The king's crown frequently had a alleged "complex shape", topped with the sign of the cross. This meant that the only power over a monarch wearing specified a crown is God.
A state that had a king as its ruler could not be anyone's lenna, any state of even the most powerful power. The royal rank of the state meant its full independence, the highest order – subjectivity.
“Polish Monarchy” by Grzegorz Kucharczyk – a book about the royal Poland, whose past teaches pride, work and spiritual strength.Professor Grzegorz Kucharczyk besides draws attention to another dimension of the royal coronation and strategy resulting from the power of the crowned monarch. In the case of the actual kings, or their dignity with the blessing of the Holy Father, the successor of Saint Peter himself, with the careful maintenance of the anointing with the hands of the Archbishop and the bishops accompanying him, we had to deal with something of the almost sacralization of power. Though not the ruler himself, who becomes anointed He continued to be a man whose actions could then be just, or besides harshly, judged by God and by his subjects. The Polish monarchy was peculiarly peculiar in this respect, in which the king was seen as primas inter parens – first among equals. The regulation of the royal prerogatives that we had in our country, however, was accompanied by this kind of respect for the ruler, who was not at all apparent in another European countries. There have been kings in Poland already in their time considered “less successful”, judged worse, enjoying little sympathy. However, no one, as in England or France, was always punished with death. Neither body was insulted, not to mention their being dragged out of the grave or another forms of profanity that occurred in countries engulfed by revolutions or another rampages of hatred.
As we learn from prof. Grzegorz Kucharczyk's most interesting communicative – not all royal anointed God proved worthy of being brought to the highest condition. The rulers of Germany who wage wars with Bolesław Chrobry or Bolesław Krzywousty were able to hotel to methods even as vile as shields from surviving people. The name of himself king of Prussia by Frederick I of the very essence of the thing was not recognized by most of the houses of the ruling. Hohenzollerns as a royal dynasty were not accepted until the time of Frederick II, due to his military successes. The gallery of the self-appointed Prussian kings, however, proved to be entirely composed of mutilators and scum who despised all holiness. Frederick Wilhelm II, utilizing a short-lived business by his Krakow troops, ordered the complete looting of the vault of Polish kings, along with Polish crowns and another symbols of monarchial power. The order was carried out despite the necessity to breach respective bronze doors, which were torn not only with furry but breaking fragments of ancient castle walls. Frederick Wilhelm III, the boy of the said looting creature, went to a crime even more repugnantly ordering the demolition of the golden Polish royal regalias to bargain the precious stones contained in the crown, the Berle and the king's apple and the gold (including those contained in the crowning spurs of the Polish kings) ordered to melt to Prussian coins. Throughout Europe, this desecration of royal symbols has only happened twice. The first 1 was made by French fat destroying symbols of the failed monarchy. The second is the Prussian criminals who annihilate the Republic. Let us add that the monument of scum, which was called Frederick Wilhelm III Hohenzollern until 1945, stood in front of the Wrocław City Hall in the place where present stands the monument of Alexander Fredra. This place is visited by all tours to Wrocław and usually guides tell about whose place Fredro took. However, 1 of them seldom reminds tourists of the function this Prussian creature played in Poland's history. The act of tearing our homeland apart into 3 parts is besides evidence of the moral bottom of the crowned monarchs carrying out the dismantling crimes. This document, signed by the crowned Russian, Austrian and Prussian heads, begins with the words: “In the name of the Holy Trinity...” Can you be a criminal more cynical and wicked than a criminal who sacrileges his own crimes? And specified were the rulers of Russia, the Austrian Monarchy of Habsburgs and Hohenzollernovsk Prussia. All the more reason to know the past of our kings and to build them monuments, due to the fact that Polish, and almost everyone, belonged to the other planet of honor and ethics. any “Prussian kings” or “Kings in Prussia” are phenomena only from the name having anything to do with the truest glow of noble past of the Polish monarchy.
It's worth it.
awareness of the perversions and utmost denials of the essence of the royal majesty which occurred and which occurs in any monar families, in order to admit the greatness, integrity, frequently even extraordinaryness of Polish kings and Polish tradition. Yes, not 1 of them committed wickedness or even crime, but no of them can be compared to genocidal psychopaths of the genus Ivan the Terrible or butchers of the kind Henry VIII and another rulers of England, for whom killing caused by phobia, fearful obsession, or sadistic whim belonged to practices almost daily. In turn, many of today's monarchs are more like characters from a mediocre operetta than guardians of the tradition and majesty of the state. In the UK, the coronation ceremony is small more than a spectacle, but at least it is, so that the storyteller has a past lesson and a performance building national pride. In Spain, they gave up on this, even rejecting the mockery of tradition and making royal dignity a ghastly grotesque.
The fact contained in prof. Kucharczyk's latest book reminds us that, on the basis of the perversions that occurred in not 1 country, the past of the Polish monarchy is simply a number of centuries of dignity and glory. Although it should be admitted that they have happened from the regulation of this exception. Crowned a 1000 years ago, Bolesław Chrobry was the ruler of the first greatness. Last, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, has disgraced himself more than once. In particular, an act of its own abdication, signed at the end of 1795. In contrast to any historians prof. Grzegorz Kucharczyk excludes from the post of Polish kings the figures of Tsars, representing themselves as Polish monarchs from the Vienna legislature to the years of the First planet War. In these times there was theoretically a creation called the Kingdom of Poland, or quasi – a state fuselage forming part of the Tsar empire and its expected individual union. 1 of these "kings", Nicholas I, even very spectacularly crowned himself in Warsaw as a Polish king. However, spectacularly does not mean that in a real way, due to the fact that with rejecting the most crucial attributes of actual coronation, adopted in our civilisation ellipse and besides with violating fundamental principles in Poland. The author of the “Polish Monarchy” reminds us of the old Polish customized of asking the subjects whether they are satisfied with crowning the fresh king. The acceptance of a fresh individual on the Polish throne was made by a three-time cry meaning that it was not force or against the will of the people that Poland received this very king. It is hard for Nicholas to number among our rulers and it is besides crucial that already a year later the Polish Sejm, convened during the November Uprising, announced the dethronation of the Tsar claiming to be a Polish king.
What speaks most from the position of the 21st century man is the image of a Europe in which our native state has advanced to the position of a kingdom. The crowned rulers were not many on our continent at the time. Among the somewhat more than a fewer were and kingdoms that forever ceased to exist. Like the kingdom of Navarra or Burgundy. Ours managed to wage war with the Empire, victorious despite the simultaneous attack besides led by Rusi Kievskaya. Marriages with crowned heads and specified descendants of the Piasts, specified as the conqueror of England, attest about the phenomenon of lightning and immense success of the Piasts. We frequently complain about the alleged Polish deficit of large political personalities. However, erstwhile we look at the number of our kings half of them we will gotta recognise as rulers at least good or at least respective – the position of statesmen of the absolutely largest format. This assessment will not be the consequence of our subjective opinion. This is demonstrated by the amazing acts of their size and by their associations with Europe’s most powerful dynasties. Like the imperial blood flowing through the veins of a number of our kings. All this was possible thanks to the fact that our country rapidly reached a dynamic and civilisational level that respected the top powers. For many readers, it may be amazing that prof. Kucharczyk quoted a congregation of facts concerning the several-year reign of Wenceslas II. The episode of Przemysl on the Polish throne is alternatively poorly known to Poles and it turns out that he was respectful of our ancestors and felt obliged to care about their country. They besides sat on the Polish throne, at the same time being descendants of the Piasts, the ruler of 1 of the top Andegawen dynasty in medieval Europe. In turn the Jagielloni power, for a long time having on the continent the equivalent only in Habsburg, was already the work of first of all genius, valor and hardship of Poles themselves and allied Lithuanians or Rusins.
The most actual majesty of the Polish monarchy was accompanied by its uniqueness. This is due to the fact that Poland, as the first since the Roman Empire, has begun to be seen by its inhabitants not as in another kingdoms, as being the property of the ruler, but as res publica – a common good. And it is the common good of not the subjects, but the civitas, or citizens. due to the fact that the concept of "citizen" besides entered into usage in Poland as the first since Roman times. Our country took on the republican character very quickly, in fact it was the European leader of republicanism. This was at the expense of the king's formal prerogatives, but without prejudice to his majesty. The monarch may have had limited tools of power and funds to exercise it, but he remained invariably inalienable and widely respected, at least in a symbolically superior component of the Polish systemic order. The unprecedented percent of the inhabitants of the Republic of Poland enjoyed almost unknown subjectivity and even untouchability, but the enthroned primas inter parens was invariably seen as God’s anointed. What only reinforced the way of knowing our homeland as an exceptional phenomenon, incomparable with no other. As a origin for large pride, as guaranteeing the unknown scope of rights and freedoms and at the same time crowned by the regulation of God. Although not only God, but besides citizens who, since their first free election, have carried their king to the Polish throne.
As prof. Grzegorz Kucharczyk himself emphasizes – “Monarchy Poland” is not another post office of Polish rulers. And indeed – to a large degree this work is an essay encouraging reflection on the most appropriate form of the strategy we should give to our country. The author does not give an answer to this, but reading his book leads to a deep reflection. Poland has 1 of the top national traditions and to a large degree this tradition is based on a number of outstanding crowned rulers. However, it is besides hard to deny that monarch governments in the modern planet seem to be anachronism. But surely the royal nature of the state must be yet crossed out and put to bed? After all, the past of parliamentary democracy is much shorter and they have managed to degenerate and compromise incomparably more than the monarchy. The opinions of large Polish primates – Cardinal August Hlond and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, can be a hint. no of them spread monarchical ideology, but both pointed to the large value that a individual of the king could represent for the Polish state and nation. It could have a beneficial effect on the form of social order, incorporating a affirmative forming, integrating spiritual element. The Monarch would besides be a surviving standing and a regular present sign of the ancient tradition of the Polish state. A state in whose past royal past is an crucial and mostly glorious topic. Nor should we definitely say goodbye to the thought of monarchy due to the fact that for centuries Poles have been recognized as the Queen of Poland. As almost the king of Poland torn apart, Poles in captivity and exile were treated by the large statesman, generous guardian, political and practices and thinker Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. For centuries, Polish primates, according to the legal – state tradition, were widely seen as interrexes, or "interkings" replacing the monarch in the periods of the kingless or shortest even moments between the death of the ruler and the coronation of his successor. erstwhile the Polish People's Republic visited U.S. president Jimi Carter, his visit to Poland's primate palace by the planet press was called "visitations to the real Polish king". And who remembers those times knows that this is how Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski was perceived. This large primate was listened to as the voice of the nation’s ultimate and actual leader. Then John Paul II took over the role, who, being the formal monarch of the Vatican during specified hard times, became the first spokesperson for Polish affairs. And, of course, a teacher, a spiritual guide, and besides an incredibly prudent leader of the most crucial Polish political goals. Without John Paul II, would it be possible in Poland to make specified events as the large national spring of August 1980, the creation of a large Solidarity movement that was then listened to by the Holy Father? I find it hard to defy the almost individual memory. In the spring of 1988 2 of my friends – Kornel Morawiecki and Andrzej Kołodziej were forcibly deported from their homeland. Already on the second day of their stay in Rome, an envoy of the Pope arrived to them with an invitation to a individual audience, which was to be reached almost immediately. akin situations in the responsibilities and long-arranged meetings of the pope's days have been highly rare. And yet the Holy Father found the time, wanted to see immediately 2 outlaws, fighters for freedom pushed out of Poland after a fewer months of imprisonment. And in the audience it turned out that the Pope was not only going to spiritually encourage or honor these 2 large patriots. The Holy Father was very curious in their answers to a fewer questions that demonstrated the perfect orientation of the Pope in the political thought they represented. Morawiecki and Kołodziej later told with amazement that John Paul II spoke to them as if he were a regular reader of the Fighting Solidarity writings and knew well not only the program of liberation of nations from communism, but besides the ideas of solidarity of Morawiecki's organization, its political analyses and publications. Our pope simply lived Polish matters, and it was not “at the general level”, but everything Polish – “he knew from the lining.” And did he not talk to us as the top king of his words by directing it from the Wroclaw Partnics, the Gdańsk Zaspa, the Krakow Błoni, the Vatican and hundreds of another places? And erstwhile did we feel so widely and so much as orphaned as on the memorable day of his departure into the home of the Lord?
Grzegorz Kucharczyk's “Polish Monarchy” is simply a reading of the arch – important. It's more than a vault of cognition or an essay about the inalienable component of our statehood tradition. This is simply a large collection of thoughts that encourage reflection on the many, deep and mostly up to date, which may translate into proposals for the further course of our collective life. “Polish Monarchy” is simply a book in all respect, which is wonderful, awakening and national pride and, like our Polish history, is besides seasoned with a pinch of bitterness. How essential to draw the essential conclusions. The latest work by prof. Kucharczyk is undoubtedly 1 of those books that will be the subject of permanent reading for Poles who love Poland. Just as it is with valuable sources and one more time it is simply a fresh reflection.
Artur Adamski
