Kajetan Sołtyk

Kajetan Ignacy Sołtyk (November 12, 1715 – July 30, 1788) was a Polish Catholic priest, bishop of Kiev from 1756, bishop of Cracow from 13 March 1759.

Son of Józef Sołtyk, castellan of Lublin and court marshal to primate of Poland, Teodor Potocki, and Konstancja z Drzewickich, brother of Tomasz Sołtyk (voivode of Łęczyca) and Maciej Sołtyk (castellan of Warsaw), scion of the great Saltykov family of RussiaFact|date=February 2007, he was educated by jesuits and took Holy Orders in 1732. From 1735 to 1738 he studied in Rome (University of Rome La Sapienza).

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 Cracow Jan Lipski. Since then he started becoming more and more active on the political scene. In 1753 he was involved in a blood libel process against Jews, 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 sejmiks (local parliaments). During the reign of August III the Saxon, known to be the height of political corruption and anarchy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he became one of the most important politicians at the royal court, working closely with "de facto" ruler of Poland, Heinrich, count von Brühl. In 1756 he became the bishop of Kiev. However from early 60s due to various conflicts he distanced himself from Brühl.

After the death of August III he opposed the election of Stanisław August Poniatowski in the beginning, although later, partially due to his worsening health, he somewhat distanced himself from politics. He became deeply involved in politics again as Russian Empire ambassador Nicholas Repnin started fomenting unrest in the Commonwealth, by encouraging the Protestants and Orthodox to demand position equal to that of the Catholics. One of Sołtyk's main goals than 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 in 1767, he opposed the dictatorship of Repnin, and for this opposition he was arrested and imprisoned in Kaluga [http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0520061756&id=BYLPBu4Kb4YC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=Kajetan+Soltyk&sig=0-pk-4JUEKeYcs-P1LZqZ533K9Y] , along with three other Polish senators (Józef Andrzej Załuski, Wacław Rzewuski and Seweryn Rzewuski). Sołtyk was a vocal opponent of giving the non-Catholics equality with Catholics, and he issued a manifest calling for prayers for preservation of faiths and national freedoms.

In 1782, when he returned from the imprisonment, his increasingly erratic behaviour allowed his opponents to declare him insane by Permanent Council and king Stanisław August Poniatowski. Thus for the last years of his life his political influence and power significantly waned.

References

*Polish|Kajetan Sołtyk|30 March 2006
* Polski Slownik Biograficzny, biographical entry [http://ipsb.tvp.pl/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN4i3dAHJgFjGpvqRqCKOcAFvfV-P_NxU_QD9gtzQiHJHRUUA43OWZA!!/delta/base64xml/L3dJdyEvUUd3QndNQSEvNElVRS82XzBfRlE!?biographyID=1309 online] , last accessed on April 3, 2006