Jan Władysław Woś

Jan Władysław Woś, the Polish historian, essayist, fiction writer and bibliophile who taught Eastern European history at universities across Italy and Germany, died on November 3, 2026, at the age of 87. Polish communities in Italy reported his death the following day.

He was born in Warsaw on April 19, 1939, and graduated from the University of Warsaw with a thesis on Dante's philosophical system. He went on to study in Milan, Louvain, Florence, Pisa, Bonn and Heidelberg, then taught the history of Eastern Europe at the Universities of Pisa (1976–1987), Heidelberg (1985–86), Trento (1987–2009) and Venice (1990–91), while also contributing to anthropological research in Africa and Amazonia.

His scholarship focused on sixteenth-century Polish history and the history of the Roman Church, especially Italian–Polish relations. He took Italian citizenship in 1987, received a laurea honoris causa from the Polish University Abroad in London, and belonged to the Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise de Paris and the Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad.

A devoted bibliophile, he assembled remarkable collections of rare books, prints, engravings, parchments and maps tied to Polish history and culture. He is remembered as a bridge between Polish and Italian scholarship and as a guardian of the written Polish past.

Photo: Paolo Bellini, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.