Category Archives: religion

by | 20 July 2025 · 6:05 pm

Changing Wilno into Vilnius

From The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey through Cities at the Heart of Europe, by Marek Kohn (Yale U. Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 179-183:

The transformation of pre-war Wilno into post-war Vilnius was effected by removing those of its inhabitants who called it Wilno, the Poles who had constituted the majority of its population. Their departure followed the removal by genocide of the second largest ethnic group in the city, the Jews, who called it Vilna or Vilne. The same sequence took place in the other borderland city that Poles had held dear, known today as Lviv, which had also been inhabited largely by ethnic Poles and Jews before the war.

Vilnius’s reconstruction was principally a population project and only secondarily a rebuilding programme, especially in the Old Town. Czesław Miłosz described the pre-war city as an enclave of negative ambiguity, ‘neither Polish nor not-Polish, neither Lithuanian nor not-Lithuanian’. The aim of the reconstruction was to remove that ambiguity, remaking Vilnius as a city that was definitely Lithuanian and very definitely not Polish. It succeeded in establishing the city’s Lithuanian identity, but had to make do with concealing the ambiguities endemic to the Old Town and the surrounding districts.

Until the Nazi occupation, the heart of Vilnius’s character as a multi-ethnic city was a triangular district adjoining the central space over which the town hall presides. The historic Jewish quarter was not beyond the walls – unlike in many European cities, such as Kraków, whose Jewish residents had been sent to live in the separate township of Kazimierz at the end of the fifteenth century – but right in the middle of the city. A larger Jewish neighbourhood spread out from it across the western side of the Old Town. By 1939, according to one estimate, the central district was home to 75,000 people, of whom 35,000 were Jewish.

Many of that fraction were crammed into the overcrowded and insanitary alleys of the original quarter, which was an object of fascination for outsiders and a symbol of identity for Vilna’s Jews. During the First World War, a boy named Moyshe Vorobeychik often happened upon German soldiers painting and sketching scenes in the quarter. Some of them were notable artists in civilian life. Vorobeychik himself became a photographer, under the name Moï Ver, and produced an avant-garde album based on one of the Jewish streets. The project represented a desire shared by other young Jewish artists in the city, to innovate and embrace modernity while retaining their cultural roots. They formed a group called Yung Vilne, whose emblem was a young tree growing above one of the old Jewish quarter’s signature arches.

Max Weinreich, an eminent linguist and scholar of Yiddish, felt similarly about the relationship between learning and place. He considered that modern Jewish research needed an environment like that of Vilna, where ‘the houses and stones retain a memory’ of its Jewish cultural heritage. Weinreich was a leading figure in the YIVO institute of Yiddish studies, which continued a tradition of intellectual enterprise that had made Vilna a centre of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, in the nineteenth century. YIVO’s headquarters opened in 1933 on a broad modern street at a distance from the city centre, but the emotional heart of Jewish Vilna was still embedded in the sclerotic alleys of the old quarter. The enclave retained its allure for outsiders too, despite the warning in a guidebook by a Polish professor about ‘the typically eastern slovenliness of the inhabitants of this anti-hygienic district and its unbearable fug, which makes it impossible for a cultured European to visit these alleys, especially on hot summer days’.

After the Germans took control of Vilnius in 1941, they confined its Jewish population to two ghettos, one in the old quarter and one in the newer neighbourhood. The former was the smaller of the two, holding 11,000 people. It was liquidated after a month, in October 1941, leaving 29,000 people in the larger one, which was maintained until September 1943 and used as a source of labour. The ghetto inmates’ tasks included the construction of a model of Vilnius, which was produced by a team of thirty architects, engineers, draughtsmen and artists. They were forced to create a representation in miniature of the city from which they had been excluded, complete with the tiny zone where they were imprisoned in the middle of it. Four of them are known to have survived the war, but they were rare exceptions. The great majority of Vilnius’s Jews perished in the Holocaust, many of them shot by squads of Lithuanian volunteers at a killing ground in woodland outside the city. Several hundred managed to stay alive until the end of the German occupation, and a few thousand escaped – many of them involuntarily, deported by the previous communist authorities – into the depths of the Soviet Union. Nearly all of the survivors subsequently emigrated to the United States, Israel and other distant lands. Vilna, the ‘Jerusalem of Lithuania’, became an exile memory.

The dissolution of Wilno began with an attempt by Polish forces to recapture it. In July 1944, as the Red Army pushed westwards, the Polish underground state launched a nationwide operation to liberate cities and territories ahead of the Soviet advance. The battles of July were the overtures to the nine-week tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising, which began on the first day of August. Wilno’s political and emotional importance to the Polish cause was expressed in the codename for the Armia Krajowa (AK) assault against the city’s German occupiers: Ostra Brama, the Polish name for the Gate of Dawn. A grand and reverent window is set above the arch on the inside of the gate; through it an image of the Virgin Mary, clad in gilded silver, presides over the street below. The site is one of the most intense foci of the Marian cult at the heart of Polish Catholicism, and therefore of Polishness as it is orthodoxly conceived, venerating Mary as ‘Queen of Poland’. Thousands of silver votive offerings attest to its devotees’ faith that the image has miraculous powers. It is said that the first of the offerings came from a Polish-Lithuanian commander who led his men through the gate in an assault on the Swedes who occupied the city in 1702.

As a precedent, it was hardly auspicious. Instead of ejecting the occupiers with supernatural support from the Mother of God, the attackers were checked and forced to retreat. The assault in 1944 also lacked the miraculous intervention that would have been needed to achieve its double objective of driving out the Germans and keeping out the Soviets. After failing to overcome the German defences on the first day, and struggling to communicate with their comrades inside the city, Polish units operated alongside the Soviet forces. In the latter stages of the battle, AK troops fought their way through the Old Town to capture the city hall, and raised the Polish flag over the castle tower. It was quickly taken down by their inimical Soviet allies, who replaced it with a red one.

After six days, the Germans were defeated, and on the day after that, the Soviet leadership ordered the disarming of the AK soldiers. The ensuing arrests of Polish officers heralded a programme of repression that saw thousands detained in Vilnius as the year went on. That sent an ominous message to the Poles who comprised most of the city’s surviving population. In September, the Soviet and Polish authorities agreed terms for the removal of ethnic Poles from Lithuania to territory within Poland’s new borders. It was to be a notionally voluntary exodus, not an expulsion. Lithuanian Poles were sent away from their homes and birthplaces in railway goods trucks, but they were not herded onto the trains at gunpoint. The official term was ‘evacuation’, which suggested that the Poles were being given aid – and that they were under threat.

Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog’s (1968) Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change was one of my most memorable textbooks during my early graduate work in linguistics, in a class taught by one of my most memorable professors, Derek Bickerton.

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by | 17 July 2025 · 12:52 pm

Poland’s Silver Age Ends

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 329-330:

The seventeenth century had proven a mixed bag for the Commonwealth. It began on a relatively high note, with the reign of Zygmunt III Vasa that ushered in the so-called Silver Age. Mid-century, however, the Commonwealth nearly imploded, wracked by devastating invasions, civil war, and the loss of left-bank Ukraine. The country’s recovery from the [Swedish] Deluge, although noteworthy, was only partial. The nobility clung ever more tightly to its cherished Golden Freedoms and rejected anything that smacked of political reform, particularly if it might lead to a strengthening of the monarch’s position within the country. Even the triumphant, world-historical victory of Sobieski and his forces at Vienna—the high point of the century—did more for Western Christendom than for the Commonwealth itself.

The final election of the seventeenth century did not lead to the confirmation of a new Piast (or native Sarmatian) dynasty. Despite his efforts, King Jan III Sobieski proved unable to secure for his sons the Polish succession. To the contrary, the election of 1697 would mark a reversal of recent policy, which since the Deluge had given preference to candidates of noble Piast heritage. From the vantage point of hindsight, an interesting pattern emerges. Consider the elections both preceding and following the triplet of Vasa reigns. The first two elections, limited to foreign candidates, put one regrettable (Valois) and one memorable (Batory) candidate on the Polish throne. The anti-foreign backlash following the abdication of Jan Kazimierz Vasa (which marked the end of the Polish Vasa dynasty) put two Piasts (native candidates) on the Polish throne: once again, one regrettable (Wiśniowiecki) and one memorable (Sobieski) candidate.

Despite the fact that Sobieski not only had significant military victories under his belt but also had fathered sons who could contend for the throne, the electoral pendulum swung once again—out of their reach….

This clear rejection of the Sobieski heir—and, by extension, all candidates of Polish/Sarmatian noble descent—opened the doors wide to foreign involvement. This time, the results of the election ended up demonstrating to what extent the Commonwealth elections could be used in the power struggle between the various major European players.

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by | 15 July 2025 · 1:05 pm

Poland-Lithuania Shrinks

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 302-304:

The population of the Grand Duchy [of Lithuania] had demonstrated its commitment to the Commonwealth, of which they considered themselves citizens. Perhaps a creative extension of citizenship was the answer to the Cossack debacle? Not relying on divine intercession, the nobles of the Commonwealth strove to put an end to the civil war with the Cossacks via diplomatic means. They entered into negotiations with the new leader of the Cossacks, Ivan Vyhovsky. Already earlier it had become clear that his predecessor Khmelnytsky was not entirely satisfied with the outcome of Pereiaslav. Centralizing and humiliating Russian rule proved very different from the genuine autonomy the Cossacks had expected. After all, not all Cossacks were uneducated; whether they had studied at the Mohyla Academy, elsewhere in the Commonwealth, or even in the West, they had been exposed to ideas at great odds with the autocracy they now encountered. Even the Orthodox clergy of the Cossack lands, especially Kyiv, were unhappy at being subordinated to Moscow. Among other things, this dissonance and the resulting dissatisfaction led Khmelnytsky to join the other potential partitioners of Poland—Sweden, Transylvania, and Brandenburg—at the end of 1656.

After Khmelnytsky’s death in 1657, Vyhovsky reached agreement with the Commonwealth. The two parties convened in a town of the Kyiv palatinate near the border with Russia. Although lying to the east of Pereiaslav, Hadiach (Polish: Hadziacz) notably marked a move westward. The Treaty of Hadiach established the terms of the Cossacks’ return to the Commonwealth—terms that were far better than the Cossacks had ever been offered before.

Signed in 1658, this treaty has been compared to the Union of Lublin, and for good reason. The Commonwealth of Two (Both) Nations would be transformed into a Commonwealth of Three Nations—the third being a newly established Duchy of Ruthenia. Consisting of the former palatinates of Kyiv, Bratslav, and Chernihiv, the Duchy of Ruthenia would be an autonomous entity, on par with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Under the leadership of the common king, the Duchy would share a common foreign policy and send its own citizens to the Seym. A certain number of Cossacks would be accepted into the Commonwealth nobility.

The new Duchy would also retain its distinctiveness: executive power would be wielded by the hetman of the Ruthenian army, some thirty thousand strong. The Uniate Church would be disallowed on the Duchy’s territory, where the Orthodox Church would be the favored religion, its higher clergy members of the Senate. The Mohyla Academy would be treated on par with other institutions of higher learning in the Commonwealth.

In short, the Cossacks appear to have successfully won the rights and privileges they had long sought. No longer to be looked down upon, they were to be treated as an equal partner. The Cossacks would be the third “nation” of the Commonwealth—a Ruthenian/Cossack/Orthodox one.

The Seym ratified the Treaty of Hadiach the following year, marking a sea change in the mentality of the Commonwealth’s citizenry, the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. For many Cossacks back in the hetmanate, however, it was too little, too late—at least a decade too late. To be sure, power politics within the hetmanate likely helped to determine the rejection of the proposal. Vyhovsky had been acting in the name of the underage son of Khmelnytsky, Yuri, who now displaced Vyhovsky at the top of the hetmanate. Yet, might the deal still go through—be pushed through? For a moment it looked as though the Poles, who now amassed the largest army in their history—a force of some seventy to eighty thousand, and one that had a string of victories over the Russian and Cossack armies in 1660—would be able to expel the Russians from the Grand Duchy and implement the new arrangement with the Cossacks.

Ultimately, this was not to be. As a result of internal political problems, the Commonwealth was not able to profit from this impressive surge. The terms reached between Russia and the Commonwealth in the armistice of 1667 at Andrusovo were by Commonwealth accounts devastating. The armistice confirmed the Commonwealth’s loss of both the Smolensk region in the north and the Cossack lands to the south, albeit in a novel configuration. The Cossack Hetmanate itself was partitioned between the two states—the dividing line being the Dnieper River. Territories on the right bank of the Dnieper (that is, in the west) were awarded to the Poles, while the left (east) bank came under Russian rule. The Russians also reserved to themselves control over Kyiv, on the right bank of the Dnieper, ostensibly for a two-year period …. The city would never again be part of the Commonwealth. As the famous mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz observed at the time (albeit from his comfortable vantage point in the west), the “barbaric East” was on the rise.

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by | 13 July 2025 · 6:40 am

Polish-Lithuanian Noble Mythmaking

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 269-271:

Men like Żółkiewski, who put national interests and faithful service above private gains, were becoming more rare. Nobles—especially the wealthy magnates—had few reasons to put up with what they saw as unreasonableness on the part of the king. Instead, they embraced a new idea that would knit the diverse Commonwealth nobility even closer together.

This represented an adjustment to the myth of Sarmatian origin. Already in the sixteenth century, Kromer and others had concluded that the inhabitants of Poland-Lithuania were descended from this ancient warrior people. Increasingly, this origin myth was limited to the Commonwealth’s nobility, however. The divisions between the estates solidified and became firmer—as the nobles maintained that, while they themselves were descended from the Sarmatians, the country’s commoners were not and thus were inferior in status. Already a brotherhood of privilege, the noble nation (the diversity of religious faiths and ethnic origins notwithstanding) came to be seen as a brotherhood of blood.

Sarmatian descent was seen as a distinction of another kind—a sign that the noble nation was a chosen nation, one destined for greatness. This sense of Sarmatian uniqueness had three components: economic, cultural, and political. First, that the Commonwealth was the Granary of Europe had been made amply clear to the owners of manorial estates, who in the period of peace that ensued in the 1620s promptly settled back into that still lucrative occupation. Their mission was to feed Europe, to help it thrive and, in the process, to help themselves thrive.

Second, their battlefield encounters with the infidel—here, understood as the Muscovites to the east as well as the Tatars and Ottomans to the south—had bolstered their vision of the Commonwealth as being the Bulwark of Christianity (antemurale Christianitatis)—a vision that the Baroque Church was all too happy to reinforce. This aspect of the Sarmatian myth was expanded to depict the nation as being under God’s special protection. Despite this fervent Catholicism, Commonwealth nobles increasingly embraced Eastern elements of dress and adornment. Witness the trend of having shaved heads—or heads with just a wisp of hair, just like the Moslem warriors they repeatedly fought. Thus, while the Commonwealth nobles defended Western values, their encounter with the East also shaped their identity—if only superficially.

Third, the sense that the Commonwealth’s mixed form of government, which provided the nobility with their cherished Golden Freedoms, was seen as infinitely superior to absolutist rule elsewhere. The myth of Sarmatian descent, thus, gave the nobles a sense of superiority, even invincibility, vis-à-vis the rest of Europe.

Sarmatian pride percolated down to even the poorest of nobles. Despite the exponential growth of magnate wealth during this period, the Sarmatian brotherhood was posited on noble equality. As the saying went, “The nobleman on his plot is equal to the palatine.” The thought that a landless noble might fancy himself as the peer of a magnate with his estates, court, and private army (practically a kinglet himself) nonetheless suggested that there was no glass ceiling: the possibility of upward mobility was always present, if not always likely. All it took was a happy accident of luck or patronage—an advantageous marriage, an appointment to a state office—and a clever nobleman could rise in stature. It was possible to become instantly wealthy if one married the heiress to a magnate family fortune that had been established as an indivisible inheritance (ordynacja). After all, even magnate families died out, to be replaced by new beneficiaries of the Commonwealth’s system. And even the magnates had to take care that their less wealthy noble clients—the men who hoped for that comfortable job, an education for their sons, and a decent marriage prospect for their daughters—retained their allegiance.

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by | 12 July 2025 · 5:55 am

Catholic vs. Orthodox Slavs

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 231-235:

The war with Muscovite Russia was hardly over. Despite the accomplishments of the valiant Transylvanian [Stefan Batory], Polish-Russian relations had yet to enter into their most interesting—indeed, most incredible—phase. In the interim, another development took place, one that would have important repercussions for the battle not only for territory but also for the hearts and minds of the borderland inhabitants.

More precisely, this new development represented a war for souls. At the same time that Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy were vying for control of the Rus’ principalities, questions of jurisdiction over the Orthodox population of Eastern Europe generated sparks. This was the world of the Greek Church, adherents of Christianity in its Byzantine (that is, Eastern) rite.

Byzantine Christianity differed from the Church of Rome in a number of ways, not all of them doctrinal. Whereas in Roman Catholicism the high church language was Latin, there was no one single high church language in the Greek world: the Slavic lands had been given their own church language by the earliest missionaries to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius. This language came to be known as Old Church Slavonic. Distinct from the spoken vernaculars of the region, it was nonetheless for the most part comprehensible to the population.

The relationship of the church and state in the East was also different than in the West. Following the pattern of Byzantium, the Eastern Church pragmatically subordinated itself to the authority of the state in which it functioned. Another seemingly obvious distinction: the Eastern churches did not owe allegiance to the pope in Rome but, rather, acknowledged the patriarch of Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the position of the Greek Church was much diminished. This allowed for some jockeying within Eastern Christendom, especially in the East Slavic lands, where the majority of the faithful resided and the religion flourished.

To be sure, even before the Ottomans moved into Byzantium, not all was well in the Eastern Greek world further north. This in part was the result of the fact that, from its inception, the head of the Greek Church in the Rus’ lands had been the metropolitan of Kyiv. The shift of state borders that resulted in the Greek faithful residing in different states complicated the ecclesiastical picture and led various clergymen to vie with each other for influence over the faithful of Eastern Europe. To give one example: the Bulgarian clergyman who was chosen as metropolitan of the Ruthenian lands in 1415 soon found himself excommunicated by the patriarch of Constantinople, whose mind had been poisoned by the metropolitan of Moscow, who wanted this position for himself. Not until 1458 was Poland-Lithuania able to establish an independent Kyivo-Halych metropolitanate for its Orthodox population.

…

Those in the Commonwealth realized that they needed to counteract such moves. Essentially there were two options. They could either establish an autocephalous Orthodox church for the country or bring about church union—here, union with what was still the biggest force in Christianity: the Church in Rome.

The latter option won out, in part because the Church of Rome had made similar efforts in the past. First attempted in Constance, union between the Roman and Greek Churches had been achieved at the Council of Florence (1439), although nothing ultimately came of it (it is this attempt at union, incidentally, that led to the formation of an autocephalous Orthodox church in Moscow). Yet another sign that union was the direction favored by the Vatican was that, as early as 1573, a Greek College was opened in Rome as well as a Congregation for Eastern Churches.

The Commonwealth, thus, was convinced to work toward union and capitalized on a desire among Commonwealth clergymen not to subordinate themselves to Muscovy—in particular, not to send their financial dues there. This became visible in the synods that took place in the town of Brest, along the internal Polish-Lithuanian border, at the end of the sixteenth century. The Greek clergy decided to support the idea of union—with qualifications. While they would recognize the authority of the pope in Rome, they were not ready to make many changes that would affect the look and feel of their religion. They were allowed to retain their distinctive Eastern rite: the liturgy in Church Slavonic, as well as other traditions, including the marriage of the clergy. A selling point for the Orthodox bishops was a further advantage specified in the act of union: they were to be admitted into the Senate of the Commonwealth, on par with the Roman Catholic bishops.

This Union of Brest, as the 1596 agreement was called, produced a new phenomenon in the Commonwealth: so-called Uniates. These were Eastern-rite Catholics, in official parlance members of the Greek-Catholic Confession of the Slavonic Rite. In other words, while they retained their traditional Eastern rite and practices, they were part of the Catholic Church.

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by | 7 July 2025 · 6:10 am

Mazovia (with Warsaw) Joins Poland

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 146-149:

Zygmunt’s reign did bring many positive developments, however. One important accomplishment was the ultimate incorporation of Mazovia (with its ducal capital of Warsaw) into the Crown of Poland. Regardless how odd this may seem to contemporary readers, Warsaw—despite its central location and later claims to fame—was not yet fully a part of the realm. Since the fourteenth century, Mazovia had been a fief of Poland, controlled by a branch of the old Piast princely dynasty. Bit by bit, the Crown of Poland had acquired pieces of that territory; yet it was only after the death of the last Mazovian prince, Janusz III, in 1526 that the process of incorporation was completed.

For a Polish province, Mazovia was in many ways atypical. The duchy had long eschewed battle with the Teutonic Knights to its immediate north and even maintained good trade relations with them. As of the late fourteenth century, Mazovians had played an important role in facilitating the trade of timber and naval stores coming to Baltic ports via the Narew, Bug, and Vistula Rivers. The duchy likewise assisted the transit trade of furs, wax, and honey from Lithuania as well as cattle from Volhynia. After 1500, Mazovians expanded their activities to include the grain trade. As for the social composition of the duchy, it boasted a preponderance of nobles—certainly vis-à-vis Poland-Lithuania as a whole. Some 20 percent of the population claimed a noble patent—quite a large number, though to be sure most of these were impoverished soldier-nobles. Warsaw had a provincial feel, although in the sixteenth century it was beginning its ascent, in part thanks to trade.

[It sounds as if Poland may have acquired its own equivalents of the Prussian Junker class when it incorporated Masovia into the Crown of Poland.–J.]

Although King Zygmunt managed to incorporate the remaining pieces of Mazovia into the Crown, he was less successful in pressing state and dynastic interests in the region of the Baltic Sea, this despite a very real occasion to do so. For a war fought against the Teutonic Order in 1519–1521 brought the Knights to their knees—literally. One of the most famous images in Polish history dates from 1525, the so-called Prussian Homage. A triumphant view of this grand event was painted in 1882 by the nineteenth-century Polish artist Jan Matejko, whose colorful brushstrokes lavishly rendered the scene of the former grand master of the Teutonic Knights, Albrecht von Hohenzollern, kneeling before the Polish king and publicly swearing his fealty.

Yet such a rosy view of the event—although attractive to Matejko’s contemporaries, who took especial pleasure in seeing Prussians bowing down before the Poles, even if only in the deep historical past—was misleading. Much more could have been achieved than simply having Albrecht von Hohenzollern kneel before the Polish king (who was, after all, his uncle) and resign himself to the status of subordinate. What could have marked the end of Prussia as an independent entity—had Zygmunt pursued the fight further—instead gave little Prussia a new lease on life. Recall that part of Prussia had already been incorporated into the Crown by Zygmunt’s father. This was the so-called Royal Prussia, which had sought to break away from the hold of the Teutonic Knights and turned to the Polish king for help.

What went wrong, then? Although it was a Polish fief, in this moment Prussia was permitted to undergo a notable change. No longer to be run by the Teutonic Knights, it was transformed by Albrecht von Hohenzollern-Ansbach (the aforementioned nephew of Zygmunt) into a secular state. Henceforth the last grand master of the Teutonic Order would be known as Duke of Prussia, and his successors would have hereditary rights in the lands formerly held by the Order. Not only that: the Prussia of Albrecht von Hohenzollern simultaneously embraced the views promulgated by Martin Luther, who by nailing his ninety-five theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg in 1517 initiated a movement that would forever change the face of Christian Europe. This was the Protestant Reformation. Close to Martin Luther himself, Albrecht became—with Zygmunt’s permission—the first territorial Lutheran ruler and Prussia became the first Protestant state in Europe.

That this should occur without bloodshed or upheaval was in part due to Zygmunt the Old’s willingness to approve this amazing transformation of the former arch-Catholic polity—in part to keep Ducal Prussia from moving into the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire. To be sure, in the Treaty of Kraków of 1525—the first European treaty between a Catholic and a Protestant state—Zygmunt and Albrecht agreed that Ducal Prussia would come fully under Polish control on the extinction of Albrecht of Hohenzollern’s line. That only a generation later a different king would, in a pinch, exchange his hereditary rights to succession for military assistance is but one of the fateful missteps that would haunt Polish history for centuries to come, even if it could not be foreseen in 1525.

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by | 4 July 2025 · 5:42 am

The Jagiellonian Moment, c. 1500

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 116-120:

Kazimierz IV Jagiellon married Elizabeth, the daughter of Albrecht Habsburg and granddaughter of Sigismund of Luxemburg. She produced for him an abundance of heirs: six sons and five daughters. This situation was enviable in a world where dynasties so often died out but also challenging, in that all this royal blood cried out for distinguished posts. And indeed: the royal pair strove to find places for their children to rule, capitalizing on the still prevalent medieval idea that royal bloodlines were important. All their children were brought up for exalted positions, and many of them would rule on one throne or another (sometimes on several at once). They were given an excellent education under none other than Jan Długosz, former secretary to Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki and Kraków canon. His greatest and certainly most durable claim to fame came from his twelve-book Latin-language history of Poland, Annales seu Cronicae Regni Poloniae (Annals or Chronicles of the Kingdom of Poland), which covered the history of the country up to 1480. In addition to royal heads of state, the pupils of the royal tutor Długosz included a future cardinal (Kazimierz’s son Fryderyk) as well as a future saint (his namesake, Kazimierz).

…

A longer period ensued before the same Jagiellon gained control over the Hungarian throne. In Hungary, it was the Transylvanian-born Matthias Corvinus (son of János Hunyadi) who was chosen king in 1458, doubtless in part due to the memory of his father’s military prowess, which he seemed to have inherited. Better known by a nickname taken from the raven (Latin: corvus) on his escutcheon, Corvinus was the first commoner to ascend to the Hungarian throne, and he was an outstanding ruler. He made inroads into what had been Poděbrady’s holdings, annexing Moravia and Silesia as well as the Lusatias. At one point the Hungarian king even occupied Vienna, the Habsburgs’ capital, which he retained control of until his death in the spring of 1490. Władysław followed these developments closely. To strengthen his position as a candidate for the throne, that autumn the Jagiellon secretly married Corvinus’s widow, and she sought to have him gain power in Hungary. Although it may seem paradoxical, there was opposition from Władysław’s own father, who wanted to seat another son, Jan Olbracht, on the Hungarian throne. The men even fought two wars over the succession (so much for family unity). Yet, once the Habsburgs got involved, the tide turned against Jan Olbracht. To keep Hungary and Bohemia safely in Jagiellonian hands, Kazimierz IV Jagiellończyk threw his weight behind his eldest son, already seated on the Bohemian throne.

…

Although in Hungary he was officially hailed as King Ulászló II, Władysław came to be known there as King Bene—this, apparently, from always answering “very well” (bene) to whatever was asked of him. Among other things, in 1514 he allowed the Hungarian nobles to establish the so-called Tripartitum, a new codification of Hungarian law that gave them increased power over their peasants. Yet the Jagiellon was indeed the true ruler of the two countries, though he reconfigured them somewhat, restoring Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia to the kingdom of Bohemia (they had come under Hungarian control under Matthias Corvinus). He also notably restored Vienna and eastern Austria, which had been occupied by Corvinus, to the Habsburgs—a move that, while keeping Habsburgs from conniving to unseat him, would nonetheless strengthen a future rival to Jagiellonian rule. Władysław lived until 1516, to be succeeded on both thrones by his son Louis (Czech: Ludvik; Hungarian: Lajos). In this way, Jagiellons came to control both the Bohemian Crown of Saint Wenceslas and the Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen.

But this was only the near realm of Central Europe. All five daughters of Kazimierz Jagiellończyk fared well in the marriage game also. They demonstrated the potential impact of the Jagiellonian dynasty on the German-speaking world. Jadwiga married George the Rich, prince of Bavaria. Another daughter, Barbara, wed another George the Bearded, duke of Saxony. Two other sisters, Anna and Elżbieta, married the dukes of Pomerania and Legnica (German: Liegnitz), respectively; each of these husbands (Bogislaw X and Friedrich II) would be given the sobriquet of Great. Their other sister, Zofia, was the wife of Friedrich von Hohenzollern-Ansbach, elector of Brandenburg. Zofia would give birth to Albrecht von Hohenzollern-Ansbach, who (as we shall see) would be last in the long line of grand masters of the Teutonic Order on the Baltic Sea coast.

All this left the Jagiellons seemingly in a strong position. Men from the dynasty came to control all of East-Central Europe: from Hungary and Bohemia through Poland and Lithuania, putting them in a position to rule over vast territories and peoples. Kazimierz IV Jagiellon ruled Poland and Lithuania, while his son Władysław had ascended to the Crowns of Saint Wenceslas and Saint Stephen—that is, Bohemia and Hungary, respectively. Jagiellons would rule uninterruptedly over these four political entities for some thirty-six years: from 1490 to 1526, their power extended from the Baltic to the Adriatic and nearly all the way to the Black Sea.

That the Jagiellonian Moment in Central and Eastern Europe is so little known has to do with both the nature of Jagiellonian rule and the times in which they lived. With the exception of Lithuania, the countries they ruled—Poland, Bohemia, Hungary—were elective monarchies with relatively powerful, noble-dominated parliaments. In these countries, what was wanted was not an absolute monarch but, rather, someone who would work with the existing parliamentary bodies.

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by | 3 July 2025 · 5:56 am

Poland and Lithuania Unite

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 105-107:

In 1411 a peace between the Polish-Lithuanian state and the Teutonic Order was finally achieved at Toruń. At that time, Jagiełło managed only to secure Žemaitija for Lithuania and Dobrzyń for Poland. Thus, ultimately, Lithuania benefited much more than did the Crown of Poland—somewhat paradoxical in a state that purportedly was dominated by the Polish half. While Lithuania regained all that it sought, the Poles remained unsatisfied. Notably, however, these were the territories that the Order had refused to give Poland-Lithuania to keep the peace only a year earlier. Still, this left many formerly Polish lands along the Baltic coast in the hands of the Teutonic Order, including the important towns of Gdańsk and Toruń. And the Crown of Poland still had no outlet to the sea.

However, in a way, the Battle of Grunwald [= the First Battle of Tannenberg in what is now named Stębark] did have an important outcome for Poland-Lithuania. The joint fight against a common enemy brought the subjects of the two halves of the state closer together, proving to Poles and Lithuanians alike that they had mutual interests. Together, they could accomplish much, even if separately each (especially Lithuania) was weak.

Within a couple of years, Poles and Lithuanians took another step on the road to becoming closer. This was in the so-called Union of Horodło, signed in the Volhynian town of that name in 1413. What had previously been a personal union cemented solely by the person of Jagiełło would now have a solid dynastic connection. To be sure, the position of grand duke in Lithuania would be hereditary (Vytautas agreed to be dux [no modifier], under Jagiełło), while the king of Poland would be elected. But the latter—that is, Jagiełło’s successor—would come from the Lithuanian dynasty, to be elected upon consultation of Vytautas and the Lithuanian boyars.

One of the most interesting provisions of the tripartite document called for a special union of (Catholic) Lithuanian and Polish nobility and clergy. Some fifty years after their conversion to Roman Catholicism, forty-seven Lithuanian noble families were embraced by and included in Polish heraldic clans. In this way, the palatine of Kraków, for example, accepted into his Leliwa clan the palatine of Vilnius. The Polish castellan of Sącz would be united with the Lithuanian castellan of Trakai (Polish: Troki). The numerous Półkozic clan embraced a Lithuanian noble family, while the protoplast [progenitor] of the Lithuanian Radvila family (better known under their Polonized name, Radziwiłł) became part of the Sulima clan. In essence, a joint Polish-Lithuanian noble estate was established. Henceforth, there would be a single nation for the united state.

The Preamble to the Union of Horodło gives evidence of the lofty principles undergirding the union: “Whosoever is unsupported by the mystery of Love, shall not achieve the Grace of salvation. . . . For by Love, laws are made, kingdoms governed, cities ordered, and the state of the commonweal is brought to its proper goal.” The love between the Poles and Lithuanians would truly have a familial (clan) basis now. Yet the union was not complete. It did not include the Orthodox nobility—for the most part, Ruthenes. They were, in a way, second-class citizens—something that would not bode well for the future.

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by | 2 July 2025 · 6:11 am

Dilemmas of Pagan Lithuania

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 88-90:

The pagan Lithuanians had managed to conquer the western Ruthenian territories (roughly today’s Belarus and Ukraine) at the time of these lands’ greatest weakness. In a relatively short space of time, they made huge advances. Lithuania gained control over Polatsk in 1307, over Minsk in 1340, over Smolensk (a mere 230 miles from Moscow) in 1356, and even over the far-distant Kyiv—the former, great capital of Kyivan Rus’—in 1363.

This tremendous expansion was in part facilitated by the protoplast [= progenitor] of the great Lithuanian dynasty, Gediminas (1315–1341). He was ably assisted by his numerous sons, the most important Kestutis and Algirdas. While Kestutis’s presence could be felt in the Polish southeast in 1376, it was Algirdas who earlier defeated the Golden Horde at Syni Vody (Blue Waters; Polish: Sine Wody) and gained control over Kyiv. The two formed a sort of diarchy—a kind of dual rule that would be inherited by their sons, Jogaila (Algirdas’s favorite son) and Vytautas.

In the process of conquering this large swath of Eastern Europe, the Lithuanian Gediminid dynasty inherited a sizable population that was Slavic and Orthodox—a population that outnumbered the Lithuanians themselves eight to one. The Lithuanians figured mainly as rulers and elites. Most of the East Slavic inhabitants—most notably, the boyars (nobles) of Ruthenia to the south—were members of the Orthodox faith. In other words, they were Christians, but not followers of the Church of Rome.

The pagan Lithuanians within this large multiethnic entity were the nobles and villagers of the north—that is, residing in the core Lithuanian territories, before the decline of Rus’ allowed the Lithuanians to gain control of a good chunk of the Ruthenian lands. This was a small but not insignificant population, especially as it included members of the ruling family, such as the future king of Poland. This expanded Lithuanian state was a completely decentralized entity, with descendants of Gediminas ruling over various sections of the state (and often quarreling among themselves).

Although Lithuanians ruled, the rapid expansion of the state left the initial population, which had yet to establish a written language, with real challenges. How could they rule over Christian, and lettered, peoples? In part this imbalance was ameliorated by the Lithuanians availing themselves of a ready-made state language—the language of the conquered Ruthenes. Intermarriage with Ruthenian princes led to the spread of Ruthenian culture within the Grand Duchy. Many Gediminids became converts to Orthodoxy and otherwise found the culture of the conquered Slavs to be attractive. Some went so far as to ally themselves with the Muscovite state to the east. This most certainly was true of the numerous sons of Algirdas and his first wife, Maria, all of whom embraced Orthodoxy and ruled in the eastern section of the Grand Duchy. (Their half-brother Jogaila long remained a pagan, as did the other children of Algirdas and his second wife, Juliana of Tver—this notwithstanding her Orthodox provenance.)

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by | 1 July 2025 · 5:44 am

Polak, Węgier dwa bratanki

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 74-75:

But the Hungarian and Polish king found himself in the same situation as had Kazimierz. He too had no male heir—only daughters, and these were born to him late in life. They included the previously mentioned Maria and her younger sister, Hedwig. (An older sister, Catherine, also figured in the picture until her death in 1378.) As already noted, Maria was betrothed to Sigismund of Luxemburg, whose father was king of Bohemia as well as Holy Roman Emperor. Hedwig—born only in the year 1374—also awaited a princely husband, having been promised in marriage since early childhood to Wilhelm of Habsburg.

…

All of this might have been enough to inspire a degree of friendliness between Hungarians and Poles. Historically they were on good terms. They did not figure as much of a threat to each other, as they were both just one step removed from Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire. The Carpathian Mountains served as a boundary between the two countries, but it was a porous one. There was much contact across that border. Furthermore, it is important to note, the clanlike structure and the substantial role played by the nobilities in the two countries were similar. It is not for nothing that, even today, Poles know the ditty “Polak, Węgier dwa bratanki—tak do szabli, jak do szklanki” [emphasis added] (The Pole and the Magyar like brothers stand / Whether with sword or with tankard in hand), whereas the corresponding Hungarian rhyme affects the same brotherly affection for the hard-fighting—and drinking—Poles. (The verse, however, dates from a much later period.)

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