GOLDEN LIBERTY

'Golden Liberty' (Latin: ''Aurea Libertas''; Polish: ''Złota Wolność''), sometimes referred to as 'Golden Freedoms', 'Nobles' Democracy' or 'Nobles' Commonwealth' (Polish: ''Rzeczpospolita Szlachecka'') refers to a unique aristocratic political system in the Kingdom of Poland and later, after the Union of Lublin (1569), in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under that system, all nobles (''szlachta'') were equal and enjoyed extensive rights and privileges. In reality only those who were direct barons of the Crown enjoyed full peerage while nobles who held land from other lords would only be peers ''de iure'' and not stand in the court of peers. The ''szlachta'' controlled the legislature (Sejm — the Polish Parliament) and the Commonwealth's elected king.

★ Nihil novi (1505).

★ Pacta conventa and King Henry's Articles (1573).

★ Szlachta history and political privileges.

★ Sejm of the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

★ Organization and politics of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Many historians regard the "Golden Liberty" as a positive and unique feature of Poland's political system. It was an exception in an age when absolutism was developing in the principal countries of Europe, as an evolution from the medieval feudal system -- characterized by a strong aristocracy, a feeble king, and no legal system to grant Freedom and liberty to the people or to protect them from the excesses of the nobility.
Failing to evolve to the "modern" (in the sense of pertaining to the Modern Age, that succeeded the Middle Ages) system of a National Monarchy, the Commonwealth suffered a gradual decline down to the brink of anarchy, resulting in its annexation by stronger, neighbouring countries in the late-18th-century partitions of Poland.
A similar fate was averted by Italy; first due to a secular inability of the kings of France and Spain, and the Papacy, to come to terms on how to divide the country, then through the reaction against Habsburg domination which, as late as 1861, finally aligned most of the country's states in support to a national monarchy under king Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy, hitherto king of Sardinia.

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See also

External links

See also

★ Executionist movement

★ History of democracy

★ Liberum veto

★ Sarmatism

External links

★ Golden Freedom - 1632-1648

★ Excerpts from the book "The Polish Way" by Adam Zamojski

★ MONARCHY BECOMES THE FIRST REPUBLIC: KINGS ELECTED FOR LIFE

★ The Inexorable Political Rise of the szlachta