20 Euros 500th Anniversary of the birth of Mikalojus Radvila Juodasis

Mikalojus Radvila Juodasis — Nicolaus Radziwill the Black — was the most powerful Protestant magnate in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the sixteenth century, instrumental in spreading Calvinist reform across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He financed the 1563 Brest Bible, the first complete translation of scripture into Polish, an undertaking of considerable political as well as religious weight. He died in 1565, and within a generation his family had reverted to Catholicism, making his reformist legacy unusually short-lived for its scale.