On a Virtuous Official and a Good Citizen: Canon Augustyn Lipiński’s Philosophy of Exercising Power (Based on the Sermon Preached in Krakow on 8th May 1810)

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne 61 (2013), issue 2. This article is devoted to a presentation of the contents of one of the political sermons preached in Krakow Cathedral on 8th May 1810. A Cathedral Canon, Rev. Augustyn Lipiński delivered it on the feast of St Stanislaus in the presence of King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony and Duke of Warsaw, his court and the 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 officials. In its content the sermon was devoted to authority and the way to exercise it. It is constructed as a polemic with contemporary currents striving after secularization of the ethos of the official. The preacher expressed his conviction that a virtuous official and a good citizen are ones who regard the good of the country and of their fellow-citizens more highly than their own good or even their lives; they are ready to serve them and the king who is exercising power by the will of Providence, and they never look to their own gain in this service – either material profits or fame.