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Jan Laski

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Jan Laski redirects here. For other uses, see Jan Laski (disambiguation).

Jan Łaski

Jan Łaski, John Laski, Johannes Alasco, John a Lasco (b. 1499 in Łask - 1560 in Pinczów, Poland) was a Polish Protestant evangelical reformer, the son of Jaroslaw Laski, the voivode of Sieradz Voivodship and Susanna Bak, the daughter of the Bakova-Gora councilman, Zbigniew Bak. His uncle, also Jan Laski, was by turns royal secretary, archbishop of Gniezno, primate of Poland and Grand Chancellor of the Crown. He was the uncle of Sigismund, King of Poland. His Coat of Arms was Korab.

After his family's fall from political power and prestige, Łaski, a learned priest, went in 1523 to Basel, where he was a close friend of Erasmus and Zwingli. He became pastor of a Protestant church at Emden in 1542 and shortly after 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.

Laski was a correspondent of John Hooper whom Laski supported in the vestments controversy.

On the accession of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary he fled to the Continent. In 1556 he was recalled to Poland, where he was secretary to King Sigismund II and was a leader in the Calvinist Reformation.

His contributions to the Reformed 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, and a understanding of the eucharist that was more Zwinglian than Calvinistic. Laski tried to reorient the debate by focusing on the entire ceremony, participation in which "seals" Christians in communion with Christ.

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Works

Forma ac ratio (1555) -- A "Form and Rationale" for the liturgy of the Stranger churches in London. Possibly influenced the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, John Knox's Scottish order, the Middleburg ordinal, the 1563 German Palatinate order, and the "forms and prayers" in Pieter Dathenus' psalter, which was influential in Dutch Calvinist churches.