11 Facts About Piotr Skarga

Piotr Skarga advocated strengthening the monarch's power at the expense of parliament and of the nobility.

Piotr Skarga was a professor at the Krakow Academy and in 1579 he became the first rector of the Wilno Academy.

Piotr Skarga was a prolific writer, and his The Lives of the Saints was for several centuries one of the most popular books in the Polish language.

Piotr Skarga's family are often described as lesser landless szlachta, but it seems likely most of his ancestors had been peasants, later townsfolk who had only recently become minor nobility.

Piotr Skarga started his education at a parochial school in Grojec before moving to Krakow, where in 1552 he enrolled at the Krakow Academy, precursor to Jagiellonian University.

Piotr Skarga then returned to Poland, which emerged as one of the main terrains of struggle between the Protestant Reformation movement and the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation.

In 1584 Piotr Skarga was transferred to the new Jesuit College at Krakow.

In 1588 the newly elected King Sigismund III Vasa established the new post of court preacher, and Piotr Skarga became the first priest to hold it.

Piotr Skarga became a valued adviser to the King, and Sigismund became so fond of him that when the priest considered retirement, Sigismund rejected this, requesting that he remain at court for as long as possible.

Janusz Tazbir, in his 1978 biography of Piotr Skarga, noted that "there already is an extensive literature on Piotr Skarga".

Piotr Skarga attributed this to Skarga's being the most famous figure of the Polish Counter-Reformation, which gained him his initial fame; and, later, to his rediscovered reform proposals which, while controversial in his time, gained him renown during the Partitions of Poland and have been well regarded since.