Central European Polemics over Descartes: Johannes Placentinus and His Academic Opponents at Frankfurt on Oder (1653-1656)

Between 1653 and 1656 a heated polemic over Cartesianism and the reconcilability between Descartes’s views and traditional university curricula burst out at the University of Frankfurt on Oder, at the so-called Academia Viadrina in Brandenburg.1 The protagonist was the Bohemian- Polish mathematician Jan Kołaczek, latinized as Placentinus, a committed supporter of Cartesian philosophy, who had to face the attacks and the vexations of his colleagues from the Faculties of Philosophy and Theology. His opponents accused him of overturning a well-established scholarly tradition—mainly resting on Aristotelianism—and subverting the university statutes. They denounced him to the academic and political authorities for the dissemination of unprecedented ideas, and went so far as to reprimand his philosophical and cosmological teaching from the pulpit. Placentinus reacted with provocative writings and public demonstrations, such as the distribution of pro-Cartesian publications in the market place in front of the Church. He eventually overcame his adversaries by making a clever recourse to academic mechanisms and practices, such as the use of disputations to defend and propagate his theses, and by taking advantage of political ties, in particular the patronage of Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg.