Both the Renaissance and Reformation have reached Poland during the reign of King Sigismund, who has presided over the first golden age of Polish literature.

A patron of Renaissance art, and a major patron of Flemish weavers, Sigismund has built a courtyard and chapel in the Italian style at Wawel Castle in Kraków, bringing in the best native and foreign artists including Italian architects, sculptors, and German decorators, to refurbish the castle into a splendid Renaissance palace.

It had soon become a paragon of stately residence in Central and Eastern Europe and serves widely as a model throughout the region.

The king, although Catholic, has nevertheless granted religious freedom to Protestants and accorded royal protection to Jews, thereby making Poland the most tolerant state in Europe.

Known posthumously as Sigismund the Old, or the Great, he dies at eighty-one on April 1, 1548, succeeded by his twenty-eight-year-old son as Sigismund II, who is to continue his father's policy of religious toleration in Poland.