Lumen 2018

himself. Perhaps, by this legal act, Fr. Stanislaus wanted to protect himself from further accusations by the Piarist superiors and their potential appeal to higher Church authorities. He wanted to demon- strate that the actions taken by the Visitator in the house under the jurisdiction of the Ordinary were invalid and could not be a basis for any such accusations or appeals. Father Stanislaus’s statement of October 14, 1670, did not take any further course, but it constitutes a valuable piece of information. It corresponds with Kraus’s account regarding the actions under- taken by Fr. Pessau at Kazimierz and helps to explain them better. A letter by the Superior General, Cosmas Chiara, dated October 24, 1670, addressed to Bishop Trzebicki, releasing Fr. Stanislaus Pa- pczynski from his vows and the oath of perseverance (on the basis of Pope Clement X’s breve Cum felicis recordationis ) 204 was a decisive event on the path to Fr. Stanislaus’s release from the Piarist Congre- gation. However, before this happened, Fr. Stanislaus erroneously be- lieved for a while that he had already been released from the Piarist Congregation on the basis of the papal breve of August 5, 1670. Therefore, he asked Fr. Michael Kraus, the Vicar-Provincial Superior, for permission to officially submit his religious habit. When Fr. Kraus refused, since he had not been authorized by the Superior General to perform such an act, Papczynski decided to appeal to the Apostolic Nuncio in Warsaw. To this end, he obtained a letter of recommenda- tion from Nicholas Oborski, Auxiliary Bishop of Cracow, dated Oc- tober 28, 1670. 205 We do not know the further course of this matter, but we do know that, at the beginning of December, Fr. Stanislaus was still wearing the Piarist habit. Since Fr. Papczynski still knew nothing about the Superior Gen- eral’s letter to the Ordinary of Cracow, he sent his last letter to Fr. Chiara on November 22, 1670, requesting to be released from the congregation. On the same day, the two seminarians, Casimir Pasza- kowicz and Bernard Krupski, also wrote their letters to request a re- lease from the Congregation of the Piarist Fathers. 206 203 At the Crossroads