The Posthumous Peregrinations of King Stanisław I Leszczyński. On the History of Views on Royal Remains as a Relic of the Past and a Museum Item

The history of the remains of Stanisław Leszczyński was exceptionally stormy. Buried in the Notre-Dame de Bon Secours Church in Nancy, during the French Revolution they were profaned twice (in 1793 and 1803). The inhabitants of the town who were royalists hid some of them and they treated them as relics. It was these relics (a finger, a jaw and some intestines) that in 1814 were brought to Poland by General M. Sokolnicki who was returning home with the remnants of the Polish army after the Napoleonic wars. The cult of human remains treated as relics of the past was a characteristic phenomenon at the turn of the 18th century. Sokolnicki deposited the King's intestines in Poznań. According to the general's intentions the rest of the remains (put into a small, classicistic coffin) were to be consigned in the Wawel Castle (the jaw) and in Puławy (the finger) − however, the plan was not put into effect. Perhaps this was the result of Sokolnicki's tragic death in 1816. In 1828 the coffin found itself in the collection of the Warsaw Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk (Society of the Friends of Sciences). According to a report by one of its members − Ł. Gołębiowski − it belonged to the most precious collections of the Society. As result of the plunder by Russians after the November Uprising it was taken − along with the collection of books − to the Emperor's Public Library in St. Petersburg. In 1857, owing to an intervention by the then director of the library, M. Korf, and to the steps taken by the Polish historian and journalist A. H. Kirkor, Alexander II ordered placing it in St. Catherine Church in Petersburg. This fact was soon noted by the press. Systematic studies were begun concerning the King's remains (H. Lepage, A. H. Kirkor); accounts were collected from the still alive witnesses of the events that had happened nearly half a century earlier (K. Tyszkiewicz). H. Lepage proved that the corpse that had been placed in the crypt in 1803 had never left it. A part of the public opinion condemned what Sokolnicki had done, calling it „vandalism” (K. Jarochowski). It was demanded that the King's bones, now scattered over Europe, be deposited in Nancy again. The coffin left St. Catherine Church in 1922 when it was taken by the members of the Polish vindication commission − E. Wierzbicki, Rev. B. Ussas and M. Piotrowski. The latter one brought it to Poland. The action was supported by the then parish priest in St. Catherine Church, Rev. K. Budkiewicz. The Poles, brought up in Russia, had no doubts that their deed was right − they understood it as saving an important national relic of the past. It is characteristic that they were also going to take to Poland the remains of Stanisław August Poniatowski buried in St. Petersburg. Due to the death of Rev. Budkiewicz (murdered by the Bolsheviks) this plan was not put into effect. In the independent Poland the attitude towards the relics of King Leszczyński was not so unambiguous. For J. Skotnicki − a high ranking official at the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education, in whose hands the coffin found itself − Piotrowski's deed was a sign of irresponsibility that could expose the Polish side to diplomatic troubles and block the process of vindication of works of culture from the USSR. The Polish officials revealed a surprising lack of knowledge of the 19th century history of the King's relics. Skotnicki gave them to the Director of the Warsaw Castle − M. Treter who put the relics in the Castle safe. The press soon revealed this fact to the public. A storm that started in the press resulted in placing the coffin in the Wawel Castle (1928). In the polemics the very people who acted in 1922 took part (Ussas, Wierzbicki), writing a number of articles in which they explained the motives of their action. Their declarations, extraordinarily bombastic, did not seem credible to a large part of the public opinion. From the events of 1922 newspapers most willingly selected the sensational elements, adding a lot of colour to them. From Ussas's and Wierzbicki's texts it follows that the remains were treated by them as an object from which a „historical spirit” emanates, a witness to the plunders after the Uprising, a relic connected with St. Catherine Church and with its parish priest murdered by the Bolsheviks. This was indeed a continuation of General Sokolnicki's romantic tradition