Zygmunt I the Old
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| Zygmunt I Stary (drawing by Jan Matejko) | |
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| Reign | December 8, 1506 – April 1, 1548. |
| Coronation | January 24, 1507, Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, Poland. |
| Royal House | Jagiellon. |
| Parents | Kazimierz IV Jagiellon, Elżbieta Rakuszanka. |
| Consorts | Katarzyna Telniczanka, Barbara Zapolya, Bona Sforza. |
| Children | With Katarzyna Telniczanka: Jan, Regina, Katarzyna. With Barbara Zapolya: Jadwiga, Anna. With Bona Sforza: Izabela Jagiellonka, Zygmunt II August, Zofia, Anna Jagiellon, Katarzyna Jagiellonka, Olbracht (Wojciech). |
| Date of Birth | January 1, 1467. |
| Place of Birth | Kozienice, Poland. |
| Date of Death | April 1, 1548. |
| Place of Death | Kraków, Poland. |
| Place of Burial | Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, Poland (July 26, 1548). |
Zygmunt I the Old (Polish: Zygmunt I Stary; Sigismund I the Old; 1467 – 1548), fifth ruler of the Jagiellon dynasty, reigned as King of Poland from 1506 to his death in 1548.
Before Zygmunt I reigned as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1505 – 1548), he had already been invested as Duke of Silesia.
The son of King Kazimierz IV Jagiellon and Elizabeth of Habsburg Austria, Zygmunt followed his brothers Jan Olbracht and Aleksander Jagiellon to the Polish throne. Their elder brother Władysław became king of Hungary and Bohemia. Image:ZygmuntStary.jpg
Zygmunt was christened the namesake of his mother's maternal grandfather, Emperor Sigismund, who had died in 1437.
Zygmunt faced the challenge of consolidating internal power in order to face external threats to the country. During Aleksander's reign, the law Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade Kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the Sejm. This proved crippling to Zygmunt's dealings with his szlachta and magnates.
Despite this Achilles heel, he established (1527) a conscription army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it.
Intermittently at war with Vasily III of Muscovy, starting in 1507 (before his army was fully under his command), 1514 marked the fall of Smolensk (under Polish domination) to the Muscovite forces (which lent force to his arguments for the necessity of a standing army). 1515 he entered an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.
In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the 2nd Peace of Thorn, Zygmunt consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Zygmunt's nephew, Louis II.
The Polish wars against the Teutonic Knights ended in 1525, when Albert of Brandenburg, their marshal (and Zygmunt's nephew), converted to Lutheranism, secularized the order, and paid homage to Zygmunt, who in return gave him the domains of that order, as the First Duke of Prussia. This was called the Prussian Homage. Zygmunt's eldest daughter Hedwig (Jadwiga) (1513-1573) married Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg.
In other matters of policy, Zygmunt sought peaceful coexistence with the Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes. Image:Prussian Homage.JPG
Zygmunt was a Humanist. He and his third consort, Bona Sforza, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, were both patrons of Renaissance culture, which under them began to flourish in Poland.
On Zygmunt's death, his son Zygmunt II August became the last Jagiellon king of Poland.
Image:Zygmunt1.jpg Image:200zl r.jpg
See also
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Template:Monarchs of Polandcs:Zikmund I. Starý de:Sigismund I. (Polen) et:Zygmunt I eo:Sigismondo la 1-a (Pollando) lt:Žygimantas Senasis hu:I. Zsigmond lengyel király ja:ズィグムント1世 (ポーランド王) pl:Zygmunt I Stary ro:Sigismund I (Polonia) ru:Сигизмунд I sv:Sigismund I av Polen uk:Сигізмунд I Старий