9

Vilnius-Radom

Vytautas’s failure to push his coronation suggests that the episode was a deliberate ploy by the cousins to fend off incorporationist pressure: Halecki’s suggestion that the plan was hatched during Jagiełło’s visit to Lithuania in May 1397 is plausible.1 Vytautas—possibly with Jagiełło’s support—may have engineered the Salin banquet incident to show the Cracow lords that Vytautas, as his response to Jadwiga’s letter demonstrated, was eminently capable of appealing to his boyars to defend Lithuania’s status.

Jagiełło’s support was important, even if he necessarily had to be more circumspect than Vytautas. The cousins had a common interest in opposing the idea that ‘applicare’ signified incorporation. For Jagiełło, in the absence of an heir, the uncertainty over his position should Jadwiga die was a central consideration; for Vytautas it was just as important, since he would be seriously affected should Jagiełło be forced to return to Lithuania on Jadwiga’s death. The solidarity between the two cousins seems to have worked: the lack of any echo of the Salin incident in Cracow during Vytautas’s visit in early 1399 suggests that the point had been taken.2

By now, however, Jadwiga was pregnant. A daughter was born on 22 or 23 June, but died on 13 July. Jadwiga followed her into the grave four days later. Within a month, Vytautas had suffered his great reverse on the Vorskla. Taken together, these two very different tragedies brought a sudden end to the crisis, as all parties faced up to the failure of the main element in the Krewo plan. Jadwiga’s death without an heir exposed the frailty of the Krewo arrangements in the light of the cousins’ defence of Lithuania’s autonomy and the traditional patrimonial view of the grand duchy, while the Vorskla catastrophe exposed the gulf between Vytautas’s ambition and his resources.

On 20 August, six days after Jadwiga’s lavish funeral, Jagiełło left for Ruthenia, declaring that he was returning to Lithuania since it was unseemly to remain in another’s kingdom after she who had inherited it had died. He reached Lwów on 1 October, but did not need to travel any further. His Polish councillors hurriedly swore new oaths of loyalty to him, confirming his status, and assuring him that his position was secure.3 There is no confirmation of Długosz’s account, although in the light of the battles over the nature of the union and the Salin incident, it is entirely plausible that Jagiełło should have sought reassurances as to his position.

The ploy was only partially successful. The Poles swore new oaths of loyalty to their king, but if Jagiełło had hoped to secure recognition that following Jadwiga’s death he held the Polish throne with all the rights of his predecessors, including hereditary title for his heirs, he was to be disappointed. Subsequent developments cast doubt on Kurtyka’s suggestion that after negotiations at the Cistercian monastery in Koprzywnica Jagiełło returned to Cracow for a new election to the throne, this time with hereditary rights. The insistence of the Cracow lords that he marry Anna of Celje, a granddaughter of Casimir III, implies that any heirs would enjoy a natural right to the throne only through their mother. Jagiełło finally agreed—tradition holds that Jadwiga urged this course on her deathbed—marrying Anna in 1401, after stalling, according to Długosz, because she was unattractive.4

Jagiełło was meanwhile quietly negotiating the first major attempt to define the nature of the relationship between the union partners. He thrashed out terms with Vytautas at Hrodna in December. Although Jagiełło’s document is lost, Vytautas’s acceptance of it, sealed in Vilnius on 18 January 1401, survives, as do a document bearing the same date in which the bishop of Vilnius, three princes and 58 Lithuanian boyars and their sons accepted its terms; the formal acceptances drawn up for several Lithuanian princes; and its ratification by 52 Polish nobles at Radom on 11 March.5 Great claims have been made for what is known as the Vilnius-Radom treaty. For Rhode, it was the most important of the alterations to Krewo, which established a completely new relationship between the parties to the union.6 For Błaszczyk it marked the recognition by Poland of Lithuania’s separate statehood; others, aware that Krewo was a prenuptial agreement, have argued that it was the first true treaty of union, since it made formal provisions on practical matters of governance.7

Vilnius-Radom was not a treaty of union, but a comprehensive amplification of Astrava, concerned with internal arrangements for Lithuania’s government. Nevertheless, it had considerable implications for the union. Jagiełło delegated to Vytautas his regalian rights in Lithuania, but only for his lifetime, without rights of succession. Jagiełło retained the title supremus dux Lithuaniae ac heres Russiae, and Vytautas swore that on his death the grand duchy would revert to Jagiełło and his heirs in perpetuity. Claims that Lithuanian statehood was thereby restored or confirmed are anachronistic: Vilnius-Radom was a personal, dynastic arrangement, concerned with lordship—dominium—not sovereignty in the modern sense: Skurvydaitė’s claim that it established Vytautas as sovereign grand duke in Lithuania under Jagiełło’s nominal suzerainty, and that his entire policy thereafter was dedicated to establishing Lithuania as a separate monarchy is unconvincing.8 The language of the documents makes the position clear. They were drafted by men who knew their canon law: the phrase used to define the relationship between Jagiełło and Vytautas was ‘nos in partem sollicitudinis assumpsit supremumque principatum suarum Littwuaniae et caeterorum dominiorum suorum de manu sua nobis dedit et contulit ad tempora vitae nostrae’.9 Thus the powers granted to Vytautas over Jagiełło’s Lithuanian and other dominions came from Jagiełło personally (de manu sua): there was no mention of Poland or the corona regni. Vytautas’s position was clear. ‘In partem sollicitudinis’ was the phrase used in canon law to denote the status of bishops in relation to the pope: they were vocati in partem sollicitudinis, non in plenitudinem potestatis (called to a share of responsibility, not in the fullness of power).10 For all the huffing and puffing about ‘statehood’, ‘sovereignty’, and ‘independence’ from modern scholars, Vytautas recognized that his power was legally circumscribed, and that Jagiełło remained supreme duke: Vytautas was entitled ‘dux Lithuaniae’. He was already using the title grand duke (magnus dux) in official correspondence, except with Poland, although it was not recognized by Jagiełło until 1411.11 The fact that Vytautas exercised the full panoply of regalian powers, and that Jagiełło largely ceased to do so in practice for the grand duchy, did not, therefore, signify, as Balzer suggests, that Vytautas’s powers were equal to those of Jagiełło, or that Jagiełło was excluded from the government of Lithuania. Future events would demonstrate that this was not the case.12

Vilnius-Radom was, nevertheless, far more than just a private dynastic arrangement. It was a confirmation of the union that represented the first real attempt to define how it might work in practice, which took account of Jagiełło’s establishment of Vytautas as his deputy in Lithuania. Vytautas renewed his vows not just to Jagiełło, but also to the crown, kingdom, and inhabitants of Poland (corona ac regnum et regnicolas regni Poloniae), and swore to provide assistance to them when required. On his death, the territories he held were to revert not just to Jagiełło, but also to the crown and kingdom of Poland.13 Vytautas’s dynastic interests were recognized through provision for his brother Žygimantas, who was to receive lands from the patrimony of their deceased brothers Vaidotas and Tautvilas, while Vytautas’s wife Anna was to enjoy the lands she had been granted by Vytautas for her lifetime should he predecease her. The document sworn to by the Lithuanians followed this text closely, recognizing Jagiełło as ‘supremus principatus terrarum Litwaniae’, and referring to him as ‘dominus noster’. They recognized that on Vytautas’s death the lands granted to him would revert to Jagiełło and to the crown and kingdom of Poland, after which they promised to ‘adhere, submit, and yield to’ the crown and kingdom of Poland, and to serve it faithfully thereafter.14

The language of the documents demonstrates why the Poles were happy to accept these arrangements during Vytautas’s lifetime. For the Polish conception of the union had not been challenged. In 1401, as in 1386, the Lithuanian elites swore loyalty not just to Jagiełło as supreme duke of Lithuania, but also to the crown and kingdom of Poland, and agreed to maintain the union in perpetuity and irrevocably.15 The Vilnius-Radom documents reveal more about the nature of that Polish idea of union than the Krewo Act. The Poles were happy to compromise on technical arrangements for the governance of Lithuania, and to recognize that Jagiełło, as supreme duke, had the right to rule his Lithuanian patrimony as he saw fit, in return for an acknowledgement of where supreme authority ultimately lay. The Lithuanians swore that they would remain united with the Poles in perpetuity: ‘adhaerere’, ‘subici’, ‘obsequi’, and ‘servire’ were all unambiguous in their connotations.

Nevertheless, although these terms indicate that the Poles felt that the kingdom of Poland was the superior partner in the union, the canon law concepts in the Vilnius-Radom treaty suggest that it is more useful to consider what ‘applicare’ might have meant in practice to the Poles than simply to assert—or deny—that Lithuanian was incorporated in 1386. The distinction made throughout the documents between the ‘corona’ and the ‘regnum’ of Poland is significant. While the appeal to the concept of the regnum indicates that the idea of Polish statehood did exist for the Polish elites, it was the concept of the corona regni as the embodiment of the community of the realm that was of greater significance. Despite the institutionalization of royal government after 1320, Poland was no centralized unitary state, and the decisive role of the communitas regni in determining the succession in the 1380s indicated not only that much power effectively lay in the provinces of Wielkopolska and Małopolska, but also that the community of the realm, while it included the monarch, was viewed as an entity built from the bottom up. It was embodied in the assemblies of citizens that had—in each province—gathered to discuss the succession after 1382, before reaching a national agreement. It formed a union of provinces, in which decisions affecting the whole regnum, such as the succession, could only be taken in an assembly of all the provinces of the realm. Government was still very much the business of the king; the community of the realm was increasingly concerned with defining the limits of his powers.

It was the incorporation of Lithuania into this concept of the corona regni as a political community that was more important than any sense that Lithuania had been incorporated into, or annexed by, the Polish state, although the issue of Lithuania’s relations with the Order crystallized Polish desires for the regnum to conduct a common foreign policy. Błaszczyk argues that the Poles did not abandon the idea of incorporation in 1401, suggesting that they merely recognized that, for the moment, it could not be implemented; it might be better to suggest that they regarded the regnum as a composite, not a unitary state.16 They made no move to govern Lithuania directly and accepted Jagiełło’s arrangements for the government of Lithuania in Vytautas’s lifetime. As in canon law, the exercise of considerable power by a legally subordinate authority threatened neither the monarch’s legal superiority, nor the rights of the communitas regni to constrain the royal prerogative, just as the considerable autonomy of bishops in their dioceses did not call into question the superiority of pope or the communitas ecclesiae, the community of the church. The terms of Vilnius-Radom suggest that the Polish negotiators, while maintaining the idea of incorporation, recognized that this was not a full accessory union: it was what was later to be known as an incorporatio minus plena, in which the two parties were not merged into a unitary structure.

These aspects of the 1401 arrangements call into question the widely accepted idea that Vilnius-Radom instituted a purely personal union.17 It was endorsed by the elites of both parties to the union. The Lithuanian boyars for the first time explicitly stated that they did so with the knowledge of, and in the name of, the Lithuanian and Ruthenian political communities.18 Even if this was an empty formula—as the Lithuanian boyars were later to claim on the grounds that in those days they simply did what their grand dukes told them—it indicates the importance to the Poles of the consent of the community of the realm within the union.

There was one new element to the treaty whose significance has not been given the prominence it deserves. It was agreed that should Jagiełło die without an heir, the Poles would not elect a new monarch without consulting Vytautas and the Lithuanian elites.19 This clause indicates that this was more than just a personal union. The succession was not clear in either Poland or Lithuania in 1401. Had Jadwiga lived, the fact that she was regarded as the natural heir and inheritor of the Polish kingdom meant that any child of her marriage to Jagiełło had a strong claim to succeed by hereditary right. Yet even if she had given birth to a son, there was no guarantee that he would have succeeded automatically: Jadwiga’s claim rested on the choice made by the Polish community of the realm in 1382, and the claims of her older sister and a welter of Piasts had been set aside in her favour. Once she was dead, even if Jagiełło’s right to the throne was confirmed, there was no guarantee that his children would be regarded as natural heirs to the kingdom, as the demand that he marry Anna of Celje demonstrated.

Historians have spilt much ink worrying about whether Vilnius-Radom inaugurated a feudal relationship between Poland and Lithuania, as if the law of the Île-de-France operated on the Vistula and Niemen, without appreciating the significance of the concession of this right of consultation over any future Polish monarch.20 The Polish negotiators effectively recognized that the inclusion of Lithuania into the community of the realm conferred certain rights upon it, including the most important of all: the right exercised by Wielkopolska and Małopolska in 1382 to determine the succession. Vilnius-Radom gives the first concrete sign that the Poles did regard the Lithuanians—or at least the Catholic Lithuanian boyars—as part of the wider corona regni. As the future was to show, the question of the succession was to drive the process of union more than any other factor. While the arrangements for future royal elections, and the exact role of the Lithuanians within them, were opaque to say the least, Vilnius-Radom proposed the first truly common institutional link between the two parties to union beyond the person of the monarch: the concept of consultation over the succession was the first step on the road to a common election. It was an idea that was to develop and flourish, even if its realization was to prove challenging.

The clause sheds light on another matter that has exercised historians: who gained most from the compromise. Answers to this question depend upon assumptions concerning the motivations of the actors that are usually deduced from preconceptions about the nature of the relationship between Poland and Lithuania, or the aims and objectives of Jagiełło and Vytautas. For those who see Jagiełło and the Poles as proponents of the incorporation of Lithuania into the Polish state, 1401 marked a defeat, in which Lithuania’s separate statehood was supposedly recognized, if only for Vytautas’s lifetime; for those who see him as the champion of Lithuanian independence, Vilnius-Radom represented a defeat for Vytautas, who was forced to acknowledge the superiority not just of Jagiełło, but of the corona regni Poloniae.21

Nikodem, who rightly asserts the importance of dynastic considerations for both Jagiełło and Vytautas, ignores this clause, arguing, on the dubious basis that Salin represented the high-point of Vytautas’s supposed programme to establish Lithuania as an independent monarchy, that Vilnius-Radom marked a clear defeat for him, even if he was granted much of the practical power he sought.22 Yet the clause on the succession in the event of Jagiełło’s death without an heir was very much in Vytautas’s interests. In 1401 Jagiełło was fifty. He had no heir; even after his second marriage it would be at least a decade and a half before any son would enter his majority, and a few years more before his heir would be capable of governing. At Vilnius-Radom the Poles agreed to consult the Lithuanians over the succession, pledging not to elect a king without Lithuanian consent. This placed Vytautas in a strong position. He was younger than Jagiełło, and already had a child, albeit a daughter. By 1401 he had established a powerful political position among the Lithuanian elites and good relations with leading Polish politicians that would stand him in excellent stead should Jagiełło die without issue. Vytautas’s most dangerous rival was the unstable Švitrigaila, who had no patrimonial holdings in the grand duchy, although he had been granted western Podolia by Jagiełło following Spytek of Melsztyn’s death on the Vorskla. Should Jagiełło die before Vytautas, Vilnius-Radom opened up the enticing prospect that Vytautas himself would be the obvious candidate to succeed him on the Polish throne, especially since he would be able to count on the support of the leading Lithuanian boyars. Even if Jagiełło produced an heir, the likelihood was that he would designate Vytautas as guardian or regent during any minority. Union, not separation, was very much in Vytautas’s interests.

Švitrigaila recognized the way the wind was blowing. Shortly after Vilnius-Radom he followed the time-honoured path of disgruntled Gediminids by scuttling into the Order’s welcoming arms. Far from retreating to run some Lithuanian satrapy, or to plot an independence campaign, Vytautas, who was fascinated by western culture, cultivated his links with Poland. He well knew, as the Vorskla debacle confirmed, that Polish military support was vital if his broader goals were to be realized. Lithuania lacked the resources to fight a long war of conquest on any of its frontiers alone, and the Order had ravaged its territory with increasing impunity. He was surrounded in Vilnius by Polish secretaries and officials who had the technical skills he needed. Gradually he established a significant clientele in Poland, which eventually reached far into ministerial circles, including Wojciech Jastrzębiec, appointed bishop of Poznań in 1399, who rose to be grand chancellor and bishop of Cracow before ending his career as archbishop of Gniezno.23

Vilnius-Radom suited all the parties to it. After quarter of a century of upheaval, Lithuanian domestic politics settled down, while Jagiełło and Vytautas, though by no means always agreeing, established a working relationship that introduced much-needed stability into the politics of the union. Jagiełło made regular visits to Lithuania to consult with Vytautas that became annual after 1409. While it is not credible to suppose, as some have supposed, that after 1401 these two powerful characters worked in constant harmony, their collaboration was successful. Over the next twenty-five years its benefits became apparent both at home, as the new union stabilized itself internally, and abroad, as both parties harvested the fruits of union and the union state established itself internationally as a major power.


1 Halecki, Dzieje, i, 154.

2 Halecki, Dzieje, i, 155–6. Nikodem does not mention the visit.

3 Annales, x, 235–6; Gąsiorowski, Itinerarium, 41.

4 Annales, x, 237–8; Kurtyka, Tęczyńscy, 229–32. Kurtyka’s view is accepted by Jerzy Sperka, Szafrańcowie herbu stary koń: Z dziejów kariery i awansu w późnośredniowiecznej Polsce (Katowice, 2001), 72. Nikodem’s playing down of the problem is unconvincing: ‘Problem legitymizacji władcy Władysława Jagiełły w 1399 r.’, in Nihil superfluum esse: Prace z dziejów średniowiecza ofiarowane profesor Jadwidze Krzyżaniakowej (Poznań, 2000), 393–401. Cf. Franciszek Piekosiński, ‘Czy Władysław Jagiełło był za życia królowej Jadwigi królem Polski czy tylko mężem królowej?’, RAUWHF, ser. ii, 35 (1897), 287–9; Franciszek Sikora, ‘W sprawie małżeństwa Władysława Jagiełły z Anną Cylejską’, in Janusz Bieniak, Ryszard Kabaciński, Jan Pakulski, and Stanisław Trawkowski (eds), Personae—Colligationes—Facta (Toruń, 1991), 93–103; Tadeusz Silnicki, Prawo elekcji królów w dobie jagiellońskiej (Cracow, 1919), 158–9; Wojciech Fałkowski, ‘Idea monarchii w Polsce za pierwszych Jagiellonów’ in Fałkowski (ed.), Polska około roku 1400 (Warsaw, 2001), 210–11.

5 AU, nos 38–44, 34–47.

6 Rhode, Ostgrenze, i, 317–18.

7 Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 259.

8 Loreta Skurvydaitė, ‘Lietuvos valdovo titulas ir valdžia XIV a. pab.–XV a. viduryje’, LIS, 7 (1999), 18–27; Loreta Skurvydaitė, ‘Lietuvos valdovo titulatūra: Kada Vytautas ima tituluotis Didžioju kunigaikščiu?’ LIS, 8 (2000), 9–19.

9 AU, no. 38, 35.

10 Stanisław Kutrzeba, ‘Charakter prawny zwiazku Litwy z Polską 1385–1569’, in Pamiętnik VI Zjazdu Powszechnego Historyków Polskich, i (Lwów, 1935), 168.

11 Halecki, Dzieje, i, 180.c

12 Balzer, ‘Unia horodelska’, RAU (1912/1913), 153–4.

13 AU, no. 38, 35–6.

14 ‘Et nos etiam cum nostris posteris atque successoribus, post decessum domini ducis Wytowdi, ut praemittitur, praedicto domino Wladislao regi, coronae et regno Poloniae adhaerere, subici, obsequi et servire sine dolo et fraude toto posse et viribus tenebimur’: AU, no. 39, 40.

15 AU, no. 41.

16 Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 261.

17 Kutrzeba struggles to fit Vilnius-Radom into his legal-historical categories, but suggests that ‘the best analogy is the idea of a personal union’: ‘Charakter’, 7.

18 ‘cum cognationibus et genoloys [= genelogiis] suis necnon tota universitas omnium et singulorum nobilium et terrigenarum praedictarum Litwaniae et Russiae terrarum.’ AU, no. 39, 38.

19 AU, no. 39, 40–1; no. 44, 47.

20 Nikodem supports the idea of feudal dependency, as does Adamus. Halecki hedges his bets by arguing that the relationship between Lithuania and Poland ‘was close to’ that of a feudal relationship, allowing for local particularities; Łowmiański argues that Vilnius-Radom represented a ‘concealed’ example of feudum oblatum: Nikodem, Witold, 206; Jan Adamus, ‘O prawno-państwowym stosunku Litwy do Polski’, in Pamiętnik VI Zjazdu Powszechnego Historyków Polskich w Wilnie 17–20 września 1935 r, i: Referaty (Lwów, 1935), 178; Halecki, Dzieje, i, 160–1, 162–6; Łowmiański, ‘Wcielenie’, 331. Hrushevsky sensibly warns against applying western concepts of feudal relations, despite apparent similarities in aspects of land tenure, though he is prepared to use the term ‘feudal’ with reservations: Грушевський, Історія, v, 6, n. 1.

21 Kutrzeba argues that Vilnius-Radom was a defeat for Jagiełło, who had to recognize the practical impossibility of incorporation: ‘Unia’, 483.

22 Jarosław Nikodem, Polska i Litwa wobec husyckich Czech w latach 1420–1433 (Poznań, 2004), 90–4.

23 Łowmiański, Polityka, 79.

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