Ostroh Academy

It is considered the first institution of higher education in the Eastern Slavic world, dating to 1576 and founded by the wealthy Ruthenian magnate Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski.

The academy was at the centre of what historians have dubbed the "Ostroh Renaissance",[1][2] an Orthodox cultural revival led by the Rus’ magnates of Poland-Lithuania in resistance to the dominant Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

A large part of the funding came from Princess Halszka Ostrogska's testament of 1579, in which she donated "six times sixty thousand" (360,000) Lithuanian grosz to local school, hospital and Holy Spas' (i.e. Savior's) monastery near Łuck (Lutsk).

[8] With time, Ostrogski assembled a significant group of professors, many of them having been expelled from the Jagiellonian University (such as the first dean of astronomy Jan Latosz) or having quarreled with the king or the Catholic clergy.

[12] It also became the alma mater of professors of the so-called Brotherhood schools for Orthodox burghers being founded in the late 16th century all around the country in accordance with the royal decree of 1585 by king Stefan Bathory.

"[4] The Polish administrators at the time were engaged in a "multifaceted and all-encompassing" policy of Polonization and conversion to Catholicism,[3] and what's more, the Jesuits insisted on only the use of the Latin or Greek languages for scripture and academic publications.

She materially limited the activity of the academy, trying to reduce it to the level of a parochial school, and created instead a College of Jesuits (Ostrog) [uk] in Ostroh (1624).

On Easter night of 1636, Hanni-Aloise managed to finally liquidate the remnants of the academy and introduce a union in Ostroh and other estates - provoking a demonstration by the pupils.