When Emperor Maximilian died on January 12, 1519
the states of Lower and Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia,
and Carniola refused to give homage
until their rights and privileges were confirmed.
Maximilian had used a thousand ducats to persuade
the German electors to choose his grandson Charles as his
successor, and according to rumor Charles used more than
two tons of Hapsburg gold to outbid France’s King François.
He was crowned Emperor Charles V on October 26, 1520,
but the Austrians refused to recognize the Old Regiment
in Vienna, preferring their own.
The new Sultan Suleiman left Istanbul (Constantinople)
on May 10, 1521, and his army took over Sabacz on July 10
and then besieged Belgrade by the end of the month.
On August 25 Charles V and Henry VIII of England
confirmed their alliance in a treaty at Bruges.
In 1521 Charles gave the Hapsburg hereditary lands
of Lower Austria to his younger brother Ferdinand to govern,
and the next year he added Tyrol with its silver mines.
Confirmed by the Convention of Brussels on February 7, 1522,
this put Archduke Ferdinand in charge of Austria, Carinthia,
Carniola, Styria, and Tyrol and gave
his descendants the right to inherit Austria.
Both Charles and Ferdinand were brought up
in Spain and did not speak German.
In 1515 Ferdinand had been betrothed to Anna,
princess of Bohemia and Hungary.
The Hapsburgs tried to suppress religious reformers,
and in 1524 Kaspar Tauber was executed in Vienna.
The Anabaptists managed to establish the Moravian Brethren.
After the Ottoman Turks defeated the Hungarians
on August 29, 1526, Ferdinand I of Austria was elected
King of Bohemia in October, King of Hungary in December,
and King of Croatia in January 1527.
That year Ferdinand established a Privy Council and an
Aulic Council as a supreme court of justice
and a Court Chancellery to administer the government.
On September 27 his army with few losses defeated
the Hungarians led by Janos Zapolya at Tarcal
while the Hungarians suffered 5,000 casualties.
The Austrians defeated them again in March 1528,
and Zapolya fled and became a vassal of the Ottoman empire.
Sultan Suleiman’s army of 120,000 besieged Vienna
from September 27, 1529 until October 15 when the Turks
withdrew for the winter after losing
15,000 men killed, captured, or wounded.
Charles V lost the duchy of Burgundy in the
Peace of Cambrai on August 3, 1529.
On February 24, 1530 Pope Clement VII crowned Charles
Holy Roman Emperor, and he was the last person
to be so crowned by a pope.
Ferdinand was elected King of the Romans as successor
on January 5, 1531, and in February the Protestant princes
responded to the crowning of another Catholic by forming
the Schmalkaldic League.
Ferdinand married Anna of Bohemia and Hungary on May 25.
In 1534 he organized criminal justice under four district courts.
In 1532 the Turks again advanced toward Vienna,
and Charles V asked the Nuremberg Diet
to provide an imperial army in defense.
The Turkish invasion was stopped in 1533,
but Ferdinand agreed to a treaty that divided Hungary
with the Hapsburg portion in the west and Zapolya’s
kingdom in the east under the Ottoman Empire.
The Protestant Germans with support from France
and England invaded Württemberg
and forced the Hapsburgs to surrender in 1534.
On April 14, 1536 the Fuggers loaned Charles 100,000 ducats
at 14% interest that would be repaid in bullion from America.
He borrowed another 100,000 ducats
from them on February 26, 1537,
and a well provided fleet arrived at Seville.
That year the Empire began minting
the lighter gold coin called the escudo.
In 1537 Ferdinand began trying to regain his territory
in Hungary against the Zapolyas in Eastern Hungary,
and Bohemian and Hungarian lands
were exempted from the Aulic Council.
In the treaty of Nagyvarad in 1538 Ferdinand persuaded
Zapolya to recognize him as his successor,
though this was cancelled two years later
when Zapolya had a son.
Ferdinand reacted by invading Hungary, but the regent,
Bishop Gyorgy Martinuzzi of Varad, appealed to
Sultan Suleiman who marched an army into Hungary
and drove the Austrians back to western Hungary.
To avoid more war Ferdinand agreed
to pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire.
In 1543 he made a treaty with Poland and married
his daughter Elisabeth to Prince Zygmunt Augustus of Poland.
Ferdinand now could speak German,
Spanish, Latin, Czech, and Hungarian.
To counter the Protestant Schmalkaldic League,
the Catholics formed the League of Nuremberg
on June 10, 1538.
Moritz of Saxony withdrew from the Schmalkaldic League
in 1542 to support Charles V in his war against France.
That year the Estates General of the united territories met
to pay for the Turkish wars,
and the Bohemians were asked to pay two-thirds.
In 1545 Ferdinand had run out of resources
and asked Suleiman for a truce.
In the armistice of 1547 Ferdinand agreed to pay the
Turks 30,000 ducats annually to keep the peace.
In 1549 Martinuzzi changed his policy to recognize
Ferdinand’s claim to Eastern Hungary,
and Hapsburg armies invaded there.
In the Weissenburg treaty of 1551 Zapolya’s widow Isabella
and young Janos II Zsigmond Zapolya abdicated in Hungary.
Ferdinand betrothed his daughter to Janos II and recognized
him as his vassal in Eastern Hungary
which came to be called Transylvania.
When Cardinal Martinuzzi went back to Suleiman for support,
Ferdinand approved his execution
for treason by his General Castaldo.
Pope Julius III excommunicated Ferdinand and Castaldo;
but Ferdinand sent 87 articles of treason and the testimony
of 116 witnesses, and the Pope
ended the excommunications in 1555.
The war between the Hapsburgs and the Turks went on
for five years until 1556 when the Hungarian nobles
at the Diet of Szaszsebes elected
Janos II King of Eastern Hungary.
Meanwhile Protestants had spread to Slovenian Carniola.
Emperor Charles V persuaded Pope Clement VII
to summon a General Council at Trent
near Hapsburg territory in 1545.
The imperial army defeated the Schmalkaldic League
at Mühlfeld in 1547, enabling Charles to impose the
Interim of Augsburg in 1548 to re-establish
the Catholic faith in the Empire.
In 1550 at Konigsberg a defensive alliance against the
Hapsburgs was formed and led by Hans of Küstrin,
Johann Albrecht of Mecklenburg, and Duke Albrecht of Prussia.
French envoys negotiated with Moritz (Maurice) of Saxony
and made an agreement at Lochau on October 5, 1551
which led to the Protestant princes allied with
Henri II of France in the treaty of Chambord on
January 15, 1552 joining with Wilhelm of Hesse
and Johann Albrecht of Mecklenburg on February 19.
In 1552 the Emperor’s former ally Moritz of Saxony
led a mostly Protestant army to stop Charles
who managed to escape being captured at Innsbruck.
Emperor Charles V besieged Metz in December;
but this failed in January 1553, and Charles resigned
his political positions at the start of 1555.
The Peace of Augsburg established the principle that
in the Empire the religion of the ruler
was to be the religion of his subjects.
This was signed by Ferdinand as Charles refused to do so
but instead resigned as ruler of the Netherlands in 1555
and of Spain in 1556, yielding his imperial office
to Ferdinand on August 27.
Charles retired in Spain and died in 1558.
Ferdinand did not go to Rome to be
crowned Emperor by the Pope.
He supported the Catholic counter-reformation
and had invited Jesuits to Vienna in 1551.
In 1556 the Aulic War Council was formed to organize
the Hungarian campaign against the Turks,
and the Court Chancellery became imperial rather than Austrian.
In 1557 the Hapsburg army defeated
the French at St. Quentin and took over Italy.
In 1562 Ferdinand tried to reconcile with Protestants
at the Council of Trent, but the Catholics rejected his proposal.
He designated his son Maximilian as his heir in the Empire,
Bohemia, and Hungary, and he gave Upper Austria
to his son Ferdinand and Inner Austria to his son Charles.
Ferdinand became more interested in the Protestant religion,
and he was frustrated that Rome
would not accept more reforms.
He died of a fever on July 25, 1564.
Emperor Maximilian II (1564-76) mastered
the six major languages of Europe
and agreed to a truce with the Turks in 1568.
That year he granted the Lower Austrian estates the right
to exercise the Augsburg Confession, and in 1571 he legalized
the Protestant religion in Lower Austria and made concessions
in Protestant Bohemia.
On October 7, 1571 the Holy League of Catholic nations
defeated the Ottoman’s armada at Lepanto.
One of the commanders was Johann of Austria,
the illegitimate son of Charles V.
Maximilian believed in religious tolerance and made
concessions, and Bohemians adopted the Confession of 1575.
He sent his sons to be educated
in the court of Felipe II of Spain.
Maximilian resided in Vienna while his son
Rudolf lived at the royal castle in Prague.
Maximilian II was preparing to invade Poland
when he died at Regensburg on October 12, 1576.
On October 27, 1575 Maximilian II’s son Rudolf
was elected King of the Romans.
He had been crowned King of Hungary in 1572
and King of Bohemia on September 22, 1575.
Rudolf II (1576-1612) succeeded his father
Maximilian II as Holy Roman Emperor.
Usually the archduchy of Austria had been shared
by the brothers, but Rudolf did not share the government
but in 1578 only provided them with annual pensions,
establishing primogeniture in the Hapsburg succession.
Rudolf had been educated by Jesuits at the court of Spain,
and he promoted the Catholic religion
as well as science and the arts.
He invited to his court the astronomer and alchemist
Tycho Brahe and the astrologer and astronomer
Johannes Kepler who was the first to publish
a defense of the Copernican system.
Rudolf’s son also studied in Spain, and his younger brother
Maximilian III became master of the Teutonic Order
and regent of Inner Austria and Tyrol.
Ernst ruled Lower Austria and Inner Austria
and he governed the Netherlands for Felipe II until 1595.
The cleric Melchior Khlesl led the
Counter Reformation in Lower Austria.
Rudolf II announced he would continue his father’s policy
of tolerating Protestants, but he had three
prominent ministers expelled from Vienna.
Religious conflict in Inner Austria in 1578 revived the Catholics.
Rudolf II had renewed Maximilian’s
armistice with the Sultan in 1584.
When the Hapsburg government levied a tax for a war
against the Turks in 1531, Wilhelm Reublin opposed the
autocratic Widemann and advised against paying what he
called “blood money” because “there is little or no difference
between slaying with our own hands and strengthening
and directing someone else when we give him
our money (to slay) in our stead.”1
This idea influenced Jacob Hutter,
who had become an Anabaptist in Tyrol in 1526.
As he took over the leadership of the Austerlitz community
from Widemann, they began to develop
a communitarian way of living together.
Many Hutterites migrated from Tyrol to Moravia,
hoping to find religious tolerance from the Hussite tradition;
but in 1535 they were persecuted and refused
to give in to any form of violence.
Hutter wrote to the governor of Moravia,
Ere we would knowingly do injustice
to anybody for a penny’s worth,
we would rather suffer to be deprived
of a hundred florins….
And ere we would strike our worst enemy
with our hand, let alone with pike, sword,
or halberd, as the world does,
we would rather die
and have our lives taken from us.
Moreover, we do not possess material arms,
neither pike nor gun, as anybody may
well see and which is known everywhere.2
Hutter himself was burned at the stake on February 25, 1536.
His followers continued to practice communal sharing
because they believed that private property
was the root of human conflict.
Their fellowship spread and grew in the next century
to more than twenty thousand members
in about a hundred Brüderhofe communities.
Hutterite ideas on nonviolence were explained well
by Peter Ridemann, who wrote his Account of Our Religion,
Doctrine, and Faith (Rechenschaft)
while he was in a Hessian prison in 1540 and 1541.
He agreed with the Schleitheim Confession that no Christian
is a ruler, and no ruler is a Christian, and so Christians
in abandoning the sword must divest themselves of authority.
Ridemann considered the Hutterites a separate people
in a world of sin who endeavored
to preserve the Christ’s message intact.
Not only would they not fight in wars, but their metallurgists
would not manufacture any weapons such as swords, spears,
and muskets so as not to be “partakers of other men’s sins.”
Knives and axes could be used as tools because
they were not made for slaying and harming.
Ridemann also said they refused to pay taxes that were
raised for the purpose of war,
although they did pay taxes for useful purposes.
Starting in the 1570s the Hapsburg war with Turkey led to
government confiscation of Hutterite property
to cover their taxes, and this happened again in 1584.
Lajos (Louis) II had married Mary of Austria in 1515
and succeeded his father as King of Hungary in 1516.
Palatine Perényi died in 1519, and the nobility chose
Istvan (Stephen) VII Bathory to succeed him.
He was supported by Count Janos Zapolya,
but some barons formed a league against them in 1522.
After Sultan Selim I died in 1520,
Hungary did not renew the truce.
Sultan Suleiman led the Ottoman invasion of Hungary
in May 1521 and besieged Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade),
which fell on August 29.
The Turks also took Sabac and Zimony.
That year the Estates devalued the currency
which caused a reduction in revenues such that the
government stopped minting money in 1525.
The Turks continued to advance, and by the end of 1523
Hungary’s annual revenue was down to 88,000 florins.
Only the Holy See was still sending financial aid regularly.
The Diet of 1523 ordered that the followers of Luther
should be punished with loss of life and property.
Archbishop Ladislaus Szalkai was Palatine and Chancellor
and formed a league to stop
the nobility as civil war threatened.
The government was replaced as the nobles elected
Istvan Werboczy to be Palatine and Paul Vardai to replace
Szalkai as Chancellor and Archbishop of Esztergom.
At the Diet in April 1526 Queen Mary of Hungary
triumphed as Werboczy and Szobi were convicted of treason.
Istvan VII Bathory became Palatine of Hungary
again and in 1529 Vajda of Transylvania.
Also in April 1526 Sultan Suleiman launched another
invasion of Hungary with 80,000 troops.
In August they crossed the Drava River without resistance.
King Lajos II arrived with an army of 25,000 men.
On the plain south of Mohacs on August 29 the Ottoman
forces defeated the Hungarians, and Lajos was drowned.
Hungary lost a thousand infantry, almost all the cavalry,
many barons, and most of the bishops.
The Turks occupied Buda on September 10, but by the end
of October they returned across the Danube River
with more than 100,000 captives.
The Hapsburg Ferdinand I of Austria was proclaimed
King of Bohemia at Prague on October 24,
and the Diet of Pozsony elected him
King of Hungary on December 17.
However, Archbishop Peter Perenyi crowned Zapolya
King of Hungary on November 11, 1526.
Yet Ferdinand’s army captured Buda the next summer
and defeated Zapolya at Tokay on September 26, 1527.
Zapolya fled to Poland, England, and France,
but early in 1528 Suleiman recognized him as King
and promised him military support against the Hapsburgs.
In November the Archbishop crowned
Ferdinand King of Hungary.
Also in 1528 the Hungarian Chamber was established
to manage royal finances,
and in 1531 it was moved to Pozsony.
In March 1529 Germans meeting at Innsbruck voted
to give 120,000 Rhenish guilders to defend against the Turks,
and in May the Diet of Speyer authorized
an army of 16,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry.
Suleiman led his army of 200,000 men
and met Zapolya at Mohacs.
They captured Buda, and Zapolya resumed power there
and went with the Turkish army on its march to Vienna
which they reached by September.
Zapolya appointed the Venetian banker Aloise Gritti treasurer,
commander-in-chief, and regent.
King Ferdinand transferred the
Hungarian Chancellery to Vienna.
When Palatine Istvan VII Bathory died in 1530,
Ferdinand eliminated that office and replaced him
with a royal lieutenant who was chairman of a council.
In 1532 Suleiman moved his army north
but met resistance at Koszeg.
The Turks invaded Styria before returning to Hungary.
In 1536 an Ottoman army invaded eastern Slavonia
and held it against a Hapsburg attack the next year.
From the late 1530s on the Reformation spread in Hungary.
The priest Peter Méliusz Juhasz helped Calvinism
become the most popular creed.
The Catholic establishment remained but as a small minority
despite efforts to implement the reforms of the Council of Trent.
Biblical scholarship simulated a Hungarian-Latin dictionary
and the first Hungarian grammars in 1539 and 1549.
On February 24, 1538 Ferdinand and Janos Zapolya
agreed by the treaty of Nagyvárad to divide Hungary
with Zapolya getting the eastern two-thirds,
but he died on July 22, 1540.
He had married Isabella,
daughter of King Zygmunt I Jagiello, in 1539.
Their infant son was elected King Janos II as the
Treasurer Gyorgy Martinuzzi, Bishop of Varad, governed.
In August 1541 the Ottoman army captured Buda and took
over eastern Hungary, making Zapolya a vassal of Suleiman
while the Turks also took over one-third of Hungary.
This ended fifteen years of civil war in Hungary.
Sultan Suleiman gave the land east of the Tisza River
to Isabella and Janos II which
became the new state of Transylvania.
In 1542 Margrave Joachim of Brandenburg with an army
of 55,000 tried to regain Buda but could not even enter Pest.
Suleyman arrived and conquered Valpo, Siklos,
Szekesfehervar, and Esztergom
on the bank of the Danube River.
In 1543 King Ferdinand allowed the palatinal lieutenant
to be elected, but he was still
subordinate to the royal lieutenant.
Borders were set during a truce on June 19, 1547
when Sultan Suleiman and Emperor Charles V
agreed to an armistice for five years.
Ferdinand had to pay the Turks 30,000 gold florins
as taxes from his portion of Hungary.
That year peasants regained the right to migrate temporarily
and it became permanent in 1556.
After 1550 many people were forced to pay taxes to the
Ottoman Empire, Hungary, the Church, and their landlords.
On July 19, 1551 the treaty signed at Weissenburg recognized
Ferdinand as ruler of Hungary and Transylvania,
replacing Zapolya’s widow Isabella Jagiello with Janos II
Zsigmond Zapolya who ruled Eastern Hungary
or Transylvania as Ferdinand’s vassal.
Pasha Kara Ahmed led the siege of Temesvar
which surrendered on July 27, 1552.
By 1556 King Ferdinand had soldiers in about fifty forts,
and that year they established the Military Court Council.
The Hapsburgs were determined to keep Hungary from
becoming part of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1556
the Diet of Szaszsebes made Janos II Prince of Transylvania.
In 1559 the Hungarian Chancellery informed the
Austrian court that the ordinances from their German
chancellery would no longer be valid in Hungary.
When the war against the Turks resumed in 1566,
Suleyman sent Prince Janos II Zsigmond of Transylvania
to attack northern Hungary while his two armies advanced.
Pasha Pertev’s 30,000 men took two months
to conquer the fort Gyula.
On February 17, 1568 the second Peace of Edirne
ended the war, and Transylvania became independent.
In 1570 by the Speyer treaty Janos II Zsigmond Zapolya
agreed to renounce Hungary, and Maximilian
recognized him as the Prince of Transylvania.
After Janos II died on March 10, 1571,
Istvan Batory (1533-86) ruled Transylvania
and later Poland as Stefan Batory.
Emperor Maximilian II’s son Rudolf was crowned
King of Hungary in 1572, and he secured
the succession of the Bohemian throne in 1575.
On October 17 Rudolf was unanimously elected Roman King.
In 1574 Maximilian renewed the peace
with the new Sultan Murad III.
Bohemia took over Moravia in the 10th century
and since the 14th century included Silesia
and Upper and Lower Lusatia.
These five lands were governed by a king and a General Diet,
but Bohemia controlled the Crown, the Royal Council,
the Chancellery, and the Aulic Court.
King Lajos II came to Bohemia from Hungary in 1522,
and he dismissed the tyrannical and corrupt
Burgrave Zdenek Lev of Rozmital, making people happy.
Jan of Wartenberg became burgrave, and the King appointed
Duke Karel of Münsterberg to be regent.
Lajos II was killed in the battle at Mohacs,
and the news reached Prague on September 9, 1526.
On October 24 the Diet elected Archduke Ferdinand I
of Austria King of Bohemia,
and he ruled until his death in 1564.
Regent Karel favored Utraquists (Hussites)
and reached out to Lutherans in Germany.
Ferdinand asked Pope Clement VII
for financial aid and reinstated Lev of Rozmital.
He claimed the inheritance of Lord Petr of Rosenberg
and started a feud against that family which divided the country.
Ferdinand was busy trying to defend Hungary against
the Turks, but he tried to unite the Catholics with the Hussites
in order to stop the spread of the Lutherans.
In 1527 he established the Chamber Court with
bureaucrats directly responsible to him,
and they could issue documents without the chancellor.
They administered the royal property and debts
and prepared financial proposals for the Diet.
Other areas were also governed by Moravia’s master of rents,
the Silesian Chamber, and the captains of the two Lusatias.
In 1528 Ferdinand required the convocation
of local assemblies to get royal permission.
In 1534 the King granted the nobles
the right to mine their own lands.
In 1537 Ferdinand called a meeting of the Romanists
and Utraquists who forced several
of the Bohemian Brethren to retire.
The King wanted two bishops, one Catholic and the other
Utraquist; but the Catholics would not agree to equality,
and the Utraquists became more Lutheran.
In 1541 a fire at Prague destroyed state documents,
and Ferdinand persuaded the Estates
to accept his rule as hereditary rather than elected.
The nobility paid taxes on real property and on income
from feudal dues, but townsmen paid only on real property.
After 1542 tax was collected on the income
and real property of peasants.
Also in 1542 the Bohemian lands raised mercenary armies
of 10,000 cavalry and 14,000 infantry.
In 1545 Ferdinand negotiated a peace treaty with the
Ottoman Empire, stopping the war for a while.
He aided his brother Emperor Charles V by attacking
the lands of the Elector of Saxony; but the Diet opposed
the invasion, and the Bohemian troops
refused to cross the border.
On January 12, 1547 Ferdinand summoned troops again,
but only a few Romanists and Utraquists came.
The citizens of Prague led a revolt
that was supported by nobles and knights.
They demanded that a Diet be called, and the Estates met
at Prague on March 18 and formulated 57 articles to revive
the elective and limited monarchy
and to proclaim religious liberty.
They elected a committee of twelve from the three estates
but did not try to attack the King;
four of the nobles and knights on the
committee were Bohemian Brethren.
The Estates equipped an army and appointed
Kaspar Pflug von Rabstein to command,
instructing him to go to the Saxony border.
He went to Joachimsthal
but did not enter Germany without an order.
After Charles V defeated the Protestants at Mühlberg
on April 24, 1547, the Bohemian troops dispersed.
Ferdinand demanded that the Estates not negotiate with
Protestant princes in Germany, and he marched
to Prague with his imperial forces.
The capital capitulated on July 8.
Ferdinand limited the privileges that curtailed his authority
and appointed royal judges to control the municipalities
of Bohemia, and he took over the mines of royal towns.
Pflug fled, but four rebels in Prague
were beheaded in the square on August 20.
Ferdinand summoned the Diet on that bloody day
and confiscated landed estates.
He blamed the rebellion on religious sects, especially the
Unity of the Bohemian Brethren which was democratic
and had gained great influence.
On October 8 he re-enacted laws aimed at the Brethren.
Meetings were prohibited, and they were ordered to make
restitution to the Catholics or Utraquists
for churches they had taken.
Estates of nobles were confiscated,
and Brethren were imprisoned or driven into exile.
Unity Bishop Augusta was falsely accused and tortured
in the White Tower at Prague
and imprisoned in a dungeon for sixteen years.
In 1548 Ferdinand created the Council on Appeals
so that they could discuss cases from throughout the kingdom,
but only the courts of the royal towns, the noble courts
of the Lusatias, and some Silesian duchies submitted them.
In February 1549 Archduke Maximilian
was recognized as heir by the Bohemian Estates.
King Ferdinand departed and left his
second son Archduke Ferdinand to govern.
In 1556 King Ferdinand established the Jesuits in Bohemia,
but 22 years later they still had only 40 members.
King Ferdinand succeeded Charles V as Emperor in 1558,
and his son Maximilian was crowned King of Bohemia in 1562.
Ferdinand had been negotiating with Pope Pius IV
a reconciliation of moderate Utraquists
with the Catholic Church when he died on July 25, 1564.
Emperor Maximilian II (1564-76) was also
King of Hungary and Bohemia, and he let Archduke
Ferdinand continue governing in Bohemia.
Maximilian visited in 1567 to assemble the Estates
and get aid against the Turks.
He left religious questions to the Pope and the Church.
He authorized Church reforms and included the
Lutheran Church and the Unity of the Bohemian Brethren.
From 1569 to 1575 a sales tax of one-thirtieth was imposed.
The salt trade became a royal monopoly in the 1570s.
Georgius Agricola has been called the “father of mineralogy,”
and his De Re Metallica was published in 1566,
the year after his death.
He described various mining methods used in central Europe.
Because of the war against the Turks,
Maximilian II summoned the Estates for support again in 1575.
Lutherans allied with the Bohemian Brethren and presented
the Bohemian Confession based on the
Augsburg Confession, and it was adopted.
The Consistory Council continued, and Lutherans were
exempted from its jurisdiction, being allowed fifteen defenders
from the three estates to supervise their Church.
The papal nuncio persuaded the Utraquist Consistory
to renounce the teachings of Jan Hus.
Maximilian’s son Rudolf was crowned King of Bohemia
at Prague on September 22, 1575, and he became
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II on October 12, 1576.
He moved his court to Prague in 1583.
Poland and Lithuania had been reunited in 1501
when Lithuania’s Grand Duke Alexandras
became King of Poland as well.
He died in 1506, and his brother Sigismund
(Zygmunt in Polish and Zygimantas in Lithuanian)
succeeded him in both positions and would rule until 1548.
At the coronation ceremony the Polish king was required
to declare that he would defend the Catholic Church
and her ministers and that he would rule the
kingdom according to justice with God’s aid.
Hungary and Bohemia were ruled by childless
Lajos II (1516-26), and they were associated with the
Poland-Lithuanian Empire under the
Jagiellon dynasty (1440-1572) until 1526.
Russia fought another war against Lithuania and Poland.
On March 10, 1517 Russia allied with the Teutonic
Grand-master Albrecht, and they defeated the
Polish-Lithuanian army at Opoczka in Pskov.
The Muscovites attacked Polock,
but a Polish army defeated them in July 1518.
Bona Sforza brought a large fortune from Milan and married
Zygmunt I on April 18, 1518 and was crowned queen.
She used her wealth to buy land in Poland and Lithuania
to increase her political influence, and she founded towns,
promoted agricultural trade, and introduced better economic
management on her properties,
using the profits to invest in Mazovia.
She also brought the Italian crops of
parsley, lettuce, and cauliflower to Poland.
In 1518 Zygmunt renounced his right to arbitrate.
The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I had allied
with Zygmunt in 1515, but he died on January 12, 1519.
Sultan Selim renewed his armistice
with Poland on October 1 for three years.
Three Muscovite armies invaded
and ravaged Lithuania as far as Krewo.
Lithuanian delegates signed an armistice
on September 2, 1520, and negotiations in Moscow
led to a five-year peace treaty on September 14, 1522
which was later extended to the end of 1533.
Border skirmishes provoked Zygmunt to recruit an army
to invade Prussia, and in December 1519 Hetman
(Commander) Firley led 4,000 mercenaries
who occupied Pomerania.
The following May they attacked Konigsberg, but the
Teutonic Grand Master was saved
by Danish and German mercenaries.
The Prussians retaliated by invading Poland in October 1520
with 10,000 men led by Schonburg and Isenburg,
and they seized Miedzyrzecz, Chojnice, Starogard, and Tczew;
but they suffered losses when trying
to take Danzig (Gdansk) in November.
In 1521 Duke Albrecht of Prussia invaded Chelmno,
but negotiations produced the Torun truce on April 5
which allowed the Reformation to proceed.
Zygmunt’s edict on March 7, 1523 increased the penalties
against spreading Luther’s ideas to burning at the stake.
An edict on August 22 authorized
searching homes for heretical books.
On July 5, 1525 Albrecht decreed that the holy Gospel
was to be preached on pain of exile.
The Duke established in Konigsberg a university to educate
Protestant ministers and a press which printed thousands
of Polish religious pamphlets and books.
In 1525 Mazovia tried to keep reforms out as the
Warsaw City Council and decreed death and confiscation
of property for possessing or reading
Luther’s writings or for teaching them.
The monk James Knade had been preaching reform in Danzig
since 1518, and by 1522 conservative nobles (szlachta)
and the radicals had a majority for the Lutheran reforms.
Conservatives were led by the Franciscan friar Alexander
and the radicals by the preacher James Hegge
who criticized the Church in July 1522.
The conservative government freed the monks and nuns
from vows while restraining them from preaching,
hearing confessions, soliciting donations, and visiting homes.
Jan Laski at Danzig in March 1524
concluded an alliance with Denmark.
Danzig controlled four-fifths of Poland’s foreign trade.
Most of the Polish profits were spent on the
luxuries of the nobles and grand buildings.
Early in 1524 the aristocratic Danzig City Council
was replaced by radicals who closed monasteries
and convents, abolished Roman rituals, confiscated
Church property, and appointed Lutheran preachers.
Catholic King Zygmunt reacted by leading a force to Danzig,
decapitating fifteen radical leaders, and restoring
the conservatives and Roman worship.
Yet people had become Lutherans,
and the King finally accepted that in 1540.
Many Teutonic knights converted to Lutheranism.
The Grand Master asked Zygmunt to take Prussia
into Poland with himself as a duke, and he did homage
at Krakow on April 10, 1525.
That year the Polish Sejm of Piotrkow authorized
special taxes for a war against the Teutonic Order in Livonia.
Lithuanians allied with Crimean Tatars in the
war against Russia which ended in 1520.
In the peace agreement of 1522 Lithuania ceded to Russia
some of its Ruthenian lands including Smolensk.
Pawel Kaufmann headed a metallurgical consortium
from 1525 and controlled royal finances.
He was succeeded by his nephew
Seweryn Boner (1486-1549).
The Latin poet Andrzej Krzycki satirized Luther,
and in 1519 he and Bishop Jan Lubranski of Poznan
founded the humanistic college Lubranscianum.
That year Armenian law was codified.
Poland got a new law code in 1523,
and Church law was codified in 1527.
The First Lithuanian Statute was published
on September 29, 1529,
granting consultation to the Great Council.
In 1526 Poland annexed Mazovia, and Zygmunt
confirmed the privileges of the nobles (szlachta)
in Warsaw and received their allegiance.
The szlachta were nearly one-tenth of the population
and believed they were descended from the Sarmatians
of Scythia rather than the Slavs,
but they included Lithuanians and other nationalities.
The aristocratic nobles dominated the others,
and both exploited the cheap labor of the peasants.
At the end of 1529 the Sejm incorporated Mazovia
into Great Poland, and they got a law code in 1540.
Those who favored execution of the laws were called
Executionists, and they worked to eliminate
the legal differences in different regions.
In 1517 the Bible was the first book published
in Ruthenian (similar to Polish and Russian).
In the 1520s Lithuania suffered 300% inflation
while wages went up only 100%.
The Zloty coinage system was introduced in Poland in 1526
and was extended to Prussia in 1528 and to Lithuania in 1569.
In 1529 Queen Bona Sforza persuaded Zygmunt I
to designate their 9-year-old son as his successor,
and he was crowned Zygmunt II in 1530.
After that the King was called “Zygmunt the Old.”
Many protested this because Polish kings were usually elected,
but they promised not to repeat this.
Turkish troops of the Ottoman Empire invaded Little Poland
in 1524 led by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
The Turks conquered much of Hungary by defeating and killing
King Lajos II at the battle of Mohacs on August 29, 1526.
The Turks threatened Vienna in 1529. King Zygmunt
encouraged immigration, and many came from Austria.
Abraham Ezofowicz was a Jew who became
Treasurer of Lithuania, and he converted to Christianity;
but his brother Michal became a noble in 1525
and continued to practice as a Jew.
A Jewish Tribunal was created in Lublin in 1530.
That year Pope Clement VII complained about
the pro-Turkish policy of Archbishop Jan Laski
and demanded that Zygmunt remove him
or be excommunicated, but Laski died in 1531.
Russians had been invading, and the Polish Parliament
raised taxes on the serfs to recruit mercenary soldiers,
adding 2,500 cavalry and 650 infantry to the army in 1528
while Lithuania recruited 2,000 Cossacks and peasants.
In 1529 Moldavians led by Hospodar Petrylo invaded
Pokucie in the name of the Sultan without his permission.
The Polish army of 4,800 cavalry and 1,200 infantry
was commanded by Grand-Hetman Jan Tarnowski,
and they stopped the attack in the
battle of Obertyn on August 22, 1531.
The Moldavians had 7,746 cavalry killed and 1,000 men
taken prisoners while the Poles had only 256 men killed.
Poland made an “eternal” peace treaty with the Turks in 1533.
In March 1534 the Sejm of Wilno (Vilnius) declared war
against Moscow, and in August Hetman Jerzy Radziwiłł
organized an army of 20,000 Lithuanians.
The new tax law got 61% of the revenues from direct
rural taxes mostly on land, 14% from direct urban taxes,
and 25% from the sale of alcohol.
The following winter three Muscovite armies invaded
and
ravaged central Lithuania as far as Wilno and Nowogrodek.
The Lithuanians called upon a Polish army of 7,000 led by
Tarnowski, and in July they moved into the district
of Seversk and fought until the summer of 1536.
Negotiations led to a five-year armistice on February 17, 1537.
Zygmunt renewed this in March 1542 for seven more years.
In 1535 the Executionists persuaded the Sejm to decree
the execution of all Crown laws, and the next year
they demanded that the elective kingship be confirmed.
They also wanted Royal Prussia and Silesia
in full union with Lithuania.
Zygmunt agreed to get money to fight Moldavia,
and in 1537 they presented 36 demands.
Zygmunt had to grant them, and the Parliaments of 1538-39
forced him to accept the rights of the lower house.
In 1539 Duke Albrecht of Prussia renounced claiming
noble properties when there was no male heir,
and he got his brother Wilhelm appointed Archbishop of Riga.
That year the Executionists got a royal decree
guaranteeing freedom of the press.
The Renaissance in Poland was mostly literary and scientific.
The Jagiellonian University had outstanding rectors
such as Paulus Vladimiri and Bishop Tomicki.
Cardinal Olesnicki and Archbishop Laski were also influential.
In 1519 Maciej Miechowita’s Cronica Polonorum
was published, but the Church censored it because it named
the woman who returned from a pilgrimage
to Rome in 1493 with the first case of syphilis.
Polish goods garnered high prices,
and many Poles could afford to travel for better education.
In the 16th century more than a quarter of the students
at the University of Padua were Polish.
In 1534 Stefan Falimierz published
the first medical dictionary in Polish.
Nicholas Copernicus was born in Torun,
Prussia on February 19, 1473.
He studied astronomy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow,
earned a law degree at Bologna, learned medicine and law
at Padua for four years, and was awarded a doctorate
in canon law at Ferrara in 1503.
He was fluent in German, Latin, Greek, Polish, and Italian.
Copernicus returned to Royal Prussia and was an
administrator for the Warmia bishopric and wrote a treatise
on money to reform coinage in 1526.
He attended the Prussian diet, worked on defenses,
was a canon at Frauenberg, tax-collector, and judge.
As a practicing physician he supervised
public health during epidemics.
He collected a library of books on astronomy
and made suggestions on the Gregorian calendar.
In 1514 Copernicus began circulating his Commentariolus
criticizing the geocentric Ptolemaic view of the universe
because it did not adequately explain
the retrograde movements of the planets.
About 1532 he completed his famous On the Revolutions
of the Celestial Spheres, proposing his heliocentric theory
hat the Earth orbits the sun like the other planets.
He presented his theory before Pope Clement VII in 1533,
and he was requested to publish it in 1536.
His disciple Georg Joachim Rhaticus took the manuscript
to Nuremberg in 1540,
but Luther and Melanchthon opposed printing it.
His revolutionary book was finally printed in 1543,
and it is said he first saw it on the day he died on May 24.
Polish monarchs had long ignored any objections
from Popes on their choosing bishops,
and no Church taxes went to Rome either.
Yet Poles and Lithuanians complained about papal support
of the Teutonic Order and persecution of the Czech Brethren.
In 1520 Zygmunt I blocked the writings of Luther from
entering Poland, and additional edicts in the next few years
authorized searching houses for forbidden literature.
In 1523 a synod excommunicated heretics
and approved confiscating their property.
After the 1527 synod
bishops watched parishes more carefully.
Nonetheless Danzig and many other cities
converted to the Lutheran faith.
In 1525 Albrecht Hohenzollern became a Lutheran
and secularized Ducal Prussia,
allowing Lutheranism to spread.
He also maintained the succession rights
of his Hohenzollern family.
Calvinism recognized the importance of lay elders
and eventually became popular,
but the northern cities remained Lutheran.
Anabaptists came from Germany in the 1530s
and Hussites from Bohemia in 1548.
On April 19, 1539 Katarzyna Weiglowa was burned
as a heretic in Krakow because she had converted to the
Unitarian faith and denied that Jesus was a son of God.
That year Piotr Gramat became
Bishop of Krakow and Primate of Poland.
He presided over synods in 1542 and 1544 to battle
Protestantism by improving church conditions
as advised by the younger Jan Laski.
In 1545 Gramat instigated an inquisition
and appointed Hosius as an inquisitor.
Jan Seklucyan published his Protestant Confession of Faith
in 1544, hymnals, and a Polish translation
of the Gospels in 1551, the New Testament in 1552,
and the whole Bible in 1563.
Martynas Mazvydas published
the first book in Lithuanian in 1547.
Zygmunt II Augustus (r. 1548-72) was born on
August 1, 1520 and began ruling as Grand Duke
of Lithuania in 1529 with his father’s help.
He was a practicing Catholic but was interested
in reform and corresponded with Calvin;
he did not engage in religious quarrels.
Zygmunt II married Elisabeth of Austria on May 5, 1543,
but she died two years later.
His father sent him to Lithuania in 1544 and allowed him
to rule independently in Vilnius with two courts;
one spoke Polish and the other Lithuanian.
In 1547 he secretly married beautiful Barbara Radziwiłł,
daughter of Hetman Jerzy Radziwiłł,
because he thought she was pregnant.
His father refused to recognize the marriage,
though Old Zygmunt gave him command of Polish forces
in the war against Prussia before his death
on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1548.
That year the Bohemian Brethren in exile stopped
in Great Poland, where they were protected
by the Gorkas family before going on to East Prussia.
Stanislaw Orzechowski was a nationalist
who encouraged attacks against the Muslims.
He sent his “Instruction for the making of a good ruler”
to the new King Zygmunt II Augustus.
At the first meeting of the Sejm in October the deputies
threatened to renounce their allegiance
unless Zygmunt II repudiated his wife.
The King relied on the magnate families and was opposed
by the gentry who demanded union with
Lithuania, Prussia, and the Silesian duchies.
They demanded constitutional reforms through elections
and procurators to control the administration and that
finances be better organized to provide for the military.
On July 2, 1549 Bishop Hosius of Chelmno negotiated
an alliance with King Ferdinand and Emperor Charles V.
At the second Sejm in 1550 things turned in the King’s favor.
Merchants got a law passed
barring nobles from engaging in trade.
Barbara Radziwiłł was crowned Queen
on December 7, 1550 but died on May 8, 1551,
and many believed she was poisoned
by the Queen Mother Bona Sforza.
Some suspect that Bona had also killed Elisabeth.
On July 19, 1551 Zygmunt’s sister Isabella Jagellon,
who was acting as regent after her husband
Zapolya died in 1540, made a treaty with Ferdinand
renouncing her claim to the Hungarian throne
in exchange for Silesian duchies.
Yet she opposed the Hapsburg party and returned to
Transylvania with Polish help in October 1556
and ruled there until her death on September 15, 1559.
On June 23, 1553 Zygmunt II married
his cousin Katharina of Austria.
He did not like her interfering in politics
but could not get it annulled.
So he lived alone, and she left Poland in 1566.
On July 28, 1553 the Polish envoy Stanislaw Teczynski
confirmed the Polish-Turkish peace pact.
Polish Calvinists formed a synod in 1554,
but the next year they achieved only a compromise confession.
In 1556 Bona Sforza left Poland with 430,000 ducats
and returned to her duchies in southern Italy
where she died on November 19, 1557.
She left her properties in southern Italy to Spain’s Felipe II
and may have been poisoned
by his agent Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda.
Jan Laski’s son of the same name helped Erasmus
of Rotterdam financially by buying his library and letting him
use it until his death in 1536 when Laski took it to Poland.
He also visited Calvin in Geneva and Thomas Cranmer
in England, leaving in September 1553
with Protestants who found refuge in Danzig.
He worked for Christian unity but died in 1560,
ten years before the Consensus of Sandomierz was enacted.
He prepared a Calvinist Bible that was published in 1563.
Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski studied at the
University of Wittenberg and became a friend of Melanchthon.
In Poland he worked with Laski in the
Executionist movement and became a royal secretary.
Modrzewski wrote On the Reform of the Republic
(De Republica Emendanda).
Influenced by the classics, he recommended Cicero’s
mixed constitution with an elected king.
Book One on morals emphasized essential human goodness
and the humanist concern for education.
Book Two asserted legal equality for all.
Book Three defined just wars as self-defense,
and unjust wars as aggressive.
These books were printed in 1551.
Books Four and Five were banned by Pope Paul IV,
and the complete book was published
in Protestant Basel in 1558.
Book Four endorsed Catholic dogma but advocated
that international Church councils should prevail
over the Pope and his bureaucracy.
He called for social equality and the election of
bishops and the Pope by more people.
In Book Five Modrzewski proposed selling church benefices
and rich monasteries to use the money for education.
By the 1550s most of the deputies in the Sejm were Protestants.
Zygmunt II wanted to bring Livonia into his kingdom.
In 1554 the Livonian Master Heinrich von Galen agreed
to an armistice with Moscow for fifteen years
and promised not to ally with Poland.
He was opposed by Albrecht’s brother Wilhelm Hohenzollern
who was Archbishop of Riga and was imprisoned in June 1556.
At the 1555-56 Sejm at Warsaw the King persuaded them
to raise taxes for a war against Livonia.
After war was declared, he left Wilno (Vilnius) with his
Lithuanian and Polish troops led by Jan Mielecki.
Ferdinand persuaded Galen’s successor,
Master von Fürstenberg, to do homage before Zygmunt
in his camp at Pozwol on September 14, 1557.
Archbishop Wilhelm was released, and the Livonian Order
and Lithuania made an alliance against Moscow,
though it was not to take effect
until the armistice ended in 1569.
However, in January 1558 Russia’s King Ivan IV
invaded Livonia, seizing Narpa, Dorpat,
and the Livonian Grand Master.
Gotthard von Kettler replaced Fürstenberg,
and on August 31, 1559 he made an agreement at Wilno
that Lithuania would defend Livonia against Moscow,
ceding southeast Livonia to Zygmunt who was preoccupied
with the Livonian war until his death.
In 1558 Hetman Jan Tarnowski founded Polish military
science by publishing Consilum Rationis Bellicae,
reviving the Hussite tactic of
forming a square as a mobile fortress.
In 1559 the Parliament refused to approve taxes
for the Livonian War, but in 1561 the Catholic Church
in Poland contributed 60,000 thalers for the military.
An attempt to confiscate the estate of the Protestant of Lasocki
was stopped by a thousand armed people on May 14.
On November 28 King Zygmunt II signed a treaty with
Kettler and Wilhelm secularizing the Livonian Order
and the archbishopric, and Kettler became the hereditary
duke of the new Duchy of Kurland in southwest Livonia.
In January 1562 Muscovite armies invaded Mscislaw
beginning a war against Poland over access to the Baltic Sea.
Sweden’s King Erik XIV allied with Ivan IV and threatened
Livonia, but Poland gained an alliance
with Denmark against Sweden.
A treaty in March put Riga and its territory under Zygmunt II.
In 1562 Lithuanian nobles met in camp with Hetman
Mikolaj Radziwiłł the Red and demanded union with Poland.
At the parliamentary session of 1563 Zygmunt II persuaded
them to pass the quarter tax by which a quarter of the
revenues from all starosties (castles or noble domains)
was to pay for troops.
The Sejm also stopped exempting
the Church from taxes for war.
Poland’s Maritime Commission licensed fifteen privateer
ships to fight for the Narva trade, angering Danzig merchants.
The Lithuanian army had begun fighting in 1560
and the Polish army in 1563 when Polotsk was lost.
Zygmunt divided Livonia with the southern part
in Poland and the north in Lithuania.
Concerned that the German Empire might ally with Moscow,
Zygmunt guaranteed the hereditary succession in Prussia
to get the support of the Elector Albrecht of Brandenburg.
In 1564 they attended a joint parliament
with Lithuanian delegates in Warsaw.
Lithuanians wanted union with Poland,
and on February 12 Zygmunt II transferred
his rights in Lithuania to the Crown of Poland.
On July 1 a royal proclamation began parliamentary
reforms that made the Lithuanian Sejm equal to Poland’s.
Zygmunt II endorsed the Council of Trent’s Catholic reforms
in 1564, but he rejected the Catholic courts’ claims to try
religious crimes and did not enforce their decrees.
Nearly half of all nobles in Poland were Protestants
but less than a fifth in Lithuania,
but Protestants did not influence Mazovia at all.
After a Lithuanian victory over the Russians, Lithuanian
Chancellor Mikolaj Radziwiłł the Black tried
to block unification, but he died in 1565.
His cousin Mikolaj Radziwiłł the Red was the Lithuanian
Hetman (Commander) and led the Wilno Parliamentary
session of 1565-66 to give lesser Lithuanian nobles the rights
and status of Polish nobles and the Lithuanian
lower house powers similar to the Polish Sejm.
They also prohibited Polish merchants from traveling
overseas though they encouraged
foreign merchants to come to Poland.
Lithuania preserved its law code with a statute in 1566,
and the gentry began putting their rights into practice.
As alliances changed, the Russians
defeated the Polish-Lithuanian armies by 1567.
For seven years the Polish-Lithuanian army camped
at Radoszkowice near Wilno and debated the constitution,
hoping the Muscovites would relent.
In 1568 they agreed on a constitutional union
and disbanded the camp.
The Sejm assembled in Lublin on December 22, 1568,
but the Lithuanians were controlled by Mikolaj Radziwiłł
the Red, Jan Chodkiewicz, and Ostafi Wollowicz.
After two months the King Zygmunt II summoned Radziwiłł
and Chodkiewicz, but they fled in the night.
The Diet still had 70 Catholics to
58 Protestants and 2 Greek Orthodox.
Zygmunt annexed the Ukrainian palatinates of Volhynia,
Bratslav, and Kiev into Poland, and demanded that the
Lithuanian nobles with estates there
swear allegiance to the King of Poland.
Soon the Lithuanian provinces of Podlasie,
Volhynia, and Kiev incorporated in the Korona.
Two Podlasian officers refused to swear allegiance to Poland
and lost their lands and offices.
In April the four leaders of the Ukraine
joined the Polish Senate.
On June 17 Chodkiewicz returned and submitted for his peers.
Zygmunt said with tears,
God dwells where Love is,
for such is the Divine Will.
I am not leading Your Lordships
to any forced submission.
We must all submit to God,
and to earthly rulers.3
Chodkiewicz accepted the Union, and the Senate approved.
There was to be one republic with an elected king
with freemen and equals with equals and with one currency.
The Act of Union was sealed on July 1, 1569, and they
called it the “Most Serene Republic of the Two Nations.”
They also integrated Royal Prussia into Poland.
Zygmunt II wanted peace with Moscow,
and in 1570 Poland and Russia agreed to an armistice.
Envoys from Sweden, Denmark, Lübeck,
the German Emperor, and Poland met at Stettin.
Sweden and Denmark agreed to recognize the
Emperor’s sovereignty over Livonia,
and Narva was opened to free commerce.
Calvinists and Lutherans agreed on reforms at Wilno
and then formed a union with the Bohemian Brethren
in the Consensus of Sandomierz on April 14.
Zygmunt II was childless, and the Sejm was distracted
by discussions of his marital affairs.
Moscow’s Ivan IV was infuriated by the Union and used
tampered evidence to show that the Archbishop
and Governor of Novgorod were guilty
of treason for contacting Zygmunt.
Ivan had a thousand inhabitants of Novgorod tortured
and killed each day for five weeks,
and the city was devastated.
In 1570 the Sejm debated tax reform but passed no taxes.
In 1571 they postponed the King’s requests,
and Denmark devastated the Polish fleet.
Now the Polish Senate had 36 Protestants, 25 Catholics,
and 8 Orthodox Christians in the prominent seats.
The Olesnicki family started a Calvinist Academy in Pinczow.
Zygmunt II worked for a succession to Duke Henri Valois
of Anjou before his death on July 7, 1572,
leaving Poland and Lithuania a united and elective republic.
That year a plague spread.
Mikolaj Rej (1505-69) helped establish Polish
as a literary language with his poetry.
In 1543 he published his satire of the clergy and the collecting
of tithes as compared to morals and religious faith.
He expressed Executionist views for a stronger government
to overcome the magnates in his poem Short Conversation
between a Noble, a Bailiff, and a Village Priest.
He translated the Psalms into Polish.
Rej wrote the poetic dramas,
The Life of Joseph and The Merchant in the 1540s.
His Postilla in 1557 made poetic translations
and comments on the Gospels.
The next year his Faithful Image of an Honest Man
explored the ideas of Aristotle, Epicurus,
and other ancient philosophers.
His last book, The Mirror, offered the wisdom to live
moderately and morally with worldly enjoyment
while being philosophically alert.
Jan Kochanowski (1530-84) wrote vernacular poetry
as he described the beauty of nature and humans,
and he loved Cicero’s writing.
In 1564 his Harmony called for peaceful resolution of religious
and constitutional controversies, and The Satyr criticized
deforestation in order to produce grain and buy foreign luxuries.
In 1569 he expressed his pride in Poland becoming
a great power in The Banner, or Prussian Homage.
In 1578 his play, The Dismissal of Greek Envoys,
was set before the Trojan War,
but it reflected King Batory’s desire to invade Russia.
He doubted that politicians could ever prevent war.
Kochanowski also translated the Psalms by 1579,
and in 1580 his Laments expressed his grief
over his little daughter’s early death.
Lelio Sozzini (Socinus) came from Siena and visited Poland
in 1551 and spread the Antitrinitarian or Unitarian faith.
In 1551 Mennonites from Holland found refuge in Poland.
The Czech Brethren rejected the Trinity and practiced
communism and were called “Socinians.”
They gained converts and soon had
200 temples and 40,000 members.
In 1552 the Sejm ended secular executions for religious crimes.
The Polish Brethren began in 1565
and were called “Arians” or “Socinians.”
Lelio’s nephew Fausto Sozzini came to Poland
in 1579 and settled in Krakow.
They developed the catechism of Rakow
which was published in 1605.
Zygmunt I had tolerated Orthodox
Christians, Armenians, and Jews.
The first documented ritual murder charge against a Jew
was in Mazovia in 1547, but royal investigations
always exonerated the accused.
Only one Jew was executed before his case was appealed.
In 1564 Zygmunt II issued an edict to release all Jews
from prison into the custody of other Jews.
Szymon Budny reconciled with the Jews
and translated the Bible into Polish.
A Talmudic Academy was founded in Lublin in 1567
with Solomon Luria as rector.
Karaites were Jews who accepted
the Bible but not the Talmud.
Joseph ben Mardoc Malinowski and Abraham of Troki
wrote in Hebrew The Fortress of the Faith
which Voltaire later considered the best argument
against the divinity of Christ.
Stanislaw Orzechowski (1513-66) was the
Canon of Przemysl, and he was excommunicated
for marrying; but he debated the issue by publishing
a pamphlet, and political pressure got it lifted.
Stanislaw Hozjusz (1504-79) used the Latin name Hosius.
He was well educated, corresponded with Erasmus,
worked for church reform in the 1530s,
and was a secretary to bishops and the King.
In 1545 he was an inquisitor.
In 1551 Hosius published his influential
Confession of the Catholic Faith to confirm Catholic
teachings which was translated into many languages.
He became chairman of the Council of Trent
when it resumed in 1562 and completed its work by 1564.
He sent Giovanni Francesco Commendone,
Bishop of Zacynthos (Zante), to Poland as apostolic nuncio,
and he worked to get decrees
from Trent accepted by King Zygmunt II.
Hosius introduced Jesuits to Poland and Lithuania.
After Martin Krowicki (1501-73) left the Church,
he wrote his Defense of True Learning.
Bishop Uchanski became Primate of Poland,
but in 1555 he announced he approved of the marriage
of priests, communion in both forms, and using the vernacular.
That year a majority of the Sejm demanded
they establish the Church of Poland with these reforms.
Zygmunt II sent Stanislaw Maciejewski to Rome
with four
demands, but Pope Paul IV considered them heretical.
After Nicholas Radziwiłł the Black died in 1565,
his sons Nicholas Christopher and George became Catholics.
During the counter-reformation in Poland only a dozen
Protestants were executed compared to
more than 500 in England and nearly 900 in the Netherlands.
The Jagiellonian dynasty (1386-1572) was over.
Senators formed a national government.
Magnates from Great Poland met with the Primate
Jakub Uchanski, Archbishop of Gniezno, on his estate
at Lowicz while those from Little Poland assembled
in Krakow with the Calvinist Grand Marshal Jan Firlej.
Others met at Knyszyn in Lithuania
where Zygmunt II’s body lay in state.
Deputies suggested meeting in Protestant Lublin
and proposed Firlej as regent until a king was elected,
but bishops and senators approved the
Archbishop of Gniezno as regent.
He ordered the nobles to elect a king at Warsaw.
Bishop Piotr Myszkowski of Plock nominated
Emperor Maximilian II who was a cousin of the Jagiellonians,
and Zygmunt II’s brother-in-law Johan III of Sweden
was also suggested.
They ratified the choice of the late Zygmunt II by electing
22-year-old Henri Valois, brother of France’s King Charles IX.
He was considered responsible for the St. Bartholomew Day
massacre of Protestants on August 24, 1572,
but they imposed constitutional conditions
to assure religious freedom.
Bishop Jean de Monluc of Valence presented the case
for Henri, and he was supported by Jan Zamojski
who believed that all nobles had the right to vote.
More than 50,000 nobles gathered in a field near Warsaw
on January 6, 1573, and they voted unanimously for Henri.
On January 28 the Diet passed the Confederation of Warsaw
granting religious freedom for all denominations,
but a clause allowed them to punish rebellious servants
in order to avoid a peasant rebellion.
They cancelled the special privileges of the Catholic Church.
Primate Uchanski formally nominated Henri Valois,
and the nobles elected him on May 16.
A common parliament was elected;
but the Lithuanians boycotted the first session
to elect a new king until they agreed on Henri Valois.
Bishop Adam Konarski of Poznan was sent with
eleven ambassadors to Paris
to negotiate the terms of Henri’s election.
Henri realized he had to accept religious tolerance,
and he agreed and took an oath in Notre Dame Cathedral
on September 10 to respect Polish liberty
and the law on religious freedom that had just been passed.
He also promised not to summon the military or start or end
a war without agreement from the Parliament.
He had to summon Parliament at least every two years.
These Henrician articles would be applied
to future monarchs as well.
Henri Valois arrived in Poland in January 1574
with 1,200
gentlemen, and he was crowned at Krakow on February 21.
He postponed confirmation of the Henrician Articles,
and Parliament dissolved abruptly on April 2
without accomplishing anything after the coronation.
Henri spent his time with his French courtiers eating,
drinking, and gambling with cards,
losing money he took from the treasury.
On June 13 he learned that Charles IX had died,
and six days later he departed to claim the French throne.
Castellan Jan Teczynski caught up with him
in Czech Silesia and extracted a promise that
he would return within four months.
In a letter he wrote he wanted to remain as
King of Poland-Lithuania after becoming King of France,
but he never came back to Poland
nor did he renew the alliance.
In August 1574 the Sejm met at Warsaw
and gave Henri nine months to return.
If he failed to return by May 12, 1575, they would form
a confederation, though Lithuania and Prussia declined to join.
Parliament declared the throne vacant in May.
A small Parliament met in October and set the election
for November 7 in Warsaw.
In September 1575 the Khan of the Crimea, Davlet Girej,
had led 100,000 Tartars into Ruthenia,
and they carried away 35,340 nobles as slaves.
The Primate Uchanski had declared that
the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand II was elected.
Nobles could not accept a Hapsburg
and suggested three natives of Poland.
A mixed commission worked on a
compromise to avoid a civil war.
On December 12 one group elected Maximilian II
of Austria king, but three days later others elected the
Jagiellonian Anna and her fiancé Stefan Batory as co-rulers.
Stefan Batory was well educated at Padua
served the imperial court at Vienna, and he had spent
fifteen years fighting as a commanding general,
spending three years imprisoned in Prague.
He defeated the Hapsburg party in Hungary.
In 1571 he had been elected the ruler of Transylvania
under the Ottoman Empire,
though they were basically independent of Turkey.
He was a devoted Catholic, but he governed Transylvania
tolerating their four independent religions.
While Maximilian II delayed, Batory moved
to accept the Polish kingdom.
He assigned his younger brother Christopher
to rule Transylvania.
At a Diet on January 18, 1576 at Jedrzejow
20,000 voted to declare the election of Maximilian
illegal and acclaimed Batory as their king.
He accepted their conditions on February 8
and arrived in Krakow on March 23.
Batory married Anna and was crowned
by Bishop Karnkowski on May 1.
Queen Anna was 53 years old and could not bear a child.
Jan Zamojski (1542-1605) was the son of a senator.
He studied in Paris at the new College de France
and became rector at the University of Padua.
He published a treatise on the Roman Senate
and became a Catholic.
When he returned to Poland,
he was appointed secretary to Zygmunt II.
His rhetorical skill made him a leading politician,
and he inherited land and increased his holdings.
Batory appointed Jan Zamojski Vice Chancellor
and summoned a Diet to meet at Warsaw in June 1576.
The new King gave his opponents
fifteen days to declare their allegiance.
When Laski failed to do so,
his estate was besieged until he gave in.
In 1570 Karnkowski had led a commission to Danzig
(Gdansk) that revised their laws
to increase the power of the Polish King.
Merchants persuaded the city of Danzig to oppose Batory
as king with military force, and he imposed
a commercial blockade on September 24, 1576.
When German burghers raided the Oliva monastery
and burned church property,
Batory sent Jan Zborowski with an army.
The Diet refused to fund the military even after Maximilian II
died on October 12; some who wanted to expand Poland
to the southeast still objected to
Batory’s promise to keep peace with Turkey.
On April 17, 1577 the Polish army led by Zborowski
killed nearly twice their number of Danzigers.
The Diet voted for military spending, and in June
an army of 10,000 began the siege of Danzig
which got financial and military support from Denmark.
Poland had no fleet to stop the ships, but Batory persuaded
Ernst Weyher to gather privateers at Puck,
and a Polish squadron was organized at the port of Elblag
to which he transferred the commercial privileges
formally held by Danzig.
After negotiating for months they signed the
Peace of Malborg on December 16, 1577.
Batory abolished the Karnkowski Statutes for
200,000 zlotys and got 200,000 more from Brandenburg
when he appointed Georg Friedrich
to be Elector with a hereditary succession.
In 1577 King Batory supported the bishops in their efforts
to observe the decrees of the Council of Trent.
Jan Zamojski was promoted to Chancellor in 1578
and then to Crown Great Hetman for life in 1581.
He became the most powerful
and richest man after King Batory.
While enriching himself he decreased fraud.
In 1578 the Sejm claimed the exclusive right
to ennoble people except
the king could still grant arms on the battlefield.
Batory stopped hearing appeals and created noble
tribunals in Poland in 1578 and in Lithuania in 1581,
but he retained jurisdiction over
criminal cases and the royal exchequer.
In 1581 he appointed Karnkowski primate of Poland,
and he sent Jesuits to Krakow, Riga,
and Polotsk in White Russia.
The King helped Wilno College become a university,
and it was later renamed Stephen Batory University.
In 1582 a law was passed that enabled Livonia
to reorganize its government,
and Batory aided the revival of Catholicism there
with a bishopric at Wenden.
He executed Samuel Zborowski on May 12, 1584
for trying to instigate a war against Turkey
in order to help the Hapsburgs.
Batory hired Hungarian, German, and Scottish mercenaries
before getting permission from Parliament in 1578.
That year they organized military service
that allowed peasants to join the infantry.
Meanwhile Moscow’s Ivan IV took advantage of
Poland’s war against Danzig
to invade Livonia in the fall of 1577.
Batory demanded that Moscow return all of Livonia
and asked the Diet to support a war against Russia.
Poland made an alliance with Turkey on November 5;
but the Sultan did not ratify it until Batory executed
the Cossack Ivan Podkowa for having seized Moldavia.
Batory declared war on Moscow on June 26, 1579,
and the Poles attacked Polotsk
with 56,000 men and captured it on August 30.
The next year he sent Zamojski with 48,000 troops,
and he took Veliki Luki on September 5.
Also in 1580 Zamojski founded New Zamosc
as a model city with four churches, a synagogue, a university,
a library, public baths, and three market squares.
He often cited ancient history and the classics
and taught at the Hippeum (Academy).
Batory returned to attend the Diet
in Warsaw on January 22, 1581.
Parliament approved the King’s campaign against Pskov
which had 7,000 cavalry and 50,000 infantry,
but Poland had 170,000 knights and servants.
Russia had lost 300,000 people in the war,
and on January 15, 1582 the Muscovites agreed to a
ten-year truce and let Poland have Livonia, Polotsk, Velizh,
and Ushviata while they kept Veliki Luki.
On February 4 the Muscovite garrison left Dorpat
after 24 years of occupation.
After Ivan IV died in 1584, the Parliament refused
to grant taxes for another war against Russia.
Batory continued as a Catholic and founded three Jesuit
academies in Lithuania, but he tolerated all sects.
He adopted the controversial Gregorian calendar in 1582.
In 1584 without waiting for Senate approval
he had thirty Zaporozhians executed
for having invaded Turkey without permission.
In Lithuania the Radziwiłł family was given all the
chief offices in the government and the church.
Batory was described by the historian Reinhold Heidenstein
as a strong leader who recognized the truth in others
and did not avoid it for his own sake.
He urged his subjects to guard their own freedom.
Stefan Batory died suddenly on December 12, 1586,
and some suspected poison.
The priest Jakub Wujek (1541-97) became a Jesuit in 1565
and was chancellor of the Jesuit college at Poznan in 1571
and at the Wilno Academy in 1578
before founding the Jesuits province
of Koloszwarz in Transylvania.
He influenced many people by publishing his Catholic
sermons delivered before the Diet and his Lives of the Saints.
Among the Polish Anabaptists the Lublin pastor
Marcin Czechowic wrote an eloquent defense of
nonviolence in Polish in his Christian Dialogues,
published at Krakow in 1575.
A Teacher, apparently representing the author,
answers the questions of a doubting Pupil.
The Teacher begins by saying that a true Christian
is willing to renounce the world and take up the cross.
Thus Christians must be ready to suffer persecution
and be prepared to lose their property and possibly
even their lives to endure and tolerate whatever injuries
are inflicted upon them without resisting.
Thus the Christian renounces the use of any injurious force
even for self-defense or for the defense of others.
The wars of the Old Testament gave way to the
law of love in the new covenant of Christ.
When the Pupil asks if Christians wage war at all,
the Teacher replies,
Christian warfare has nothing in common
with the instruments of war in use in this world,
which godless people employ among themselves
lying in wait to hurt each other.
But it has its own weapon in the word of God
as revealed in the New Testament,
and with this weapon it fights but does not kill
or take away the life of any mortal being.4
The Teacher then lists the Christian weapons as faith, hope,
love, humility, gentleness, patience, truth, justice, peace,
spiritual joy, petitions, prayers, and other virtues.
The faithful disciples of Christ obey their commander Jesus.
Czechowic’s Teacher precludes any participation
in government or recourse to law courts.
Kings and magistrates are to be obeyed
except when their commands are wrong.
Servants of the Christ are not to wield a sword
nor train for war nor participate in an army
even without a weapon.
Czechowic wrote an appendix in Latin in which
he cited early Christians such as Tertullian and Lactantius
as well as many of the writings of Erasmus.
Vasily III ruled Moscow 1505-33.
Concerned about the Crimeans supporting Lithuania
from 1514 to 1521 Russians built stone walls
around Tula south of Moscow and Oka.
Khan Mehmet Emin of Kazan was allied with Russia
but died in 1518 without an heir.
Vasily III tried to impose 13-year-old Shah Ali (Shagali),
and he was overthrown by the Khan of Crimea
with aid from Poland-Lithuania.
His Crimean raid reached as far as Moscow in 1521.
Moscow’s governor (Vasily’s brother-in-law)
eventually negotiated a truce with Lithuania in 1526.
Printing came late to Russia.
Frantsisk Skoryna of Polotsk had parts of the Bible
and a small almanac printed at Prague 1517-19
and at Vilnius in 1525, but printing presses
did not begin operating in Muscovy until the 1560s.
In the 1520s Moscow began claiming that their dynasty
derived from the ancient Roman emperors while
they looked down on Polish-Lithuanian rulers
as descended from a “stable-boy.”
After Rome was sacked in 1527, the monk Filofey argued
that Rome and Constantinople had fallen,
leaving Moscow as the third and last imperial capital.
Vasily III made pilgrimages to the Trinity Monastery,
and he began the Russian tradition of celebrating the Magi
and the baptism of Jesus on Epiphany (January 6).
Vasily forbade his brothers from marrying until
he had produced an heir,
but his first wife Solomonya Saburova bore no children.
She refused to accept a divorce and became a nun
on November 28, 1525 in the Pokrov monastery.
The Metropolitan Daniel granted the divorce so that
Vasily could wed young Elena Glinskaya in early 1526.
On August 25, 1530 she gave birth to Ivan.
Vasily died on December 3, 1533.
Cyril of Novoezersk left a monastery in 1512 and lived
as a hermit in the forest for five years before
starting a monastery at New Lake near Bielozersk.
In 1546 the monk Feodor built a monastery between
Vologda, Kargopol, and Vaga and later he was
given a license to settle land within twelve versts.
Ephraim founded a monastery on the Upper Volga,
and in 1559 his successor got a similar license.
By 1582 the Monastery of Saint Cyril of Bielozersk
owned about 57,000 acres.
Fedor Karpov studied with Maxim the Greek and was
a diplomat who used astrology and cited Aristotle, Cicero,
and Ovid to support classical ideas
on law, property, and human dignity.
He along with Maxim and Nil Sorskij criticized absolute rule
and wrote a letter to the Metropolitan Daniel (1522-39)
who tried to support absolute rule but was removed anyway.
In 1525 Daniel had Maxim arrested on false heresy charges,
and in 1531 did the same to the prince and monk
Vassian Patrikeev who was an influential disciple of Sorskij,
the founder of the Sora Hermitage
and advocate of monastic hesychasm (stillness).
Sorskij translated the lives of the early and medieval ascetics
in Egypt, the Levant, and Greece for the Russians.
Maxim had been trying to educate Russians,
and in 1531 popular protest got his status
changed to house arrest so that he could write.
Before he died, Vasily III made his wife Elena Glinskaya
and her uncle, Prince Mikhail Glinsky,
guardians of their two infant sons, Ivan and Yuri.
However, she relied on her lover, the young Prince
Ivan Telepnev-Obolensky who was added
to the Council in January 1534.
She spread rumors that Mikhail had poisoned Vasily
and had him imprisoned in August,
and he starved to death on September 24.
Vasily III’s brother Yuri had been imprisoned in 1533
and died there in 1536.
The other brother Andrey rebelled against Elena in 1537;
he tried to negotiate
but was imprisoned and died in December.
Elena had the coinage reformed
by unifying monetary units in the realm.
When Elena died suddenly in April 1538,
poison was suspected.
Prince Vasily Shuisky and his brother Ivan Shuisky
dominated the Council, and with the Belskys and other boyar
families they quickly overthrew Obolensky and struggled
for power which changed hands three times
as the Metropolitans changed twice.
The Shuiskys prevailed, and three of them
ruled in succession for their own interests.
Land surveys were conducted,
and tax burdens were increased.
Vasily Shuisky claimed the regency for young Ivan IV in 1538,
but he died the next year and was succeeded by this brother
Ivan Shuisky who removed Metropolitan Daniel in 1539.
Joasaphus Skripitsyn was elected Metropolitan of Moscow,
and he supported Maxim the Greek
but was sent into exile in 1542.
Makarii supported the Shuisky prince and was
Metropolitan of Novgorod from 1526
until he became Metropolitan of Moscow in 1542.
Ivan IV was only 13 years old when he had his servants
arrest Andrey Shuisky and throw him into a cell
of hungry dogs who killed him in 1543.
In the next three years young Ivan traveled
on hunting trips and pilgrimages to monasteries.
Ivan came of age in 1545 and was given ethical advice
on how to be a good ruler by Maxim the Greek.
He should issue good laws, control his anger,
ignore slanders, and strive for justice.
His grandmother Anna Glinskaya and her sons
Mikhail and Yuri still dominated the court.
On January 16, 1547 Makarii crowned Ivan IV
who was the first to use the title “Tsar of all the Russias.”
Then on February 3 he married
17-year-old Anastasia Romanovna.
In April and especially on June 24 great fires burned
most of Moscow and killed about 3,000 adults
while displacing 80,000.
People blamed the Glinsky family,
and a mob stoned to death Yuri Glinsky,
Ivan’s uncle, in a cathedral.
The riot weakened the Glinsky family
and strengthened the authority of the young Tsar.
Anastasia was a good influence on Ivan,
and they formed the Chosen Council of enlightened
advisors which included Metropolitan Makarii,
the priest Sylvester, and the treasurer Alexis Adashev.
Ivan sent the Saxon Schlitte to western Europe,
and he brought back scholars and artisans.
In 1547 the Church in Muscovy canonized 22 Russians,
and in 1549 they added 17 more saints.
In February 1549 Ivan summoned representatives
of the estates in the first large Zemsky Sobor,
and they created a standing army and approved his plan
to reform the criminal and civil law code which became
the Sudebnik law code of 1550
that was declared binding in all of Russia.
In 1551 Church representatives led by Makarii met as the
Council of a Hundred Chapters, but the Church lost the right
to acquire more land without the Tsar’s permission.
They approved the new law code
and the reforms of local government.
The aim was to eliminate corruption and oppression.
They modernized the army with engineers, artillery,
and musketeers (streltsy) and devised the pomest’ia system
that required landowners to provide cavalry.
When Kazan’s Genghisid Khan died in 1549,
his heir was only two years old.
Ivan IV sent forces across the Volga River,
and they built a fort at Sviiazhsk in 1550.
Kazan had a garrison of 20,000 men,
and they agreed
to restore the Russians’ choice
of Khan Shigali of Kasimov as their Tsar.
Alexis Adashev negotiated the treaty,
and Ivan sent him to get Shigali removed in 1552.
That year Crimean Tatars supported
by Turkish janissaries invaded Muscovy.
The Russians stopped their advance toward Moscow,
and in June the Tsar Ivan led 100,000 men
who marched to Kazan and surrounded it.
After a siege of six weeks the commanders
Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky and Prince Andrey Kurbsky
used 250 cannons to destroy fortifications,
and a German engineer blew up a wall,
enabling them to take the city in October.
Ivan returned to Moscow.
The Crimean Tatars invaded Muscovy again,
but their siege of Tula failed.
In the next five years Russians annexed the entire khanate
of Kazan, and by 1557 the lands
had been distributed to the Russian gentry.
In March 1553 Ivan IV became seriously ill,
and he made the boyars swear allegiance to his
infant son Dmitry; but Sylvester and others resisted another
reign by a minor and reluctantly took the oath.
In August the English captain Richard Chancellor sailed east
through the Arctic Ocean to the mouth
of the Northern Dvina in the White Sea.
He visited Moscow and opened relations
between England and Russia.
In 1555 Chancellor returned to Moscow,
and the English granted commercial privileges to Muscovy.
Archangel on the Northern Dvina became their entry port.
A Russian mission to England returned
with medical and mining specialists.
The ukaz Code of Service was enacted to make sure
that all land provided military service.
Even allodial land not providing service could be confiscated.
Sylvester may have been the author of the Domostroi
(House Manager) which advised the family head
how to discipline and punish his children.
In 1554 the Russians attacked Astrakhan at the mouth
of the Volga River and appointed a vassal khan.
The Astrakhan khanate became part of Russia in 1556
when Ivan regulated military service by defining
how many warriors each landlord must provide.
The law also increased the requirements for cavalry service,
and some became combat slaves.
Kazan and Astrakhan had mostly Muslim populations.
These conquests brought the Volga River into Muscovy
and provided access to the Caspian Sea and Iranian markets.
Crimeans invaded Muscovy in 1554, 1557, and 1558
to steal slaves; but the Russians turned them away,
and in 1558 the Russians occupied the Crimean peninsula.
Ivan’s son Feodor born on May 31, 1557
may have had Down’s syndrome.
Russians wanted access to the Baltic Sea,
but Sylvester and Adashev opposed this invasion,
preferring another offensive against the Crimean Tatars.
The truce with Livonia had been renewed in 1554.
In 1557 the Livonians agreed to pay tribute,
but the envoys brought no money to Moscow
and were sent away.
Ivan IV had installed the Lithuanian Prince
Dmitry Vishnevetsky to govern Kazan
whose base was in the Ukraine.
He attacked the Crimeans and occupied
the island of Kortitsa in the Dnieper.
Russians had attacked the Swedes at Vyborg in 1555-56,
and the Swedes tried to take Oreshek at the Neva’s mouth.
By 1558 they had made a seven-year truce.
In September 1557 the Livonians made an alliance
at Pozvol with Poland-Lithuania against Russia.
In January 1558 Ivan IV ordered an attack on Livonia,
and they captured twenty forts.
In May the port of Narva surrendered to the Russians,
followed by Dorpat on July 19.
Ivan sent an envoy to Vilna that spring to propose
a Russian and Lithuanian crusade against the Muslims,
and Lithuania sent envoys to Moscow in June.
Livonia rejected Ivan’s peace offers,
and he ordered another invasion in January 1559.
They agreed to an armistice from May to November.
On August 31 the Grand Master of the Livonian Order
formed an alliance with Poland-Lithuania in a treaty at Vilna.
Livonian forces led by Gotthard Kettler destroyed
a Russian army near Dorpat in November.
Ivan IV sent a force led by Daniel Adashev to build a fort
on the Donets River to prepare for a
Crimean campaign led by Ivan.
In January 1560 Ivan refused to make peace with Livonia,
and he sent Andrey Kurbsky to strengthen the troops.
A force led by Prince Ivan Msistlavsky defeated
a Livonian army at Ermes on August 2, and they captured
the Fellin fortress and Grand Master Wilhelm von
Fürstenberg who died in a Moscow prison.
The Livonian Order was disbanded in 1561;
its territory was secularized as the last Master Kettler
became the Duke of Kurland and Semigallia
as a vassal of Poland.
Russians fought a Polish-Lithuanian attack
and in 1563 managed to take Polotsk on the Dvina River.
Ivan’s beloved Anastasia died suddenly on August 7, 1560,
and he suspected that Sylvester
and Adashev had poisoned her.
Sylvester was exiled to the Solovetsk monastery,
and Adashev died in prison.
Ivan turned against other members of his Chosen Council,
and many were executed without trials.
Princes who criticized the Tsar lost their lives.
In March 1562 the truce with Poland-Lithuania ended,
and Ivan IV sent an army to invade Lithuania.
Ivan himself led an unsuccessful attack in May.
Kurbsky was wounded in August, and Ivan blamed him
for the defeat and returned to Moscow in September.
Russians captured the Livonian fort of Tarvast
and later destroyed it.
In late November the Tsar Ivan led an army of 280,000 men,
and they besieged Polotsk on January 31, 1563.
After three weeks they capitulated.
After Makarii’s death on December 31,
Ivan often had future metropolitans executed.
In 1564 the Lithuanian-Polish army defeated
the Russians at Velikie Luki.
Andrey Kurbsky lost his commission
and went over to the Lithuanians in 1564.
On July 15 of that year he wrote the first of five letters
over fifteen years to Ivan IV who responded with two letters.
Kurbsky protested against Ivan’s
autocratic rule and bitter persecution.
He described his conscience as “leprous”
because he killed so many people.
Ivan claimed he had the divine right to rule the people
and considered himself responsible to God.
He accused Andrey of using treachery
to try to rule Yaroslavl.
Ivan denied using torture, persecution, and murder,
but he admitted that he used
capital punishment against treason and magic.
Ivan IV and Anastasia had six children,
but only Feodor outlived Ivan to succeed him.
Ivan became erratic as he went through a series of six wives
who only produced two children
with only the infant Dmitri surviving him.
Ivan felt persecuted and would erupt in rage.
He assisted Maliuta Skuratov and other oprichniki
in investigations that led to torture and executions.
In December 1564 Ivan IV retreated
to Aleksandrov sixty miles from Moscow.
He sent two letters to the Metropolitan denouncing
the boyars and clergy in one but in the other expressing
his love for the masses to whom the letter was read.
They begged him to return,
and he came back in February 1565
on the condition that they create a district around Moscow
called the oprichnina that would be ruled by him
exclusively with its own court.
This territory expanded to become a third of Muscovy,
and the remainder was called zemshchina.
His servants and police were called oprichniki
and increased from 1,000 to 6,000.
Their job was to destroy Ivan’s enemies,
and four boyars were executed in 1565.
About 180 families were forced to move to Kazan;
the Tsar let them return the next year,
but they had lost much of their wealth.
Moscow’s Metropolitan Afanasy opposed the oprichnina,
openly criticized Ivan, and resigned on May 19, 1566.
At the Zembsky Sobor in June the assembly asked Ivan IV
to abolish the oprichnina, but the main issue was whether
to make peace with Poland’s King Zygmunt II
or go to war against Poland-Lithuania over Livonia.
The groups consulted included 32 clergy, 30 boyars,
97 superior gentry, 97 secondary gentry,
33 diaki from the metropolitan prikazi (chancelleries),
and 75 merchants.
They agreed to support the war, but afterward
the service gentry demanded that
the hated oprichnina be abolished.
Several were arrested, and three nobles were executed.
In October 1567 Ivan IV accompanied his army to the
western border, and he summoned
a military council on November 12.
He may have called off the campaign because of reports
that nobles were plotting against him.
He began confiscating Fedorov’s lands and wealth
and had him killed in September 1568.
According to the Sinodiki record about 500
of his retainers and their servants were also executed.
Lithuanian threats led to the execution of four members
of the Council and 150 other officials and servants.
Metropolitan Filipp Kolychev had tried to intervene
and attacked the oprichnina in March 1568.
He was condemned by the Church Council
on November 4 and was deposed
and exiled to the Otroch Monastery in Tver.
In January 1569 Lithuanians seized Izborsk near Pskov.
When the Russians regained the town,
those who had been taken prisoner
on both sides were executed.
In March about 450 families from Pskov and 150
from Novgorod were forced to move to the interior.
Turkish and Crimean armies invaded and besieged
Astrakhan until September 1569
when they left to attack Venetians.
On October 9 Tsar Ivan accused Vladimir of Staritsa
and his family of treason and poisoned them.
When Filipp refused to bless Ivan’s attack
on Novgorod, he was killed on December 23.
On January 2, 1570 Ivan had a force of oprichniki
surround Novgorod, and he banned travel.
Troops advanced, executing people as they went.
Then they ravaged Tver for five days.
A reported 9,000 people were killed
while twice as many died of starvation and disease.
Lithuanian prisoners were also executed.
The oprichniki attacked churches and monasteries,
arresting hundreds of clerics.
Treason trials were held in Ivan’s camp outside Novgorod,
and they executed at least 2,200 people.
Some 13,000 rubles were taken to Moscow which took
over most of the best land to establish pomestie estates
that obligated the landlord to provide military service.
As the number of gentry increased more state lands
with their peasants were given to the nobles.
Ivan in February went to Pskov
where at least thirty gentry were executed.
Ivan in June agreed to a three-year truce with
Poland-Lithuania and to a treaty with
King Magnus of Denmark, providing him
with 15,000 rubles and 20,000 Russian soldiers.
In 1571 Khan Davlet-Geray led 120,000 Tatars
in a march on Moscow, and on May 24
they burned the city but could not take the Kremlin.
They plundered a large area and left with thousands
of prisoners to be made slaves.
Thousands more were captured on their way home.
Famine and plague followed.
Ivan used the fire to eliminate
most of the remaining higher oprichniki.
In October the Tsar forced a hundred merchant families
to move from Novgorod to Moscow.
The next summer the Russian army of about 60,000 men
managed with heavy losses to defeat the Tatar invasion
at the bloody battle of Molodi as the Turks
had about 100,000 casualties and deaths.
In October donation of land to monasteries was forbidden.
Also in 1572 Ivan abolished the oprichnina,
but the division remained until 1575.
According to incomplete records about
3,000 Muscovites were killed during the oprichnina.
The Boyar Council was revived in 1573.
The Tatar Khan Simeon Bekbulatovich married Ivan’s niece,
and in 1575 Ivan put him on his own throne
as Grand Prince of Moscow, but then
he demoted him to Grand Prince of Tver.
Novgorod suffered so much under Ivan
that they retained only one-fifth of their population.
On June 20, 1575 Russia and Sweden
agreed to a truce for two years.
In November several leading boyars
and oprichniki were executed.
On July 13, 1577 Tsar Ivan led 30,000 troops and Tatar
cavalry under Simeon Bekbulatovich to attack
southern Livonia which was occupied by Poland-Lithuania.
In 1578 the Polish army invaded southern Livonia,
and the next year they took Polotsk and Velikie Luki
but could not capture Pskov.
In September the Swedish army
defeated the Russians at Wenden.
Peace negotiations began in January 1579,
but Poland’s King Batory declared war on Russia on June 26.
Ivan gathered an army of 36,000
and moved his headquarters from Novgorod to Pskov.
Batory’s army attacked Polotsk in August,
and the city surrendered
before Ivan and his army could get there.
In the early 1580s the right of peasants to move was
suspended to prevent the loss of workers.
The first Slavonic Bible was printed in 1581.
Russia agreed to a ten-year truce
with Poland on January 15, 1582
and to a three-year truce with Sweden in August 1583.
The Stroganov family developed industries to extract salt
and procure fish and furs in northeastern Russia.
After Kazan was conquered,
they obtained colonies in the upper Kama region.
Local tribes resisted the Russians and were encouraged
by the khan of Sibir beyond the Ural Mountains.
In September 1581 the Stroganovs sent 840 Cossacks
and other volunteers led by the rebel Ermak.
Outnumbered, they used fire-arms to defeat the natives,
capturing in 1582 the capital of the Siberian Khan Kuchum.
In 1584 Kuchun defeated and killed Ermak
in a battle with 900 men on each side.
Fortified towns were built at Tiumen in 1586
and at Tobolsk in 1587.
In 1569 Ivan IV killed his cousin Vladimir,
and on November 9, 1581 he even mortally
wounded his own son and heir Ivan
after having caused his pregnant wife to miscarry.
Ivan IV came to be called “Grozny”
which means “fearsome.”
His son Dmitry was born on October 19, 1582,
and Ivan IV died of a stroke on March 28, 1584.
In April 1584 Bogdan Belsky tried to seize power
and continue the oprichnina policy, but he failed.
Feodor (Theodore) Ivanovich was nearly 17 years old
when he succeeded his father
as the last Tsar of the Rurik dynasty.
After forty days of mourning the leading men met in Moscow
on May 14 and agreed on an early coronation,
and he was crowned Feodor I on June 10.
He was religious but was not strong enough physically
or mentally to rule without relying on his advisors.
His five-year-old brother Dmitry was sent to live in Uglich.
Bogdan Belsky was sent to govern Nizhni Novgorod,
and secretary Andrey Shchelkalov was overshadowed
by Boris Godunov who had risen by marrying
the daughter of Grigori Malyuta in 1570.
Feodor had married Godunov’s sister Irina in 1580,
and the capable Boris led the regency council.
In January 1585 Russian envoys met with King Batory
in Poland, and they agreed on an armistice
that would expire on June 3, 1587.
Other Russian aristocrats met with Swedish envoys
near Narva in October 1585 and signed a four-year armistice.
Prince Ivan Mstislavsky led the boyars
who resented the untitled Boris.
His plot was discovered, and Mstislavsky was forced
to become a monk in the Kirillov monastery.
The Shuisky family was not implicated,
but they led the opposition.
Metropolitan Dionysii tried to mediate, but two merchants
who said that Boris would get rid of them all
were arrested and disappeared.
The Shuisky circulated a petition that Tsarina Irina
was barren after she had still-born children.
Dionysii signed it, became unpopular,
and resigned to become a monk in early 1587.
Prince Ivan Shuisky was banished to Beloozero,
and Prince Andrey Shuisky was taken to Kargopol;
both were then strangled.
Fedor Nagoi and six of his friends in the conspiracy
were beheaded, and others were banished or imprisoned.
By 1588 Boris Godunov was considered the ruler
and was called “His Majesty.”
He conducted foreign policy, and his name appeared
on all documents next to Tsar Feodor’s.
Boris tried to protect those who were oppressed
by the boyars or landowners,
and he tried to root out corruption and crime.
A judge found guilty of taking bribes
had to pay a fine of up to 2,000 rubles.
Dyaks who took bribes were
whipped in public and then imprisoned.
Many were punished, but during his rule
Boris did not publicly execute a single boyar.
They abolished tax privileges for large landowners
and had a good economy in the late 1580s.
In the late 1580s Boris had to deal with leaders
from the civil wars among Crimean Tatars.
Muhammad Girei’s sons Saidet and Murat were given refuge
in Moscow, and Tsar Fedor and Boris let them live
in Astrakhan where they served Moscow.
Murat put down the disobedient Nogai.
Early in 1586 Commander V. B. Sukin was sent beyond the
Ural Mountains to fortify Siberia, and in 1588
Khan Seid-Akhmat was captured.
An Orthodox Georgian king struggling against Muslims
was accepted as a vassal of the Tsar.
1. Wilhelm Reublin quoted in James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, p.172.
2. Jacob Hutter quoted in Freedom from Violence by Peter Brock, p. 51.
3. Quoted in God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Volume 1: The Origins to 1795 by Norman Davies, p. 153.
4. Christian Dialogues 260 by Marcin Czechovic, quoted in Freedom from Violence by Peter Brock p. 73.