High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Szymon Starowolski (1585 ? 1650; Simon Starowolski, Simonis Starovolsci) was a writer, scholar and historian in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was probably born near Pruzhany, and died near Kraków. He was very prolific writer, left behind over 70 works, mostly in Latin. Some of them survived until its translation into Polish. Szymon Starowolski was born into an impoverished Lithuanian noble family. As a young man he visited the courts of many magnates, including the famous Chancellor Jan Zamoyski (at age 17) and Bishop Jakub Zadzik. After his studies, he traveled in the service of the Ostrogski family through Western Europe (Germany, France, Holland), where he studied at the University of Louvain. On his return, from 1612 to 1619 Starowolski studied and taught at the Kraków Academy (Jagiellonian University), and then at the Cistercian monastery in W?chock.