THE FORMATION OF THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP
Peter B. Brown|Harry E. Dembkowski
Western historians concerned with early modern European political devel opment remain woefully ignorant of one the truly momentous events day, 1569 Union Lublin (Unia Lubelska) that united predomi nantly western Slavic, Roman Catholic Kingdom Poland and essen tially eastern Orthodox Grand Duchy Lithuania. The resulting Rzeczpospolita obojga narodow, Two Peoples, was unique in its confederative characteristics being only sizea ble, multi-confessional country Europe second largest polity after Muscovite Russia. remaining three decades sixteenth century, so-called Golden Age?heady days gentry indulgence?were followed by unmitigated catastrophe seventeenth century when Commonwealth lurched from disaster to next: numerous civil foreign wars, oc cupation, increasing paralysis, attendant social, cultural, economic decay. This post-1600 decline, which reached nadir during Partitions, has obscured many state order swam against stream absolutist evolution for nearly hundred years. origins Polish history date late Carolingian times. Medieval fits into a medieval historical mold shared Kievan Appanage Rus' lesser extent Moravia Bulgaria: brief period pre-Christian statehood; conversion Faith mollify encroaching Christian empires; fleeting internal conquest national consolidation; subsequent fragmentation, sometimes accompanied or even precipitated barbarian invasion; at tempts integration regional center. sequence unfolded over half millennium, between ninth fourteenth centuries. By 1400, had been centuries within cultural orbit because Catholicism, official use Latin government, links intellectual centers West.