Rafał Jaworski
Prace Historyczne, Numer 146 (1), 2019, s. 261 - 278
https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.19.014.10279King Sigismund II Augustus’ Russian letters to Mikołaj “the Red” Radziwiłł from the period of 1568–1571 in the collections of Konstanty Świdziński Museum (Krasiński Library)
The correspondence between the king Sigismund II Augustus and the Radziwiłł family is one of the main sources of research on the political history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Polish-Lithuanian relationships in the second half of 16th century. Five Russian letters of the last member of the Jagiellonian Dynasty to Mikołaj “the Red” Radziwiłł from the period of 1568–1571 are the subject of this article. The original documents were destroyed in 1944 but the information about their content is available owing to the abridged versions printed in 1876 by W. Chomętowski. The abridgements didn’t come into scientific circulation. There is also Stanisław Bodniak’s translation of one of the letters (24th March 1571, Warsaw). The abridgements and the translation are published in the article, which also contains an attempt to explain in what way the letters from the Nesvizh Archive came to the collection of the Krasiński Library (Konstanty Świdziński Museum). The question of the bilingual correspondence between the king and the Radziwiłł family is also partially discussed.