LASKI (a Lasco), Jan. - Polish reformer, b. at Lask (eastern Poland) in 1499, d. at Pińczów in 1560. A nephew of the famous archbishop and statesman Jan the Elder, he spent his youth in Italy, at Bologna and Rome, pursuing humanistic studies, then became a close friend of Erasmus, whose library he acquired, and later went to Paris. During this long sojourn he made the acquaintance of many of the future leaders of the “Reformation.” Ordained priest in 1521, he obtained, through his uncle’s influence, ecclesiastical posts and benefices. In the period 1524–26, while on a diplomatic mission, he intensified his contacts with the Reformers. In 1530, again through his uncle’s influence, he received from King John Sigismund Zápolya of Hungary the see of Veszprém; this appointment, however, was not confirmed by the Pope.
Meanwhile, suspicions about his orthodoxy grew, as his contrary actions and continuous contacts with Protestant leaders became ever more evident. By 1538, in fact, he was already a Protestant. Passing through Frankfurt, Louvain, and Emden, he was even entrusted with the oversight of the Reformed churches in that region. In 1544, back in his homeland, he swore allegiance to Catholicism once more, but soon abandoned it again and returned to Emden to organize the Reformed community there on humanistic-Calvinist principles, decidedly anti-Zwinglian.
Meanwhile in England, during the minority of Edward VI, when power was in the hands of the Lord Protector Somerset and the primate of the English Church, Archbishop Cranmer—who was busily engaged in organizing the Anglican Church—invited Laski to collaborate. Laski arrived in England in 1550, and while serving as Cranmer’s adviser he devoted himself particularly to that colony of exiled Protestants who, following the Augsburg Interim of 1548, were known as the *Ecclesia peregrinorum*. Calvinist in his view of the Lord’s Supper, he rooted his liturgy in this conviction and promoted the introduction of laymen into the governance of ecclesiastical affairs. Upon the death of Edward VI (1553) and the accession of the Catholic Mary, Laski left England. Hated by the Lutherans, who drove him and his Reformed community out of Denmark, Mecklenburg, Lübeck, and Hamburg in the dead of winter, he finally took refuge in 1556 in Poland, where King Sigismund Augustus received him. Laski had long pressed the king to support his efforts to unite Poland’s divided Protestant churches, which were bitterly split over sacramental questions. His final years were spent in this endeavor, seeking to bring Calvinists, Lutherans, and Moravian Brethren into a single confession. He achieved some success in “Little Poland,” where he fought fiercely against Catholicism, but his efforts at reunion, as Farel wrote to Calvin, seemed destined always to produce the opposite effect. A lasting agreement was reached later (1572), twelve years after Laski’s death, at Sandomierz, when the virulence of the sacramental controversy began to abate.