THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN POLAND 159account of the Confederation of Bar would be complete without the jeremiads
and political prophecies of the almost legendary 'Father Marek'.^8 Slightly later,
the Revd Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski (1762—1808) started life as a modest
school-teacher of the Piarist Order; but his career led him into active politics in
Kollataj's 'Smithy' and Kosciuszko's Rising; to immense literary achievements
as translator among other works of Paradise Lost and the Iliad; and eventually
to Protestantism, marriage, and the secretaryship of the Society of the Friends of
Science. In a later generation, the Revd Piotr Sciegienny (1800-90), sometime
Vicar of Wilkolaz near Belz, founded a famous revolutionary conspiracy among
the peasants of the Lublin area. The Revd Stanislaw Stojalowski (1845-1911), a
pioneer of rural education and of agricultural co-operatives, was the founder of
the Christian-People's Movement (SCh-L) in Galicia. In the inter-war period,
the Revd Eugeniusz Okori (1882-1949), a fiery orator from the Lublin region,
voiced the most urgent demands for agrarian reform in the Sejm of the Second
Republic. These names form but the visible tip of a huge company of anony-
mous Catholic priests who spent their lives submerged in the service of their
parishes, agonizing between needs of their flock and the reticence of the hierar-
chy. As might be expected, the great majority did not openly rebel, and held to
the traditional discipline of their calling. But those who did break loose,
attacked the ills of society with a fury that often surpassed that of their secular
colleagues. Over one thousand Polish priests were exiled to Siberia in the period
1864-1914. Their temper was clearly reflected in Piotr Sciegienny's Letter of the
Holy Father to Peasants and Craftsmen, written in 1842. This political tract,
which was disguised as a supposed encyclical from the luckless Gregory XVI,
contained a simple man's guide to the principles of Christian socialism, and
detailed proposals for social revolution:
Go, and teach the nations — those are the words of Christ.
I, Pope Gregory, in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, hereby grant fifteen
years' indulgence to anyone who reads this letter or listens to it attentively five times over.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen...
I have already appealed to those who oppress you that they accept you as people and
that they do not oppress you with labour services, rents and gifts in kind: I have even
begged your Kings and Emperors that they should not burden you with taxes, nor send
you to war and slaughter like cattle, nor waste your blood in their own interest... but
their hearts are hardened ...
My children, you know not what happiness is. Born in slavery, you think that God cre-
ated you to suffer cold and hunger, to work not for yourselves but for the landlords, and
to live in the grossest ignorance... But I tell you that God created all people, including
you, so that all should use his divine gifts freely, labouring only for yourselves, for your
wives and children, for the old and sick... God, my brothers, gave you the land, gave
you will, understanding, and memory, gave you everything necessary for a comfortable
and happy life ... If, therefore, you are poor and miserable, it is not through God's will,
but through your own will or that of evil people...
God commands that you love your neighbour as yourselves... And everyone is our
neighbour, whether Catholic or Jew, Pole or Ruthene, Russian or German, soldier or