The Jagiellons’ rivalry with the Habsburgs over Hungary and Bohemia also proved counter-productive, provoking a rapprochement between the Habsburgs and Muscovy, forcing Poland to sign her first treaty with France, in 1500. An English alliance was also considered, but in 1502 the Sejm rejected this on the grounds that England ‘is in a state of continual revolution’. Henry VII and Henry VIII would repeatedly angle for an Anglo-Polish alliance against Turkey but nothing would come of this, as by then Poland needed the support of Turkey, with which she eventually signed an Eternal Peace in 1533.
Whatever international advantages they may have forfeited, the last two Jagiellon kings did give their subjects and their country something of inestimable value. Zygmunt I (known as ‘the Old’), the youngest son of Kazimierz IV, succeeded in 1506 and died in 1548. His son Zygmunt II Augustus became Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1522 and King of Poland after his father’s death. Their combined reign from 1506 to 1572 displayed a certain continuity, even if their persons did not. The strong Solomon-like father was strikingly different from his glamorous, refined son who stands out, along with Francis I and Charles V, to whom he was often compared, as the epitome of the Renaissance monarch. But they both encouraged every form of creative activity and helped to institutionalise a spiritual and intellectual freedom which endured. Above all, they ensured that the murderous Reformation and Counter-Reformation never grew into anything more dangerous in Poland than an unruly debate.
FOUR
The Jagiellon realm was theoretically a Roman Catholic kingdom like every other in Christendom, yet the majority of its population was not Catholic. Large numbers of Christian Slavs living within its borders practised the Orthodox rite, acknowledging the Patriarch of Constantinople rather than the Pope. Another group of Christians who paid no heed to Rome were the communities of Armenians living in the major cities of south-eastern Poland.
A significant proportion of the population was not Christian at all. The Jewish community multiplied each time there was an anti-Semitic witch-hunt in other countries, and its numbers soared in the decades after the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496. If visiting foreign prelates were shocked to see synagogues in every Polish township, they were hardly less so to see mosques standing on what was supposed to be Christian soil. These belonged to the descendants of Tatars who had settled in Lithuania in the fifteenth century and become loyal subjects of their adopted country. Many of them had been admitted to the ranks of the szlachta but clung to the Islamic faith. By the mid-sixteenth century there were nearly a hundred mosques in the Wilno, Troki and Łuck areas.
One of the conditions of the union between Poland and Lithuania in 1385 had been the conversion of that country to Christianity. But, formal gestures apart, little had been done to bring this about, and 150 years later, Grand Duke Zygmunt Augustus recorded that ‘Outside Wilno…the unenlightened and uncivilised people generally accord that worship which is God’s due, to groves, oak-trees, streams, even serpents, both privately and publicly making sacrifices to these.’ A hundred years after that, Bishop Melchior Gedroyc noted that he could hardly find in his diocese of Samogitia ‘a single person who knows how to say a prayer or make the sign of the Cross’.
That the Polish hierarchy had failed to impose religious observance on the population is not altogether surprising. According to a special arrangement, its bishops were appointed not by the Pope but by the King of Poland, who submitted his candidates for Rome’s approval. When this was not forthcoming it was ignored. In 1530, for instance, Pope Clement VII violently objected to the anti-Habsburg and pro-Turkish policy of the Primate Archbishop Jan Łaski, and insisted King Zygmunt dismiss him on pain of excommunication. But no action was taken.
The King was guided by political considerations when appointing bishops and this led him to choose either powerful magnates whose support he needed, or, more often, trusted men of his own. These were drawn from his court, which was imbued with a humanistic and empirical spirit. A high proportion of his secretaries was of plebeian stock, and Zygmunt felt no compunction in ennobling those, like his banker Jan Boner, whom he favoured. This favour transcended creed as well as class. The Jew Abraham Ezofowicz, whom Zygmunt elevated to the rank of Treasurer of Lithuania, did convert to Christianity, albeit the Orthodox rite, before being ennobled, but his brother Michał remained a practising Jew when he was elevated to the szlachta in 1525—a case without parallel anywhere in Christian Europe.