Bona Sforza
Bona Sforza married a man she had never met. On the 6th of December 1517, in Naples, a proxy stood in her groom's place while she took her vows. The match sealed her marriage to Sigismund the Old, King of Poland. She would not see his actual face until they met near Kraków on the 15th of April the following year.
How did a young noblewoman from Milan's Sforza family end up bound by treaty to a throne on the far side of Europe? And once she got there, what did she do with the power that marriage handed her? She arrived in a court that expected royal wives to stay quiet and out of state affairs.
This documentary traces Bona Sforza's path from a childhood spent fleeing her own family's collapse. It follows her into a reign that reshaped land, money, and alliances across Poland and Lithuania. Long after her death, her heirs would still be chasing an unpaid debt from Spain that historians call the Neapolitan sums.
Bona was born on the 2nd of February 1494 in Vigevano, in the Duchy of Milan. She was the third of four children born to Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella of Naples. Isabella was a daughter of King Alfonso II of Naples, from the House of Trastámara. Gian Galeazzo was the legal heir to the Duchy of Milan. But his great-uncle Ludovico Sforza, known as "Il Moro," had already taken power for himself. Ludovico sent the small family to live at the Castello Visconteo in Pavia, where Gian Galeazzo died the same year Bona was born. Rumors spread that Ludovico had poisoned him.
The family then moved to the Sforza Castle in Milan, watched closely by Ludovico. He feared that Milan's residents would rebel and install Bona's popular brother, Francesco, in his place. To reduce that risk, Ludovico separated Francesco from the rest of the family and granted Bari and Rossano to Bona's mother. The Italian War of 1499-1504 then interrupted these plans. King Louis XII of France deposed Ludovico and took Francesco to Paris. With nothing left in Milan, the rest of the family left for Naples in February 1500. But the war reached Naples too, and Bona's maternal great-uncle, King Frederick of Naples, was deposed. Along with other relatives, Bona was hidden for a time at the Aragonese Castle on the island of Ischia.
By January 1512, Bona was the only one of her siblings still alive. She and her mother settled more permanently at the Castello Normanno-Svevo in Bari, where Bona received an excellent education. Her teachers, the Italian humanists Crisostomo Colonna and Antonio de Ferraris, taught her mathematics, natural science, geography, history, and law. They also taught her Latin, classical literature, theology, and how to play several musical instruments.
During her youth in Bari, Bona took a young lover named Ettore Pignatelli. He was the eldest son of Alessandro Pignatelli, who had himself been the lover of Bona's mother, Isabella d'Aragona, Duchess of Milan. Ettore later died under mysterious circumstances. It is believed Bona had him poisoned after he refused to follow her to Poland.
In 1512, the House of Sforza was restored to power in the Duchy of Milan. Bona's mother, Isabella, hoped to marry her to the new duke, Maximilian Sforza, to help legitimize his rule. Spain's King Ferdinand II of Aragon proposed Giuliano de' Medici, brother of Pope Leo X. Isabella countered with Ferdinand's own ten-year-old grandson, Ferdinand of Austria. Pope Leo X, meanwhile, proposed Philippe, Duke of Nemours, who stood to inherit the Duchy of Savoy if his brother Charles III abdicated. The Maximilian Sforza match collapsed after he was deposed following the French victory at the Battle of Marignano in 1515. Pope Leo X then proposed his nephew, Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, hoping to install him as Duke of Milan using Bona's inheritance claims. But France's hold on Milan proved too strong, and that plan failed as well.
Poland's King Sigismund I the Old was widowed in October 1515. Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, did not want him marrying another Habsburg opponent, as his late wife Barbara Zápolya had been. The Emperor quickly proposed three candidates instead: his granddaughter Eleanor of Austria, the widowed Queen Joanna of Castile, and Bona Sforza. Joanna, 36 years old, was ruled out for her age, and Eleanor's brother chose King Manuel I of Portugal for her instead. Polish nobles had their own suggestion, Anna Radziwiłł, the widow of Konrad III of Masovia. Isabella sent Bona's old teacher, Crisostomo Colonna, along with the diplomat Sigismund von Herberstein, to Vilnius to press Sigismund toward Bona. They succeeded, and a marriage treaty was signed in Vienna in September 1517.
Bona's dowry was enormous: 100,000 ducats in cash, personal items worth another 50,000 ducats, and the Duchy of Bari itself. In exchange, Sigismund granted her the towns of Nowy Korczyn, Wiślica, Żarnów, Radomsko, Jedlnia, Kozienice, Chęciny, and Inowrocław. Jan Konarski, Archbishop of Kraków, traveled to Bari to escort her, and for the wedding she wore a dress of light blue Venetian satin reportedly worth 7,000 ducats.
Bona was reported to have fair blond hair, dark eyebrows, and rosy cheeks. At 24, the Polish envoys overseeing the match found her beautiful. Bishop Konarski compared her to a nymph when he welcomed her into Kraków. Others disagreed sharply: a rival proposal from Naples, matching her to the fourteen-year-old Federico Gonzaga, was never even considered. Federico's mother, Isabella d'Este, and the archdeacon Alessandro di Gabbioneta both objected. They called it a sin to sacrifice the young man's beauty on a woman they judged "mature and ugly." Bona tried to soften her face with jewelry and fine fabrics, with little success. As one account of the time put it, "little or nothing has graced her." Bona would soon give the court far more to talk about than her looks.
The wedding and coronation took place on the 18th of April 1518, with celebrations that continued for a week. Almost immediately, the energetic new queen began building a circle of supporters within the Polish court. On the 23rd of January 1519, Pope Leo X granted her a striking privilege. He was a friend from her years in Italy. The privilege let her award eight church benefices across five Polish cathedrals: Kraków, Gniezno, Poznań, Włocławek, and Frombork. By May 1519, the privilege had grown to fifteen benefices, a powerful tool for winning over officials. Three of her most trusted supporters, Piotr Kmita Sobieński, Andrzej Krzycki, and Piotr Gamrat, became known as the Triumvirate. This open involvement in state affairs broke with the old ideal that a royal wife should influence government only through quiet, indirect means. Even so, despite frequent disagreements over both domestic and foreign policy, the marriage remained a supportive and effective partnership.
Wanting the Jagiellonian line to continue, Bona and Sigismund moved to secure the throne for their only surviving son, Sigismund Augustus, still a minor. Lithuanian nobles gave him the ducal throne in October 1529, and Polish nobles declared him king that December. He was crowned Sigismund II Augustus in February 1530. Polish lords pushed back hard. They forced a new rule: any future coronation needed every noble's consent, and only after Sigismund Augustus's own death.
During the Chicken War, Bona pushed through economic and agricultural reforms to raise state revenue. These included the sweeping Wallach Reform in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. She believed royal authority depended on money the crown controlled directly, rather than funds granted slowly through Parliament. The royal family also gained large estates in Lithuania, effectively taking over the Grand Duchy's finances between 1536 and 1546. Bona helped standardize peasant taxes and land measurement across the estates, generating huge profits. In 1539, Bona reluctantly presided over the burning of 80-year-old Katarzyna Weiglowa for heresy. That harsh episode, oddly, ushered in an era of greater religious tolerance. Her own confessor, Francesco Lismanini, helped establish a Calvinist academy in Pińczów.
Her hand in Poland's finances and religion was now impossible to ignore, even before she turned to the world beyond its borders.
During her first decade of marriage, Bona gave birth to six children. While pregnant with her sixth child, reportedly in her fifth month, Bona joined a bear hunt in the Niepołomice Forest. She was injured trying to escape on horseback, and the fall sent her into premature labor.
Historian Małgorzata Duczmal has suggested the pregnancy may have been further along than reported, since the child was born alive and did not die immediately. The prince was baptized under a name presumably Albertus, though some records call him Adalbertus, since the two names were often interchangeable in the 16th century. He was born, and died, on the 20th of September 1527. Doctors could not save him; he died of either premature birth or injuries from the accident.
The accident that triggered her early labor left Bona unable to have more children. It also left Albertus's father and older brother as the last male members of the Jagiellonian dynasty.
Bona cultivated good relations with the Ottoman Empire, including direct contact with Hürrem Sultan, chief consort of Suleiman the Magnificent. Her gender and her Italian birth made her an easy target for rumors that she was a scheming conspirator. This was despite her good standing with the Vatican. It is believed the friendship between the two queens helped spare Poland from an Ottoman attack during the Italian Wars.
By 1524, Sigismund grew wary of the deepening ties between the Habsburgs and Russia. He signed a Franco-Polish alliance with King Francis I of France to avoid fighting a war on two fronts. Bona was central to that alliance, which aimed in part to help recover Milan for her family. The plan collapsed after Charles V defeated Francis's troops at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, and the alliance was disbanded.
Despite her blood ties to the Habsburgs, Bona pushed to attach Silesia to the Polish crown. In exchange, she offered up her hereditary claims to Bari and Rossano, though Sigismund never fully backed the idea. Hungary's King Louis II was killed at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. Bona then backed her son-in-law, John Zápolya, as his successor, against the Habsburg claimant Ferdinand. She wanted her eldest daughter secure on the Hungarian throne. In 1537, Bona established a settlement at Bar, in what is now Ukraine.
Sigismund shared a deep interest in the revival of classical antiquity, and Bona became a driving force behind the Polish Renaissance. She brought renowned Italian artists, architects, and sculptors from her native country to work in Poland. Her best-known projects were the expansion of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius. She also built Ujazdów Castle, complete with a large park and a menagerie. The architect Bartolomeo Berrecci da Pontassieve drew up these plans; he went on to design several other projects across Poland.
On the 1st of April 1548, Sigismund the Old died and was succeeded by their son, Sigismund Augustus. He was buried in Wawel Cathedral beside his and Bona's late son, Prince Albertus. Mother and son then clashed over his marriage to Barbara Radziwiłł, a former mistress the nobility fiercely opposed. Bona eventually gave in, accepting Barbara as her daughter-in-law and as Queen of Poland. Widowed in 1548, Bona also began a romantic affair with Giovanni Lorenzo Pappacoda. Even so, the relationship with her son stayed difficult. After her husband's death, Bona moved with her unmarried daughters to Masovia and stayed there for eight years before returning to Bari.
In February 1556, Bona left Poland for Italy, carrying treasures she had gathered over 38 years. By May, she had reached Bari and taken possession of her mother's old duchy. Envoys of King Philip II of Spain soon came, trying to convince her to give up Bari and Rossano to Habsburg Spain. Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba and viceroy of Naples, feared a French attack and needed money for troops. Perhaps hoping to become viceroy of Naples herself, Bona agreed to lend him a huge sum, 430,000 ducats, at 10 percent annual interest. The loan was secured against customs duties collected in Foggia, with agreements signed on the 23rd of September and the 5th of December 1556.
The Habsburgs, determined to obtain Bari, had no intention of repaying the debt. On the 8th of November, Bona fell ill with a stomach ache. On the 17th, as she began losing consciousness, her trusted courtier Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda acted. He brought in the notary Marco Vincenzo de Baldis to record her will. That will left Bari, Rossano, Ostuni, and Grottaglie to Philip II of Spain, along with large sums to Pappacoda's own family. Her daughters were each promised a one-time payment of 50,000 ducats, except Isabella Jagiellon, who was to receive 10,000 ducats every year. Her son, King Sigismund II Augustus, was named the main beneficiary, though in practice he stood to inherit only cash, jewelry, and other personal property. The next day, feeling better, Bona dictated a new will to Scipio Catapani, this one leaving Bari and her other property to Sigismund Augustus after all.
Bona died in the early morning of the 19th of November 1557, at the age of 63. She is suspected to have been poisoned by members of her own trusted household. She was buried in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, where her daughter Anna had a Renaissance-style tomb built for her. That same daughter would later succeed her brother, Sigismund Augustus, becoming Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania in her own right.
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Common questions
What was Bona Sforza queen of?
Bona Sforza was Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania from 1518 to 1548, as the second wife of Sigismund the Old. She was also Duchess of Bari and Rossano in her own right.
When was Bona Sforza born and when did she die?
Bona Sforza was born on the 2nd of February 1494 in Vigevano, in the Duchy of Milan. She died on the 19th of November 1557 in Bari, at the age of 63.
How did Bona Sforza die?
Bona Sforza fell ill with a stomach ache on the 8th of November 1557 and died in the early morning of the 19th of November. She is suspected to have been poisoned by trusted members of her own household.
Who did Bona Sforza marry?
Bona Sforza married Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland, in a proxy ceremony held in Naples on the 6th of December 1517. The couple met in person for the first time near Kraków on the 15th of April 1518.
What reforms did Bona Sforza introduce in Lithuania?
Bona Sforza introduced the Wallach Reform, a sweeping set of agricultural and taxation changes in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including standardized peasant duties and land measurement. She pursued these and other economic reforms during the Chicken War to raise state revenue.
What happened to the loan Bona Sforza made to Spain?
In 1556, Bona Sforza lent Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba and viceroy of Naples, 430,000 ducats at 10 percent annual interest, secured against customs duties in Foggia. The Habsburgs never fully repaid the debt, and her descendants became beneficiaries of the unpaid claim known as the Neapolitan sums.
Who were Bona Sforza's children?
Bona Sforza had six children with Sigismund the Old: Isabella, who married John Zápolya, King of Hungary; Sigismund II Augustus, who succeeded his father as king; Sophia, who married Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg; Anna, who eventually became Queen of Poland in her own right; Catherine, who married John III of Sweden; and Albertus, who was born prematurely and died the same day in 1527.
All sources
3 references cited across the entry
- 1Oczekiwanie na dziecko w rodzinie królewskiej w Polsce w XV-XVI wiekuAgnieszka Januszek-Sieradzka — February 2024
- 2JournalThe funerary monument of Bona Sforza in the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari: history and background of a royal mausoleum of Polish patronageAlessandro Grandolfo — 2023