KB, Poland, King Sigismund I the Old, Lithuania, Teutonic Order, Korski

Description: This medal is a part of my Polish medals offer Visit my page with the offers, please. You will find many interesting items related to this subject. If you are interested in other medals, related to this subject, click here, please. Poland; Rulers Medieval Motives Historic Battles Poland; History The Polish Kings and Royals and Their Coins Series by Profs. Witold Korski This series consists of 44 medals; if you are interested in the complete set, please contact me. The artist - Prof Witold Korski (1918 - 2003), one of the most famous Polish artist, architect, sculptor and medalist. see the link; http://warszawa.sarp.org.pl/php/galeria/barucki_witold-korski.htm The information is in Polish, and the medals are published there, as the finest of his works. His imagination regarding the medieval motives is the most creative I ever seen on the contemporary medals. av. The Renaissance coins of Sigismund I the Old; the dates 1506 – 1548. rv. The eagle of the Jagiellon Dynasty, around; AUREA AETAS; horizontal; SIGISMUNDUS I REX POL. ARTIUM PROTECTOR diameter - 70 mm (2 ¾ “) weight – 124.60 gr, (4.40 oz) metal – bronze, authentic patina Sigismund I the Old Sigismund I the Old (Polish: Zygmunt I Stary; Lithuanian: Žygimantas II Senasis; 1 January 1467 – 1 April 1548) of the Jagiellon dynasty reigned as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 to his death at age 81 in 1548. Before that, Sigismund had already been invested as Duke of Silesia. Sigismund I owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The son of King Casimir IV Jagiellon and Elisabeth of Austria Habsburg, Sigismund followed his brothers John I of Poland and Alexander I of Poland to the Polish throne. Their elder brother Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia became king of Hungary and Bohemia. Sigismund was christened the namesake of his mother's maternal grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who had died in 1437. Sigismund faced the challenge of consolidating internal power in order to face external threats to the country. During Alexander's reign, the law Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade Kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the Sejm. This proved crippling to Sigismund's dealings with the szlachta and magnates. Despite this Achilles heel, he established (1527) a conscription army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it. Intermittently at war with Vasily III of Muscovy, starting in 1507 (before his army was fully under his command), 1514 marked the fall of Smolensk (under Polish domination) to the Muscovite forces (which lent force to his arguments for the necessity of a standing army). Those conflicts formed part of the Muscovite wars. 1515 he entered an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the Second Peace of Thorn, Sigismund consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Sigismund's nephew, Louis II. The Polish wars against the Teutonic Knights ended in 1525, when Albert of Brandenburg, their marshal (and Sigismund's nephew), converted to Lutheranism, secularized the order, and paid homage to Sigismund. In return, he was given the domains of the Order, as the First Duke of Prussia. This was called the Prussian Homage. "Prussian Homage," by Jan Matejko, 1882, 388 x 875 cm, National Museum in Cracow. Albrecht Hohenzollern receives the Duchy of Prussia in fief from Polish King Sigismund I the Old in 1525 Sigismund's eldest daughter Hedwig (Jadwiga) (1513-1573) married Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg. In other matters of policy, Sigismund sought peaceful coexistence with the Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes. Sigismund was a Humanist. He and his third consort, Bona Sforza, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, were both patrons of Renaissance culture, which under them began to flourish in Poland and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. On Sigismund's death, his son Sigismund II August became the last Jagiellon king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. The Prussian Homage or Tribute The Prussian Homage or Tribute (German: Preußische Huldigung; Polish: hołd pruski) was the formal investment of Albert of Prussia as duke of the Polish fief of Ducal Prussia. Albert, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights and a member of the House of Hohenzollern, visited Martin Luther at Wittenberg and soon therefter became sympathetic to Protestantism. On April 10, 1525, in the market of the Polish capital Kraków, Albert resigned his position as Grand Master to become a Lutheran and receive the title "Duke of Prussia" from King Zygmunt I the Old of Poland. In a deal partially brokered by Luther, the Duchy of Prussia became the first Protestant state, anticipating the Peace of Augsburg of 1555. Albert I Hohenzollern of Brandenburg-Ansbach (German: Albrecht I Hohenzollern von Brandenburg-Ansbach; Latin: Albertus; 16 May 1490 – 20 March 1568) was Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights and, after converting to Lutheranism, the first duke of the Duchy of Prussia, which he made the first state to adopt the Lutheran faith. Albert was the third son of Margrave Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and Sophia, daughter of Casimir IV Jagiellon, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, and his wife Elisabeth of Austria. Albert's titles (on his proclamation of 1561 in Königsberg) were: Albert the Elder, Margrave of Brandenburg, in Prussia, Stettin in Pomerania, Duke of the Kashubians, and Wends, Burgrave of Nuremberg and Count of Rügen etc.[citation needed] Early life Born in Ansbach in Franconia as a third son, Albert was raised for a career in the church and spent some time at the court of Hermann IV of Hesse, elector of the Archbishopric of Cologne, who appointed him canon of the Cologne Cathedral. Turning to a more active life, Albert accompanied Emperor Maximilian I to Italy in 1508, and after his return spent some time in the Kingdom of Hungary. Grand Master Friedrich Wettin von Sachsen, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, died in December 1510. Albert was chosen as his successor early in 1511 in the hope that his relationship to his maternal uncle, Sigismund I the Old, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, would facilitate a settlement of the disputes over eastern Prussia, which had been held by the Order under Polish suzerainty since the Second Peace of Toruń in 1466. The new Grand Master, aware of his duties to the empire and to the papacy, refused to submit to the crown of Poland. As war over the Order's existence appeared inevitable, Albert made strenuous efforts to secure allies and carried on protracted negotiations with Emperor Maximilian I. The ill-feeling, influenced by the ravages of members of the Order in Poland, culminated in a struggle which began in December 1519 and devastated Prussia. Albert was granted a four-year truce early in 1521. The dispute was referred to Emperor Charles V and other princes, but as no settlement was reached he continued his efforts to obtain help in view of a renewal of the war. For this purpose he visited the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522, where he made the acquaintance of the reformer Andreas Osiander, by whose influence he was won over to Protestantism. He then journeyed to Wittenberg, where he was advised by Martin Luther to abandon the rules of his Order, to marry, and to convert Prussia into a hereditary duchy for himself. This proposal, which was understandably appealing to Albert, had already been discussed by some of his relatives; but it was necessary to proceed cautiously, and he assured Pope Adrian VI that he was anxious to reform the Order and punish the knights who had adopted Lutheran doctrines. Luther for his part did not stop at the suggestion, but in order to facilitate the change made special efforts to spread his teaching among the Prussians, while Albert's brother, Margrave George of Brandenburg-Ansbach, laid the scheme before their uncle, Sigismund I the Old of Poland. Duke of Prussia After some delay the king assented to it, with the provision that Prussia should be treated as a Polish fiefdom; and after this arrangement had been confirmed by a treaty concluded at Kraków, Albert pledged a personal oath to Sigismund I and was invested with the duchy for himself and his heirs on February 10, 1525. The Estates of the land then met at Königsberg and took the oath of allegiance to the new duke, who used his full powers to promote the doctrines of Luther. This transition did not, however, take place without protest. Summoned before the imperial court of justice, Albert refused to appear and was proscribed, while the Order elected a new Grand Master, Walter von Cronberg, who received Prussia as a fief at the imperial Diet of Augsburg. As the German princes were experiencing the tumult of the Reformation, the Peasants' War, and the wars against the Ottoman Turks, they did not enforce the ban on the duke, and agitation against him soon died away. In imperial politics Albert was fairly active. Joining the League of Torgau in 1526, he acted in unison with the Protestants, and was among the princes who banded together to overthrow Charles V after the issue of the Augsburg Interim in May 1548. For various reasons, however, poverty and personal inclination among others, he did not take a prominent part in the military operations of this period. The early years of Albert's rule in Prussia were fairly prosperous. Although he had some trouble with the peasantry, the lands and treasures of the church enabled him to propitiate the nobles and for a time to provide for the expenses of the court. He did something for the furtherance of learning by establishing schools in every town and by freeing serfs who adopted a scholastic life. In 1544, in spite of some opposition, he founded Königsberg University, where he appointed his friend Andreas Osiander to a professorship in 1549. Albert also paid for the printing of the Astronomical Tables ("Prutenische Tafeln") compiled by Erasmus Reinhold. This step was the beginning of the troubles which clouded the closing years of Albert's reign. Osiander's divergence from Luther's doctrine of justification by faith involved him in a violent quarrel with Philip Melanchthon, who had adherents in Königsberg, and these theological disputes soon created an uproar in the town. The duke strenuously supported Osiander, and the area of the quarrel soon broadened. There were no longer church lands available with which to conciliate the nobles, the burden of taxation was heavy, and Albert's rule became unpopular. After Osiander's death in 1552, Albert favoured a preacher named Johann Funck, who, with an adventurer named Paul Scalich, exercised great influence over him and obtained considerable wealth at public expense. The state of turmoil caused by these religious and political disputes was increased by the possibility of Albert's early death and the need, should that happen, to appoint a regent, as his only son, Albert Frederick was still a mere youth. The duke was consequently forced to consent to a condemnation of the teaching of Osiander, and the climax came in 1566 when the Estates appealed to King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland, Albert's cousin, who sent a commission to Königsberg. Scalich saved his life by flight, but Funck was executed. The question of the regency was settled, and a form of Lutheranism was adopted and declared binding on all teachers and preachers. Virtually deprived of power, the Duke lived for two more years, and died at Tapiau on March 20, 1568. He had married Dorothea, daughter of Frederick, King of Denmark, in 1526, and following her death in 1547, he married Anna Maria, daughter of Eric I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Albert was a voluminous letterwriter, and corresponded with many of the leading personages of the time. For switching to Protestantism, Albert had been excommunicated by the Pope. The Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire continued to claim the office of Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights as administrators of Prussia. In 1891 a statue was erected to his memory at Königsberg.

Price: 44.9 USD

Location: Sliema,

End Time: 2024-05-09T12:00:21.000Z

Shipping Cost: 12 USD