Jan Kanty Rzesiński – dziewiętnastowieczny krakowski romanista i historyk prawa (część I)

Jan Kanty Rzesiński was an active member of the Cracovian intellectual elite of the first half of the 19th century. However, his research activities, as well as his literary works, are mostly forgotten today. It is primarily a consequence of the fact that although Rzesiński many times sought employment at Jagiellonian University, he was finally hired as a professor there only in the last years of his life. Rzesiński’s academic career at first covered Roman law studies, but in its later stages he focused on the problems of Polish legal history, as well as the philosophy of law. In terms of the views presented, he can be labeled as one of the first Polish propagators of the Historical School of Jurisprudence. He was not, however, an uncritical apologist of the school, rather he was engaged in the discussion of its goals and methods of legal research. The article is divided into two parts. The first one covers Rzesiński’s academic curriculum vitae, as well as an analysis of his works related to Roman law: his doctoral the- sis regarding the calculation of interest in Roman law, his translation into Polish of Edward Gibbon’s Chapter 44 presenting the history of Roman law, as well as the translation of Eduard Gans’ work about Gaius’ Institutions. The second part of the article that will be published in the next issue of Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History (2023) concerns Rzesiński’s remaining literary activity, which was related to both law (the translation of Processus iuris civilis Cracoviensis, articles on the law of quartering in lieu of securing the creditors rights in the old Polish law, articles on language and jurisprudence, and articles on the relations between legal history and philosophy of law) and his views against the contemporary society and the Cracovian academic milieu.