Kraków roku 1772 w zapiskach nuncjusza papieskiego Giuseppe Garampiego

KRAKÓW OF 1772 IN THE EYES OF PAPAL NUNCIO GIUSEPPE GARAMPI Among the first foreign diplomats who visited Kraków after the fighting inspired by the Bar Confederates had ceased and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had seen its first partition was Archbishop Giuseppe Garampi (1725–1792), who came to Poland in the summer of 1772 as a newly appointed papal nuncio. That diplomatic representative of Pope Clement XIV (as well as the later nuncio to the imperial court in Vienna and, eventually, a cardinal) was an outstanding figure in the history of the Catholic Church during the Renaissance. A famous bibliophile and erudite, Garampi went down in history mostly for his contribution to organizing collections of the Vatican Archives. Kraków, then a border city (as the territories across the Vistula had just fallen under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty), was for Garampi only a brief stop on his way to Warsaw; he arrived on 17 August 1772 (less than two weeks after Austria, Prussia and Russia had signed a partition treaty) and left on the following day. Despite such a short stay in the run-down capital of the Kingdom of Poland, the later cardinal left an interesting description of the city in the journal he was keeping throughout his term as a papal nuncio in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (in the years 1772–1776); currently the journal has been in the collection of the Vatican Archives (Diarium legationis Poloniae, Diario di Monsignor Garampi). Garampi’s observations are not only concerned with the historic buildings encountered and grandees acquainted in Kraków, but also provide an outline of the realities of everyday life in the city during that difficult period in its history, with an emphasis on Churchrelated issues. In his account, Garampi also gave voice to his scientific interests and passion for books. As a consequence, although rather concise in form and practically devoid of any narrative, the report from Kraków is an interesting and by all means noteworthy excerpt from the history of the royal city and its dwellers on the eve of the era of partitions, one of the most tragic times in the history of Poland.