An equal measure of independence characterized the Polish high clergy in respect to its relation to the Vatican. Prince Wladislaus II (1138-1146), striving to establish a strong unified and centralized government in defiance of the provisions of his father’s will, which divided the kingdom among four of his sons, aroused the opposition of the aristocracy and of the clergy, to whom a strong centralized government was very unpalatable. James of Żnin, archbishop of Gnesen, as leader of the opposition, excommunicated the stubborn ambitious prince, and forced him to abdicate. Wladislaus appealed his case to Conrad III, emperor of Germany, and to the Pope. Both of them responded, the emperor with a military expedition and the Pope with a legate. When on arrival in Poland the Pope’s legate, Cardinal Guido, was unable to secure a return of the throne to Wladislaus, he excommunicated the opponents, and placed the country under an interdict. The Polish bishops, however, paid no attention to the legate’s excommunication and interdict; and Wladislaus, though supported by the Pope, had to remain in exile until his death in 1159.[10] Wladislaus, surnamed Langshanks (1202-1206), in his opposition to the Gregorian reforms, upon which Pope Innocent III insisted, had the support of many high church dignitaries among the Polish clergy. Philip, bishop of Posen, for instance, refused to promulgate in his diocese the papal interdict, under which Archbishop Kietlicz was instructed to place the country.[11] To what extent the Polish clergy disregarded papal decrees may be seen from the fact that though Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) decreed a general enforcement of celibacy among the Roman clergy, marriage among the clergy of Poland, according to the historian Długosz, was still generally common as late as the close of the twelfth and the first quarter of the thirteenth century.[12] It is quite instructive to note that even such high church dignitaries as John Łaski and James Uchański, both archbishops and primates of Poland, the first from 1510 to 1531 and the second from 1562 to 1578, were very unfavorably disposed toward the Vatican. As bishop and secretary of state, Łaski declined to support the Pope’s project of forming a league against the Turks. As archbishop of Gnesen and primate of Poland, he worked for the emancipation of his archbishopric from Rome to such an extent as to alarm not only his enemies, but even his friends and the king himself.[13] Uchański’s orthodoxy and loyalty to Rome had been long under suspicion at the Vatican; so much so that when Sigismund Augustus (1548-1572) appointed him to the bishopric of Chełm, the Pope did not ratify the appointment for several years, and when the king promoted Uchański to the bishopric of Kuyavia, the Pope refused to sanction the promotion altogether. This served only to estrange Uchański from the Vatican still more, and led him, especially on his elevation to the archbishopric of Gnesen, to