W areszcie? Jakub Frank na Jasnej Górze
Was that Arrest? Jakub Frank at Jasna Góra

Summary/Abstract: Historiographers write about Frank’s 13-year incarceration in the Częstochowa monastery, although there is nothing in the sources about prison-like conditions prevailing there. This was rather a kind of safe residence, like that used by Sabbatai Zevi in Gallipoli in w 1666.Church sources have not even once termed Frank’s confinement in the monastery as arrest or prison, After all, nobody has ever issued an arrest warrant, let alone passed a prison sentence. The decision of the Church authorities could be and was interpreted as the provision of a safe, if isolated, shelter to a convert persecuted by the Jews. After all, the consistory recommended his “free” detention at the monastery pending the Holy See decision. This expectation was likely just an excuse because the Holy See apparently did not intend to get involved in the matter. Besides, Frank, his relatives and supporters who settled next to the monastery received their subsistence from the Kraków curia.Why, then, do the Frankist sources consistently refer to „arrest” to describe Frank’s residence? It could be that their authors could not find a better term to explain Frank’s long sojourn at the monastery. There was no easy explanation for it. Meanwhile the Jewish sources, whose impact on historiography was the biggest, consistently portrayed Frank’s presence at the monastery as the imprisonment of a treacherous convert, similarly as they did with regard to Sabbatai and the time spent by him in the Gallipoli fort.When Giuseppe Garampi, who served as Papal nuncio in Warsaw since 1772, learned at the beginning of 1776 that he was named Papal nuncio in Vienna and that one of his “charges” there would be Jakub Frank, who was already in Brno with his court, travelled to Jasna Góra to inquire with the Pauline monks about their inmate of many years. It turned out that he was not really treated as a prisoner there. He had his family with him, a personal cook, and even his own Jewish library, which was just amazing for a Jewish convert in such monastery. He was also free to send and receive mail and dispatch envoys to all corners of the world, on which there is evidence in his Rozmaite adnotacje [Sundry Annotations].When the Russians seized the monastery, they did not know what to do with the old-time resident, who was not willing to leave the place, apparently due to concerns about his safety. General Bibikov travelled to Warsaw to consult the matter with the Russian envoy there, before ordering his “expulsion.”

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