The Role of the Cult of Saints in Reshaping Episcopal Leadership and Cracow's Struggle for Primacy in Piast Poland

Abstract

In the regional duchies of high medieval Poland, ideological aspects of the piety associated with holy men and women directly affected the hierarchical model of public authority. As active political brokers, the bishops of Cracow assertively operated to formalize, control, and utilize the cult of saints for two main purposes: to buttress the post-Gregorian ideal of clerical leadership and to secure Cracow's primacy within the Polish hierarchical church. After the revolutionary accession of Casimir the Just to the principal Duchy of Cracow, the installation of the relics of an ancient Roman, Florian, in Cracow in 1184 emphasized the Gelasian principles of a harmonious government. Seven decades later, the canonization of the eleventh-century native Bishop Stanisław, martyred as a result of a conflict with his king, not only strengthened Cracow in its rivalry against the episcopal centers of Gniezno and Wrocław, which both lacked a comparable type of holy figure associated with their cathedrals but also served as a reminder of the ecclesiastical guardianship of just rulership. The relevance of clerical sacrifice in the name of a rejuvenated Polish monarchy reappeared in the early thirteenth century when a Piast duke was crowned king of Poland at the cathedral city sanctified by the episcopal cult of its prelate.

Saints and their relics appeared as both elements of the physical world and channels of divine operation. Suspended between God and humankind, they are supposed to function beyond physical reality, unbound by the laws of nature.¹ Those who controlled access to holy figures and their earthly remains acquired prestige that could be effectively translated into political influence and a superior authority. The communal veneration of holy men and women formally organized and encouraged by bishops was useful in legitimizing public authority and formulating episcopal hierarchies. The cult of saints, propagating specific Christian virtues, piety, and models of authority, was a powerful venue to manifest papal and episcopal functions and prerogatives. In the implementation of the Gregorian ideals of clerical supremacy and the church as a universal community of the faithful, formal papal canonization and the bishops’ control of the relics demanded a popular recognition of clerical supremacy in all aspects of Christian life and the unequivocal leadership of the Apostolic see.²

The discussion about the relationship between the cult of saints and episcopal power in high medieval Cracow, located in the historical province of Lesser Poland, has been mostly limited to Polish historiography. Saint Florian, a Roman martyr of late antiquity whose imported cult did not develop in a successful manner in ducal Poland, has not generated much attention. Instead, scholars have tended to focus on the cult of Saint Stanisław, the martyred eleventh-century bishop of Cracow associated with the ideology of political unity and the monarchical revival in the early fourteenth century.³ Only recently have several important studies in English introduced the cult of Saint Stanisław to a broader scholarly community. They analyze the presence of the idea of unifying the realm of the ruling Piast dynasty in contemporary chronicles and hagiography as well as the perception of the saintly bishop in literary and pastoral traditions.⁴ These studies correspond with the historiography on the role of saints and their relics in other regions of East-Central Europe, which favors the perspective of dynastic interests often affecting local and communal identities on various levels, such as cities and kingdoms. When bishops’ status is concerned, it is usually examined in the context of patronage and manipulation of sacral space.⁵

This study aims to broaden the scholarly discussion about episcopal identity by analyzing the utility of the cult of saints for the construction of episcopal leadership in the specific contexts of the Gregorian ideals of clerical supremacy and the competition among episcopal sees in the fragmented dynastic realm of ducal Poland. It focuses on particular strategies of controlling the cult of saints by the bishops of Cracow, who sought new instruments of political prominence at the time when their city and own hierarchical position experienced considerable challenges from both the episcopal peers and the ruling dukes. It argues that the cult of saints was a useful instrument in reshaping a body politic directed by the bishop of Cracow, whose new, self-imposed task was to provide a strong sense of local unity and responsible governance. This study will demonstrate that the episcopal initiative to establish and develop the cult of saints in the diocese contained a fulfilment of the Gregorian ideal of a proper order in Christendom, where Cracow should stand superior to other ducal and episcopal centers due to the bishops’ effective leadership, custody over holy remains, and cooperation with the secular segment of legitimate public authority.⁶ The episcopal see of Cracow asserted the position of a peace broker, first to secure justice and harmony in Lesser Poland by legitimizing a local Piast lineage and a joint patronage of the ancient Saint Florian, then by advocating for the unity of the entire Piast patrimony symbolized by a bishop-martyr Saint Stanisław, and concluded with a new monarchy. The choice of those two saints as objects of episcopal patronage is significant. When skillfully organized and advanced, the cult of those saints enhanced the prestige of the bishopric of Cracow within Polish episcopacy, a matter of particular importance, especially when conflicts and open wars of ducal succession augmented episcopal rivalry between the bishopric of Cracow, its episcopal superior the archbishopric of Gniezno, and the see of Wrocław in the duchy of Silesia, which was ruled by the Piasts who actively sought the status of the high duke in Lesser Poland.⁷ The cults of Saint Florian and Saint Stanisław must therefore be cast in the context of the ideological significance of the holy figures promoted by other episcopal centers, such as Saint Adelbert in Greater Poland and Saint Hedwig in Silesia. The struggle for a proper episcopal precedence, the right to consecrate prelates, and efforts to secure new benefits from the dukes’ courts seems to have become a common feature of the Polish church.⁸ Therefore, the episcopal authority is analyzed not only within the context of the episcopal patronage of the saints to define a desirable hierarchy of the cathedral sees, but also within two coalesced dimensions: the bishops’ role in ducal succession crises in the age of decentralized secular power and the episcopal implementations of the post-Gregorian notion of clerical leadership and a rejuvenated Christian community.

Saints were particularly needed in a society that experienced political instability like ducal Poland, where ducal succession and episcopal status were subject to competition.⁹ The early twelfth century brought a long-lasting division of the Polish realm into a number of duchies. The disunity of the Polish realm resulted from the attempts to contest Duke Bolesław the Wrymouth's 1138 Act of Succession. The act regulated territorial inheritance and the distribution of power among Piast dukes according to dynastic seniority (seniorate), with Cracow as the seat of the sovereign high duke (princeps).¹⁰ Conflicts among Bolesław's sons developed and continued after the exile of Bolesław's oldest son, Władysław II in 1146. His victorious half-brother Mieszko III the Old was no more popular with the barons, and his tendency to make autocratic decisions and engage in abusive fiscal and legal practices violated the ideal of just lordship, prompting a rebellion. Adopting the ancient role of spiritual admonisher yet loyal supporter of responsive temporal governance, Bishop Gedko openly sanctioned the violation of the succession order and elevated Casimir the Just, Bolesław the Wrymouth's youngest son, to the throne of Cracow in 1177.¹¹ A moral legitimization of the new rule was in the interest of both the young duke and the assertive bishop.¹² The revolution offered an opportunity to reassess the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and also strengthen the bishop of Cracow's position within the Polish Church.

The importation of the remains of Saint Florian to Cracow and a cathedral-led revival of interest in the martyrdom of Bishop Stanisław of Cracow should be viewed in the context of episcopal efforts to build a new and ideal type of Christian society, one drawing its ideological models from Gregorian principles of the ideal hierarchical order separating laity from the clergy and setting the latter at the headship of God's temporal community.¹³ The local church elite was heavily influenced by Pope Gelasius's model of a Christian government defined by symbiotic relations between secular and sacerdotal authorities. The Cracovian see readily supported the Gelasian regalis potestas, provided that the ducal arm did not act arbitrarily and would function harmoniously within the church by rendering effective service to it. This community was to be an exemplary political structure marked by harmonious coexistence between the clerical and lay agencies. But equally important were Gregorian ideas emphasizing clerical responsibility to resist tyrannical lay rulers and secure peace. The concept of juris resistendi often found explicit ideological expressions in the course of papal conflicts with the Hohenstaufen emperors. Polish episcopal leaders, like Bishop Gedko of Cracow, may have become more familiar with the ideology of lawful resistance when he studied in Italy. While Ivo of Chartres's Collectio tripatria and Gratian's Decretum were in the possession of the Cracow cathedral, communication between the Polish realm and the post-Gregorian Holy See was maintained by papal legates who visited the Province of Gniezno and ducal courts.¹⁴

Dukes of Cracow were expected to act as the divinely sanctioned arm of the bishopric. This cooperation between the spiritual and the temporal would install the martyred Florian's relics in Cracow and thus further legitimize the accession of Casimir the Just to the principal duchy in the whole Polish realm. The violation of the succession order offered an opportunity to create a new model of rulership in which bishops reserved the right to censor, judge, admonish, or even openly oppose a secular ruler. Sixty-nine years later, the canonization of Saint Stanisław and the elevation of his relics not only benefited Cracovian competition within the Polish hierarchical Church, but also presented Casimir's grandson, Bolesław the Chaste, with a reminder of the ecclesiastical guardianship of commendable rulership. A new proper lordship was sanctified by the blood of a local prelate who had opposed a tyrannical king in the past.

A Roman Saint and a Rebellious Piast Duke in Cracow

In a micro context, the process of implanting the cult of Saint Florian in Cracow and its ideological ramifications coincided with the Piasts’ struggle for rulership and the competition of episcopal sees for prominence within the Polish ecclesiastical province. From a macro perspective, one can cast the bishops’ support for the new cult against broad ideological ferments in Western Christendom, especially those caused by the clerical demands for leadership. The appearance of the Roman martyr's relics in Cracow was a delayed result of Casimir's coup against his older brother Senior Duke Mieszko the Old and its correlation with the Gregorian ideal of an ecclesiastical initiative in constructing a harmonious corporate organism of prelates and lay lords working for the common good of a self-identified Christian corpus of citizens.¹⁵ Paradoxically, the obscure character of the ancient saint, whose relics arrived with episcopal assistance at Cracow in 1184, well suited the existing political atmosphere, when episcopal leaders needed to create optimal conditions for displaying fealty and harmony between the usurper of the princeps’ throne and the local church. The relics of a martyr murdered by the pagan Roman government in the remote past could now bring the duke and the bishop—the temporal and spiritual, the mundane and sacerdotal—together to forge a new Christian body politic driven by spiritual objectives and protected not only by the secular arm of the duke but, above all, by the transcendent power of God's holy agents.

Through the celebration of the feast of Saint Florian on May 4, the see of Cracow anchored the saint's presence in public consciousness and attracted donors, church patrons, and pilgrimage traffic to the city. The relics placed in Cracow's suburban church and in the cathedral united episcopal and secular authorities in their task of providing welfare and splendor to the people of the city and the entire duchy. At the moment, there were no better-suited holy men to advance episcopal interests in Lesser Poland. The cult of the eleventh-century Bishop Stanisław, who died in the course of his conflict with King Bolesław II, could have easily become too controversial to advance the model of symbiotic relations with the chosen ruler after the revolutionary replacement of the legitimate senior member of the Piast dynasty. Meanwhile other episcopal centers were unable to employ the cult of saints to their advantage. Cracow's growing rival, the See of Wrocław, still awaited its own prestigious saint, but the archbishopric of Gniezno, which territorially coincided with Mieszko's hereditary province, presented a challenge.¹⁶ The popular cult of Saint Adalbert, a tenth-century bishop of Prague and a martyred missionary to the pagan Prussians, tied Gniezno to the foundation of the Polish ecclesiastical province headed by the archbishop. According to the contemporary chronicler Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg, it was during the pilgrimage of Emperor Otto III to the tomb of the saint in the year 1000 that the Polish ruler Bolesław I Chrobry established the metropolitan church of Gniezno.¹⁷ The cathedral claimed to host the relics and ignored the fact of their removal to Prague by King Bretislav during the Bohemian invasion of 1038.¹⁸ As Cracow had been deprived of a holy man dating back to the heroic age of courageous missionaries and Christian expansion, the choice of a Roman martyr from the legendary time of the early Church had a promising ideological utility.

The translation of Florian's remains to Cracow allowed the immediate foundation of a local cult by the episcopal authority, which in this case remained unrestricted by local interpretations, organic traditions, and forms of piety. No written Life of Saint Florian appears to have accompanied the relics when brought to Poland. Thus, only a very general account of his martyrdom in the fourth century may have been known to the local clerical elite. Florian's early Christian martyrdom did not directly generate an ideological controversy over the relation between the secular and ecclesiastical realms of Christian society in the high Middle Ages. The twelfth-century bishops were not sufficiently prepared to confront such a problem without support from hagiographic traditions.¹⁹ The Cracovians’ knowledge about Florian must have been restricted to only a general oral account of his death for refusing to offer a pagan sacrifice. In consequence, the arrival of the relics in Cracow allowed for the construction of a local cult according to current local ideological and spiritual needs. The consecration of Florian's altar in the cathedral and the foundation of a collegiate church at Cracow and a Cistercian monastery at Koprzywnica, both dedicated to the saint, all took place shortly thereafter.²⁰

Duke Casimir the Just's participation in the foundation of the cult indicated a convergence of interests between a new secular ruler of Cracow and its bishop. Casimir had already opened diplomatic negotiations with Pope Alexander III when the decisions of the council of Łęczyca, which approved his rule in Lesser Poland, needed a papal confirmation.²¹ It is reasonable to suggest that the council also assessed the availability of relics. After all, the remains of Saint Florian were brought from Bologna to Cracow by a papal envoy, Aegidius of Modena, three years later, with no trace of interim contacts between the papacy and the see of Cracow.²² The presence of relics in his new capital augmented the prestige of Casimir's government. Casimir stressed his own close association with Florian by honoring the saint after a victory against the pagan Pollexians. According to a contemporary account, Casimir organized a grand feast for the nobles only after devoting the entire Feast Day of Saint Florian to prayers of thanksgiving.²³

The episcopal and ducal patronage that had been exercised in regard to the relics of Saint Florian heralded a new order in the duchy, promising the well-being of the diocesan community. The baronial foundation of the Cistercian monastery of Saint Florian at Koprzywnica reflected the same idea.²⁴ Duke Casimir granted this monastic community generous immunity from ducal exactions. An almost parallel episcopal grant of tithes for the monks indicates that the monastery was part of the greater program initiated by the cathedral and the ducal court to promote the new cult.²⁵ While Casimir patronized the Cistercians in the countryside, Bishop Gedko brought the cult to the capital. The church of Saint Florian at Kleparz was undoubtedly an episcopal foundation, probably in an area that was an episcopal possession.²⁶ To stress the importance of the new church, Gedko purposefully organized its clergy into a collegiate chapter.²⁷ The bishopric, now armed with the shrines of an ancient martyr, seemed to deserve a special place among episcopal sees and requested its confirmation from the papacy. A papal bull of 1186 responded positively to these ambitions by confirming Cracow's second rank in the Polish episcopal hierarchy, right after the archbishopric of Gniezno. The bull granted by Urban III to Bishop Pełka on the occasion of his consecration not only placed the diocese under the protection of Saint Peter and confirmed its possessions, but also sanctioned “the tradition, observed by previous bishops of Cracow, that the bishop of Cracow had the first place and voice after the metropolitan bishop of the Polish ecclesiastical province.” The Cracovian prelates could exercise the right to oppose all attempts to violate their see's economic privileges and exclusive right to erect new churches. The pope also reconfirmed the custom of consecrating the archbishops of Gniezno by the bishops of Cracow.²⁸

This promising beginning was followed by the unimpressive development of the cult in the next century. The lack of a Vita of Saint Florian indicates the failure of the cult to inspire the local intellectual elite, although the celebration of his feast on May 4 reveals the saint's presence in public consciousness.²⁹ Much more institutional was the role of Saint Florian's relics as the guarantor of legal agreements. In 1220 one can already find a donation that had been confirmed “ante altare beati Floriani martyris in Cracovia.” Such a pious act was taking place in the cathedral, not in the collegiate church that possessed only an arm of the saint.³⁰ But the bishopric ultimately needed a saint directly associated with its cathedral. A martyred local prelate would be considerably more useful as the dynastic situation in the duchy reached some stability.

The Revived Cult of a Martyred Bishop

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Cracow's promotion of Saint Florian is that it largely ignored a martyr much closer to home geographically and chronologically: Bishop Stanisław of Cracow, who had been murdered by King Bolesław II the Bold in 1079. It might seem logical that campaigning for the canonization of a bishop killed by secular power fit well with the Gregorian model of power relations. Yet, the legitimization of Casimir's accession required an avoidance of assertive attitudes and sensitive issues pertaining to clerical claims to public authority. Clear manifestations of cooperation and harmony prevailed. As the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth, such concerns faded, and interest in having a saint specifically associated with Cracow and Poland revived.

While the translation of relics from Italy emphasized cooperation with a secular authority legitimized by the bishop, the canonization of Bishop Stanisław highlighted the extraordinary spiritual as well as temporal legacy of uncompromising episcopal power. Cracow ultimately favored a saint who would stress the model of the bishop as a defender of justice, a pragmatic guardian of the welfare of his community, and an effective political leader with the ability to direct secular and spiritual powers to a full accord in order to unify the Polish realm and recreate a monarchy.³¹ This corresponded with general trends in the cult of saints found in the old Latin core of Europe, where episcopal leaders became objects of reverence in the post-Roman order, and papal canonization began to elevate them to formal sainthood in the Innocentian Church.³² Only when the see of Cracow energetically campaigned to augment the old but dormant cult of a martyred local bishop, who opposed an allegedly tyrannical king, did the prestige of the episcopal authority in Cracow successfully rival that of its ecclesiastical counterparts in the increasingly hierarchical Polish church. The royal crown lost by the monarch associated with Bishop Stanisław's death, could be brought back to Cracow by the martyr's new community centuries later. This particular sentiment was clearly and famously articulated by Bishop Vincentius in the early thirteenth century.³³

Cracovian interest in the cult of Saint Stanisław gained a new momentum with the tenure of Bishop Ivo (1218–1229 in office) who was markedly attentive to the problem of the episcopal precedence and hierarchy. During Ivo's episcopate, Stanisław's future hagiographer, Vincentius of Kielce, visited the martyr's home village of Szczepanow.³⁴ Vincentius must have sought information about the early life of the martyred bishop, including possible instances of miracles and his noble pedigree.³⁵ The hagiographer reacted to the new modes of inquest into the quality of potential saints whom the papacy considered for inscribing into the catalogue of saints. A structured narrative that described spiritual growth in a social context supplemented the list of virtues and miracles.³⁶ In order to properly respond to the papal claims to control the cult of holy figures and to legitimize the episcopal promotion of a bishop disloyal to his king, the cult needed more sophisticated literary efforts that could expand the knowledge of the Cracovian tradition among the ecclesiastical elite of the Polish church.³⁷

In his Chronica Polonorum, Master Vincentius, future Bishop of Cracow (1208–1218 in office), stressed the extraordinary merits of his eleventh-century predecessor. The account of Stanisław's conflict with King Bolesław II, his death, and first miracles was not yet a Vita. Vincentius nonetheless presented the martyred Stanisław as a hallowed saint and a symbolic figure of a collapsing Polish kingdom. The first miracles took place immediately after his death at the hands of the king himself, when four eagles arrived to guard the dismembered body, divine lights glowed around the place of the murder, and the body regenerated itself. The king and his sons never regained good fortune.³⁸ No serious attempt to develop, reconstruct, or reinterpret the story of the assassinated bishop was made for another half-century.

During Bishop Prandota's tenure (1242–1266 in office), Vincentius of Kielce, who had investigated Stanisław's origin, wrote two accounts of Stanisław's life and miracles.³⁹ According to Vincentius's text of the Vita (maior), the initiative to write a hagiographical story of Bishop Stanisław's life came from Prandota himself.⁴⁰ The hagiographic narrative included most of the reported miracles, as well as those recorded by papal commissions in 1250 and 1252.⁴¹ Vincentius's famous and ideologically potent parallel between the dismembered body of the saint that miraculously regains unity and the partitioned Polish realm, deprived of the crown by a sinful king but about to be revived due to Stanisław's sacrifice, implied an organic relation between the saint and Cracow as the source of political unity and glory in the Polish realm.⁴² Stanisław's successors in the bishopric would be crucial for the revival of the kingdom of Poland, because God himself “preserves all royal insignia, such as the crown, scepter and the lance, hidden in the cathedral treasure in Cracow, which is the capital and the royal residence.”⁴³ In this deep symbiosis between episcopal and secular interests, the bishop was the ultimate grantor of power. Through a saintly life and his martyrdom, the bishop enforced the centrality of Cracow among Polish duchies and bishoprics. Due to Stanisław, a new Polish monarchy would rise from the cathedral of Cracow.

While praising Bishop Prandota's interest in the Stanisław cult, Vincentius of Kielce criticized Prandota;s predecessor Bishop Wisław for neglecting it. It has been argued that Wisław's lukewarm attitudes to the cult may have reflected an ongoing debate within the Polish church about the legitimacy of Stanisław as a stern opponent to the royal will. The silence of earlier sources, including Bishop Vincentius's chronicle, as to the details of the king's charges against the future martyr reflected that controversy about the bishop.⁴⁴ There were also various political difficulties testing Wisław's skills after his election to the see in 1229. He had to seek external support from the Silesian duke Henry the Bearded. This alliance led to the bishop's overriding the papal provision for a cathedral canon from the influential local Gryfita family and delaying his consecration.⁴⁵ Under these circumstances, seeking a canonization at the Holy See could not have been a priority for a bishop who additionally experienced a crisis of ducal authority in his home province and the rise of the local secular baronage.

Prandota's more secure position in the office and his negotiating skills quickly produced an initiative to provide the see of Cracow with a new cult directly controlled by the bishop. The Life of Saint Stanisław explicitly refers to Prandota, who “lifted the bones of the holy martyr Stanisław from the ground; he washed them with wine and water and placed them reverently together in a clean vessel above the ground.” The bishop also referred the sick to the care of the saint.⁴⁶ In 1250 Prandota had a chance to present the matter of Stanisław's sainthood to the secular barons and—not coincidently—to the bishop of Wrocław during councils held by the Cracovian Duke Bolesław III the Chaste near Chroberz.⁴⁷ Prandota also had an opportunity to solicit Archbishop Pełka (Fulko) of Gniezno to prepare broader support for his project among Polish ecclesiastical circles.⁴⁸ The same year, Prandota informed the Curia about the merits of the cult and thus stressed its recognition by episcopal authority in Cracow. Innocent IV's bull, which initiated the investigation by Jacob of Velletri, refers to the bishop's initiative as follows:

. . . the bishop of Cracow and the beloved sons from the [cathedral] chapter and the clergy of the town and the diocese of Cracow had already reported to us, in due time, that God, worthy of admiration through his saints, allows that Stanisław, bishop of Cracow, of venerable memory, glistens indeed with so many extraordinary miracles—the obvious proofs of his sainthood—and therefore in every respect it is appropriate to invoke his intercession, like other saints. . . .⁴⁹

The supplication initiated a dynamic process of papal investigation and diplomatic exchanges between Cracow and the papal court. It revealed the collective character of the effort to canonize a local martyr. In his contacts with the Holy See, the bishop could count on support from the cathedral chapter, the clerical elite of the town, and the local mendicants. The presence of legal specialists, the doctor of decretals Jakub of Skarzeszow and magistri Gerard and Gozwin, in the commission sent to Rome in 1251 and 1253 suggests the determination of the Polish delegation to effectively negotiate the canonization process in legal terms. The Dominicans and Franciscans, who had only recently arrived at Cracow, supported them in the expectation of augmenting the prestige of their new headquarters and attracting new waves of receptive pilgrims.⁵⁰

The miracles recorded by the papal commission investigating the cult in 1252 also underlined the centrality of the cathedral as a potent locus of divine power. The saint's bodily remains were not its only source. The fabric of the saint's clothing, the soil or a stone from the tomb, and his ring (anulus) emanated God's miraculous forces with effectiveness equal to those of his relics. In nine cases out of fifty-one, Saint Stanisław's episcopal ring alone cured the pious and the skeptical.⁵¹ This most important attribute of ecclesiastical spiritual power and episcopal status was a channel of divine powers.⁵² Stanisław died as a bishop of Cracow and acted as a bishop-saint who demanded elevation of his remains and pilgrimages to his tomb located at the very heart of the diocese, the cathedral.⁵³

In 1253 in Assisi, Pope Innocent IV canonized Bishop Stanisław as a martyr. A year later Prandota officially established a feast for the new saint.⁵⁴ The canonization represented a great success for the bishopric, despite initial difficulties in convincing a papal commission of the merits of the case.⁵⁵ The formal papal recognition, the local origin of the saint, and an energetic episcopal patronage successfully infused a new life into the cult. Saint Florian quickly lost the exclusive status of a figure specifically fortified by the bishopric. When in 1269 Legate Guido confirmed a sixty-day indulgence for four major feasts in Cracow, there was no indication that the anniversarium of Saint Florian enjoyed any particular prominence protected by the episcopal authority. Pilgrims received the same spiritual rewards for visiting Cracow during the day of Saint Florian as during the commemorative celebrations of the consecration of the cathedral, the days honoring Bohemian Saint Wencleslaus and Virgin Mary, and the death of Saint Stanisław, who had just been canonized due to the impressive determination of the Cracovian prelates.⁵⁶ The intellectually unstructured cult of Saint Florian, having been deprived of a solid hagiographical foundation, could not compete with the powerful stories associated with Saint Stanisław's miracles, like the one in which a canon of the very collegiate church dedicated to Florian invokes the name of the Cracovian bishop to soothe his suffering.⁵⁷ The epitaph transcribed by the fifteenth-century chronicler Jan Długosz helped not only to preserve the memory of a martyred episcopal leader, but also to stress the bishopric's official recognition of Stanisław's status as a blessed martyr.⁵⁸

The positive conclusion of the canonization procedure eased relations between Cracow and Wrocław. It put pressure on Bishop Thomas I of Wrocław to attend the celebration of the canonization in the presence of legate Opizo, abbot of the monastery of St. Paul at Mezzano.⁵⁹ On May 8, 1254, a delegation of leading ecclesiastical hierarchs from Wrocław arrived at Cracow to honor the elevation of Stanisław to the community of the saints. In a gesture of grand generosity, the bishop of Cracow presented Thomas with a relic.⁶⁰ With the presentation of such a valuable gift, Prandota expressed both piety and commanding authority. It also strengthened the image of the bishop of Cracow as an active peacemaker, munificent benefactor, and the key propagator of harmony within the Polish church.

Saints and the Rivalry between Cracow, Gniezno, and Wrocław

The bishop's access to the relics was Cracow's great victory. By choosing friends for his officially recognized saint, Prandota accomplished two objectives: he stressed his special power in the Polish episcopal hierarchy and pacified his counterpart in Wrocław. The Silesian see was unable to counter Cracow's ideological offensive. It lacked a strong local cult that would efficiently buttress episcopal leadership. The almost coinciding canonization of Duchess Hedwig, whose relics rested in the Silesian monastery of Trzebnica, did not present challenging competition for Cracow. Both the close association of the new cult of Hedwig with the Piast dynasty and its monastic location prevented the bishops of Wrocław from forming a competing cult center controlled by episcopal authority.

The papal approval of the saintly status of the eleventh-century martyr suddenly elevated the bishopric of Cracow to a prime spiritual center.⁶¹ Cracow's great peer, Gniezno, had limited ability to produce an equally potent hagiographic tradition and a cult with a strong significance for ecclesiastical power. The archbishopric could claim no more than the head of Saint Adalbert, who died on a mission to Prussia at the inception of the Polish state. This saint's remains were removed by Bretislav I of Bohemia who invaded Poland in 1036. The head only miraculously reappeared in Gniezno in 1127.⁶² To Cracow's advantage, the cult had important political limitations, despite its prestige that even brought Otto III to the Gniezno cathedral and allowed the see to emphasize its independent episcopal status in relation to the imperial church. Adalbert, who became a missionary to pagans in a remote northern land near the Baltic Sea, followed the ideal of heroic martyrs who courageously sacrificed their lives on the fringes of the Christian world.⁶³ While the bishops of Cracow may have felt uneasy about the installation of the massive bronze doors at the Gniezno cathedral that commemorated Adalbert's various stages of life and religious activities, the archbishopric could not conceal the fact that Adalbert had never practically exercised the power of an archbishop in the Polish church.⁶⁴ The strength of the cult rested on apostolic tradition as well as on its relation to the universal ideology of Christian offensives against pagans and schismatics.⁶⁵ Missionary activities in Prussia, as well as the crusades against its tribes, distinguished Adalbert's martyrdom and enticed devotion in the Polish duchies that experienced frequent invasions by their non-Christian neighbors and crusading counter-offensives.⁶⁶ In such form, the cult of Saint Adalbert, as important as it was, did not correspond to the old-fashioned but locally expressed Gregorian ideal of episcopal leadership that Saint Stanisław represented—an ideal that complemented the image of episcopal authority in Cracow. In the era of the ecclesiastical effort to secure the right of intervention in secular affairs and advance fiscal and legal immunities for church estates, the struggle against the perceived threat to Christendom could start locally on the level of a duchy or a province. The bishop was to determine the quality of his local community as the basic unit in a larger structure of Roman Christendom. Only then could the pure and properly managed post-Innocentian church effectively defend itself and enlarge its frontiers.

The cult, with a broad ideological appeal of expanding Christian frontiers, lacked direct local and political application to Cracow that would augment the archbishop's influence in the diocese. As a consequence, the bishops of Cracow did not perceive Saint Adalbert as a great threat from Gniezno. In 1217 at the synod of Danków, Bishop Vincentius, who had brought the case of Stanisław's martyrdom to the attention of the clerical elite, encouraged the Cistercian Order to introduce prayers to the saint into their pious routines.⁶⁷ He also consecrated the recently completed collegiate church of Saint Florian in Cracow and thus proved the continuous importance of Gedko's project for the see.⁶⁸

Vincentius's energetic successor, Paul of Przemakow (1266–1292 in office), avoided open discrimination in regard to the saints. His conflicts with Duke Leszek the Black in Cracow did not allow for spare resources to combat those cults that did not undermine the tradition of martyred Stanisław. In 1271, Paul helped to provide tithes from four villages to three altars in the Cracow cathedral, including the one devoted to Saint Adalbert.⁶⁹ He also endorsed the decision of the synod of Łęczyca in 1285 to popularize hystoria beati Adalberti through singing in cathedral and monastic churches.⁷⁰ The see of Cracow did not need to actively counter Gniezno's Adalbert. Rather, the see needed its own saint whose universal cult would stress the centrality of Cracow in both the Polish ecclesiastical province and the unified Polish monarchy.

By contrast, the cathedral of Wrocław was an alternative political and religious center that potentially might have posed a greater challenge to Cracow than that of Gniezno. While Wrocław did not possess any famous martyred missionary from an early heroic age, the cult of Hedwig and her association with Piast lineage through her husband could have impeded recognition of Cracow as the political center of Piast Poland. However, her secular status was no match to Stanisław's ideological distinction as an episcopal leader who died as a martyr in defense of his fellow Christians against an unjust temporal power. Hedwig was never directly associated with the see of Wrocław. In 1243, having taken an oath of chastity after years of marriage, she died in Trzebnica monastery, which was a wealthy and prestigious foundation of her husband.⁷¹ Her cult represented a new model of sanctity propagated by the dynamically rising Mendicant orders.⁷² The pious existence that Duchess Hedwig expressed through humility, charity, utmost asceticism, even chastity within marriage, and retreat to a monastery was an integral part of a new female holiness.⁷³ When the duchess was not preoccupied with charitable work or prayer, she taught her family the principles of the Christian faith.⁷⁴

The episcopal power of Wrocław appeared distant and unrelated to Hedwig's demonstration of Christian perfection. To address the problem, the bishopric attempted to impose its mark on the cult by assisting the elevation of the saint's remains and the construction of a new chapel for them in Trzebnica soon after her canonization in 1267.⁷⁵ The archbishop of Salzburg, Władysław, who acted in the capacity of the administrator of the see of Wrocław, gave the translation of the relics to a new place the character of a grand public spectacle attended by a Silesian duke and the king of Bohemia.⁷⁶ Unfortunately for the see, Pope Clement IV granted the nuns of Trzebnica the exclusive right to own and manage the holy bones, with no reference to the episcopal authority in Silesia.⁷⁷ The sanctity of Hedwig testified more directly to the prestige of ducal authority and the Piast dynasty than to the episcopal power of Wrocław.⁷⁸ In addition, her own Vita, written in Silesia at the end of the thirteenth century, acknowledges the primacy of Stanisław, as it claims that Hedwig foretold the construction of an altar for Saint Stanisław at the Trzebnica monastery and asked the nuns to pay particular reverence to it, because “it should be devoted to the greatest of the saints.”⁷⁹ The papacy acting in the person of a legate, perhaps unintentionally, diminished the special importance of the Silesian cult by granting extensive indulgences to pilgrims visiting the cathedral of Cracow.⁸⁰

Episcopal Blood and Cracow's Victory

In contrast to Hedwig's sanctity and her ducal patrons, the canonization of Bishop Stanisław brought splendor and power directly to the bishopric of Cracow. It cemented close relations between the bishopric and the Curia. One of the delegates who celebrated the canonization of Bishop Stanisław in 1254 was legate Opizo.⁸¹ Soon after the canonization of Stanisław, Bishop Prandota sought an official papal confirmation of Cracow's extraordinary position within the Polish province in regard to historical precedent. The papacy reacted positively, without violating the hierarchical authority of Gniezno. For the first time, the spiritual qualities of the bishopric joined its historical ones as legitimate arguments for its predominance.

In 1256 a series of bulls of Alexander IV provided the bishopric of Cracow with another recognition of its preeminent rank within the episcopal hierarchy. At first, the pope further stressed the validity of the cult of Saint Stanisław in granting indulgences to the pilgrims visiting his tomb and by ordering the inclusion of the feast of Saint Stanisław into the liturgical calendar of Polish monasteries.⁸² Soon after, Alexander confirmed the privileges of the 1186 bull and emphasized the primacy of the bishop of Cracow among Polish bishoprics, regardless of the sequence in which the bishops were consecrated. The Curia also noted the importance of the see of Cracow as the host of saintly remains.⁸³

Cracow's close relations with Rome were pivotal for a successful completion of the political project buttressed by the cult of saints. The pope's words reached Poland shortly before Bishop Thomas I of Wrocław was imprisoned by Bolesław II Rogatka, Duke of Legnica-Głogow, as a result of a prolonged conflict over ecclesiastical privileges in 1256.⁸⁴ This embarrassing condition for Thomas as well as Duke Bolesław's excommunication by Archbishop Pełka a year later offered Prandota an additional opportunity to display loyalty to the papal authority at the time of rejuvenating and formalizing the cult of Bishop Stanisław.⁸⁵ While the duke continued to ignore clerical sanctions, the pope made Prandota an executor of the penalties approved by the Apostolic See.⁸⁶ The two church leaders acted energetically after the synod of Łęczyca when they called for a crusade against the enemy of the recently released Bishop Thomas.⁸⁷ As a defender of ecclesiastical liberties and a punisher of an abusive secular ruler, like his canonized predecessor, Prandota assiduously labored for the prestige of his episcopal office that would set Cracow as the center of clerical leadership, order, and justice.

Cracow's position within the Polish hierarchical church did not remain static. The long and dramatic tenure of Paul of Przemankow as bishop of Cracow, and the Bohemian Přemyslids’ expansion into Polish territories in the late thirteenth century, undermined the relevance of saints to power dynamics in Lesser Poland. Thomas took advantage of his seniority over the newly elected Paul. The bishop of Wrocław acted on behalf of papal authority and, not coincidently, successfully concluded the canonization process of the wife of Duke Henry the Bearded, the aforementioned Duchess Hedwig.⁸⁸ When shortly after his election in 1267 Paul attended the legatine synod at Wrocław, the bishop-elect had to accept the formal preeminence of his host, at least on the grounds of canon law, as Paul was still awaiting episcopal consecration.⁸⁹ In 1267, at the provincial synod of Danków, the situation was identical.⁹⁰

The rise of the see of Wrocław was, however, fleeting. The following decades nonetheless undermined the position of the see of Wrocław. The Piasts’ accelerated efforts to unify Polish provinces and reinstate monarchy in the second half of the century disadvantaged the Silesian cathedral. Duke Henry IV Probus's prolonged conflict with Thomas II over ecclesiastical legal immunities and church estates revealed the considerable strength of Piast ruler.⁹¹ Indeed, Bishop Thomas II's inability to force the duke to accept the primacy of the church's authority, despite the excommunication of the duke and an interdict imposed on Henry's realm, as well as Franciscans’ defiance of those measures, was particularly embarrassing. Despite determination and assertiveness, an excommunication of the duke, and an interdict imposed on Henry's realm, Thomas was unable to secure support from the entire Silesian church, while the Franciscans’ defiance was particularly embarrassing. The duke's occupation of the episcopal castellany of Nysa-Otmuchów and assault on Raciborz, where the bishop found a temporary refuge, demonstrated Thomas's defeat.

From the perspective of Cracow, Henry's death in 1290 provided more political opportunities for Bishop Paul, although he too had been imprisoned and humiliated due to the political miscalculation of siding with the duke of Kujavia, Wladyslaw Lokietek, during a succession crisis in Lesser Poland. As a result, both Cracow and Wrocław lost status to Gniezno with the rise of Przemysl II of Greater Poland, who claimed Cracow after the Silesian duke and eventually revived the Polish monarchy. In 1295 he was coronated in Gniezno, not Cracow, which he had only managed to control briefly between 1290 and 1291. Archbishop Jacob Świnka, who probably secured Lesser Poland for his duke by negotiating with Henry Probus shortly before the duke's death, made his cathedral the center of the new monarchy.⁹² Political will, diplomacy, and assertive action overcame the hierarchy of prestige based on the cult of saints.

Although Przemysł was coronated king, his practical control of Lesser Poland was no longer feasible.⁹³ A few years earlier the new king left Cracow and ceded the Duchy of Cracow to Vaclav II Přemyslid.⁹⁴ The expansion of the Kingdom of Bohemia in southern Polish territories was a pacifying and unifying factor in the relations between Cracow and Wrocław and ultimately favored the former. During the conflict between Duke Władysław Łokietek and Bishop Muskata of Cracow (1294–1320 in office), who was an ally of the Přemyslids’, the bishop of Wrocław provided reliable assistance to his Cracovian peer.⁹⁵ In 1304 Thomas successfully mediated during an ecclesiastical trial against Bishop Muskata.⁹⁶ In 1307, the see of Wrocław provided a safe refuge for Muskata, who had to leave Cracow when Archbishop Świnka came to Lesser Poland to dismember episcopal authority, conduct legal procedures against the bishop's allies in the cathedral, and transfer the diocesan administration to Custodian Jarost.⁹⁷ In 1309, however, the disgraced bishop was able to return to Cracow accompanied this time by the new bishop of Wrocław, Henry of Wierzbno, who continued to support Muskata after his release from imprisonment by Lokietek's knight. Henry also intervened at the court of Pope Clement V in crucial matters pertaining to the violent struggle between the bishop and the Piast duke in Lesser Poland.⁹⁸

Nonetheless, this apparent episcopal harmony and collaboration failed to secure Wrocław's prime status in the Polish church. The see, now situated in a miniature duchy produced by dynastic quarrels over inheritance and partitions, formally joined the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1337 and declined in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Polish province of Gniezno. By contrast, Cracow remain ideologically and practically important in the effort to revive the Polish kingdom. In 1320 the cathedral of Cracow hosted the coronation of Władysław Łokietek as a new king. The ritual was performed by the archbishop of Gniezno, whose preference for a Piast duke to champion the unification of Polish territories also set Cracow at the heart of the process. The space encapsulated royal insignia and holy relics. The act of reviving the Polish monarchy was taking place in the presence of two saints, one an ancient confessor martyred for his faith in a pagan empire, the other murdered for resistance against injustice and tyranny in his native land of Lesser Poland.

Conclusion

The hierarchical organization of the Polish church revealed competition among bishoprics and a dynastic struggle for the throne of Cracow. Mere affiliation with a secular ruler of Lesser Poland did not guarantee successful campaigns for the highest position in the episcopal ranks. The bishops of Cracow sought, therefore, new venues of protection and assistance. The increasingly centralized papacy became an especially helpful ally in this process, as the bishops skillfully exploited Rome's effort to control the cult of saints. The bulls of 1186 and 1256 formally assigned the bishop of Cracow the second position in the Polish hierarchy, just after the archbishopric of Gniezno. The first document closely followed the installation of the relics of Saint Florian in Cracow, the second the canonization of Bishop Stanisław.

Each saint met specific ideological needs of the bishopric. This study has more closely examined those needs in the context of the Gregorian notion of a model Christian community led by the bishops and accentuating the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal. The case of the bishopric of Cracow and its saints expands the scholarly discussion on the matter of episcopal authority and the discourse between universal and local identities in East-Central Europe, a region still less familiar to Anglophone scholarship. The cult of particular saints always reflected specific interests of its patrons, who in turn responded to both the micro and macro elements of politics and ideology. Clerical assertiveness encouraged by the Gregorian movement and the crises of the secular authority in Lesser Poland found an extraordinary expression in the selection of holy figures as local patron-saints. This closer examination of the role of the bishop as a peacemaker, builder of a new just order, and a determined advocate of a responsible secular rulership should contribute to a better understanding of a very broad spectrum of exploiting the cult in post-Gregorian western Christendom. The episcopal interest in the cult of saints in medieval Cracow incorporated the hierocratic concept of a proper polity, construction of which reflected clerical leadership in assuring peace, cooperation, and legitimization of the hierarchy of public power headed by the pope and all the clergy, but where a positive role was also assigned to a responsible lay ruler.

The initiation of the cult of Saint Florian emphasized collaboration between a rebellious duke recently installed in the cathedral city and his episcopal patron. Florian was a good reminder of a positive change from military violence to peace and unshaken devotion to God. The figure of Saint Stanisław accentuated bishops’ responsibility to sustain leadership in resisting injustice and tyranny. A popular hagiographic tradition connected the cult with the idea of unifying Polish duchies and reviving a monarchy. The cult of saints became a useful instrument of demonstrating Christian unity under episcopal headship and effectively responded to the problem of political fragmentation in the Polish realm. The pacifying power of the saintly figures from the past addressed the problem of political conflicts that threatened to destabilize Cracow's principal place within both secular and ecclesiastical realms.

The archbishopric of Gniezno and the see of Wrocław, Cracow's main competitors in the Polish ecclesiastical province, were unable to utilize their own saints equally successfully. Gniezno's Saint Adalbert represented the model favoring missionary work beyond the northern frontier of Polish territories, and there is little evidence that even the Piast dukes of Greater Poland found the cult politically useful in the struggle for the prestigious Cracovian throne. The supreme position of the cathedral of Gniezno was never openly challenged by other episcopal centers. Historical precedents and papal bulls sufficiently eliminated the need for saintly presence there. In contrast, Saint Hedwig could have buttressed the ambitions of the Silesian bishops and dukes, but the cult of the holy duchess began too late to affect the trajectory of the province's collapsing sovereignty.

The arrival of the relics of Saint Florian at Cracow initiated the bishopric's custody of a tangible source of divine power and provided opportunities to manifest the mutual support between the cathedral and the new duke Casimir the Just, who was elevated to the throne of the high duke in Cracow by a consensus within the local baronage. The saint from the Roman past seemed to have confirmed a new prosperous chapter in Cracow's history and hope for a stable, hereditary line of good Piast dukes originating in Lesser Poland. By the middle of the next century, Cracow demanded a different type of holy figure. Bishop Stanisław's relics were utilized by the faithful to create a corporal association that approached the hierocratic ideal forged almost two centuries earlier. Participation in pilgrimages to the cathedral that hosted them brought together quarreling dukes and prelates from distant provinces to observe the holy relics of an official saint and his contemporary episcopal successor. The journey to the remains of God's special people became part of a political ritual forcing the participants to act in public accord and project the image of a harmonious society. The relics were not only an effective means of personal salvation for those who visited them, but also God's agent for unifying the Polish realm. In 1320, duke Władysław Łokietek was crowned the new king of Poland in Cracow's cathedral, at the very altar with Stanisław's earthly remains. Quarrels and fraternal fights of the Piast dukes were now to be suppressed and replaced by a united monarchy, although the reality became significantly more complex and problematic, and no pacifying outsider of any kind, from the mundane world or from the spiritual realm of sanctus, would assure absolute order and peace in the early fourteenth century. The city hosting the holy bones of holy martyrs—the saints formally recognized by the assertive and politically relevant papal and episcopal authorities—finally became the unquestionable site of central power. The bishops of Cracow did not become sovereign territorial lords with their own military routines and castles, but their position in the hierarchy of the Polish ecclesiastical province and in the royal government, especially through the royal council and then the senate, promised a successful future for centuries to come.