STANISŁAW WOJEŃSKI’S WAY TO THE EPISCOPAL MITRE. THE ADVENTUROUS CHURCH CAREER OF THE SON OF THE RECTOR OF THE CRACOW ACADEMY
STANISŁAW WOJEŃSKI’S WAY TO THE EPISCOPAL MITRE. THE ADVENTUROUS CHURCH CAREER OF THE SON OF THE RECTOR OF THE CRACOW ACADEMY

Summary/Abstract: Stanisław Wojeński – who was Bishop of Kamieniec in 1680–1685 – was the author of a printed account of the Polish-Turkish wars of 1684 and was one of the distinctive (albeit forgotten) figures of the Church and political life during the reign of King Jan III Sobieski. He was the son of the Rector of the Cracow Academy and received his education in Poland, Germany and Italy. Since the reign of King Jan II Kazimierz, he was active not only as a diplomat, but also as a Canon of the Cracow Cathedral and as the Archdeacon of the Collegiate Chapter in Pilica. In 1677, he was nominated Bishop of Kamieniec Podolski, which at that time was under the Turkish jurisdiction. However, it was not until three years later that his nomination received papal approval, the delay being due not only to the geopolitical situation of the Diocese of Kamieniec, which had temporarily been lost to the Turks by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also to the fact that Wojeński had been accused – first before the Apostolic Nuncio in Warsaw and later in the Roman Curia itself – of necromancy, lack of personal piety, involvement in the anti-imperial opposition in Hungary (i.e. in today’s Slovakia, which at that time belonged to the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen) and of having falsified his own descent (which was not in fact noble) in order to qualify for a senior Church dignitary.

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