CIRCUMSTANCE OF CREATION AND THE CREATOR OF THE LUBIN CODEX (SCHLACKENWERTHER KODEX) WITH PICTORIAL LEGEND OF ST. JADWIGA (HEDWIG) (Okolicznosci powstania i tworca Kodeksu lubinskiego z Legenda obrazowa o sw. Jadwidze)

In the second half of the 14th c. the dominating position in the partitioned and subdued by the Luxembourgs Silesia was achieved by Louis I (d. 1398), Duke of Brzeg. His independent rule, however, started only after the small town of Lubin was redeemed from the hands of obligees. In the politically uncertain situation the year 1353 was certainly a turning point for the duke. Thanks to the support from Charles IV, Louis I gave his daughter Margaret in married to the Bavarian duke Albrecht I, lord of Straubing, who was also, together with his brothers, an heir of the counties of Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland, as well as the lands of the Frisians. On that occasion Louis I ordered a new courtly redaction of the Life of St. Hedwig, which was a public manifestation of his place in the Piast family, pretending to the role of one of the oldest dynasties in Christian Europe. Genealogical self-identification of duke Louis with his ancestors, St. Hedwig (d. 1243, canonized 1267) related to the Wittelsbachs, her husband Henry I the Bear­ded (d. 1238) and her son Henry II the Pious (d. 1241) was a kind of legitimization of the poor duke and was intended to be a pass to the highest aristocratic spheres of late medieval Europe.