The Act of the Union of Lublin document

The act of the Union of Lublin of 1569 is a unique testimony to establishing, in early modern age, by means of negotiations and free agreement, of the Commonwealth of two equal states: the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Union’s importance consisted not only in the lasting character, political power and civilizational attractiveness of thus created Commonwealth. It was no less due to the very uniqueness, as for its time, of the adopted solution and of the active, decisive political role played by the parliament in the Union’s negotiation and adoption process. Stemming from traditions of multicultural, multi-ethnic Jagiellonian monarchy and previous Polish-Lithuanian unions, as well as intellectual backgrounds of the republican Rome’s tradition and the Renaissance, the Union of Lublin significantly strengthened the civic, republican and democratic attitudes in political practice and thought of its time. The act of the Union agreed between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the Sejm (state parliament) meeting in Lublin, on 1 July 1569, constituted one of the legal foundations of the Commonwealth, called also Res Publica (Republic); another one was the Henrician Articles, which included the Warsaw Confederation of 1573.