HOSIUS (Hos, Hozusz, Osio), Saint Stanislas. - Theologian and cardinal, b. in Kraków on 5 May 1504, d. at Capranica (Sutri) on 5 Aug. 1579. Born into a German family that had immigrated to Poland in the service of the King, he studied first in Kraków, then in Bologna and Padua, taking his degree in law in 1533; there he met Ugo Buoncompagni (the future Gregory XIII, who was his teacher), Lazzaro Bonamico, Cristoforo Madruzzo, Reginald Pole, Otto Truchsess, who initiated him into the humanistic and religious currents of the time.
Through contact with these eminent men he acquired a profound ecclesiastical sense and conceived an unshakeable attachment to the Roman Church, which accompanied him throughout his life. Having returned to his homeland, he worked for some time in the royal chancery, assisting his protector P. Tomicki, bishop of Kraków and vice-chancellor. In 1543 he became a priest, in 1549 bishop of Kulm
(consecrated in 1550) and ambassador of King Sigismund II Augustus to Charles V and Ferdinand I. In 1551 he was appointed bishop of Ermland (Warmia). Paul IV summoned him to Rome in 1558 for consultations on the Reform. By Pius IV he was sent as nuncio to the Emperor Ferdinand I to negotiate the resumption of the Council of Trent and the difficulties created in the ecclesiastical field by the conduct of Maximilian II. In 1561, created cardinal, he was sent as papal legate to the Council of Trent. After the Council he carried on his activity once more in his diocese, and obtained, together with Commendone, the recognition of the decrees of Trent in Poland (Diet of Parczów, 1564), summoned the Jesuits to found a college at Braunsberg, made the pastoral visitation and celebrated the diocesan Synod. In 1566 he received the appointment of papal legate for Poland and in 1569, having left a coadjutor in the diocese, he fixed his residence in Rome, where he served as ambassador of his King; surrounded by the esteem of the cardinals and above all of Pope Gregory XIII, he was also appointed (1573) major penitentiary, and zealously attended to the affairs of the universal Church, especially the Catholic restoration in the northern countries.
The spiritual figure of H. emerges from a synthesis of humanistic and theological formation matured in a rigid orthodoxy and absolute fidelity to the Church. In his theological thought St. Augustine had a special influence; he knew scholasticism well, but in particular the controversialist literature of his time. He was above all a polemicist; as a theologian he has the merit of having synthesized, with precise formulation, Catholic doctrine, in such a way that its clear separation from the errors of Protestantism could be discerned. The soul of the Catholic restoration in Poland and averse to any compromise in dogma, he strove to have the principle of religious territorialism applied to Catholicism and to have heretics repressed even by force.
Principal works: the Confessio catholicae fidei, very widely circulated, published in 1532, had 30 editions, of which the best is that of Cologne 1582 (Opera omnia, in 2 vols.); F. Hipler, Die deutschen Predigten und Katechesen der Ermländischen Bischöfe Hosius und Kromer (Cologne 1885); F. Hipler - V. Zakrzewsky, Stanislai Hosi epistolae (I [1525-50], Kraków 1879; II [1551-58], ibid. 1886).
Bibliography10 works
Igino Rogger