Nicolaus Copernicus surviving primary documents on the early years of Copernicus's childhood and education. Copernicus biographers assume that Watzenrode first sent young Copernicus to St. John's School, at Toruń, where he himself had been a master. Later, according to Armitage, the boy attended the Cathedral School at Włocławek, up the Vistula River from Toruń, which prepared pupils for entrance to the University of Kraków, Watzenrode's alma mater in Poland's capital. In the winter semester of 1491–92 Copernicus, as "Nicolaus Nicolai de Thuronia", matriculated together with his brother Andrew at the University of Kraków (now Jagiellonian University). Copernicus began his studies in the
Nicolaus Copernicus common in the period, the spellings of both the toponym and the surname vary greatly. Copernicus "was rather indifferent about orthography". During his childhood, about 1480, the name of his father (and thus of the future astronomer) was recorded in Thorn as "Niclas Koppernigk". At Kraków he signed himself, in Latin, "Nicolaus Nicolai de Torunia" (Nicolaus, son of Nicolaus, of Toruń). At Bologna, in 1496, he registered in the "Matricula Nobilissimi Germanorum Collegii, resp. Annales Clarissimae Nacionis Germanorum", of the "Natio Germanica Bononiae", as "Dominus Nicolaus Kopperlingk de Thorn – IX grosseti". At Padua he signed himself "Nicolaus Copernik", later