Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with population of over 39 million people, and the seventh-largest EU country, covering a combined area of 312,696 km2 (120,733 sq mi). It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordering seven countries. The territory is characterised by a varied landscape, diverse ecosystems, and temperate transitional climate. The capital and largest city is Warsaw; other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, and Gdańsk.
Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script. It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2023, there were over 40.6 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union. Polish is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics, and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals.
The szlachta were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and, as a social class, dominated those states by exercising political rights and power. Szlachta as a class differed significantly from the feudal nobility of Western Europe. The estate was officially abolished in 1921 by the March Constitution.
Poland–Lithuania, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and also referred to as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth or the First Polish Republic, was a bi-confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch in real union, who was both King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. It was one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th- to 17th-century Europe. At its largest territorial extent, in the early 17th century, the Commonwealth covered almost 1,000,000 km2 (400,000 sq mi) and as of 1618 sustained a multi-ethnic population of almost 12 million. Polish and Latin were the two co-official languages, and Catholicism served as the state religion.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 partitions of Poland–Lithuania. The state was founded by Lithuanians, who were at the time a polytheistic nation of several united Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija, which by 1440, became the largest European state controlling an area from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.
The Nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Szlachta of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was historically a legally privileged hereditary elite class in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth consisting of Lithuanians from Lithuania Proper; Samogitians from Duchy of Samogitia; following Lithuania's eastward expansion into what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, many ethnically Ruthenian noble families (boyars); and, later on, predominantly Baltic German families from the Duchy of Livonia and Inflanty Voivodeship.
Sejny is a town in north-eastern Poland and the capital of Sejny County, in Podlaskie Voivodeship, close to the northern border with Lithuania and Belarus. It is located in the eastern part of the Suwałki Lake Area, on the Marycha river, being a tributary of the Czarna Hańcza. As of 1999 it had almost 6,500 permanent inhabitants, with a strong seasonal increase during the tourist season.
The Karaim language, also known by its Hebrew name Lashon Kedar is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak group, with Hebrew influences, similarly to Yiddish or Judaeo-Spanish. It is spoken by only a few dozen Crimean Karaites in Lithuania, Poland, Crimea, and Galicia in Ukraine. The three main dialects are those of Crimea, Trakai-Vilnius and Lutsk-Halych, all of which are critically endangered. The Lithuanian dialect of Karaim is spoken mainly in the town of Trakai by a small community living there since the 14th century.
Polish heraldry is the study of the coats of arms that have historically been used in Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It treats of specifically Polish heraldic traits and of the Polish heraldic system, contrasted with heraldic systems used elsewhere, notably in Western Europe. Due to the distinctive ways in which feudal societies evolved, Poland's heraldic traditions differ substantially from those of the modern-day German lands and France.
Sarmatism was an ethno-cultural ideology within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was the dominant Baroque culture and ideology of the nobility that existed in times of the Renaissance to the 18th centuries. Together with the concept of "Golden Liberty", it formed a central aspect of the Commonwealth social elites’ culture and society. At its core was the unifying belief that the people of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth descended from the ancient Iranian Sarmatians, the legendary invaders of contemporary Polish lands in antiquity.
This article covers the history of Poland in the Middle Ages. This time covers roughly a millennium, from the 5th century to the 16th century. It is commonly dated from the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and contrasted with a later Early Modern Period. The time during which the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation unfolded is generally associated with the transition out of the Middle Ages, with European overseas expansion as a succeeding process, but such dates are approximate and based upon nuanced arguments.
Poland is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the ninth largest in Europe.
A coffin portrait was a realistic portrait of the deceased person put on coffins for the funeral and one of the elements of the castrum doloris, but removed before the burial. It became a tradition to decorate coffins of deceased nobles (szlachta) with such funerary art in the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, the time of the baroque in Poland and Sarmatism. The tradition was limited to Commonwealth countries, although the term may also describe the Ancient Egyptian mummy portraits.
Robert I. Frost is a British historian and academic. His interests are in the history of Eastern and Northern Europe of 14th to the 19th centuries, with primary focus on Poland–Lithuania and the history of warfare of the period.
The Polish-Lithuanian identity describes individuals and groups with histories in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth or with close connections to its culture. This federation, formally established by the 1569 Union of Lublin between the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, created a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state founded on the binding powers of national identity and shared culture rather than ethnicity or religious affiliation. The term Polish-Lithuanian has been used to describe various groups residing in the Commonwealth, including those that did not share the Polish or Lithuanian ethnicity nor their predominant Roman Catholic faith.
The Funeral Crown, also known under its Latin name as the Corona Funebris or Funebralis, was a part of the Polish Crown Jewels. It was probably lost before 1669.
The Lithuanian Crusade was a series of campaigns by the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order under the pretext of forcibly Christianizing the pagan Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Livonian Order occupied Riga in 1202 and in the 1230s they settled in Chełmno Land, a fief of Poland. They first conquered other neighboring Baltic tribes—Curonians, Semigallians, Latgalians, Selonians, and Old Prussians—in the Livonian Crusade and Prussian Crusade.
Paweł Giżycki was a Polish Jesuit architect who worked in eastern regions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Armeno-Kipchak was a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch of the family that was spoken in Crimea during the 14–15th centuries. The language has been documented from the literary monuments of 16–17th centuries written in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Armenian script. Armeno-Kipchak resembles the language of Codex Cumanicus, which was compiled in the 13th century.
