The Black Lady of Nesvizh: the sad story of one transformation (7 photos)

The legend of the Black Lady or, as she is also called, the Black Lady from Nesvizh is already more than 450 years old. And the reason for its appearance is banal - the inability of crowned heads to create a family out of love, and not out of duty to the country.





Barbara Radziwill (1520-1551) - Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania did not suddenly become a ruler. Through her cousin, who was very beautiful, her brother Nikolai decided to pave the way to the world of the noble and influential.



Barbara Radziwill

After meeting the future Polish king Sigismund Augustus, the girl began an affair with him. And Nikolai Radziwill allegedly accidentally caught the couple and demanded to get married. However, both influential aristocrats and the family were categorically against a secret marriage. Several years of confrontation and intrigue, carefully woven by the dowager queen, did not bring results. Sigismund Augustus refused to annul the marriage. And in 1550 Barbara was recognized as the Polish queen.



Joseph Zimler. Death of Barbara Radziwill (1860)

The happiness turned out to be short-lived: less than a year had passed before the mother of King Bona Sforza poisoned her unwanted daughter-in-law. There were no problems, since the lady belonged to the Medici family, who were quite well versed in poisons.

Barbara was buried in the Cathedral in Vilna. And the widowed king was very homesick for his Basya. And one day, while visiting the brothers of the deceased, he decided to perform a ritual of summoning the soul from the afterlife. Which went well. But the king violated the ban on touching the ghost and rushed to hug his beloved. The connection with the afterlife was interrupted, and the unfortunate soul was forever imprisoned within the walls of Nesvizh Castle, where she was summoned.



Wojciech Gerson. The Ghost of Barbara Radziwill (1886)

A restless spirit wanders around the castle in mourning clothes as a sign of his short love. Appears more often in the first hour of the night and portends that the usual thing with ghosts, unpleasant things. For example, the fire that happened in 2002. During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans who were here believed in this legend and began to shoot at any shadow, seeing the Black Panna in it.

Alternative versions



Sigismund August

The legend also has more prosaic versions. According to one, Barbara was already married before her marriage to the king. But she quickly became a widow and, as they say, threw herself into the pool headlong, starting endless affairs. And the brothers allegedly caught her with the future king, knowing full well that the monarch was far from the first in a series of lovers of the beautiful Basya.

And Bona Sforza was not involved in the death of her daughter-in-law: she was killed by a bad disease that Barbara contracted from one of her lovers.



Radziwill Castle in Nesvizh

There is also an explanation that Barbara died due to taking drugs for infertility (by the way, Sigismund II Augustus Jagiellon never left any heirs, and the dynasty ended with him). But this does not negate the possible fact of a seance and the birth of the Black Lady, whose spirit continues to delight tourists, slowly floating through the corridors of the castle in anticipation of its king.



Be that as it may in fact, the romantic legend of Barbara formed the basis of many works of different genres.