Throughout the old Polish centuries Stary Sącz was a private town – and a church-owned one at that. Its lady was the abbess of the Poor Clares, and her title to that authority rested on Kinga’s charter of 1280. Biegonice belonged to the convent without a break until the 18th century, and the office of the town’s hereditary wójt, once sold off, came back into the nuns’ hands. Just how great this lordship was became clear only from an imperial decree of 1781, which listed the town and fifty-four villages.
A town in the abbess’s hands
The king, though not lord here, was glad to play the benefactor. In 1505 a royal commission met in Stary Sącz with Abbess Anna Rokitnicka. In 1508 Sigismund the Old at last settled the long dispute over the Grybów toll, and in 1528 he granted the Poor Clares two fairs a year. Stephen Báthory confirmed them in 1582, with one condition: the income was to go towards fortifications. The town’s Magdeburg rights were confirmed by successive rulers, among them Henry of Valois and Stephen Báthory.
It was also in 1582 that a town hall was first mentioned. The last of them, a two-storey stone building with a tower, arcades and market stalls, went up in 1750. It did not stand for long – but that is a tale for the next chapter.
Crafts thrived under the abbess’s eye, and it was she who approved the guild statutes: the weavers’ in 1558, the shoemakers’ in 1590 (under Abbess Zofia Różanówna), the butchers’ in 1630 and the tailors’ in 1631. The statute of the combined guild was approved on 16 December 1638 by Abbess Anna Lipska.
The registers of 1581, 1629 and 1655 name shoemakers, weavers, bakers, fishermen, butchers, smiths, tailors, furriers and potters – the whole little town at its workbenches. An inventory of 1698 counts sixty-four workshops. Fourteen years later, in the register of 1712, only two shoemakers were left. Of the once busy craft town, little then remained.
The poor and learning were cared for too. In 1551 Mikołaj Hipolit founded the hospital provostry of the Holy Cross, and in 1608 the town council, as patron, maintained a parish school attended by some forty pupils. Towards the end of the century, the inventory of 1696 counted 271 properties, over one thousand five hundred burghers and about two thousand inhabitants. The oldest list of houses on the market square, from 1699, covers twenty-six plots.
From timber to stone: the convent transformed
The Poor Clares’ convent entered the new centuries as a largely wooden building. Change came gradually. A bull of Pope Pius V in 1566 freed the sisters from dependence on the Franciscan provincials. In 1598 Cardinal Jerzy Radziwiłł ordered the walls to be raised and pierced with loopholes. The work was finished before 1632, for that date is borne by the sgraffito on the wall.
In 1601 Bishop Bernard Maciejowski ordered a convent of stone to be built. Master Jan di Simoni rebuilt the four wings in 1601–1604, and the priests’ house in 1605. The accounts preserve the cost for 1603 – 2,127 złoty and 26 groszy – and the contract for the east wing of 14 March 1604. Leases were also agreed on the convent estates, among others on 25 June 1606 with Sebastian Lubomirski.
The interiors filled up with every decade. Wawrzyniec Cieszyński painted the polychrome (1617), Andrew of Lwów built the organ (1618) and Baltazar Kurcz the altar (1619). The vaults of 1647–1649 were funded by Anna Lipska. Kinga’s stone altar went up in 1661, the Loreto chapel around 1664. In 1671 the “Tree of Jesse” pulpit was raised, and at the close of the century, in 1696–1699, the workshop of Baltazar Fontana made three marble altars.
Music, too, filled these walls. In March 1691 Abbess Konstancja Jordanówna founded the convent’s own band of musicians, which first played in public in 1697.
Fire, soldiers and the Deluge
Stary Sącz never had town walls. It was defended by the lie of the land, by fences and by the fortified convent – and against fire nothing defended it at all. The fire of 1644 consumed the parish church, St Roch’s church and the wooden Franciscan friary. The parish church took about five years to rebuild, and its tower was raised in 1686 by Paweł Beber.
The Swedish Deluge of 1655–1657 laid waste to the convent estates. The Swedes entered Nowy Sącz in October 1655 and were driven out on 13 December. Yet a heavier burden than the foreign invader was the passing of the Commonwealth’s own troops, who billeted, requisitioned and moved on.
The losses were reckoned up: 29,822 Polish złoty in 1649–1650, 76,155 złoty in 1693–1702 and around 700,000 złoty during the Bar Confederation.
The fire kept coming back. The blaze of 1746 had “catastrophic consequences”, and on 7 October 1764 the flames engulfed the roof of the Poor Clares’ church, Kinga’s chapel, the Loreto chapel and the bell tower. By 1766 the church had a new copper roof and a crown made by Placidi.
Kinga’s road to the altars
Whole generations laboured to have Kinga raised to the altars. Urban VIII issued decrees on the matter on 13 March 1625 and 5 July 1634. Bishop Szyszkowski’s commission, sitting from 27 May 1628, heard eighty-two witnesses, and a new process, opened on 8 June 1629, heard eighty-four. Yet no verdict came.
In the end it was the king who helped. At the request of John III Sobieski, Bishop Mikołaj Oborski’s commission began, on 1 March 1684, a process concerning her immemorial cult. On 23 March 1685 its opinion was announced, and on 13 January 1687 the copying of the records was completed.
Pope Alexander VIII declared Kinga blessed on 11 June 1690. A week of celebrations in Stary Sącz and Kraków began on 24 July 1691, the anniversary of her death. In 1715 a decree recognised her as patroness of Poland and Lithuania. The canonisation process was opened on 13 July 1741, and in 1749 the records were taken to Rome. There the cause stalled for more than two centuries.
The end of the Commonwealth
The last years of old Poland came with weapons in hand. The Bar Confederation was formed nearby, in Piwniczna, and on 30 June 1768 Marcin Leszczyński became cavalry captain of the Sącz and Czchów districts. The confederates did not spare the convent: in 1769 Bierzyński’s division led eight horses out of the convent stables.
The true end, however, came from the south. In the summer of 1770 Austria, on the pretext of a sanitary cordon – protection against the plague – occupied southern Lesser Poland, Stary Sącz included. On 2 August 1770 the boundary posts were moved as far as Mogilna. In September 1772, after the First Partition, Sącz became part of Austrian Galicia. The age of the abbesses and of the Commonwealth was over; the age of imperial officials had begun.
In old and new photographs
