Legenda Zygmunta Augusta i jego żony Barbary w birżańskiej linii Radziwiłłów
The Legend of Sigismund II Augustus and His Wife Barbara in the Birże Line of the Radziwiłł Family

Author(s): Mariola Jarczykowa
Subject(s): Cultural history, Modern Age, Recent History (1900 till today), 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Present Times (2010 - today), History of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Radziwiłłs; Barbara Radziwiłł; Sigismund II Augustus; literary legend; occasional literature
Summary/Abstract: The Radziwiłłs from Birże commemorated their relative Barbara and her second husband, the king Sigismund II Augustus in the 17th century. The paper discusses literary works from that time that both referred to this marriage and emphasized the honour of the whole Lithuanian family closely related to the Jagiellonian dynasty resulting from this relationship. Walerian Gorzycki, Filip Bajewski, Samuel Dowgird from Pogowie were the authors who mentioned Barbara Radziwiłł in their laudatory verses devoted to the prince Krzysztof Radziwiłł and his son Janusz. Salomon Rysiński wrote an entire chapter about her, which was published in his biographical book concerning the Radziwiłłs. Moreover, the queen was mentioned in Augustyn Wituński’s sermon delivered at the funeral of Katarzyna, the first wife of Janusz Radziwiłł. In the dedication to "The Gdańsk Bible" [pol. "Biblia gdańska"], the prince Krzysztof Radziwiłł, a patron of Protestants in Lithuania and the author of that introductory text, described his ancestor who offered the earlier translation of the Bible to the king Sigismund II Augustus. Furthermore, at the end of the 17th century the author of "The Life of Bogusław Radziwiłł" [pol. "Żywot [...] Bogusława Radziwiłła"] wrote briefly about close ties of some of the Radziwiłłs – Mikołaj Czarny and Mikołaj Rudy – with the royal court. All these laudatory and epistolary writings portray the king and his wife very favourably as their authors tried to prove the importance of the Radziwiłłs and to counteract a black legend of the most infamous daughter of this family.

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