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Imagining The Idea of the Unity of the Commonwealth During the Great Northern War. Wawel Castle as a Witness (and Victim) of National Discord
Abstract
This article involves the imagining of political unity in artistic undertakings in the context of contemporary perceptions of works of art being perceived as witnesses to (and victims of) tragic events from the beginning of the Great Northern War. The analysis is based primarily on poetic accounts of Wawel Castle, which was set on fire by the Swedes in 1702. In the early 18th century, Wawel Castle was seen as a metaphor for national discord, as Poles, consumed by internal conflict, were unable to defend the royal residence against the Swedish invader. One of the heads of Wawel, who survived the fire, became a leading witness to the events (in an anonymous work titled Głowa w pozostałych przez Szwedów zamku krakowskiego pokojach…) which described the scale of the castle’s destruction caused by the fire and the extent of the devastation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth resulting from the ongoing civil war. Similarly, satirical works preserved in various versions, entitled Epiphania Poloniae, described the destructive activities of the armies of three European rulers (Sweden, Brandenburg and Saxony) in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, compared to the three kings from the New Testament. Wojciech Węgierski, in his work titled Classicum wolności polskiej, also referred to the burning of Wawel in order to metaphorically illustrate the decay of the Polish state, comparing the ruins of the residence left after this event to the Republic, which had been ruined by external and internal conflicts. According to Węgierski, the opposite of the lawlessness caused by the activities of the three foreign kings in the territory of the Republic of Poland (he also referred to the motif of Epiphania Poloniae) is the harmony of the three Polish estates (the king, the senate and the chamber of deputies) co-operating with each other. This was graphically depicted by three knights’ hands in a mutual embrace. This theme, albeit in a slightly modified version, returned in the propaganda of Augustus II in connection with the events of the Lublin Sejm of 1703. To convey a positive image of the events in Lublin to the public, a medal was minted on his initiative, emphasising the harmonious co-operation of the Sejm estates. The reverse shows two hands, stretching out from the clouds and directed towards each other in a brotherly embrace, one of which is armed and holds a sceptre, and the other a naked sabre.
Keywords:
Wawel, heads of Wawel, Great Northern War, Epiphania Poloniae, Wojciech WęgierskiDetails
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.