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This article is about the 14th century Polish king. For other uses, please see Casimir.

Casimir III the Great
Noble Family or Dynasty	Piast dynasty
Coat of Arms	File:Herb Orzel Piastowski.jpg Piast Eagle
Parents	Władysław I the Elbow-high, Jadwiga Kaliszka, of Gniezno and Greater Poland
Consorts	Aldona Ona, Adelheid of Hessen, Christina, Jadwiga of Glogow and Sagan
Children	5 daughters
Date of Birth	1310
Place of Birth	Kowal
Date of Death	1370
Place of Death	Cracow
Ruled	1333 – 1370

Casimir III, called the Great (Polish: Kazimierz Wielki; April 30 1310 – November 5 1370), King of Poland (1333-70), was the son of King Władysław I the Elbow-high and Jadwiga of Gniezno and Greater Poland.

Biography

Born in Kowal, Casimir (Kazimierz) the Great first married Anna, or Aldona Ona, the daughter of the prince of Lithuania, Gediminas. The daughters from this marriage were Cunigunde (d 1357), who was married to Louis VI the Roman, the son of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and Elisabeth, who was married to Duke Bogislaus V of Pomerania. Aldona died in 1339 and Kazimierz then married Adelheid of Hessen. He divorced Adelheid in 1356, married Christina, divorced her, and while Adelheid and possibly also Christina were still alive c. 1365 married Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Glogow and Sagan.

His three daughters by his fourth wife were very young and regarded as of dubious legitimacy because of their father's bigamy. Due to the fact that all of the 5 children he fathered with his first and fourth wife were daughters, he would have no lawful male heir to his throne.

File:50zl r.jpg

When Kazimierz, the last Piast king of Poland, died in 1370, his nephew King Louis I of Hungary succeeded him to become king of Poland in personal union with Hungary.

The Great King

Kazimierz is the only Polish king who both received and kept the title of Great in Polish history (Boleslaw I Chrobry was once also called the Great, but no longer). When he received the crown, his hold on it was in danger, as even his neighbours did not recognise his title and instead called him "king of Kraków". The economy was ruined, and the country was depopulated and exhausted by war. Upon his death, he left a country doubled in size (mostly through the addition of land in today's Ukraine, then the Duchy of Halicz), prosperous, wealthy and with great prospects for the future. Although he is depicted as a peaceful king in children's books, he in fact waged many victorious wars and was readying for others just before he died.

Kazimierz the Great built many new castles, reformed the Polish army and Polish civil and criminal law. At the Sejm in Wislica, March 11, 1347, he introduced salutary legal reforms in the jurisprudence of his country. He sanctioned a code of laws for Great and Little Poland, which gained for him the title of "the Polish Justinian" and founded the University of Kraków, although his death stalled the university's development (which is why it is today called the "Jagiellonian" rather than "Casimirian" University).

He organized a meeting of kings at Kraków (1364) in which he exhibited the wealth of the Polish kingdom.

Concession to the nobility

In order to enlist the support of the nobility, especially the military help of pospolite ruszenie, Kazimierz was forced to give up important privileges to their caste, which made them finally clearly dominant over townsfolk (burghers or mieszczanstwo).

In 1335, in the "treaty of Trenčín", Kazimierz relinquished "in perpetuity" his claims to Silesia. In 1355 in Buda Kazimierz designated Louis of Anjou (Louis I of Hungary) as his successor. In exchange, the szlachta's tax burden was reduced and they would no longer be required to pay for military expeditions expenses outside Poland. Those important concessions would eventually lead to the ultimately crippling rise of the unique nobles' democracy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

His second daughter, Elisabeth, Duchess of Pomerania, bore a son in 1351, named Kasimir (Kazimierz of Pomerania) after his maternal grandfather. He was slated to become the heir, but did not succeed to the throne, dying childless in 1377, 7 years after King Kazimierz. He was the only male descendant of King Kazimierz who lived during his lifetime.

Also, his son-in-law Louis VI the Roman of Bavaria, Margrave and Prince-elector of Brandenburg, was thought as a possible successor as king of Poland. However, he was not deemed eligible as his wife, Kazimierz's daughter Cunigunde, had died already in 1357, without children.

Kazimierz had no legal sons. Apparently he deemed his own descendants either unsuitable or too young to inherit. Thus, and in order to provide a clear line of succession and avoid dynastic uncertainty, he arranged for his sister Elisabeth, Dowager Queen of Hungary, and her son Louis king of Hungary to be his successors in Poland. Louis was proclaimed king on Kazimierz's death in 1370, and Elisabeth held much of the real power until her death in 1380.

Many of the influential lords of Poland were unsatisfied with the idea of any personal union with Hungary, and 12 years after Kazimierz's death, (and only a couple of years after Elisabeth's), they refused in 1382 to accept the succession of Louis's eldest surviving daughter Mary (Queen of Hungary) in Poland too. They therefore chose Mary's younger sister, Hedwig, as their new monarch, and she became "King" (=Queen Regnant) Jadwiga of Poland, thus restoring the independence enjoyed until the death of Kazimierz, twelve years earlier.

Relationship with Polish Jews

King Kazimierz was favorably disposed toward Jews. On 9 October 1334, he confirmed the privileges granted to Jewish Poles in 1264 by Boleslaus V. Under penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries.

Although Jews had lived in Poland since before the reign of King Kazimierz, he allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers and protected them as people of the king.

See also

• History of Poland (966-1385)

References

1. "In Poland, a Jewish Revival Thrives — Minus Jews". New York Times. July 12, 2007. Probably about 70 percent of the world's European Jews, or Ashkenazi, can trace their ancestry to Poland — thanks to a 14th-century king, Casimir III, the Great, who drew Jewish settlers from across Europe with his vow to protect them as "people of the king." {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

• Polish monarchs
• House of Piast
• 1310 births
• 1370 deaths