The streets of sixteenth-century VilnaFootnote ¹ rang with the sounds of a multilingual throng, in which ethnic differences overlapped with religious ones.Footnote ² Visiting the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1555, the papal nuncio Aloisius Lippomano compared it to ‘Babylon, because … there are Armenians, Muscovites, Ruthenians, Tatars, Lithuanians, Germans and Italians, but few good Christians’.Footnote ³ The complex confessional and cultural relations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (in union with the Corona Regni Poloniae) have recently become more accessible to Anglophone readers through David Frick's book on seventeenth-century Vilna,Footnote ⁴ and the first volume of Robert Frost's magisterial history of the Polish-Lithuanian union.Footnote ⁵ There is no simple answer to the question of who, among this diverse population, was considered a ‘foreigner’, and who counted as a ‘Lithuanian’. The importance of this question to contemporaries is attested by records in the sources, including legal sources, but their interpretation requires care. As is also the case today, the situation in the city was rather different to that in the surrounding countryside, but attempts to apply later categories of nationality or ethnicity only confuse the issue.Footnote ⁶ To address it, it is necessary to consider not only the letter of the law, but everyday practice, which was, among other things, affected by factors of estate – not only the differences between the burgher and noble estates, but also those between the lay and clerical estates.

This article will focus on the distinction between ‘Lithuanians’ and ‘foreigners’ among the senior clergy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – a distinction which they applied to themselves. It will re-examine a cause célèbre – the protracted dispute, between 1591 and 1600, over the royal nomination of a new bishop of Vilna. This dispute has traditionally been presented as evidence of strains in the Polish-Lithuanian union, and as an expression of Lithuanian particularism or even patriotism. Research in the archive of the Vilna cathedral chapter reveals some less elevated motives for the intense opposition that the royal nomination provoked.Footnote ⁷

To the mélange of languages, religions and ‘nations’ that characterised the sixteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its Babylonian capital, the cathedral chapter of Vilna made its own individual contribution. Not the least important arose through its ownership of much land within the city; the chapter exercised its own legal jurisdiction over those who lived and worked on its property. Among its members in the sixteenth century were prominent jurists, diplomats, doctors, poets and a few committed pastors. It has even been dubbed the intellectual elite of Lithuania (problematically, given that many of its luminaries were rarely in residence).Footnote ⁸ But was the chapter in the vanguard of ‘Polishness’ in the Grand Duchy,Footnote ⁹ either before or after the Union agreed at Lublin in 1569, which united the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Corona Regni Poloniae into one Commonwealth of Two Nations?Footnote ¹⁰ However ‘Polishness’ may be understood, the chapter contained relatively few ‘Lithuanians’, in the territorial sense of the word here; that is those born to families settled within the boundaries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It is surely significant that, in the second half of the sixteenth century, persons hailing from various lands of the Polish Crown constituted over half the members of the Vilna chapter. Those from the territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including its Ruthenian lands (now in Belarus and Ukraine), made up just over a fifth, with a further 8 per cent coming from the borderland of Podlasie, which in 1569 was transferred from the Grand Duchy to the Polish Crown. One prelate came from Royal Prussia, the terms of whose incorporation into the Polish Crown were contested, at least on the Prussian side (and this affected royal nominations to bishoprics in an analogous way to those in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). Twelve per cent (or nine persons) came from places further afield. Information is lacking for just one of the seventy-five members of the chapter in this period. This means that non-Lithuanians, ‘foreigners’, constituted about three-quarters of the chapter. So besides persons from the Polish Crown (koroniarze), clergymen from Aragon, the Apennine peninsula, Dalmatia, Transylvania and the kingdom of Sweden could in theory have contributed to the babbling diversity of Vilna.Footnote ¹¹

The law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, even after the Union of Lublin, treated inhabitants of the Polish Crown in the same way as other foreigners. After the territories of Volhynia and Podlasie were incorporated into the Polish Crown in 1569, their inhabitants, according to Lithuanian law, became foreigners.Footnote ¹² In the Third Lithuanian Statute of 1588, that is, in the codified law in force in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which with few significant changes outlasted even the Commonwealth,Footnote ¹³ there is hardly a hint of the union between the Polish Crown and Lithuania concluded in 1569. Moreover, the Third Lithuanian Statute contains provisions which contradicted the Union of Lublin. Such provisions include the maintenance, contrary to article 14 of the Union,Footnote ¹⁴ of the old limitations on the acquisition of lands and offices in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by ‘foreigners’ and ‘neighbours’.Footnote ¹⁵ Moreover, the Act of Union did not include the demand of the Lithuanian nobility, assembled in Vitebsk (Віцебск) in 1562, that offices in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would be reserved for indigenous citizens of the Grand Duchy.Footnote ¹⁶

It is however noteworthy that the 1588 Statute did include the Warsaw Confederation of 1573. This act declared that those who ‘differed in religion’ forswore mutual persecution. By giving this agreement an even higher status than in Polish law, the compilers of the Third Lithuanian Statute contributed to the stronger position of non-Catholic confessions in the Grand Duchy compared to the Polish Crown.Footnote ¹⁷ For a long time the efforts of the Lithuanian Catholic hierarchy to assert Catholic superiority met with strong resistance. For example, in 1602 the bishop of Vilna, Benedictus Woyna, tried and failed to persuade the sejmik (dietine or local assembly of the nobility) of Lida (Ліда) to omit a demand for the full implementation of the Confederation of Warsaw ‘and other clauses favouring “heretics”’ from its instruction to the envoys whom it had elected to the sejm (diet or parliament) of the Commonwealth.Footnote ¹⁸

The last quarter of the sixteenth century was an intensely challenging period for the Roman Catholic Church in Lithuania. After just two centuries of conversion and expansion, with the Protestant Reformation in full cry, Orthodox Christians still outnumbering Catholics in most of the territory of the Grand Duchy and even Catholic nobles questioning the jurisdiction and fiscal privileges of the clergy, and on the other hand faced with the reforming imperatives of the Council of Trent, Catholic ecclesiastical corporations sought to carry out their functions and pursue their interests – both spiritual and temporal – in time-honoured fashion.Footnote ¹⁹ Moreover, the Church's offices, dignities and benefices continued to be much sought after by aspirants. Here account must be taken of the specific procedures required to obtain them under canon law. Nevertheless, neither before nor after the Union of Lublin were regulations always effective in preventing ‘foreigners’ from acquiring higher ecclesiastical offices and dignities, including prelatures and canonries, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They were not eliminated by the privilege granted by Grand Duke Casimir Jagiellon on 2 May 1447, which envisaged the conferring of ecclesiastical office only on those born in the Grand Duchy. This was because the monarchs, who had the right to present candidates to the majority of benefices, made use of a clause of that privilege, which stated that benefices might be granted to foreign persons, if the locally born proved unsuitable.Footnote ²⁰

It seems that there were too few citizens of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania judged capable of filling the cathedral stalls. Canons and prelates themselves felt their own foreignness, a conviction which left traces in the acts of the chapter. Even if they did not always identify themselves as Poles, Swedes, Italians and so on – and they certainly did not do so in today's sense of those words – they were aware of their own territorial origins, distinct from those of the ‘locals’.Footnote ²¹ A similar sense of origin was retained by nobles who had settled in Lithuanian lands and underwent – as Andrzej Zakrzewski's research has revealed – a process of ‘political Lithuanisation’. The latter concept cannot however be applied to the senior clergy, mainly because prelates and canons accumulated benefices in the entire Commonwealth (and occasionally even beyond it). Without further research on each individual in question, it is not possible to show that they felt themselves to be ‘Lithuanian citizens’ or that they were ‘advocates of Lithuanian raison d’état’.Footnote ²²

The monarch (the grand duke of Lithuania, who even before 1569 was usually also the king of Poland) possessed the right of presentation (ius patronatus) to the majority of Roman Catholic benefices in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.Footnote ²³ In the second half of the sixteenth century, when ninety-four installations took place in the cathedral chapter of Vilna, at least eighty-four written recommendations were issued.Footnote ²⁴ In all probability, sixty-five of them were issued by the king and nineteen by the bishop (including those originating from the pope). On six occasions the chapter itself made the choice. The capitular sources are silent on who presented to the four remaining benefices.Footnote ²⁵

The nominated clergyman had the right to demand his canonry or prelature from his ecclesiastical superior. But it was for the chapter to induct him into possession of his stall and its associated income. At this last stage, the chapter could defend itself against unwanted candidates by refusing them entry into the chapter. Existing members assessed the claimant by examining, for example, the validity of his clerical orders, and his noble parentage, age and education.Footnote ²⁶ At least two examples of refusal are known from the capitular acts.

In the first case, a dispute broke out on 14 September 1520 over the canonry vacated by the death of Stanislaus Rozbicki. On 27 November 1520 Wenceslaus Czyrka finally took possession of the stall, following the rejection of the claims of Nicolaus of Wolborz. Although the reasons for the refusal are not known, it is clear that one member of the chapter – the bishop of Kamieniec (Кам'янець-Подільський), Laurentius Międzyleski – argued, in supporting Czyrka, that he would not act against the capitular statutes. Others supported him, except for Canon Joannes Albin, who maintained that the statutes were not applicable in this case.Footnote ²⁷

The second case dates from 11 July 1554, when the bishop of Vilna, Paulus Holszański, recommended to the chapter that it accept as the cathedral preacher Martinus Kurek, who was a doctor of theology and preacher to King Sigismund Augustus. The chapter replied that Kurek had a hoarse voice and a fickle character.Footnote ²⁸ The bishop responded on 5 October 1554 by funding a supernumerary canonry for the preacher.Footnote ²⁹ The chapter did not recognise the foundation, while the bishop would not accept the refusal. Less than a year later, on 27 April 1555, Holszański instructed the chapter to accept Preacher Kurek as a supernumerary canon.Footnote ³⁰ The chapter again refused, claiming that it would be contrary to its interests. So, when on 9 May 1555 Kurek appeared at the start of the general session of the chapter, he was asked to leave.Footnote ³¹ The objections to Kurek were only a pretext, as the conflict had both economic and confessional aspects. The chapter had an interest in not sharing with him the daily distributions to its resident members (ius refectio). Moreover, Kurek was reputed to sympathise with the Reformation.Footnote ³² How the story ended is not known: Bishop Holszański died in September 1555 and Martinus Kurek before the end of January 1562. In contrast, the cathedral chapter of Kraków either recognised Kurek's abilities, or yielded to royal pressure, in presenting him to the nearby parish of Bieżanów and temporarily assigning him the duties of cathedral preacher.Footnote ³³ There are no recorded cases of the Vilna chapter objecting to the installation of a prospective canon or prelate because of his territorial or ‘national’ origin.

The monarch also had the right to nominate the highest lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries, including bishops and some abbots. The right of the kings of Poland to nominate bishops was finally recognised by the Holy See in 1512–13.Footnote ³⁴ This right was referred to as an existing one in a bull of Sixtus v issued on 9 February 1589.Footnote ³⁵ Political, legal and ecclesiastical historians have identified various factors which ultimately decided how episcopal vacancies were filled, both in the Polish Crown and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.Footnote ³⁶ First, however, let us establish the procedure which applied in the sixteenth century.

After the death or translation to another see of the bishop-ordinary, the chapter assembled and chose a temporary administrator of the diocese, as well as envoys who would inform the king of the date of the forthcoming election. The monarch would then recommend the election of his nominated candidate. As a rule, the chapter gladly carried out the royal wishes. After formal election by the chapter, the king sent a letter to Rome requesting the confirmation of the nominee and the canonical grant to him of his office.Footnote ³⁷ So, in practice, the choice of the new bishop was almost invariably made by the king, who usually informed the chapter of his preference in advance. Without formally depriving the chapter of the right to elect its bishop, he suggested the most suitable person.

The chapter, in order to guard against the possibility of losing its right to choose the bishop, was supposed to conduct an election within three months of a vacancy arising. The last word belonged to the chapter and the pope, at least in theory. Since, according to the law, the king nominated and presented, while the pope judged whether the chosen person was suitable for the diocese in question, popes retained the freedom to confirm or reject candidates.Footnote ³⁸ If there were no objections from the Holy See, the ingress could be prepared. The newly chosen bishop, once he had received his bull of confirmation from the pope, proposed the date of the ingress.Footnote ³⁹ Although such cases were very rare, both the chapter and the pope could oppose the royal will. This is what happened at the end of the sixteenth century in Vilna. An intriguing dispute over the bishopric of Vilna took place after the Union of Lublin and after the acceptance by King Sigismund iii of the 1588 Third Lithuanian Statute.Footnote ⁴⁰

The dispute in question became a political conflict, whose origins are usually located in the ‘national’ origin of the candidate for the bishopric of Vilna. The most recent summary has been provided by Andrzej Rachuba, who concluded that:

Maciejowski had previously been presented to the see of Łuck and Brześć, part of which lay in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania even after the transfer of much of the Grand Duchy's territory to the Polish Crown in 1569. Similar protests had not been raised then. It is possible, however, to argue tentatively for the exceptional status of the bishopric of Vilna. The diocese sprawled across most of the remaining lands of the Grand Duchy after 1569, making it the largest in Europe, and far more important in terms of size, wealth and rank than the other wholly Lithuanian see, that of Samogitia. The case remains that the historiography of the problem has seen the origins of this dispute in political relations between Lithuania and the Polish Crown. However it has omitted the fact that there would have been no such dispute had it not been for the opposition of the Vilna chapter, to which belonged the choice between candidates proposed by the monarch. This fact requires emphasis. The election of a bishop-ordinary did not belong to the Lithuanian Estates, despite the fact that since 1569 membership of the joint senate of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had opened up new spheres of public activity to the bishop.

Analysis of capitular sources and knowledge of the functioning and organisation of the Vilna chapter allow us to discern other factors which generated the dispute. The argument about the ‘national’ origin of the bishop appeared at a later stage of the conflict and the balance of the evidence suggests that it was not the motive, but rather the pretext for the chapter to rid itself of an unwanted bishop.

The bishopric of Vilna fell vacant in 1591 when Georgius Radziwiłł, a representative of the Catholic branch of the leading Lithuanian magnate clan, was translated to Kraków. Here a Lithuanian was being moved to the Polish Crown. The Vilna chapter opposed the nomination of Bernardus Maciejowski. Its opposition, at least in the early stages of the conflict, was provoked by the demand for a sum of money by the nominee, Maciejowski, which he claimed that he needed to pay for the papal bull of confirmation. At this time, the economic condition of both the capitular and episcopal estates was parlous. So, at a time when the first revenues were coming in from the episcopal estates, administered by the chapter during a vacancy, the chapter did not react favourably to the nominee's demands for a substantial share of the money (10,000 Polish złotys) even before his ingress.Footnote ⁴² It seems that the chapter was motivated by straightforward pragmatism, especially when we consider the corporation in the wider context of its activities. These clerics were not particularly generous even among themselves, and the treasury was empty. So, when the opportunity arose to refill it with revenues from the administration of episcopal lands, the canons and prelates had an interest in prolonging a favourable situation.

They were able to hold out until 1594, without mentioning Maciejowski's ‘national’ origin at all. However, to continue their successful resistance to Maciejowski's demands and the will of the king, the chapter needed the support of powerful and influential allies.

On 10 June 1594 the chapter received another letter from Maciejowski, this time with a papal brief, calling on the chapter – under threat of excommunication – to pay the nominee his money.Footnote ⁴³ It was only after this that the Lithuanian Estates joined forces with the chapter. Possibly they did so at the instigation of the probable spiritus movens of the conflict – the administrator of the diocese, Prelate Benedictus Woyna. Woyna, who came from a Ruthenian family, and so counted as a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, had his own ambitions and appetite for power. Their scale is evident from his later attempt, after he finally became the bishop-ordinary of Vilna, to usurp the title of primate of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This outraged the archbishop of Gniezno and primate of Poland, in whose metropolitan province lay the diocese of Vilna, and Woyna had to abandon his pretensions.Footnote ⁴⁴

In a written appeal twenty-four Lithuanian senators, in the name of the Lithuanian Estates, asked the chapter not to pay Maciejowski, and recommended that the chapter retain all the funds of the bishopric until a Lithuanian had been appointed to the see.Footnote ⁴⁵ It was argued that the nomination of someone who was not a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as its foremost senator was contrary to the letter of the Lithuanian Statute.Footnote ⁴⁶

It is however interesting to compare the response of the custodian of the Vilna chapter, the same Benedictus Woyna, when in 1591 the Evangelical church in Vilna was burnt down, and the culprits turned out to be students of the Jesuit Academy of Vilna (whose chancellor was the bishop of Vilna). In order to save the students from punishment, Woyna, who judged the case, exploited the contradictory arguments made by the two sides, and insisted that article 17, chapter 11, and article 6, chapter 14 of the Third Lithuanian Statute did not apply. He did not press charges. As Henryk Wisner has shown, the Lithuanian Tribunal (the supreme court of appeal for the Grand Duchy) then accused Woyna of violating the law and the Third Statute in particular. However, it seems that the Tribunal's own verdict in the case was never implemented.Footnote ⁴⁷

In 1594 the chapter decided to send Canon Ambrosius Beynart on a mission to Rome,Footnote ⁴⁸ in order to treat with Pope Clement viii about the bishopric of Vilna. He was above all instructed to raise the matter of the revenues of the vacant bishopric.Footnote ⁴⁹ Initially this matter seemed decided against the chapter, as Beynart lamented in a letter to his colleagues, in which he explained that his efforts were fruitless, because the pope had already given his support to the bishop of Łuck and Brześć, and issued another brief. Moreover, the pope had apparently said: ‘This man, that is the priest of Łuck, has deserved more than he has been given.’ Beynart's riposte, ‘we know that he has served, we do not know who is to pay’,Footnote ⁵⁰ bears powerful witness to the financial aspect of the affair, and supports the hypothesis that, for the prelates and canons, the essential problem was money, and not the ‘national’ origin of the bishop.

Sigismund iii did not help his own cause, as he nominated Maciejowski without even appearing to take the opinion of the chapter into account. We may be sceptical about the chapter's commitment to the particular rights of the Grand Duchy when we note that in the last quarter of the sixteenth century (when the dispute took place), just 22 per cent of the canons and prelates originated from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while 59 per cent came from the Crown (61 per cent if Royal Prussia is included) and 15 per cent came from further afield.Footnote ⁵¹ The chapter of Vilna should therefore be viewed, not only as an ecclesiastical institution, but also through the prism of the men that constituted it. Without doubt the chapter, like any corporation, was interested in having a bishop who was well disposed towards it, and who would understand its problems and concerns. And nobody could know those as well as one of their own.

When in 1591 Georgius Radziwiłł was translated from Vilna to Kraków, the suffragan bishop, Canon Cyprian (a Dominican friar) was chosen by the chapter as the administrator of the diocese. After his death (on 18 March 1594), the custodian of the chapter, Prelate Woyna, was successful in his efforts to be elected as the next administrator.Footnote ⁵² He continued to spare no effort to win the support of his confrères. For example he gave everyone present at the May meeting of the chapter in 1597 a vessel of unrefined honey.Footnote ⁵³ The proceeds from the sale of this product should have gone to the episcopal treasury.

Sigismund iii also began a campaign to win over allies. He could of course count on the support of most of the citizens of the Polish Crown, starting with the Grand Chancellor, Jan Zamoyski.Footnote ⁵⁴ He had the support of Georgius Radziwiłł, the previous bishop of Vilna, who came from the most important Lithuanian family.Footnote ⁵⁵ The king also sought to convince the palatine of Troki, Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł, called ‘the Orphan’, of the fatal consequences for the Commonwealth of a dispute between the Poles and Lithuanians. In a letter of 13 December 1596 he also pointed to the fact that the ‘Orphan's’ own first cousin was now bishop of Kraków – a Lithuanian bishop in the Polish Crown.Footnote ⁵⁶ The campaign undertaken by the king before the meetings of the sejmiki brought partial success – a division among the Lithuanian elite. But the sejm of 1597 only deepened that division, without bringing a solution to the problem.Footnote ⁵⁷

According to Jan Rzońca, only one of the sixteen surviving sejmik instructions from the Polish Crown (significantly, that of the palatinate of Kraków) contains the postulate that a Pole should become bishop of Vilna. However, among the four Lithuanian instructions known to Rzońca, three (those of Vilna, Oszmiana [Ашмяны] and Lida) demanded that the bishopric of Vilna should be given to a Lithuanian. The sejmik of Brześć Litewski, located further away from the capital of the Grand Duchy, took a less trenchant view of the question. However, at the general sejmik held at Słonim (Сло́нім) on 28–30 January 1597 the representatives of fourteen sejmiki articulated their electors’ views, and no less than ten of them demanded that only a Lithuanian should hold the see of Vilna.Footnote ⁵⁸

The sejmiki of the Grand Duchy have traditionally been viewed as controlled by a narrow elite of ‘lords’ or ‘magnates’ (or, alternatively, contested between the leading families). It would be possible to argue that the intense opposition to Maciejowski's nomination as bishop of Vilna reflected the interests of a narrow elite jealously guarding its oligopoly of high office; ordinary nobles, who had minimal or no expectations of achieving such positions, may or may not have been indifferent to the eloquent defences of Lithuanian laws being mounted by the ‘lords’, but their attitude was in any case of little import. However, the pervasive image of the mass of the Lithuanian nobility as politically immature and utterly subjected to its patrons has been questioned by Artūras Vasiliauskas. His research has revealed significant levels of participation in sejmiki by moderately wealthy nobles in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as well as yielding a picture of relations between magnate patrons and ordinary noble clients in which the latter could often exert considerable pressure on the former. This might suggest a much wider social spread of ‘Lithuanian patriotism’ articulated by members of the elite. On the other hand, Vasiliauskas has found negligible evidence of hostility to ‘Poles’ beyond the elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but much evidence that ‘middling’ families were primarily concerned with politics at district level.Footnote ⁵⁹ Whoever made the key decisions at district sejmiki, the cathedral chapter of Vilna sought to ensure that its interests were taken into account at the level of the general sejmik.

During the last quarter of the sixteenth century, representatives of the Vilna cathedral chapter regularly participated in the Lithuanian general sejmiki held at Wołkowysk (Ваўкавыск) and Słonim.Footnote ⁶⁰ In 1597 the chapter was represented at Słonim by Canon Gregorius Święcicki, who had been delegated on 3 January and granted a substantial victualling allowance of 15 schocks of Lithuanian grosze. The chapter delegated the administrator of the diocese – Benedictus Woyna – to look after its interests at the sejm in Warsaw. He was authorised to pay for the costs of the journey from episcopal income, according to his judgement and conscience, without forfeiting his right to the daily distribution (ius refectio) assigned to resident canons and prelates.Footnote ⁶¹

The agitation against Maciejowski becoming bishop of Vilna was led by the palatine of Smolensk, Jan Abramowicz, who recruited other senators and dignitaries to the cause – including the former prelate-custodian of the Vilna chapter, the bishop of Samogitia Melchior Giedroyć.Footnote ⁶² Crucially, it was also joined by the grand chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Lew Sapieha. Sapieha had at one stage seemed inclined to support the king's candidate, but, as his letters to Krzysztof ‘the Thunderbolt’ Radziwiłł (palatine of Vilna and head of the Calvinist branch of the family) testify, he repeatedly resisted pressure exerted on him by the monarch to attach his seal to the nomination (many documents issued by the king required the seal of either the chancellor or vice-chancellor of either the Polish Crown or Grand Duchy of Lithuania before they acquired legal force).Footnote ⁶³ Sapieha wrote to Radziwiłł that he was ‘the guardian of the laws and liberties of the ancient and virtuous nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’. Aware of the opposition of the Estates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, neither he nor the vice-chancellor could or would attach their seals to the nomination, ‘unless all the lord citizens of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania permitted it and commanded us [to do so]’. He had given this response to the king's messenger, who had brought a copy of the nomination with the royal letter.Footnote ⁶⁴ He later reiterated his opposition in another letter to the ‘Thunderbolt’, who shared his stance. While still hoping that the king would change his mind, he declared his willingness to face the consequences of royal displeasure rather than yield.Footnote ⁶⁵

Despite this uncertain situation Sigismund iii decided on 1 June 1597 once again to nominate Maciejowski as bishop of Vilna.Footnote ⁶⁶ . The news of the nomination swiftly hit the streets of Vilna, as well as palaces and manor houses across the Commonwealth. On 9 June 1597 the royal secretary Wojciech Kochlewski handed the original document of nomination to the chapter.Footnote ⁶⁷ On the very same day, the palatine of Smolensk, Jan Abramowicz, in the expectation of a new sejm being called, proposed to send copies of the protest of the Lithuanian Estates to sejmiki in the Crown.Footnote ⁶⁸ Krzysztof ‘the Thunderbolt’ Radziwiłł professed his outrage. In a letter to Crown Grand Chancellor Jan Zamoyski he stated that ‘the nomination of Maciejowski is contrary to the laws of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the provisions of the Union of Lublin’. The second part of his assertion is all the more interesting for being wrong, at least as far as regards the letter of the Union (which had abolished the prohibition on Poles holding offices and lands in the Grand Duchy), but it does throw some light on how its spirit may have been understood among some of the Lithuanian elite. A similar view was taken by several other senators present in Vilna for a session of the Tribunal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They expressed their opposition in a letter to Maciejowski. Besides Radziwiłł ‘the Thunderbolt’, it was signed by Melchior Giedroyć, the bishop of Samogitia, Teodor Skumin Tyszkiewicz, Dymitr Chalecki, Mikołaj Talwosz and Jan Hlebowicz.Footnote ⁶⁹

On 10 June 1597, in the name of the opponents of Maciejowski's nomination and self-professed defenders of Lithuanian laws, the Vilna chapter was addressed by Bishop Giedroyć, the former custodian of Vilna cathedral. At some length he sought to convince his former colleagues that they should not bow to the will of Sigismund iii, and should not take any steps without the knowledge and permission of the Lithuanian Estates.Footnote ⁷⁰ The speech had its due effect. On 11 June the king's secretary was sent away with the decision that the chapter would not accept Maciejowski as bishop of Vilna. The sole argument used was the incompatibility of a nomination of a non-Lithuanian with the laws of the Grand Duchy. These, they argued, guaranteed that offices and dignities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania should be granted only to Lithuanians.Footnote ⁷¹ The point was taken. No more koroniarze became bishops of Vilna until the Commonwealth ceased to exist in 1795.

At this point a comparison with analogous disputes in Royal Prussia may be instructive. The western part of the former territory of the Teutonic Knights’ Ordensstaat had been united with the Polish Crown in 1454 (confirmed by the peace treaty of 1466). However, the terms of that incorporation remained contested. Prussian jurists wrote many learned tomes on their liberties and privileges, especially the ius indigenatus, which reserved offices and the purchase of landed estates to native Prussian citizens. These included the lucrative prince-bishopric of Warmia (Ermland), whose holder ex officio presided at meetings of the Prussian Estates (Landtag). However, the sixteenth century saw the kings of Poland break the Estates’ resistance to the appointment of Poles – born outside Prussia – to the see. A bitter dispute took place during the 1570s and 1580s over the nomination, first as co-adjutor with a right of succession, and then as bishop-ordinary, of the royal secretary and historian Martinus Kromer (following another non-Prussian, Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, one of the leading figures at the Council of Trent). Although Kromer finally overcame opposition within the chapter (the bishop had to be elected from among its members), he was not allowed to preside in the Prussian Estates.Footnote ⁷² Kromer's problem, as Karin Friedrich puts it, was that ‘he had neither Prussian parents, nor a reputation for cherishing Royal Prussia's special constitution’.Footnote ⁷³

However, while Prussian jurists wrote treatises on the ius indigenatus, Polish kings were increasingly successful in exempting the bishopric of Warmia from the principle. As Jerzy Dygdała has noted, between 1512 and 1740 only five of the nineteen bishops were native Prussians, and only one of them after 1550.Footnote ⁷⁴ Similar arguments to those made in Lithuania therefore had very different results. On the face of it, this would suggest that the Prussian elites mounted a weaker defence of their ius indigenatus than did their Lithuanian counterparts. Yet the possibility remains that some future historian will reveal the turning of the capitular wheels within the wheels of royal nominations to the prince-bishopric.

In the case of Sigismund iii's attempt to install Maciejowski as bishop of Vilna, the role of the cathedral chapter was crucial, and its decision might have been different. The protocols of the capitular sessions preceding Bishop Giedroyć's speech reveal that its stance wavered.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the first years of the vacancy the chapter was far more concerned with financial matters, and benefited materially from the absence of a bishop. As the episcopal revenues began to repair the chapter's finances – and the fabric of the cathedral – the chapter was in no hurry to change the situation, especially given the prospect of a bishop who even before taking possession of the diocese was already demanding money. It seems, therefore, that although the Third Lithuanian Statute did indeed reserve offices and dignities in the Grand Duchy for Lithuanian citizens, nevertheless the chapter could – at least initially – have proceeded as it usually did. The chapter could have accepted the royal nominee, who had already performed sterling service, as historians agree, to the Catholic Church as bishop of Łuck and Brześć.Footnote ⁷⁶

On the same day as Bishop Giedroyć's speech, the group of Lithuanian senators, not yet sure of the chapter's reaction, sent a letter to Maciejowski, informing him of their opposition and suggesting that the nomination concerned not only the Vilna chapter, but all Lithuanians.Footnote ⁷⁷ Maciejowski did not however agree that Lithuanians should have any complaints against him; they should be directed elsewhere. He would remain obedient to the will of God and the king.

By the second half of 1597 the positions taken by some of the senators and dignitaries of Lithuania had become less clear-cut. Krzysztof ‘the Thunderbolt’ Radziwiłł, who had signed the letter to Maciejowski and defended the laws of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was ready to compromise. He would support the king if the monarch would legalise his marriage to Elżbieta OstrogskaFootnote ⁷⁸ and if the future bishop would not try to claim back the episcopal lands taken by ‘the Thunderbolt’. Sigismund iii's positive reaction to this hard-nosed offer is found in a fragment of a letter sent to Rome by the papal nuncio. The nuncio informed his superiors that Elżbieta was already officially called Radziwiłł's wife (the ‘wojewodzina wileńska’) and that the king was ready to pay Radziwiłł a sum from the revenues of the bishopric. Moreover, Sigismund, continued the nuncio, planned to give two bishoprics – those of Łuck and Chełm – to relatives of ‘the Thunderbolt’. This insalubrious package was apparently endorsed by Jan Zamoyski and Cardinal Radziwiłl.Footnote ⁷⁹

The king agreed to the demands, but Maciejowski would not. In these circumstances Krzysztof Radziwiłł renewed his protest, instead proposing to translate the bishop of Chełm, Stanislaus Gomoliński, to Vilna. Gomoliński was from the Polish Crown. He would later end his career as bishop of Łuck and Brześć.Footnote ⁸⁰ This time it was Maciejowski who played the Lithuanian card. He was – for a while – prepared to give up the nomination on condition that the Lithuanians would maintain their condition that the bishop of Vilna should be a Lithuanian.

As late as September 1599 the matter remained unresolved. Sigismund iii was still counting on the chapter and the Lithuanian Estates agreeing to his nomination of Maciejowski, but agreement was still not forthcoming. A sign that Maciejowski himself was seeking a way out of the impasse is given by his becoming coadjutor to the archbishop of Gniezno – which gave him the right of succession to the primacy of Poland. In the meantime he won a still greater prize – in material terms. On 21 January 1600 Cardinal Radziwiłł died. Maciejowski was then nominated to the vacant bishopric of Kraków.Footnote ⁸¹ Kraków was decidedly the most lucrative see in the Commonwealth of the Two Nations: the revenues were about twice those of Gniezno and six times those of Vilna.Footnote ⁸² After the two archbishops of Gniezno and Lwów (Львів), the bishop of Kraków had the highest place in the senate. So a translation from Vilna to Kraków was in every respect a promotion. This factor had no doubt influenced Cardinal Radziwiłł's decision to abandon Vilna to its fate and go to the Polish Crown. The koroniarze accepted the Lithuanian bishop, although not without some grumbling, at least in the palatinate of Kraków, whose citizens claimed that such benefices should be given to ‘native Poles, according to older laws’.Footnote ⁸³

After Maciejowski's nomination to the bishopric of Kraków, on 21 April 1600 the canons and prelates of Vilna received a letter from the king with the nomination of Benedictus Woyna as bishop of Vilna. He had at last achieved his goal. In response, a week later, on 28 April, the chapter decided to delegate the dean of Vilna, Prelate Nicolaus Dicius, to travel to the royal court and convey the chapter's thanks to the king for the nomination.Footnote ⁸⁴

The lack – after Radziwiłł's translation and Cyprian's death – of both a bishop-ordinary and a suffragan in the diocese of Vilna negatively affected its functioning for several years. It is noteworthy that Melchior Giedroyć, as the bishop of the neighbouring diocese of Samogitia, who in that role has been judged by most historians to have been a zealous pastor,Footnote ⁸⁵ agreed to his former colleagues’ request to perform some episcopal duties in the vacant diocese of Vilna, such as ordinations and consecrations.

The protracted opposition to the nomination of Bernardus Maciejowski as bishop of Vilna has usually been seen as evidence of Lithuanian ‘particularism’ or even ‘patriotism’. Some of the language employed in the dispute, for example by Melchior Giedroyć and Lew Sapieha, lends itself to such an interpretation – as long as ‘Lithuanian’ is used in a territorial and civic sense of the word, and not in an ethnic one. However, this opposition seems less clear-cut or principled in the light of the personal interests of several of the protagonists in the dispute, including Krzysztof ‘the Thunderbolt’ Radziwiłł, Georgius Radziwiłł, Benedictus Woyna and even Maciejowski himself. The waters are muddied still further when the territorial origins of the senior clergymen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are taken into account. More than half of the cathedral chapter came from the Polish Crown; less than a quarter were natives of the Grand Duchy. It is difficult to accept at face value the chapter's use – at a relatively advanced stage in the dispute – of the argument that the bishopric of Vilna should only be conferred on a native citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In contrast, its corporate, material interest in prolonging the state of sede vacante (to keep out a nominee who had lost no time in demanding money) is perfectly clear.

The dispute over the bishopric of Vilna might on the face of things also testify that the Third Lithuanian Statute was considered superior to all other legal acts within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, both the Third Statute and the capitular statute were normative acts. In practice there was much room for their interpretation by the dignitaries of the Grand Duchy and the chapter of Vilna alike, as circumstances required. Having studied the capitular records, it is possible to conclude that in general the chapter was inclined to accept requests from persons who were influential with the royal court, and with the leading personages of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish Crown – especially if it could gain benefit from them.

A wider conclusion may be drawn from the analysis of this dispute. Sixteenth-century human beings were rarely as principled and consequential in their actions as they are usually portrayed by historians, and in particular by legal and ecclesiastical historians. By expanding research to sources which have hitherto been neglected or ignored, such as capitular records, a more nuanced picture of the past can be constructed. This is a picture in which practice often takes on a different meaning to the letter of the law. In this case, at least, the defence of the laws and liberties of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not necessarily the principal motor of a notable political conflict. The reinvestigation of this cause célèbre adds weight to the growing doubts among scholars concerning the supposedly overwhelming importance in the politics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the defence of Lithuanian ‘statehood’ or ‘sovereignty’ against Polish attempts at incorporation.Footnote ⁸⁶ It also emphasises the considerable role played by material interests, rather than confessional or pastoral ones, in the activities of early modern ecclesiastical corporations – in this case, the cathedral chapter of Vilna.