Once there was a ruler in charge of an entire country. Though married, he engaged in numerous debaucheries with other women, and was known to treat women with disrespect and worse. Furthermore, his public policies involved mistreating the poor, the foreigners, and those who did not kiss up to him.

Everyone around this ruler more or less agreed among themselves that the ruler was an immoral, greedy moron, a sexist pig, and a man with an unpredictable and dangerous temper. So everyone–including church leaders–maintained the fiction that the ruler was a good man, well-meaning, passionate but still worthy of respect…and a Christian, of course, since that was important in order to maintain his rule.

Enter Stanislaus. He just wouldn’t lie–to himself or to others. Stanislaus was respectful and well-respected. He made a point of not grousing or gossiping with others about how terrible the ruler (the King of Poland) was, but instead made an appointment with the King. In fact he made several. He sought to counsel the King, and, after each session, the King promised to clean up his act. And, not surprisingly, nothing changed. The King continued his insatiable misogyny and his disregard for the human dignity of any of his subjects. And all those around the King agreed that he was unfit to rule, but, fearing the King’s wrath, they spent their lives in spin-control mode and in ass-kissing.

Yet Stanislaus persisted. This time, he called upon the King to inquire about why the King was making promises and not following through. The King told Stanislaus to shut up. The King called in his ass-kissers three (or however many) and asked them whether or not he was a good king. They all agreed he was. Then Stanislaus, who was a bishop at this point in time, said to the King, “You, Sir, are no Christian.” That is, no matter what the King claimed, his actions–compounded by his hypocrisies–showed that he was not a man of faith, not a man of justice let alone compassion, not even a man of his word. So Stanislaus told the King that he no longer had the right to call himself a Christian. At that time, a bishop’s declaration along these lines actually had some teeth to it.

The King went into a rage! He told his lackeys to dispatch (kill) Stanislaus. But all these people were essentially cowards (no news there) and hadn’t been able (in 11th-century Poland) to take any polls about how the King’s excommunication was playing, out in the rural areas, so they decided for a variety of reasons that they simply could not carry out the King’s demands. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, they said, but that they couldn’t.

So the King himself did the deed. He rushed into the room where he had detained Stanislaus and struck Stanislaus down with his sword. At that point, all those others previously unable to do the deed then fell upon the stricken man and chopped him into pieces, seeing firsthand just how vital it was to stay on the King’s good side.

For his integrity in a sea of slithering sycophants, today we honor Stanislaus–perhaps considering how we, a millennium or so later, might learn from his example.