Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SHA-SIV |
|
|
SIGISMUND II . (1520-1572), king of Poland, the only son of Sigismund I., king of Poland, whom he succeeded in 1548, and Bona Sforza. At the very beginning of his reign he came into collision with the turbulent szlachta or gentry, who had already begun to oust the great families from power. The ostensible cause of their animosity to the king was his second marriage
Barbara
movement
Barbara
contract a third purely political union with the Austrian archduchess Catherine, the sister of Sigismund's first wife Elizabeth, who had died within atwelvemonth of her marriage
heir male who might be born to him; but their complacency was in vain, for the king died childless. This matter of the king's marriage was of great political importance, the Protestants and the Catholics being equally interested in the issue. Had he not been so good a Catholic Sigismund might well have imitated the example of Henry VIII. by pleading that his detested third wife was the sister of his first and consequently the union was uncanonical. The Polish Protestants hoped that he would take this course and thus bring about a breach with Rome at the very crisis of the confessional struggle in Poland, while the Habsburgs, who coveted the Polish throne, raised every obstacle to the childless king's remarriage. Not till Queen Catherine's death on the 28th of February 1572 were Sigismund's hands free, but he followed her to the grave less than six months afterwards. Sigismund's reign was a period of internal turmoil and external expansion. He saw the invasion of Poland by the Reformation, and the democratic upheaval which placed all political power in the hands of the szlachta; he saw the collapse of the ancient order of the Knights of the Sword in the north (which led to the acquisition of Livonia by the republic) and the consolidation of the Turkish power in the south. Throughout this perilous transitional period Sigismund's was the hand which successfully steered the ship of state amidst all the whirlpools that constantly threatened to engulf it. A far less imposing figure than his father, the elegant and refined Sigismund II. was nevertheless an even greater statesman than the stern and majestic Sigismund I. Tenacity and patience, the characteristics of all the Jagiellos, he possessed in a high degree, and he added to them a supple dexterity and a diplomatic finesse which he may have inherited from his Italian mother. Certainly no other Polish king so thoroughly understood the nature of the ingredients of that witch's caldron, the Polish diet, as he did. Both the Austrian ambassadors and the papal legates testify to the care with which he controlled " this nation so difficult to lead." Every-thing went as he wished, they said, because he seemed to know everything beforehand. He managed to get more money than his father could ever get, and at one of his diets won the hearts of the whole assembly by unexpectedly appearing before them in the simple grey coat of a Masovian squire. Like his father, a pro-Austrian by conviction, he contrived even in this respect to carry the Polish nation, always so distrustful of the Germans, entirely along with him, thereby avoiding all serious complications with the ever dangerous Turk. Only a statesman of genius could have mediated for twenty years, as he did, between the church and the schismatics without alienating the sympathies of either. But the most striking memorial of his greatness was the union of Lublin, which finally made of Poland and Lithuania one body
See Ludwik Finkel, Characteristics of Sigismund Augustus
Lemberg
Adam
End of Article: SIGISMUND II If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/SHA_SIV/SIGISMUND_II.html"> SIGISMUND II </a> |
|
|
(Previous) SIGISMUND I |
(Next) SIGISMUND III |
|
Sponsored Advertisements