Courtiers of Foreign Origin amongst the Horse Courtiers of King Sigismund I the Old in 1518–1526. Part One: Whether or Not, and How to Examine the National/Ethnic Attachment of the Royal Courtiers?*

Courtiers of Foreign Origin amongst the Horse Courtiers of King Sigismund I the Old in 1518–1526. Part One: Whether or Not, and How to Examine the National/Ethnic Attachment of the Royal Courtiers? The service of horse courtiers was modelled on the system used in the Polish army at the time. The horse courtiers joined the court with horse detachments, which were not part of the court structure, but were subordinated to and served the courtiers. The analysed sources — 1518 displays of the horse courtier detachments of King Sigismund the Old (1506–1548) and register of changes until 1525 (Central Archives of Historical Records, Archives of the Crown Treasury, Section 85, no. 13 and 14) — are a valuable source of information about the horse courtiers in terms of their actual involvement in warfare, places and times of the detachments joining the royal service, numbers in the various military operations, ways and circumstances in which compensation was paid. However, the surviving sources tell us little about the precise origin of the various courtiers, and the well-documented cases of artists (architects, musicians) and fine craftsmen (gardeners, tailors) working for the royal court and standing out by virtue of their achievements are exceptions confirming the rule. Among the over nine hundred horse courtiers, identified also on the basis of other sources, those of foreign origin were a small minority (around 10%) at the courts of both Sigismund the Old’s predecessor and his successor. In both analysed books courtiers of foreign origin made up, according to preliminary findings — obviously bearing in mind all methodological limitations of such research — around 19% and 16% respectively. Presumably, when it comes to the formation of the royal court, the reign of Sigismund the Old was a period in which a significant transformation happened in the ethnicity of the horse courtiers — from a fairly varied group during the reign of Alexander Jagiellon into a nationally almost uniform group during the reign of Sigismund Augustus.