An Ambiguous Golden age: the Jagiellonians in Polish memory and historical consciousness

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lenkija (Lenkijos karalystė. Kingdom of Poland. Poland); Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Jogailaičiai (Jagiellonian dynasty); Valdovai; Istoriografija; Istorinė atmintis; Jagiellonians; Historical memory.

ENThis essay has two aims. First, it seeks to map the long-term patterns of Jagiellonian memory in Poland, and identify their evolving social-political functions, for the first time. It identifies distinct phases, or modes, of Jagiellonian memory from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first: the discourses and images already in circulation during the long Jagiellonian period itself (1380s-1570s); early modem ‘genealogical’ memory cultivated by successor dynasties (1580s-1660s); a competing early modem ‘national monarchy’ memory popular among local elites (1570s-1790s); an elegiac nineteenth-century ‘national’ memory during the Partitions in which Jagiellonians embodied lost sovereignty (1800s-1918); state-directed memory (1918-), with Jagiellonians deployed as a Polish tool in Central European geopolitics; and finally civic-commercial memory (c.1989-), in which Jagiellonians provide pleasant entertainment and nostalgia, having been pushed well into the background of Polish cultural memory by the brutal events of the twentieth century and their ongoing memory wars. The essay’s second purpose is to probe the mutual relationship between these different memory regimes. How far are memories of the Jagiellonians in one period shaped by, or recycled from, earlier memories? Where is, say, eighteenth-century memory of the Jagiellonians in Poland deriving its content from? This, as we saw in the volume Introduction, is currently a moot point in the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. Judith Pollmann has stressed how far historic memory is remediated - showing, for example, how in Leiden during medieval famine, the privations of the Dutch Revolt, and food shortages in 1945, the same distinctive local story about herrings and bread pops up again and again, presenting itself as a true recent anecdote. [Iš straipsnio, p. 49-50]