White Eagle, Black Madonna: One Thousand Years of the Polish Catholic Tradition

By Robert E. Alvis

In 1944, the Nazis razed Warsaw’s historic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. “They knew that the strength of the Polish nation was rooted in the Cross, Christ’s Passion, the spirit of the Gospels, and the invincible Church,” argued Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in a letter celebrating the building’s subsequent reconstruction. “To weaken and destroy the nation, they knew they must first deprive it of its Christian spirit.” Wyszynski insisted that Catholicism was an integral component of Polish history, culture, and national identity. The faithfulness of the Polish people fortified them during times of trial and inspired much that was noble and good in their endeavors.

Filling a sizable gap in the literature, White Eagle, Black Madonna is a systematic study of the Catholic Church in Poland and among the Polish diaspora. Polish Catholicism has not been particularly well understood outside of Poland, and certainly not in the Anglophone world, until now. Demonstrating an unparalleled mastery of the topic, Robert E. Alvis offers an illuminating vantage point on the dynamic tension between centralization and diversity that long has characterized the Catholic Church’s history. Written in clear, concise, accessible language, the book sheds light on the relevance of the Polish Catholic tradition for the global Catholic Church, a phenomenon that has been greatly enhanced by Pope John Paul II, whose theology, ecclesiology, and piety were shaped profoundly by his experiences in Poland, and those experiences in turn shaped the course of his long and influential pontificate.

Offering a new resource for understanding the historical development of Polish Catholicism, White Eagle, Black Madonna emphasizes the people, places, events, and ritual actions that have animated the tradition and that still resonate among Polish Catholics today. From the baptism of Duke Mieszko in 966 to the controversial
burial of President Lech Kaczyński in 2010, the Church has accompanied the Polish people during their long and often tumultuous history. While often controversial, Catholicism’s influence over Poland’s political, social, and cultural life has been indisputably profound.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780823271726

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White Eagle, Black Madonna

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alvis, Robert E., author.

Title: White eagle, Black Madonna : one thousand years of the Polish Catholic tradition / Robert E. Alvis.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Fordham University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015042063 (print) | LCCN 2016003335 (ebook) | ISBN 9780823271702 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780823271719 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780823271726 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Catholic Church—Poland—History. | Poland—Church history.

Classification: LCC BX1564 .A63 2016 (print) | LCC BX1564 (ebook) | DDC 282/.438—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042063

Printed in the United States of America

18  17  16  5        4  3  2  1

First edition

for Magda and Leo

Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps

Preface

A Timeline of Poland’s Political and Ecclesiastical History

1 Baptized into Christendom (966–1138)

2 Chaos and Consolidation (1138–1333)

3 Baptized into Power (1333–1506)

4 The Promise and the Peril of Liberty (1506–1648)

5 Deluge and Illusions (1648–1764)

6 Reform, Romance, and Revolution (1764–1848)

7 The Gospel and National Greatness (1848–1914)

8 From Captivity to Cataclysm (1914–1945)

9 From Stalinism to Solidarity (1945–1989)

10 From Triumph to Turmoil (after 1989)

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Martyrdom of Saint Vojtěch

Saint Andrew’s Church, Kraków

Statue of Saint Hedwig, Wrocław

Blessed Wincenty Kadłubek’s Church, Jędrzejów

Bas-relief depicting King Kazimierz III and Bishop Bodzęta

Byzantine-style frescoes in the Royal Chapel of the Holy Trinity, Lublin

Union of Lublin by Jan Matejko

Zygmunt III Vasa Column, Warsaw

Corpus Christi Church, Poznań

Church of Our Lady of the Holy Linden, Masuria

Golden Chapel, Poznań

Students who participated in the school strikes in Września, 1901

Funeral procession in honor of Stanisław Wyspiański, Kraków, 1907

Unveiling of a war monument in Ząbki, 1924

Procession of the relics of Saint Andrzej Bobola through Warsaw, 1938

Outdoor Mass at Jasna Góra on May 3, 1966

Church of the Divine Mercy, Kalisz

AWS election campaign billboard, 1997

Couple waiting to wed at Holy Trinity Church in Stęszew

Maps

Poland, tenth–twelfth centuries

Poland and Lithuania, fourteenth century

Poland-Lithuania, seventeenth century

The Catholic Church in the Polish lands, ca. 1900

The Catholic Church in Poland, ca. 2004

Preface

In 1960 Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the archbishop of Warsaw and primate of Poland, wrote a letter to Catholics of the Archdiocese of Warsaw on the occasion of the completed reconstruction of the city’s Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. Built in the fourteenth century, the edifice was demolished along with much of the city by German military units in the waning months of 1944, a spiteful and strategically senseless operation ordered by a Nazi regime approaching collapse. After fifteen years of painstaking rebuilding, Wyszyński was eager to celebrate the achievement. In the process, he invited his followers to see the structure as a symbol of the profound relationship between the Polish people and the Catholic religion. After cataloguing some of the many historical figures and events associated with the cathedral, the cardinal argued that the history of St. John’s and the history of our country are so much of a piece that we cannot separate them. The Germans methodically razed the church to the ground, he suggested, because they knew that the strength of the nation was rooted in the Cross, Christ’s Passion, the spirit of the Gospels, and the invincible Church. To weaken and destroy the nation, they knew that they must first deprive it of its Christian spirit. Wyszyński encouraged his readers to learn from their enemies. Whatever our enemies attack, we should love and respect. If they pack the churches with dynamite charges, we should fill them with the love of hearts ‘faithful to God, the Cross, the Church and her pastors.’ ¹

Wyszyński’s argument is consistent with a set of assumptions that echoed throughout his writings, sermons, and speeches. He recognized Catholicism as a central component of Polish history, culture, and national identity. The Poles stood out from other nations on account of their fidelity to the church, and this faithfulness fortified them during times of trial and inspired much that was noble and good in their endeavors. Such an idealized portrait of the church is hardly surprising, coming from a cardinal. Others have offered more nuanced, if not negative, characterizations of its influence in Polish culture. More impervious to challenge is Wyszyński’s assertion of Catholicism’s seminal role in Polish history and culture. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Polish lands were ruled by Russia, Germany, and Austria, these powers were reminded repeatedly that perceived attacks on Catholicism were liable to provoke Poles into rebellion. American bishops discovered the same thing when they tried to pry Polish Catholic immigrants away from their language and national customs in order to promote assimilation into the American Catholic mainstream. In the decades after World War II, Poland’s communist rulers learned to tread lightly around the church despite their ideological opposition to its tenets. Meanwhile, a host of survey data from the postwar era reveals that Poles have been much slower than their European peers to abandon Christian practice. For many years now, Poland has been the most religiously observant country in the region.

The world had the opportunity to witness aspects of Polish Catholicism’s vitality during the long pontificate of the recently canonized John Paul II. He played a critical role in rallying the Polish people in opposition to communist rule in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Catholic symbols and institutions were integral to a resistance movement that ultimately broke the regime, and with the free elections in June 1989 Poland became the first domino to fall in the Eastern Bloc. The charismatic Polish pope inspired Catholics the world over, attracting untold millions to the rather traditional piety common in his homeland. One lasting measure of his influence is the global popularity of the Divine Mercy devotion, which originated in interwar Poland.

Polish Catholicism’s recent moments on the global stage are but the latest chapter in a fascinating tradition stretching back more than a thousand years. This tradition has not been particularly well understood outside of Poland, and certainly not in the Anglophone world. Until quite recently, there has been relatively little English-language scholarship on Poland’s religious history. Happily that has begun to change in the quarter century since 1989, as Poland has reemerged as a substantial component of a more unified Europe. A growing number of quality studies have enriched our understanding of the various phases and aspects of this important subject. Significant gaps in this field remain, including more comprehensive treatments of Polish Catholic history. To date, the only volume in English to attempt this is Jerzy Kłoczowski’s A History of Polish Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2000). This is a very fine book written by a celebrated historian whose erudition and mastery of the subject are plain. It is not without its limitations, however. The book is a translation of a two-volume work originally published in Polish in 1987 and 1991, lightly revised to address more recent events. Written largely in the 1980s, the work does not take into account the fresh scholarship to emerge over the past three decades, and its treatment of the communist and early postcommunist eras does not benefit from the perspective that comes with a temporal remove from one’s subject matter. Originally written for a Polish audience, the work sometimes assumes too much familiarity with the basic outlines of Polish history and reflects certain blind spots commonly found in Polish historiography.

The present volume offers a new resource for understanding the historical development of the Polish Catholic tradition. Each of those last three words merits some explanation. By Polish I mean two things: the people who have inhabited the series of duchies, kingdoms, and republics that constitutes Poland’s political history and the people who have belonged to the Polish linguistic and cultural sphere. Poland’s political history has been marked by substantial shifts in boundaries, not to mention extended absences from the map of Europe. The territory within its present borders certainly belongs to this account, but so do regions currently within neighboring countries such as Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, which in earlier eras were enmeshed in the sphere of Polish culture. The Catholic populations within Poland’s past and present boundaries have not always been Polish in the modern ethnic or linguistic sense of the term, but they fall within the scope of this book by virtue of political affiliation. I also have sought to weave into my account Polish Catholics living outside of Poland, a population that has been rather substantial over the past two centuries.

This account focuses on the Polish Catholic tradition. The Polish state that emerged from the ravages of the Second World War has been home to a population that has identified overwhelmingly as Catholic. From a historical vantage point, however, such religious homogeneity is actually rather novel. Throughout much of the country’s history, its Catholic population coexisted with large numbers of non-Catholics, including Jews, Orthodox Christians, Protestants, and other religious groups. My decision to focus on Polish Catholics is based not on the assumption that these other populations are somehow insignificant; on the contrary, their histories are too significant and complex to capture adequately in a single volume. I make repeated mention of Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants in this book, but only insofar as they have had an impact on the Polish Catholic experience.

In characterizing this as a study of the Polish Catholic tradition, what I mean to convey is that the book is more than a chronological account of what Polish Catholics have experienced and accomplished. As a religion, Catholicism takes its history very seriously. It considers its past to belong to a living tradition that continuously adds dimensions to the meaning of church and informs Catholic belief and praxis in the present. These same instincts have informed Polish Catholics. They have drawn from their ever-expanding past as they have endeavored to embody the faith in their own day. This book considers what Polish Catholics have chosen to remember about their past and sometimes what they have chosen to forget. My approach is genealogical insofar as I seek to highlight the origins and development of patterns of belief and practice. To a certain extent, it is also cumulative. This is reflected in the time frames of my chapters, which grow progressively narrower to accommodate the mounting complexity of the subject matter.

In each of the book’s ten chapters, I weave together different dimensions of Polish Catholic history. I begin with political developments on the national and international levels, focusing in particular on their relevance to the Catholic Church. This helps form a context for understanding how and why the church evolved the way it did in a given historical period. I usually turn next to institutional developments within the church, including the personnel, organizations, and procedures it depended on to guide the faithful. I then consider the lived experience of Polish Catholics. I rely heavily on textual evidence to build my account, drawing mainly from secondary literature, but I also look to material evidence such as churches and artworks that allow the past to speak in powerful ways.

I have endeavored to make this book at once worthwhile to scholars and accessible to the general reader interested in the subject. Scholars of Polish history no doubt will find much that is familiar in these pages, but I hope that they will also find material that is fresh and useful. In a time when the pressure to specialize is particularly intense, sometimes it can be helpful to take in the long view offered by books like this. Considering how rarely Poland surfaces in Anglophone studies of church history, it is my hope that this book might contribute to a greater appreciation of the country’s considerable relevance to the field. Throughout the book, I have sought to highlight how the Polish case either reinforces, nuances, or challenges dominant interpretations of the historical development of the Christian churches. Out of respect for the general reader, I do not assume a lot of prior knowledge of the subject. I have avoided scholarly jargon and a surfeit of footnotes, and I have privileged English-language sources when making suggestions for further reading.

Regarding language, a few explanations are in order. Owing to the country’s shifting borders and the ethnic diversity of its population, the villages, cities, and regions historically linked to Poland or currently within its borders invariably have been known by multiple names. Choosing the most appropriate name to use is by no means straightforward. I have adopted a strategy that risks anachronism for the sake of consistency and the interests of readers unfamiliar with the linguistic complexity of Polish history. When there exists a dominant English-language variant of a place-name, I use it. I write of Warsaw, for instance, even though Poles know the city as Warszawa. Otherwise, I use the name most commonly employed at the time of this book’s publication. I thus refer to Lithuania’s capital as Vilnius, even though for centuries prior to 1945 the majority of its inhabitants spoke Polish and knew their city as Wilno.

In terms of personal names, I have generally eschewed using Latinized or Anglicized versions in favor of the original names by which the subjects in this book knew themselves. When describing King Bolesław I Chrobry, for instance, I use his Polish name instead of Boleslaus, its Latinized equivalent. I refer to the Bavarian-born Hedwig of Andechs by her German name rather than its Polish equivalent, Jadwiga. Exceptions to this rule include figures of international relavance or renown, such as popes, emperors, and luminaries like Nicolaus Copernicus.

I have translated most Polish terms into English with a few exceptions. I use Sejm instead of Parliament, for instance, because the latter sounds too foreign to the subject. Likewise, rendering a periodical title such as Tygodnik Powszechny into its English equivalent, The Universal Weekly, strikes me as awkward.

1 Baptized into Christendom (966–1138)

On April 14, 966, Mieszko I, chieftain of a Western Slavic tribe known as the Polanians, allowed himself to be baptized according to the Roman Rite. Although the precise details of the event are not known, a missionary bishop named Jordan probably performed the ritual in a Polanian stronghold in either Gniezno (Gnesen) or Poznań (Posen). In the days leading up to the ritual, Mieszko likely fasted and listened to oral instruction concerning the faith. On the day of his baptism, Holy Saturday, he was called to renounce paganism, Satan, and evil. He then shed his clothing and entered a baptismal pool ringed with curtains, where the priest poured water over his head, pronounced the baptismal formula, and anointed him with oil. When he exited the pool, Mieszko donned a white garment signifying his purified state. According to an eleventh-century chronicle, Immediately, members of his hitherto reluctant people followed their beloved head and lord and, after accepting the marriage garments, were numbered among the wards of Christ.¹

Polish Catholics long have attached weighty historical significance to Mieszko’s ritual act. They recognize it not only as the introduction of Christianity to the Polish lands but also as the very birth of Poland as a nation. Catholicism, the argument runs, eased Poland’s entry into the family of Western Christian nations, and it supplied essential resources that enabled Poland to weather the vicissitudes of history. During the celebration of the millennial anniversary of Mieszko’s baptism on April 14, 1966, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński observed the following: Where would the Poles be, if Mieszko I had not baptized Poland? To answer this question, it suffices to look at the history of the pagan Prussians and other western neighbors of the Polanians who did not follow the path of Christianity. None of these tribes created a state that joined the European cultural mainstream. One after the other, they disappeared from the map of Europe. Christianity offered Poland a great opportunity for spiritual and material development. Over the centuries, it remained the linchpin of national existence.²

Such claims have considerable merit. At the time of his baptism, Mieszko presided over a preliterate tribe of modest technical ability by western European standards and an underdeveloped, unstable domain that was only as large as his warriors could defend. Poised on the margins of Christendom and rendered odious on account of their pagan practices, the Polanians were a tempting target for western missionary and colonizing zeal. Christianization removed the readiest rationale for a military invasion. Mieszko’s baptism placed his domain, soon to be known as Poland, on the map of Christendom, and it created pathways for the importation of literacy and the structures and expertise of western European civilization that strengthened this fledgling political entity. Pressured to cut ties with traditional pagan beliefs and practices and to adopt the new religion, the local population did so, though not without considerable resistance.

The Deeds of the Princes and Prelates of the Poles

The earliest history of the Polanians and other Western Slavic peoples is the stuff of legend and conjecture, and ultimately it lies beyond the concerns of this volume. The story of Polish Catholicism originates in Mieszko’s day, when the Polanians were one of a number of tribes settled in the lands that would come to be associated with Poland. Their heartland lay between the Oder and Vistula Rivers, a region known as Great Poland. Their tribal neighbors included the Pomeranians to the north, the Masovians to the east, the Vistulans to the southeast, and the Silesians to the south. These tribes inhabited small settlements and sustained themselves through primitive farming, animal husbandry, fishing, hunting, and gathering. Archaeological evidence suggests that they also engaged in a measure of long-distance trade. Intertribal conflict was a perpetual fact of life, which required chieftains such as Mieszko to build fortified strongholds and to remain on a war footing.

In addition to regional struggles for preeminence, the Western Slavic tribes had to contend with the missionary and military ambitions of more distant powers. The Byzantine Empire sponsored the missionary journeys of Cyril and Methodius, who introduced Orthodox Christianity to Moravia in the ninth century. The faith may even have registered at this time among the Vistulans and Silesians to the north, though little concrete evidence remains.³ Much more significant for Poland’s future was the planting of Orthodox Christianity in Kievan Rus’ in the tenth century. Poland would in time extend eastward into the heartland of Kievan Rus’, leading to a long history of Orthodox–Catholic coexistence. By the second half of the tenth century, Moravia and Silesia passed into the dominion of the Přemyslid dynasty centered in Bohemia. The Přemyslids had found their way into Western Christendom through the agency of officials linked to the Regensburg Diocese, and they in turn would help mediate Mieszko’s move in the same direction.⁴

In this period, the Saxon ruler Otto I (912–973) managed to stifle the Magyar threat, exert his dominion over much of central Europe, and reclaim the title of emperor. He encouraged German colonization and missionary work among the Slavic tribes dwelling between the Elbe and Oder Rivers, which brought an imperial presence to the edge of the Polanian domains. After a number of skirmishes, Mieszko entered into a formal relationship with the empire in 964. It seems that he recognized Otto’s authority as emperor, was recognized as duke of Poland in turn, and agreed to pay tribute. Around the same time, Otto won papal approval for the establishment of the Magdeburg Archdiocese, with a missionary mandate to extend the faith and its ecclesial authority eastward. The Polanians stood in the trajectory of Otto’s ambitions.

In 965 Mieszko married Dubravka (c. 940/45–977), daughter of Přemyslid ruler Boleslav I (c. 915–967/72), cementing an alliance between the two tribes. Bishop Thietmar of Merseberg (975–1018) mentions the marriage in his early eleventh-century chronicle, claiming that Dubravka was instrumental in leading her husband to Catholicism. Historians generally have assumed that political calculations factored in Mieszko’s thinking. Mieszko’s baptism and the Christianization of his people deprived the empire of justifiable cause for subjugating the Polanians. This also may explain the Dagome Iudex, a document from this period that notes how Mieszko placed his domains under the protection of Pope John XV. No rationale is given, but it could be that Mieszko was seeking to insulate himself from the authority of the empire and the Archdiocese of Magdeburg.

The conversion of the Polanians was part of an impressive burst of Catholic missionary outreach eastward, touching populations that stretched from Poland to Hungary. Thereafter the advance slowed, leaving these newly Catholicized populations on the edge of Western Christendom and neighboring peoples with different religious commitments. These conditions eventually nurtured the idea that Poland was an eastern bulwark of the Catholic West, an enduring trope in Polish Catholic discourse.

By the time of his death in 992, Mieszko had managed to extend his authority over a broad expanse that encompassed part or all of Great Poland, Little Poland, Mazovia, Silesia, and Pomerania. Power then passed to his and Dubravka’s eldest son, Bolesław I Chrobry (the Brave), who enjoyed a long and successful reign (992–1025). His prodigious military achievements and interest in social, economic, and ecclesial development strengthened Poland considerably and enabled it to withstand future travails.⁵

Early in his rule, Bolesław forged a relationship of lasting consequence with Vojtěch (Wojciech, Adalbert), the bishop of Prague. Born to a prominent Bohemian family, Vojtěch studied in Magdeburg and established important connections in the German imperial court. He was appointed to lead the newly created Diocese of Prague in 982, but entrenched pagan practices and rivalries between leading clans made for a rocky tenure. He eventually abandoned his post and set his sights on missionary work among the pagan tribes beyond the boundaries of Western Christendom, including the Prussians living northeast of Poland. He met Bolesław while passing through Poland, and the duke showed him hospitality and sent troops to accompany him on his dangerous venture. Vojtěch eventually reached his destination, only to be murdered by hostile Prussians on April 23, 997.⁶ An account of the killing is preserved by Jan Długosz, a fifteenth-century cleric, who authored a massive chronicle of medieval Polish history that ranks as a signal achievement of medieval historiography. As Vojtěch was preparing to say Mass for the conversion of Prussia, Długosz notes, the Prussians interpreted the ceremony as a casting of spells and charms intended to destroy them and their gods, so they fell upon him, cutting off his head and hanging it in a tree for three days. Bolesław agreed to ransom the bishop’s body for its weight in silver. His agents ventured to Prussia, and the corpse was placed on the scales. It had lost so much weight that only a handful of silver [was] required to level the balance, which the Poles recognized as a miracle. They returned home with the body and most of their silver, leaving the Prussians feeling cheated.⁷ Bolesław had the body installed in honor before the altar of the church in Gniezno. Two years later, Pope Sylvester II canonized the martyred bishop. In this manner, Poland gained its first patron saint, and his sacred relics enhanced the young country’s stature throughout Christendom.⁸

001_Map_1_Draft_4-28.ai

Poland, tenth–twelfth centuries

006_Image_01_Martyrdom.jpg

The martyrdom of Saint Vojtěch, as depicted in one of the panels of the Gniezno Doors.

Bolesław’s military prowess earned the respect of Emperor Otto III (980–1002), who envisioned the Polanians as allies in his political designs to enlarge and unify Western Christendom. Toward that end, he ventured to Gniezno in the year 1000 and made gestures of lasting consequence for Poland. With the blessing of Pope Sylvester II, he affirmed Gniezno as the seat of an independent ecclesiastical metropolitanate that would encompass new dioceses at Kraków, Wrocław, and Kołobrzeg.⁹ He tapped Vojtěch’s half-brother Radim to serve as Gniezno’s first archbishop, and Bolesław and his successors won the authority to invest future bishops in the metropolitanate with symbols of their office. Otto seems to have honored Bolesław by placing the imperial crown on his head and raising him to the status of patricius. The meaning of these gestures long has been disputed, but it appears likely that the emperor signaled his recognition of Bolesław as more than just a tributary duke, but short of a peer. This budding alliance unraveled when Otto died prematurely just two years later.¹⁰

Bolesław continued to enjoy considerable military and political success. He extended his authority west of the Oder River at the empire’s expense. In 1003 he defeated a Bohemian army, captured Prague, and exercised control over Bohemian domains for a time. In 1015 he launched a victorious invasion of Kievan Rus’. In 1025, during an imperial interregnum, he dared to crown himself king, an action sanctioned and legitimated by Pope John XIX. This marks the start of Poland’s status as a kingdom, the Kingdom of Poland. The descendants of Mieszko who ruled it belonged to what is known as the Piast dynasty.

After Bolesław’s death, the kingdom passed to his son Mieszko II Lambert (990–1034), crowned in the Gniezno cathedral by Archbishop Hipolit on Christmas Day, 1025, thus perpetuating the royal pretensions of his father. Emulating his father’s military success proved much more difficult. He had to contend with scheming brothers, aggressive neighbors, and Polish elites opposed to a strong central government. The combined effects of foreign invasion and internal rebellion, including a popular pagan uprising against a Catholic order imposed from above, led to the virtual collapse of the Polish state in the second half of the 1030s. A description of the carnage is found in The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles (Gesta principum Polonorum), an early twelfth-century chronicle that constitutes the oldest surviving history of Poland.¹¹ Its author, known traditionally as Gallus Anonymous, notes: Serfs rose against their masters, and freedmen against nobles, seizing power for themselves, reducing some in turn to servitude, killing others, and raping their wives and appropriating their offices in most wicked fashion.¹² The leading towns of Great Poland suffered destruction, and the central government essentially ceased to exist. Mieszko’s son and successor, Kazimierz I Odnowiciel (the Restorer, 1016–1058), gradually pacified much of Poland’s core territories. In light of the heavy damage inflicted on Great Poland, he moved his capital to Kraków, where it was destined to remain for centuries to come.

Succeeding Kazimierz was his son Bolesław II Śmiały (the Bold, 1041/42–1081/82). He earned his moniker through his ambitious and generally successful foreign policy and military exploits, including interventions in the affairs of Hungary, Kievan Rus’, and the Duchy of Bohemia. During the Investiture Controversy, a titanic clash between Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII over control of the appointment of bishops in the empire, Bolesław allied himself with the pope. In gratitude, Gregory supported the Polish leader’s royal coronation, which took place on Christmas Day in 1076 in the Gniezno cathedral. A papal legate looked on as Gniezno’s Archbishop Bogomił crowned Bolesław king.

While reaping certain advantages that a close alliance with the church could bring, Bolesław also paid heavily for running afoul of the institution. In the late 1070s he clashed with Stanisław (1030–1079), the bishop of Kraków, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Gallus Anonymous suggests that the king believed the bishop was involved in a plot to depose him: For this harmed [Bolesław] much, when he added sin to sin, when for treason he subjected a bishop to mutilation of limbs. For neither do we forgive a traitor bishop, nor do we commend a king for taking vengeance in such a shameful way.¹³ Later medieval historians Wincenty Kadłubek and Jan Długosz argue that the conflict began when the bishop accused the king of various moral offenses and ultimately excommunicated him. Whatever the true source of the dispute may have been, in 1079 the king seems to have arranged for Stanisław’s murder. More dramatic accounts aver that Bolesław personally murdered the bishop while he celebrated Mass. Outrage over the bishop’s death undermined the king’s position, forcing him into permanent exile.¹⁴ Stanisław emerged in Polish historical consciousness as a martyr for religious principles, foreshadowing the moral significance of the more famous Saint Thomas Becket. He was officially canonized in 1253.

With Bolesław’s exile, power shifted to his brother Władysław I Herman (1079–1102), whose ineffective tenure was reflected in his submission to the overlordship of the Holy Roman emperor and refusal to claim the royal crown. Under pressure, in 1098 he divided his domains between himself and his sons Zbigniew (1070/73–1112/14) and Bolesław III Krzywousty (the Wry Mouth, 1086–1138). An indication of the church’s growing political influence can be discerned in the description by Gallus Anonymous of how Archbishop Martin of Gniezno helped ameliorate the poisonous rivalry that simmered between the sons after Władysław’s death: And for five days Archbishop Martin with the chaplains celebrated the funeral rites in the city of Płock, not daring to bury him because he was waiting for the sons. When they came, before their father was even in his grave a bitter quarrel nearly broke out between the two brothers about the division of the treasury and the kingdom. But by the grace of God and the faithful old archbishop’s mediation, they kept the instructions their father had given in life while he lay dead before them.¹⁵ In short order this power-sharing arrangement broke down. Bolesław eventually drove his brother from power, reunited the kingdom, and reasserted Polish control over much of Pomerania.¹⁶

Gallus Anonymous devotes the majority of his chronicle to celebrating the virtues, piety, and accomplishments of Bolesław. The night before launching a siege of Kołobrzeg, for instance, Bolesław had mass celebrated in honor of the holy Mary, which afterwards he kept as his normal practice in devotion. He then offered his soldiers the following advice: Just trust in God and in your weapons, and have no care.¹⁷ Such details were designed no doubt to secure the reader’s sympathy for the chronicle’s protagonist, but they likely illuminate a core reason for the unwavering loyalty of the Piasts to the church: Engaged in almost perpetual warfare, they recognized the Christian God and the saints as invisible yet powerful allies on the field of battle.

A Fledgling Church

After Mieszko’s baptism in 966, the church as an institution gradually took shape in Poland. From the relatively few historical traces that survive, it is clear that the church suffered its share of setbacks in this tumultuous era, but in some respects it proved more durable than the state. It benefited from the patronage of sympathetic rulers, and it aided the cause of Poland’s stability and development.

This fledgling church greatly increased in stature in the year 1000 with the establishment of Gniezno as an archdiocese charged with overseeing newly minted dioceses based in Kraków, Wrocław, and Kołobrzeg. The Metropolitanate of Gniezno spanned much of Great Poland, Little Poland, Silesia, and Pomerania, and it served as an essential source of unity and continuity for the Polish state during the first two centuries of its history.

The pagan uprising of the 1030s was especially pronounced in Pomerania, and the Kołobrzeg Diocese collapsed under the strain. A diocesan structure was reestablished later in the century at Kruszwica, but it proved ephemeral. In contrast, the coalescence of Polish Catholic life in Mazovia justified the organization of the Diocese of Płock in 1075. In 1124, papal legate Gilles of Paris visited Poland in order to oversee the establishment of two new dioceses to govern church life and promote missionary work in Poland’s northern domains. The Diocese of Włocławek encompassed much of eastern Pomerania and Kuyavia, while the Diocese of Lubusz (Lebus) included parts of western Pomerania.

One would assume that the early bishops of Poland took steps to build the bureaucratic structures required to administer their dioceses, though there is little hard evidence to support this. Gallus Anonymous notes that during a Prussian raid on Gniezno in the early eleventh century the bishop, priest, and archdeacon were terrified and driven to despair for their temporal life.¹⁸ This is the first known reference to an archdeacon in Poland, and it points to the existence of a multilayered clerical hierarchy.

Gniezno was the undisputed capital of Polish Catholic life in the early decades of the Polish state, both on account of its archdiocesan status and its possession of Saint Vojtěch’s shrine. The unrest of the 1030s compromised its authority somewhat. Bohemian invaders ravaged Gniezno and captured what they believed to be Vojtěch’s relics, depositing them ultimately in a new shrine in Prague. Polish sources have disputed this ever since, arguing that the true relics were hidden from the invaders and remain in Gniezno. Whatever the truth may be, church officials in Gniezno now had to contend with the rising prestige of the Diocese of Kraków, which benefited from Kazimierz’s decision to transfer the central government there.

Gniezno temporarily lost its status as a metropolitanate in the 1130s, owing in part to the efforts of Norbert of Xanten (c. 1080–1134; canonized in 1582), the archbishop of Magdeburg, to subject the church in Poland to his jurisdiction. He presented Rome with documents, apparently forged, that supported Magdeburg’s claims. He found a sympathetic audience in Pope Innocent II, who was smarting from the support that Polish leaders had been showing to his nemesis, Antipope Anacletus II. The pope formally subjected Gniezno to Magdeburg in 1133. Bolesław III subsequently acknowledged Innocent as pope, and Gniezno’s Archbishop Jakub of Żnin led the successful campaign to reverse the pope’s decision. On July 7, 1136, Innocent published Ex commisso nobis, also known as the Bull of Gniezno, which restored Gniezno to its former status.¹⁹

The earliest priests and bishops who ministered in Poland hailed from various corners of Europe. Many came from neighboring Germany, including a Thuringian named Poppon, who served as Kraków’s first bishop. Before long, leadership of the church in Kraków fell to Rachelin (d. 1046), who according to Długosz was originally from the Italian peninsula. Alexander and Walter, brothers from the Belgian city of Liège, served respectively as bishops in Płock and Wrocław in the twelfth century. They brought with them religious texts that rooted the church in Poland within Western Christian practice. Alexander is thought to have introduced the Pontificale Plocensis, for instance, which offered ceremonial guidelines according to the Roman Rite. By the early twelfth century, Kraków’s cathedral chapter maintained a library containing at least fifty-three manuscripts, including liturgical and juridical works, the encyclopedia of Isidore of Seville, and manuals for learning Latin.

The steady stream of missionary priests and bishops to Poland illustrates how the young state had found a foothold in Western Christendom and benefited from its resources. At the same time, from a western European vantage it is clear that Poland qualified as a distant and poorly understood frontier. In the 1136 bull issued by Innocent II to the Archdiocese of Gniezno, the pope notes his concern for the region of the Poles, situated in the farthest part of the world.²⁰ Missionaries no doubt regarded Poland as a difficult assignment and a spiritually meritorious sacrifice.

Although the church in Poland depended initially on foreign missionaries, there were early efforts to develop indigenous clergy and religious. Records suggest that a number of Slavs belonged to the Benedictine hermitage established at Międzyrzecz (Meseritz) at the start of the eleventh century. A historical account of this community written not long after its founding notes the following: And there were also … two who were brothers in flesh, one by the name of Isaac, the other Matthew, who were staying at the hermitage; … this pair arose from the land of the Slavs; and their sisters were serving in the monastery amongst the virgins of God.²¹ Another local affiliated with the hermitage, Krystyn, served as a cook. Stanisław, who functioned as bishop of Kraków from 1072 to 1079, is thought to have been born in the village of Szczepanów in Little Poland, which would make him the first Polish-born bishop on record. There is evidence of a cathedral school founded in Kraków during the late eleventh century, which advanced the formation of a Polish clergy.²²

The first two centuries of Christianity in Poland witnessed the gradual proliferation of churches in episcopal centers, royal strongholds, and the bases of regional lords. Judging from the few sources that survive from this era, little was yet achieved in terms of building a formal network of parishes. The inadequacy of pastoral care is reflected in a letter from Pope Gregory VII to Bolesław II in 1075. The pope expressed his regret that there are so few bishops, and the dioceses (parochiae) of each are so large that the cure of the episcopal office can in no way be carried out or properly administered.²³

A brief, illuminating reference to the process of founding churches in Poland at this time can be found in the chronicle of Gallus Anonymous. The author notes that "a certain noble had built a church in the