The things you learn from Wikipedia

I was reading about the Szlachta, or Polish privileged class in Wikipedia.  Tanya found the article as she has been searching out information on her family name (Franskeyvich is the English transliteration of the Russian spelling).  She has tracked down several people with the same family name and one of them gave her a site where she can learn more about the family name history.  Apparently at least some of them were Polish nobility and have a family crest.  She found the Wiki site to explain to me about the crest.

I found this sentence referring to the mentality and ideology of the Szlachta rather interesting.  Amazing how ideology transforms over time.

In its early, idealistic form, Sarmatism seemed like a salutary cultural movement: it fostered religious faith, honesty, national pride, courage, equality and freedom. Late Sarmatism turned belief into bigotry, honesty into political naiveté, pride into arrogance, courage into stubbornness, equality and freedom within the szlachta class into dissension and anarchy.