Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki

Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki
Coat of arms	Clan Piława
Born	around 1712
Died	1782
Buried	Pochayiv Lavra, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine (then Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Noble family	Potocki
Spouse(s)	Marianna Dąbrowska
Father	Stefan Aleksander Potocki
Mother	Joanna Sieniawska

Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki (ab. 1712 – 13 April 1782) was a Polish nobleman, starost of Kaniv, Bohuslav, benefactor of the Buchach townhall, Pochayiv Lavra, Dominican Church in Lviv, deputy to Sejm and owner of the Buchach castle.

Mikołaj's father, Stefan Aleksander Potocki, Governor of Bełz, with his second wife, Joanna Sieniawska, were the founders of Basilian monastery of the UGCC in Buchach. Mikołaj Hieronim Sieniawski was his grandfather.

Infamous for his many excesses and habits, he was immortalized in many Polish and Ukrainian stories and legends (especially those of the 19th century), notably in the Ukrainian ballad Bondarivna (about a cooper's daughter, whom he murdered when she refused to live with him). Zygmunt Krasiński, in his Nieboska Komedia, referred to him as a "governor, who shot women on the trees and baked Jews alive" ("Ów, starosta, baby strzelał po drzewach i Żydów piekł żywcem"). Near the end of his life, after the first partition of Poland, when many of his lands passed under Austrian rule, he was ordered to disband his private army. He then attempted to create an image of a pious and almost saintly person, moving to a monastery and sponsoring many religious buildings and organisations – nonetheless, even until his last years, he retained a harem.

Buried in Ławra Poczajowska (Pochayiv Lavra).

• 
  Portrait of Potocki held in Lviv
• 
  Pochayiv Lavra
• 
  Buchach townhall (1750–1751)
• 
  Greek Catholic Church (former Roman Catholic Church) in Horodenka
• 
  Church of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, Buchach
• 
  Greek Catholic Church in Horodenka
• 
  St. Pokrova church, Buchach

Sources

• Sadok Barącz. Pamiątki buczackie.— Lwów: Drukarnia «Gazety narodowej», 1882.— 168 p. (in Polish and Latin)
• Zofia Zielińska. Potocki Mikołaj Basyli / Polski Słownik Biograficzny.— Wrocław — Warszawa — Kraków — Gdańsk — Łódź, Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1984.— t. XXVIII/1, zeszyt 116.— 178 p.— P. 113–115. (in Polish)