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.
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
Cracow, 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 of Brandenburg, 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
legatinati.
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
- 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 (Cracow, 1527)
- De Ruthenorum nationibus eorumque erroribus (Nuremberg)
See also
