A theft worthy of a novel
In the best-known version of the story, nobleman Mikołaj Sapieha was healed while visiting Rome. He asked Pope Urban VIII for a cherished Marian painting, was refused, bribed a sacristan, and fled home with it. He was supposedly excommunicated, then forgiven.
If true, it would be a remarkable episode in papal history. The difficulty is that no surviving document has been found confirming the theft, the chase or the excommunication. The full dramatic narrative became prominent in writings published by a Sapieha descendant in 1720.
What the records do say
Mikołaj Sapieha held Kodeń and financed church building there. A 1631 foundation deed and a funeral sermon of 1642 help establish the family’s patronage. That sermon refers to a Marian image associated with Guadalupe and brought from Spain, rather than explicitly documenting an illicit removal from Rome.
Art-historical scholarship has questioned whether the image could have the ancient pedigree later attached to it. We should therefore speak of the papal theft as family and devotional legend, not as an established criminal episode.
A legend gains a purpose
Jan Fryderyk Sapieha, a later member of the family, published the story as he sought recognition for the image’s cult. His account offered the family a thrilling connection to Rome, papal authority and exceptional devotion.
The image was indeed crowned with papal crowns in 1723. That event can be documented, but it does not verify each part of the earlier theft story. The distinction lets us enjoy the mystery while seeing how aristocratic memory was shaped.
Exile and return
In 1875, amid imperial Russian pressure on Eastern-rite Catholic institutions, the Kodeń church passed into Orthodox use. The Marian image was removed and kept at Jasna Góra for more than half a century.
It returned to Kodeń in September 1927. The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate took charge of the shrine, and the painting remains an important focus of devotion on Poland’s eastern border.
The borderland behind the painting
Kodeń stands near the River Bug, in a region of Catholic, Orthodox and Greek Catholic histories. That context deepens the story far beyond one flamboyant nobleman.
Visitors can discover the Basilica of St Anne, traces of the Sapieha presence and a devotion that survived removal, political upheaval and return. The question mark in the title is deliberate: it belongs to an evocative story, not a proven theft.