Sigismund I the Old

Sigismund I the Old
A modern depiction of Sigismund I from the 18th century by Marcello Bacciarelli
King of Poland Grand Duke of Lithuania
Reign	8 December 1506 – 1 April 1548
Coronation	24 January 1507 in Wawel Cathedral, Kraków
Predecessor	Alexander I
Successor	Sigismund II Augustus
Born	1 January 1467 Kozienice, Poland
Died	1 April 1548(1548-04-01) (aged 81) Kraków, Poland
Burial	7 July 1548 Wawel Cathedral, Kraków
Spouses	Barbara Zápolya Bona Sforza
Issue more...	Hedwig, Electress of Bradenburg Isabella, Queen of Hungary Sigismund II Augustus Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg Anna I of Poland Catherine, Queen of Sweden
Dynasty	Jagiellon
Father	Casimir IV of Poland
Mother	Elisabeth of Austria
Signature

Sigismund I of Poland (Polish: Zygmunt I Stary, Lithuanian: Žygimantas I Senasis, Belarusian: Жыгімонт I Стары, romanized: Žyhimont I Stary; 1 January 1467 – 1 April 1548), of the Jagiellon dynasty, reigned as King of Poland and also as the Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 until 1548. Earlier, Sigismund had been invested as Duke of Silesia. Sigismund I was a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Early life and coronation

The son of King Casimir IV Jagiellon and Elisabeth of Austria, Sigismund followed his brothers John Albert and Alexander to the Polish throne. Their eldest brother Vladislaus became king of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia. Sigismund was christened as the namesake of his Habsburg maternal great-grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund.

After his father's death, Sigismund was the only son who did not hold any land titles. In the years 1495–1496, he addressed his older brother, the Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander, and demanded the separation of a domain from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but was refused. Queen Dowager Elisabeth Habsburg also tried without success to ensure the succession of her son to the throne of Austria. And the disastrous and unsuccessful invasion of Bukovina led by his older brother King John I Albert dispelled the plans for placing Sigismund on the Moldavian throne. Eventually Sigismund came under the care of his eldest brother Vladislaus II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, from whom he received the duchies of Głogów (1499) and Opava (1501), and in 1504 became governor of Silesia and Lower Lusatia.

After the death of King Alexander I, Sigismund arrived in Vilnius, where he was elected by the Lithuanian Ducal Council on 13 September 1506 as Grand Duke of Lithuania, contrary to the Union of Mielnik (1501), which proposed a joint Polish-Lithuanian election of a monarch. On 8 December 1506, during the session of the Polish Senate in Piotrków, Sigismund was elected King of Poland. He arrived in Kraków on 20 January 1507 and was crowned four days later in Wawel Cathedral by Primate Andrzej Boryszewski.

Internal politics

Crown of the Kingdom of Poland

Coat of Arms of the Jagiellon kings of Poland

The internal situation in Poland was characterised by broad authorisation of the Chamber of Deputies, confirmed and extended in the constitution of Nihil novi. During Alexander's reign, the law of Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the Sejm. Sigismund had little control over the act, unlike the senators, whom he personally appointed. Eventually, during his reign, Sigismund benefited from the advice of the local nobility, competent ministers in charge of the royal judiciary system, and the wealthy and influential treasurers of Kraków. Although he was reluctant to the parliamentary system and political independence of the nobility, he recognised the authority of legal norms, supported legalism and summoned annual sessions of the Sejm, usually obtaining funds on state defence. However he was unsuccessful at attempting to create a permanent fund for defence from the annual income tax. Despite this "Achilles heel", in 1527 he established a conscript army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it. He set up the legal codes that formalised serfdom in Poland, locking the peasants into the estates of nobles.

Likely related to tax matters was an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the king, made on 5 May 1523. The identity of the would-be assassin - who shot the ruler while he was strolling in the evening around the cloisters of the Wawel castle - and his potential supporters was never established. Unclear motives remained after the assassination attempt. The only clue was the fact that three weeks before the event, Sigismund I introduced a new edict that was very unfavourable and somewhat hostile to the high-ranking nobles.

Sigismund I achieved several economic successes, including partial debt reduction, separation of accounts of public taxation from the royal treasury, strengthening of the activities of the mint operating in Kraków, and the attempt to organise the processing of income from operating salt mines. Furthermore, he issued a statute for the Armenians (1519) and strongly intended to harmonise the law across the country.

Between 1530 and 1538 the king issued two statutes defining the rules for the selection of the monarch, which permanently established the election viritim. The laws held that all social groups, regardless of their wealth, could watch the election process (unusquisque qui vellet), and the election was to be free (electio Regis libera).

The king successfully organised the agricultural economy, looked after the development of the royal cities and recovered numerous goods of the treasury belonging to the crown that were under lien. During the financial activities, the king received full support of his wife, Queen Bona, who aimed to expand the royal estates by purchasing and improving economic efficiency.

Chicken War - the rebellion of Lwów

Chicken War by Henryk Rodakowski

The rebellion of Lwów (the so-called Chicken War) was an anti-royalist and anti-absolutist rokosz (rebellion) by the Polish nobility that occurred in 1537. The derisive name was coined by the magnates, who for the most part supported the King and claimed that the "war's" only effect was the near-extinction of the local chickens, eaten by the nobles gathered for the rebellion at Lwów, in Lesser Poland. The nobility, gathered near the city to meet to a levée en masse, called for a military campaign against Moldavia. However, the lesser and middle strata of the nobility called a rebellion, or semi-legal rebellion, to force the King to abandon his risky reforms. The nobles presented him with 36 demands, most notably: a cessation of further land acquisitions by Queen Bona, exemption of the nobility from the tithes, a clean-up of the Treasury rather than its expansion, confirmation and extension of the privileges of the nobility, lifting of the toll or exemption of the nobility from it, adoption of a law concerning incompatibilitas — the incompatibility of certain offices that were not to be joined in the same hand, the carrying out of a law requiring the appointment of only the local nobles to most important local offices and the creation of a body of permanent advisors to the king. Finally, the protesters criticised the role of Queen Bona, whom they blamed for the "bad education" of young Prince Sigismund Augustus (the future King Sigismund II Augustus), as well as for seeking to increase her power and influence in the state.

It soon transpired, however, that the nobility's leaders were divided and that achieving a compromise was almost impossible. Too weak to start a civil war against the King, the protesters finally agreed to what was thought a compromise. The King rejected most of their demands, while accepting the principle of incompatibilitas the following year and agreeing not to force the election of the future king vivente rege, that is, in the lifetime of the reigning king.

Thereupon the nobility returned to their homes, having achieved little.

Foreign politics

European affairs

Sigismund was intermittently at war with Vasily III of Muscovy beginning in 1507, before the Polish army was fully under his command. 1514 marked the fall of Smolensk (then under Lithuanian domination) to the Muscovite forces, which lent credence to his arguments for the necessity of a standing army. Those conflicts formed part of the Muscovite wars.

In 1515 Sigismund entered into an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), Sigismund consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Sigismund's nephew, Louis II.

Worried about the growing ties between the Habsburgs and Russia, in 1524 Sigismund signed a Franco-Polish alliance with King Francis I of France. The agreement fell through, however, when Francis I was vanquished by Charles V at the Battle of Pavia (1525).

After the death of Janusz III of Masovia in 1526, Sigismund succeeded in annexing the Duchy of Masovia to the Kingdom of Poland.

In other matters of policy, Sigismund sought peaceful coexistence with the Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes.

Teutonic Knights

Prussian Homage, by Jan Matejko, 1882. Albrecht Hohenzollern receives the Duchy of Prussia in fief from Poland's King Sigismund I the Old, 1525

The Polish wars against the Teutonic Knights ended in 1525 when Albert, Duke of Prussia, their marshal (and Sigismund's nephew), converted to Lutheranism, secularized the order, and paid homage to Sigismund. In return he was given the domains of the Order as the First Duke of Prussia. This was called the "Prussian Homage".

Succession

On Sigismund's death, his son Sigismund II Augustus became the last Jagiellon king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

Interest in Renaissance movement

Sigismund was interested in Renaissance humanism and the revival of classical antiquity. He and his second consort, Bona Sforza, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, were both patrons of Renaissance culture, which under them began to flourish in Poland and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Portraits and art

• Portraits of Sigismund I
• 
  The Vienna double wedding in 1515. Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. Sigismund I the Old is on the far right.
• 
  Portrait by Hans Süß von Kulmbach, 1511/1518
• 
  As one of the Magi by Joos van Cleve, ca. 1520
• 
  Portrait made by Andreas Jungholz, 1546
• 
  Portrait of Sigismund I in an advanced age by Anonymous Painter, 1550
• 
  Portrait by Lucas Cranach the Younger made in around 1553

Marriages and issue

Medal of Sigismund I the Old.

In 1512, Sigismund married Barbara Zápolya (d. 1515), a Hungarian noblewoman, with whom he had two daughters:

• Electress Hedwig of Brandenburg (15 March 1513 – 7 February 1573), wed 1535 Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg;
• Anna (1 July 1515 – 8 May 1520).

In 1517, Sigismund married Bona Sforza, with whom he had two sons and four daughters:

• Queen Isabella of Hungary (18 January 1519 – 15 September 1559), wed 1539 John Zápolya (d. 1540);
• Sigismund II Augustus (1 August 1520 – 7 July 1572);
• Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg (13 July 1522 – 28 May 1575), wed 22/25 February 1556 Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneberg (d. 11 June 1568);
• Anna I of Poland (18 October 1523 – 9 September 1596), wed 1 May 1576 Stephen Báthory (d. 12 December 1586);
• Queen Catherine of Sweden (1 November 1526 – 16 September 1583), wed 4 October 1562 John, Duke of Finland (later John III of Sweden) (d. 17 November 1592);
• Wojciech Olbracht (b. and d. 20 September 1527).

By his mistress, Katarzyna Telniczanka (d. 1528), he also fathered three children prior to his first marriage:

• Jan (8 January 1499 – 18 February 1538), Bishop of Wilno (1519-1536) and of Poznań (1536-1538);
• Regina (1500/1 – 20 May 1526), wed ca. 20 October 1518 Hieronim Szafraniec, Starost of Cieszyn (d. 1556/59);
• Katarzyna (1503 – before 9 September 1548), wed after 1522 George II Count von Montfort in Pfannberg (d. 1544).

Ancestry

Ancestors of Sigismund I the Old

16. Gediminas of Lithuania 8. Algirdas, King of Lithuania 17. Jewna of Polotsk 4. Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland 18. Alexander I, Grand Prince of Tver 9. Uliana Alexandrovna of Tver 19. Anastasia Yuryevna of Halych 2. Casimir IV Jagiellon, King of Poland 20. Ivan Olgimuntovich, Prince of Halshany 10. Andrew Ivanovich, Prince of Halshany 21. Agrippina 5. Sophia of Halshany 22. Dimitri of Drutsk (possibly Demetrius I Starshy) 11. Alexandra Dimitrijewna of Drutsk 1. Sigismund I the Old 24. Albert III, Duke of Austria 12. Albert IV, Duke of Austria 25. Beatrice of Hohenzollern-Nuremberg 6. Albert II of Germany 26. Albert I, Duke of Bavaria 13. Johanna Sophia of Bavaria 27. Margaret of Brieg 3. Elizabeth of Austria 28. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 14. Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor 29. Elizabeth of Pomerania 7. Elisabeth of Bohemia 30. Hermann II of Celje 15. Barbara of Celje 31. Anna, Countess of Schaunberg

See also

• History of Poland (1385–1569)
• Zygmunt (bell)
• List of Polish monarchs

External links

• Petr Kozák, „Pátý princ“: Kníže Zikmund mezi periferií a centrem jagellonského světa