Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/50

 THE GOTHIC AGE Lithuania (confirmed by an act signed in 1401) was a great victory won by both these powers, in 1410, over the Teutonic Knights of the Cross. In the famous battle of Tannenberg (or, as the Poles call it, of Grunwald) the Knights were utterly defeated, their banners captured and brought to Wawel Cathedral, which they adorned as trophies; the objects of art, that had been taken as spoils of war, were distributed among the treasuries of several churches.

The next sovereign of the Jagellonian line, Ladislaus, King of Poland and Hungary, who was slain in the battle of Varna against the Turks (1444), had no importance for the development

of the town. But in the reign of his successor, Casimir IV, called Jagiellonczyk (the Jagellonian), 1447-1492, there are several important events to record. In 1454 the king married Elizabeth of Habsburg; this lady, in whose education no less a man than Æneas Silvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.) had a hand, was endowed with refined taste and culture, and showed it chiefly by promoting intimate relations between Cracow and Nuremberg, as well as other centres of German art; this may be seen by her presents and bequests to churches (illustration 8).

In 1465 the first book was printed at Cracow by the German printer, Günther Zayner; this was followed by the first Slavonic incunables (1491) from the Cracow press of Sweipolt Fiol, who