STANISLAUS, Saint, Martyr. - Bishop and patron of Poland, born in that nation between 1030 and 1035, died in Kraków in April 1079. Tradition holds that he came from the Polish stock of the Prus-Turzyma of Szezepanowo, for which reason he is called St. Stanislaus Szezepanowski. Of a fully Western spirit, he was elected bishop of Kraków in 1071 and confirmed in 1072. He had a dramatic conflict with the king of Poland Boleslaus the Bold. The King was excommunicated by Stanislaus; in response he had Stanislaus killed in the church of St. Michael in Kraków. The body of Stanislaus was maltreated by the King and his henchmen before the altar where Stanislaus was celebrating Holy Mass. Canonized at Assisi on 17 August 1253 by Innocent IV; feast on 7 May.
On the origin of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus a broad controversy arose in the nineteenth century among historians of medieval Poland, following the discovery of the manuscript of the so-called Gallus Anonymus; a tendentious echo of that controversy is also found under the entry Boleslaus the Bold, in Enc. Ital., VII, p. 299: the author, Jan Dabrowski, seeks to justify the crime of King Boleslaus on grounds of reason of state.
St. Stanislaus, bishop and martyr, is depicted as a person of middle age; a sword placed at his feet and a palm that he holds in his hand allude to his glory as a martyr. He is often seen depicted in the act of raising a naked man who is emerging from the tomb: it represents the miracle of the resurrection of the knight Peter (that is, Pietrovino).
For the iconography of St. Stanislaus, particular importance attaches to the frescoes with two scenes of his legend painted on the lateral surfaces of the Gothic arch above the pulpit of the Lower Church in the basilica of Assisi. They depict the miraculous resurrection of the knight Peter (Pietrovino) and the martyrdom of the Saint; they date from 1337: attributed by Vasari in 1568 to his imaginary Giottino, they are now often cited, though without sufficient basis, as a work of Stefano Fiorentino. St. Stanislaus is depicted on the altarpiece in the Polish church of St. Stanislaus in Rome by Antiveduto Gramatica, who painted it around 1594; in it the Savior is depicted among three Polish saints: Stanislaus, 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 Ronicz. On the ceiling the glory of St. Stanislaus is seen frescoed by Ermenegildo Costantino around 1775, and the three scenes of the Saint's legend in the sacristy are attributed to F. Smuglewicz (late eighteenth century).
Bibliography5 works
Witold Wehr