Walerian Krasiński

Who was Walerian Krasiński?

Count Walerian Skorobohaty Krasiński or Valerian Krasinski was a Polish Calvinist politician, nationalist and historian.

Krasinski was a Polish aristocrat in exile after the November Uprising 1830, during the Austrian, German and Russian partition of Poland. In 1844, he was proposed for a chair in Slavonic Studies at Oxford University. In 1848, he presented appeals to the Habsburg government. In Russia and Europe, or, The probable consequences of the present war he wrote on the Crimean War.

Krasinski's Historical sketch of the rise, progress, and decline of the Reformation in Poland still one of main texts on the subject available in English, was written in English. One of Krasinski's main sources is Slavonia reformata by Andreas Vengerscius.

He died in Edinburgh and is buried in the old Warriston cemetery close to another Polish exile, the violinist and composer Feliks Janiewicz, one of the co-organisers of the first Edinburgh Festival.