Stanisław Hozjusz was born at Kraków to a German burgher family and studied at Kraków, Padua, and Bologna. He served the Polish crown as secretary and diplomat and became Bishop of Chełmno in 1549 and of Warmia in 1551. In Poland the Reformation was spreading among the nobility in both its Lutheran and Reformed forms.

Hosius met it with learning and organization. His Confession of the Catholic Christian Faith (1553) was translated into many languages and became one of the most widely read Catholic works of the age. He brought the Jesuits to Poland and founded their college at Braniewo in 1564. Made a cardinal in 1561, he served as one of the presidents of the Council of Trent in its final sessions.

His ambitions reached beyond Poland. When King John III of Sweden married a Catholic Polish princess, Hosius encouraged the queen and wrote to the king himself:¹

If there be any scruple in your majesty’s mind, … there is nothing upon earth I desire more than with God’s help to remove it.¹ Stanislaus Hosiusto King John III of Sweden

John III restored much of the old liturgy and secretly professed Catholicism in 1578, but the Swedish church and people resisted, and the attempt failed after his death. Hosius died at Capranica near Rome on August 5, 1579. Poland, which had seemed open to the Reformation in the 1550s, was largely recovered for Rome within two generations.

Catholic Opponents