Raphael attended the Brethren’s school at Koźminek, and subsequently studied at the Calvinist universities in Strasbourg and Basle. In his youth he lived in Paris, Florence, London and Prague, and spoke five languages fluently. It is to his credit that the Latin school at Leszno, founded as early as 1555 by his grandfather Raphael IV, developed; it was reformed in 1624 to become a higher gymnasium, the task of which was to prepare the sons of the nobility and bourgeoisie for such studies as they might undertake abroad.
Raphael Leszczyński offered a safe haven for adherents of the Unitas Fratrum, who after the promulgation of the Renewed Provincial (Land) Ordinance determined in 1627/28 to abandon their original homeland. Among the Moravian religious exiles to arrived in Leszno in 1628 were Jan Amos Comenius and his family.