Everything about Sigismund I The Old totally explained
Sigismund I the Old (; ;
1 January 1467 –
1 April 1548) of the
Jagiellon dynasty reigned as King of
Poland and Grand Duke of
Lithuania from
1506 to his death at age 81 in
1548. Before that, Sigismund had already been invested as Duke of
Silesia.
Biography
The son of King
Casimir IV Jagiellon and
Elisabeth of Austria, Sigismund followed his brothers
John I of Poland and
Alexander I of Poland to the Polish throne. Their elder brother
Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia became king of
Hungary and
Bohemia.
Sigismund was christened the namesake of his mother's maternal grandfather,
Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who had died in 1437.
Sigismund faced the challenge of consolidating internal power in order to face external threats to the country. During Alexander's reign, the law
Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade Kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the
Sejm. This proved crippling to Sigismund's dealings with the
szlachta and
magnates.
Despite this
Achilles heel, he established (
1527) a conscription army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it.
After the death of
Janusz III Mazowiecki in 1526, he succeeded in annexing the
Duchy of Masovia.
Intermittently at war with
Vasily III of
Muscovy, starting in
1507 (before his army was fully under his command),
1514 marked the fall of
Smolensk (under Polish domination) to the Muscovite forces (which lent force to his arguments for the necessity of a standing army). Those conflicts formed part of the
Muscovite wars.
1515 he entered 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.
The Polish wars against the
Teutonic Knights ended in
1525, when
Albert of Brandenburg, 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.
Sigismund's
eldest daughter Jadwiga (Hedwig) (
1513-
1573) married Elector
Joachim II of Brandenburg.
In other matters of policy, Sigismund sought peaceful coexistence with the
Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes.
Sigismund was a
Humanist. He and his third 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.
On Sigismund's death, his son
Sigismund II August became the last Jagiellon king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Sigismund I owed some allegiance to the Imperial
Habsburgs as a member of the
Order of the Golden Fleece.
Image:Lesseur-Zygmunt I Stary.jpg|Sigismund I wearing the Crown of Bolesław the Brave
Image:ZygmuntStary.jpg|Coin with likeness of Sigismund I the Old
Image:Orzeł Zygmunta Starego.JPG|Polish white eagle with Sigismund`s monogram
Trivia
King Sigismund the Old instituted the death penalty for poaching a
Wisent.
Ancestors
Patronage
Image:Święty Stanisław.PNG|King Sigismund I and bishop Tomicki kneeling before St. Stanisław, a leaf form the Hours of Sigismund I by Stanisław Samostrzelnik
Image:Wawel-kaplica1.jpg|The Sigismund's Chapel of the Wawel Cathedral built for Sigismund I between 1517-1533 by Bartolommeo Berrecci
Image:017KrakówWawel.JPG|Wawel Castle courtyard constructed between 1516-1536 on the order of King Sigismund I the Old
Image:Piotrkow (js).jpg|Castle in Piotrków Trybunalski was built for the King between 1512-1519 by Master Benedykt of Sandomierz
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sigismund I The Old'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://sigismund_i_the_old.totallyexplained.com">Sigismund I the Old Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
