For many centuries Lublin was a thriving centre of Hebrew and Yiddish culture, where Judaic studies flourished so much that the city was often referred to as the Jerusalem of the Polish Kingdom or even the Jewish Oxford. First Hebrew publications and prayer books started to be published in Lublin in the mid 16th c. In 1578 Kalonymos ben Mordechai Jaffe established a renowned printing house which largely contributed to the development of Jewish literature. The printing traditions were upheld in the 19th c. by Samuel Arct, owner of a printing house and a bookshop in Lublin, who subsequently moved the company to Warsaw. In the 16th and 17th c. Lublin was the seat of the Council of the Four Lands (Vaad Arba Aratsot) - a central body of local government for the Jews who inhabited the Kingdom of Poland. In the 18th c. Yaakov Yithak Horowitz, the leader of the Polish Hasidic Movement known as the Seer of Lublin, was born here.