Założenie klasztoru ojców dominikanów w Krakowie

Nota do artykułu Zofii Kozłowskiej-Budkowej z 1926 roku

Abstract

THE FOUNDING OF THE DOMINICAN FATHERS’ PRIORY IN KRAKÓW. A NOTE TO ZOFIA KOZŁOWSKA-BUDKOWA’S 1926 ARTICLE

In 1926, Zofia Kozłowska published an article entitled Founding of the Dominican Fathers’ Monastery in Kraków in Rocznik Krakowski. After almost a century, this text has not lost its relevance, and only some of Z. Kozłowska’s findings need to be corrected in the light of new research. In this article, the author addressed two issues concerning the date of St. Hyacynth’s arrival in Kraków. Z. Kozłowska-Budkowa claimed that 1217 as the date of St. Hyacynth’s arrival, cited by lector Stanisław of Kraków in De vita et miraculis sancti Jacchonis from around 1360, was only a literary invention for the purposes of veneration and future canonisation. His interpretation was challenged in the 1950s by Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, who argued that lector Stanisław inferred the date from the sources available to him. From then on, his “Life of St. Hyacynth” had been viewed as a normative source, and its author turned from a hagiographer of St. Hyacynth into a historiographer analysing the sources. Owing to recent studies on the academic and literary resources of lector Stanisław and the circumstances of the creation of the “Life of St. Hyacynth”, we can appreciate the validity of Kozłowska’s observations. A careful analysis of the content and structure of De vita allows us to fully confirm her opinion: lector Stanisław set himself one goal – to present Brother Hyacynth not only as a holy monk, but also as an excellent candidate for the patron saint of the renascent Polish Kingdom. Z. Kozłowska-Budkowa had no doubt that St. Hyacynth arrived in Kraków in 1222. What remained to be established was the month or at least the season of this occurrence. In her opinion, it happened in the early months of 1222. The solution to the problem came only with the discovery, in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, of a new source for the history of the Polish Dominicans, namely a manuscript containing a fragment of a 13th-century chronicle of the Polish Dominicans. It shows that St. Hyacynth was sent to Poland by Blessed Jordan of Saxony and may have reached Kraków in the summer (July–August), and certainly no later than in the autumn of 1222. As for the exact day, we have to settle with the account of Jan Długosz, who gives the date as November 1.