ON SS. THE MARTYRS, AT SANDOMIERZ IN POLAND, SLAUGHTERED BY THE TARTARS.
IN THE YEAR 1260.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY. On the time and manner of the Martyrdom and the cult, from Kromer and others.
The Martyrs, at Sandomierz in Poland, slaughtered by the Tartars (SS.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
Marcin Kromer, having embraced the Origins and Deeds of the Poles, at the exhortation of Sigismund Augustus, in thirty books, up to the year 1506; when in book 9, page 237, he had narrated the civil disturbances, by which after the year 1258 Poland was distracted; soon subjoins, how meanwhile a great force of the Tartars, The Tartars having crossed the Vistula with Nogai and Celega as leaders, poured itself into Poland through Russia in the month of December, the Russians themselves being helpers and leaders; and using the utmost speed, and having passed by the Lublin shore, made an assault on the Sandomierz one: where, the monasteries of the Poor Clares of Zawichost, and of Lysiec, being plundered, they burned the town of Sandomierz; and the citadel, no breathing-space being given to the defenders, day and night they began to assail. But they did this, [through their Russian allies they entice to themselves the Prefect of the citadel of Sandomierz.] he says, with no profit: for the citadel was bravely defended by many. For almost all the neighboring nobility, and the townsmen and many country-people, with their wives, children, and fortunes, at the first arrival of the enemy, had fled there. There the Russian Leaders, who were in the camp of the Tartars, first through messengers, then in person, deal with Peter of Crempa the Prefect of the citadel, that, if he wished to save himself and the citadel, he should come to the Leaders of the Tartars in their camp; and professing that he would do what was commanded, should redeem himself and the citadel and the whole multitude for a small price: they give a pledge that there would be no peril in the matter; that they would so accomplish these things.
[2] The Prefect believed, that the Russians, moved by mercy for Christian blood, just as they bore before them, persuaded and accepted these things: but they confirmed their promises, a few days' truce being obtained. And so the Prefect, with his brother Sbigneus and the chief men of the nobility, and him being perfidiously slain they suddenly break in, sets out for the camp of the enemy: he adores the Leaders of the barbarians, as he had been taught by the Russians; suppliant he treats of the safety of himself and the citadel. The barbarians, as they are most deceitful and devoid of faith, make an assault upon the suppliants; despoiled and beaten they monstrously slay them; and immediately, a shout being raised, with rushing course into the citadel, the defenders then expecting nothing of the kind, they are carried; and in the slaughter of men, all being terrified and seeking hiding-places, they rage indiscriminately … but wearied with slaughtering, and make a foul carnage, they drove the rest of the common people in flocks into the Vistula. But so great a slaughter is said to have then been made in the citadel, that the blood of the slain flowed down even to the Vistula. The river, as also the others then, frozen with ice, has Sandomierz clinging to its left bank, the last of the Polish regions toward Russia: which about twenty years before this disaster, namely in the year 1240, just as in the year 1240 they had done at the Monastery of Koprzywnica. had suffered a similar incursion from the same Tartars. For they, as is narrated by the same Kromer in book 8, page 211, similarly, the river Vistula frozen with ice being crossed, stormed Sandomierz: they plundered the monastery of Koprzywnica, which is also called Pocrivunian; in both places besides the citizens they killed a great multitude of country-people and nobles, which had fled there, together with the Monks.
[3] These things therefore I have thus compared among themselves: because Kromer, in the place cited before, hangs doubtful whether truly in the year 1260, or in the preceding one, the citadel of Sandomierz was invaded, on account of the authority of Długosz, who writes that it was done in the prior year, namely in the second volume of the Polish History, which is not yet come forth in print but is kept in manuscript. But about to solve the doubt somehow, Kromer thinks the citadel was taken on 2 June, he suspects, that the Tartars then twice invaded Poland; which indeed to me, he says, becomes credible, because then the feast of those slain in it is held; because the same Długosz writes that that prior incursion was made about midwinter at the beginning of the month of December: but that the one in which Sandomierz was taken happened at the beginning of summer is established from this, that to the present day that slaughter, as of Martyrs of Christ, with an anniversary celebration, on the day after the Kalends of June, is commemorated at Sandomierz with a great concourse of the people, accumulated and dedicated with a great Indulgence of Alexander the fourth, supreme Pontiff. Alexander IV sat from the year 1254 to 1261, immediately following that disaster, having died on 25 May; whose Bull would that it were set forth, probably about to teach us something more certain about the time and truth of the Martyrdom! For I can scarcely persuade myself, that the Pontiff wished all and each whom that public calamity involved, but it is not probable that of all indiscriminately. to be honored with the title of Martyrs. For although the barbarians could be presumed to have been moved by hatred of the Christian Religion to so monstrous a crime; yet it is probable, that the virtue of some specially stood out, in embracing death rather than for the sake of offered life to abjure the faith. For this reason certainly, not another, on 14 August those about eight hundred citizens of Otranto are reckoned to be venerated, whom in the year 1480, on the third day after the city was taken by the Turks, refusing to go over to Mohammedanism, the barbarous sword cut to pieces; but not the others far more numerous, whom with their Archbishop the first fury of those breaking into the city killed, by no command of the Leaders.
[4] But just as those, slain for the faith in one place outside the city, various heavenly prodigies afterward taught to be venerated as saints; so I should believe, the barbarians having departed and returning, that something happened to the provincials at Sandomierz who had escaped death or chains, by which they were taught, that a certain heap of the slain is judged by God worthy of special veneration, [that the bodies of certain ones worthy of special honor then began to be honored,] their bodies perhaps being preserved by a miracle, or surrounded with heavenly light. But those were brought into the city on 2 June, the assent of the Roman Pontiff having been obtained beforehand and Indulgences to last yearly. Which being supposed, as we saw the Tartars, in the devastation of the year 1240, Sandomierz being occupied, plundered the Pocrivucian monastery (for so also the Topographical maps name the place, otherwise called Copronitz, distant a league and a half from Sandomierz, on the same bank of the Vistula founded for the Cistercians about the year 1185); as, I say, we saw the Tartars then plunder that monastery and kill the Monks; and that they were of the Monks of Koprzywnica. so it is credible that the same did so also a second time nineteen years afterward; and indeed in those circumstances, in which the faith and constancy of the said Monks shone more certainly, and more singularly deserved to be honored. This Gaspar Jongelinus altogether supposed, in the Notice of the Cistercian Abbeys throughout the kingdom of Poland, about the Monk Martyrs in this convent, bidding Kromer to be read, page 236.
[5] Leaning on those authorities Chalemot, the Cistercians wish to be presumed. in the series of the Saints, Blessed, and illustrious Men of the Order, begins the 2nd day of June: "In Poland, in the convent of Clara-provincia, or of Koprzywnica, the memory of the blessed Martyrs, Monks of this place, who in hatred of the faith being killed by the Tartars at Sandomierz, illustrated that place with their blood; and their triumph there each year is commemorated with a concourse of the faithful; certain Indulgences being granted to those visiting their sacred bodies, by Alexander IV the supreme Pontiff, on this day on which they are inscribed in the Calendar." But in what Calendar? Is it that of Sandomierz? Would that it were! For if there the title of Monks is expressed, I shall easily believe, not only that the Koprzywnica monks, who twenty years before had experienced the fury of the Tartars, this time fled into the citadel of Sandomierz; but also, that the citadel being thus taken by guile, something happened concerning them either living or dead, on account of which their bodies were then more honorably gathered than others' and exposed to public veneration. But until I have been more certainly informed about these things, I will hold the feast, of which I have a suitable witness Kromer, Bishop of Warmia, either then when he was writing or afterward created; and I will call it of the Martyrs of Sandomierz, suspending the pen and judgment as to the appellation of the Monks of Koprzywnica.
[6] Thus far I had written, when by the effort of the Reverend Father Ignatius Diertins, But from an authentic copy of the Indulgences of the year 1295, after having laudably administered our Flemish-Belgian Province by supreme right, sent into Poland as Visitor, with the title of Vice-provincial, which afterward he was also in neighboring Lithuania; I received in the ninetieth year of this century, from the Acts of the Acts of the Officialate of the Consistory of Sandomierz, under the seal of the Most Illustrious and most Reverend Lord, Lord Christopher de Dembika, Licentiate of both Laws, Canon and Official of Sandomierz, Provost of Stolnice, Councilor of the Sacred Royal Majesty, extracted and delivered, which Albert Charles Mrouczynski, by sacred Apostolic authority and of the Consistory of Sandomierz Notary Actuary, made a transcript of an authentic copy, from a certain Brief, which had been given by Pope Boniface VIII at Rome at St. Peter's on the 3rd of the Ides of November 1295: which copy in the year 1646, on Friday 16 March, the Venerable Matthew Brzostowski, Vicar and Vicedispenser of the Vicars of the Collegiate church of Blessed Mary of Sandomierz, asked to be made at the Office of the Consistory of Sandomierz and the Acts, coming in person, holding in his hand a certain schedule, legibly written, written in the year 1646, of certain Indulgences, pertaining to the aforesaid Collegiate church of Blessed Mary the Virgin, and asking the same to be received into the Acts and engrossed. But the tenor of his schedule was such.
[7] Boniface the Eighth, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, it is known that that desolation was done in the year 1259 on 2 February. to his sons beloved in Christ and faithful, to whom the present writing shall come, everlasting salvation and Apostolic benediction. Coming to us our beloved Sons, Rodzella, Dean of the church of Sandomierz, with his companion named Albert, who said that he was a Canon of the same church; they tearfully narrated to us that impious Pagans coming, whom they called Tartars, entered the land of Sandomierz; and overthrowing the citadel of Sandomierz, killed there a manifold multitude of Christians, of whom there was no number, and whose blood flowed down even to the river which is called the Wisla. This done they entered the church of St. Mary, which is there; and despoiled it, and burned it, and killed many Christians there, and took captive, and burned them; and many Relics of the Saints, which were there, they scattered: and they said that this was done, on the Feast of the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin. And in the year of the Lord one thousand two hundred fifty-nine, the aforesaid Pagans, thus doing such evils, withdrew. But we, assenting to their petitions and tears, asked what they sought. Who said, "We ask, that the aforesaid church may be relieved, and repaired still, and by your Paternity be fortified with some Indulgences and Privileges."
[8] But we, the counsel of our Brothers the Cardinals being taken, by the authority of almighty God, and of Saints Peter and Paul, and by our authority to the same church of St. Mary of Sandomierz, gave, and that Indulgences were given for 2 June, granted, and assigned, the same Indulgences, which our Roman Church has, which is called St. Mary at the Martyrs. That therefore to the same solemnity, the Christian Faithful might come more eagerly and desirously; to all penitent and confessed, being on the day of St. Mary at the Martyrs in the church of St. Mary of Sandomierz, on the second day of the month of June, spiritual stipends, by Apostolic largess we grant, three hundred sixty-six years, or as many as are the days in a year, of true Indulgence with as many carenae. But a carena contains in itself thirty days, on which the soul ought to do penance in purgatory, one carena shall be deleted; and the same Indulgence the truly penitent and confessed Faithful, in the same church, such as then were at Rome for the feast of St. Mary at the Martyrs: through the Octaves of the same feast, seeking it, shall mercifully obtain. We establish also in the same church of St. Mary at Rome, and similarly at Sandomierz, that a Procession be made every Friday, with Banners and Relics of the Saints, except on a Double feast or one of nine Lessons, with the Offertory, "Protege," and a Litany; and from the aforesaid Procession, as often as it happens, to all truly penitent and confessed, who shall then have been present there, seven years and as many carenae we mercifully grant to those present forever.
[9] but that those thus slain were not held for Martyrs From this Bull first is established the year and day of the slaughter committed, namely 1259, on 2 February, not June: from the same then we understand that the alleged Privilege of Pope Alexander, of which there is here no mention, is very ambiguous; and that the name of Alexander perhaps crept upon Kromer from this, that hearing the Indulgences had been obtained from Rome, he believed they had been obtained from him who then, when the disaster was still recent, held the Pontificate. Therefore it is by no means certain, that either he, or any other Roman Pontiff, or even the people of Sandomierz themselves then, judged that those should be venerated as Martyrs, whom the Tartars had slain; and so the whole prior conjectural reasoning falls, founded on this, that they are now held as Martyrs. For it appears that Boniface VIII intended nothing else, than that the church, desolated 36 years before, should be relieved by the benefit of the Indulgences established in it, through the alms of the faithful to be attracted there: and that the same Pontiff granted to the church of Sandomierz, in which so great a slaughter of Christians had been committed by the Barbarians, the same Indulgences, which at Rome he had granted for the 2nd day of June to the church of St. Mary at the Martyrs, commonly the Rotunda, dedicated under such a title almost 690 years before by Pope Boniface IV.
[10] or that such a feast was instituted for them at Rome; I showed in the Chronico-historical Essay on the Catalogues of the Pontiffs, in Dissertation 8, otherwise to be the 13th, that Indulgences to those visiting some church first began to be granted in the 11th century; and those at first of a few days; but that the same in the course of time were so amplified, that in the time of Nicholas IV, who almost immediately preceded Boniface VIII, on nearly each day some were obtained in the Vatican Basilica. Therefore it ought not to seem wonderful, if Boniface himself gave so great ones to that other Bonifacian church; which if I should conjecture to have been restored and adorned by him, I do not think this will be without probability; for now nearly 700 years had flowed since St. Gregory had last done this, covering it with lead. On such an occasion too I should believe, rather than under Boniface IV (which Baronius says he found in the Manuscript Codex of that very church in the Notes on 13 May), the bones of the holy Martyrs were brought there in twenty-eight carts; but on account of the bones of many Martyrs then brought into the Rotunda. dug out from the diverse cemeteries of the City, and solemnly carried together and most becomingly placed. For how foreign it would have been in the time of the former Boniface, to move the bodies of the Saints; will be plain from the Letters of St. Gregory, to be produced among the Analecta on the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, §6. Yet in the course of time the festivity of the 2nd day of June grew obsolete at Rome, and that one to be celebrated with an Octave: but it remained at Sandomierz, whence this notice shone upon us; and it began gradually to be believed, that for the Christians killed there a feast had been instituted, which had been instituted for the Roman Martyrs, carried together into the Bonifacian Basilica. See the Propylaeum of May, where it treats of Pope Boniface IV.