Kajetan Ignacy Sołtyk (12 November 1715 – 30 July 1788) was a Polish
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
bishop of Kraków
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
), scion of the great
Saltykov
The House of Saltykov ( rus, Салтыков, p=səltɨˈkof) is the name of an old Russian noble family which can trace their ancestry back to 1240. In March 1730 the family was awarded with the title of Count in Russia, granted to them by Empre ...
and took Holy Orders in 1732. From 1735 to 1738 he studied in Rome (
University of Rome La Sapienza
The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...
).
After his father died, saddling the family with debt, he was unable to afford to return to Poland until 1740, when he attached himself to the court of bishop of
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
Jan Lipski. Since then he started becoming more and more active on the political scene. In 1753 he was involved in a
blood libel
Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mur ...
process against
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, which resulted in 13 of them being sentenced to death. As a politician he was known to use unethical means - from nepotism through forgery of documents to bribing the local szlachta (Polish nobility) at
sejmik
A sejmik (, diminutive of ''sejm'', occasionally translated as a ''dietine''; lt, seimelis) was one of various local parliaments in the history of Poland and history of Lithuania. The first sejmiks were regional assemblies in the Kingdom of ...
s (local parliaments). During the reign of Augustus III of Poland, known to be the height of political corruption and anarchy in the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi- confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ru ...
, he became one of the most important politicians at the royal court, working closely with the ''de facto'' ruler of Poland, Count
Heinrich von Brühl
Heinrich, count von Brühl ( pl, Henryk Brühl, 13 August 170028 October 1763), was a Polish-Saxon statesman at the court of Saxony and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and a member of the powerful German von Brühl family. The incumbency of ...
. In 1756 he became the bishop of Kiev. However, from the early 1760s due to various conflicts he distanced himself from Brühl.
After the death of Augustus III Sołtyk initially opposed the election of Stanisław August Poniatowski, although later, partially due to his worsening health, he somewhat distanced himself from politics. He became deeply involved in politics again as the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
ambassador
Nicholas Repnin
Prince Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin (russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Репни́н; – ) was an Imperial Russian statesman and general from the Repnin princely family who played a key role in the dissolution of the Polish–Lit ...
started fomenting unrest in the Commonwealth by encouraging the
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
s, the
Eastern Catholics
The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous ('' sui iuris'') particular churches of ...
and the
Orthodox
Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to:
Religion
* Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...
to demand all state positions equal to that of the Roman Catholics including a royal one. One of Sołtyk's main goals then became to dethrone King Poniatowski. In the shifting world of political alliances, for a time he worked with pro-Russian factions, but eventually became an opponent of Repnin.
During the
Repnin Sejm
The Repnin Sejm ( pl, Sejm Repninowski) was a Sejm (session of the parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place between 1767 and 1768 in Warsaw. This session followed the Sejms of 1764 to 1766, where the newly elected King ...
in 1767, Sołtyk opposed the practical dictatorship of Repnin, and for this opposition he was arrested and imprisoned in Kaluga, along with three other Polish senators ( Józef Andrzej Załuski, Wacław Rzewuski and Seweryn Rzewuski). Sołtyk was a vocal opponent of giving non-Catholics equality with Catholics, and he issued a manifest calling for prayers for preservation of the faith and national freedoms which initiated Bar confederation.
In 1781, when he had returned from the imprisonment in 1773 and had protested against the First partition of Poland in the Senate, his increasingly erratic behaviour allowed his opponents to declare him insane by the
Permanent Council
The Permanent Council () was the highest administrative authority in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1775 and 1789 and the first modern executive government in Europe. As is still typically the case in contemporary parliamentary pol ...
and King Stanisław August. A special commission was tasked with investigating his situation. The problem caused much controversy, as it was alleged that the investigators were influenced by various political motivations. The
Sejm
The Sejm (English: , Polish: ), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland ( Polish: ''Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej''), is the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Poland.
The Sejm has been the highest governing body of ...
of 1782 was heavily preoccupied with this case. One of the primary issues was the relevance of the neminem captivabimus law, which had no provisions for mentally ill persons, and which guaranteed wide personal freedoms to Polish nobility. Amendment bills were submitted, but were met with opposition and filibusterer, preventing the Sejm from making much progress on any issues. Eventually, Sołtyk failed to reclaim his bishopric from the substitutes who administered it in his absence. Thus for the last years of his life his political influence and power significantly waned.
Notes
References
*
Polski Słownik Biograficzny
''Polski Słownik Biograficzny'' (''PSB''; Polish Biographical Dictionary) is a Polish-language biographical dictionary, comprising an alphabetically arranged compilation of authoritative biographies of some 25,000 notable Poles and of foreigner ...