Orzechowski (Orichovius), Stanisław

ORZECHOWSKI (ORICHOVIUS), STANISŁAW. - Polish priest and humanist, b. 1515, d. 1567. O. was born into a mixed Polish-Ruthenian family and therefore liked to call himself "gente Ruthenus natione Polonus." At only 14 years of age O. was already a canon at Przemysl. He studied in Vienna and then in Wittenberg, where he came under the influence of Protestantism, and finally in Padua and Rome, where he regained his Catholic convictions. In 1543 O. unwillingly received, under pressure from his father, priestly ordination.

A brilliant humanist, but of a passionate and turbulent character, he entered in 1546 into conflict with ecclesiastical authority because of his polemic against the celibacy of the clergy. O. maintained that celibacy is against nature and against the genuine traditions of the early Church; appealing to the discipline in force in the Eastern Church (O.'s mother was the daughter of a Ruthenian priest), he proposed the abolition of obligatory celibacy as the best remedy for reforming the life of the clergy of that time. In 1551 O. married after renouncing all ecclesiastical benefices. From then until his death, despite the ecclesiastical censures inflicted on him, he obstinately defended the legitimacy of his own marriage, devoting numerous pamphlets to this, which, written with elegance and skill, won him many sympathies, particularly among the nobility. Despite all this, O. at the same time and with equal zeal wrote against the Protestants, especially against Stancur (1502-74), then the principal propagator of Protestantism in Poland.

Giuseppe Olar