Dokument Unii Lubelskiej w Archiwum Głównym Akt Dawnych

It took King Sigismund Augustus the entire decade of the 1560s to bring the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania together. The plan was finalized on 1st of July 1569 at the General Sejm in Lublin. Before that, intense negotiations were held for almost three weeks, from 10th to 27th of June 1569. The conclusion of the agreement was completed by the exchange of acts of the union by both parties and the confirmation issued by the king, according to the “script” from Vilnius dated 24th March 1569. Evidence of those events is preserved in the only surviving parchment document of the Union of Lublin. It is the copy that the Lithuanian side has presented to the Polish side, authenticating it with 78 wax seals. The document is preserved in the Central Archive of Historical Records in Warsaw, in the Collection of Parchment Records, no. 5627. Before World War II, the document was viewed by professors Władysław Semkowicz and Stanisław Kutrzeba, publishers of the source edition Akta unii Polski z Litwą 1385–1791 [Records of the Poland-Lithuania Union 1385–1791] (Kraków 1932). At that time they saw two other acts of the Union of Lublin, which they also published in their book. Those were: the Union document presented by the Polish side to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (with 140 seals) and the so-called Original No. 2 (with 63 seals) of the Lithuanian document (i.e. the extant one). The article attempts to reconstruct the work of the Polish Crown Chancellery, operating under the supervision of Vice-Chancellor Franciszek Krasiński, which between 29 th June and 1 st July 1569 prepared these documents and organized their sealing by several hundred signatories. In the text, special attention is given – as Władysław Semkowicz and Stanisław Kutrzeba have already done – to the differences between the two documents of the Lithuanian side (the extant one and the lost one).