THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ical development of the Church of England. The king entrusted Lasco with the organization of a congregation of all foreign Protestants in London. It was acknowledged as a congregation independent from the government of the Church of England, Lasco being its superintendent, assisted by four clergymen. He wrote a confession (Confessio Londinensis) intended as a strong defense against the sectarian tendencies of the foreigners, and this was to be signed by every new member; for the instruction of youth he used a catechism which he had compiled in Emden and was not without influence upon the Heidelberg catechism. Lasco exercised a decisive influence upon the English Church, as well as upon his own, also by his highly important work on the sacraments, Brevis et dilucida de saeramentis ecclesice Christi tractatio (London, 1552). But with the early death of Edward VI. in 1553 the whole work of Lasco broke in pieces. Mary dissolved the congregation of foreigners and expelled them from the country. They wandered from place to place, rinding no rest, owing to the dissensions between the adherents of the Reformation. Even in Emden Lasco found no home. He went to Frankfurt, where a part of the fugitive congregation obtained an asylum, always and everywhere taking pains to alleviate the dreary lot of the fugitives' way to Basel, to defend the confession of his brethren as well as their legal status within the Church of the Reformation, and to warn the whole assembly of Evangelicals to unite against their common foe, the Roman Church. On an urgent request from Poland he returned thither in Dec, 1556, with the intention of devoting the rest of his life to the service of the Evangelical Church of his native country. During his eighteen years' absence the Reformation had made rapid progress among the nobility, not so much from Wittenberg as from Geneva since the Calvinistic system of the congregation and of the church government met more readily the peculiar conditions of Poland. But there was no prominent, energetic theologian to bring order into the confused conditions of the Evangelical congregations. Lasco, the fittest man, was in exile. So it happened that the Evangelicals of Poland at the Synod of Kozminek in 1555 united with the Bohemian Brethren, adopting their confession and church order. In 1556 Lasco arrived in Poland. He immediately perceived that the Evangelical Church in Poland needed her own independent development in order to guard herself against the Roman Church in the country, and he spared no efforts to destroy the connection with the Moravians and to lead the Evangelical Church of his country into genuinely Evangelical paths. Until the last moment of his life he had to struggle against great difficulties, on the one side from a hostile party within the Church of the Reformation herself, and, on the other side, from the Unitarians who had gained considerable ground in Poland. His works were collected in two vols, by Kuyper (Amsterdam, 1886). (H. Dalton.)
Bibliography: His life was written by P. Bartels, Elberfeld, 1860; H. Dalton, Gotha, 1881; G. Pascal, 1894. Consult further: M. Goebel, Geschichte des christlichen Lebem in der rheinisch-westfalischen Kirche, i. 324-358, Coblentz, 1862; H. Dalton, Lasciana, Berlin, 1898;
idem, Miscellanea, ib., 1905; Kruske, Johann a Lasco und der Sakramentsstreit, Leipsic, 1901.
LASICIUS, la"si-si'us, JOHANNES (JAN LASI- CKI): Polish noble and author; b. in Great Poland or in Lithuania, 1534; d. shortly after 1599. Of his life little is known, but about 1557 he was in Switzerland, where he left the Roman Catholic Church for the Reformed. He traveled extensively, not only as a private tutor and private scholar but also as a diplomat, being appointed royal envoy by King Stephan Bathory. Later he seems to have returned to his native country, where he occupied himself with teaching and literary work. He took an active part in the extension of Protestantism, the union of the Lutherans, Reformed, and Bohemian Brethren, and the war on Polish Jesuitism and Unitarianism. In consequence of his interest in the Bohemian Brethren he wrote his De origine et institutis Fratrum Christianorum qui sunt in Prussia, Polonia, Boemia, et Moravia (written in 1568), later expanded into his De origine et rebus gestis Fratrum Bohemorum libri octo (written after 1575). Neither of these have been published, nor are even their manuscripts complete, though the eighth book of the larger work was edited, with a summary of the other books, by J. A. Comenius (Lissa, Poland, 1649) . His main source was J. Camerarius's Historica narratio (Heidelberg, 1605; written in 1573). The work of Lasicius is still not without value, since much of the material at his disposal is now lost. He also wrote De Russorum, ftloscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, sacrificiis, nwptiarum et funerum ritu e diversis scriptoribus (Speyer, 1582), which, like his De diis Samagitarum caeterorumque Sarmatarum. etfalsorum Christianarum (published, with his De religione Armeniorum, in Michalonis Lituani de ?noribus Tartarorum, Lituanorum et Moschorum fragmina decern, ed. J. Grasser, Basel, 1615; also ed., W. Mannhardt, Riga, 1868), is of great value as one of the few sources for a knowledge of the pagan religion of the Balto-Slavic peoples. (Joseph Muller.)
Bibliography: J. Lukaszewicz, Geschichte der reformirten Kirche in Litauen, ii. 182 sqq., Leipsic, 1850; E. W. Croger, Geschichte der alten Briiderhirche, ii. 100 sqq., Gnadau, 1866; J. Goll, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der bohmischen Briider, i. 74 sqq., Prague, 1878; H. Usener, Gotternamen, p. 82, Bonn, 1896.
LAST THINGS. See Eschatology.