Jan à Âaski or Johannes àLasco (1499 â 8 January 1560) was a Polish Calvinist reformer. Owing to his influential work in England (1548âÂÂ1553) during the English Reformation, he is known to the English-speaking world by the Anglicised form John àLasco (or less commonly, John Laski).
Jan à Âaski was born in 1499 as the second son of Jarosà Âaw à Âaski, the voivode of Sieradz, and Zuzanna of Bàkowa Góra. Following Hermann Dalton's claims in his nineteenth-century biography of à Âaski, a number of historians have identified the à Âaski family's castle in à Âask as his place of birth, although recent Polish scholarship concludes that the exact location cannot be ascertained.
His uncle, also Jan à Âaski, was the Archbishop of Gniezno, Primate of Poland and Grand Chancellor of the Crown, and he was instrumental in forwarding the early career of his nephew. The coat-of-arms of the à Âaski family was Korab.
In 1513 Jan joined his uncle's retinue travelling to Rome, passing through Silesia into Bohemia and then onto Vienna. It is possibly in Vienna that he left the company of his uncle, staying for some time in Leipzig, where the latter directed financial support for his nephew from Rome. There is no record of à Âaski undergoing any formal education at the University of Leipzig at that time. He then travelled to Bologna in 1515, where he studied under the guidance of other Polish noblemen. While Eaves and Carter suggest that à Âaski studied at the University of Bologna, Janakowski has noted that there is no evidence for that, although it is likely that he may have interacted with the university's teaching staff. Jan stayed in Bologna until 1517 or 1518, and he was referred to as the scholar of Bologna (Bononiensis scolaris) by his uncle in 1517, but the stay did not result in any formal degree.
Using his influence, his uncle secured for him the position of the custodian of à ÂÃÂczyca in 1517, and in 1518 the young à Âaski became canon at both Kraków and Pà Âock. In the same year he left Bologna, much to the chagrin of his uncle, and eventually made his way to Padua, where he remained until 1519, returning to Poland in the same year without an academic degree. He was appointed one of the secretaries to the Polish king Sigismund I upon his return, and in 1521 he took holy orders and was appointed Dean of Gniezno.
In 1523 or 1524 Jan à Âaski met Erasmus in Basel, where he returned soon for a prolonged stay in Erasmus's home. There he met Conrad Pellican, who became his instructor in Hebrew, Beatus Rhenanus, who later dedicated to à Âaski his commentaries on Pliny, as well as Heinrich Glareanus and Johannes Oecolampadius. Konstanty à »antuan argues that à Âaski became Erasmus's favourite pupil and notes that he was later commemorated by the Basel Protestants with a stained glass window with his family coat-of-arms, the Korab, in the room where he lived. The friendship between Erasmus and à Âaski culminated in à Âaski buying Erasmus's library, which the latter was allowed to keep and use until the end of his life. à Âaski's visits to Switzerland also acquainted him with Ulrich Zwingli, whom he visited in Zurich.
In the conflict for the Hungarian crown between John Zápolya and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, à Âaski supported Zápolya, and he was involved, alongside his brother Hieronim, in negotiations with the Turks to secure military support for Zápolya. Zápolya's defeat and the à Âaskis' involvement in the affair resulted in their financial ruin, postponing Jan's payment promised to Erasmus for his library until after the latter's death. The money was finally brought to Basel on à Âaski's behalf by Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski in November 1536.
Jan à Âaski left Poland in 1538, first travelling to Wittenberg, where he met Philip Melanchthon, with whom he developed a correspondence. He then reached Frankfurt, where he met the theologian Albert Hardenberg; the two moved to Louvain, where in 1540 Jan married Barbara, the daughter of a local merchant. In December that year he moved with his wife to Emden in East Frisia.
In 1542, he became pastor of a Protestant church at Emden. A public library in Emden is named after him. Shortly after his stay in Emden he went to England, where in 1550 he was superintendent of the Strangers' Church of London and had some influence on ecclesiastical affairs in the reign of Edward VI.
Upon the accession of Catholic Queen Mary in July 1553, he fled to Copenhagen with a shipload of refugees from the Strangers' Church. However they were denied refuge there because they would not accept the Augsburg Confession of Faith. They were resettled in Brandenburg. à Âaski also helped Catherine Willoughby and her husband after they too had left England. His support enabled them to obtain an appointment from Sigismund II as administrators of Lithuania. à Âaski was a correspondent of John Hooper, whom à Âaski supported in the vestments controversy.
In 1556, he was recalled to Poland, where he became secretary to King Sigismund II and was a leader in Calvinism.
His contributions to the Calvinist churches were the establishment of church government in theory and practice, a denial of any distinction between ministers and elders except in terms of who could teach and administer the sacraments. A meeting with the Anabaptist Menno Simons in 1544 led à Âaski to coin the term "Mennonites" for the followers of Simons.
He died in Pià Âczów, Poland.
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