From Royal Prayer Books to Common Prayers: Religious Practices in Late Medieval and Early Modern Poland

Abstract

The Union between Poland and Lithuania, whose foundations were laid in 1386 with the baptism of Jagiello, the pagan grand duke of Lithuania, and his marriage to Queen Jadwiga (Hedwig), daughter of the last king of Poland, marked the beginning of a systematic Christianization to which the pagan Lithuanians offered remarkably little resistance. Recent research on religious practice under the ruling Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland and Lithuania (1386–1572) shows that royal piety was often designed to elicit participation at a popular level, cementing both the diffusion of Christian involvement across the newly unified kingdom, and in turn the role of the royal family at its centre. Surviving royal accounts and prayer books can offer a privileged insight into the personal religion of the monarchs and their relatives. These accounts, although only partially extant, constitute an objective source by which religious practices may be understood. Created for bureaucratic reasons, to keep order in the Treasurer’s Chancery, rather than to present the king as pious, they detail expenses for masses and other opera pia of the king and his family, recording the rhythm of royal religious practices – for the day, the week and the whole liturgical year. The accounts also provide evidence of sacramental practices and royal almsgiving. Pious literature composed at the behest of the Jagiellons, combined with extant pedagogical treatises and didactic sermons delivered in the presence of the monarch, is particularly valuable in admitting us into the world of royal Christian education.