| Chełmno Voivodeship Województwo chełmińskie Palatinatus Culmensis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voivodeship ofPoland¹ Part ofRoyal Prussia andGreater Poland provinces | |||||||||
| 1454–1793 | |||||||||
 Coat of arms | |||||||||
 Chełmno Voivodeship of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (in 1619) | |||||||||
| Capital | Chełmno | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
• | 4,654 km2 (1,797 sq mi) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1454 | ||||||||
| 1466 | |||||||||
| 1772 | |||||||||
| 1793 | |||||||||
| Political subdivisions | Two lands divided into 7counties | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Poland | ||||||||
| ¹ Voivodeship of thePolish Crown in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; Voivodeship of theKingdom of Poland before 1569. | |||||||||
TheChełmno Voivodeship (Polish:Województwo chełmińskie) was a unit of administrative division and local government in theKingdom of Poland since 1454/1466 until thePartitions of Poland in 1772/1793. Its capital was atChełmno.
Together with thePomeranian andMalbork Voivodeships and thePrince-Bishopric of Warmia it formed the province ofRoyal Prussia, and with several other voivodeships it formed theGreater Poland Province.[1]
TheChełmno Land had been part of the PolishDuchy of Masovia since 1138. It was occupied by paganOld Prussian tribes in 1216, who struggled against theirChristianization instigated by BishopChristian of Oliva. After several unsuccessful attempts to reconquer Chełmno, DukeKonrad I of Masovia in 1226 called for support by theTeutonic Knights, who indeed approached and started a Prussian campaign, after the duke promised to grant the Chełmno Land as afief to the Teutonic Order.
In the course of the Order's decline after the 1410Battle of Grunwald, the citizens of Chełmno, Toruń (Thorn),Lubawa (Löbau),Brodnica,Grudziądz,Nowe Miasto andRadzyń co-formed the anti-TeutonicPrussian Confederation. In 1454, the organisation led an uprising against the rule of the Teutonic Knights, and asked KingCasimir IV of Poland to reincorporate the region to the Kingdom of Poland, to which the King agreed and signed the act of reincorporation,[2] which sparked theThirteen Years' War between the Knights and theKingdom of Poland. The towns and nobles of the region then took an oath of allegiance to Poland in Toruń on 28 May 1454.[3] The Chełmno Voivodeship was established the same year. After the Order's defeat, the reintegration of Chełmno Land with Poland was confirmed in theSecond Peace of Thorn and together with the adjacent Lubawa Land in the east it formed the Chełmno Voivodeship of theKingdom of Poland, since the 1569Union of Lublin part of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The voivodeship was annexed byPrussia during theFirst Partition of Poland in 1772, except for the city ofToruń, which was not incorporated into the province ofWest Prussia until the 1793Second Partition.
Voivodeship Governor (Wojewoda) seat:
Regional council (sejmik generalny)
Regional councils (sejmik poselski i deputacki)
Administrative division:[4]
The largest city of the voivodeship was the royal city ofToruń,[5] which as one of the largest and most influential cities of entire Poland enjoyed voting rights during theRoyal free elections.[6] It was the birthplace of the renowned astronomerNicolaus Copernicus in 1473, and place of death of Polish KingJohn I Albert in 1501.[7] It was the location of theSejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (parliament) in 1576 and 1626,[8] and theColloquium Charitativum, a three-month congress of European Catholics,Lutherans, andCalvinists, considered an important event in the history of interreligious dialogue, held in 1645 on the initiative of KingWładysław IV Vasa at a time when religious conflicts occurred in many other European countries and the disastrousThirty Years' War was fought west of Poland.[9]
Otherroyal cities and towns wereBrodnica,Golub,Grudziądz,Kowalewo,Lidzbark,Łasin,Nowe Miasto,Radzyń,Rogoźno, whereasprivate church towns wereChełmno,Chełmża,Kurzętnik,Lubawa andWąbrzeźno.[5] In 1750, alsoOstromecko was grantedtown rights, which, however, it was deprived of shortly after its annexation by Prussia in theFirst Partition of Poland.[10]
The most prominent educational institutions of the province were the Academic Gymnasium in Toruń, founded in 1594 from a former municipal school, and theChełmno Academy in Chełmno, transformed from a local gymnasium in 1692, which in 1756 became a branch of theJagiellonian University inKraków, the oldest and leading Polish university.[11][12]Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, one of the greatest PolishBaroque composers, was a lecturer at the Chełmno Academy in the 1690s.[13] Lubawa was the place where the decision was made to publish Copernicus' groundbreaking workDe revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
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