Jan Łaski (1456–1531)

For the Protestant reformer (1499–1560), see Jan Łaski.

Jan Łaski

Jan Łaski (Łask, March 1456 - May 19, 1531, Kalisz, Poland) was a Polish nobleman, Grand Chancellor of the Crown (1503–10), diplomat, from 1490 secretary to Poland's King Kazimierz IV and from 1508 coadjutor to the Archbishop of Lwów.

Life

From 1510 Łaski was Archbishop of Gniezno and thus Primate of Poland. He was the uncle of his namesake Jan Łaski, the noted Protestant reformer. His coat of arms was Korab.

Life

Łaski appears to have been largely self-taught and to have owed everything to the remarkable mental alertness which was hereditary in the Laski family.

Secretary to the Chancellor

He took orders betimes, and in 1495 was secretary to the Polish chancellor Zawisza Kurozwecki, in which position he acquired both influence and experience. The aged chancellor entrusted the sharp-witted young ecclesiastic with the conduct of several important missions. Twice, in 1495 and again in 1500, he was sent to Rome, and once on a special embassy to Flanders, of which he has left an account. On these occasions he had the opportunity of displaying diplomatic talent of a high order.

Secretary to the King

On the accession to the Polish throne in 1501 of Alexander Jagiellon, who had little knowledge of Polish affairs and chiefly resided in Lithuania, Laski was appointed by the senate the king's secretary, in which capacity he successfully opposed the growing separatist tendencies of the grand-duchy and maintained the influence of Catholicism, now seriously threatened there by the Muscovite propaganda.

Chancellor of Poland

So struck was the king by his ability that on the death of the Polish chancellor in 1503 he passed over the vice-chancellor Macics Dzewicki and confided the great seal to Laski. As chancellor Laski supported the szlachta, or country-gentlemen, against the lower orders, going so far as to pass an edict excluding henceforth all plebeians from the higher benefices of the church. Nevertheless he approved himself such an excellent public servant that the new king, Sigismund I, made him one of his chief counsellors.

Primate of Poland

In 1511, the chancellor, who ecclesiastically was still only a canon of Kraków, obtained the coveted dignity of archbishop of Gnesen which carried with it the primacy of the Polish church. In the long negotiations with the restive and semi-rebellious Teutonic Order, Laski rendered Sigismund most important political services, proposing as a solution of the question that Sigismund should be elected grand master, while he, Laski, should surrender the primacy to the new candidate of the knights, Albert, Duke of Prussia, a solution which would have been far more profitable to Poland than the ultimate settlement of 1525. In 1513, Laski was sent to the Lateran council, convened by Pope Julius II, to plead the cause of Poland against the knights, where both as an orator and as a diplomatist he brilliantly distinguished himself. This mission was equally profitable to his country and himself, and he succeeded in obtaining from the pope for the archbishops of Gnesen the title of legati nati.

In his old age Laski's partiality for his nephew, Hieronymus, led him to support the candidature of John Zapolya, the protégé of the Turks, for the Hungarian crown so vehemently against the Habsburgs that Clement VII excommunicated him, and the shock of this disgrace was the cause of his sudden death in 1531.

Works

Polish King (left) and Chancellor Jan Łaski

• Commune incliti Poloniae regni privilegium (1506; Łaski's Statute; in Polish, Statut Łaskiego)

Collections of synodal legislation

• Statuta provincialia (1512)
• Sanctiones ecclesiasticae tam expontificum decretis quam ex constitutionibus synodorum provinciae excerptae, in primis autem statuta in diversis provincialibus synodis a se sancita (1525)
• Statuta provinciae Gnesnensis (Kraków, 1527)
• De Ruthenorum nationibus eorumque erroribus (Nuremberg)

See also

• List of Poles

References

Attribution

•  Ott, Michael (1913). "John Laski". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Laski". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. ; which in turn cites:
  • Heinrich R. von Zeissberg, Joh. Laski, Erzbischof in Gnesen (Vienna, 1874)
  • Jan Korytkowski, Jan Laski, Archbishop of Gnesen (Gnesen, 1880)

External links

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Preceded by Andrzej Boryszewski

Primate of Poland Archbishop of Gniezno 1510–1531

Succeeded by Maciej Drzewiecki