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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Un messaggio per i posteri. La tomba di Stanisław Miński nella Basilica di Sant'Antonio a Padova

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The article deals with the first burial in the tomb crypt built under the altar of the natio polona in the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua. Stanisław Miński, a Polish state dignitary and diplomat who was passing through Padua on his way from Naples, was the one buried here. The tombstone, removed only in the first half of the 20th century, contained information about the laying of Miński’s body to rest in the place where church services associated with Poland and Poles were performed. For over three centuries, the tomb attracted the attention of pilgrims from Poland coming to Padua, reminding them not only of the outstanding Polish diplomat, but also of the natio polona, which, in the 16th and early-17th centuries, constituted a large and distinctive group of ultramontani, that is, those who came from beyond the mountains, most of whom had come to study at the flourishing university. In the article, little-known documents concerning the burial are gathered; these documents are kept in the Paduan archives and had been collected by the clergy and secular administration of the Basilica. Via the analysis of these documents, the cultural context in which the decision against bringing Miński’s body to Poland is reconstructed. The role of the institution, constituted by the administration of St. Anthony’s Basilica operating under the name of Veneranda Arca di Sant’Antonio, which grants permission to lay the body in the Basilica, is also established.