LITMIR.BIZ

      The Polanie shared a common language with the other western Slavs which differed slightly from that spoken by the Bohemians or Czechs to the south-west and that of the eastern Slavs of Rus. They also shared a common religion based on much the same pantheon as other Indo-European cults, worshipped through objects in nature—trees, rivers, stones—in which they were held to dwell, and less so in the shape of idols, or in circles and temples. As practised by the Polanie, this religion was neither organised nor hierarchical, and was not a politically unifying force. What set the Polanie apart from their sister peoples were their rulers, the Piast dynasty established in Gniezno at some time during the ninth century.

      Throughout the second half of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth, these princes gradually extended their sway over neighbouring peoples. Most of these were under some kind of pressure from the outside world, which made it easier for the Piast princes to assume control, and by the middle of the tenth century they reigned over a considerable area. This dominion was described in the first written source of any worth, by Ibrahim Ibn Yaqub, a Jewish traveller from Spain, who noted that the ruler, Prince Mieszko, had imposed a relatively sophisticated fiscal system, and exercised control through a network of castles and a standing army of 3,000 horsemen.

      It was these troops and castles that Otto I, King of the Germans, encountered in the year 955. Otto had won a series of victories over his eastern neighbours and fortified his boundaries with a string of bastion-provinces known as marches. He then crossed the Elbe. As he advanced eastward, routing small bands of Slav warriors on the way, he eventually came up against something resembling an army and a system of defences. For the Polanie, the period of isolation had come to an end, and Prince Mieszko could no longer ignore the outside world.

      He could even less afford to do so after 962, when Otto was crowned Roman Emperor by the Pope. This was a largely symbolic act, but one charged with significance, and Mieszko, who was aware of the political and cultural benefits Christianity had brought his Czech neighbours of Bohemia, appreciated this. Only by adopting Christianity himself would he be able to avoid war with the Emperor, and at the same time provide himself with a useful political instrument. In 965 he sought the approval of Otto and married the Bohemian Princess Dobrava. The following year, 966, Mieszko and his court were baptised. The Duchy of Polonia became part of Christendom.

      Mieszko nevertheless continued to pursue his own aims, even where they conflicted with those of the Empire. One of these was to gain control of as much of the Baltic coast as possible. He invaded Pomerania, but this led to confrontation with the Margrave of the German northern march, who was attempting to conquer the area for the Empire. Mieszko defeated him at Cedynia in 972 and reached the mouth of the Oder in 976. The Margrave called on his new master Otto II for assistance, and the latter mounted an expedition against the Poles. Mieszko defeated him too in 979, and became master of the whole of Pomerania. He con—tinued to advance along the coast until he joined up with the Danes, who had been extending their dominion eastward. He ensured good relations with his new neighbours by giving his daughter Świętosława in marriage to King Eric of Sweden and Denmark (after Eric’s death, she would marry Swein Forkbeard, King of Denmark, and bear him a son, Canute, who visited Poland in 1014 to collect a force of three hundred horsemen who would help him reconquer England).

      The first ruler of Christian Poland was a remarkable man. Consistently successful in war, Mieszko did not neglect diplomacy, involving powers as distant as the Moorish Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain in his schemes. His last enterprise was to invade and absorb the lands of the Slenzanie. There in 992 he drew up a document, Dagome Iudex, laying down the boundaries of his realm, which he dedicated to St Peter and placed under the protection of the Pope.

      The Pope was to prove immensely useful to Mieszko’s son and successor, Bolesław the Brave, who carried on his work with flair. In 996 a monk called Adalbertus (originally Vojteh, a Bohemian prince) appeared at Bolesław’s court. As he had been sent by Pope Sylvester I on a mission to evangelise the Prussians, a non-Slavic people inhabiting the Baltic seaboard to the east of the mouth of the Vistula, Bolesław received him with due honours before sending him on his way. The Prussians made short work of putting the missionary to death. On hearing the news, Bolesław sent to Prussia and bought the remains of the monk for, allegedly, their weight in gold. He then laid them to rest in the cathedral at Gniezno.

      When Pope Sylvester heard of this, in 999, he canonised Adalbertus. He also took the momentous step of elevating Gniezno to the level of an archbishopric, and creating new bishoprics at Wrocław, Kołobrzeg and Kraków. This effectively created a Polish province of the Church, independent of its original tutelary German diocese of Magdeburg. It also strengthened the Polish state, as ecclesiastical networks were prime instruments of communication and control. In Poland, the first parishes were established beside castles which were centres of royal administration, a connection between religious and temporal power which is enshrined in the etymology of the Polish word for ‘church’—kościół, which derives from the Latin castellum.

      The new Emperor Otto III had been a friend of Adalbertus, as well as of Pope Sylvester, and in the year 1000 he came on a pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine at Gniezno. His visit is described by the chronicler Gallus, who wrote:

      Bolesław received him with such honour and magnificence as befitted a King, a Roman Emperor and a distinguished guest. For the arrival of the Emperor he prepared a wonderful sight; he placed many companies of knights of every sort, and then his dignitaries, in ranks, every different company set apart by the colours of its clothes. And this was no cheap spangle or any old stuff, but the most costly things that can be found anywhere on earth. For in Bolesław’s day every knight and every lady of the court wore not linen or woollen cloth, but coats of costly weave, while furs, even if they were very expensive and quite new, were not worn at his court unless lined with fine stuff and trimmed with gold tassels. For gold in his time was as common as silver is now, silver was as cheap as straw. Seeing his glory, his power and his riches, the Roman Emperor cried out in admiration: ‘By the crown of my Empire! What I see far exceeds what I have heard!’ And taking counsel with his magnates, he added, before all those present: ‘It is not fit that such a man should be titled a prince or count, as though he were just a great lord, but he should be elevated with all pomp to a throne and crowned with a crown.’ Taking the Imperial diadem from his own brow, he placed it on the head of Bolesław as a sign of union and friendship, and for an ensign of state he gave him a nail from the Holy Cross and the lance of Saint Maurice, in return for which Bolesław gave him the arm of Saint Adalbertus. And they felt such love on that day that the Emperor named him brother and associate in the Empire, and called him the friend and ally of the Roman nation…

      Otto had come not only to pray at the tomb of his saintly friend. He needed to assess Poland’s strength and establish its status within the Holy Roman Empire. He was impressed by what he saw, and decided the country must be treated not as a tributary duchy, but as an independent kingdom, alongside Germany and Italy.

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