Esterka (born c. 1315)
Mistress of: Casimir the Great.
Tenure: c. 1333 - 1370.
Royal Bastards: Three.
Fall From Power: The king died.
The legendary Esterka was the Jewish mistress of King Casimir the Great, who ruled Poland for almost forty years and, with the help of his mistress, turned Poland into a tolerant, interfaith country that flourished culturally. Her story has been embellished so many times throughout the years that historians tend to view it as more myth than fact; there is even uncertainly that she existed at all. Nevertheless, the figure of Esterka frequently appears throughout Poland, her story first recorded by a historian in the sixteenth century.
Esterka was born in the town of Opoczno, a Jewish community in Poland, and was the daughter of a poor tailor. As an infant, so one story goes, she was rescued from a pogrom (a violent massacre that particularly singled out Jews) by Casimir, only to meet him again several years later by chance when Casimir was on a hunting expedition. He brought her back to Cracow, then the capital, and set her up in a house adjacent to his castle. The king had a secret tunnel built that connected the two residences, thus they could carry on an affair discreetly. Casimir was, at the time, married to one of his four wives, of which he would divorce two in quick succession. Esterka was said to have been stunningly beautiful and highly intelligent so it is no wonder that Casimir fell madly in love with the young woman.
Perhaps of more interest to Casimir, though, is that Esterka was the only woman to bear him sons, though she likely also gave him one or two daughters. Purportedly, their two sons were raised as Christians while the girls were raised Jewish. Today, there are several areas in Poland that are said to be attributed to Esterka, including several castles that were built for her in Bochotnica, Nicolomice, Lublin and Cracow. There is also speculation that Casimir married Esterka, though without the sanction of the church she could not be his official queen. According to several historians, the renewal and expansion of Jewish rights in Poland is attributed to Casimir’s liaison with Esterka. Written accounts are heavily biased depending on the sources pro- or anti-Jewish sentiment; for some she was a temptress, to others a saint.
In 1370, Casimir was mortally wounded in a hunting accident and died without a legitimate male heir. What happened to Esterka is unknown, though there are several (conflicting) stories about her demise. Some say she retired to a life of seclusion, spending the rest of her days in idle bliss, while others say she committed suicide, and to this day she haunts the ruined remains of her castle in Kalisz, waiting for her lover to return.
Sources
- ”Casimir the Great arriving at the house of his mistress Esterka” by Wydawnictwo Kluszczyński, 1869. (image).
- Sherwin, Byron. Sparks Amidst the Ashes: The Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry. Oxford University Press (1997). ISBN: 01951057.
- Valley, Eli. The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (1999). ISBN: 0765760002.
- Graham, Ian. Scarlet Women: The Scandalous Lives of Courtesans, Concubines, and Royal Mistresses. St. Martin’s Press (2016). ISBN: 1250062635.
(via thelovelygods)
