The church owes its origin to fairly dramatic circumstances, a tale that includes lechery, crime, a curse, and royal penance. The soft spot King Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki) had for the fairer sex was denounced by the Bishop of Kraków, Jan Bodzanta, who sent his envoy in the person of the cathedral vicar, Marcin Baryczka to admonish the king about the matter. The enraged monarch had the messenger drowned in an ice-hole in the Vistula. Repenting his deed, the king later turned to Pope Clement VI to lift the anathema. The Holy Father absolved him and ordered an appropriate penance: the construction of a number of churches, including that of St Catherine and St Margaret in Kraków in the place where the body of the drowned priest surfaced. This is how the bishop’s curse indirectly contributed not only to Kraków but also to Polish sacred architecture.