Casimir the Great in the painting by Leopold Löffler.
Casimir III the Great (1310-1370) - king of Poland from the Piast dynasty, son of Władysław Łokietek and Jadwiga Kaliska. He was probably the last child of this couple. He was seriously ill in his youth. He also did not receive a broader education, and his parents started introducing him into politics late. There are even sources suggesting that he was one of the very few illiterate rulers on the Polish throne. In 1331, perhaps on the orders of his father, he escaped from the field of the battle of Płowce with the Teutonic Knights.
After the death of Władysław the Short in 1333, he was crowned the new Polish king. He sorted out relations with the Czechs, who claimed the right to the Polish throne, and with the Teutonic Knights, with whom his father conducted long and mostly unsuccessful battles. He successfully brought the country out of isolation, stripping Poland off the label of a seasonal state. With the help of Hungarians, and especially of his sister, Queen Elżbieta Łokietkówna, he made a gradual expansion towards Red Ruthenia, which allowed to radically strengthen and enrich the state. He also tried to normalize contacts with pagan Lithuania and for this purpose he married Princess Aldona Anna Giedyminówna. The concluded alliance, however, turned out to be fragile and detrimental to its image.
Famous because of the codification of the law, founding a university in Krakow and a great construction action, mentioned in the well-known saying:"he found Poland wooden and left it bricked". He was also referred to as the "king of the peasants." However, the figure of Casimir the Great is also burdened by vague or even shameful episodes:the alleged rape of the Hungarian aristocrat, Klara Zach, the imprisonment and expulsion of Adelaide Heska's second wife, an illegal wedding with a Czech townswoman and an agent of the hostile power, Krystyna Rokiczana, and, finally, multiple bigamy and stormy trials before papal courts.
The chronicler Jan Długosz accused Kazimierz of dissipated and debauched life, maintaining private brothels, and even murdering a priest who dared to criticize the royal customs. The ruler died of a hunting wound. He was referred to as "great" at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.