HOME
*



picture info

Golden Freedoms
Golden Liberty ( la, Aurea Libertas; pl, Złota Wolność, lt, Auksinė laisvė), sometimes referred to as Golden Freedoms, Nobles' Democracy or Nobles' Commonwealth ( pl, Rzeczpospolita Szlachecka or ''Złota wolność szlachecka'') was a political system in the Kingdom of Poland and, after the Union of Lublin (1569), in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under that system, all nobles ('' szlachta''), regardless of rank, economic status or their ethnic background were considered to have equal legal status and enjoyed extensive legal rights and privileges. The nobility controlled the legislature (the ''Sejm'' — the parliament) and the Commonwealth's elected king. Development This political system, unique in Europe, stemmed from the consolidation of power by the '' szlachta'' ( noble class) over other social classes and over the monarchical political system. In time, the ''szlachta'' accumulated enough privileges (established by the ''Nihil novi'' Act (1505), King Henry' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Kanclerz
Chancellor of Poland ( pl, Kanclerz - , from la, cancellarius) was one of the highest officials in the historic Poland. This office functioned from the early Polish kingdom of the 12th century until the end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. A respective office also existed in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the 16th century. Today the office of the chancellor has been replaced by that of the Prime Minister. Chancellors' powers rose together with the increasing importance of written documents. In the 14th century the office of Chancellor of Kraków ( pl, Kanclerz krakowski) evolved into the Chancellor of the Crown ( pl, Kanclerz koronny) and from that period the chancellor powers were greatly increased, as they became responsible for the foreign policy of the entire Kingdom (later, the Commonwealth). The Chancellor was also supposed to ensure the legality of monarch's actions, especially whether or not they could be considered illegal in the context of pacta co ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sejmik
A sejmik (, diminutive of ''sejm'', occasionally translated as a ''dietine''; lt, seimelis) was one of various local parliaments in the history of Poland and history of Lithuania. The first sejmiks were regional assemblies in the Kingdom of Poland (before 1572), though they gained significantly more influence in the later era of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (18th century). Sejmiks arose around the late 14th and early 15th centuries and existed until the end of the Commonwealth in 1795, following the partitions of the Commonwealth. In a limited form, some sejmiks existed in partitioned Poland (1795–1918), and later in the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939). In modern Poland, since 1999, the term has revived with the ''voivodeship sejmiks'' (''sejmiki województwa''), referring to the elected councils of each of the 16 voivodeships. The competencies of sejmiks varied over time, and there were also geographical differences. Often, numerous different types of sejmiks co ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Warsaw Confederation
The Warsaw Confederation, signed on 28 January 1573 by the Polish national assembly (''sejm konwokacyjny'') in Warsaw, was one of the first European acts granting religious freedoms. It was an important development in the history of Poland and of Lithuania that extended religious tolerance to nobility and free persons within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and is considered the formal beginning of religious freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although it did not prevent all conflict based on religion, it did make the Commonwealth a much safer and more tolerant place than most of contemporaneous Europe, especially during the subsequent Thirty Years' War. History Religious tolerance in Poland had had a long tradition (e.g. Statute of Kalisz) and had been ''de facto'' policy in the reign of the recently deceased King Sigismund II. However, the articles signed by the Confederation gave official sanction to earlier custom. In that sense, they may be considered either t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Religious Toleration
Religious toleration may signify "no more than forbearance and the permission given by the adherents of a dominant religion for other religions to exist, even though the latter are looked on with disapproval as inferior, mistaken, or harmful". Historically, most incidents and writings pertaining to toleration involve the status of minority and dissenting viewpoints in relation to a dominant state religion. However, religion is also sociological, and the practice of toleration has always had a political aspect as well. An overview of the history of toleration and different cultures in which toleration has been practiced, and the ways in which such a paradoxical concept has developed into a guiding one, illuminates its contemporary use as political, social, religious, and ethnic, applying to LGBT individuals and other minorities, and other connected concepts such as human rights. In Antiquity Religious toleration has been described as a "remarkable feature" of the Achaemenid E ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Insurrection
Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority. A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and then manifests itself by the refusal to submit or to obey the authority responsible for this situation. Rebellion can be individual or collective, peaceful (civil disobedience, civil resistance, and nonviolent resistance) or violent (terrorism, sabotage and guerrilla warfare). In political terms, rebellion and revolt are often distinguished by their different aims. While rebellion generally seeks to evade and/or gain concessions from an oppressive power, a revolt seeks to overthrow and destroy that power, as well as its accompanying laws. The goal of rebellion is resistance while a revolt seeks a revolution. As power shifts relative to the external adversary, or power shifts within a mixed coalition, or positions harden or soften on eithe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Rokosz
A rokosz () originally was a gathering of all the Polish ''szlachta'' (nobility), not merely of deputies, for a ''sejm''. The term was introduced to the Polish language from Hungary, where analogous gatherings took place at a field called Rákos. With time, "rokosz" came to signify an armed, semi-legal rebellion by the szlachta of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against the king, in the name of defending threatened liberties. The nobles who gathered for a ''rokosz'' formed a "confederation".Juliusz Bardach, Bogusław Leśnodorski, and Michał Pietrzak, ''Historia państwa i prawa polskiego'' (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1987, p.225-226) The institution of the rokosz, in the latter sense, derived from the medieval right to resist royal power. The rokosz took its authority from the right to refuse obedience to the king, as stipulated in the Privilege of Mielnik (''przywilej mielnicki'', signed October 23, 1501) and later in the Henrician Articles of 1573. Two of th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Royal Elections In Poland
Royal elections in Poland (Polish: ''wolna elekcja'', lit. ''free election'') were the elections of individual kings, rather than dynasties, to the Polish throne. Based on traditions dating to the very beginning of the Polish statehood, strengthened during the Piast and Jagiellon dynasties, they reached their final form in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth period between 1572 and 1791. The "free election" was abolished by the Constitution of 3 May 1791, which established a constitutional-parliamentary monarchy. Evolution The tradition of electing the country's ruler, which occurred either when there was no clear heir to the throne, or to confirm the heir's appointment, dates to the very beginning of Polish statehood. Legends survive of the 9th-century election of the legendary founder of the first Polish royal family, Piast the Wheelwright of the Piast dynasty, and similar voting of his son, Siemowit (that would place a Polish ruler's vote a century before the earliest I ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the elder" or "old man") and therefore considered wiser and more experienced members of the society or ruling class. However the Roman Senate was not the ancestor or predecessor of modern parliamentarism in any sense, because the Roman senate was not a legislative body. Many countries have an assembly named a ''senate'', composed of ''senators'' who may be elected, appointed, have inherited the title, or gained membership by other methods, depending on the country. Modern senates typically serve to provide a chamber of "sober second thought" to consider legislation passed by a lower house, whose members are usually elected. Most senates have asymmetrical duties and powers compared with their respective lower house meaning they have special dut ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]