Studies

1626

At the age of 14, Michał suffers a life-threatening illness. In the face of possible death, he takes an oath before Saint Francis Xavier (a Jesuit and the first missionary in Asia who died in 1552 at the shore of Guangdong, China. 

1626

Michał Boym enters a Jesuit college in Lviv.

1631

Michał Boym finishes studying at the Jesuit college in Lviv.

August 16, 1631

Michał joins the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits and begins a two-year novitiate at Saint Stephen and Saint Mathias churches (previously at Stephen Square, but no longer existing.) He is practicing for future missionary work by assisting patients in hospitals and prisons and teaching catechism to children. 

1633

Michał begins pedagogical studies in Sandomierz (east-southeast of Poland) and then follows with studies of philosophy in Kalisz (west of center Poland).

1638

Michał begins theological studies in Kraków. He attends Jesuit College of Saint Peter and Paul the Apostles. It is a place filled with a missionary zeal since it already had produced two missionaries in active service around that time in the Far East. One of them is the great benefactor of the College and a missionary martyred in Japan, Wojciech Męciński (1598–1643), and the other, Andrew Rudomina (1596–1631), who died during his mission in China.

1640

Michał completes his studies at Jesuit College in Kraków. He travels to Jarosław, a small town in the South-East part of Poland, to take the Third Vow. The Third Vow, otherwise called the Pilgrim`s Vow, is a survival school envisaged by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It consists of the candidates peregrinating without money during a whole month, often being forced to resort to the door-to-door mendicancy for the love of Christ and "to become accustomed to discomfort in sleep and feeling hungry to having abandoned all hopes in money and material goods, they place them with true faith and devout love in the Supreme God, their Creator.") (Constitution of the Society of Jesus, General Examination.)

1641

Jerzy, father of Michał dies. On his deathbed, he commands them to follow his path in medicine.

1641

After completing "the Third Vow" in Jarosław, Michał is ordained as a chaplain in Kraków.