Pobożność rodziny Kazimierza Jagiellończyka

Abstract

This article attempts to present the piety of the nearest relatives of St. Casimir in the light of the treatise De Institutione Regii Pueri (attributed to the mother, Queen Elisabeth), and of the other sources describing Jagiellon pilgrimages and religious practices, -such as their personal prayer-books. The piety of Casimir Jagiellon and Elisabeth Habsburg’s other sons and daughters was initiated and grew under the influence of the religious fervour of their parents and of carefully selected tutors who brought up the young generation of the Jagiellon according to strict religious principles. The Royal Family practice of daily Mass, frequent Communion, and their participation in the processions with the Holy Sacrament made the cult of the Eucharist the basis of their piety. Their religious foundations and pilgrimages show a vivid cult of the Holy Cross, and also of the Virgin Mary, as expressed in their close association with the shrine of Our Lady of Jasna Góra in Częstochowa. The family also shared a devotion to the Patron Saints of Poland, especially to St. Stanislaus. The Family’s religious piety and instruction in doctrine were developed through the reading of the Bible, the Lives of the Saints and prayer-books, some of which (eq. belonging Vladislaus III, Vladislaus King of Bohemia and Hungary, Alexander, Sigismond I and Bona Sforza) are still extant, and are characterized by a wide variety of form and content. As in all prayer-books for lay people, the influence of the liturgical breviary forms can be clearly seen in the Jagiellon prayer-books. The offices of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Cross and Our Lord’s Passion, of the Holy Ghost and Our Lady, the Officium Defunctorum, the psalms and the litanies, and in one case also the text of the Mass Salve Sancta Parens, are the most important examples of liturgical prayers. The prayer-books also contain a number of private prayers, popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, occurring most frequently in the numerous preserved manuscripts of the Book of Hours and printed prayer-books such as the Hortulus Animae or Antidotarius Animae. The Holy Trinity, the Eucharist, the Holy Cross and the Passion of Christ, the Holy Virgin, the Angels and also, though on a limited scale, the Saints were the main subjects of the family’s religious cult in both their liturgical and private prayers. Their prayer-books offered the kind of piety which reflected both the veneration of the Passion so characteristic of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the fear of death and increase of interest in it. Both these tendencies and the Royal Family’s „pietas Mariana” are also reflected in the religious ornamentation of the Jagiellon sepulchral chapels in the Cathedral on Wawel Hill, and in the paintings, sculpture and other works of religious art commissioned by them.