Casimir III of Poland in the context of "Visegrád Group"

Louis I, also known as Louis the Great (Hungarian: Nagy Lajos; Croatian: Ludovik Veliki; Slovak: Ľudovít Veľký) or Louis the Hungarian (Polish: Ludwik Węgierski; 5 March 1326 – 10 September 1382), was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1342 and King of Poland from 1370 until his death in 1382. He was the first child of Charles I of Hungary and his wife, Elizabeth of Poland, to survive infancy. A 1338 treaty between his father and Casimir III of Poland, Louis's maternal uncle, confirmed Louis's right to inherit the Kingdom of Poland if his uncle died without a son. In exchange, Louis was obliged to assist his uncle to reoccupy the lands that Poland had lost in previous decades. He bore the title Duke of Transylvania between 1339 and 1342 but did not administer the province.

Louis was of age when he succeeded his father in 1342, but his deeply religious mother exerted a powerful influence on him. He inherited a centralized kingdom and a rich treasury from his father. During the first years of his reign, Louis launched a crusade against the Lithuanians and restored royal power in Croatia; his troops defeated a Tatar army, expanding his authority towards the Black Sea. When his brother, Andrew, Duke of Calabria, husband of Queen Joanna I of Naples, was assassinated in 1345, Louis accused the queen of his murder and punishing her became the principal goal of his foreign policy. He launched two campaigns to the Kingdom of Naples between 1347 and 1350. His troops occupied large territories on both occasions, and Louis adopted the styles of Neapolitan sovereigns (including the title of King of Sicily and Jerusalem), but the Holy See never recognized his claim. Louis's arbitrary acts and atrocities committed by his mercenaries made his rule unpopular in Southern Italy. He withdrew all his troops from the Kingdom of Naples in 1351.

The first Congress of Visegrád was a 1335 summit in Visegrád in which Kings John I of Bohemia, Charles I of Hungary and Croatia, and Casimir III of Poland formed an anti-Habsburg alliance. The three leaders agreed to create new commercial routes to bypass the staple port of Vienna, which made merchants offer their goods there before they could try elsewhere, and to obtain easier access to other European markets.

The summit was triggered by the sudden expansion of Habsburg power in the region, which had taken over Carinthia and Carniola after the death of duke Henry of Gorizia-Tyrol, who had unsuccessfully claimed the Bohemian and the Polish crowns.

The General Charter of Jewish rights known as the Statute of Kalisz, and the Kalisz Privilege, granted Jews in the Middle Ages some protection against discrimination in Poland compared to other places in Europe. These rights included exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish matters to Jewish courts, and established rules of evidence for criminal matters involving Christians and Jews.

The statute was issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Bolesław the Pious on September 8, 1264 in Kalisz. After the unification of Poland, the statute was then ratified by some subsequent Polish Kings: Casimir the Great in 1334, Casimir IV in 1453, and Sigismund I in 1539. This was in contrast to other rulers in Western and Southern Europe at the time who forced Jews to emigrate: England in 1290, France in 1306, Spain in 1492.

Jagiellonian University Medical College is the medical school of Jagiellonian University, a public research institute in Kraków, Poland. It was established by King Casimir III of Poland in 1364, making it the 12th oldest medical school in the world. Jagiellonian University Medical College (JUMC) provides patient care, medical education, and research training through its various clinical affiliates and research institutes.