Krzycki, Andrzej

(d. 1537)

   Polish poet, statesman, and bishop, known in Latin as Andreas Cricius. Born into a noble family but orphaned at an early age, he was educated under the direction of his maternal uncle, Bishop Piotr Tomicki, an influential royal official. He studied in Italy, probably from 1498 to 1503, and heard the lectures of two famous humanist professors at Bologna, Codro Urceo and Filippo Beroaldo the Elder. The bishop of Poznan became his patron, and he entered holy orders and received several valuable benefices. In 1512 Krzycki became secretary to Queen Barbara Zápolyai and after her death became a protégé of King Sigismund's second wife, the Italian princess Bona Sforza. In 1523 he became bishop of Przemysl but spent nearly all of his time at the royal court in Cracow. He represented the king in negotiations that led to the secularization of the state of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, a dependency of the Polish crown. Despite this political mission, which made Prussia a Protestant duchy, he was personally opposed to the Reformation. Later he was promoted to the bishopric of Plock (1527) and still later to the archbishopric of Gniezno.

   Throughout his career, Krzycki supported humanism. He was also a highly regarded Latin poet and published a number of works, some of them occasional poems for his royal patrons, others being epigrams and satiric verses directed against his political antagonists. His verses included parodies of church hymns and popular religious verse. Much of his work, especially his erotic poems, remained unpublished but circulated in manuscript. He also published two prose works against Martin Luther. He was a great admirer of the Dutch humanist Erasmus and sought to persuade him to visit Poland. He respected the Lutheran leader Philipp Melanchthon and tried to bring him to Poland in order to woo him away from Luther.