King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium are paying a state visit to Lithuania this week. The latter has family links to Lithuanian nobility, says historian Jolanta Karpavičienė.
Among Queen Mathilde’s ancestors were the Sapiehas (Sapiegos), the Polish-Lithuanian magnate family, says Karpavičienė.
According to the historian, Queen Mathilde’s Lithuanian links come from her maternal grandparents. The father of Countess Anna Maria, the queen’s mother, was a Komorowski, a distant relative of the Polish noble Komorowski family.
“One branch [of the Komorowski family] acquired estates in the territory of present-day Lithuania in the 17th century, around Biržai and Rokiškis. One of their ancestors became the owner of the Kavoliškis estate near Rokiškis. This branch of the Komorowski family was called Kamarauskis or Kamarauskas in Lithuanian until 1940,” says Karpaviečienė.
Queen Mathilde’s maternal grandmother was Princess Sofia Maria Sapieha, a descendant of the Sapiehas, one of the most prominent noble families of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
According to Karpavičienė, the house of Sapieha had two branches – the Kodenian, after the city in present-day Poland, and the Chereya-Ruzhany, after the place in present-day Belarus. Although Queen Mathilde descended from the Kodenian branch of the Sapiehas, she is related to both branches through various kinship ties, according to the historian.
The Spiehas reached the pinnacle of their power in the 16th century. Lew Sapieha (Leonas Sapiega) became the Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Voivode of Vilnius, and later also the Grand Hetman.
He was called by his contemporaries the “guardian of the fatherland”, strengthening Lithuania militarily, politically, and legally. On his initiative, the Third Statute of Lithuania was published in 1588, which served as the constitution of the time.
Lew Sapieha’s son, Kazimierz Leon Sapieha (Kazimieras Leonas Sapiega), was also an important statesman, a Vice-Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Faculty of Law of Vilnius University was established in 1641 on his initiative. He also donated a huge collection of law books to the university’s library, only about one-tenth of which, around 300 publications, survive today.
According to Karpavičienė, through the Sapiehas Queen Mathilde is also related to other noble families of the Grand Duchy: the Czartoryski (Čartoriskiai) the Pac (Pacai), the Chodkiewicz (Chodkevičiai).
She is also a distant descendant of the Gediminas dynasty which founded Vilnius and ruled Lithuania and Poland from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.
“This is a very important circumstance that we should be proud of – that Lithuania has a very long tradition of statehood. Since the 13th century, when Lithuania became a state, it has been a subject of history. It began to develop international relations, including through marriage policy,” says Karpavičienė.
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