STANISLAUS, Saint, martyr. – Patron bishop of Poland, born in that nation between 1030 and 1035, died at Cracow in April 1079. Tradition holds him to be of the Polish stock of the Prus-Turzyma of Szczepanowo, for which reason he is called St. S. Szczepanowski. Of fully Western spirit, he was elected bishop of Cracow in 1071 and confirmed in 1072. He had a dramatic conflict with the King of Poland Boleslaus the Bold. The King was excommunicated by S.; in response, he had S. killed in the church of St. Michael at Cracow. The body of S. was mutilated by the King and his henchmen before the altar where S. was celebrating Holy Mass. Canonized at Assisi on 17 Aug. 1253 by Innocent IV; feast on 7 May.
In the 19th century, a broad controversy arose among historians of medieval Poland regarding the origin of the martyrdom of St. S., following the discovery of the manuscript of the so-called Gallus Anonymous; a tendentious echo of this controversy is also found under the heading Boleslaus the Bold, in Enc. Ital., VII, p. 299: the author, Jan Dąbrowski, seeks to justify the crime of King Boleslaus on grounds of state necessity.
St. S., bishop and martyr, is depicted as a man of middle age; a sword placed at his feet and a palm he holds in his hand allude to his glory as a martyr. He is often shown in the act of raising a naked man emerging from a tomb: this represents the miracle of the resurrection of the knight Peter (i.e., Pietrovino).
For the iconography of St. S., frescoes depicting two scenes from his legend, painted on the lateral surfaces of the Gothic arch above the pulpit in the Lower Church of the basilica at Assisi, are of particular importance. They depict the miraculous resurrection of the knight Peter (Pietrovino) and the martyrdom of the Saint; they date to 1337 and, attributed by Vasari in 1568 to his imaginary Giottino, are now often cited, though without sufficient basis, as the work of Stefano Fiorentino. St. S. is depicted on the altarpiece in the Polish church of St. S. in Rome by Antiveduto Gramatica, who painted it around 1594; in it, the Saviour is shown between three Polish saints: St. Adalbert and Hyacinth. In the same church, the altarpiece with the Miracle of the Resurrection of the knight Peter, painted between 1750 and 1752, is by Taddeo Ronzini. On the ceiling, the glory of St. S. is frescoed by Ermenegildo Costantini around 1775, and the three scenes from the legend of the Saint in the sacristy are attributed to F. Smuglewicz (late 18th century).