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Bona Sforza

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Bona Sforza

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Also known as Queen Bona

Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Origin
France

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Key facts

Tenure
18 April 1518 – 1 April 1548
Coronation
18 April 1518 , Kraków , Poland
Predecessor
Isabella
Successor
None (annexed by Naples )
Born
2 February 1494, Vigevano , Duchy of Milan
Died
19 November 1557 (1557-11-19) (aged 63), Bari , Kingdom of Naples
Burial
Basilica di San Nicola
Spouse
Sigismund I of Poland ​ ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1517 ; died 1548 ) ​
Issue
Isabella, Queen of Hungary Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg Anna, Queen of Poland Catherine, Queen of Sweden Albertus, Prince of Poland
House
Sforza
Father
Gian Galeazzo Sforza
Mother
Isabella of Aragon

via Wikipedia infobox

~16 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Bona Sforza (2 February 1494 – 19 November 1557) was Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania as the second wife of Sigismund the Old, and Duchess of Bari and Rossano in her own right. She was a surviving member of the powerful House of Sforza, which had ruled the Duchy of Milan since 1450.

Smart, energetic and ambitious, Bona became heavily involved in the political and cultural life of the Polish–Lithuanian union. To increase state revenue during the Chicken War, she implemented various economic and agricultural reforms, including the far-reaching Wallach Reform in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In foreign policy, she allied with the Ottoman Empire and sometimes opposed the Habsburgs. Her descendants became beneficiaries of the Neapolitan sums, a loan to Philip II of Spain that was never completely paid.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Bona Sforza” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.