Changes

Jump to navigation Jump to search

A Royal Banquet in Cracow

40 bytes added, 11 May
no edit summary
{{Cytat
| Also on the square is the historic restaurant Wierzynek, the best place to enjoy courtly European service and traditional Polish specialties. Said to be one of the oldest operating restaurants in Europe, its history goes back to 1364, when innkeeper Mikolaj Wierzynek created a banquet served on gold and silver plates for the guests of King Casimir the Great, including Holy Roman Emperor Charles  IV. Wierzynek restaurant has hosted every visiting head of state ever since. Experience 500 years of history at the elegant café downstairs or the venerable upstairs salon, where seasonal game, mountains trout, and mushroom-sauced delights are served amid decorative reminders of the establishment’s gloried past.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Schultz
[[File:Kazimierz Wielki - kamienica hetmańska.jpg|thumb|upright|left|A supposed portrait of Casimir the Great (2nd half of the 14th century) on a bossed keystone at the Hetman House (below one of the Wierzynek restaurant’s dining rooms) in Cracow]]
The only historical source that mentions the banquet at Wierzynek’s are the ''Annals of the Glorious Kingdom of Poland'' by Jan Długosz, also known by his Latinized name, Joannes Longinus. According to his account, it all began when Charles of Luxembourg, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Bohemia (a kingdom roughly corresponding to the modern-day Czech Republic) was receiving envoys from Hungary and said something very offensive about King Louis of Hungary’s mom. It led, obviously, to a major diplomatic crisis. Louis, together with Duke Rudolph Habsburg of Austria (who also had his differences with the emperor and, incidentally, his father-in-law), was getting ready for war. This is when Pope Urban  V decided it was enough that western Europe, recently ravaged by a pandemic of bubonic plague, was already being plunged into a bloody conflict (which would later come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War). Having rulers of the relatively stable and quickly developing central Europe at each other’s throats would be too much. Which is why he dispatched his nuncio, Peter of Volterra, to try and calm them down. The nuncio did a great job – he managed to prevent hostilities and to convince the wrangling monarchs to settle their argument through arbitration. It was agreed there would be two adjudicators: one was Duke Bolko the Small of Schweidnitz, the last sovereign ruler in Silesia and uncle of the emperor’s recently deceased third wife. The other was King Casimir of Poland, brother of the Hungarian queen mother whose honour had been besmirched.
The nuncio also engaged in matchmaking and arranged the marriage of the freshly widowed emperor with Casimir’s granddaughter, Duchess Elizabeth of Stolp, Pomerania. The wedding was held in Cracow. According to Longinus, people invited by King Casimir included – apart from the young bride (and her family) and the not-so-young groom (and his family) – King Louis of Hungary, King Sigismund of Denmark, King Peter of Cyprus, Duke Bolko the Small of Schweidnitz, Duke Otto &nbsp;V of Bavaria, Duke Semovit of Masovia, Duke Vladislav &nbsp;II of Opole, etc. The wedding reception lasted twenty days, during which barrels of wine were put out in the streets for the common folk, while the royals and lords passed their time with tournaments, dances and banquets. The festivities were overseen – again, according to Longinus – by a&nbsp;certain Wierzynek, “a councillor of Cracow, native of the Rhineland” and “manager of the royal treasury”. He held one of the banquets in his own home, where – in gratitude for “unspeakable benevolence” – he seated King Casimir (and not the emperor!) in the place of honour and showered him with presents that were worth more than the new empress’s dowry.<ref name=Długosz>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Długosz
| imię = Jan
| 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&nbsp;ozdabia opowiadanie nie tylko stylistycznymi dodatkami. Tak i&nbsp;ten piękny obraz walki o&nbsp;sławę siostry i&nbsp;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 it happens, the great Cracovian chronicler, writing a&nbsp;century after the actual events, combined at least three separate meetings of central European monarchs which took place in Cracow in the years 1363–1364 into one big congress. First there was the imperial wedding of May 1363. Louis wasn’t there as he hadn’t yet reconciled with the emperor, nor had the kings of Denmark and Cyprus any reason to attend. The bride’s and the groom’s families were certainly there, so we can presume the presence of some people not mentioned in the sources, such as the emperor’s brother John Henry, Margrave of Moravia, or Casimir of Stolp, the bride’s brother and King Casimir’s favourite grandson.
In December of the same year Bolko the Small arrived in Cracow, so that he and King Casimir could finally adjudicate on the dispute between Charles and Louis. It’s possible that King Valdemar &nbsp;IV of Denmark (not Sigismund, as Longinus writes) was in town at the same time on unrelated business.
Finally, in September 1364, Emperor Charles and King Louis convened in Cracow to reconcile and swear friendship to each other, as mandated by Casimir and Bolko’s arbitration. This was a&nbsp;purely political gathering, not a&nbsp;family event, so most likely without women. Other participants may have included dukes of Austria, as parties to the dispute, other aforementioned dukes and – quite coincidentally – King Peter of Cyprus.
This must be one of the earliest descriptions of what is now considered an important part of traditional Polish hospitality, that is, forcing more food and drink down one’s guests’ throats than they are able to ingest. I can almost hear Wirsing and King Casimir urge their commensals with “You should try this one too! Just a&nbsp;little piece. But you must! Aren’t you gonna drink with me?”
Later descriptions of the banquet often stress the lavishness of golden and silver tableware, which is probably how some historians have interpreted the mentions of expensive gifts that were presented to the visiting monarchs. This may have been influenced by analogy to a&nbsp;chronicler’s account of another famous banquet from Poland’s medieval history – the one in Gniezno, AD 1000, where Duke Boleslav the Brave entertained Emperor Otto &nbsp;III and impressed him so much that Otto made Boleslav Poland’s first king.
{{Cytat
| inni = translated by Marcel Weyland
| url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170707131534/http://www.antoranz.net/BIBLIOTEKA/PT051225/PanTad-eng/PT-Start.htm#CONTENTS
}}, Book I, verse 484</ref>; and even before that, Italy was the point of cultural reference. But few people in Poland remember that in the late Middle Ages and at the turn of the Renaissance everything Czech was ''en vogue'' in Poland. Under Casimir the Great, the Polish Kingdom was growing strong, and forgotten were the times when Poland was ruled by King Wenceslaus &nbsp;II of Bohemia (Charles’s grandfather), while Vladislav the Ell (Casimir’s father), leader of the anti-Bohemian opposition, had to hide in forests and caves; but Casimir still looked from Cracow to Prague – by then, the ''de facto'' capital of the Roman Empire – as the West, in both geographic and cultural terms, and eagerly copied Bohemia’s legal, administrative and monetary solutions. Even the Czech language, which rings childish and funny to Polish ears today, was regarded as a&nbsp;tongue of great beauty and elegance by 16th-century Poles.
And what about Old Czech cuisine? Well, not everyone was fond of it, least of all the French poet Eustache Deschamps, who had learned to rhyme from Guillaume de Machaut.
| rozdział = Szczupak po polsku, czyli co Polacy dali Europie
| adres rozdziału = http://www.wilanow-palac.pl/szczupak_po_polsku_czyli_co_polacy_dali_europie.html
| wydawca = Muzeum Pałacu Króla Jana &nbsp;III w&nbsp;Wilanowie
| miejsce = Warszawa
}}</ref> As European gastronomy was modernizing and moving away from excessive use of exotic spices, this medieval recipë remained a&nbsp;souvenir of the colourful times when boiled fish was being seasoned with wine, pepper, ginger, mace and saffron (but no cloves!), while a&nbsp;Cracovian merchant was hosting princes, kings and an emperor.
{{Komentarze}}
[[Category: Pike in the Polish style]]
[[Category: Sour rye-meal soup]]
[[Category: Wine]]
[[Category: Boleslav the Brave]]
[[Category: Charles IV of Luxemburg]]
[[Category: Pavel Severýn]]
[[Category: Cracow]]
[[Category: Belgium]]
[[Category: Czechia]]
[[Category: France]]
[[Category: Germany]]
[[Category: Italy]]
[[Category: United Kingdom]]
[[Category: Middle Ages]]
[[Category: 20th century]]
[[Category: 21st century]]
[[Category: Pike in the Polish style]]
[[Category: Sour rye-meal soup]]
[[Category: Italy]]
[[Category: Belgium]]
[[Category: France]]
[[Category: United Kingdom]]
[[Category: Germany]]
[[Category:Wine]]
[[pl: Wierzynek – pierwszy polski restaurator?]]

Navigation menu