Lietuvos istorijos metraštis

Katarzyna Hochstadt of Telnicz (Moravia) is known as the mistress of Sigismund the Old, mother of his illegitimate children: bishop of Vilnius John of the Lithuanian Dukes, Regina Szafraniec, and Katarzyna Montfort, and wife of Andrzej Kościelecki, castellan of Wojnicz and sub-treasurer of the Crown of Poland. Little is known about her true personality, with the exception of the universally emphasized fact of her being a genuine beauty and the mother and grandmother of beauties. As the legend has it, Katarzyna was an enchantress, a witch, a woman who intruded where she was not supposed to. The few preserved sources suggest of a more subtle picture: a woman of an unknown descent in the higher society that was strange to her was in fact dependent on the grace of men – her lover, her spouse or her son. Katarzyna, however, managed to exercise her influence as she accumulated certain wealth and formed a circle of her clients.

This article is the first attempt of the biographic research of Grand Duchess Uliana Algirdienė of Lithuania (d. 17/03/1392), based on the critical analysis of primary sources. It is also aimed at pointing out the reflection of the role of women in the pagan Lithuanian society. The research was carried out by means of the analytical and comparative method of historical source analysis with a view to separate as distinctly as possible the information derived from contemporary sources from the images imposed by later historiographic tradition. The article questions the stereotypes related to Uliana’s great political power in Lithuania’s political life that are well-established in modern historiography and present-day cultural memory. With this an attempt is made to draw attention to the problematic nature of information derived from historical sources as well as to more distinctly define the frames imposed by the political culture of pagan Lithuania which clearly marked the boundaries for the political activities of women representing the ruling dynasty. This article for the most part dwells on the issues related to the coverage of Algirdas and Uliana’s marriage and the period of their married life up to Algirdas’ death in 1377.