JAN LASKI, the elder (1456-1531), Polish statesman and ec clesiastic, took orders at an early age, and in 1495 was secretary to the Polish chancellor Zawisza Kurozwecki, in which position he acquired both influence and experience, and was sent on important diplomatic missions to Rome in 1495 and again in 150o, and once on a special embassy to Flanders, of which he has left an account.
On the accession to the Polish throne in 1501 of the indolent Alexander, who had little knowledge of Polish affairs and chiefly resided in Lithuania, Laski was appointed by the senate the king's secretary, in which capacity he successfully opposed the growing separatist tendencies of the grand-duchy and maintained the in fluence of Catholicism, now seriously threatened there by the Muscovite propaganda. In 1503 his king appointed him chan cellor, in which capacity Laski supported the szlachta, or country gentlemen, against the lower orders, going so far as to pass an edict excluding henceforth all plebeians from the higher benefices of the church. In 1511 Laski became archbishop of Gnesen, and thus primate of the Polish Church. He carried out difficult ne gotiations for King Sigismund I. with the Teutonic Knights with
conspicuous ability, which he also displayed at the Lateran Coun cil convened by Pope Julius II. in 1513, where he attended to plead the cause of Poland against the Knights.
This mission was equally profitable to his country and him self, and he succeeded in obtaining from the pope for the arch bishops of Gnesen the title of Legati nati. In his old age Laski's partiality for his nephew, Hieronymus, led him to support the candidature of John Zapolya, the protege of the Turks, for the Hungarian crown so vehemently against the Hapsburgs that Clem ent VII. excommunicated him, and the shock of this disgrace was the cause of his sudden death in 1531. Of his numerous works the most noteworthy are his collection of Polish statutes entitled Statuta provinciae gnesnensis antiqua, etc. (Cracow, 1525-28) and De Ruthenorum nationibus eorumque erroribus, printed at Nuremberg.
See Heinrich R. von Zeissberg, Joh. Laski, Erzbischof in Gnesen (Vienna, 1874) ; and Jan Korytkowski, Jan Laski, Archbishop of Gnesen (Gnesen, 188o).