Bishop of Poznań Andrzej Stanisław Kostka Młodziejowski in Defense of Stanisław Konarski and the Polish Piarists – an Unknown Letter of December 1769

Abstract

Hitherto unknown sources concerning the trial against Stanisław Konarski in the Holy Office, allow to describe more accurately the dispute between nuncio Angelo Maria Durini and the Piarists of the Polish Province. One of such sources is a letter written by Andrzej Stanisław Kostka Młodziejowski, bishop of Poznań, in defense of the Piarists. The article analyzes its contents, confronting it with the archival documentation of the Warsaw Nuntiature. While defending the Polish religious, the bishop of Poznań emphasized their orthodoxy, the special merits of S. Konarski, as well as the falsity of the slander directed at them by one of the insubordinate religious. He drew attention to the fact that Warsaw belongs to his ecclesiastical jurisdiction and that, in the first place, he himself supervises the discipline of clergy. Perhaps this intervention was not of key importance for the defense of the Piarists against the allegations of the nuncio, however the Holy See, following its own procedures, has eventually lifted the allegations against the Piarists.