Dictionary - Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious Thought #226623

Alascans. A name given to the foreign Protestants in London during the reign of Edward VI. It was derived from John Laski, or a Lasco, a Polish refugee of noble birth, who had adopted the negative theology of Zwingli during a resi dence at Zurich. For some years a Lasco was minister of a congregation at Embden in F riesland, but being invited to London by Cranmer, he lived with the Archbishop at Lambeth for six months, and was then made superintendent of the foreign churches (german, Belgian, French, and Italian) in London, the principal one being the church of the Austin Friars in Broad Street. A Lasco was a forward partizan of Puritanism, opposing the use of the surplice, kneeling at Communion, &c., and it is believed that he in fluenced the later opinions of Cranmer in the same direction as regards the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. The German congregations were dispersed at the accession of Queen Mary, and some portions of them settled at Embden, under a Lasco, who, however, soon forsook them, and after a sojourn at Frankfort, returned to Poland, where he died in 1560. A full account of the Alascan liturgy will be found in the British Magazine, vol. Xv. 614, and xvi. 127. It is distinctly Zwinglian.