Albertas Radvila: the first magnate in the episcopal seat of Vilnius

Albertas Radvila was the tenth bishop of Vilnius. However, he was the first coming from a magnate family of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thus, in 1507, for the first time in Lithuanian history, both highest secular and ecclesiastical offices in the country ‒ the palatine (voivode) of Vilnius and the bishop of Vilnius ‒ were in the hands of a single family. A magnate bishop was not necessarily a sign of the Church’s decline, as has been portrayed in tendentious contemporary descriptions or the historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The twelve years in the See of Vilnius (1507‒1519) were marked by a number of changes, the most important of which were the establishment of the office of suffragan bishop in 1512, and the approbation of the statutes of the Vilnius cathedral chapter in 1515. Educated clergymen formed the backbone of the bishop’s intellectual and religious environment, and that demonstrates the magnate bishop’s abilities to recruit suitable individuals. Among them were Łukasz Noskowski, the professor of medicine at the University of Cracow, as well as the secretary Vaclovas Mikalojaitis, later known by the pseudonym Michalonus Lituanus (Mykolas Lietuvis), and others. In 1512‒1513, Radvila participated in the Fifth Council of the Lateran. At the beginning of the canonization process of prince Casimir, he visited the pope on several occasions. The bishop of Vilnius came into conflict with Jan Łaski, archbishop of Gniezno, as he tried to strengthen the independence of the diocese. The memory of Albertas Radvila was formed by several conflicting factors, such as the intention of the Radvila family to remember an ecclesiastical hierarch, the image of an administrator of the diocese and the patron of the poor, as well as the emerging critical attitude towards the magnates holding high ecclesiastical offices