Szymon Okolski

In 1648 Okolski accepted the post of the prowincjał (province leader) of the Dominican Order in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth-controlled Ruś territories.

In 1637-38 Okolski accompanied Crown hetman Mikołaj Potocki during his neutralization of rebellious Cossacks driven by Jakub Ostrzanin and Dmytro Hunia.

Being a witness and a direct participant of those developments, Okolski gave a detailed description of them in his field diaries.

The latter were published immediately and became a valuable source of information for historians and writers: for instance, Nikolai Gogol must have used these materials for his "Taras Bulba" - a novel devoted to the Cossack rebellions 1637–38.

Okolski was an author of historical and heraldic books among which an armorial encyclopedia of the Polish nobility Orbis Polonus (1641–43) in three volumes is the most famous.