Nawojka
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Nawojka ( 1300s - 1400s ) was a semi-legendary medieval Polish woman known to have dressed as a boy in order to study in the university at Krakow in the 15th century. She later became a nun. She is considered to be the first female student and teacher in Poland.
[edit] Overview
The story of her was first told by the abbot Martin of Leibitz (d.1464) in Vienna in about 1429. There are several different version of the legend.
According to the one version, she was a daughter of a teacher in church school in Gniezno, schooled by her father, who decided to continue her studies using any means necessary. According to another version, she was a girl who inherited a fortune when orphaned and, dressed as a boy. In any case, enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in the name of Andrzej (or Jakub, two versions of the name she used are reported). As it was forbidden for women to attend higher schools.
[edit] Discovery
She sucessfully fooled everyone and studied for two years, making herself a name of being a great scholar and a serious student, but one day, she was exposed as a woman. The versions differ here again: according to one, two soldiers wagered that the student walking by was in fact a woman, and exposed her; according to the second, she was found by a son of wójt from Gniezno who joined the school; according to the third one, she fall ill and a doctor examining her found out the truth.
When she was taken in front of the authorities to answer why she had comitted this crime, she simply answered: "For the will of learning". When they interrogated her former fellow - students and professors they cold find no one to accuse her of immoral behaviour; further, her record as a student was excellent. She was not accused for any crime, but it is lightly that the judges did not want her to go unpunished. According to Martin of Leibitz, she asked to be taken to an convent, where she took the woves, soon became a teacher and a leader of the convent school, and eventually became elected their abbess.
This story may or may not be true, but some historians gues, that if it is true, her time at the university was about 1407-1409.
[edit] Woman's dormitory
Later on, the Jagiellonian University did allow individual women to attend; the widow Sofia Gokowa did so in 1580-1581. In 1929 it built its first women's dormitory; it was named after Nawojka. One of the streets in Kraków is also named after her.
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