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A Royal Banquet in Cracow

691 bytes added, 21:59, 21 January 2020
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{{Cytat
| Clear-headed historical criticism does not fully trust Longinus, who tends to combine distinct facts, seek relationships among them where there aren't any and embellish his account with more than just stylistic additions. No more did the beautiful story of a king's fight for his sister's honour and of his granddaughter's wedding survive the scalpel of critique. Doubts, minor at first, eventually dismantled almost entirely the structure which Longinus had skillfully pieced together.
| źródło = S{{Cyt | tytuł = Rocznik Krakowski | nazwisko r = Kutrzeba | imię r = Stanisław | rozdział = Historya rodziny Wierzynków | adres rozdziału = http://mbc.malopolska. Kutrzeba, ''Krakowski zjazd monarchów, czyli uczta upl/dlibra/doccontent?id=12450 | wydawca = Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Miłośników Historyi i Wierzynka,'', p. Zabytków Krakowa | miejsce = Kraków | rok = 1899 | tom = II | strony = 53 }}, own translation
| oryg = Trzeźwa krytyka historyczna nie bardzo wierzy Długoszowi, który nieraz wiąże ze sobą fakty odrębne, szuka między nimi związku, choć go nie było, wreszcie upiększa i ozdabia opowiadanie nie tylko stylistycznymi dodatkami. Tak i ten piękny obraz walki o sławę siostry i zaślubin wnuki królewskiej nie ostał się przed skalpelem krytyki. Drobne początkowo wątpliwości doprowadziły do tego, iż prawie na szczątki rozbito gmach sklejony sztucznie przez Długosza.}}
As for Wierzynek, Longinus gives us only his surname. A merchant family of this name, one of Cracow's most affluent and influential, used to live in the city for centuries. Its progenitor, Mikołaj Wierzynek, arrived in Cracow from the Rhineland, or what is now western Germany, at the beginning of the 14th century. And of course his name wasn't really Mikołaj Wierzynek, but Nikolaus Wirsing; it was only years later that his descendants Polonized the German surname to ''Wierzynek''. He served as member of the city council of Cracow and later as a mayor of the nearby salt-mining town of Wieliczka. He was even named Pantler of Sandomierz, but it doesn't mean he was actually responsible for the royal pantry whenever the king was in that city; it had already become a purely titular office, although a prestigious one and reserved for the nobility. So how did a Rhenish merchant become a Polish nobleman? We don't know for sure, but there were basically three options to achieve this status: ennoblement, naturalization and imposture. Whichever it was, Wirsing was certainly a man of means who enjoyed a high level of the king's trust – in other words, an ideal candidate for organizing a great banquet designed to wow the emperor and other monarchs, and to glorify Casimir the Great's kingdom, which was just making its debut as a serious player on the international stage.
There's only one but: Pantler Nikolaus Wirsing died in 1360, that is, 3–4 years before the banquet. So if it hadn't been him who threw the most famous party of medieval Poland, then it must have been one of his family members. His family grew quickly after he had settled in Cracow, but, out of a number of Wirsings residing in Cracow in 1364, historians have been able to identify one who could have been responsible for the feast; it was the pantler's son, Nikolaus Wirsing Junior, who, like his father, served as a Cracow councillor and, unlike his father, isn't known to have accomplished much else. Hence the conclusion that Junior held the banquet, perhaps in his own house, but did so in his official capacity as a representative of the city and spending money from the city's budget.<ref>S. {{Cyt | tytuł = Rocznik Krakowski | nazwisko r = Kutrzeba, ''op | imię r = Stanisław | rozdział = Historya rodziny Wierzynków | adres rozdziału = http://mbc. citmalopolska.''pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=12450 | wydawca = Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Miłośników Historyi i&nbsp;Zabytków Krakowa | miejsce = Kraków | rok = 1899 | tom = II | strony = 29–87 }}</ref>
It's commonly accepted that Wirsing's banquet took place during the third of the meetings mentioned above – the one of September 1364. This one took the top place in the number-of-crowned-heads-in-one-place category, which surely stirred people's imagination. But if sources confuse this summit with the imperial wedding of May 1363, then you can imagine just as well that Wirsing's feast was part of the multi-day wedding festivities. Especially if you remember that Longinus compared the value of Wirsing's gifts for Casimir to that of the bride's dowry. Although, after all, if Wirsing had done such a good job as a wedding reception manager, than why couldn't he repeat his own success during the political summit a year and a half later? Perhaps there was more than just one "banquet at Wierzynek's"?

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