GIACINTO, SANTO - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. VI, p. 208

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

GIACINTO, Saint

Dominican, of a noble Polish family, perhaps the Odrowąż, born at Gross-Stein in Silesia toward the end of the 12th century, died at Cracow on 15 August 1257. Still young, he was made a canon of the cathedral of Cracow by Bishop Ivo. After completing his scientific training in a studium generale (at Bologna?), he returned to Cracow, where he became a valuable assistant to the bishop in the administration of the diocese. The bishop himself, in 1218, chose him as companion and counsellor for a journey to Rome, to the papal court.

There Giacinto met St Dominic, who received him into the Order along with two companions, Ceslaus and Herman, who were also in the bishop’s retinue. In 1219 he was sent by St Dominic himself with his companions to Poland and on the journey founded a convent at Friesach in Carinthia. A second convent was founded by him at Cracow in the parish of Holy Trinity, where he remained until 1222; and a third he founded in 1223 at Kiev, after an apostolic mission among the Vandals of Muscovy. In 1226, having founded a new convent at Danzig, he returned to Cracow. He was the initiator of Dominican missions in Ruthenia. He was canonized by Clement VII in 1594. Feast, 17 August.

BIBL.: Acta SS. Augusti, III, Paris-Rome 1867, pp. 309-70; L. Cwikinski, De vita et miraculis s. Iacchonis (Hyacinthi) Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, autore Stanislao lectore Cracoviensi eiusdem ordinis, in Monumenta Poloniae historica, IV, Leopoli 1884, pp. 818-903; D. Bertolotti, Vita di S. G., 2 voll., Rome 1903; B. Altaner, Die Dominikanermissionen des 13. Jahrhunderts, Habelschwerdt 1924, pp. 196-225; R. J. Loenertz, Les origines de l’ancienne historiographie dominicaine en Pologne, II, Abr., 1948; Ham Bzowski, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 19 (1949), pp. 49-94.

### ICONOGRAPHY

From the time of his canonization (1594) onward, there exist several iconographic representations of the Saint, such as the legend of him painted by Francesco Vanni in the church of S. Domenico at Siena, the altarpiece by Antevuto Gramatica in the Polish church of S. Stanislao at Rome with the Saviour between three Polish saints, the frescoes by Federico Zuccari in the church of S. Sabina at Rome, where he is also depicted in an altarpiece by Lavinia Fontana. The picture of St Giacinto in the church of S. Maria della Scala at Rome seems instead to be an 18th-century copy of a lost painting by Antevuto Gramatica, made for the said church in 1602. St Giacinto is represented as a Dominican of middle age; sometimes standing on a cloak in the midst of a river; this depiction alludes to his miracle of crossing the Vistula.

BIBL.: M. Nowodworski, Jacek, in Encyklopedia Kościelna, VIII, p. 354 (with bibliography) Witold Wehr