Revealing Privacy in Epithalamia: Royal Possessions during Wedding Festivals at the Court of the Jagiellonians: Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus

Abstract

This article analyses the wedding poems (epithalamia) from the Jagiellonian courts of Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus in order to understand what privacy was and how it was comprehended in the sixteenth century Polish Lithuanian-Commonwealth courts. Applying the terminological and the heuristic zone approach, this article deals with the idea that in early modern Central-Eastern Europe, privacy could have an ambiguous meaning. On the one hand, it could be grasped as family ties, especially in poems following the classical tradition where priv* words appear, and on the other hand, as the King’s personal property understood as an artifact commissioned or possessed by the ruler that formed part of his domestic belongings. The epithalamia also let us observe the wedding rituals and customs practiced by the Jagiellonians and prove their derivation from Western European court traditions.