Radziwiłłowie nieświescy i birżańscy - solidarność rodowa a kwestia wierności religii

Abstract

In the 16th-17th centuries, the Radziwiłł family belonged to the most significant magnate families in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Their power resulted, among others, from the fact that the family representatives supported each other's interests at the royal court or in relation to other magnates. In the 1560s and 1570s, the family divided into Catholics (Nieśwież) and Calvinists (Birże). During the Counter-Reformation, religious divisions among the Radziwiłł family weakened their family solidarity bonds. There were several conflicts involving Catholic and Protestant representatives of the Radziwiłł family. The most serious conflict took place in 1588, when the Franciscan church in Vilnius was desecrated by Arian Ezajasz Jeśman. Then, the Bishop of Vilnius and Cardinal Jerzy Radziwiłł, together with his chapter, came into a serious conflict with the Vilnius Voivode Krzysztof Radziwiłł "Piorun" (Calvinist) about who should judge the perpetrator of this crime. A few years later, the senior of the Catholic part of the family, the Trakai Voivode, Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł "Sierotka", did not support Krzysztof Radziwiłł "Piorun" when he sought (for his son Janusz) Zofias hand, a heiress of huge estates of the Słuck princes, with the Catholic Chodkiewicz family. In addition, the relations between these two family branches were complicated by the fact that the Nieśwież Radziwiłłs were regalists and the Calvinist family branch remained in opposition to King Sigismund III Vasa. Nevertheless, "Sierotka' and then Lithuanian chancellor Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł tried to reach an agreement between the monarch and the Protestant relatives., At the same time, the last male representative of the Protestant branch of the family, Bogusław Radziwiłł, cooperated in unison with the Catholic Radziwiłłs. Among others, it was due to the fact that the then Catholic Radziwiłłs were not as zealous in their faith as their predecessors mentioned here. Due to the extinction of the Calvinist branch of the Radziwiłł family in the second half of the 17th century, the problem discussed in the article ceased to exist.