Kajetan Sołtyk

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

Son of Józef Sołtyk, castellan of Lublin and court marshal to primate of Poland, , and Konstancja z Drzewickich, brother of Tomasz Sołtyk (voivode of Łęczyca) and Maciej Sołtyk (castellan of Warsaw), scion of the great Saltykov family of Russia, 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 Kraków 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 Augustus III of Poland, 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 the de facto ruler of Poland, Count Heinrich von Brühl. In 1756 he became the bishop of Kiev. However, from the early 1760s due to various conflicts he distanced himself from Brühl.

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