We now move on to the second painting: The Adoption of Christianity by Lithuania, 1386.
The Kingdom of Poland, nearly four centuries after the Summit in Gniezno, is now ruled by the last heiress of Bolesław Chrobry’s Piast dynasty – Queen Jadwiga of Anjou. Poland already has a very enlightened “political nation” – i.e., a group of lords, mainly from Małopolska (Lesser Poland), who are ready to take responsibility for the fate of the Kingdom. They are looking for a husband for the young queen. And they found him in the last pagan state of Europe – namely, in neighboring Lithuania, with which Poland had already had two centuries of difficult relations. Now Poland and Lithuania were drawn together more than ever before by a common enemy: the Teutonic Order. The Order had tricked the Kingdom out of the priceless lands of Pomerania together with Gdańsk, and now it wanted to conquer Lithuania entirely in the name of a Christianizing mission, albeit by the sword. The joining of Lithuanian and Polish forces could counter this threat. The negotiations did not last long. The Grand Duke of Lithuania, Jogaila/Jagiełło, gladly took up the idea of marriage with Jadwiga and a union of the two states. Controversy was no longer aroused by the condition that previously had broken Polish-Lithuanian agreements – that is, the duke’s baptism in the Catholic rite, “together will all his brethren who have not yet been baptized, and likewise with his relatives, the nobles, and land-owners great and small who reside in his lands”. The third condition was also nothing extraordinary in the case of accepting a new ruler on the throne: he was to promise “to submit and offer the entirety of his treasures for the recovery of the lands severed from either of the two kingdoms, namely, Poland and also Lithuania”, and “to rejoin […] the lands taken away and severed from the kingdom of Poland, in their entirety, by whomsoever’s hand these might have been seized and taken”. This condition, along with others presented by the Polish delegation to Jagiełło at the castle in Krewo, was also accepted there in the above wording (of course, in Latin), in the form of a diplomatic act, issued on August 14, 1385 by the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
On the 15th of February the following year, another great act of historical drama shaping Eastern Europe took place: the baptism of Lithuania performed at Wawel cathedral in Kraków. There on that day, beside the sarcophagi of Poland’s restorers, Władysław Łokietek (the Short) and Kazimierz the Great, baptism was received by Jagiełło, as well as his pagan brothers Korygiełło, Świdrygiełło, Wigunt, and (being baptized for the third time) Witold (Vytautas). Officiating the baptism ceremony was the archbishop of Gniezno Bodzanta together with Kraków’s bishop Jan Radlica. Jagiełło received “the famous name of Władysław” in honor of Łokietek, the great-grandfather of his wife-to-be. The previous choice of the Orthodox Church and its cultural tradition was faithfully upheld by three other brothers of Jagiełło, also present in Krakow: Skirgiełło-Iwan, Korybut-Dymitr, and Lingwen-Semen. And this is also a characteristic moment. The five Lithuanian dukes, including Jagiełło and Witold, as well as the “large number” of boyars accompanying them, chose Latin baptism. Ethnic Lithuania would follow them. The three other dukes, like the majority of the inhabitants of the great Lithuanian empire and most of Giedymin’s family, remained Orthodox. And in no way did this obstruct the great celebration at Wawel. No-one was compelled to reconvert. This was not a conquest, but a voluntary union. On February 18, the magnificent wedding between Władysław and Jadwiga took place. At last on March 4, a series of great ceremonies culminated with the coronation of Władysław Jagiełło in Wawel Castle as the King of Poland. The Polish-Lithuanian Union had become a fact.
Through this connection, which King Władysław will skillfully cultivate for its first 48 years, and which will then continue as the Polish-Lithuanian Union for three and a half centuries, the concept will become real of Central-Eastern Europe, our great region of Europe. Poland, especially in the 14th-century, was deeply immersed in the dynamic development of Central Europe, with its symbolic capitals in Prague, Buda, and Kraków. Lithuania created a great empire in that same century – one that extended outward from the Baltic and the ethnically Lithuanian area to embrace half of the Ruthenian and Orthodox lands beyond. Lithuania was Eastern Europe. Through the union with Poland, she and a large part of this area will become more Europe, maybe less Eastern – politically connected with the center of this continent, which will soon also freely enter into the hands of the Jagiellonians. Central-Eastern Europe – that’s Kraków, Buda, Prague, also of course Poznań, Wrocław (still in the Crown of St. Wenceslas), Mazowsze, recovered Pomerania, but also Vilnius, Trakai, Kowno, Lviv, Kamieniec Podolski, Kiev, Polotsk…
After the coronation, Władysław began to carry out the spiritual commitment he had accepted in Krewo. He traveled to Vilnius along with “prelates, doctors and pious men, and priests in great numbers”. Indeed, many representatives of the richest Polish families went with the king on this mission: from the voivode of Poznań Bartosz from Wezenborg, through chancellor Zaklika from Międzygórze (from Toporów) and vice-chancellor Klemens from Moskorzów (from the Pilawici clan), Castellan of Wiślic Mikolaj Bogoria, Kraków’s Czestnik Włodek from Charbinowice (Sulima coat of arms), Spytek from Tarnów (Leliwa coat of arms), to the king’s confessor, the future primate Mikołaj Trąba of the Trąba coat of arms. Poland’s 15th-century historian Jan Długosz described how personal conversion by Władysław Jagiełło and his baptized brothers in Kraków could have happened (they were able to address their pagan brothers in the Lithuanian capital in their native language), how the king ordered the holy fire to be extinguished, the holy groves to be cut down, and the snakes worshipped as guardian deities to be killed. How Jagiełło taught them to pray in Lithuanian (The Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed – I believe in God…) and preached the truths of the Christian faith. And how he added to the Good News the following encouragement for catechumens: “to every man of the people after receiving baptism, new clothes, shirts and clothing made of cloth brought from Poland”. This is the moment the Lukians symbolically depict in their second painting. The king, with arms crossed, stands in front of the cross. Behind him is his Lithuania. Before him – the bishops and monks from Poland. On February 17, 1387, the king granted a great privilege to Vilnius’ bishopric he himself had established. On the site of the pagan temple the construction began of the cathedral dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and saints Stanisław (Vilnius had the same patron as the Polish capital) and Władysław (the Hungarian, the personal patron of the king himself). The Vilnius diocese was incorporated into the structure of the mission of the Gniezno Archbishopric. The Polish Franciscan, Andrzej of the Jastrzębiec coat of arms, was appointed as the first bishop. Polish Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines from Tyniec, as well as canons regular from penance (the “Markians” – from St. Mark’s Church), distinguished themselves in this mission over the coming years, establishing branches of their monasteries and spiritually supporting new parishes throughout ethnic Lithuania (i.e., without still pagan Samogitia). Just as Poland owes its baptism to missionaries from Bohemia and Germany, probably also from Italy and faraway Ireland, Lithuania owes its roots of Catholic identity mainly to Polish priests. Lithuania, and with it, today’s Belarus and a large part of Ukraine, thus entered via Polish mediation into the circle of the wider, Latin Europe. This great work – commenced at Wawel cathedral with the holy baptism of Jagiełło himself – continued over the following centuries. But it is still in danger. In 1939, Joseph Stalin, ready to come to an agreement with Hitler and destroy Central-Eastern Europe, headed a pagan – or even worse, an atheistic, bloody, communist “reconquista” of this great area. This thought may well have accompanied visitors to the Polish pavilion in May 1939. With all certainty it occurred to them on August 23, when news came of the Hitler-Stalin pact concluded in Moscow, the one we know as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact…