Andrzej Krzycki

Who was Andrzej Krzycki?

Andrzej Krzycki herbu Kotwicz was a Renaissance Polish writer and archbishop. Krzycki wrote in Latin prose, but wrote poetry in Polish. He is often considered one of Poland's greatest humanist writers.

He earned an education at the University of Bologna studying under prominent humanists, and started a career in church hierarchy in 1501. In 1512, Barbara Zapolya married King Sigismund I the Old. Krzycki wrote a verse to commemorate this marriage, and became Zapolya's secretary the same year. When the king won the victory of Orsza, he again wrote a poem, and sent verses purporting to be from the queen to her absent husband after the model of Ovid's Epistolae Heroidum; these, in a letter to Krzycki, Erasmus praised enthusiastically. After Barbara's death he continued to be chancellor in the household of Bona Sforza, Sigismund's second wife. He took orders and managed to obtain rich benefits, and even a bishopric.

The Reformation, then rapidly spreading, filled him with dismay, and was the occasion of the most serious work that he produced, Religionis et Reipublicae quaerimonia.