Open main menu

Changes

A Royal Banquet in Cracow

115 bytes removed, 18:31, 29 March 2019
[[File:Drzewo EN.png|class=full-page|Casimir the Great's family relationship. In yellow: more or less likely participants of the Cracow Congress of 1364.]]
[[File:Kazimierz Wielki - kamienica hetmańska.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Domniemany portret Kazimierza Wielkiego (2. poł. XIV w.) na zworniku sklepienia w Kamienicy Hetmańskiej (poniżej jednej z sal restauracji Wierzynek)Supposed A supposed portrait of Casimir the Great (2nd half of the 14th century) on a bossed keystone in 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 when Charles of Luxembourg, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and king of Bohemia (a region roughly corresponding to the modern-day Czech Republic), spoke offensively, in the presence of Hungarian envoys, of their King Louis the Great's mother (which, I suppose, means the he simply called Louis a son of a whore). It led, obviously, to a major diplomatic crisis. Louis, together with Duke Rudolph Habsburg of Austria (who also had his differences with his emperor and father-in-law), was getting ready to go to 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 knows 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. This 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.
| nazwisko = Długosz
| imię = Jan
| inni = tłum. translated into Polish by Karol Mecherzyński
| tytuł = Roczniki czyli kroniki sławnego Królestwa Polskiego: księgi IX–XII (wybór)
| url = https://wpolonia2polska.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/dlugosz-jan-roczniki-czyli-kroniki-krolestwa-polskiego-ix-xii.pdf
{{Cytat
| Clear-headed historical criticism does not fully trust Longinus, who tends to combine separate facts, looks for relationships where there weren't any and embellishes his account with more than just stylistic additions. Neither 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. Kutrzeba, ''Krakowski zjazd monarchów, czyli uczta u Wierzynka,'', sp. 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.}}