use of the
former, and even pronounced Casimir worthy of dethronement. Such
outbursts against Casimir IV. are not infrequent in Dlugosz's _Historia
Polonica_, and his strong personal bias must certainly be taken into
consideration in any critical estimate of that famous work. Yet as a
high-minded patriot Dlugosz had no sympathy whatever with Olesnicki's
opposition to Casimir's Prussian policy, and steadily supported the king
during the whole course of the war with the Teutonic knights. When
Olesnicki died in 1455 he left Dlugosz his principal executor. The
office of administering the cardinal's estate was a very ungrateful one,
for the family resented the liberal benefactions of their kinsman to the
Church and the university, and accused Dlugosz of exercising undue
influence, from which charge he triumphantly vindicated himself. It was
in the year of his patron's death that he began to write his _Historia
Polonica_. This great book, the first and still one of the best
historical works on Poland in the modern sense of the word, was only
undertaken after mature consideration and an exhaustive study of all the
original sources then available, some of which are now lost. The
principal archives of Poland and Hungary were ransacked for the purpose,
and in his account of his own times Dlugosz's intimate acquaintance with
the leading scholars and statesmen of his day stood him in good stead.
The style is modelled on that of Livy, of whom Dlugosz was a warm
admirer. As a proof of the thoroughness and conscientiousness of Dlugosz
it may be mentioned that he learned the Cyrillic alphabet and took up
the study of Ruthenian, "in order that this our history may be as plain
and perfect as possible." The first of the numerous imprints of the
_Historia Polonica_ appeared in 1614, the first complete edition in
1711.

Dlugosz's literary labours did not interfere with his political
activity. In 1467 the generous and discerning Casimir IV. entrusted
Dlugosz with the education of his sons, the eldest of whom, Wladislaus,
at the urgent request of the king, he accompanied to Prague when in 1471
the young prince was elected king of Bohemia. Dlugosz refused the
archbishopric of Prague because of his strong dislike of the land of the
Hussites; but seven years later he accepted the archbishopric of
Lemberg. His last years were devoted to his history, which he completed
in 1479. He died on the 19th of May 1480, at Piatek.

See Aleksander Semkow