Zbigniew Oleśnicki

Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1389–1455) was Bishop of Kraków from 1423 and the most powerful churchman-statesman of fifteenth-century Poland. A royal secretary at twenty, he fought beside Władysław II Jagiełło at Grunwald in 1410.

He shaped crown policy under two Jagiellonian kings, governing as regent during Władysław III's minority and leading the legation to the Council of Basel in 1433. He opposed the Hussites, and in the 1430s a conflict led to a brief civil war. In 1439 he was made the first native Polish cardinal. He pressed Władysław III's Hungarian crusade, which ended at Varna in 1444. He died in 1455.