Women of early modern Italy are famous for being clever and devious political players on the European political scene. Catherine de’ Medici, who effectively ruled France for decades, and Lucrezia Borgia, who exerted influence by marrying into the Sforza, Aragon and d’Este families, are perhaps the most famous examples. Other familiar names include Caterina Sforza, who occupied Castel Sant’Angelo after Pope Sixtus IV’s death in 1484, and Isabella d’Este, known for her patronage of art and effective regency of Mantua. There is substantial English-language literature about these women, but their close relative, Bona Sforza (b. 1494–d. 1557), whose counsel and actions influenced the fate of the largest composite monarchy on the continent, remains largely obscure in English literature.Footnote 1 The only surviving child of Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan and Duchess Isabella d’Aragona of Bari and Rossano, Bona lived with her mother under the protection of the Neapolitan Aragons following her father’s death. Her marriage to King Sigismund I the Old of Poland was arranged by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, as result of the alliance agreed between the Habsburgs, Sigismund and his brother, King Vladislaus II of Hungary, at the Congress of Vienna in 1515 . In April 1518, Bona entered a country very different from her own, governed as an elective monarchy with a strong parliament that gave much political privilege to the nobility, who could hold the royal couple accountable for their actions.Footnote 2

Polish historians make much of Bona’s political position and often write of her in terms that might as well describe a powerful sixteenth-century man. The exhaustive interwar research of Władysław Pociecha, since augmented by Maria Bogucka, Anna Sucheni-Grabowska and my own contribution, shows Bona as a wife to a weak king and an active politician who bought the crown lands pawned to wealthy senators for royal debts to turn them into the Jagiellonian dynasty’s private property, conducted wide-ranging economic reforms in Lithuania, governed her Italian duchies (Bari and Rossano) from afar and took complete charge of raising her children.Footnote 3 But even though there is much evidence of Bona’s political action, such as buying lands or appointing officers, there are few documented occasions of her giving direct advice or counselling the king. Even when this evidence of Bona directly counselling her husband is lacking, historians tend to assume that she was the master-puppeteer behind Polish internal and foreign politics. The view of the Polish historians is strongly grounded in the aura of unbreakable political fortitude that surrounds the queen in reports of her contemporaries. Giovanni Marsupino, the Habsburg ambassador at the Polish court, wrote that “Dear God, talking to the old king is like talking to nobody. The king has no will of his own, he is so curbed. Bona holds everything in her hands, she alone rules the country and gives orders to everyone”.Footnote 4 This chapter demonstrates that while Bona pursued a comprehensive political programme and mounted her own political faction which included some of the most powerful Polish nobles, she was only successful in implementing her political agendas insofar as it suited her husband, Sigismund the Old.

Bona’s political programme had three main aims. First, she attempted to strengthen the position of the Jagiellonians as a dynasty by buying out crown lands pawned to some of the wealthiest of the realm’s nobility for royal debts. But instead of returning them to the state, she converted them into the private property of the Jagiellonians, which was seen by the republican Polish nobility as an attempt to introduce absolute monarchy. Part of this agenda was also the manipulation of the elective system to solicit the election and coronation of the couple’s son, Sigismund August, to the Polish throne in 1530 while his father was still alive. Strengthening of the dynasty at home was connected to consolidating its position in the European context. The dynastic expansion of the Jagiellonians was directed towards the Hungarian and Czech territories, where it collided with the dynastic politics of the German Habsburgs. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the kings of Poland (Alexander I Jagiellon until 1506, then followed by Sigismund I the Old) and Hungary (Vladislaus II Jagiellon) were brothers, but by the end of the sixteenth century Hungary was under control of the Holy Roman Emperors. The Vienna Congress in 1515 between the Jagiellonian brothers and Emperor Maximilian I was a defeat for Jagiellonian diplomacy. Due to the dynastic marriages agreed during the meeting, the Jagiellonians virtually gave up control over Hungary and Bohemia’s future. The marriage between Bona and Sigismund was an indirect result of the congress, as she was Maximilian’s niece by his marriage to Bianca Maria Sforza. Bona defied expectations to become a quasi-ambassador for her natal family at the Polish court, which was the traditional role fulfilled, for example, by Catherine of Aragon at Henry VIII’s court (see Michelle L. Beer’s, Chap. 3 in this volume). Despite her Habsburg connections, Bona understood that Poland must counter the growing influence of the Habsburgs in the region or be swallowed by the empire. She thought that Poland should fight the growing influence of the Habsburgs by pursuing two of her other aims—a strong alliance with France sealed with a dynastic marriage and the provision of support to the anti-Habsburg faction in Hungary led by the Zapolya family.

By demonstrating how Bona’s political action was dependent on the success of her counsel, this chapter offers a more nuanced analysis of Bona’s political activities and the dynamic between the royal couple. Ultimately even Bona, despite her undoubted sway, was hindered by gender constraints. Pursuing her ends often exposed her vulnerability and it is not always easy to distinguish the counsel she offered her husband from her efforts to solicit his approval for her political projects. Despite Bona’s political fortitude, the historical evidence suggests that her husband often refused her wishes outright, or that she had to revise her plans on the basis of a significant compromise. This was all complicated by Bona’s refusal to constrain her counsel and the manner of giving it by the prescriptions of her gendered office. She notoriously disregarded the tenets of queenship as they were epitomized in the coronation ritual, particularly in the symbolism of the queen’s regalia.Footnote 5 The Polish coronation book, according to which Bona was crowned, states that the crown symbolized her new status as “the consort to royal power” and her duty to provide “good counsel”.Footnote 6 “Good” meant guarded by virtue, meaning high moral standards, propriety and goodness, as befitted the “guardian of humility and custom” rather than practically beneficial. The restrictions on how the queen was permitted to give counsel were gendered and dominated by the concept of intercession, but in practice the lives of consorts were often fraught with political challenges that could not be resolved with feminine virtue and mitigation. The world of early modern high politics favoured the devious over the meek. This was linked to the masculine virtue conceptualized by Machiavelli as virtù, or the ability to “do wrong, and use it and not use it according to necessity”.Footnote 7 Early modern virtue was subject to a gendered double standard, but not all queens, including Bona, would allow themselves to be ruled by it. This chapter thus examines the realpolitik of queenly counsel as practical or even self-interested rather than guided by ideals of queenly virtue and as an instrumental tool in carrying out the queen’s political plans, if only she could influence and compromise with her husband.

Throughout Bona’s time as the queen of Poland, numerous reports concerning the influence of her counsel survive, written by her enemies as well as supporters. In April 1519, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, who travelled with Bona to Poland for her wedding in April 1518, wrote to Alfonso I of Ferrara, then Lucrezia Borgia’s husband, that: “Everyone wants to be of service to the queen, expecting much good from her favour, because the king displays an extraordinary love for her and she never speaks on someone’s behalf in vain, but he always fulfils her wishes most attentively”.Footnote 8 This was a golden period in the royal couple’s marital life. Bona had just given birth to the couple’s first daughter, Isabella, and was soon to conceive their first son, Sigismund August. Bona was not lax in her wifely duties and she took good care of Sigismund’s daughters from his first marriage to Barbara Zapolya as well as his illegitimate daughter, Beata Kościelecka, from his relationship with Katarzyna Telniczanka.Footnote 9 The king was so pleased with his new wife that in 1519, a year after the wedding, he made her a gift of the duchies of Pińsk and Kobryń to use for life. He continued to endow her with, for example, Sielce in 1521 and castle Teteryn in 1523.Footnote 10 Two factors were key in Bona’s initial success: the strength of the couple’s relationship and Sigismund’s amenable character.

Sigismund’s prayer book, now held at the British Library, contains proof that the royal couple led a rich family life and worked as a genuine team. Prayer books were portable and personal, carried in the pockets of their owners as convenient family albums. Made around 1524 in the workshop of Stanisław Samostrzelnik, Sigismund’s prayer book served as a family scrapbook, including personal marginalia, such as uplifting proverbs or, indeed, a handwritten recipe involving the use of scorpion oil. However, Sigismund used it primarily as a private means of recording the births of his children. About the birth of his daughter, he writes: “On Tuesday, when four in the evening was still ringing, on 18 January 1519, in Cracow was born the most illustrious lady Isabella of Casimir’s line, I wish [to let you know] that you are regarded most lucky and passionately desired”.Footnote 11 Similar sentiment accompanies Sigismund’s entry about the birth of his second daughter Sophie, “most lucky and desired”, which gave him joy in his old age for which he was grateful to God.Footnote 12 Sigismund addresses his daughters in the second person of the present tense, suggesting that they might have been able to read the entry. Sentiment expressed in private seems genuine and suggests that the Jagiellonian family did not lack affection. The shared ownership of the book with his wife, Bona Sforza, also makes it a rare testament to the royal couple’s relationship.Footnote 13 Because births of the Jagiellonian children were recorded in two hands, the earlier ones in Latin, the later in Italian, it is highly likely that Bona Sforza at some point took over the family record-keeping. Taking over each other’s personal things suggests that the formal declarations of affection that were a part of any arranged royal marriage was not entirely a matter of ritual in this case—a similar practice developed between Henry VIII of England and Anne Boleyn when their relationship was at its strongest.Footnote 14 Susanna Niiranen’s chapter about Catherine Jagiellon, daughter of Bona and Sigismund, suggests that she shared a similar bond with her husband, John III of Sweden (Chap. 5). Sigismund was truly fond of his young wife, who effortlessly bore him five children, and, perhaps to avoid the awkwardness of forgetting her birthday, he dutifully recorded the date in his prayer book.

Maria Bogucka is right to suggest that Bona’s distress after her husband’s death in 1547 seems genuine.Footnote 15 More importantly, Bona’s letter to her daughter Isabella, the queen of Hungary, suggests the reasons why the relationship worked. “His Royal Highness bore his illness and death with the same courageous mind and patience with which he endured life’s challenges”, she writes, “we lost the most compassionate husband and father, Poland lost a king who was good, kind and affable to everyone”.Footnote 16 Sigismund’s famously amenable character was important in building the couple’s relationship, but also in Sigismund’s brand of kingship. Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–66), a prominent Polish writer, thinker and politician, commented that Sigismund was “always happy to talk to us, to listen to our counsel. He not only opened his kind ears to us, but also all of his palaces, rooms, the most secret places, he put all of his house and life on public display”.Footnote 17 Sigismund’s willingness to listen to counsel benefitted Bona, but was also a crucial characteristic for a king within the context of the Polish system of government. In 1505, Alexander I Jagiellon signed the Nihil Novi act, in which the Polish kings renounced much of their legislative powers in favour of the parliament, or sejm, giving equal powers to the Senate and Chamber of Envoys. The sejm was thus established as the central organ of the Polish monarchy.Footnote 18 The Polish king had to appear to be susceptible to counsel, but Sigismund seems to have been especially so, if Orzechowski is to be believed. However, Bona learnt very quickly after the marriage that Sigismund’s affability was not the equivalent of spinelessness and some of her more ambitious plans had to be abandoned or adapted in order to compromise with her husband.

Following the birth of the couple’s son Sigismund August in 1520, Bona made the first documented attempt at exercising her newfound power through direct counsel. The surviving evidence is Sigismund’s reply to a letter in which she must have advised him to secure the Duchy of Głogów for two-year-old Sigismund August. Following the feudal partitions of the Polish kingdom among the various branches of the hereditary Piast dynasty in the twelfth century, Głogów resisted the reunification 300 years later and remained under the governance of the Silesian Piasts. The last Piast, Duke Jan II, was defeated by King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, and Głogów became part of the Bohemian dominions. Bohemia passed into the dominion of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1471 and Hungary followed suit in 1490. Vladislaus II Jagiellon, Sigismund’s brother, became king of these dominions first, with his very young son, Louis, following in 1516. In his youth, Sigismund spent much time at the Hungarian court and became the duke of Głogów in 1499, renouncing his title after his election to the Polish throne in 1506. In 1522, Bohemia and Hungary were ruled by sixteen-year-old Louis, Sigismund’s nephew, who was already proving a weak and incapable ruler, so Bona might have been justified in thinking that Głogów was for the taking, especially considering Sigismund’s previous governance of the area. Sigismund begged to differ. His reply was very clearly a refusal, slightly reproachful, but nevertheless conciliatory:

We wish that our son could have all kingdoms and realms in his dominion, but we are the guardian of the Hungarian king, who with our help has been trying with great toil to reunify the provinces which had been torn away from his realms and despite much unrest in his own country. Consider Your Royal Highness whether it would be proper and what kind of reputation it would give us among these peoples, if we demanded Głogów from our young nephew, who was given into our care and who has so little, and gave to our son who has no need of this land, instead of extending a helpful hand to our nephew?Footnote 19

Jan Malarczyk claims that Sigismund was an Erasmian king, characterized by noble character, goodness and impeccable integrity.Footnote 20 Bona, on the other hand, cannot be characterized by ideals of early modern queenship. The model imposed on her during her coronation seems least fitting of all. Rather than guided by virtue, her request was prompted by the Machiavellian virtù. Her baby son had very little claim to the Polish throne until his election by the nobility, and the queen must have rolled her eyes when reading her husband’s arguments about not taking from another king to give to her son, whose future must have seemed very uncertain in the context of the Polish elective monarchy. Bona was unlikely to have forgotten how she was exiled from Milan with her mother, following the fall of her father, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, in 1494. Her background, circumstance and personality made Bona into a Machiavellian queen—clever and monomaniacal in exercising her influence.

Sigismund’s letter concerning Głogów suggests that he must have realized Bona’s character, but he never discarded her counsel lightly and, whenever possible, sought a compromise, doubtless realizing that keeping the peace in his household depended on it. He especially respected Bona’s counsel regarding appointments to vacant offices. While there is limited evidence of instances when Bona’s direct counsel to Sigismund was entirely successful, her influence on appointments to offices allows us another perspective on her practices of counsel. The appointments allowed her to create a network of queenly counsel, understood as a group of people whose political interests were aligned with those of the queen and who reinforced the counsel she gave to Sigismund. Andrzej Krzycki, the queen’s favourite as well as a famous poet and infamous debauchee, bragged in a letter dated 1520 to Crisostomo Colonna, an Italian poet, that “I have received now and before three prominent church offices thanks to the favour of our most illustrious queen”.Footnote 21 He was part of a very extensive network which included high-ranking office-holders like Piotr Gamrat, Sigismund’s secretary, who eventually became the archbishop of Gniezno in 1541. He owed his successful career to Bona, who supported his consecutive promotions to church offices. Most importantly, he was allowed to combine the offices of the bishop of Cracow and the archbishop of Gniezno, arguably the two most prestigious church offices in Poland. Having supporters of such high status could be a liability as Marsupino , the imperial ambassador, pointed out. He reported to the emperor that it might be possible to keep Bona’s power in check by threatening to influence the pope to order Gamrat to renounce one of his offices. Marsupino further commented that “that archbishop is the first confidant and advisor of queen Bona and the most hostile towards your highness and his daughter”.Footnote 22 Gamrat proved a loyal and useful ally, who supported Bona’s anti-Habsburg and pro-French politics, and helped discharge the tension of the accusations made by the nobility against Bona during the Chicken War .Footnote 23 In 1537, the nobility gathered in Lviv to demand the execution of their liberties and the curbing of Bona’s political influence by forbidding her to buy out crown lands pawned for royal debt, taking away her control over Sigismund August’s education, and, importantly, having permanent royal councillors, which could diminish Bona’s and her faction’s influence on the king. Gamrat continued to be one of Bona’s closest confidants, but his motivations were more complex than merely connected to his acquisition of offices and pro-French politics. Marsupino, who made every effort to keep his master up to date with gossip from the Polish court, reported that “the archbishop and his wife are in Masovia. Bona rules everything. One is the queen, the other is the popess; so that both spiritual and secular matters are in good hands”.Footnote 24 This mysterious “popess” was a woman called Sobocka, the long-term mistress of the archbishop and one of Bona’s favourites.

Bona’s hold on Gamrat was multi-dimensional and ensured his loyalty, but the same could not be said for other members of her political faction. Piotr Kmita, the voivode of Cracow and Grand Marshal of the Crown from 1529, proved especially useful in facilitating Bona’s Hungarian politics, but a disloyal ally in internal politics. This was especially evident during the Chicken War of 1537 when Kmita openly spoke against the queen.Footnote 25 Another member of Bona’s network, Jan Łaski, the primate of Poland, supported her anti-Habsburg and anti-Hohenzollern politics, even if, as an advocate of the “executionist movement”, he heartily disagreed with her attempts to consolidate the Jagiellonian dynasty as the rulers of Poland-Lithuania. The “executionist movement”, linked to the Chicken War of 1537, aimed to enforce the nobility’s political rights by, for example, campaigning for the return of the crown lands pawned for royal debts by the magnates and the right of the parliament rather than the king to appoint to state offices. In particular, Łaski firmly opposed Bona’s efforts to secure an election to the Polish throne for her son, Sigismund August, while his father, Sigismund the Old, was still alive. Even if they were elective kings of Poland, the Jagiellonians were still the hereditary dukes of Lithuania and to perpetuate the union between the two realms, the Poles would have to elect the grand duke of Lithuania. Sigismund’s letter to Bona from 1522 suggests that the royal couple collaborated on the project of securing the loyalty of the Lithuanian lords for the dynasty. Sigismund writes that:

Another enterprise that detains us here, examining carefully the human fragility and the inconstancy of human affairs and wishing to secure the future position of our most illustrious son, on the day of St Barbara, I lingered with a multitude of prelates, dukes and high lords of the senate, with whom we have transacted that if my human life was to end before our son reaches adulthood, they will recognise no one else’s dominion but his.Footnote 26

This caused a serious concern for Łaski and his faction that the royal couple would pervert the elective system and the Lithuanians would henceforth dictate who would be the king of Poland. Bona and Sigismund succeeded and, in 1530, Sigismund August was crowned as rex iunior of Poland while his father was still alive. This election vivente rege caused much controversy and the Chicken War of 1537 was partly a delayed backlash against the perceived corruption of the system.

People who belonged, even broadly, to Bona’s faction had their own political agendas and programmes they were keen to realize. The omnipotence suggested by the sources and by modern historians is not born out by Bona’s constant need to accommodate the interests of others. Furthermore, her influence on appointments to offices was not impregnable and the extent of her network was by necessity the result of a compromise with her husband. The same letter that brought news of Sigismund’s success with the Lithuanian lords also contained some less pleasing tidings. Following the death of Sigismund’s secretary, Jan Konarski, Bona recommended two of her Italian courtiers to the vacant church offices. She asked that her personal doctor, Giovanni Andrea Valentino, a known agent of the duke of Ferrara, be named the new cantor of Sandomierz. Sigismund refused, claiming that he had already promised the office to his other secretary, Mikołaj Zamoyski. He also commented on Valentino’s unsuitability for the office as “too young” and someone who might leave unexpectedly. The king was also wary of appointing too many Italians, as Bona’s Italian court was already not perceived favourably by the Poles. However, he wrote that “wanting to satisfy your Majesty’s wishes, we confirm that the prebendary and altaria of St George, for which you have asked, is for your disposition … because we always wholeheartedly want to satisfy your Majesty’s wishes”.Footnote 27 The office was given to Alessandro Pesenti of Verona, who had been the organist to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este before becoming a royal musician at the Polish court. Even if Sigismund was a gentle and amenable man, Bona often had to compromise on the appointment of her supporters and then compromise again with their respective political agendas.

Bona’s political feats of counsel and compromise were even more complicated by the fact that Bona and her network were working against another powerful faction gathered around Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, the grand chancellor of the Crown from 1515. His firmly pro-Habsburg politics led to the Congress of Vienna in 1515 and the marriage between Bona and Sigismund which consolidated the Jagiellonian-Habsburg alliance. But Bona understood that Poland might well join Bohemia and Hungary under the empire’s control, unless her three political goals were pursued: strengthening the Jagiellonian dynasty at home; supporting the Hungarian, anti-Habsburg, national party led by the Zapolyas; and creating an alliance with France and the Ottomans. Emperor Maximilian’s death in 1519 opened an opportunity for Bona and Łaski to start weaving the Franco-Ottoman alliance. It seems that at the time, Sigismund favoured this line of diplomacy. Already in 1520 Sigismund wrote to Francis I of France, who was one of the candidates in the imperial election of 1519, to assure him that the Polish court gave no support to Charles V, who was elected. To show his commitment to an alliance, Sigismund despatched Łaski as his ambassador to France.Footnote 28 The original plan hatched in 1521 was for Princess Isabella, Bona and Sigismund’s eldest child, to marry Francis I of France’s son, Henry. It was Bona’s particular wish that the newly-weds should become the rulers of Milan, to which she felt she had hereditary rights. The footprint of Bona’s counsel is discernible again in the negotiations conducted in 1523 with the French ambassador, Rincon de Medina del Campo. Bona and Krzycki took part in the negotiations which concluded with a confirmation of the original dynastic match.Footnote 29

These plans were thwarted with the catastrophe that was the battle of Pavia in 1525, though Poland was by and large spared the political consequences, because the plans were far from advanced. A year later, the wheel of politics turned again and opened a new political opportunity for Bona’s anti-Habsburg faction. Sigismund the Old’s nephew, King Louis of Hungary, was killed in the battle of Mohács against the Ottomans. According to the resolutions of the Vienna Congress in 1515, the Hungarian throne should have passed on to Ferdinand Habsburg, who married Louis’ sister Anne of Bohemia and Hungary. Pociecha argues that Bona originally counselled that Sigismund should try to recover the Hungarian throne for the Jagiellonian dynasty. This is one of the cases when Bona’s advice is only discernible by inference, because we lack evidence of it being expressed directly. It is possible that Bona advised Sigismund to stand as a candidate in the Hungarian elections, given her previous advice about the duchy of Głogów. However, Pociecha exaggerates when he argues that “the news of the Mohács must have first reached Bona, who was then constantly in Cracow with the children, and undoubtedly she sent it on to Sigismund with her comment”.Footnote 30 The possibility that a messenger would stop in Cracow when it was known that Sigismund, with the most prominent officers of his court, was in Masovia taking advantage of the death of the last of the Masovian Piasts, is debatable. But queenly advice, so often given in private, is sometimes only traceable through her networks of counsel. For example, we know that Bona’s agent, Bernhard von Prittwitz, appeared in Hungary soon after to subtly campaign on Sigismund’s behalf. All in vain, as the Hungarian nobility elected Jan Zapolya, Sigismund’s brother-in-law through his first wife, Barbara Zapolya.

The war between the newly elected Zapolya and Ferdinand Habsburg ensued. The French openly supported Zapolya and sent their ambassador, Rincon de Medina del Campo, to persuade the Polish king to do the same. The Habsburgs sent their own ambassador, Georg von Logschau (Loxau), who reported to Ferdinand: “believe me your majesty that a lot of people here envy and fear this good fortune sent from the heavens to your majesty and they are trying with in many ways and with much cunning to interfere with your plans”.Footnote 31 Bona is not named, but she and her faction are implicit, especially as the Habsburgs acknowledged the importance of Bona’s counsel. Hoping in vain to solicit her support, Logschau had an audience with the queen, who outwardly promised to give Sigismund favourable advice about Ferdinand’s cause. While the queen herself remained seemingly impartial, having the good of her Italian interests at heart, her people managed the unofficial support given to Zapolya. The tasks were divided. In 1527, Piotr Kmita was in charge of levying troops, while Giovanni Andrea Valentino was broadcasting news of Zapolya triumphs to Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Logschau also reported that the French ambassador Rincon, together with Jan Rozrażewski, who was father-in-law to Łaski’s cousin, Zuzanna Myszkowska, tried to convince Konstanty Ostrogski, castellan of Vilnius, voivode of Trakkai, and the most prominent member of Bona’s network in Lithuania, to send 3000 or more Lithuanian Tartars to aid Zapolya.Footnote 32 In this case it is difficult to differentiate between counsel and political action, but Bona must have been doing both. Sigismund proved again that his wife was not omnipotent, when in 1528 he announced that Poland would not be providing military support to either side of the conflict. It was another compromise rather than a straightforward defeat for the queen. Sigismund would not help the Habsburgs and gracefully evaded the question of a dynastic marriage offered by Ferdinand, which would render Bona’s plans for a French marriage void. The aid provided secretly by Bona and her faction was not immaterial in evening out the Habsburg and Zapolya forces and placing Sigismund in a position where he could tip the scales of the conflict, should he wish to. It is possible that the royal couple were working together again and Bona played her part with the convincing air of authority.

Even if shadowed by compromise, Bona’s political programme seemed to have taken off. The Hungarian conflict ended in 1537 with a peace treaty between Zapolya and Ferdinand, stating that after Zapolya’s death, Hungary would pass into the Habsburg dominion on the condition of them granting the duchy of Spisz as well as the Zapolya lands to Jan Zapolya’s male descendants. In the same year, an anonymous agent of the Habsburgs sent an encrypted message to Vienna stating that:

Queen Bona, the great enemy of the king of the Romans [Ferdinand], the least favourable to the whole German nation and even its open enemy, is trying in every way to prevent the marriage between the Polish king [rex iunior – Sigismund August] and the daughter of the Roman king … The Queen of Poland, seeing that the magnates and the nobility hate her and are trying to cause her damage, is putting all her hope in King Jan [Zapolya]. It is certain, beyond any doubt, that she promised him Princess Isabella and already agreed with him, wishing her daughter to be the queen of Hungary to spite the one who would want it least [Ferdinand]. And even though the king [Sigismund the Old] opposed this, she managed to bring it to pass by stubbornly insisting.Footnote 33

The Habsburg agent refers to four issues: the Chicken War of 1537, which was an attack on Bona’s authority; the French marriage, which was once again being discussed with the Valois; the marriage between Sigismund August and Elizabeth of Austria proposed by the Habsburgs; and the marriage between Princess Isabella and Jan Zapolya, which came to fruition in 1539. Arguably, arranging this marriage was the last success of Bona’s political faction. The birth of Isabella’s son, Jan Sigismund Zapolya, in 1540 was closely followed by his father’s death. The baby was elected king by the Hungarians, which resulted in simultaneous attack by Ferdinand and the Ottomans, who saw the opportunity to take control of Hungary. Isabella was subsequently exiled to Transylvania and then Poland.

Bona’s other political defeats followed swiftly. First, when the marriage between Sigismund August and Elizabeth of Austria was finally agreed in 1543. This was despite Bona’s vigorous resistance reported by Joachim von Maltzan, the imperial ambassador. She reportedly had met the Ottoman ambassador Kardus who brought back the prospect of Sigismund August’s marriage to Margaret of France. In the same year, Bona and Isabella were in contact with Roxolana, or Hurrem Sultan, the favourite consort to Suleiman the Magnificent. The triumvirate was so remarkable that it was dramatized at the court of Charles II of England by Roger Boyle, the Earl of Orrery , in a play called “The tragedy of Mustapha, the son of Solyman the Magnificent”.Footnote 34 Roxolana wrote to Isabella in Latin that “we are both born of one mother Eve, made from the same dough, and serve similar men”.Footnote 35 It was unusual for Suleiman, as an Ottoman ruler, to use his consort for diplomatic purposes, but it was a well-established practice among European monarchs. Roxolana hits the nature of the relationship on the head when she writes “servimus”. Bona’s fate is an example of how women were allowed to pursue their political programme as long as it served the needs of their husbands. Sigismund the Old was adamant that the Habsburg marriage would take place in the same year. He decided to change the political agenda of Polish foreign politics and the usefulness of Bona was outdated. As such, the king’s ears were closed to her counsel.

Once Elizabeth arrived at the Polish court in 1543, Bona launched a sustained campaign to humiliate the young queen and to ensure that Sigismund August spent as little time with Elizabeth as possible. Upon hearing of this, Ferdinand despatched a special ambassador, Marsupino, to provide accurate reports and try to remedy the situation by diplomatic means. The ambassador reported that the young king “is still so afraid of his mother that he does or says nothing without her consent”.Footnote 36 He also commented on the old king’s true fondness for his new daughter-in-law. Bona was playing the bad cop, telling Marsupino in their first meeting that she cared as much for her daughter Isabella as Ferdinand did for his. The hint was unsubtle—she would treat Elizabeth the way Ferdinand treated Isabella. Ferdinand was also unwise to delay the payment of Elizabeth’s dowry. The trail of documents dated after the couple’s wedding in 1543 reveals that the Polish king repeatedly accepted the delay in payment of the 100,000 Hungarian florins.Footnote 37 This added force to Bona’s original opposition to the marriage and Marsupino reports that she often taunted her son, telling him to pay for things from his wife’s dowry. Some of the slights were remarkably petty, for example, when Bona refused to allow Elizabeth parmesan cheese, knowing that the young queen was particularly fond of it.Footnote 38 Marsupino’s letters give us a clue as to what Bona’s counsel given in person might have looked like. He was openly hostile to the queen and he was not witness to the debate, so his report must be taken with a pinch of salt. He describes how when the king was reading a letter from Marsupino,

the queen interrupted him screaming that Marsupino must not be allowed back to the court and then she started crying. The king replied: “Why would he not come?” The bishop [of Płock, Samuel Maciejowski, pro-Habsburg] said that he knew for certain from Marsupino that he was forbidden from following the court and was forced to stay in Cracow. And after a long argument the queen started crying again, shouting that she does not want Marsupino to come. The bishop had many arguments against her, and Bona suddenly hissed like a snake: “My God, I brought a trousseau and a dowry and she brought nothing, yet still you are all my enemies.” To which the king replied “Silence, idiot!”Footnote 39

Marsupino probably embellished the account he must have heard from Samuel Maciejowski, but there was clearly a disagreement between the royal couple and the account suggests how quickly Bona’s counsel could be dismissed with a brief word from her husband. Marsupino might have portrayed Bona as overtly emotional to discredit her, but other accounts, not least her own letter about the duchy of Głogów cited at the beginning of this chapter, suggest that Bona was prone to giving counsel based on emotional motivations. She was refused both times, suggesting that Sigismund was not prone to accepting emotion-based counsel and Bona might have been better served by keeping a cool head.

Bona had every reason to be nervous. In 1544 her counsel was dismissed again, this time in a matter that was part of her internal political programme and in which she invested much of her own funds. Her attempt to strengthen the position of the Jagiellonians involved buying out the crown lands pawned for royal debts to some of the most prominent of the Polish nobility. Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, who conducted extensive research about the distribution of the crown lands within the Crown (meaning Poland rather than Lithuania), calculated that of the pawned lands worth in total 675,000 Polish guldens, Bona bought out lands worth approximately 91,000 Polish guldens, which brought her an annual income of 20,000 Polish guldens.Footnote 40 The lands retained their “crown” status, but Bona had the right to appoint officers and designate her successors. Sigismund allowed Bona to start purchasing these lands in 1528 because he was convinced by Bona’s good management of her vast lands in Lithuania, where she conducted wide-ranging reforms.Footnote 41 This is a stark contrast to his refusal of Bona’s emotional counsel—Sigismund would be more easily persuaded by political and financial profit than by a wife’s and mother’s pleading. Some of these lands, like the duchy of Pińsk and Kobryń, were a gift from Sigismund to use for life, while others were crown lands like Bielsk, Suraż, Brańsk, Narew, Kleszczele and Kowno purchased from some of the most prominent Lithuanian nobles, such as Olbracht Gasztołd, the grand chancellor of Lithuania, and Jerzy Herkules Radziwiłł, the grand hetman of Lithuania. Bona’s possessions in Lithuania were much larger than in Poland, as suggested by the annual income they brought in—36,000 Polish guldens.

After Sigismund August’s marriage to Elizabeth of Austria, under the influence of Samuel Maciejowski, Sigismund the Old decided that his son should have an active function in the realm’s government. Sigismund briefly considered giving the young couple the region of Masovia (where Warsaw is located), but finally decided to hand over control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Sigismund August. This would kill two birds with one stone by providing a raison d’être for the rex iunior and curbing Bona’s influence in Lithuania, which was the wish of the Lithuanian nobility. This became abundantly clear at the 1544 parliament in Vilnius where the nobility complained about Bona’s unfair judiciary and the “thieves, bandits, liars, and slanderers” she appointed as officers. Once Bona found out about the secret plans of her husband and son, she started to “cry, implore, beg and entreat the old king that he should not give away all of his authority in favour of his son, for his own sake considering his old age and for the sake of his wife and companion”, before “taking to bed”.Footnote 42 Again represented as emotional, Bona’s counsel was disregarded by her husband, who proceeded with his plan. She had to give up many of her lands and the judicial authority in those she was allowed to keep. Bona had outlived her usefulness in Lithuania, but could be put to work elsewhere, which would also serve as compensation for her Lithuanian loss. In 1545, Sigismund the Old cleverly allowed her to exchange the standard Polish queen’s dower for the Masovia region, a much more substantial land-holding, where she conducted profitable reforms.

Bona’s political influence was undermined even further by her son’s second marriage. In 1548, Sigismund August announced that he had secretly married a Lithuanian noblewoman, Barbara Radziwiłł, the previous year. Sigismund the Old died soon after and some laid the blame for his demise on the unexpected news. Bona, to demonstrate her disapproval of the marriage, retreated to Masovia with her daughters in a voluntary exile from court. She never recovered her political influence and as her relationship with her son deteriorated, the prospect of leaving Poland for Italy where she was still duchess of Bari and Rossano became increasingly appealing. One of her last encounters with her son suggests the extent to which the relationship between the queen and her son had failed. In 1552, Sigismund August reported to his friend Mikołaj “the Black” Radziwiłł that:

Today we set out from Kozienice for a hunt and she deliberately planned to meet us on the road. And so she did. She was in a German-style carriage, made for her in Warsaw and designed to imitate Kieżgajło’s carriage, because Kieżgajło’s carriage was transported from Germany via Warsaw. So when we met on the road in the forest today, we conversed of nothing else except for her praising the carriage. We remained there for a little moment, and having talked of nothing else but the carriage, we parted ways.Footnote 43

Bona’s counsel influenced the internal and foreign political agenda of Poland-Lithuania, so long as it was aligned with the broad commitments of her husband. Once her agenda and his plans diverged, she lost much of her influence, though Sigismund made every effort to compensate her in other ways. She returned to Italy in 1556 to die a year later poisoned by her closest confidants, who may have been working for the Habsburgs. For over twenty years, Bona conducted a political programme, but it was primarily because her husband was ready to compromise with her, which was in turn motivated by the fact that supporting some of Bona’s ideas suited him politically. The overwhelming impression of Bona’s omnipotence given by sixteenth-century reports has little grounding in the sources. On the rare occasions that she was recorded providing counsel to the king, she had to compromise, or even experienced humiliating refusal. She is an example of how a queen’s counsel was the centre of her political authority, but also how vulnerable that position of authority was and how easily a queen could have been discredited as overtly emotional. Much of Bona’s character may be glimpsed from examples of her giving counsel. Never constrained by the feminine notions of virtue, rather she could be characterized by the Machiavellian concept of virtù. Bona’s case suggests that a queen could be allowed to diverge from her traditional gendered role of counselling according to virtue, but this was predicated on her ability to maintain positive family relationships and ultimately on how useful her counsel was deemed by the men in her life.