Christ of Europe

Christ of Europe, a messianic doctrine based in the New Testament, first became widespread among Poland and other various European nations through the activities of the Reformed Churches in the 16th to the 18th centuries.

[2][3][4] The concept, which identified Poles collectively with the messianic suffering of the Crucifixion, saw Poland as destined – just like Christ – to return to glory.

Mickiewicz (1798-1855) evoked the doctrine of Poland as the "Christ of nations" in his poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers' Eve), considered by George Sand one of the great works of European Romanticism,[5] through a vision of priest called Piotr (Part III, published in 1832).

[6] Mickiewicz had helped found a student society (the Philomaths) protesting the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was exiled (1824–1829) to central Russia as a result.

[12] During the periods of foreign occupation, the Catholic Church served as a bastion of Poland's national identity and language, and the major promoter of Polish culture.

[15] The Messianic tradition was stoked by the Warsaw Franciscan Wojciech Dębołęcki who in 1633 made a prophecy of the defeat of the Turks and the world supremacy of the Slavs, themselves in turn led by Poland.

[a] Beginning in 1772 Poland suffered a series of partitions by its neighbors Austria, Prussia and Russia, that threatened its national existence.

One of them, Adam Mickiewicz, the foremost 19th-century Polish romanticism poet, wrote the patriotic drama Dziady (directed against the Russians), where he depicts Poland as the Christ of Nations.

[22] The Catholic Church, in addition to having provided the main support for the solidarity movement that replaced the communists, also has deep roots of being wedded to the Polish national identity.

Stanisław Musiał, deputy editor of a leading Catholic newspaper and with a close relationship to then Pope John Paul II called for a Polish reappraisal of history that would take these critiques of nationalist ideology seriously.