About the presentation
The thirteenth century was a key period for the formation of the papal canonisation of saints. Prior to this, the formalisation of new cults had generally taken place at the local level, with the involvement of the local bishop, synod, and often the ruler. Pac will discuss the involvement of rulers, often appearing among the postulators requesting the papacy to recognise a new saint, in thirteenth-century canonisation processes. His starting point is the case of St Stanislaus of Krakow, around which his current research is centred, and which he has recently compared, together with Stefen Hope, with the case of St Eystein of Trondheim. An important element in his discussion is the specific nature of the relationship that peripheral areas such as medieval Poland and Norway had with Rome.
About the speaker
Grzegorz Pac is Associate Professor at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw. Pac completed his PhD (2011) and habilitation (2020) in history at the University of Warsaw. He has published extensively in the field of women’s history and the cult of saints in Early and High Middle Ages. His PhD thesis on the social role of wives and daughters in the Piast dynasty introduced the women’s history perspective into the research field on the early and high medieval Polish history.
His research interests include the social role of women, queenship, hagiography and the cult of saints, as well as the ideology of power. Pac focuses on various elements of medieval political and religious culture in the context of legitimization of elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages.