Members of the St. Cordula Society, while searching an area near the railroad tracks, near Wysoka Kamieńska, came across a fragment of a medieval papal bull.
One hypothesis assumes that the bull was destroyed on the way to its addressee and abandoned near the edge of the road. The road is located eleven kilometers from a 14th-century castle.
The surviving letters and iconography found on the bull can be attributed to popes such as Benedict XI (1303-1304), Clement V (1305-1314), Benedict XII (1334-1342) and Clement VI (1342-1352), meaning the bull can be dated between 1303 and 1352.
The bull found in the vicinity of Wysoka Kamieńska is the third recently found in the West Pomeranian region. The first lead bull seal from the time of the so-called Avignon Captivity of Pope Benedict XII (1334-1342) was discovered in 2020 in a field near Kamień Pomorski.
Bulls have been discovered all around Poland, among others, in Gdańsk, Kolbacz, Kraków, Poznań in Ostrów Tumski, Grodno, Nowy Targ, Grzybowo, and Mierzyn.
Papal bulls
A papal bull is an official document issued by the pope in the Roman Catholic Church. The term comes from the lead seal (bulla) that is customarily attached to these kinds of papers.
By the thirteenth century, the phrase “papal bull” was reserved for the pope's most significant texts.
