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This work presents issues relating to a dramatic fragment of European history and a tumultuous period in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the light of the accounts and assessments of papal nuncios residing at European courts. The author's primary aim was to answer the question: how did the Holy See dur-ing the first phase of the pontificate of Urban VIII assess the foreign policy of the Commonwealth and to what extent did it try to influence it? In his work, main direc-tions of Polish policy during this period and the papacy's attitude toward them were analyzed. The Roman Curia's stance on the Commonwealth's relations with neigh-bors, including Turkey, Moscow, and Sweden, was discussed. The papacy's stand on the issues relating to Poland's potential participation in the Thirty Years' War and on Vasa-Habsburg military plans was examined. Moreover, Rome's attitude toward issues which pertained to domestic policy, albeit they determined the position of the Polish-Lithuanian state in Europe of that time – the 1632 election and Władysław IV Vasa's marital plans – was presented. The above-mentioned issues were the subject of mutual diplomatic relations, which usually took the form of correspondence of nuncios to Poland and other European courts with the Holy See's Secretariat of State. This work is part of an important trend in Polish historical research in which for-eign source materials have been used to explore the history of the Commonwealth. The main source material for this study is the correspondence of apostolic nuncios gathered in Archivio Segreto Vaticano and Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. The cor-respondence of papal nuncios to Poland between 1623 and 1635 – Giovanni Battista Lancellotti, Antonio Santacroce, Honoratio Visconti, and partially Mario Filonardi, as well as letters from Secretary of State Francesco Barberini to these nuncios are of particular importance to the topic of research. Moreover, telegrams from papal dip-lomats residing at the most important courts of modern Europe: in Vienna, Paris, and Madrid, concerning the international situation of the Commonwealth, are valuable supplementary material. Offering an insight into analyses and actions undertaken by papal diplomacy toward the Commonwealth, the book simultaneously shows the Polish-Lithuanian state as a significant part of European political reality.

Between 1621 and 1635, Sisigmund III Vasa and Władysław IV Vasa, in seeking finance for the wars waged and those planned, applied to the Holy See for financial aid on many occasions. Papal subsidies were sought at the time of conflicts with Turkey between 1621 and 1634, the Smolensk War, and the intended invasion of Sweden and resuming military action in 1635. The following article presents Polish diplomacy used in this matter. Simultaneously, an analysis is conducted of Pope Gregory XV's and Urban II's attitudes towards the endeavours of the Varsovian court. The article points out which trends in Polish foreign policy were attractive enough for the Roman Curia to be approved for financing by the papacy. For this purpose, the papal correspondence from the period between 1621 and 1635 was thoroughly analyzed. This allowed confirmation of the prevailing historiographic theses, as well as making new assumptions.

The article deals with communication and interaction between papal diplomatic missions in the early modern era. Mainly due to a lack of extant source materials, it remains the white spot in the research into the history of Polish and foreign nuncios. However, thanks to materials from Archivio di Stato di Roma, namely the section of Archivio Santa Croce containing the originals of letters received by Nuncio Antonio Santa Croce in 1629, it is possible to attempt at least a partial reconstruction of the collaboration between the papal diplomat residing at the Court of Warsaw and his counterpart at the Court of Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsburg in Vienna, Giovanni Battista Pallotta. The correspondence analysis allows us to conclude that the contacts between the papal diplomats residing in Warsaw and Vienna in 1629, and probably earlier and later, were regular and intensive. We can assume that the routine products of the information and analytical work carried out for the Secretariat of State by both papal missions were shared in the correspondence, and the Nunciatures of Vienna and Warsaw were thus well informed about the course of affairs related to the pan-European conflict in several theatres of war. However, they also communicated and cooperated on strictly ecclesiastical matters, such as the ongoing reform of religious congregations in the 1620s.

This article is based on source material from the unique collection of correspondence of the Warsaw nuncio Antonio Santa Croce, stored in the Roman Archivio di Stato in the Archivio Santacroce ensemble under number 774 and containing 846 letters from the year 1629, addressed to the nuncio from various senders. The authors analyze the correspondence of the nuncio from the Roman Catholic bishops of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, consisting of 109 letters. 104 from the ordinary bishops and 5 from suffragan bishops. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the most regular and intensive correspondence was maintained with the nuncio by Archbishop of Gniezno Jan Wężyk and Bishop of Cracow Marcin Szyszkowski (presumably twice a month). Most of the other bishops approached the frequency of one letter per month, and this concerned the bishops of Vilnius, Cuiavia, Poznań, Płock, Samogitia, Łuck (Lutsk), Przemyśl and Chełm. The bishops present at the court, such as Bishop of Chełmno, Chancellor Jakub Zadzik or Bishop of Kamieniec Paweł Piasecki, made less frequent contact with the nuncio by letter. The bishops only sporadically addressed political issues in their letters and this was connected with the preparation for the sejm. Some hierarchs were interested in the Brest Union and referred to it in their letters. Most often, however, the bishops raised in their correspondence the issues of nominations for benefices, problems related to the discipline of the diocesan clergy and the issues of dispensations and facultates. The bishops' contact with the nuncio therefore concerned in the vast majority of cases ecclesiastical matters and the secular functions of hierarchs, as senators of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, only occasionally marked their presence in correspondence with the papal ambassadors.