Polish literature begins with a hymn to the Holy Virgin (Bogarodzica, Mother of God), the national protectress of the Poles, whose worship pervades their entire life, and whose sacred picture is the essential part of their national coat of arms of the white eagle and their national banner. This hymn is the Polish catechism; it accompanies the schoolboy and the warrior and, in fact, all classes and ages throughout life. This feminine romantic song and the Psalter of Queen Margaret are the oldest monuments of Polish literature.
The later princes and kings of Poland, a dignity bestowed upon them by Otto II., Emperor of Germany, married, for dynastic reasons, Czech, Kief, and German princesses, who, it is true, did not further Polish national life, but broadened Polish culture by contact with other nations. Wladislaw Lokietek (the Short), who about 1312 made Cracow the centre of Poland, being the first monarch crowned there, married Jadwiga, daughter of Boleslaw, Prince of Kalisz. She was an eminent woman, and was buried in the magnificent cathedral at Cracow, where her granite monument still stands.
The early kings favored the common people, who, unfortunately, in later centuries were reduced to servitude, against the szlachta (Geschlechi, nobility), so that in early days the women of the people (naród) attained a high social standard. Especially Casimir the Great, "the king of the peasants," and of the oppressed generally, greatly increased the happiness and prosperity of the nation. He even admitted to his realm the persecuted Jews by virtue of the statute of 1357 (privilegia judaeorum), a favor which, according to an unauthenticated tradition, was due to his love for a beautiful Jewess Esterka (Esther). This great king was legally married three times. He was unhappy in his marriage with Anna Aldona, a Lithuanian princess, a union which remained, however, without political consequences. Anna never felt at home in Poland; she clung to Lithuanian customs, music, and dance. She loved the manly sports of horseback riding and hunting, and during her indulgence in them she was accompanied by Lithuanian flute players. Her Christianity appeared at all times rather doubtful in the eyes of the Polish clergy, and the Church pomp and ceremony were to her very distasteful.
Her husband, to whom she was married almost in his boyhood, led a very licentious life. Theodor Schiemann, the historian of the Slavs, relates how Casimir at the court of Budapest fell in love with Clara von Zach, daughter of a court official. Casimir's sister, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, aided him in seducing the innocent maiden. The father of the latter, maddened by the disgrace, broke into the royal hall to avenge himself upon the betrayers of his child, and wounded the royal couple, but he was finally slain. A terrible judgment was passed upon all the members of the family of Zach: Clara herself was mutilated and chased, as a beast might be, to death, but her royal seducer did not interpose a barrier to her punishment. This event throws a lurid light on the mediæval court life in Hungary and Poland.
After the death of Lithuanian Anna, Casimir betrothed himself to Margareth of Bavaria, who is said to have died of grief at the approaching marriage to the hated Polish king. His next wife, Adelheid of Hesse, was neglected and ill treated, and when the king married another woman, Christina Rokiczan, she left Poland forever. Christina shared the fate of her predecessor, and the king married in 1365 Hedwig, Duchess of Sagan, during the lifetime of his undivorced wife Adelheid. The Pope, however, who had at first called that marriage "a public disgrace," granted him a divorce from his former wife to legitimatize the new union. We may draw interesting comparisons between that otherwise great and tolerant but morally depraved Polish king and Henry VIII. of England.
The first great Polish woman in the glowing light of history is Jadwiga, daughter of King Louis of Hungary and Poland, the legitimate queen of Poland in default of a male heir, crowned on October 15, 1384, in the Cathedral of Cracow. Betrothed in her childhood to an Austrian prince, who now came to Cracow and quickly won her heart and actually consummated the marriage, she was nevertheless compelled by the Polish nobles, who hated the German and forced him to flee for his life, to accept Jagiello, the supreme duke of the Lithuanians, a still barbarous, pagan people, but whose power extended down to Kief. This union was a political stroke of the first magnitude. Jagiello and the Lithuanians became Christianized in the Latin form, the united countries became the greatest power in eastern Europe, and therewith the overwhelming might of the Teutonic Order was broken forever. The dynasty of the Jagiellos was founded and reigned supreme in Poland for two hundred years (1386-1572). When Jadwiga, a great queen and woman, died in 1399, the Poles, otherwise unruly, retained as their ruler King Wladislaw Jagiello, who from a great but savage pagan had become a good Christian and a strong statesman. The destruction of the Teutonic Order in the battle of Tannenberg, 1410, one of the greatest and most decisive battles in history, insured for centuries the hegemony of Poland in eastern Europe. Of this battle we have an interesting letter from Jagiello to Anna, his second wife, whom he addressed from the camp on the battlefield as "noble princess, illustrious and dear consort": "We slew numberless enemies, not through the strength of Our arm, or the multitude of Our warriors, but solely with the aid of Our Lord, who may further us in power and virtue!" This document not only shows Jagiello's adherence to Christianity, but also proves the respect paid to a Polish queen, even though she was inferior to Jadwiga, who was the reorganizer and refounder not only of a mighty realm, but also of the famous old University of Cracow, which before her time had sunk into complete insignificance. She had obtained in 1397 a papal bull for the foundation of a theological faculty, and insured the existence of the university for the future by rich legacies bequeathed on her deathbed.
One century and a half later a royal romance with a tragic ending was enacted in Poland. King Sigismund (Augustus) II. (1547-1572), on the death of his first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I., married secretly Barbara Radziwil, of the most illustrious Lithuanian family. On his accession to the throne he avowed his marriage, and the princess accompanied him to Cracow to attend the funeral of his father. The diet of Piotrkow believing a union with a foreign princess more profitable to Poland, demanded the annulment of his marriage with Barbara, but the king resisted, and saw her crowned as his queen in 1550. Six months after her coronation, however, she died suddenly, probably poisoned by her mother-in-law, the hated Italian, Bona Sforza, who as queen had exercised a baneful influence upon Polish life. The unfortunate Queen Barbara is idealized in Polish lays, and the portraits preserved of her show beauty of form and features.
It may be interesting to note the relation of the great Polish king Jan Sobieski (1674-1696), the liberator of Vienna, and in truth of Europe, from the Turkish conquerors, to his wife, who exercised an almost complete dominion over him. We have an admirable description of the Polish court at the time of Sobieski; of his extraordinary wife and daughter, and of social affairs there, in a report by a contemporary, an anonymous French abbé, whose manuscript was found in the Bibliothèque Mazarin, in Paris, and was published for the first time in 1858. He describes the Polish nobility as turbulent in the Diet and at home, tells of their luxury and their habits, the high esteem in which ladies of high birth were held, and the scandalous treatment of peasant women, as well as the absolute power of the szlachta over the life and honor of the serfs and their women.
Sobieski's wife was a French woman, but she became completely Polonized: Marie Casimire d'Arquien, originally maid of honor of Marie Louise, wife of Wladislaw and of his brother Casimir successively, had been married first to the Polish magnate Zamoiski, and after his death to Sobieski. She is said to have induced her royal consort to assist Austria against the Turks, very much against the wishes of Louis XIV. of France, who desired the power of Austria to be broken forever. The King of France had incurred her ill will by refusing to elevate her father to the rank of a duke. The queen had the strongest Polish interests and sympathies; the letters of Sobieski to her are all in Polish; they are of the greatest historical value, as the king informs her constantly of his progress; also the personal element in them is highly interesting; they abound in words of endearment: "My charming and incomparable Mariette." "Only joy of my soul." The queen, though beautiful and passionately loved by Sobieski, was an avaricious, despotic, jealous, revengeful woman. After the death of the great king she lived in Italy and France, and died in 1716 in the castle of Blois which Louis XIV. had given to her. Her remains rest with those of Sobieski in the Cathedral of Cracow.
The description of the decline of Poland under the Saxon kings, of the political and moral decay of the country under foreign rulers, does not belong to our theme, since the national element in the social life of the unfortunate country is wanting.