On a virtuous clerk and a good citizen. Canon Augustyn Lipiński’s philosophy of exercising power (based on the sermon preached in Krakow on 8th May 1810)

Abstract

The article is devoted to presentation of the contents of one of political sermons preached in the Krakow Cathedral on 8th May 1810. A Cathedral Canon, Rev. Augustyn Lipiński delivered it on the feast of St Stanisław in the presence of King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony and Duke of Warsaw, his court and dignitaries who accompanied him: the Minister of War, Prince Józef Poniatowski, the Prefect of the Krakow Department, Prince Henryk Lubomirski and many department and municipal clerks. In its content the sermon was devoted to authority and the way to exercise it. It is constructed as a polemics with contemporary currents striving after secularization of the ethos of the clerk. The preacher expressed his conviction that a virtuous clerk and a good citizen is one who the good of the country and of his fellow-citizens regards more highly than his own good or even his life; he is ready to serve them and the king who is exercising power by the will of Providence, and he never looks for his own profits in this service – either for material profits, or for fame.