Adam Naruszewicz

Who was Adam Naruszewicz?

Adam Stanisław Naruszewicz was a Polish nobleman from an impoverished aristocratic family, poet, historian, dramatist, translator, publicist, Jesuit and titular Bishop of Smolensk and bishop of Łuck.

His family had a small estate in Polesie, and he was educated at Pinsk.

As a senator he participated in the Great Sejm. He taught at Warsaw Collegium Nobilum Societatis Jesu. After the suppression of the Jesuit Order in 1773, King Stanislaus arranged for him the bishop's seat. After Polish defeat in the Polish–Russian War of 1792 he withdrew from the political life and permanently settled in Janów Podlaski where he died in 1796.

Naruszewicz was the first modern historian who wrote a History of the Polish Nation. He used for the first time in a historical work the expression Piast dynasty for the Piast the Wheelwright and his descendants that ruled in Poland to 1370. Nevertheless the term Piast dynasty was first used in the late 17th century in the Silesian Piast mausoleum in Legnica.