DOI article:
Crossley, Paul: "Bohemia Sacra" and "Polonia Sacra"
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20619#0068
morę than a generalized and symbolic ambience for the
coronation. They certainly provide no firm evidence for
the actual liturgical topography of the coronation.
Nor does the roof boss sculpture of the presbytery.
The four bays of the choir are decorated with a series of
bosses, arranged in a hierarchical progression from west
to east. First, in the westernmost bay, and occupying
the lowest rank, are the arms of Bishop Jan Grot, who
officially completed the choir in 1346. The next bay
shows St Wenceslas, the joint patron, with St Stanislaus,
of the Polish kingdom. His presence can be explained
by the joint dedication of the cathedra! to both saints
and by the strong Bohemian influence in Cracow in the
early years of the l4th century, fostered enthusiastically
by Bishop Jan Muskata, Nanker’s predecessor, and a fer-
vent supporter of King Wenceslas II, King of Bohemia
and of Poland78. But in the hierarchy of the bosses St
Wenceslas gives way to St Stanislaus, who occupies the
next boss, in the penultimate eastern bay. Their relative
positions mark, in a delicate but unmistakable way, the
decline of Czech power in Cracow after the accession
of Władysław Łokietek in 1320 and the death of Muskata
in the same year. They also register the corresponding
rise in the popularity of St Stanislaus. Enthroned in
pontificals, one hand blessing, the other holding a cro-
zier, St Stanislaus’s image in the boss resembles (as we
have seen) two images of sacro-political authority: the
enthroned images of the Cracow bishops on their seals,
including the seal of Jan Grot; and the image of St
Stanislaus on two of Władysław Łokietek’s coins, both
struck at politically important moments in his reign: a
denar of around 1306, immediately after his critical oc-
cupation of the city of Cracow, and a florin of 1330, the
year before his victory at Płowce79. But there is nothing
in this seąuence that refers clearly to the coronation ritual
or suggests its enactment directly beneath it. Nor do the
three bosses of the easternmost bay, clistinguished from
the other cross-rib-vaulted bays by its three idiosyncratic
triradial vaults, provide harcl evidence for the siting of
the coronation at the high altar80. The central boss shows
panel paintings, and sees it as primarily symbolic and generic. See
also Wawel 1000-2000. Artistic Culture of the Royal Court and the Ca-
thedra! Jubilee Exhibition, Catalogue, 3 vols., Cracow 2000; vol. 1,
pp. 62-64. I am very grateful to mgr. Czyżewski for generously giving
me a copy of this catalogue.
78 For Czech power in Lesser Poland in the late 13th and early 14*
centuries, and for Jan Muskata, see A. Barciak, Czechy a ziemie
południowej Polski w XIII oraz w początkach XIV wieku. Polityczno-
ideologiczne problemy ekspansji czeskiej na ziemie południowej Polski,
Katowice 1992 (Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Śląskiego 1264), and S.
G a w 1 a s, Człowiek uwikłany w wielkie procesy - przykład Muskaty
[in:] Człowiek w społeczeństwie średniowiecznym, Warsaw 1977, pp.
391-401.
79 See above, notes 41-42, and also Piech, Średniowieczne
herby..., pp. 132-133-
80 See J. T. F r a z i k, Sklepienia tak zwane piastowskie w katedrze
wawelskiej. Ze studiów nad gotycką katedrą w Krakowie, Studia do
Dziejów Wawelu, 3: 1968, pp. 127-147; and P. Crossley, The Yaults
Christ as Pantocrator, flanked, in the side bosses, by two
angels (one with a censer, the other carrying a candle).
Zenon Piech has argued forcefully that this abbreviated
imagery of the heavenly liturgy is a mirror of the coro-
nation liturgy at the high altar directly beneath it; that
the enthroned Christ-Pantocrator symbolically transmits
his authority to God’s anointed vicar below Him, and
that during the ‘third’ phase of the ceremony, the inves-
titure with the crown and the sword, the archbishop
makes that identification explicit, when he refers to the
anointed king as chrestos - the king a Deo coronatus81.
In all, Piech argues that the meaning of the roof boss
sculpture in the choir, and particularly over the high al-
tar, can only be properly understood in terms of its lo-
cation, above a presbytery intended sińce its beginning
as a site for the coronation. But to reconstruct liturgical
ceremony from architectural decoration is a hazardous
business, especially when that decoration has other,
wholly different, referents. Christ-Pantocrator (as Piech
acknowledges) coulcł be seen, together with the mensa
of the high altar below, as the heavenly corner stone,
the ‘living stone’ of Peter ‘s First Epistle (Peter, 2, 4-5)82.
And as the stars which Kasimir the Great caused to be
painted on the choir vaults indicate83, the vaults of the
presbytery were images of heaven, a heaven peopled
with an abbreviated hierarchy of its inhabitants. Ruled
over by the Maiestas Domini of the central eastern roof
boss, accompanied by angels whose eternal prayers -
symbolized by the censer and the candle - make up the
musica coelestis vel angelica of the heavenly spheres,
this is the heaven of St John’s Apocalypse, the mysterium
tremendum and the mysteńum fascinosum of chapters
4 and 5. If any earthly liturgy is evoked here zHa its ce-
lestial counterpart, it is not, primarily, the coronation of
a king and ąueen, but a central and much morę regular
ceremony in the life of the cathedral church - the open-
ing of the Canon of the Mass with the text of the Sanctus
sung or said daily at the high altar. It is a text of accla-
mation celebrating the theophany of God surrounded
by choirs of angels; and its usual depiction in service
of Kraków Cathedral and the Cistercian Tradition [in:] Podług nieba
i zwyczaju polskiego. Studia z historii architektury, sztuki i kultury
ofiarowane Adamowi Miłobędzkiemu, ed. by Z. Bania et al., Warsaw
1988, pp. 63-72.
81 Piech, Średniowieczne herby..., pp. 129-134. He likens the
angels flanking the Christ figurę to the two cherubim added c. 1280 to
the Imperial crown. Miodońska, op. cit., p. 155, had already seen
the kinship between the Christ in Majesty boss, the king as vicarius
Dei, and the enthroning of the king in the finał stages of the corona-
tion ritual. In particular, she associated the three bosses of the eastern-
most vault with the ‘Te deum laudamus’ (enthronement of the king)
miniaturę in the Erasmus Ciołek Pontifical.
82 Piech, Średniowieczne herby..., p. 133; see also Frazik, op.
cit., p. 133-
83 See Kronika Jana z Czarnkowa, Monumenta Poloniae Historica,
vol. II, Lwów 1872, p. 624: ‘ipsiusąue chori testudinem stellis deauratis
decoravit’.
64
coronation. They certainly provide no firm evidence for
the actual liturgical topography of the coronation.
Nor does the roof boss sculpture of the presbytery.
The four bays of the choir are decorated with a series of
bosses, arranged in a hierarchical progression from west
to east. First, in the westernmost bay, and occupying
the lowest rank, are the arms of Bishop Jan Grot, who
officially completed the choir in 1346. The next bay
shows St Wenceslas, the joint patron, with St Stanislaus,
of the Polish kingdom. His presence can be explained
by the joint dedication of the cathedra! to both saints
and by the strong Bohemian influence in Cracow in the
early years of the l4th century, fostered enthusiastically
by Bishop Jan Muskata, Nanker’s predecessor, and a fer-
vent supporter of King Wenceslas II, King of Bohemia
and of Poland78. But in the hierarchy of the bosses St
Wenceslas gives way to St Stanislaus, who occupies the
next boss, in the penultimate eastern bay. Their relative
positions mark, in a delicate but unmistakable way, the
decline of Czech power in Cracow after the accession
of Władysław Łokietek in 1320 and the death of Muskata
in the same year. They also register the corresponding
rise in the popularity of St Stanislaus. Enthroned in
pontificals, one hand blessing, the other holding a cro-
zier, St Stanislaus’s image in the boss resembles (as we
have seen) two images of sacro-political authority: the
enthroned images of the Cracow bishops on their seals,
including the seal of Jan Grot; and the image of St
Stanislaus on two of Władysław Łokietek’s coins, both
struck at politically important moments in his reign: a
denar of around 1306, immediately after his critical oc-
cupation of the city of Cracow, and a florin of 1330, the
year before his victory at Płowce79. But there is nothing
in this seąuence that refers clearly to the coronation ritual
or suggests its enactment directly beneath it. Nor do the
three bosses of the easternmost bay, clistinguished from
the other cross-rib-vaulted bays by its three idiosyncratic
triradial vaults, provide harcl evidence for the siting of
the coronation at the high altar80. The central boss shows
panel paintings, and sees it as primarily symbolic and generic. See
also Wawel 1000-2000. Artistic Culture of the Royal Court and the Ca-
thedra! Jubilee Exhibition, Catalogue, 3 vols., Cracow 2000; vol. 1,
pp. 62-64. I am very grateful to mgr. Czyżewski for generously giving
me a copy of this catalogue.
78 For Czech power in Lesser Poland in the late 13th and early 14*
centuries, and for Jan Muskata, see A. Barciak, Czechy a ziemie
południowej Polski w XIII oraz w początkach XIV wieku. Polityczno-
ideologiczne problemy ekspansji czeskiej na ziemie południowej Polski,
Katowice 1992 (Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Śląskiego 1264), and S.
G a w 1 a s, Człowiek uwikłany w wielkie procesy - przykład Muskaty
[in:] Człowiek w społeczeństwie średniowiecznym, Warsaw 1977, pp.
391-401.
79 See above, notes 41-42, and also Piech, Średniowieczne
herby..., pp. 132-133-
80 See J. T. F r a z i k, Sklepienia tak zwane piastowskie w katedrze
wawelskiej. Ze studiów nad gotycką katedrą w Krakowie, Studia do
Dziejów Wawelu, 3: 1968, pp. 127-147; and P. Crossley, The Yaults
Christ as Pantocrator, flanked, in the side bosses, by two
angels (one with a censer, the other carrying a candle).
Zenon Piech has argued forcefully that this abbreviated
imagery of the heavenly liturgy is a mirror of the coro-
nation liturgy at the high altar directly beneath it; that
the enthroned Christ-Pantocrator symbolically transmits
his authority to God’s anointed vicar below Him, and
that during the ‘third’ phase of the ceremony, the inves-
titure with the crown and the sword, the archbishop
makes that identification explicit, when he refers to the
anointed king as chrestos - the king a Deo coronatus81.
In all, Piech argues that the meaning of the roof boss
sculpture in the choir, and particularly over the high al-
tar, can only be properly understood in terms of its lo-
cation, above a presbytery intended sińce its beginning
as a site for the coronation. But to reconstruct liturgical
ceremony from architectural decoration is a hazardous
business, especially when that decoration has other,
wholly different, referents. Christ-Pantocrator (as Piech
acknowledges) coulcł be seen, together with the mensa
of the high altar below, as the heavenly corner stone,
the ‘living stone’ of Peter ‘s First Epistle (Peter, 2, 4-5)82.
And as the stars which Kasimir the Great caused to be
painted on the choir vaults indicate83, the vaults of the
presbytery were images of heaven, a heaven peopled
with an abbreviated hierarchy of its inhabitants. Ruled
over by the Maiestas Domini of the central eastern roof
boss, accompanied by angels whose eternal prayers -
symbolized by the censer and the candle - make up the
musica coelestis vel angelica of the heavenly spheres,
this is the heaven of St John’s Apocalypse, the mysterium
tremendum and the mysteńum fascinosum of chapters
4 and 5. If any earthly liturgy is evoked here zHa its ce-
lestial counterpart, it is not, primarily, the coronation of
a king and ąueen, but a central and much morę regular
ceremony in the life of the cathedral church - the open-
ing of the Canon of the Mass with the text of the Sanctus
sung or said daily at the high altar. It is a text of accla-
mation celebrating the theophany of God surrounded
by choirs of angels; and its usual depiction in service
of Kraków Cathedral and the Cistercian Tradition [in:] Podług nieba
i zwyczaju polskiego. Studia z historii architektury, sztuki i kultury
ofiarowane Adamowi Miłobędzkiemu, ed. by Z. Bania et al., Warsaw
1988, pp. 63-72.
81 Piech, Średniowieczne herby..., pp. 129-134. He likens the
angels flanking the Christ figurę to the two cherubim added c. 1280 to
the Imperial crown. Miodońska, op. cit., p. 155, had already seen
the kinship between the Christ in Majesty boss, the king as vicarius
Dei, and the enthroning of the king in the finał stages of the corona-
tion ritual. In particular, she associated the three bosses of the eastern-
most vault with the ‘Te deum laudamus’ (enthronement of the king)
miniaturę in the Erasmus Ciołek Pontifical.
82 Piech, Średniowieczne herby..., p. 133; see also Frazik, op.
cit., p. 133-
83 See Kronika Jana z Czarnkowa, Monumenta Poloniae Historica,
vol. II, Lwów 1872, p. 624: ‘ipsiusąue chori testudinem stellis deauratis
decoravit’.
64