It is at the end of the century. X and during the century. XI, that the first rulers of the Piasti dynasty completed the organization of the Polish state, taking as a model the state institutions of Western Europe, based on the state body of the Frankish monarchy. These models served above all as a basis for the organization of the ducal offices, at the head of which was the comes palatinus (later called in Polish wojewoda); substitute for comes was the podkomorzy (subcamerarius), then came the chancellor, the treasurer, the judge, the baker (stolnik), the seneschal (cze ś nik), etc. The provincial organization was based on castles, at the head of which were the castellan comites, later called castellani (in Polish: kasztelani). The duke had absolute power. The state was considered the property of the ruling Piasti dynasty; the sovereign divided it among his sons (with the exception of daughters), and in the event of a lack of sons he could pass on his territory to any of his male relatives, who were united to him by kinship ties on the male side. Only in the century. XIII admitted the possibility of transmitting the territory to the children or husbands of females, belonging to the ruling dynasty. With the year 1138, Poland divided into a series of particular duchies, at the head of which, by virtue of the testament of Boleslao Boccatorta (Krzywousty), only one of his heirs had been constituted as grand duke (princeps). However, the institution of the princeps disappeared in the mid-century. XIII.
Boleslao Chrobry (1024) was the first to wear the royal crown, after having obtained the consent of the pope; after him, his immediate successor Mieszko II (1025), son of Boleslao Chrobry, then, after an interval, Boleslaus the Bold (1075), and later, the Duke of Greater Poland, Przemysław II (1295). From the coronation of Ladislao Łokietek (1320), all the sovereigns carried out the act of coronation, according to the formula ad coronandum regem, taken from the Ordo Romanus, and modified somewhat later.
The social organization differed from that of Western Europe in that Poland did not admit the feudal system, although the division of Polish society had a similar configuration. During the XI-XIV centuries the noble caste was born in Poland, characterized by the military ius, which corresponds to the fief; the lands, however, were conferred hereditary, iure militare, and were subject to the ordinary rules of inheritance; there was no feudal hierarchy, but all the militesthey depended directly on the king. Based on the privileges granted by the sovereigns starting from the century. XII, the states arose: the ecclesiastical one (endowed with important general privileges in the years 1211 and 1215) and the noble one. The state of the bourgeoisie appears in the century. XIII, and this fact remains in connection with the foundation of the cities on the model of Magdeburg. The assets of the duke, the church and the military nobility were inhabited by a free and not free population, from which it originated, in the century. XIV, an intermediate layer of peasant population, personally free, but without the right to own the land.
When the Piasti dynasty died out (in the year 1370), Luigi the Hungarian became king by virtue of the agreements stipulated with Casimir the Great. The great privilege (privileium terrestre) promulgated by this ruler in Košice in 1374, became the basis for the further development of the importance of the nobility. When, after the death of Louis (in 1382), the throne passed to his daughter Hedwig, the union of Poland with Lithuania was achieved, thanks to the marriage of this princess with Jagiello (Grand Duke of Lithuania), the union of Poland with Lithuania, only personal union. The sons of Jagiello and his fourth wife had no hereditary right to the throne; their eldest son, Vladislaus, was the first personally elected Polish monarch; as long as the descendants of Jagiello lived, however, they were always elected to the throne, so as not to sever the bonds of union with Lithuania. The election was formally carried out by all the nobility, but in practice, it depended on the king’s advice. The government of the state, definedCorona Kingdoms Poloniae, was held by central officials, established towards the end of the century. XIV and at the beginning of the century. XV, called officials of the crown and court officials, among whom were the first: the marshal of the crown, the chancellor of the crown, the subchancellor of the crown, the treasurer of the crown and the marshal of the court, all forming part of the sovereign council. The ancient central officials of the period of the Piasti dynasty changed into provincial officials, mainly honorary, since the character of effective provincial officials was reserved (after the disappearance of the castellans), from the century onwards. XIV onwards, to the “starosta” (capitanei). Social organization was therefore based on the division of society into classes. Among these, only two reached a powerful situation, namely, the clergy and the nobility, which obtained a series of privileges (in the years: 1386, 1388, 1422, 1425, 1430, 1433, 1454). These privileges guaranteed to the two classes mentioned above the exemption from taxes that exceeded the quota established in the privilege of 1374, personal freedom (neminem captivabimus nisi iure victum) up to 1422, the non-punishment, without prior sentence of the court (up to the year 1425), etc. The bourgeoisie acquired no greater influence. The peasants, starting from the end of the fifteenth century, were subjected to the dominion of the lords, by virtue of the prohibition to leave the land without their authorization, and thanks to the development of patrimonial jurisdiction. These reforms were closely connected with the development of the rural economy of the lords; the peasants were imposed on the corvates for the cultivation of the landowners, and the limits of these corvate increased to the extent of the greater exports of Polish grain, which followed the route of the Vistula to Danzig, and from Danzig were directed to Amsterdam. The nobility and the clergy meanwhile acquired influence over the state government, the king not being able to impose contributions of any kind, without the consent of the nobility. In the century XV this consent was granted by the committees of the nobility, who gathered in the province, comizî called dietine. The diet did not arise until 1493; it was made up of two chambers: the king’s council – later called the senate, composed of bishops, voivodes, castellans and the five highest officials of the crown and court – as well as the chamber of deputies, who were elected in the Dietine by the nobility. At first, deputies from larger cities were also part of the diet, but later, they were excluded. The diet, in addition to taxes, also decreed laws called constitutions with royal consent; the limits of competence between sovereign and diet were not strictly defined; the king should not have promulgated without theNihil novi).
