Renaissance, the Platonic-Christian humanist belief in virtue as the essence of nobility was summed up in the Latin phrase: Virtus vera nobilitas est (Virtue is the True Nobility). The counter-revolutionary author Edmund Burke wrote on merit-based promotion: "...the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle." Napoleon Bonaparte and Friedrich Nietzsche were later to continue the tradition of promoting a vision of aristocratic meritocracy, although no longer within (and opposed to) the Catholic-chivalric framework. Kingdom of Poland In the Kingdom of Poland and later in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, ennoblement (nobilitacja) meant an individual's joining the szlachta (Polish nobility). At first it was granted by monarch, since the late 16th century by the sejm that gave the ennobled person a coat of arms. Often that person could join an existing noble szlachta family with their own coat of arms. The increase of number of Polish nobility by trustworthy ennoblements was proportionally minimal since the 14th century. Grand Duchy of Lithuania In the late 14th century, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vytautas the Great reformed the Grand Duchy's army: instead of calling all men to arms, he created forces comprising professional warriors—bajorai ("nobles"; see the cognate "boyar"). As there were not enough nobles, Vytautas trained suitable men, relieving them of labor on the land and of other duties; for their military service to the Grand Duke, they were granted land that was worked by hired men (veldamas). The newly formed noble families generally took up, as their family names, the Lithuanian pagan given names of their ennobled ancestors; this was the case with the Goštautai, Radvilos, Astikai, Kęsgailos and others. These families were granted their coats of arms under the Union of Horodło (1413). In 1506, King Sigismund I the Old confirmed the position of the Lithuanian Council of Lords in state politics and limited entry into the nobility. Imperial Russia After the reforms of Tsar Peter the Great in the early 18th century, noblemen in Russia were obliged to serve as civil or