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.
As soon as Otto was succeeded by the less exalted Henry II this independence came under threat. Neither German nor Bohemian raison d’état accommodated the idea of a strong Polish state, and a new German offensive was launched, supported by Bohemia on the southern flank, and some pagan Slavs in the north. Bolesław defeated Henry in battle. He then brought diplomatic pressure to bear on Bohemia by a timely alliance with the Hungarians, and on Henry himself by arranging a dynastic alliance with the Palatine of Lorraine. Pressed from all sides, Henry was obliged, at the Treaty of Bautzen (1018), to cede to Poland not only the disputed territory along the Elbe, but the whole of Moravia as well.
Like his father, Bolesław was not a man to rest on his laurels, and when an opportunity for action arose, he took it. He had married his daughter to Prince Svatopolk, ruler of the Principality of Rus. When Svatopolk was ousted by rebellion from his capital in Kiev, Bolesław intervened on his son-in-law’s behalf. He took the opportunity of annexing a slice of land separating his own dominions from those of Kiev, the area between the rivers Bug and San, which rounded off his own state in the east.
The Polish realm was now large by any standards, and its sovereign status seemed beyond doubt. To stress this, in the last year of his life, 1025, Bolesław had himself crowned King of Poland in Gniezno Cathedral. But his death revealed that the empirebuilding policies of Mieszko and Bolesław had outstripped the means of the nascent state, which could not digest their conquests at this rate. At the same time, strong regionalist tendencies made themselves felt with the accession of Bolesław’s son Mieszko II.
While he attempted to hold together his dominions, jealous brothers obtained the support of Kiev by promising to cede the lands between the Bug and San rivers, and that of the Empire by offering to give back areas annexed by Bolesław. They had little difficulty in toppling Mieszko, and he had to flee the country in 1031. The unfortunate man was then set upon by some Bohemian knights who, according to the Polish chronicler, ‘used leather thongs to crush his genitalia in such a way that he would never sire again’. Although he managed to return and regain his throne, Mieszko died in 1034, leaving the country divided.
His son, Kazimierz I, was hardly more successful, and he too had to flee when civil war broke out. Duke Bretislav of Bohemia took advantage of this to invade. He seized Gniezno, whence he removed not only the attributes of the Polish crown, but also the body of St Adalbertus (Wojciech in Polish), which put in jeopardy the very survival of Poland as an independent unit.
At a moment when boundaries were theoretical, cultural distinctions imperceptible and concepts of nationhood in their infancy, the first Czech chronicler, Cosmas of Prague, and his Polish contemporary the monk Gallus, both saw the other nation as the worst enemy of his own.
This raises the question of what we mean by terms such as ‘Poland’ at this point in history, let alone by ‘Poles’, ‘Germans’ and ‘Czechs’. Frontiers, such as they were, were fluid, changing each time one ruler or another asserted his rights by force. Ethnic distinctions did not impose any deeper loyalty, and Germans fought amongst themselves more often than they fought Slavs, while the Slavs were constantly at war with each other. Nor were they well defined. When the Germans occupied the lands up to the Oder, they absorbed so much Slav blood that the population of what would become Brandenburg, the cradle of German racial myths, was heavily mixed. When the area later known as Mecklenburg became part of the German world, the Slav ruling classes became the German aristocracy. On the other hand, the rulers of Poland repeatedly intermarried with Germans.
The underlying conflict that ranged the Poles against Bohemia and the Empire was over the question of Poland’s position in the
Fig. 1 The early Piast Kings. (Only the more important members of the dynasty are shown. Dates given are those of reigns. The family tree continues on pages 24-5.)
Christian world. For a century and a half after Otto III had sanctioned Bolesław the Brave’s royal ambitions, Poland’s status remained uncertain, with the Empire repeatedly trying to place it in the position of a vassal state, and Poland struggling to preserve its sovereignty. The ebb and flow of this struggle is reflected in the way Polish monarchs are variously referred to as dux, princeps or rex in contemporary Western sources. In spite of its own internal dissensions and wars, the Empire was the theoretical arbiter on such questions. The Polish monarch could strengthen his position by building up his own power, by seeking the support of other countries and by alliance with the Pope against the Emperor. The problems involved are clearly illustrated by the hundred years after the death of Kazimierz I in 1058.
After regaining his throne in 1039, Kazimierz had made Kraków his capital. Gniezno, the centre of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland), the land of the Polanie, needed a strong boundary along the Oder and Polish domination of Pomerania in the north and Silesia in the south. Kraków, the capital of Małopolska (Lesser Poland), was likely to be more affected by what happened in Kiev than what was going on in Pomerania. Both Kazimierz, who was married to the sister of the Prince of Kiev, and his son Bolesław II, the Bold, who also married a member of that royal house, had turned their eyes to the east and Bolesław occupied Kiev twice on his uncle’s behalf. At the same time, Hungary was emerging as an important factor in Polish affairs. It was an obvious ally against both Bohemia and the Empire. It was also an element in a great web of papal diplomacy aimed against the Empire, stretching from Poland to Spain. One of the benefits of joining this alliance was that the Pope granted Bolesław a royal crown, with which the latter crowned himself in 1076.