EN
The topic of this paper is the representation of the two kings of Poland – Stephen Báthory and Sigismund III Vasa – emerging from the correspondence of Lew Sapieha addressed to the Radziwiłłs of Birża: Krzysztof ‘the Thunder’ and his son Krzysztof (d. 1640), as well as Mikołaj Krzysztof Sierotka of the Nieśwież line of the family. A look at Sapieha’s writings allows to capture the differences in his descriptions of the two monarchs and also enables identifying the rhetoric tools aimed at making the king’s policies favourable in the eyes of the addressees. Sapieha’s letters are testaments of his unusual ability to depict reality colourfully; most of all, however, they enrich the knowledge on the art of epistolography in the past centuries, a topic which remains not fully explored by literary historians.