The Chełmno Voivodeship () was a unit of administrative division and local government in the Kingdom of Poland since 1454/1466 until the Partitions of Poland in 1772/1793. Its capital was at Chełmno.

Together with the Pomeranian and Malbork Voivodeships and the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia it formed the province of Royal Prussia, and with several other voivodeships it formed the Greater Poland Province.

History

The Chełmno Land had been part of the Polish Duchy of Masovia since 1138. It was occupied by pagan Old Prussian tribes in 1216, who struggled against their Christianization instigated by Bishop Christian of Oliva. After several unsuccessful attempts to reconquer Chełmno, Duke Konrad I of Masovia in 1226 called for support by the Teutonic Knights, who indeed approached and started a Prussian campaign, after the duke promised to grant the Chełmno Land as a fief to the Teutonic Order.

In the course of the Order's decline after the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, the citizens of Chełmno, Toruń (Thorn), Lubawa (Löbau), Brodnica, Grudziądz, Nowe Miasto and Radzyń co-formed the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation. In 1454, the organisation led an uprising against the rule of the Teutonic Knights, and asked King Casimir IV of Poland to reincorporate the region to the Kingdom of Poland, to which the King agreed and signed the act of reincorporation, which sparked the Thirteen Years' War between the Knights and the Kingdom of Poland. The towns and nobles of the region then took an oath of allegiance to Poland in Toruń on 28 May 1454.Górski, p. 76 The Chełmno Voivodeship was established the same year. After the Order's defeat, the reintegration of Chełmno Land with Poland was confirmed in the Second Peace of Thorn and together with the adjacent Lubawa Land in the east it formed the Chełmno Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland, since the 1569 Union of Lublin part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The voivodeship was annexed by Prussia during the First Partition of Poland in 1772, except for the city of Toruń, which was not incorporated into the province of West Prussia until the 1793 Second Partition.

Administration

Voivodeship Governor (Wojewoda) seat: Chełmno

Regional council (sejmik generalny) Grudziądz

Regional councils (sejmik poselski i deputacki) Kowalewo Radzyń

Administrative division: Chełmno Land (Ziemia Chełmińska), Chełmno Chełmno County (Powiat Chełmiński), Chełmno Toruń County (Powiat Toruński), Toruń Grudziądz County (Powiat Grudziądzki), Grudziądz Radzyń County (Powiat Radzyński), Radzyń Kowalewo County (Powiat Kowalewski), Kowalewo Michałowo Land (Ziemia Michałowska), Lubawa Brodnica County (Powiat Brodnicki), Brodnica Nowe Miasto County (Powiat Nowomiejski), Nowe Miasto

Cities and towns

The largest city of the voivodeship was the royal city of Toruń, which as one of the largest and most influential cities of entire Poland enjoyed voting rights during the Royal free elections. It was the birthplace of the renowned astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in 1473, and place of death of Polish King John I Albert in 1501. It was the location of the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (parliament) in 1576 and 1626, and the Colloquium Charitativum, a three-month congress of European Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, considered an important event in the history of interreligious dialogue, held in 1645 on the initiative of King Władysław IV Vasa at a time when religious conflicts occurred in many other European countries and the disastrous Thirty Years' War was fought west of Poland.

Other royal cities and towns were Brodnica, Golub, Grudziądz, Kowalewo, Lidzbark, Łasin, Nowe Miasto, Radzyń, Rogoźno, whereas private church towns were Chełmno, Chełmża, Kurzętnik, Lubawa and Wąbrzeźno. In 1750, also Ostromecko was granted town rights, which, however, it was deprived of shortly after its annexation by Prussia in the First Partition of Poland.

The most prominent educational institutions of the province were the Academic Gymnasium in Toruń, founded in 1594 from a former municipal school, and the Chełmno Academy in Chełmno, transformed from a local gymnasium in 1692, which in 1756 became a branch of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, the oldest and leading Polish university. Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, one of the greatest Polish Baroque composers, was a lecturer at the Chełmno Academy in the 1690s. Lubawa was the place where the decision was made to publish Copernicus' groundbreaking work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.

Voivodes

Augustyn z Szewy, 1454–1455 Gabriel Bażyński, 1455–1474 Ludwik Mortęski, 1475–1480 Mikołaj Dąbrowski, 1480–1483 Karol z Napola, 1484–1495 Jan Dąbrowski, 1498–1513 Jan Luzjański, 1514–1551 Stanisław Kostka, 1551–1555 Jan Działyński, 1556–1583 Mikołaj Działyński, 1584–1604 Maciej Konopacki, 1605–1611 Ludwik Mortęski, 1611–1615 Stanisław Działyński, 1615-1615 Jan Jakub Wejher, 1618–1626 Melchior Wejher, 1626–1643 Mikołaj Wejher, 1643–1647 Jan Działyński, 1647–1648 Jan Kos, 1648–1662 Piotr Działyński, 1663–1668 Jan Gniński, 1668–1680 Michał Działyński, 1681–1687 Jan Kos (died 1702),1688–1702 Tomasz Działyński, 1702–1714 Jakub Zygmunt Rybiński, 1714–1725 Franciszek Bieliński, 1725–1732 Jan Ansgary Czapski 1732–1738 Michał Wiktor Bieliński, 1738–1746 Zygmunt Kretkowski, 1746–1766 Franciszek Stanisław Hutten-Czapski, 1766–1802

References

Bibliography