The Legend of Saint Kinga’s Ring: A Comparative Analysis of the Sources

Abstract

The author has carried out a comparative analysis of sources pertaining tothe legend of Kinga’s ring. Kinga was the daughter of Hungarian King BelaIV, and she wed Boleslaus the Chaste (Bolesław Wstydliwy), Duke of Cracowand Sandomierz. According to a life of the duchess written by an anonymoushagiographer in 1317–1329, she journeyed to Hungary and asked her father tobestow a salt mine upon her. After her request was granted, Kinga cast a goldring into the mine, and some time later it was found in a block of salt that camefrom the first pit (fovea) to be mined in Bochnia (Poland). Certain scholarshave detected in this legend echoes of actual events, duly ascribing miningspecialists from Hungary a key role in the development of salt mining in Poland(Adam Naruszewicz, Karol Szajnocha, Hieronim Łabęcki, Franciszek Skibiński, and also several Hungarian historians). Even Józef Piotrowicz, who emphatically rejected such an interpretation of the legend, reflected that there was ‘a grain of truth in it’. The collation of passages that refer to the oldest hagiographic tradition about this Hungarian princess has enabled the author of this study to clarify the relations among the works containing these references (Traska’s Annals, The Chronicle of Dzierzwa, The Chronicle of Greater Poland, The Life and Miracles of Duchess Kinga). However, above all, this undertaking allowed the author to establish the milieu which contributed to the dissemination of the legend, namely the Franciscans of southern Poland, most probably the Poor Clares of Stary Sącz. Aided by these religious communities, the hagiographerexplained how deposits of rock salt appeared near Cracow, whereas the fact of the actual establishment of the Bochnia was only of secondary importance to him. Kinga symbolically married salt for the good of her adopted homeland, thanks to which salt deposits miraculously appeared near Cracow, having multiplied in a characteristic manner. It was only Late Medieval and Early Modern writers who started to interpret the legend in a different way, stressing that the wife of Boleslaus the Chaste contributed to the mining of the first pit at Bochnia. The account of the discovery of the ring should thus not be treated as a testimony to any kind of influence of Hungarian specialists on the development of Polish salt mining.