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Casimir was a shrewd politician who governed with considerable authority after subduing early opposition in Poland and extending control over the royal council. Yet if he demonstrated that government could be conducted in a highly effective manner in peacetime, the reigns of his immediate two successors showed that his system was inadequate in time of war. After 1492, the Ottoman empire, the Crimean Tatars, and a revitalized Muscovy provided far greater challenges than the impoverished and declining Order had been capable of mounting between 1454 and 1466. The challenges faced after 1492 were of a different order of magnitude. In Poland they stimulated the emergence of parliamentary monarchy; in Lithuania they unleashed a series of developments that culminated in the radical reshaping of the union between 1499 and 1569.
In Poland, the most radical change was the emergence of the sejm (diet) as the cornerstone of the political system as a consequence of the problems posed by the Nieszawa privileges, and the need to mobilize resources for war. Although 1493 was traditionally seen as the date at which the Polish sejm was established in the form that survived to the partitions, general assemblies had been a feature of Polish political life since the fourteenth century, when they were used by Łokietek and Casimir III to confirm important council decisions, although Casimir viewed them with distaste and rarely called them.1 Two key moments embedded general assemblies in Polish political culture: the 1374 Koszyce privileges, which ensured that the monarchy would have to seek noble consent for taxes beyond the annual poradlne, and the 1382–4 interregnum, when general assemblies representing the citizen body—the community of the realm—determined the succession. The increased frequency of general assemblies, however, did not eclipse the provincial and local assemblies that had played a considerable role in political life during the fragmentation of the Polish kingdom between 1138 and 1320. The nature of the relationship between local, provincial, and general assemblies is unclear. Some scholars favour an evolutionary position, arguing that the sejm developed organically out of these local assemblies; others follow Kutrzeba in dating the sejm’s definitive establishment to its 1493 institutionalization as a bicameral body comprising an upper chamber formed by the council, which came to be known as the senate, and the chamber of envoys, composed of delegates (posłowie in Polish, nuntii in Latin) from the sejmiks.2
That the practice of calling general assemblies was embedded in Polish political culture by 1493 is clear, but there was no standard format or procedure laid down, and although historians—and the sources—use the term ‘sejm’ when referring to them, to avoid confusion there is much to be said for Kutrzeba’s insistence on only applying the term to the institution that developed after 1493.3 To do otherwise leads to confusion, as the term ‘sejm’ was previously applied to very different types of assembly. There was no fixed membership of what were called general assemblies (conventiones generales), a term that was sometimes applied to what were effectively meetings of the wider royal council without szlachta representatives. Whoever attended, the core of general assemblies before 1493 was formed by the council, comprising the highest lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries: the Catholic bishops, government ministers—in particular the chancellor, vice-chancellor, marshal, and treasurer—and palatines and castellans, the leading royal officials in the provinces, although other dignitaries could attend if invited by the king, and by no means all of those entitled to attend did so.4
It was on this as yet ill-defined body that the Polish tradition of consensual politics originally rested. Documents were issued ‘de consilio’ or ‘de consilio et consensu praelatorum et baronum’; this phrase usually referred to the council rather than some proto-parliament. Casimir was clear on the council’s role, stressing that he had chosen it to advise him above all; its duty to advise the ‘country’—that is the community of the realm—was of secondary importance, and he specifically excluded the ‘commonality’ (pospólstwo) from council debates.5 From around 1400, however, occasions when members of the wider political community were summoned to what were called a ‘great’ or ‘solemn’ assembly’ (conventio magna; conventio solemna) a ‘general parliament’ (parlamentum generalis) or simply a ‘general assembly’ (conventio generalis), became more frequent. Although in theory any member of the community of the realm could attend such assemblies—and many did—these were not true parliamentary bodies: decisions were taken by the council and then presented to the assembled masses outside for acclamation, to ensure the maintenance of the public concord and harmony that were so highly prized. They could meet without the king’s presence, as in 1423 in Warta, where the assembly agreed the controversial Warta statute, and during Władysław III’s minority, his absence in Hungary, and the interregnum after his death. Thirteen general assemblies were held during his short reign; only in 1438 did he attend.6
After 1454 when, as a consequence of Nieszawa, sejmiks met more frequently, support grew for the idea that they should send delegates to participate in general assemblies, who would be accorded a voice in their proceedings. Forced to raise extraordinary taxes for the Thirteen Years’ War, Casimir called general assemblies that were in effect meetings of his council, but their decisions were not seen as binding on the districts until ratified by the provincial sejmiks.7 Although the system emerged without any clear or consistent lead from the government, it developed a logic of its own. In order to avoid endless negotiation with the large numbers of district sejmiks—known as conventiones particulares—the lead was increasingly taken by provincial sejmiks; these were also called conventiones generales.8 Wielkopolska’s provincial sejmik met at Koło. It comprised delegates from the palatinates of Poznań and Kalisz—which had a joint sejmik held in Środa—of Sieradz and Łęczyca, which had their own sejmiks, and of Inowrocław and Brześć Kujawski—which also had a joint sejmik that met at Brześć, and, in the sixteenth century, at Radziejów. The provincial sejmik was also attended by szlachta from the territory of Dobrzyń. There were no district sejmiks as yet in Małopolska, whose provincial sejmik, for the palatinates of Cracow, Sandomierz, and Lublin, met at Korczyn or Wiślica; it also contained delegates from the district sejmiks of the Ruthenian palatinate, whose separate general assembly sometimes met at Wiszna.9
Casimir encouraged the development of provincial sejmiks. He saw them, especially in his early years, as a means of appealing to the ordinary nobility over the heads of the council, which he was struggling to control. He used his powers of appointment to build up a core of royal supporters at the local level, but sejmiks could cause difficulties, as in 1455, when a general assembly—effectively the council—agreed to taxation for the Prussian war that was accepted by the Wielkopolskan provincial sejmik but rejected by its Małopolskan counterpart, which was only persuaded to change its mind after long negotiations. A decision was taken at a general assembly in 1456 to formalize procedure: henceforth extraordinary taxation needed to be explicitly accepted by the community of citizens (a communitatibus) as represented in the provincial assemblies at Korczyn and Koło; the demands of the Prussian war meant that this procedure rapidly became institutionalized, and was followed in 1457, 1458, 1459, 1464, 1468, and 1472.10 As Casimir’s control of his council strengthened, however, the sejmiks developed mechanisms to consult and coordinate responses to royal initiatives: in 1489, for example, the Koło sejmik sent fourteen delegates to Korczyn to agree a common position on proposed legislation. Aware of the dangers of separate meetings, which might enable the king to divide and rule, provincial sejmiks began accepting royal proposals on condition that they were agreed by other sejmiks.11
As the district and provincial sejmiks developed after 1454, general assemblies, dominated by the council, seemed increasingly anomalous, and szlachta resentment at their effective exclusion from the key debates grew. At a general assembly in Sieradz in 1452, szlachta envoys howled down debate, attacking the council for its tepid conduct of public affairs. Casimir had to continue discussions with eight members of the council behind closed doors.12 Such tactics might secure the decision he desired, but they were dangerous. Precedents existed for a more formal approach to debate, based on the election of representatives or delegates charged with giving voice to the ordinary nobility. Not all of them were helpful: in 1424 a general assembly at Wiślica summoned two representatives of each heraldic clan, but this harked back to an older form of social organization that was rapidly being supplanted by the idea of the community of citizens that formed the respublica, and it was not repeated: delegates from local sejmiks were summoned to the 1434 election assembly after Jagiełło’s death.13 In 1453, at the tense general assembly that sought to persuade Casimir to confirm past privileges and to recognize Lithuania’s incorporation, the assembly divided into two chambers to debate ‘that which might more easily and in a mature manner lead to the stabilization of the kingdom’.14 Knoppek sees this as the definitive birth of the bicameral principle in the Polish parliament, but that is to read too much into what was an isolated occurrence. Nevertheless, as the practice of sending delegates to other provincial sejmiks flourished, and as Casimir’s control over the council strengthened—thereby enhancing his ability to secure what he desired—the provincial sejmiks increasingly avoided taking separate decisions, preferring to coordinate their stance at a general assembly: in 1468, the general sejmik of Małopolska took no decisions at all, preferring to await discussions at a general assembly in Piotrków, at which two delegates of each district would be present, although it is probably premature to designate the 1468 Piotrków assembly as the first ‘formal bicameral sejm’, as Knoppek does.15 As the provincial sejmiks became better at coordinating their response to royal initiatives, Casimir adopted a different strategy, appealing directly to the district sejmiks, where the majesty of the royal name, and the practical direction of the local starosta could often secure the consent he sought. Such meetings of district sejmiks—called convencio particularis Regiae Majestas or convencio particularis regalis—became regular occurrences after 1470: between 1476 and 1480 they met on eleven occasions in the Łęczyca palatinate alone.16
In the peaceful years after 1466 these methods worked well enough. They were to prove insufficient in the years of war after 1492, when the royal government sought high levels of taxation to raise troops for the Ottoman war, and to support Lithuania against Muscovy. It was therefore during the reigns of John Albert and Alexander that the sejm acquired its definitive institutional form. The first general assembly of John Albert’s reign, at Piotrków from 27 February to 3 March 1493, was prepared carefully. The king attended the Małopolskan sejmik at Korczyn, where he received several petitions. At Piotrków he confirmed privileges granted by his predecessors—some of them only for three years—and in return received a substantial grant of taxes.17 This assembly, however, has passed into history for another reason, as the occasion on which the bicameral sejm became established. It was preceded by meetings of the sejmiks, whose delegates, when they arrived in Piotrków, met and debated separately from the council, in a pattern that rapidly became the norm.
It is only with hindsight that 1493 has been accorded the aura of historical immortality, and too much emphasis is sometimes placed on its significance: general assemblies had occasionally separated into two chambers since the early 1450s, and no legislation was ever passed requiring the calling of a two-chamber assembly, or to define the membership or means of electing the chamber of envoys. There is no sign that the szlachta, or anyone else realized that they had crossed the Rubicon; although the general assemblies of 1496, 1498, 1501, 1503, and 1504 (all in Piotrków), 1502 (in Cracow), and 1503 (in Lublin) were all bicameral assemblies preceded by meetings of the sejmiks, other meetings termed ‘general assemblies’ in Radom in September 1494 and in Cracow in 1499 were essentially council meetings, while the assembly that elected Alexander in Piotrków in September 1501—managed with such aplomb by Cardinal Frederick—took place according to the traditional procedure, in which the council debated and communicated its decision to the assembled szlachta, who were not delegates of sejmiks.18 Yet by 1501 such procedures were looking antiquated. At the 1496 Piotrków sejm John Albert, desperate to secure funding for his Moldavian campaign, issued his general privilege consolidating the separate agreements with the various provinces in 1454 into a statute that covered the whole kingdom, thereby strengthening the institutional and legal foundations for the sejm, and for the participation of the ordinary nobility in the political system.19 Their position was only secured, however, by the political battles surrounding Alexander’s election, which opened a new era in Poland’s parliamentary history and demonstrated that Lithuania had changed considerably since 1447.
1 Łokietek called assemblies in 1306, 1318, 1330, and 1331: Bardach, Historia, i, 442–3.
2 Kutrzeba, Korona, 117–18. For introductions to the debate see Bardach, ‘Początki’, 10–13; Wojciech Kriegseisen, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej (do 1763 roku) (Warsaw, 1995), 15–18.
3 For an alternative view see Bardach, Historia, i, 446.
4 Jerzy Wyrozumski, ‘Geneza senatu w Polsce’, in Krystyn Matwijowski and Jerzy Pietrzak (eds), Senat w Polsce (Warsaw, 1993), 26–8.
5 Górski, ‘Rządy’, 102–3.
6 Wojciech Fałkowski, ‘Sejmy bez króla (1440–1446)’, in Smołucha et al. (eds), Historia, 235–55.
7 Knoppek, ‘Zmiany’, 69–70; Bardach, ‘Początki’, 37.
8 National assemblies were termed conventiones generales totius Regni to distinguish them from provincial assemblies: Bardach, Historia, i, 443.
9 Bardach, ‘Początki’, 35; Bardach, Historia, i, 447–8; Wacław Uruszczak, ‘Sejm w latach 1506–1540’, in Historia sejmu, i, 67.
10 Bardach, ‘Początki’, 37–8.
11 Knoppek, ‘Zmiany’, 70; Bardach, ‘Początki’, 38–9.
12 ‘quod tepide rempublicam administrarent’: Annales, xii/i, 136.
13 Bardach, Historia, i, 445; Kriegseisen, Sejm, 17.
14 ‘Consilio bipartito, quo facilior maturiorque ederetur pro stabilimento regni in tam difficili eventu provisio’: Annales, xii, 163.
15 Knoppek, ‘Zmiany’ 79, 89–90; for a critique of this view see Górski, ‘Rządy’, 110.
16 Bardach, ‘Początki’, 39.
17 Papée, Jan Olbracht, 44–6; Andrzej Szymanek (ed.), Nihil Novi: Z dorobku sejmu radomskiego 1505 roku (Radom, 2005), 23–4.
18 Szymanek, Nihil novi, 24–8.
19 Julia Dücker, ‘Pro communi reipublicae bona: König und Reich im jagiellonischen Polen um 1500’, in Florian Ardelean, Christopher Nicholson, and Johannes Preiseur-Kappeler (eds), Between Worlds: The Age of the Jagiellons (Frankfurt am Main, 2013), 68–9.