Stopnica

History

The first mention of Stopnica (known then as Stobnica) comes from the 12th century, but a gord, or Slavic settlement, had existed here earlier. According to Jan Długosz’s chronicle Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae, in 1103, the parish priest of Stopnica, the Right Reverend Baldwin, became the Bishop of Kraków. In 1362, Stopnica was granted civic rights by King Casimir III the Great. On the king’s order, a castle, a hospital and a Gothic church were built here. It was a royal town of the Kingdom of Poland, administratively located in the Wiślica County in the Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province. In 1498, King John I Albert confirmed the status of Stopnica. At that time, it was the seat of a starosta, and the town enjoyed several privileges granted to it by the kings of the Jagiellon dynasty (1410, 1439, 1442, 1444, 1445, 1487, 1520). In 1470, Jan of Stobnica, later professor of the Jagiellonian University, was born here. Together with several other locations in Lesser Poland, Stopnica in the 16th century was one of the centers of the Protestant Reformation. A Calvinist church was founded here in 1551 by Marcin Zborowski, an influential nobleman, voivode of Kalisz. In 1649, King John II Casimir confirmed the town status of Stopnica, and banned Jews from settling in the market square and around the parish church. Stopnica maintained its position of an important urban center of Sandomierz Voivodeship, but the town declined in the 1650s, during the Swedish invasion of Poland. Firstly, it was looted and burned by the Swedes, then more destruction was brought by the Transilvanian troops of George II Rakoczi. To make matters worse, in 1662 a plague decimated the population. After its complete destruction, Stopnica never recovered. In 1787, the town…