Walerian Krasiński

The grave of Count Valerian Krasinski, Warriston Cemetery

Count Walerian Skorobohaty Krasiński or Valerian Krasinski (1795– 22 December 1855) was a Polish Calvinist politician, nationalist and historian.

Krasinski was a Polish aristocrat in exile after the November Uprising 1830, during the Austrian, German and Russian partition of Poland.^[1] In 1844, he was proposed for a chair in Slavonic Studies at Oxford University. In 1848, he presented appeals to the Habsburg government. In Russia and Europe, or, The probable consequences of the present war he wrote on the Crimean War.

Krasinski's Historical sketch of the rise, progress, and decline of the Reformation in Poland (1838) still one of main texts on the subject available in English, was written in English. One of Krasinski's main sources is Slavonia reformata (1679) by Andreas Vengerscius.^[2]

He died in Edinburgh and is buried in the Warriston Cemetery close to another Polish exile, the violinist and composer Feliks Janiewicz, one of the co-organisers of the first Edinburgh Festival. The grave is marked by a tall grey granite obelisk. It lies in the overgrown area (2014) to the south-west, around 50m east of the more accessible monument to Horatio McCulloch.

Works

• The present government of Russia: the Emperor Nicholas, article 1841^[3]
• Russia and Europe, or, The probable consequences of the present war
• Historical sketch of the rise, progress and decline of the reformation in Poland 1. London: [s.n.] 1838. OCLC 714971939.

Historical sketch of the rise, progress and decline of the reformation in Poland 2. London: [s.n.] 1840. OCLC 714971939.

• Monachologia, Or, Handbook Of The Natural History Of Monks: Arranged According To The Linnean System Ignaz Edler Von Born and Walerian Krasinski.
• English translation of Calvin's Treatise on Relics.
• Panslavism and Germanism 1848^[4]
• Sketch of the religious history of the Slavonic nations (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter. 1851. OCLC 794325672.
• Montenegro and the Slavonians in Turkey 1853
• The Polish Question and panslavism 1855
• Poland, its history, constitution, literature etc. 1855

References

1. Peter F. Sugar Nationality and society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe reprint of article from 1967
2. Piotr Wilczek Jesuits in Poland according to A.F. Pollard a review of A. F. Pollard, The Jesuits in Poland. [The Lothian Essay, 1892] New York. Haskell House Publishers Ltd. Publishers of Scarce Scholarly Books. 1971. 98 pages. Hardcover.
3. 543-591. Volume 11, No. XXII, 1840 [Published January 9, 1841]
4. Alexander Maxwell (2008). "Walerjan Krasiński's "Panslavism and Germanism" (1848): Polish Goals in a Pan-Slav Context". New Zealand Slavonic Journal (Australia and New Zealand Slavists’ Association) 42.

External links

• Works by Valerian Krasinski at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Walerian Krasiński at Internet Archive