THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN POLAND 157The Vatican's apparent indifference could not be easily explained to Polish
Catholics, many of whom had clung to their faith as a last consolation against
alien oppression. In intellectual and patriotic circles, it formed a subject for rib-
ald satire. No one could deny the force of the famous conversation in Stowacki's
drama Kordian, where the Polish hero is granted an audience with the Holy
Father and begs his indulgence:
A tapestried room in the Vatican. The Pope, in golden slippers sits in an armchair. Beside
him, on a golden three-legged tiara stands a parrot with a redneck. A Swiss Guard, open-
ing the doors for Kordian to enter, announces him loudly:
SWISS GUARDSMAN: Count Kordian, a Pole.
POPE: Welcome, kinsman of Sobieski. (He extends his foot. Kordian kneels and kisses
it). Poland is continually overwhelmed by benefactions from Heaven, is she not? Daily, I
thank God in the name of this happy land. For the Russian Emperor, like a veritable
angel bearing an olive branch, is ever most favourably disposed to the Catholic religion.
We ought to sing Hosanna...
PARROT: (raucously) Miserere.
KORDIAN: Holy Father, I bring you a sacred relic. It is a handful of earth from a place
where ten thousand men, women, children, and old folk were murdered... without the
blessing of the sacraments. Treasure it where you treasure the presents of the Tsars, and
give me in return a tear, only a tear.
PARROT: Lacrymae Christi.
POPE: Down, Luther, down! What, my son,have younot seen St. Peter's, the Circus, and
the Pantheon? On Sunday you must hear our tenor in the choir of the Basilica, newly
arrived from Africa... Tomorrow you shall see me in all my glory, dispensing blessings
'to the city and the world'. You shall see whole races on their knees before me. Let the
Poles pray to God, reverence the Tsar, and hold fast to their religion.
KORDIAN: But this handful of bloody earth? Does no one bless that? What shall I tell
my friends?
PARROT: De profundis clamavi, clamavi.
POPE: Down, Satan, down... My son! May God guide thy steps, and grant that thy
people cast the seeds of Jacobinism from their bosom, henceforth devoting themselves
entirely to the worship of God and the cultivation of the earth, holding nothing in their
hands but litany, rake and hoe.
KORDIAN: (throwing his handful of earth into the air) I scatter the ashes of the martyrs
to the four winds. I return to my native land with a sorrowful heart.
POPE: If the Poles be conquered, thow canst be sure I shall be the first to excommunicate
them. May religion increase like an olive tree, and the people live in peace in its shade!
PARROT: Hallelujah.^7
This scene, truly Dantean in its bitter irony, was written in 1828 as a piece of
fiction, but it correctly anticipated Pope Gregory's attitude to the November
Rising. No amount of apologies and corrections issued by the Vatican in subse-
quent years could atone. The damage had been done. Later, Gregory XVI
claimed to have been deceived by the Russian ambassador, and eventually
denounced 'the congenital duplicity of the Church's enemies' in a secret speech
in Consistory. But few people in Poland ever heard of that.