 It taught the "trivium" (grammar, rhetorics, dialectics) as well as the "quadrivium" (arithmetics, geometry, music and astronomy).It featured education in Latin, Greek and Ruthenian (predecessor to both modern Ukrainian and Belarusian), the only institution of higher education in the world teaching that language at the time.The first rector of the academy was Herasym Smotrycki, a noted Eastern Christian writer of the epoch.