STANISLAO, saint, martyr. — Bishop and patron of Poland, born in that nation between 1030 and 1035, died at Cracow in April 1079. Tradition holds that he belonged to the Polish lineage of the Prus-Turzyma of Szezepanowo, and for this reason he is called St. S. Szezepanowski. Entirely Western in spirit, he was elected bishop of Cracow in 1071 and confirmed in 1072. He became involved in a dramatic conflict with the king of Poland, Boleslao l'Ardito. The King was excommunicated by S.; in response, he had S. killed in the church of St. Michael at Cracow. S.’s body was mutilated by the King and his henchmen before the altar where S. was celebrating Holy Mass. Canonized at Assisi on 17 August 1253 by Innocenzo IV; feast on 7 May.
A wide-ranging controversy arose in the nineteenth century among historians of the Polish Middle Ages concerning the origin of the martyrdom of St. S., following the discovery of the manuscript of the so-called Anonymous Gallus; a tendentious echo of this controversy is also found under the entry Boleslao l'Ardito, in Enc. Ital., VII,
p. 299: the author, Jan Dabrowski, attempts to justify King Boleslao’s crime on grounds of raison d’état.
S. S., bishop and martyr, is represented as a person of middle age; a sword placed at his feet and a palm held in his hand allude to his glory as a martyr. He is often depicted in the act of raising a naked man emerging from the tomb: this represents the miracle of the resurrection of the knight Pietro (that is, Pietrovino).
Of particular importance for the iconography of S. S. are the 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 of Assisi. They represent the miraculous resurrection of the knight Pietro (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 the work of Stefano Fiorentino. S. S. is represented on the altarpiece in the Polish church of S. S. in Rome by Antiveduto Gramatica, who painted it around 1594; it depicts the Savior among three Polish saints: S., Adalberto, and Giacinto. In the same church, the altarpiece depicting the Miracle of the resurrection of the knight Pietro, painted between 1750 and 1752, is by Taddeo Ronicz. On the ceiling, the glory of S. S. is shown in a fresco by Ermenegildo Costantino, executed around 1775, while the three scenes from the Saint’s legend in the sacristy are attributed to F. Smuglewicz (late eighteenth century).