Lumen 2018

Wyszynski and of the Marian archives in existence before the order was dissolved. In his article, he calls Fr. Papczynski “an extraordinary man and priest.” 8 In 1913, in Cracow, Joseph Stanislaus Pietrzak published a book about the Founder of the Marians entitled Venerabilis Servus Dei Stanislaus Papczynski a Jesu Maria [...] . Despite Pietrzak’s esteem for Fr. Papczynski, the book has no scientific value because the au- thor treated the historical sources with a great deal of license. A series of his subsequent publications merits a similar opinion. The first work about the Founder of the Marians, which is of a more scholarly character, is his biography written by Rev. Stephen Sydry, MIC, titled Czcigodny Sluga Bozy o. Stanislaw od Jezusa Maryi Papczynski i jego dzielo w swietle dokumentow [The Venerable Servant of God Fr. Stanislaus of Jesus Mary Papczynski and His Work in the Light of Documents], Warsaw 1937. The book is source-based and presents the person of Fr. Papczynski and his principal work, namely the Congregation of Marian Fathers which he founded. It is a pio- neering work and it merits our appreciation that the author person- ally managed to find so many documents. The texts of some of them survived to this day only because he made manuscript copies of them. After Fr. Sydry, it was G. Navikevicius, MIC, who wrote a schol- arly biography of Fr. Papczynski entitled Stanislao di Gesu Maria Pa- pczynski (1631-1701) Scolopio e Fondatore della Congregatione dei Padri Mariani , Roma, 1960. It is a doctoral dissertation and to all appearances a solid work as far as methodology and historical accu- racy are concerned. It presents the person of Fr. Stanislaus in the light of critically interpreted historical sources, although it must be stated that the author made a mistake when he refused to recognize the value of such important documents as the biographies penned by M. Leporini and by C. Wyszynski. As a result, the image of Fr. Papczynski as a person was considerably impoverished. Without con- ducting a more extensive scholarly research, Navikevicius decided that these biographies and the subsequent works which referred to them were merely panegyrics and legends. 9 S TANISLAUS P APCZYNSKI 22