Hannibal of Capua (aka Annibale di Capua), the bishop of Naples spent some time in Poland as the papal nuncio between 1586 and 1591. He produced copious correspondence reporting back to HQ regarding all sorts of matters. One of the letters to the Vatican Secretary of State at the time – Paolo Emilio Sfondrati – contains a description of certain pagan practices in Poland. The correspondence was copied from the so-called Chigi archive in Italy by Professor Stanisław Smolka in 1888 and was later mentioned by the Polish historian priest Jan Nepomucen Fijałek. As far as I can tell the text of the letter has not been published but Fijałek’s description has been and it goes like this:
“…even at the end of the XVI century the papal nuncio Hannibal of Capua was reporting to the secretary of state Sfondrato about a superstitious rite that was practiced in Poland at that time in which a straw doll was made in the shape of a dragon to represent an evil spirit which was then thrown down from the church belfry on – if we are not mistaken – Ascension Day.”
In later times, a similar custom was reported in Cracow where a straw figure of “Judas” would be dropped from the church bell tower and thereafter abused.
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