De Boleslao rege et passione sancti Stanislai episcopi Cracoviensis (excerptum)
The Tyrant's Descent
Bolesław abandons virtue and turns his warfare inward against his own people, ruling through suspicion, treachery, and savage cruelty.
Matthew: "Then the olive tree turned into a wild olive, and the honeycomb turned into wormwood." Once he had let the pursuit of virtue drop, Bolesław turned the war he had been waging against his enemies against his own people; he pretends he is not out to avenge injuries done to the common people, but to pursue royal majesty in the person of the king. For once the common people are removed, what is a king? He says he takes no pleasure in married men, because with them womanly influence carries more weight than submission to the prince. He complains that he was not so much deserted among the enemies by them as deliberately exposed to the enemies. Accordingly he summons the leading men of the realm, and those he cannot attack openly he attacks through treachery. He also attacked the women whose husbands he had spared with such savagery that he did not shrink from fastening their young children to the breasts of the women he had cast aside — children even an enemy would have spared. For he argued that the scandals of prostitutes must be rooted out, not fostered.
The Bishop's Rebuke and the King's Madness
Bishop Stanislaus threatens Bolesław with anathema, but the king, like a crooked bow, only bends further into madness and orders the bishop seized at the altar.
When the most holy bishop of Kraków, Stanislaus, could not call him back from this savagery, he first threatened him with the destruction of his kingdom, and at last brandished the sword of anathema against him. But he, like a bow already bent crooked, was clothed in an even greater madness, because twisted pieces of wood can more easily be broken than straightened. And so, near the altar, among the vestments, with no regard for rank, for place, or for the occasion, he ordered the bishop to be seized. Whenever the most fierce attendants tried to rush upon him, they were struck down; as often as they attacked, just as often they were thrown to the ground and became gentle.
The Martyrdom of Stanislaus
The king himself commits sacrilegious violence, butchering the bishop limb by limb with meticulous cruelty, leaving the chronicler stunned beyond speech.
The tyrant rebukes them most indignantly, and then he himself lays sacrilegious hands on them: he himself drags the bridegroom from the bride's embrace, the shepherd from the sheepfold; he himself cuts down the father in his daughter's arms, and the son nearly within the mother's womb. O grievous sight! O spectacle of death beyond all death! The unholy man profanes the holy one, the wicked man violates the devout, the sacrilegious man tears the bishop limb from limb, the bloodiest of men butchers the innocent, hacking each limb apart with the most meticulous cruelty, as though punishment had to be exacted from every single part of his body. I am completely stunned, completely paralyzed by a kind of shuddering, so that I can scarcely take it in with my mind, much less give it voice with my tongue, much less set it down with my pen — these deeds wrought in the holy Savior's great power; for the understanding fails at the telling of them, speech fails the understanding, and words, as things stand, cannot unfold the reality.
Heavenly Signs Over the Martyr's Body
Four eagles guard the martyr's scattered body from scavengers, and a wondrous reddish glow shines from each fragment, illuminating the night as though it were day.
For from the four corners of the world four eagles were seen flying in, circling the place of the passion at a great height to drive away the vultures and other blood-drinking birds from touching the martyr's body. In reverence for this sacred watch, they keep vigil without ceasing, passing day into night and night into day. Should I call it night, or day? I would call it day rather than night. For this is the other night, of which it is written: 'And night shall be illuminated as day.'✦ For a wondrous reddish glow shone in as many individual places as there were pieces of the scattered sacred body, so that heaven itself seemed to have begrudged the earth its own glory — glory that seemed set apart by the beauty of certain stars and, you would think, by rays of the sun.1
The Gathering of the Sacred Remains
Moved by the miracle, the faithful gather the scattered limbs and find the body miraculously whole, then lay it to rest with spices in the basilica of Saint Michael.
Moved by the wonder of this miracle and set ablaze with zeal for devotion, some of the fathers long to gather up the scattered fragments of the limbs. Step by step they draw near, find the body perfectly whole and without even a trace of scars, lift it, carry it away, and lay it to rest with spices in the lesser basilica of Saint Michael, among the divine ones.
Read the original Latin
Matthaeus: «Extunc in oleastrum olea, et favus versus est in absinthium. Intermisso namque studio virtutum, Boleslaus bellum in suos ab hostibus transtulit; fingit, illos non iniurias in plebe ulcisci, sed regiam in rege persequi maiestatem. Nam plebe remota, rex quid erit? Ait, non placere sibi viros uxorios, quibus plus causa placeat feminea quam principis obsequela. Queritur, se non tam apud hostes ab ipsis desertum quam hostibus ultro expositum. Proinde praecipuos capitis accersit, et quos aperte non potest aggredi, insidiis aggreditur. Mulieres quoque, quibus mariti pepercerant, tanta insectatus est immanitate, ut ad earum ubera catulos applicare non horruerit, infantulis abiectis, quibus etiam hostis pepercisset. Astruebat enim, exstirpari oportere scortorum scandala, non foveri.
Quem sacerrimus Cracoviensium pontifex Stanislaus ab hac truculentia quum revocare non posset, prius illi regni comminatur excidium, tandem anathematis gladium intentat. At ille, ut erat in arcum versus pravum, immaniore induitur vesania, quia lignorum tortuosa facilius frangi possunt quam dirigi. Itaque prope aram, inter infulas, non ordinis, non loci, non temporis inspecta reverentia, corripi iubet antistitem. Ad quem satellites atrocissimi quoties irruere tentant, toties compuncti, toties prostrati mansuescunt.
Quos tyrannus indignatissime obiurgans, ipse manus iniicit sacrilegas, ipse sponsum e gremio sponsae, pastorem ab ovili abstrahit, ipse patrem in filiae amplexibus et filium in maternis paene visceribus obtruncat. O luctuosum! o transfunebre funeris spectaculum! Sanctum profanus, pium sceleratus, praesulem sacrilegus, cruentissimus innoxium membratim discerpit, singulos artus perminutissime dissecans, quasi a singulis membrorum partibus poena exigi debuisset. Totus autem stupore, totus quadam horripilatione dirigui, ut vix mente concipere, nedum lingua, nedum calamo possim exprimere haec in sancto Salvatoris magnalia; succumbit enim dicendis intellectus, intellectui sermo, et rem, ut est, verba non explicant. E quattuor namque mundi partibus quattuor advolare visae sunt aquilae, quae sublimius locum passionis circinando vultures aliasque sanguipetas alites a contactu martyris abigerent. Cuius in custodelae reverentia pervigiles diem nocti et noctem diei continuant. Noctem appellem, an diem?
Diem potius dixerim quam noctem. Haec enim altera nox est, de qua scriptum est: ‹Et nox sicut dies illuminabitur. › Mirae siquidem rutilantiae tot in singulis locis divinae fulserunt lampades, quot sacri corporis dispersa sunt minuta; ut ipsum coelum suum ornatum, suam terrae gloriam videretur invidisse, quam quorundam decore siderum et quibusdam putares solis radiis distinctam.
Hac vero miraculi alacritate animati ac zelo devotionis quidam patres accensi sparsas membrorum minutias colligere gestiunt. Pedetentim accedunt, corpus integerrimum, etiam sine cicatricum notamine, reperiunt, tollunt, asportant, apud minorem S. Michaelis basilicam divis conditum aromatibus recondunt.»
Scripture echoes
- ↩Isa.21.12 — The watchman said, ‘Morning comes, and also night. If you would inquire, inquire; return, come.’
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin clause order is complex and the agreement of 'distinctam' is ambiguous; the translation renders the most plausible sense: the earth's glory appeared distinguished by starlight and sunlight.
Chronica Polonorum — Selections companion
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