WLADISLAVIA (WŁOCŁAWEK, CUJAVIA-KALISZ). — City and diocese in Poland, with its seat at Włocławek.
It has an area of 11,500 sq. km and a population of 1,109,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,000,000 are Catholics, distributed among 249 parishes served by 350 diocesan and 75 religious priests; it has two seminaries, 22 male and 62 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1933: 15, 455).
The first episcopal see was at Kruszwica, whose first eight bishops are uncertain. The first certain one was Swidger, who died in 1133. Eugenius III, by a bull of 1148, established the boundaries of the diocese of W., which bore the names of Cujavia and Kalisz; then, from 1159, the episcopal see was transferred to W. Notable bishops were: Gervard (1300–1323); Maciej z Galanczewa (d. 1368), who began construction of the Cathedral; Krzesław z Kurozwek (1494–1503); Wincenty Przerębski (1503–13); Stanisław Karnkowski, transferred to Gnesna in 1581; Hieronim Rozdrażewski (1555–1600), buried in Rome in the church of the Gesù; Stanisław Sarnowski, who died in 1680; Antoni Sebastian Dembowski (1682–1763); Andrzej Wólowicz (d. at Kalisz in 1822), the first bishop of Cujavia and Kalisz. From 1576 the bishops of W. replaced the Primates of Poland during a vacancy of the see; in the Senate they occupied the second place; from the fourteenth century there were also auxiliary bishoprics. The Chapter is known from the eleventh century. The original Cathedral was destroyed by the Crusaders in 1329; the present one, dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, is Gothic and dates from 1340–1411, but was rebuilt between 1690 and 1720; it is a minor basilica. S. Giovanni Battista dates from 1538; the church of Ognissanti from 1640; S. Vitale from 1330. W. was the property of the bishops until 1796; their residence was in the castle, rebuilt in the fourteenth century and then again in the eighteenth. The Seminary, founded in 1569, was the first in Poland. At Kruszwica is the church of SS. Pietro e Paolo, from the twelfth century, initially a collegiate church and later a cathedral; the relics of s. Vitale, brought from Corvey in Saxony, are venerated there. At Kalisz, the church of S. Niccolò, from 1220, is noteworthy; the collegiate church of the Blessed Virgin dates from 1459 and was rebuilt in 1790.