Grodziecki, Wacław (c. 1535 - 1591)

Wacław Grodziecki (or Grodecki) (c. 1535 - 1591) was a Polish Catholic priest, canon, and cartographer. He was born to the family of a Starost, a community elder; he studied mathematics and philosophy at Krakow Academy, and between 1556 and 1558 studied further at the university in Leipzig. He is thought to have travelled to Rome in 1558 and to have visited Prague in 1561. Having returned to Krakow, he graduated with a master's degree in liberal arts in 1564. Thereafter he became canon in several towns successively: Wrocław, Olomouc and Brno, where he and his brother Jan established a Jesuit college. In 1572, he became Olomouc's bishop. During his time in Leipzig, Grodziecki drew a map of Poland, published around 1562 in Basel; it is thought to have been derived from the 1526 map of Bernard Wapowski, but as virtually all of Wapowski's maps were destroyed in the fire of Kraków in 1528, Grodziecki's work was long the best map of Polish lands. It provided the model for Ortelius' 1570 map, to which Grodziecki's fame can largely be ascribed.