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.