Between liberty and crisis. The Sejm of the Commonwealth during the reign of the Wettin dynasty on the Polish throne in 1697-1763

ENDuring the Saxon period (1697–1763) the Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth experienced an extremely serious crisis. The latter, however, did not come into being in 1697, but was a continuum of the inferior functioning of the Polish Parliament already during the previous years. In the course of the Saxon era this crisis grew more grievous as demonstrated by the intervention of foreign states (Russia, Prussia, the Empire, France, and partly Sweden) into the functioning of the Polish Parliament. The outcome assumed the form of a paralysis of the legislature, making it impossible to carry out indispensable reforms within the state. At the time of Augustus II the Strong (1697–1733) the Sejms partly fulfilled their function and were even capable of introducing order into the legal treasury system in Poland (e.g. the Silent Sejm in 1717), but during the reign of Augustus III (1734–63) the Sejm became the sole arena of the political struggle waged by the royal court and magnate factions, often supported by neighbouring countries. The symbol of the role played by this particular monarch was the solitary Sejm held at the time, which ended with the passage of a constitution (the pacification Sejm of 1736). Despite its decline the Sejm remained of considerable importance for the nobility of the modern era. Conceived as a symbol of the functioning of the state it was treated as pupilla libertatis, a personification of the sovereign existence of the state and an institution indispensable for reforming and modernising the country. Keywords: ordinary Sejm, Commonwealth, Saxon era (1697–1763), crisis.