Golden Liberty (Latin: Aurea Libertas; Polish: Złota Wolność, Lithuanian: Auksinė laisvė), sometimes referred to as Golden Freedoms, Nobles' Democracy or Nobles' Commonwealth (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Szlachecka or Złota wolność szlachecka, Latin: áurea libertas) refers to a unique aristocratic political system in the Kingdom of Poland and later, after the Union of Lublin (1569), in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under that system, all nobles (szlachta), regardless of economic status, were considered to have equal legal status and enjoyed extensive legal rights and privileges. The nobility controlled the legislature (Sejm — the Polish Parliament) and the Commonwealth's elected king.
Read more about Golden Liberty: Development, Assessment, Similar Systems, Proverb
Famous quotes containing the words golden and/or liberty:
“I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“New York is a woman
holding, according to history,
a rag called liberty with one hand
and strangling the earth with the other.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)