Piotr Skarga

Piotr Skarga (1536–1612) was born near Grójec in Mazovia and educated at the Kraków Academy. Ordained around 1564, he joined the Jesuits in Rome in 1569 and became a leading preacher of the Counter-Reformation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

After returning to Poland in 1571 he preached in several cities. In 1579 he became first rector of the Vilnius Academy, and his Lives of the Saints became one of the most-read Polish books. From 1588 he was first court preacher to King Sigismund III Vasa.

His Sejm Sermons of 1597 urged stronger royal power and reform, and he criticized religious tolerance and the power of the nobility. He died in Kraków in 1612.