Tobacco came into Poland quietly, one could even say that secretly. We can guess about when it happened based on uncertain information and 19th century analyses that are not entirely reliable. In the past, researchers associated the appearance of a new stimulant with vivid contacts with the Orient. The first person to introduce tobacco was wrongly identified as Paweł Uchański, the Polish legate in Istanbul, son of Tomasz, Bełsk Master of the Hunt and nephew of Primate Jakub. Zygmunt Gloger wrote: "The first seeds of the plant were sent by legate Uchański to Anna (1568–1625), sister of king Zygmunt III, from Constantinople. The Załuski library had a herbarium made by Anna that contained a tobacco leaf. Poles learned to smoke tobacco from Turks, the same as some words: tytuń, kapciuch, lulka, cybuch, stambułka, and they learned to inhale snuff from Germans and the French." Before him, the same information was reported by Tadeusz, only he referred to a different Anna: "I read a letter from Uchański, the Polish legate in Istanbul, written in 1590, in which he sent a tobacco seed to Queen Anna, wife (widow) of Stephen Bathory, as she collected plants. You could see a leaf of Turkish tobacco in a herbarium kept at the Załuski library, apparently picked by the Queen's hand."
Paweł Uchański, Starosta (senior) of Drohobycze and Gniezno, Secretary of the Crown and Legate in Italy and Turkey, partner of Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz during his stay in Italy from 1569 to 1579, was not an ordinary man. A worldly diplomat (for example, he was delegated to Rome as leader of the legacy of obedience after election of King Stephen Bathory), he was at the same time a typical Sarmatian brawler and barrater. In 1574, he removed from the Krasnystaw property - apparently with the consent of King Henry of Valoise - Jerzy Mniszech, who recovered his property in 1576, taking advantage of Uchański's another diplomatic trip. In the spring of 1580, Uchański regained control over the castle in Krasnystaw and the dispute continued for years before the Sejm tribunal. In 1588, King Zygmunt III Waza appointed Uchański the Bełz Voivode. He died in February 1590 in Istanbul during one of his diplomatic missions. Niesiecki reported: "A man of great heart and prudence, his wife Anna Katarzyna Herburtowna, daughter of Lviv Castellan and Samborsk Starosta (senior), her daughter Helena or Anna, married to Mikołaj Daniłowicz, Grand Vice Treasurer of the Crown, brought Uchanie to the family but did not deliver a male offspring and it seems to me Voivode Paweł died as the last male member of the family."
In 1589, Paweł Uchański sent to Poland gifts for the King and people from the court, one of them being an encrusted box with tobacco leaves. The courier could be reverend Wojciech Sękowski, bearer of Prawdzic coat of arms, described in the following way by Niesiecki: "S. Theologiae Doctor in the Order of the Preachers, he used to travel with Paweł Uchański, Bełz Voivode and ablegate to Constantinople, and after his return, ruled the Polish province for 10 years." Yet, the abovementioned dates: 1589 and 1590 are doubtful. If any, only the year 1589 is possible. However, there is another problem. In that year, Anna, unwelcome at the Polish court as she was accused of having too much influence on the King, left for Sweden and did not return to Poland until 1592, long after Uchański's death. Did she receive tobacco leaves before her departure, as Gloger has it? The consignment - and we have no reason to doubt its existence - was no coincidence. Uchański, a frequent visitor at the royal court, must have known about Anna's fondness of botany. An educated woman (she could speak: Polish, Swedish, German, French and Latin), she was interested in botany, herbalism and natural medicine. The Queen could understand the problems of ill people - she herself suffered from a rare disease of bones that caused severe pain incurable by available medicines. In 1611, she settled down in Golub, where she established a botanical garden with rare plants. Like 16th-century humanists, she kept a herbarium, where she collected dried plants. It was so-called dry garden (hortus siccus). She added a tobacco leaf to her collection. Unfortunately, the herbarium has not survived to the present times. Kept in the Radziwiłl collections in Nieśwież, it was destroyed during a Russian invasion in late 18th century. She supported artists and scientists, for example, in 1613, she financed the publication of the herbarium of Professor Szymon Syreński (Syreniusz) of the Krakow Academy.
Translation: Lingua Lab
