(Redirected from Kazimierz III Wielki): ''This article is about the 14th century Polish king. For other uses, please see
Casimir''.
'Casimir III', called 'the Great' (
Polish: '''Kazimierz Wielki''';
April 30 1310 –
November 5 1370),
King of Poland (1333-70), was the son of King
Władysław I the Elbow-high and Jadwiga of
Gniezno and
Greater Poland.
Biography
Born in
Kowal, Casimir (Kazimierz) the Great first married Anna, or
Aldona Ona, the daughter of the prince of
Lithuania,
Gediminas. The daughters from this marriage were Cunigunde (d 1357), who was married to
Louis VI the Roman, the son of
Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and Elisabeth, who was married to Duke
Bogislaus V of Pomerania.
Aldona died in 1339 and Kazimierz then married Adelheid of
Hesse. He divorced Adelheid in 1356, married Christina, divorced her, and while Adelheid and possibly also Christina were still alive c. 1365 married Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Glogow and Sagan.
His three daughters by his fourth wife were very young and regarded as of dubious legitimacy because of their father's bigamy. Due to the fact that all of the 5 children he fathered with his first and fourth wife were daughters, he would have no lawful male heir to his throne.
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 Royal seal of Kazimierz the Great |
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When Kazimierz, the last
Piast king of Poland, died in 1370, his nephew King
Louis I of Hungary succeeded him to become king of
Poland in personal union with
Hungary.
The Great King
Kazimierz is the only Polish king who both received and kept the title of ''Great'' in Polish history (
Boleslaw I Chrobry was once also called ''the Great'', but no longer). When he received the crown, his hold on it was in danger, as even his neighbours did not recognise his title and instead called him "king of
Kraków". The
economy was ruined, and the country was depopulated and exhausted by war. Upon his death, he left a country doubled in size (mostly through the addition of land in today's
Ukraine, then the Duchy of
Halicz), prosperous, wealthy and with great prospects for the future. Although he is depicted as a peaceful king in children's books, he in fact waged many victorious wars and was readying for others just before he died.
Kazimierz the Great built many new
castles, reformed the Polish
army and Polish
civil and
criminal law. At the
Sejm in
Wislica, March 11,
1347, he introduced salutary legal reforms in the jurisprudence of his country. He sanctioned a code of laws for Great and Little Poland, which gained for him the title of "the Polish Justinian" and founded the
University of Kraków, although his death stalled the university's development (which is why it is today called the "Jagiellonian" rather than "Casimirian" University).
He organized a meeting of kings at Kraków (1364) in which he exhibited the wealth of the Polish kingdom.
Casimir III tomb effigy in Wawel Cathedral
Concession to the nobility
In order to enlist the support of the
nobility, especially the military help of
pospolite ruszenie, Kazimierz was forced to give up important privileges to their caste, which made them finally clearly dominant over townsfolk (
burghers or ''mieszczanstwo'').
In
1335, in the "treaty of
TrenÄÃn", Kazimierz relinquished "in perpetuity" his claims to
Silesia. In
1355 in
Buda Kazimierz designated Louis of Anjou (Louis I of Hungary) as his successor. In exchange, the szlachta's tax burden was reduced and they would no longer be required to pay for military expeditions expenses outside Poland. Those important concessions would eventually lead to the ultimately crippling rise of the unique
nobles' democracy in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
His second daughter, Elisabeth, Duchess of Pomerania, bore a son in 1351, named Kasimir (
Kazimierz of Pomerania) after his maternal grandfather. He was slated to become the heir, but did not succeed to the throne, dying childless in 1377, 7 years after King Kazimierz. He was the only male descendant of King Kazimierz who lived during his lifetime.
Also, his son-in-law
Louis VI the Roman of Bavaria,
Margrave and
Prince-elector of
Brandenburg, was thought as a possible successor as king of Poland. However, he was not deemed eligible as his wife, Kazimierz's daughter Cunigunde, had died already in 1357, without children.
Kazimierz had no legal sons. Apparently he deemed his own descendants either unsuitable or too young to inherit. Thus, and in order to provide a clear line of succession and avoid dynastic uncertainty, he arranged for his sister Elisabeth, Dowager Queen of Hungary, and her son Louis king of Hungary to be his successors in Poland. Louis was proclaimed king on Kazimierz's death in
1370, and Elisabeth held much of the real power until her death in
1380.
Many of the influential lords of Poland were unsatisfied with the idea of any personal union with Hungary, and 12 years after Kazimierz's death, (and only a couple of years after Elisabeth's), they refused in 1382 to accept the succession of Louis's eldest surviving daughter Mary (Queen of Hungary) in Poland too. They therefore chose Mary's younger sister, Hedwig, as their new monarch, and she became "King" (=Queen Regnant)
Jadwiga of Poland, thus restoring the independence enjoyed until the death of Kazimierz, twelve years earlier.
Relationship with Polish Jews
King Kazimierz was favorably disposed toward
Jews. On
9 October 1334, he confirmed the privileges granted to Jewish Poles in
1264 by
Boleslaus V. Under
penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced
Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of
Jewish cemeteries.
Although
Jews had lived in Poland since before the reign of King Kazimierz, he allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers and protected them as ''people of the king''.
[1]
See also
★
History of Poland (966-1385)
References
1. In Poland, a Jewish Revival Thrives — Minus Jews
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