This medal is a part of my Polish medals collection
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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.
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.
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 – 130.90
gr, (4.62 oz)
metal – silver plated
Sigismund I the Old, 1467 - 1548
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,
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
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.
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.
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
The ill-feeling,
influenced by the ravages of members of the Order in
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
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
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
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
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
In 1891 a statue was
erected to his memory at Königsberg.