The treatise by Jan Ostroróg (ca. 1430-1501), castellan and voivode of Poznań, is a collection of reform ideas and postulates concerning the recovery of the state and ecclesiastical relations in Poland. It might have been created in connection with one particular Sejm that took place in the times of king Casimir Jagiellon (1447-1492), as a comprehensive project to improve the functioning of the state. Most of all, it highlights the issues of increasing the burden of the clergy for the benefit of the state, of increasing royal powers, the idea of introducing a uniform legal system, the issues of abolition of fees supporting the papacy or of the organisation of the court and of managing the state.
In their analyses of the content of Memoriał and inspiration that stood behind it, historians stressed both: the continuation of Polish tradition of political and legal thought: Matthew of Kraków, Paweł Włodkowic and Jacob of Paradyż and the content, which coincides with the Hussite ideology, inspiration drawn from the works of fourteenth-century French legists, and finally, the possible inspiration by the notion of the fifteenth century German reformers who formed the so-called Reich Reform movement. That is because its author, doctor in Roman and canon law, distinguishing himself from other secular dignitaries of his epoch by his careful education (he studied in Erfurt, Vienna and Bologna), paid particular attention to legal aspects of the functioning of state.
Jan Ostroróg’s Memoriał causes many problems to historians. There were opinions that we do not have the authentic text and we only have an adaptation of an earlier work, prepared specifically for political purposes. On other occasions, there were suggestions that the text is an apocrypha created in the first half of the sixteenth century, in which the name of the Poznań castellan was used to express the postulates dating back to the times when the executionist movement was formed. One of the reasons for doubts is the fact that the oldest manuscripts we have date back to the 30s of the sixteenth century, so they are several decades younger than the time in which the historical figure of Jan Ostroróg lived and acted.
