Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Zamoyski Academy was founded in 1594 by Jan Zamoyski, the Polish Crown Chancellor. Its official opening ceremony took place on the 15th of March 1595 in Zamość, a city that Zamoyski also founded.
The Zamoyski Academy was the third institution of higher education in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, after the Kraków Academy (1364) and Vilnius University (1578). It was also the first privately funded institution of higher education in the Commonwealth.
Pope Clement VIII approved the Academy's founding via a bull dated the 29th of October 1594. In Poland, the Bishop of Chełm, Stanisław Gomoliński, provided ecclesiastical sanction, and King Sigismund III Vasa confirmed the foundation act in 1601.
The Academy initially comprised three departments: liberal arts, law, and medicine, with seven faculty positions. A department of theology was added in 1648. From 1637 the school held the power to award doctor of philosophy diplomas.
Faculty included Polish scholars such as Szymon Szymonowic, Adam Burski, Tomasz Drezner, and Stanisław Staszic, as well as international figures: English lawyer William Bruce, Italian theologian Dominic Convalis, and Belgian mathematician Adriaan van Roomen.
In 1784 the Austrian government, which had taken control of that part of Poland during the late-18th-century partitions, shut the Academy down and converted it into a secondary school called Liceum Królewskie (Royal Lyceum). Between 1811 and 1866 the old buildings were used as barracks for troops of the Zamość Fortress.