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[[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, the whole story started 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 V of Bavaria, Duke Semovit of Masovia, Duke Vladislav 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 enjoyed tournaments, dances and banquets. The festivites were overseen -- again, according to Longinus -- by a 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>{{Cyt
[[File:Nuremberg chronicles - CRACOVIA.png|thumb|left|400px|A panorama (from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle) of the Wawel castle, the city of Cracow and its suburbs, including the town of Kazimierz, founded and named after King Casimir the Great]]
Let's take a closer look at this somewhat exotic ruler. The Kingdom of Cyprus was established after crusaders led by King Richard the Lionheart had conquered the Christian, but strategically located, island. From then on, it was ruled by Catholic kings of the French house of Lusignan. Most of the time they were warring against the equally Catholic city of Genoa, but for PR reasons they promoted the need to fight the Arabs and the Turks. And so, in 1362, King Peter set out on a tour of Europe to gather volunteers and money for a new crusade against the infidels. He travelled through Italy, France, what is now Belgium, England and Germany. He collected quite a sum of money, but the he was robbed and had to start again from scratch. Eventually he got to Prague, where the emperor proposed to take him to a big get-together of monarchs in Cracow, where he was just getting ready to go and where Peter could propagandize his idea for a crusade.
Years later Guillaume de Machaut would sing of King Peter's peregrination, as well as the actual crusade against Egypt, in ''The Capture of Alexandria''. According to de Machaut's account, Charles and Peter leaved Prague on horseback, entering Silesia (a region between Bohemia and Poland) after three days, then passed a number of Silesian and Polish towns (some of which couldn't possibly be on their itinerary, so it looks like the poet just listed the place names he happened to know) and finally reaching Cracow, where they were greeted by other monarchs with much rejoicing. During the congress, the monarchs politely lent their ears to Peter's pleas and then supported his crusading efforts by letting him win the main prize in a tournament.
