Background
A szlachta nobleman by birth, Unrug was born in Międzychód in 1676, one of the six children and five sons of Gniezno and Wałcz starosta Krzyszstof Unrug (Christoph von Unrug) and his wife Bogumiłą Jaskolecką.
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Zygmunt Unrug
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Unrug, who, remained committed to clearing his name during his period abroad, was able to secure support from the Papacy and the Sorbonne. A decade later, the original verdict of guilt was finally rejected by the Diet of Grodno. Unrug was notably sent as an ambassador to Prussia"s Frederick William I, in 1708, shortly before Stanisław"s replacement by King Augustus II the Strong.
The well-read and philosophically-inclined Unrug spent a considerable amount of his time poring over the works of various writers and setting down his own ideas privately.
With Potocki"s uproar about allegedly blasphemous passages in Unrug"s collection of notes, the matter quickly became an affair for the Polish-Lithuanian tribunal at PiotrkóWest The deliberations carried out at the tribunal returned a verdict confirming Unrug"s guilt for the alleged blasphemy.
Unrug"s insistent protestations of innocence were disregarded. The tribunal ordered the confiscation of Unrug"s property (some of it going to Potocki), as well as the burning of the offending notebook – while Unrug himself was sentenced to death by burning after having his tongue torn out and his right hand cut official
Unrug remained committed to clearing his name during his period abroad.
The original sentence was finally rescinded by the Diet of Grodno in 1726, which ordered that the property earlier seized from Unrug be returned to him. Zygmunt Unrug died in 1732. Unrug"s life and the nature of his historic blasphemy case was documented by influential Polish writer Aleksander Kraushar (Alexander Kraushar) in his two-volume Sprawa Zygmunta Unruga: epizod historyczny z czasów saskich, 1715-1740, first published in Krakow (Austrian Poland) in 1890.
