HISTORY of POLAND
by
ALEKSANDER GIEYSZTOR Professor of Warsaw University
STEFAN KIENIEWICZ
Professor of Warsaw University (editor-in-chief)
EMANUEL ROSTWOROWSKI Professor in the Polish Academy of Sciences
JANUSZ TAZBIR Pofessor in the Polish Academy of Sciences
HENRYK WERESZYCKI Professor of Cracow University
2nd edition
PWN—POLISH SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHERS - WARSZAWA, 1979
Acknowledgement
The authors owe a great debt to Professor R. F. LESLIE
of Queen Mary College, University of London, and Doctor GEORGE SAKWA of Bristol University, for their invaluable contributions in kindly
agreeing to undertake the revision of the English text.
Translation from the Polish manuscript :
KRYSTYNA CEKALSKA, ILONA RALF-SUEZ, JANINA RODZINSKA LEON SZWAJCER, ANTONI SZYMANOWSKI
Maps :
JOZEF HUMNICKI, BOGUSLAW KACZMARSKI, WANDA LEWANDOWSKA TADEUSZ LADOGORSKI, WLADYSLAW PALUCKI, ZBIGNIEW PUSTULA HENRYK RUTKOWSKI (editor), ANNA ZABOKLICKA DUNIN-WASOWICZ Diagrams :
IRENA GIEYSZTOR, STEFAN JACKOWSKI
Lay-out : ZYGMUNT ZIEMKA, WITOLD MOTYL
Editor : ZUZANNA STEFANIAK
© Copyright by
Pahstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN—Polish Scientific Publishers Printed in Poland by DRP
ISBN 83-01-00392-8
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by S. Kieniewicz Translation: K. Cekalska
MEDIEVAL POLAND
by A. Gieysztor Translation: K. Cekalska
Chapter I BEFORE THE RISE OF THE POLISH STATE
Slavic Antiquity The Slavic Wends and the Germans on the Fringes of Roman Influence Slavic Migrations and the Age of Crises (The Fifth to the Seventh Centuries)
Chapter II THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
Economic Foundations of Poland in the Eearly Middle Ages
The Social Structure and Organization of Regional States
The Origins of the Polanes
The Spiritual and Mental Culture on the Eve of the Unification of the Polish
State
Chapeer If THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
The Consolidation of the State and the Christianization of Poland in 966 Polish Boundaries Established in the Odra and Vistula Basins
The Polish Empire under Bolestaw the Brave
The Crisis of the First Polish Monarchy
Economic and Cultural Achievements of the Architects of the State
Chapter IV THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
Struggle for International Position and the Establishment of Royal Authority Feudal Disintegration Gains the Upper Hand (1138-1146)
17
25
25 28 31
35
35 37 41
43
47
47 50 52 55 57
65
65 67
6 CONTENTS
Economic Foundations of the Oligarchy. Village and Town Prior to the Mid-Twelfth Century Cultural Relations in the Eleventh Century and in the First Half of the Twelfth Century
Chapter V
THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
Evolution of Settlements in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Foreign Colonization and the Introduction of German Law in the Thirteenth Century The Duchies of Poland
The Growing External Danger
Efforts at Unification in the Late Thirteenth and the Early Fourteenth Centuries Transition of Polish Culture from the Romanesque to the Gothic
Chapter VI
THE CORONA REGNI POLONIAE AT THE HEIGHT OF ITS POWER IN THE FOURTEENTH AND THE FIFTEENTH CENTURIES
The State Apparatus Centralized
Political Problems in the Reigns of Wladystaw the Short and Casimir the Great The Period of Angevin Rule
The Union of Poland and Lithuania. The Struggle with the Teutonic Order Poland and Lithuania in the Hussite Period. The Union with Hungary
The Growing Political Role of the Gentry. The Restitution of Crown Lands Casimir IV’s Foreign Policy in the Second Half of His Reign
From Land Diets to a National Parliament
Western Pomerania, Lubusz Land and Silesia in the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Centuries
Economic Life in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Culture in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE GENTRY by J. Tazbir (VII-IX) and by E. Rostworowski (X-XIII)
Translation : L. Szwajcer and A. Szymanowski
Chapter VII
POLAND’S “GOLDEN AGE” (1492-1586)
General Characteristics of the Period
Between the Habsburgs and Muscovy
The Social and Political Foundations of the “Democracy of the Gentry” The Movement for the “Execution-of-the-Law” Sigismund Augustus’ Foreign Policy
The Reformation
The First Interregnum and the Period of Elective Kings The Policy and Wars of Stephen Batory
Batory and the Gentry
Humanism in Poland
The Development of a National Culture
Renaissance Culture and Life
71
76
80
80 $4 89 93 97 102
107
107 111 114 114 {17 120 121 122
125 127 133
143
145 145 146 149 154 156 158 161 167 169 170 171 176
Chapter VIII
THE COMMONWEALTH AT THE TURNING POINT (1586-1648)
The struggle for power
The Political Crisis of the Commonwealth The Zebrzydowski Rebellion
Attempts to Check Russia
The Conflict with Turkey
The Agrarian Crisis
The Growing Importance of the Magnates The Situation of Towns and Burghers The Doctrine of the Counter-Reformation The Methods of the Counter-Reformation The Election and Reign of Wiadyslaw IV The Cossack Question
Chapter IX THE COMMONWEALTH IN THE YEARS OF CRISIS (1648-1696)
The Main Features of the Period
The War with the Cossacks
The Swedish Invasion of 1655
The Peace of Oliwa and the Eastern Question Attempts to Introduce Reform and the Lubomirski Rebellion War with Turkey
The Anti-Turkish League
Economic and Political Crisis
Religious Problems
Sarmatian Baroque
Literature and Arts
Education and Learning
Chapter X THE CRISIS OF SOVEREIGNTY (1697-1763)
General View of the Eighteenth Century
The Personal Union of Saxony and Poland
The Northern War and the Struggle for the Crown
The Confederation of Tarnogréd and the Arbitration of Peter I The Struggle for the Polish Throne
Demilitarization and Neutralization of the Commonwealth The System of “Anarchy”
Western Pomerania and Silesia under Prussian Rule Sarmatian and Catholic Conformism
Late-Baroque Culture
The Forces of Progress
The Political Deadlock
Chapter XI TENTATIVE REFORMS UNDER RUSSIA’S TUTELAGE (1763-1788)
The Russo-Prussian Alliance
The Plans of “The Family”
The Interregnum (1763-1764)
The First Years of Stanistaw Augustus
The Confederation of Radom and the Seym of 1767-1768
CONTENTS 7
180
180 181 184 186 188 190 192 196 197 199 203 206
211
211 212 214 217 218 220 221 223 225 226 229 231
234
234 235 237 239 242 245 247 251 253 256 261 265
267
267 268 270 272 275
8 CONTENTS
The Confederation of Bar (1768-1772) The First Partition
Constitutional Transformations (1773-1780) Government by the Permanent Council
Chapter XII ° THE SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
The Economic Revival
The Social Transformation Conflict of Fashions and Ideals The Intellectual Upheaval
Chapter XIII THE STRUGGLE FOR THE INDEPENDENCE AND FOR THE REFORM OF THE COMMONWEALTH (1788~1794)
The End of the Guarantee
The Seym Control
Political Literature
The Constitution of 3 May, 1791
The Russian Intervention and the Second Partition (1792-1793) The Emigration and the Situation at Home
The Insurrection of 1794
The Extinction of the Polish State
POLAND UNDER FOREIGN RULE 1795-1918
by S. Kieniewicz (KIV-XVII) and by H. Wereszycki (XVIII-XXI) Translation : I. Ralf-Suez and J. Rodzinska
Chapter XIV THE NAPOLEONIC ERA (1795-1815)
The Enfranchisement of the Peasants and the National Uprisings Poland after the Third Partition
Attitude of the Population and the Independence Movement
The Legions
Adam Czartoryski and the Putawy Plan
Jena and Tilsit
The Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw
Economic and Social Changes Within the Duchy of Warsaw The Year 1809
The Downfall of the Duchy of Warsaw
Chapter XV THE KINGDOM OF POLAND AND THE NOVEMBER INSURRECTION (1815- 1831)
Pesasant Reform in Prussian Poland
Establishment of the Congress Kingdom of Poland
The Agrarian Question in the Kingdom of Poland ‘'
The Beginnings of Modern Industry in the Kingdom of Poland Opposition and Conspiracy
Neo-Classicism and Romanticism
The Origins and the Outbreak of the November Insurrection, 1830 The Political Struggle to Control the Insurrection
277 280 283 285
288
288 293 297 300
305
305 307 310 315 320 322 325 332
335
337
337 338 340 342 345 346 348 351 354 356
360
360 363 367 369 373 377 380 382
The Polish-Russian War The Revolutionary Left and the Peasant Question The International Situation and the Collapse of the Rising
Chapter XVI ON THE EVE OF AN AGRARIAN REVOLUTION (1832-1849)
Reprisals after the Insurrection
Economic Development in the Three Partition Zones The Liberal Camp and “Organic Work”
The National Question in Silesia and Pomerania The Great Emigration
Conspiracy Within Poland
The Disaster of 1846
The Poznan Rising of 1848
Galicia in 1848
Poles in European Revolutionary Movements Polish Culture in the Romantic Period
Chaprer XVII
THE PERIOD OF THE JANUARY INSURRECTION (1850-1864)
The Revolutionary Situation in Russia and Poland Patriotic Demonstrations
The National Organization
The Armed Struggle of 1863
CONTENTS 9%
384 385 388
391
391 392 394 397 398 405 409 413 418 420 422
431
431 435 438 441
The Emancipation of the Peasants and the End of the Period of National Risings 445
Chapter XVIII
POSITIVISM AND TRI-LOYALISM. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE WORKING-
CLASS MOVEMENT (1864-1885)
The Aftermath of Disaster The Post-1863 Emigration The Russianization Policy in the Kingdom
449
449 450 451
The Polish Provinces of Prussia. The Kulturkampf and the National Revival in
Silesia
The Autonomy of Galicia
The Development of Industry in the Congress Kingdom Positivism
The Beginings of the Polish Working-Class Movement The “Proletariat”
The Beginnings of the Peasant Movement
Three Provinces and One Nation
Chapter XIX
456 458 463 465 473 476 478 479
THE FORMATION OF MASS POLITICAL PARTIES. NATIONALISM AND
SOCIALISM (1885-1904)
The Prussian Expulsions. The Colonization Commission The Polish League The Socialist Movement
Attempts at Compromise with the German and Russian Governments
Polish Nationalism at the ‘Turn of the Century The Peasant Movement in Galicia The Defence of Polish Nationality in the Prussian Area
482
482 484 486 489 492 493 495
10 CONTENTS
Economic Emigration 498 “Young Poland” and the Arts 500
Chapter XX THE PERIOD OF REVOLUTION AND THE APPROACHING EUROPEAN
WAR (1904-1914) 505 Changes in Russian Economic Policy Towards Poland 505 The 1905 Revolution in the Russian Empire and Poland 506 The Reorientation of the Policy of the National Democrats 513 The Expropriation Decree in Prussian Poland and the National League 515 Political Changes in Galicia 516 The Debate on Political Attitudes on the Eve of the World War 518
Chapter XXI THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE REBUILDING OF THE POLISH STATE
(1914-1918) 521 Pitsudski and the Legions 521 The Austro-German Occupation of the Kingdom 525 The Declaration of 5 November, 1916 526 The Downfall of the Tsarist Régime, 1917 528 The Regency Council 530
The October Revolution and the Peace Treaty of Brzesé Litewski (Brest Litovsk) 531 Germany’s Defeat. The Declaration of the Powers on the Polish Question, 1918 533
The Liberation of the Austrian Area 535 The Swiezynski Government 536 The Lublin Government 537 Liberated Poland 538 POLAND 1918-1939 541
by H. Wereszycki
Translation: J. Rodzinska
Chapter XXII THE DEMARCATION OF THE FRONTIERS AND THE ENACTMENT OF.
THE CONSTITUTION (1918-1921) 543 The First Moments of Independence 543 The Legislative Seym 546 The Peace Treaties 549 The War with Soviet Russia 550 The Demarcation of the Western Frontiers 552 The March Constitution, 1921 555 Chapter XXII
PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT (1922-1926) 558 The 1922 Elections » 558 Wiadystaw Grabski and the Stabilization of the Currency 560 The Ukrainian and Byelorussian Questions 563 The Communist Movement 564 Polish Foreign Policy and Locarno 565
Education, Science and Culture 567
CONTENTS tit
Chapter XXIV PROSPERITY AND THE CRISIS: THE STRUGGLE TO LEGALIZE
PILSUDSKI’S DICTATORSHIP (1926-1931) 577 The May coup a’état 577 The Social Aspect of Pilsudski’s Dictatorship 579 The Struggle between the Government and the Seym 580 Gdynia and Moscice 582 The Centre-Left and the Brzes¢ Affair 584 The Great Economic Crisis of 1929-1931 586 Chapter XXV
TOWARDS TOTAL DICTATORSHIP (1931-1939) 588 The Foreign Policy of Pilsudski 588 The Death of Pilsudski. The Conflict in the Ruling Party 590 The Growth of Opposition 595 The National Unity Camp 596 Beck and the Cieszyn Question 599 Facing German Aggression (1938-1939) 601 CONCLUSION 605
by S. Kieniewicz Translation : K. Cekalska
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 611 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 622 INDEX 636
PLATES
Sleza mountain, Wroclaw voivodship. Woman with Fish
Leg Piekarski, Konin voivodship. Roman imports, 2nd-3rd cent.
Proboszczowice, Sieradz voivodship. Stronghold, 9th cent. Photo from a helicopter Lezno, Torun voivodship. Cult stone, 10th cent.
Denarius of Bolestaw the Brave “Gnezdun Civitas”, c. 1000, National Museum, Cracow
Cieszyn. Katowice voivodship. St. Nicholas’ Chapel, 11th cent.
Wloctawek cup, 10th cent. National Museum, Cracow
Gniezno Doors, c. 1170-1180. Holy Wirgin Mary’s and St. Adalbert’s Cathedral Strzelno, Bydgoszcz voivodship. Holy Trinity Church, second. half of the 12th cent., detail of a Romanesque column
Trzebnica, Wroclaw voivodship. Cistercian Nuns Church, c. 1220-1230. Tympanum Wachock, Kielce voivodship. Cistercian Monastery, 13th cent. Chapterhouse
Sulejéw, Piotrk6w Trybunalski voivodship. St. Thomas’s Church, first half of the 13th cent. Keystone
Cracow, St. Florian’s Gate, 14th cent.
Cracow, St. Catherine’s Church, 14th cent.
Cracow, Church of the Virgin Mary, 14th cent.
Cracow, Barbican, 1498-1499
Nicolaus Copernicus. Portrait by an unknown painter, first quarter of the 16th cent. Regional Museum, Torun
Cracow, Wawel. Envoys Hall. 1529-1535
Stanislaw Samostrzelnik, Investing the Szydtowiecki Family with Coat-of-Arms, 1522. Title page of Liber geneseos. National Museum, Poznan (Kérnik branch)
Poznan, Town Hall, 1550-1560, Architect : Giovanni Battista Quadro
Jan Kochanowski. Tombstone at Zwolef, Radom voivodship, 1584
Thomas Treterus, Disputation of Cardinal Stanislaw Hozjusz with Torun Protestants, 16th cent. Drawing from Theatrum virtutum d Stanislai Hosii, Pelplin, 1928
Portrait of a nobleman, 16th cent. National Museum, Warsaw
Krasiczyn, Przemy$l voivodship. Renaissance castle, 1598-1614. Architect : Galeazzo Appiani
Kazimierz Dolny, Lublin voivodship. Przybyta House, 1615
Powroznik, Nowy Sacz voivodship. St. James’ Orthodox Church, c. 1643
Bialystok. Palace,’ rebuilt 1728-1758. Architects: Jan Z. Deybel and Jan H. Klemm Canaletto (Bernardo Belotto), Election of Stanislaw Augustus, 1778. National Museum, Warsaw
Warsaw. Lazienki Park. The Water Palace, 1784-1795. Architect : Dominik Merlini Ignacy Krasicki. Copperplate by Jan Ligber. Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Warsaw
26 27 39 40
53 54 69 70
81 82 96
97 109 110 123 124
151 152
163 166 177
178 193
194 205 209 259
260 273 274
PLATES 13
Hugo Kolfataj. Portrait by Jézef Peszka, c. 1792. National Museum, Warsaw (Wila- néw branch)
Jan Sniadecki in the observatory of Wilno University. Water colour by unknown painter, second half of the 18th cent. Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Warsaw
Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Portrait by Karol Schweikart, 1789-1792(?). National Museum, Warsaw (Wilanéw branch)
Ozaréw, Tarnobrzeg voivodship. Manor House, second half of the 18th cent. State Institute of Art, Warsaw
General Jan Henryk Dabrowski entering Poznan on November 6, 1806. Gouache by Michat Stachowicz. Polish Army Museum, Warsaw
Sielpia Wielka, Kielce voivodship. Factory shop, first half of the 19th cent.
Stanislaw Staszic. Medallion by unknown artist, first half of the 19th cent. National Museum, Warsaw
Warsaw, Polish Bank, 1825. Architect: Antonio Corazzi. Aquatint by Friedrich Christoph Dietrich. Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
Attack on the Belvedere Palace, November 29, 1830. Aquatint by Friedrich Christoph Dietrich, based on a drawing by Jan Feliks Piwarski. Polish Army Muzeum, Warsaw
Joachim Lelewel. Lithography, probably of a drawing by N. Maurin, c. 1832, Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Warsaw
Poles in Berlin after their Release from the Moabit Prison. From a contemporary drawing published in the “Illustrierte Chronik”, Leipzig 1848
Adam Mickiewicz. Portrait by Aleksander Kaminski, 1850. National Museum, Warsaw
Juliusz Stowacki. Engraving by J. Hopwood, according to a drawing by J. Kurowski from 1838. Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Warsaw
Cyprian Kamil Norwid. Heliography according to a Paris photograph from 1856. Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Warsaw
Fryderyk Chopin. Portrait by Eugéne Delacroix
Piotr Michatowski, Portrait of an Old Peasant. National Museum, Cracow
Artur Grottger, Battle from the series Lithuania, 1864-1866. National Museum, Cracow
Jacek Malczewski, The Last Stage, 1883. National Museum, Warsaw
Bolestaw Prus. Photograph, 1910
Maria Konopnicka. Photograph, 1910. National Museum, Warsaw
Henryk Sienkiewicz. Portrait by Kazimierz Pochwalski, 1890. National Museum, Warsaw
Jan Matejko, Starczyk, 1862. National Museum, Warsaw
Maria Sklodowska-Curie. Photograph, 1913
Aleksander Gierymski, Sand-diggers, 1887. National Museum, Warsaw
Ludwik Warynski. Photograph
Stanislaw Wyspianski, Self-portrait, 1902. National Museum, Warsaw
Leon Wyczétkowski, Digging Beetroot, 1892. National Museum
Olga Boznanska, Self-portrait, 1900. National Museum, Warsaw
Stanislaw Lentz, The Strike, 1910. National Museum, Warsaw
Stanislaw Mastowski. Spring of 1905, 1906. National Museum, Warsaw
Stefan Zeromski. Photograph, 1924. Property of Monika Zeromska
Tadeusz Zelenski (Boy). Head. Sculpture by Alfons Karny
Xawery Dunikowski, Bolestaw the Bold. Tombstone, 1916-1917. National Museum, Warsaw (Xawery Dunikowski Museum branch)
Whiadystaw Skoczylas, Stone Stairs, s. 1930. National Museum, Warsaw
Henryk Kuna, Christ, 1926. Sculpture in wood
Gdynia. Harbour
313
314
326
329
347 365
371
372
381
403
414
423
424
427 428 429
442 447 467 468
469 470 471 473 477 501 502 503 509 511 569 572
573 574 575 583
MAPS IN THE TEXT
Migrations of Slavic tribes, 5th-7th cent. by H. Rutkowski
Gniezno before the 12th cent. by J. Humnicki, H. Rutkowski
The separate Polish duchies, 1138 by A. Gieysztor
The expansion of the Teutonic Order State, 1230-1329 by H. Rutkowski
The Polish Kingdom, 1320 by J. Humnicki, H. Rutkowski
Monuments of Romanesque architecture in Poland by Z. Swiechowski
The battle of Grunwald, 1410 by H. Rutkowski
Cracow, 15th cent. by J. Humnicki, H. Rutkowski
The dominions of the Jagiellonian dynasty, 15th/16th cent. by H. Rutkowski
Major centres of the Reformation in Poland, 16th and 17th cent. by A. Zaboklicka Dunin-Wqsowicz
Jesuits’ and Dissenters’ schools, 16th-18th cent. by W. Lewandowska
The Chmielnicki uprising, 1648-1653 by H. Rutkowski
Main residences of magnates, 17th and 18th cent. by A. Zaboklicka Dunin-Waqsowicz Warsaw, second half of the 18th cent. by J. Humnicki, H. Rutkowski
The school system under the Commission for National Education by W. Lewandowska, E. Rostworowski
Major military actions during the Kosciuszko Insurrection by H. Rutkowski
The Duchy of Warsaw by H. Rutkowski
The Congress Kingdom of Poland and the Free State of Cracow, 1815 by H. Rut- kowski
The November Insurrection, 1830/1831 by H. Rutkowski
Textile inudustry in the Kingdom of Poland, c. 1850 by A. Zaboklicka Dunin-Waso- WiCZ
Blast furnaces in the Kingdom of Poland and Silesia, c. 1857 by B. Kaczmarski Industry in Poland and neighbouring countries, c. 1910 by Z. Pustula, H. Rutkowski Poland, 1918/1919 by T. Ladogorski
The Silesian uprisings, 1919-1921 by T. Ladogorski
Plebiscite areas by T. Ladogorski
Density of population, 1931 by H. Rutkowski
Population of Poland according to occupation, 1936 by W. Lewandowska Industrial centres in Poland, 1918-1939 by T. Ladogorski
32 61 73 94 100 103 118 130 147
162 201 207 249 291
301 330 349
366 386
432 434 507 544 553 554 581 592 594
INSERTED MAPS
Poland, c. 963-1034 by J. Humnicki, H. Rutkowski
Poland in the second half of the 12th cent. by J. Humnicki, H. Rutkowski
The Polish Kingdom under Casimir the Great, 1370 by H. Rutkowski
Poland and Lithuania, 1466 by H. Rutkowski
The Polish Commonwealth after the Union of Lublin, 1569 by A. Zaboklicka Dunin- Wasowicz
The Polish Commonwealth during the partitions, 1772-1795 by H. Rutkowski, W. Pa- tucki
Polish participation in the European Revolutions, 1848 by A. Zaboklicka Dunin-Wq- SOWICZ
Poland under foreign rule, c. 1870 by H. Rutkowski
Poland, 1923 by H. Rutkowski
The Polish People’s Republic
48 64 112 128
160 320 416 464
560 608
DIAGRAMS
I. Growth of population in central Poland, 1000-1800 and 1800-1914 II. Growth of population in Poland, 1900-1940 III. Structure of peasant farms in Poland, c. 1900s IV. Emigration from Polish lands, 1870-1914 V. Structure of small holdings in Poland, 1921 and 1938 VI. Growth of population in Poland, 1000-1975
DIAGRAMS I, II, VI by I. Gieysztor ; III, IV, V by S. Jackowski
Genealogy of the Piasts Genealogy of the Jagiellons and the Vasas
18 20 497 499 591 608
138 182
INTRODUCTION
Poland is a country which inherited and, at the same time, played her part in the development of European culture. Situated in the heart of the conti- nent, between the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic Sea, between Ger- many and Russia, Poland came under the influence in the course of ten cen- turies of all the major migrations, conflicts and crucial economic and social changes experienced by Europe since the Middle Ages. There were times when Poland was a power of continental dimensions. There were times also when she disappeared from the political map of the world. She enjoyed on occasion great esteem in world opinion but she also sank at times into utter - oblivion.
Today Poland is the seventh largest country in Europe in size and the seventh in population. She is a member of the group of socialist countries which is associated with the Soviet Union by ties of alliance and friendship, but she also maintains lively economic and cultural relations with the na- tions of the West. From being an agricultural country, exporting grain, tim- ber, and later coal to the more prosperous communities of the West, Poland has become an industrial country and an equal partner with them in inter- national trade. The land of Copernicus, Chopin and Maria Sktodowska-Curie, of Kosciuszko and Mickiewicz is still contributing its share to common achievements of human thought and creative art.
At different times, according to the current political climate of opinion, Poland’s historical role was variously defined as that of the “bulwark of Christianity”, of the “Western bastion of the Slavs”, or of the “bridge be- tween East and West”. Poland’s rich and varied past cannot be interpreted and described by any one facile formula. In the course of history, every European country has experienced vicissitudes of fortune. Yet in this part of the world there is probably no country which can claim to have under- gone such an erratic development as Poland.
The fully developed Polish State appeared upon the stage of history in the second half of the tenth century. Dominion over the Vistula and Odra
2 History of Poland
S&S £28 84Ag eve SRZEeeC8FECE i=} oe 7 E Fes NS; = —_ T ° *® O'S & a oA Mas Oo 3 to 3 2? CeO @ YO%*rnRZ ao —= We ee < es = 73 2N op ‘5 9 a & mn a i) ca ba & A, he ° “~ ,a = a ta ro) & w»gtrvwyart sos 2 V@u’g eg o O« ie Boe a oe OS ° Be —“~r*ood ¥w =< § << Sa 9.4 Gs a mm “” 6 Soo a fQ CO. DB ERS GE oS Zee a 0% pO Eg Pa sa gees Sgr stg ee 5 Gs -Ss Nw as Of’ BseeOeg?e & My Es ee2ag™ So 8" 4,8 2 3° tH oo —s SR aAatsS&S6RARASSEE SG Ces, Pa i \ Nes Kk > ‘\ ‘ \7’: \ ges \ 8 aa ( \ $ a , F oO * / ) SO OOO Me oost 3 < __.. “So kj i USS Fe, . RRoees oO ~ > = 70091 5 > / ~y 2 \ OOS be "N LS 4 y : ae: oornt = Pees << Sas ¢ OOEL ! S = } . Ue 00z1 i a : ° . Pe ( OOLL rey ~ ° tee 0001
Y tTAeIOMO N Nu suoijius ul uoeindog
i “a 74 \ Pd - ba ee ee, g ee Pe = jys~wsn , nS i (o) se 2 ‘S ~~ ? a r o Z [ aes ‘
Ba AN SNSNCMTNG ICES OCUCHINTE GUNNS NSN GANT STRAIN NAN iH AMIN” NEAL AASO CHEM ATACISASHSPC CASES OGHGRUNS AGUS ES HSMN NSNSUSRNNRNUNNISNERURCSocetanataR Rote TR A ERR aR Rote np NNN os Soh ‘ SOP I SS SS ASA RA ENS
SOS SR ‘ passecesesseonneneneenenenereseonnes somnaneseunacusennneuesnunamunnanan anseucinerecanarerecenes Lo CE AS : SEA SE
ratetatetetetetere”
pons ee I 10881
ST TS So in SSS aS ee mes
& SSIS 0% OOS RRR Resets OC
S SRY 5 ° f Sees aa SS ers Se eeceacatt 4
a a SSS 5 > Seed OF Bt 8 ° wo ) eS Ee
: Ren SS : ON Se
; ! ‘SEE 4 eae Ae SEES NS ee
: \ SSS
SaaS Se BR B.8 A elo Re Roe ee Beate SUOH||IW Ul UOHe|ndog LF Nees
INTRODUCTION 19
(Oder) valleys was exercised with a firm hand by a hereditary ruler, asserting his sovereignty and taking part successfully in critical political struggles with the Empire, Rome, Kiev and Byzantium. The first monarchy in Poland did not survive long. In the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries we find in Polish territories a score of contending petty duchies, harrased by Tartar raids, threatened by the expansionist policies of German lords marcher and by the peaceful infiltration of German settlers, both burghers and peasants. In spite of parcellization and weakness Poland’s cultural development nevertheless followed the west European model. Settlements spread through- out the country and urban life flourished. The country experienced more- over the growth of constitutional institutions normal in the Middle Ages. Parcellization, however, was succeeded by a fresh consolidation when the last rulers of the Piast dynasty reunited Poland at the dawn of the fourteenth century. Although only a landlocked state pushed back from the Odra river and cut off from the Baltic Sea, Poland nevertheless had a vigorous life of her own and was capable of defending her independence. A political union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania concluded at the close of the fourteenth century, suddenly extended the frontiers of the Jagiellonian monarchy to the sources of the Dnieper and to the shores of the Black Sea. In this way the country became one of the major powers of Europe. Poland absorbed the learning of the Renaissance and became a wealthy and brilliant community, a granary of Europe and cradle of scholarship providing patronage to artists and a haven of refuge for thinkers who suffered persecution elsewhere. This golden age of Poland’s history was followed by a period of decline. In modern times the development of central Europe followed a course differ- ent from that of the leading countries of the West. Polish wheat was shipped to the Low Countries and England while Poland imported industrial pro- ducts from western Europe. The balance of trade was always unfavourable to the east European States, a fact which had repercussions on the develop- ment of the economy in the peculiar growth of demesne farming and the so-called “second serfdom”. The carefree and hospitable life of the Polish gentry was accompanied by a decline in the crafts, the stagnation of the towns and the oppression of the peasants. The overwhelming political su- periority of the gentry over the townsmen and the peasants destroyed the basis for the rise of an absolute monarchy in Poland. At the close of the sixteenth century the Polish Commonwealth could proudly point to its par- liamentary system, to the toleration, equality and freedom enjoyed by the gentry. In the following century however the Commonwealth was trans- formed into an oligarchy of magnates with a feeble parliament and an admin- istration reduced to impotence. The country, with a wide area open to attack on all sides and torn internally by the uprisings of Ukrainian peasants, was destined to fall victim to the greed of its powerful neighbours. Too late, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Poland began to rise out of her intellectual, economic and political sloth. It was nevertheless precisely her
2°
as r
(aa Vm sak 2 8 > Ové6t QO popcooenooocan, x 6 L Renee: ee See RC Repeane Of61 SO GZ6L A ; =f os ears OZ61L : "on 3 ee ® RRS ones
100 Kms
0061
ao Oo 78 M4 N
suoljjiu ul uoneindog
in Poland
II. Growth of population
The data for 1900 pre-1939 frontiers
1914 relate to the territory of Poland within the
INTRODUCTION 21
achievements in the field of administration and military reforms which induced Russia, Prussia and Austria to destroy the state which might become an obstacle to their expansion.
There was indeed another paradox. Having lost their own state owing to centuries of misgovernment, the Polish people were to fight with undaunted resolve for the restoration of independence, appealing to the conscience of Europe by their military endeavours, playing upon the antagonisms of rival powers and establishing alliances with the European revolutionary movements. Superficially it appeared that all these efforts were of no avail. One insurrection after another ended in defeat until finally after 1864 noth- ing was heard of the Polish cause in Europe. The whole of eastern Europe and with it Poland in fact witnessed the destruction of the last vestiges of feudalism and experienced an industrial revolution. As a consequence of the transformation induced by the capitalist era, the population of Poland more than doubled in the second half of the nineteenth century. National con- sciousness, moreover, reached the mass of the population even in areas like Upper Silesia and Pomerania which seemed near to being completely Ger- manized. When the three partitioning Powers were brought to defeat and ruin by the First World War, the Polish people were ready and capable of demanding a state of their own.
This awakening of dormant nationalism may be seen in many other European countries in the nineteenth century. Unlike the Czechs and Hun- garians and even more unlike the Balkan peoples, Poland had existed as a state up to the close of the eighteenth century and the advent of industriali- zation. Consequently, Poland had not lost her aristocracy and gentry, but on the contrary had even assimilated the upper classes in the Lithuania and parts of the Ukraine. The society which lost its independence at the begin- ning of the nineteenth century, a century of growing national awareness, still retained a social structure and a political tradition inherited from the epoch of self-government. This explains the exceptional dynamism of the Polish national struggle and the fact that it was regarded by the leaders of European revolutionary movements as a disruptive element within the Holy Alliance. This fact also explains many peculiar characteristics in the political life of Poland’s more recent history. It was the poorer, declassed section of the gentry that fought for independence up to 1863. This element was to transmit its ideals and traditions to the Polish intelligentsia, a large propor- tion of whom came from the gentry. Here are the sources of the particular role played by the radical representatives of the intelligentsia at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was they who stimulated the growth of workers’ and peasants’ movements, though unable to identify themselves entirely with them. This political tradition explains the high- minded ambition of the Polish intelligentsia apparent in the years between the two world wars, their aspiration to play the part of rulers and leaders of the nation. Those singular characteristics which have emerged in the political
22 INTRODUCTION
and social upheaval of the post-war years, and which distinguish Poland from other People’s Democracies, may perhaps be traced to this same source.
Poland’s history was determined only to a certain degree by her geo- graphical position and her role in Europe’s development. Like the rest of the continent, Poland lived through the Middle Ages, participated in the Renaissance and the age of Enlightenment and experienced the consequences of the industrial revolution. Unlike the countries of central and eastern Europe, however, Poland began to suffer, by the eighteenth century, the consequences of an economy which was retarded by comparison with that of the western European countries. In this broad frame of reference this history seeks to analyse the salient features of Polish historical development in both the decline of the Commonwealth and in the national revival after the loss of independence.
At home and abroad widely differing views of the Polish nation’s char- acteristics have been held. Poland “the Christ of nations” and “the con- science of the world”, Poland ruined by misgovernment and incapable of throwing off her anarchy, these are the widely disparate judgements. Reject- ing these concepts many historians of recent years veer towards an opposite extreme in refusing to admit that Polish history has claims to singular char- acteristics of its own and in detecting in it only the refllections of universal processes.
The truth lies somewhere between these two points of view. Account ought to be taken both of the European character of Poland’s history and of her specific and peculiar contribution to the history of Europe. This short history aims at examining the course of these two themes as they run through Poland’s past.
MEDIEVAL POLAND
by Aleksander Gieysztor
Chapter I
BEFORE THE RISE OF THE POLISH STATE
SLAVIC ANTIQUITY
Mention of Poland and the Poles first appears at the close of the tenth cen- tury in the pages of foreign chroniclers who had obtained more exact infor- mation about this people. This single fact, however, cannot serve as a point of departure for an examination of the evolution of the Poles or Poland. At this early date the names as well as the ideas which these terms represented reveal a centuries-old heritage which remained in constant evidence through the Middle Ages and into the present. The Polish language, the most signifi- cant cultural phenomenon in Poland’s history, began to emerge in a remote antiquity. Other features of a geographic, historic and ethnographic nature also hark back to the period before the rise of the Polish State.
Most probably, a pronounced language division occurred among the Slavs in the last centuries B.c. The two large groups which emerged from this division were the West Slavs, who occupied an area north of the Carpathian and Sudeten Mountains and east of the Odra river, and the East Slavs whose settlements spread east of Volhynia up to the middle Dnieper.
There was an affinity between the material cultures and the social sys- tems of the early Slavs. The language differences between the two groups were the result of geographic conditions, namely a large expanse of area in which it was impossible to maintain one uniform language despite the com- mon ethnic background designated by the old native term Slavs. However, the principal factor was the different historic evolution of each of these groups. Their individual histories were affected by the cultural and political conditions of neighbouring peoples, some of whom were integrated with the Slavs and exerted varying influences on the Slav culture.
The West Slavs emerged in the first centuries B.c, in an area occupied earlier by an older stratum of Indo-European inhabitants, from whom they most probably took the name Wends (Veneti). The subject under considera- tion is the ethnic affiliation of the people of what the archaeologists call the Lusatian culture. Though it belonged probably to an earlier ethnic stratum
26 BEFORE THE RISE OF THE POLISH STATE
Sleza mountain. Woman with Fish
Leg Piekarski. Roman imports, 2nd-3rd cent.
than the Slavs, the Lusatian culture was nevertheless absorbed completely by them. The peoples of the Lusatian culture occupied virtually the whole of contemporary Poland and reached far to the west and south west beyond the present Polish frontiers. The long centuries of peaceful development, from about 1300 to 400 B.c., years untroubled, it seems, by alien incursions, promoted a considerable uniformity in the features of the material culture. From these days and up through the Middle Ages and on, the cultural thread in our country remained unbroken, which can be seen in the features of the timber buildings, the settlements and their anthropological substratum. It may be assumed that the Lusatian culture played an important part in the formation of the West Slav culture.
It has been possible to study the cultural achievements of this people in the large fortified settlement of about 400 B.c. which has been excavated at Biskupin in the Bydgoszcz voivodship. The principal features were : primi- tive farming methods and animal husbandry, a high skill in carpentry and pottery, and the use of iron to forge weapons and some of the tools. A con- siderable section of the Biskupin settlement has been uncovered on a lake island. The old settlement comprised about 100 houses of the same size
28 BEFORE THE RISE OF THE POLISH STATE
lining eleven parallel streets all ending in one street that inscribed a sur- rounding oval line. A 15 to 19 feet high powerful wooden rampart and a structure that broke the floes and the force of the waves, surrounded the settlement. A large gate opened on the bridge that joined the island with the mainland. It may be assumed that fortified settlements of this type were the seat of the wealthier patriarchal families who protected their growing wealth from greedy neighbours.
The genesis of the West Slavs may be traced to the modification of this Lusatian culture under the influence of the Slavs. It is no accident that this change coincided with economic changes, related on the one hand to the development of iron metallurgy—with the ore mined locally from the second and first centuries 8.c.—and on the other to improvements in agri- culture. It seems that the proximity of federations of Celtic tribes helped the ancient Slavs to adopt a number of technical innovations. In the late fourth and the early third century 3B.c. the Celts reached across the lands on the Danube and the territory of Bohemia as far as Silesia where they established a settled community in the region of the Sleza mountain. The magnificent sculptures ascribed to them which are scattered on the slopes and at the foot of the mount would indicate that this was their chief centre of worship, inherited later by other peoples. Another settlement was established in Upper Silesia while Celtic influence also extended as far as western Little Poland. The assumption is that the tribal name of the Lugii may refer to those Celtic groups. Other scholars, however, place them among Slavic tribes.
THE SLAVIC WENDS AND THE GERMANS ON THE FRINGES OF ROMAN INFLUENCE
Starting with Herodotus (fifth century B.c.) the Slavic peoples were recorded by geographers in the Mediterranean basin under a variety of names. More definitive remarks pertaining especially to the Wese Slavs appear in the first and second centuries a.D. The later chroniclers speak of the Wends who lived on the Baltic seacoast west of the Vistula, east of the Sudeten Moun- tains and north of the Carpathians, occupying an area that extended to the river Dnieper. Close study of the records left by Roman writers has led to the conclusion that the Wends are Slavic in character. Approximately at the beginning of the Christian Era, these peoples were threatened by the pressure of Germanic tribes who, in a period of political activity, invaded and settled for varying lengths of time various parts of the Wend lands.
Among these Germanic peoples were the Goths who in the first decades of the Christian Era came to Pomerania from Scandinavia. They remained in a part of Gdansk-Pomerania until the third century and established trade between the lower Vistula and the Moravian Gate and the Ktodzko Pass.
ON THE FRINGES OF ROMAN INFLUENCE 29
The name of the Lugii was eventually extended to include all Celtic, Ger- manic and Slavic tribes which, no matter what their origins, lived in this area. At first the federation of the Lugii showed good will toward the Marko- manns (a Germanic tribe) but at the end of the first century concluded an alliance against them with the Roman Empire. The Burgundians, originally from Bornholm and other Scandinavian countries, lived at that time on the lower reaches of the Odra but they were soon to continue their Odyssey towards the west and the south. The Gepidae lived at the mouth of the Vis- tula. Larger German groups departed from the territories of the Slavic Wends between the second and fourth centuries and moved closer to the Roman frontier. Thus about 250 a.p. the Goths reached the Black Sea. Soon after the Gepidae followed them bringing others in their wake. It may be accepted that in the fourth century the Slavic Wends became again the sole masters of the Polish territories. In the first centuries a.D. the Wends occupied some regions of these original territories side by side with other peoples although they remained the sole inhabitants of the major section of these lands. This period marked also a broad social and economic transformation of the Wends.
Written records contain little information about this. Much more can be gleaned from abundant archaeological evidence which indicates that the Polish territories were on the fringes of the influence of Mediterranean cul- ture. When the Romans crushed the Celtic power in Gaul and in the Alpine countries, they opened trade routes to the north and east of Europe, to lands inhabited by German and Slavic peoples whose elders purchased Roman goods imported from the imperial provinces of the Rhineland, Gaul and the Danube valley. One may conclude that some of these communities knew how to set aside means for the purchase of such luxuries as glassware, vessels which bore the stamp of far-off producers (terra sigillata), amphorae filled with wine and bronze and silver vessels.
Some of the graves of that period, called the “princes’ graves”, contain an astonishing wealth of objects. Valuable Roman imports, bronze vessels, silver goblets, dice and stones used in games and statuettes of Hellenic and Roman gods indicate, that the chiefs adopted a style of life which imitated that of the upper classes in Roman provincial society. The less opulent though more numerous graves of the warriors indicate that members of wealthier families maintained a personal relationship with the leaders.
The luxury trade route from the countries of the Roman Empire ran from the direction of the Rhineland and Aquileia through the Polish terri- tories to the Baltic seaboard. Pliny the Elder wrote of the amber trade which attracted a wealthy Roman trader, who in the days of Nero set out for the Baltic from the Danubian Carnuntum near Vienna. He made such large purchases of amber that the whole Roman amphitheatre could be adorned with it. He was one of the first Romans to explore the trading conditions and routes of this region. However, it seems that go-between agents played
30 BEFORE THE RISE OF THE POLISH STATE
the dominant part in this trade. They carried skins, furs, honey, wax, some slaves and, above all, amber to frontier trade outposts in the Roman prov- inces. Impressive quantities of amber, called “the gold of the north”, were exported to the south, especially in the second century A.D. One of the stores discovered at Partynice near Wroclaw contained three tons of this valuable material. Roman silver coins made their appearance in the Slavic lands, and were in abundance in the second century, but became increasingly rare from the third century on.
News of distant lands lying north of the Carpathians reached the Med- iterranean writers through the traders. Thus in the middle of the second century, Claudius Ptolemy, the Alexandrian geographer, placed on his map the first place name in the Polish territories. Ptolemy’s Kalisia, identified with present day Kalisz on the Prosna river, lay on the amber route.
In the southern Polish territories the crafts, practiced in an earlier per- iod to satisfy domestic needs, were taken over later by specialists in some branches of production in certain regions of the territory. The development of iron smelting was based on turf ores mined in strip pits and partly, as in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains, on mined red iron ore or haematite. From the third to the fifth centuries, after the departure of the Germanic tribes who did not engage in smelting, other important smelting centres operated in an area near Cracow where fifteen centuries later there was to be built one of the most powerful metallurgical combines in the country, known as Nowa Huta. A great many primitive smelting furnaces were discovered and studied at the time when Nowa Huta was built. It is assumed that the iron produced here was exported south beyond the Carpathians.
The family community which continued as the basic unit of the social structure was undergoing diversification. Owing to the contact between the Slavic Wends and the martial Celtic and Germanic groups, certain families became engaged in fighting and looting, others in trading or even perhaps in the organization of industrial production on quite a large scale. The system employed in the production of pottery near Cracow in the first centuries A.D., has been compared with that of the Pannonian workshops which employed slave labour.
However, these phenomena were neither permanent nor prevalent. In spite of the activities of these leading families, the Polish territories were still a land of free farmers and cattle breeders who lived on self-sufficient farms. As among all the Slavs, so here too, land was held in common. This organization was based on the principle of military aid and agricultural cooperation among neighbours. The common use of pastures and forests was widespread, though families tilled their own land individually. The existing farm tools enabled some leading families to work the same strips of land continuously. However, new areas of settlement were usually brought under the plough by the majority of farmers by the more primitive burnbeat method of cultivation. A noticeable rise in the number of settlements signi-
SLAVIC MIGRATIONS AND THE AGE OF CRISES 312
fied a growth in the population. Archaeologists and historians put the hypo- thetical density of population in the second century a.D., in the area which corresponds to that of present-day Poland, at about 1.2 to 2 persons per square kilometre, or roughly a population of about 375,000.
The distribution of the settlements and the concentration of Roman im- ports would indicate several territories which correspond to the later region- al division of Medieval Poland. Several groups seemed to have gained con- siderable importance in the first centuries a.D. They settled in the vicinity of Wroctaw, Cracow and Sandomierz. This may have been the beginning of an important political organization in southern Poland, each of which embraced several tribes. In the plains of central Poland, the more significant groups of this type were settled around Poznan, Kruszwica, Leczyca and Plock. Similar communities were known in Pomerania and in the Baltic region of Pruthenia and Sudovia (Ja¢wiez). It is not known whether this phenomenon carried the seed of the rise of states on a regional scale. Not- withstanding their political activity, it would seem that these groups never advanced beyond the stage of tribal federations and that the twilight of the Ancient world engulfed in its descending shadows the Polish lands as well, retarding the formation of social classes by a few centuries.
SLAVIC MIGRATIONS AND THE AGE OF CRISES THE FIFTH TO THE SEVENTH CENTURIES
The tribal federations of Slavs were at the peak of their prosperity in the third and fourth centuries. This fact enabled large groups of Slavs to spill beyond their native area between the Odra and the Vistula and the upper Dniester and middle Dnieper.
Warrior leaders of the tribal federations of Slavs stood at the head of these expeditions which turned, especially in the fifth and sixth centuries, into migrations of large sections of the population. The economic, social and political reasons behind the Slavic migrations are not entirely clear. At any rate, it seems that the Polish lands were experiencing a period of a compara- tive population growth, because large groups of settlers issued from these regions and, as early as the fifth century, moved south to Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, areas which were completely absorbed by the Slavs. In the course of the fifth and sixth centuries they moved westwards to the area between the Odra and the Elbe which for many centuries hence was to be occupied by Slavs, who by their language and customs were most closely related to the Poles.
Conclusive evidence is available regarding the original Veleti settlements in the Polish territories, especially in Pomerania, before this people moved west to the Odra. The Serbs lived here before they moved into the Lusatian
Vea
wf é
.S) 2 & ® 2 : Se. 3 x4 e : i} ° e py e 2 SNS . : ° bs Se, Si Mure, : * > Sava oe ri . 4 ey Pome Bey x on : = aoe? ybe > 5 <i Nell oY : BLACK woeonee” a ann :
Migrations of Slavic tribes, 5th-7th cent. fe) 250 Kms
eee
1) 150 Miles
area, and south to the Danubian lands. The Obodrits lived on the Odra be- fore they moved to the lower Elbe. The Croats probably inhabited the upper Vistula before they moved off in different directions ; their main body was carried to the Sava river. In the age of Slavic migrations, some of these names denoted only enterprising groups of warriors led by princes. The Slavic population subjugated by them in the Balkans came from the great East Slavic language family.
In contrast with the impressive German march across the lands of the Roman Empire and its peripheries, the main feature of Slavic settlement
SLAVIC MIGRATIONS AND THE AGE OF CRISES 33
was the complete mastery of the occupied areas by planting settlements and by effecting a permanent slavification, embracing not only the mass of in- coming Slavs, but also other ethnic groups which assimilated the Slavic lan- guage. This expansion was facilitated by the economic, social and political cataclysm that struck the Roman Empire, and by the migrations of other barbarians across its territories. The westward thrusts of the Huns set off a chain reaction. Numerous German tribes surged in the direction of the Roman Empire and at the end of the fourth century the Slavic peoples moved into the Danubian lands which were left vacant by the departing Germans and Roman garrisons.
It is supposed that in the second quarter of the fifth century during the rule of Attila, the peoples which lived in the Polish territories were subdued by Huns. The signs may be read in the archaeological finds of southern Poland. The graves discovered in Jakuszowice southwest of Cracow have yielded a bow embossed with gold, a symbol of authority among the Huns. Teophy- laktos Simokattes, a Byzantine historian, wrote (book VI, chapters 2-4) that at the close of the sixth century an Avar Chagan (khan) sought the aid of Slav chieftains who lived on the Baltic and sent gifts to them. Their strength must have been considerable if the formidable Avars appealed to them for mili- tary and political aid against the Byzantines. In 562-567 the Avars probably not without the cooperation of some Slavic tribes, assaulted the Merovingian Kingdom, launching the attack from southern Poland, which may have been under the control of the Avar empire in one way or another. Whatever the dependency it must have been rather loose, for archaeology provides very little evidence of the presence of Avars north of the Carpathians. The Polish word olbrzym, which means giant, may have come from the name of the Avars in the same manner, as the old French term ogre may be traced to the Hungarian invasions of the tenth century.
No outline shall be given here of the Slavic migrations to the Balkans, particularly in the sixth and seventh centuries, where the East Slavs dis- played a greater vigour in establishing their settlements. It is sufficient to say that this period witnessed a regrouping of the Slav peoples. In addition to the East and West Slavs there now emerged a third group, the South Slavs. The main role in the creation of this group was played by the East Slavic elements though not without an admixture of certain West Slavic elements.
Later a further diversification made itself felt among West Slavs, in the form of a split into the Southwest Slavs, the ancestors of the later Czechs and Slovaks, and into the Northwest group, comprised of the Polish and Polabian Slavs.
The material culture of the inhabitants of Poland declined on account of the emigration of large groups of the Slavic population — west beyond the Odra and up to the Elbe, and south across the Sudeten Mountains and the Carpathians, and owing to the severance of trade ties with the now depopulated Roman provinces. There was a pronounced slump in the living
3 History of Poland
34 BEFORE THE RISE OF THE POLISH STATE
standards of the tribal elders as trade with distant lands deteriorated. The descendants of the elders depended more on domestic products than on loot from distant lands and on external trade.
This reversion to primitive culture affected chiefly the leading families. It was, however, not quite as catastrophic as in the case of the downfall of Roman grandeur and the ruin of its high intellectual culture. The Slavic pop- ulation which continued to live in rural conditions and whose demands or means of satisfying them were not exorbitant, may have breathed more freely when great potteries and metallurgical workshops, which were in no way integrated with their peaceful and easy-going life on territories held in com- mon, were abandoned or destroyed following the nomadic invasions.
The subsequent years did not bring peace. The Roman model was replaced by others. Most significant, however, was the development and expansion of the heritage of the by-gone epoch, that is the cultivation of soil and stock- breeding. Extensive burnbeat cultivation was still prevalent. It led to great mobility of settlement and internal colonization. Although intensive farm- ing with the use of the ard was still limited yet it was common enough in southern Poland as early as the fourth and fifth centuries, as is borne out by the discovery of ploughshares. As the migrations of German tribes and no- mads came to a halt, the seventh century ushered in a steady economic expansion which, though modest at first, bore promise of qualitative growth.
Meanwhile, the Slavic peoples in the Polish territories were still organ- ized into territorial tribes living under a democratic system. Byzantine ob- servers reported that all problems whether favourable or not were discussed by the Slavs at assemblies attended by all the people. Here differences among the leaders were brought to light. The assemblies appointed princes whose authority was limited, because the general assembly had the power to vote for or against war and to make grants to the chosen ruler.
In this type of society, conservative as all groups with little internal stratification, there were, however, the seeds of cultural change. Economic progress required time, but the impatience of certain sections of the com- munity speeded development. The impetus came from the narrow group of lords who were eager to turn their influence to profit by the division of la- bour, the concentration of political power, and an extension of territorial organization. With the dawn of the new age the proto-Polish tribes and peoples stood on a similar culture level to the other Slavic, Baltic and Scan- dinavian peoples. Their entry into medieval civilization still required a con- siderable re-structuring of all aspects of their social life:
Chapter IT
THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF POLAND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
The research of the last few years has established the fact that Poland and Polish nationality did not emerge suddenly in the middle of the tenth century, nor did they spring full grown from the head of Mieszko I, son of Siemomys}, the first Polish duke who is better known owing to written records and who was by and large an excellent ruler. The origin of Poland is spread over several centuries. The statesmen of that period remain anonymous. Their ac- tivity is but vaguely known while events and details are submerged in ob- livion. The period of Poland’s origins in these centuries is marked mainly by the daily effort of the people who changed the features of history by clear- ing primeval forests for arable land, by building settlements and homes and by their concern to transmit to their successors the growing material, social and spiritual heritage.
The period of emergence from obscurity, from the end of the Slavic migrations in the seventh century to the rise of a Polish State in the tenth century, was remarkable for events of special significance and long lasting consequences. The foundations of a new and diverse medieval society fol- lowing the course of feudal evolution and the development of Polish ethnic traits as distinct from the Slavic family as a whole and the West Slavs in particular, may already be perceived. Modern research has enabled closer study to be made of the economic foundations of the changes that occurred concurrently on many levels of human activity.
The general progress noted in agriculture and stockbreeding before the formation of the State, was a factor in overcoming the social and political crisis, which marked the Slavic migrations. In the early Middle Ages social organizations again began to gain control over their natural surroundings in order to increase the yield of the soil. By the clearing of trees, and the burn- ing of brushwoods, human settlements cut deep swaths into the forests, and with the use of iron ploughshares the lands around the settlements could be cultivated intensively. Grain crops, especially important in view of the growing population, seem to have been produced in larger quantities between
3°
3% THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
the seventh and tenth centuries, a time when the major parts of the Slavic lands adopted the ard and abandoned, except in remote or outlying settle- ments, the older and more primitive methods of agriculture.
The soil was the chief source of wealth in the Polish land. Its produc- tivity was related directly to the improvement of farming implements. The lighter soil of Great Poland, Pomerania and Mazovia were easy to plough. When ploughshares were armed with iron during the late period of Roman influence, it was possible to till the heavy and fertile soil of Silesia and Little Poland. The prevalence of the ard and the sickle must have effected changes in the quality of Polish agriculture as early as the tenth century. The pursuit of agriculture and cattle farming gave the landscape of early Po- land an appearance of uniform husbandry. There were regional differences of lesser importance, resulting from the abundance of wild life or bees’ nests in the forests, or from an abundance of fresh water fish. The chief mineral mined in this period was bog iron ore which was found in virtually all Polish territories. In many parts of Poland iron smelting was conducted most prob- ably as a seasonal occupation secondary to farming. Salt was extracted from salt springs by evaporation, principally at Kolobrzeg in Western Pom- erania, in the Kujawy region, near Cracow and in other local salt springs. Skills in various crafts spread gradually. Having survived the critical period between the fifth and seventh centuries, such crafts as pottery and metallurgy revived under the influence of new stimuli. Domestic products still fell far short of the luxury handicrafts imported from both near and distant coun- tries to satisfy the needs of the leading social groups.
As the upper ranks of society established their position on the new eco- nomic foundations, the severed or tenuous trade ties with other countries were reestablished. Though not numerous, the archaeological sites of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries indicate that the economy of the Slavic, proto-Polish and Baltic tribal federations, though they still bore the traits of a primitive, natural economy conducted within settled groups, neverthe- less had contacts with the external world. The trade of this period involved a small number of goods which were especially attractive to the ruling group. The most important items were weapons which domestic producers could not supply in sufficient quality and number ; next came luxury goods, such as gold and other ornaments. It is known, although this information pertains to other Slavic countries, that horses were used in the barter trade.
One of the frontier posts through which goods from and to the West had to pass was Magdeburg on the Elbe, designated by Charlemagne’s decree as one of the places to which Frankish merchants, chiefly Jews, could come to trade with the Slavs. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the items exported were principally furs and slaves despatched usually from Mainz, the emporium from which the goods were carried to Gaul, northern Italy and even Islamic Spain, where Slavic slaves were highly valued. In southern
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF REGIONAL STATES 37
Germany, Ratisbon (Regensburg) was an important market centre of a far- flung trade.
Trade with Rus (Ruthenia) was established at an early date. One of the routes between Ruthenia and central and western Europe ran through Poland as early as the ninth century. The route led from Kiev to Cracow and thence through Bohemia and Bavaria. Imports of Moravian metallurgy were also known in Polish territories.
Sea commerce on the Baltic with the distant Frisian and the closer Scan- dinavian ports gains in vigour in the course of the ninth century. Wulfstan, the voyager and informant of King Alfred of Wessex, sailed at the close of the tenth century from Haithabu (Hedeby) at the base of the Jutland penin- sula and down the Slavic coast eastwards to the market settlement of Truso- Druzno, an active buying and selling centre lying in the Vistula delta in the Slav-Pruthenian border area, not far from present lake Druzno and Elblag.
It may be inferred from written evidences supported by archaeological data that in the early Middle Ages the forest frontiers between the lands of the Balts and the Slavs were crossed by both sides. In addition to the sea and coastal routes from the mouth of the Vistula to Sambia, renowned for hez amber, the roads between the settlements of Chelmno region and the bor- ders of Pomerania led deep into the Prussian region; an important Mazovian route joined by a southern branch from south Poland ran up the Narew towards Sudovia, a region situated between Poland, Ruthenia, Lithuania and Pruthenia, which was for many centuries a neuralgic cross-road of economic and political interests in this part of eastern Europe.
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF REGIONAL STATES
The early medieval trade expanded concurrently with the organization of the larger states which were capable of insuring a steady supply of the raw material sought by foreign merchants. The materials were collected from the tributes exacted from the population by their rulers. The rulers also guaran- teed a supply of slaves, principally, though not exclusively, war hostages.
In the Polish territories, as among the neighbouring peoples, this trade satisfied the demands of the higher social classes which cut themselves off from the territorial rights held in common. These people accumulated more arable land and more cattle because they worked their farms with slave labour made up of war captives and native serfs. As the accumulated movable wealth was inherited, the lords had a greater opportunity for conducting wars, for pursuing political interests and for leading the free population. Representatives of this group stood at the head of larger territorial federa-
38 THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
tions and compelled the population to make free gifts and imposed tributes for the ducal treasury and for their own political activity. Wars of expan- sion and loot were conducted by means of a standing group of warriors and also troops raised by levy in the whole of the political organization.
The new type of organization was heralded by the emergence of the castle-town (gréd, castrum), a fortified settlement raised as a centre of authority by several powerful families whose political influence extended over the surrounding still fairly small territories. The archaeological remains of these wood and earth works are studied today as evidence of Polish his- tory. The oldest, built between the seventh and ninth centuries, are of two types. There are the small forts built as seats of the leaders which were known in Great Poland, Lower Silesia and also in western Mazovia. The second type are the large structures which served as a refuge for the whole population of a given area. We know, however, from Little Poland that the whole of the fortified area was not occupied permanently. Political power vested in the most powerful economic groups tended to concentrate in both types of such castle-towns. The political centres began to show great vigour. This fact may be ascribed to the aspirations of lords who, in the struggle with their rivals and with the population from whom they exacted tribute, created the military and financial foundations of the state structure.
Among the Slavs and the Balts the political struggle for power took place most likely at the general assemblies of freemen called the wiec. Here the antagonisms between the interests of the freemen and the ambitions of the notables and between the rival tendencies of individual notables, came to light. Actually, policies of war and peace were resolved by the assembly’sbody of aldermen drawn from among the notables, who also chose or deposed their leader, the duke (Polish knedz, later ksiqdz and ksigze, latin dux).
The dukes were originally, and for a long time, only military command- ers, but they strove to increase their wealth and to secure office for life. Later they tried to make this honour hereditary also. The success of their endeavor depended on what interest could be excited among the notables in external expansion. Among the Polish and Russian Slavs, this expansion led to concentration of political power in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. Among the Balts, this power did not cross the low threshold of territorial and castle-town districts until the emergence of the Lithuanian State in the thirteenth century, their expansion having been checked by powerful Polish and Russian neighbours.
In the early Middle Ages, the duke led a small group of warriors which the Slavs called a druzyna. This institution was indispensable to the success of authority, though the warrior group alone did not constitute a state. The state emerged from a struggle waged by the duke, the notables and the war- riors on the one hand, against the free members of territorial communes on the other, upon whom they sought to impose heavy burdens to support the treasury and to defray military costs. The enactment of tribute and gifts
Proboszczowice. Stronghold, 9th cent.
signified that a State machinery was in operation. The ruling groups had a share in the income of the treasury and by this fact indentified their inter- ests with the policies of the highest authority, working to strengthen its po- sition internally and externally.
The factors which secured an uneasy balance in this antagonistic social structure are noteworthy. One of these, and not the least important, was the fact that the free population still constituted the overwhelming majority in the expansionary and defensive enterprises undertaken by the political organi- zation, which also offered a chance of development for many of the inhabit- ants. They were still integrated by a common faith and belief, a common lan- guage and culture, a fluidity between the social groups and the way of life of individual groups of the population.
A record written in the eastern part of the Carolingian Empire, most probably immediately after 843, and called the Bavarian Geographer (De- scriptio civitatum ad orientalem plagam Danubit), gives an account of the organization of the Slavic and Baltic political associations of the ninth century. Several other ninth and tenth century texts fill in the picture and disperse the mists of anonymity surrounding certain phenomena, which at this date had a long history of evolution. Informants of the Carolingian of-
40 THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
4 7
Lezno. Cult stone, 10th cent.
ficials knew comparatively a great deal about the nearest neighbours of the Frankish State ; but less was known about the territorial organizations that lay on the trade routes to the east and very little indeed about the political institutions of the lands of the Slavs and the Balts in the remoter areas.
What were the oldest Polish territorial organizations ?
In Silesia we find at least five territorial organizations : the Dziadoszanie (Dadodesani), Bobrzanie, Slezanie (Sleenzani), Opolanie (Opolini) and Go- leszyce (Golensizi). A large group of the Polanie (Polanes) inhabited all of central Poland. Some scholars hold that the term Polanes was preceded by Ledzice (Lendizi) and that this term was extended from central Poland to embrace various other regions as far as the Ruthenian boundary, where the Poles were known as Lachy ; they were called by the Baltic peoples the Lenkai and by the Magyars (Hungarians) the Lengyel. It is probable, how- ever, that the term Ledzice was first applied to the south-eastern strip of proto-Polish lands on the forefield of Sandomierz. Written evidence reveals two smaller regions, one of the Wolinianie (Velunzani) and the Pyrzyczanie (Prissani) and of other smaller groups whose names have become extinct. Another large regional group known as the Vislanes (Wislanie) lived in south- ern Poland on the upper Vistula and its tributaries.
Virtually nothing is known of the rest of the Polish lands and of their
THE ORIGINS OF THE POLANES 41
é
organization. The geographic extent of these groups mentioned above is often an object of scholarly controversy. It is possible to determine the territorial delimitations, bounds with permanent settlement, by the names which these large and small organizations carried, but only in rare instances did the names survive a greater length of time. This is eloquent evidence of the po- litical ferment in which the peoples who bore these names lived. Unrecorded battles and invasions, attempts to consolidate large areas and their subsequent disintegration, was most likely the content of their political history.
Two major centres proved capable of survival. One of these formed around Cracow, the capital of the small State of the Vislanes, and the sec- ond rose around Gniezno, the capital of the Polanes.
In the second half of the ninth century the Moravian neighbours con- sidered the Vislanes “very powerful” for having opposed the political ex- pansion and the attempts at conversion to Christianity that came from Moravia. However, this opposition ended in disaster for the duke of the Vislanes and his ]ands were incorporated into the Moravian State. The Life of Methodius, an apostle from Moravia, gives an account written by a con- temporary: “The pagan duke, very powerful among the Vislanes, defied the Christians and caused them harm. Methodius sent to him and said ‘My son, it would be well for you to accept baptism of your own free will in your own land, for otherwise, taken captive you will be forced to accept Christi- anity in a foreign land. Remember my words!’ And so it came to pass”. .
Despite its favourable geographical situation and it would seem a swift- er, economic development, southern Poland could no longer fulfil the role of being the nucleus of a growing State, owing to the pressure of more powerful neighbours to the south, Moravia and Bohemia, and later to the influence of the Polanes to the north. ;
THE ORIGINS OF THE POLANES
The Polanes inhabited a territory on the middle Warta. Their expansion was most fruitful in political consequences. The term Polanes—Polanie is undoubtedly derived from the Slavic pole, the word for field. This testifies to the agricultural nature of settlement in an area under permanent culti- vation, though surrounded and cut up by forests. Very little is known as yet about the earliest history of this political federation. The large expanse of territory inhabited by the Polanes in the tenth century would indicate that their conquests must have begun at least in the middle of the ninth century. The duke, who ruled in Gniezno, succeeded in uniting in a state of consjderable scope the smaller territories around such castle-towns as Poz- nan, Kruszwica, Lad and Kalisz and to set it on a course of continued terri- torial expansion.
42 THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
Recent archaeological excavations have yielded tangible evidence about the castle-town of Gniezno, which the written records name as the capital of the Polish duke in the tenth century. This well fortified town was founded between the eighth and ninth centuries and expanded later several times. The names of the dynasty to which Mieszko I belonged are known. The name itself testifies to the fact that the ruling house was of native origin. Mieszko I succeeded to a throne upon which not a few predecessors had sat : his father Siemomysl, his grandfather Leszek (also Lestek or Lestko) and great grand- father Siemowit preceded by yet another duke, called ChoSciszko, a person who cannot be identified with the legendary Piast. There is a vague tradition that this dynasty ascended the throne by an act of violence committed most probably in the second half of the ninth century. Medieval history created the legend that the dynasty was founded by Piast, a peasant of the Duke Popiel from the preceding dynasty. Modern history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bestowed upon the ruling house the dynastic name of Piast, although in the Middle Ages these rulers called themselves “the fam- ily of Polish dukes”.
The shaping of the Polish State started a hundred, if not more, years earlier than about the year 963 when Mieszko I led Poland onto the stage of European history. Mieszko I and his predecessors expressed the interests of the small group of lords who surrounded them. The organization of a strong Polish State accorded not only with the goals and interests of the centre of authority with its seat at Gniezno and not only did it protect the popula- tion from foreign invasion, but also insured a distinct ethnic and cultural evolution to the native elements. The bell of history had sounded for the West Slavs. The fact that the German State had frustrated the political devélopment of the Polabian Slavs, led eventually to their loss of independ- ence and to their gradual, but final disappearance from the map of Europe. After 955, following the twin victory of Otto I over the Hungarians and the Slavs, the Polanes brushed against the mounting influence of large power that was rising in the west.
The leaders of the Polanes showed considerable political sense at this hour of the birth of their State. The prospects awaiting them were clearly extremely attractive unlike those offered to the small Polabian or Pruthenian States. It was incumbent upon them to meet the challenge of history. The prospects were of expansion which promised to strengthen the central organi- zation of the State, which was the repository of every type of revenue, loot and prisoners. One of the consequences in the evolution of an expansionary political organization was the early emergence among the Polanes of the authority of a hereditary duke. However, this did not preclude the fact that the lords had to give their approval to the manner in which the title was transferred to the descendents.
A large area was united in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. It embraced, even before the reign of Mieszko I, a wide expanse of plain,
THE SPIRITUAL CULTURE ON THE EVE OF THE UNIFICATION 43
and therefore all of central Poland, the later Great Poland, the lands of Leczyca and Sieradz and all of Mazovia. It is quite probable that at this early date the Polanes had already reached across the Land of Chetmno for suzerainty over Gdansk-Pomerania, which was conveniently connected with central Poland by the course of the lower Vistula and roads alongside both its well populated banks. Apart from this loosely-connected territorial group there was still the northern zone of the lake and coastal countries of Western Pomerania ruled by various dukes and local lords, and the uplands of Si- lesia and Little Poland, embraced by Bohemian influence.
Most of these territories were drawn together by their similar social evo- lution. Physical-geographic links between the basins of the Odra and the Vistula, as well as the cultural, ethnical and lauguage similarities, were con- ducive to unification. These factors were very important to the cohesion of early medieval states, although their architects did not always take them into account, trying instead, with varying success, to extend their rule beyond the related ethnic groups.
THE SPIRITUAL AND MENTAL CULTURE ON THE EVE OF THE UNIFICATION OF THE POLISH STATE
What common cultural heritage could attract to each other the population of the Polish territories in the tenth century ? It is not easy to distinguish the features inherited from earlier developments and the flowering of the Slav community, from the changes introduced when the new political system began to emerge.
A most notable feature of the beliefs held by the Slavic peoples is the subservient role of their pagan religions to the needs of the agricultural pop- ulation. They worshipped fire and the sun, a mysterious power to the people of that age which gave them the means of livelihood, warmth and a good harvest, but one that could show its anger by causing drought, by hurling lightning bolts and wreaking fire. They worshipped the life giving properties of the mother earth. A few relics that survive in folk customs would indicate that there was worship of water, of the springs, rivers and lakes, though this was not as important among the pagan Slavs. Mythical creatures were invoked in forests under trees of venerable age or of unusual appearance, and in enclosures designated as sacred groves. Here the people worshipped. Here auguries were taken and large sacrificial feasts were held with gifts from the first fruits to insure a good harvest for the year.
The most important cult, however, was sun worship, which must have come down from a very remote past as evidenced by the fact, that the chief god heaven and thunder was known by the common name of Perun to many of the Slav peoples. According to ninth century Arabic
44 THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
accounts about the harvest rites practised by the Slavs, a handful of grain was cast upwards to the sky to propitiate the gods. Until the late Middle Ages, the Polish nobility took the oath by raising the hand to the sun.
Inherited from ancient times, this cult of the gods and of the phenomena of nature was practised on a family or local scale. The sacrifices were made by the head of the family or by one of the elders on behalf of the community. There were soothsayers who told fortunes and cast spells, who turned back evil and foretold good luck and who also acted as medicine-men.
There is reason to believe, that as the new society emerged in the Polish lands, attempts were made to extend the scope of some cults and to invest them with political meaning, or at any rate, to bind them to the centre of authority. Among the Polabian Slavs this was accomplished by evolving more elaborate sacrificial rites and by establishing special servants around the personification of the chief god. There are traces of a similar effort in the Polish territories. We know that the Sleza-Sobétka mountain, whose lone peak looms in the middle of the fertile plain of Lower Silesia was a centre of a pagan cult at the close of the tenth century. “It was greatly honoured by all inhabitants”, wrote Thietmar Bishop of Merseburg (lib. VII, c. 59), “owing to its hugeness and purpose, for magic rites were performed here.” Archaeological evidence of a ninth century cult centre was discovered on the summit of Mount Lysiec, later called Swiety Krzyz (Holy Cross) in the central Polish massif. This was a 1.5 kilometres (about a mile) long stone wall that surrounded the summit of that mount.
The people had stone images and wooden gods. The heads of some of the oak statues have come down to our times. A bearded and moustached head of a natural size (22.5 cm together with the neck) carved in oak with a sure hand was found on a lake island at Jankowo, southeast of Gniezno. The hole at the base of the neck was made for fixing the head on a figure or post. Another head was discovered in the basin of the upper Warta, thereby offering tangible proof of the Old Ruthenian chronicle’s story of the eradi- cation of pagan cults, by casting the images into the water. Several large roughly carved stones have been preserved in central and northern Poland. They are anthropomorphic in character as may be seen by the three images on the rock of Lezno in Gdansk-Pomerania. The Life of St. Adalbert charged that the Slavs worshipped stone and wood instead of god (Vita, I c. 1).
The people worshipped their ancestors by invoking the ghosts of the forefathers. There was a gradual change in the funeral ritual. Owing to the influence that came from the south, from the Christian area of Moravia, cremation was abandoned and the bodies of the dead were buried. The vic- tory of Christianity accelerated this process of change which, however, was completed only as late as in the twelfth century. The Mazovian custom of surrounding and covering the body with rocks has remained to this day as a trace of local beliefs.
Although little is known of the cult and the rites, there is reliable evidence
THE SPIRITUAL CULTURE ON THE EVE OF THE UNIFICATION 45
furnished by folklore and ample illustration provided by later day medie- val records, regarding the various kinds of magic spells and taboos, which the Christian clergy combated for many centuries.
The general level of intellectual ideas may be assessed by means of lin- guistic data, and especially the vocabulary, and from the abundant ethno- graphic evidence common to all the Slavs. On this basis it may be accepted that prior to the ninth and tenth centuries, when new and intensive intel- lectual and cultural contacts were established with the outside world, all the Slavic peoples, including those in the Polish territories, had a consider- ably diversified vocabulary. They had words not only to describe ideas re- lating to concrete objects used in their daily life, to the material culture and technical knowledge and to information about nature, but also words design- ating quite elaborate abstract ideas, which would testify to a knowledge of the basic phenomena of abstract thought.
The Slavs were broken up into language groups and began to evolve internally along different lines at an early period. The language group that settled the valleys of the Vistula and the Odra was uniform for genetic rea- sons because for centuries, at least from about 500 B.c., it had lived on the same territories, which may be regarded as the cradle of the Slavs. The ver- nacular spoken in these lands began to differ in the early Middle Ages from. that spoken by the neighbours to the west, the Polabian and Czech Slavs, although the precise chronology of this event is a controversial matter.
Archaeological excavations offer a better view of various aspects of cul- ture among the earliest Poles. The modest finds provide evidence of an art that was as little varied as the society of the early Middle Ages. The need for monuments found expression in the mounds of earth raised as trib- ute to a great leader, or duke of the regional political organization. Few of the mounds have survived to our times. The most prominent height is the mound, called the tumulus of Krakus, which looms above Cracow on the right bank of the Vistula, a work of the seventh century, which is an impressive technical achievement of a society in which the territorial com- munities of free farmers were still a dominant feature. The mound is about 17 m (56 feet) high with a diameter of about 61 m (200 feet) and a volume of 16,000 cubic metres (571,000 cubic feet).
Art handicrafts, metal objects, especially weapons and ornaments, were imported from the Rhineland, Scandinavia, the land of the Avars and Mo- ravia. By the early ninth century, Arabic silver coins and objects made by Oriental silversmiths, were brought in by way of the Baltic. Before the middle of the tenth century, the Slavic countries on the Baltic organized their own handicraft industries, imitating the Arabic filigree work, to satisfy the growing demands of their native lords. From Ruthenia there were the weaver’s shuttles made of pink Volhynian slate glazed baby rattles.
Pottery used in daily life which appear in great abundance in excavations from before the tenth century represent a definitely native trend in orna-
46 THE ORIGINS OF POLAND
mentation. The simple though varied decorative themes could be executed under primitive conditions of production, and it seems highly probable that they were performed by women as a home craft. On the vessels from north- ern Poland the grouping of all kinds of lines, zigzags, herring bone design and arcs exhausted the decorative possibilities. We may assume that the geometric design was strongly entrenched and had a long history here. In southern Poland the designs were arranged in stripes. This pattern may have resulted from the fact that the pots, or parts of them, were shaped on a pot- ter’s wheel. This technique spread across the whole of Polish territory by the tenth century, and the making of pottery became a trade performed by men, who worked in shops that were attached to the castle-towns.
Although the level of the Slavic civilization cannot compare even with the reduced and barbarianized heritage of the Mediterranean culture, and even less with Oriental culture, yet it did not differ from the culture of other Scandinavian and Baltic peoples, who were new members of the large fam- ily of European races. The Slavic civilization was based on many centuries of native achievement which survived and defined their distinct character through the ages and to the present day. From earliest times, the Polish people participated in the heritage of the general Slavic traits and made contributions which were distinctly their own. Only later, after the accept- ance of Christianity, did they establish cooperation with the more distant German and Latin neighbours, and also with the closer neighbours, Ruthenia and Hungary.
Chapter III
THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATE AND THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLAND IN 966
The second half of the tenth century marked the consolidation of the State machinery placing it on firm territorial foundations. Although the Polish State arose from the former state of the Polanes, there are reasons to view the political organization ruled by that energetic Duke Mieszko as in many respects a novel achievement, effected during a turbulent transition to a high- er form of organization. Ibrahim ibn-Yaqub, a Jewish traveller from dis- tant Spain, wrote in 966 that the country of Mieszko, the King of the North, was the most extensive of the four known Slav states (the Obodrits—in present day Mecklenburg ; the Bohemians ; the Bulgars ; and the Poles). Ac- cording to his report, the Polish State had an elaborate fiscal system, with tribute paid to the ducal court which performed the function of the country’s central administration. Tribute was used to pay the rank and file of the knights living in the environs of the castle-towns and to maintain a stand- ing and battle seasoned squad (druzyna).
Archaeological data reveal that at least a score of castle-towns were re- built in the second half of the tenth century or built afresh on new founda- tions, and that there were important changes in the re-distribution of the castle-towns to locations that suited the needs of a more extensive State. The network of administrative, fiscal, defense and judiciary organs extended to all parts of the land and united the components into a single whole, which was governed personally by the duke and a circle of lords associated with him. The towns enjoyed the services of the peasant population which was compelled to pay tribute and to render services for the benefit of the lords of the castle-town and their garrisons of knights. Almost all these garrisons, whether deep in country or on its borders, were protected by a network of obstacles and fortifications in their approaches. Traces of these constructions remain in contemporary place names such as Zawady (Obstacle), Stupie (Post), Stréze (Guards) and others. The organization of the administration
48 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
must also have led to the fixing of State boundaries by the annexation of small peripheral territories which, though independent, nevertheless vacillated in their fealty between one more powerful neighbour and another.
Mieszko’s personal ability is evident in his initiative and energetic mili- tary and diplomatic activity. His vision embraced Europe from Rome to Kiev and from Hungary to Scandinavia. Owing to his great talent he could successfully undertake to carry out tasks which were also supported by his lords. The first task was to buttress the internal structure of a State organi- zation constructed with admirable ingenuity, and then to extend the State’s administration over territories which were gravitating towards the Polish State by ethnic kinship, indispensable to a Polish State if it was to emerge safe, and sound from the competition with the states of central and east Europe, which were also consolidating their power in the tenth century. The second of these tasks was completed in the last few years of Mieszko’s rule, from 989 to 992. The frontiers of the State were extended to the Baltic coast, from the mouth of the Odra to the mouth of the Vistula, and in- cluded all of southern Poland from the western boundaries of Silesia to the upper reaches of the Wieprz river. The success may be ascribed to the pro- nounced internal cohesion in which a major role was played by the consoli- dation of the apparatus of authority further strengthened by the acceptance of Christianity in 966.
The consequences of Christianization extended to all aspects of life, though not to all at one and the same time. The introduction of Christianity by the court was in the first place a political act. The conversion of the country was a necessity to the group which was building a powerful new State. Not only in Poland but also in other Slavic and in Scandinavian societies was this group alive to the fact, that a new system of beliefs and views was necessary to consolidate the group itself, and at the same time to exert an influence on the whole of society at large, in order to integrate it with the new State organization. Not without reason did the local Pruthenian leader of the opposition to the Polish mission of Bishop Wojciech (Adalbert) fear the alien Christian law under the cover of which the Poles sought to expand their power over their northern neighbours. In the same manner, the tribal duke, in the borderland town of Sudovia preferred to trust his own gods when he welcomed Brunon of Querfurt.
There was no elaborate hierarchical system in the pagan religion of the Poles. Slavic rulers, who sought to reinforce their new States with a system of ideas, tried occassionally to reorganize and centralize the pagan religions. Tribal beliefs were organized and firmly implanted, as was the case in Kiev, before the Christian religion was ultimately accepted. Elsewhere the hier- archy of the priests of the chief god was raised in status, examples of which may be found among the Polabian Slavs and in Pomerania. At that time Pomerania reverted to pagan beliefs and cast off Polish suzerainty. The most advantageous and effective solution of both the internal and the exter-
» —_— (Wtodzimier2)
Dan, Co | | Conquests of Boleslaw thé Brave Pressburg i (Bratislava) O Boundaries of the Polish State in 1031 os T Archbishoprics, bishoprics
+ Monasteries
am. 9074/79-X-30 218-10 285 agz
PWN Warsaw 1979 mprint PPWR.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATE 49
nal political pressures exerted by the neighbouring Christian countries upon the pagans was to accept Christianity while independence was maintained. This course was followed in the late eighth century by the Slovene and Croat dukes, in the ninth century by the Bulgarian, Moravian, Bohemian and Serb dukes, in the tenth century again by the Bohemian as well as by the Ruthenian and Hungarian dukes ; in the north by the Scandinavians.
The Christian Church gave its sanction to the new social structure, lent support to and extended the authority of the duke. It provided models of organization and people well equipped to conduct correspondence and main- tain international relations as well as to carry on the internal administration. The Church threw the gates wide open to the cultural heritage of the ancient world and to the achievements of the early Middle Ages by introducing writing, that basic tool of culture, and by establishing contact with more highly developed centres of culture, education and art.
The political conditions attendant upon Poland’s conversion were ad- vantageous to the country. Nothing is known of any kind of foreign pres- sure to christianize Poland. It is clear, however, that the decision to accept Christianity was made in order to strengthen her position with regard to the two Catholic neighbours in the west, Germany and Bohemia. Hence, this decision was justifiable as a measure of political expediency and to in- sure Poland equal rights in international relations. The choice between the Eastern and Western Church was determined by Poland’s proximity to countries that professed the Roman Catholic faith and by the close political ties with Catholic Bohemia. Embers of the Slavic rites, surviving from the Moravian State, still flickered in Bohemia, but the Court and the Church of Bohemia had close ties with the Church organization of Bavaria. There is no conclusive evidence available that the Slavic rite survived the Moravian period in Cracow or that it had been implanted there in the tenth and elev- enth centuries.
The baptism of the Polish duke and his courtiers occurred in 966 in an agreement with the Bohemian Premyslids, a dynasty which had a year ear- lier provided Mieszko with a wife named Dobrava. Emperor Otto I de- clared his support and confirmed the appointment of the first Polish bishop. The first mission, comprised of churchmen from the Holy Roman Empire, was headed by Bishop Jordan who, it is presumed, came from lower Lor- raine, perhaps from Liége or from Italy. Bishop Jordan assumed the govern- ment of an embryonic Church organization. There may have been only one diocese extending over the whole of Mieszko’s State and directly subordi- nated to the Apostolic See. The Polish mission’s independence of the German Church must be regarded as evidence of the political perspicacity of the Polish ruler as well as evidence of his advantageous position in relation to Otto I who needed the Polish duke’s support in his struggle with the more powerful State of the Veleti that lay west of the Odra river. The Christian name of Lambert, which recurs in the ducal family (carried by Prince Lam-
4 History of Poland
50 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
bert, son of Mieszko I, and by his grandson, King Mieszko II Lambert) was the name of the patron saint of the cathedral of Liege. Other western in- fluences noted in the earliest Polish clergy came from Ratisbon (Regensburg) and Augsburg. Mieszko I was known to worship at the grave of St. Udalrich at Augsburg.
Although the Church organization of Poland subsequently reverted to the model established by the Holy Roman Empire, it was nevertheless Bo- hemia, then still without a bishop of her own, which first helped the Poles adopt the Church terminology through the agency of her clergy and con- tacts between the Bohemian abbeys and the earliest Church of Poland. In consequence the terminology of the Polish Church is derived from that of Bohemia, Moravia and indirectly of Bavaria. It ought to be remembered that for many years before this, Christianity had exerted an influence on Little Poland, which was not governed by Mieszko I, preparing the ground for the conversion of his country. The Moravian mission which came to the land of the Vistanes at the close of the ninth century did not find the political conditions favourable to its aims, and there is reason to doubt whether the faint traces of a cult of the Moravian saints found in southern Poland can be connected with the mission of Methodius. On the other hand, the Bohemian mission of the tenth century did achieve its aim. For a time the Church of Prague maintained Bohemian influence north of the Car- pathians.
POLISH BOUNDARIES ESTABLISHED IN THE ODRA AND VISTULA BASINS
The Polish-Bohemian alliance helped Mieszko I adopt certain elements of State organization which opened the door to foreign cultural influence. In the political sense this alliance covered Mieszko’s southern flank during his campaign to conquer Western Pomerania. The country at the mouth of the Odra played an extremely important role in the economy of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Baltic littoral with some of its ports, such as Wolin and Szczecin on the southern coast, became a powerful factor in the exten- sive commerce through the northern Ruthenian lands and to the Arab East. Large amounts of silver extant among the great many treasuries of Pomer- ania, Great Poland and Mazovia came this way from the Near East. In the tenth century, Poland entered the orbit of world commerce and politics via the Baltic. In the course of several decades, Mieszko tried to establish him- self on the Baltic seabord from the mouth of the Odra as far as Pruthenia. For a number of reasons Western Pomerania became the most alluring prize.
About 963 Mieszko I, rex Misaca as the Saxon chronicler Widukind called him, suffered a defeat at the hands of the Veleti who, living beyond
POLISH BOUNDARIES IN THE ODRA AND VISTULA BASINS 51
the Odra, also reached out for the whole area at its mouth. Trying to safe- guard his position with regard to the Holy Roman Empire by paying tribute for the contested territory, Mieszko arrived at the mouth of the Odra in 967. In 972, he defended his prize by defeating Margrave Hodo, who had been greatly disquieted by Mieszko’s progress, at Cedynia at the confluence of the Warta and the Odra. In 979 Mieszko successfully repulsed a German expedition led by Otto II and soon established relations with the regency which ruled the Empire. The Polish State held its boundary on the Baltic and the Odra and also established political relations with Scandinavia. Evi- dence of these ties is established by the marriage of the daughter of Mieszko I, Swietostawa, identified by historians as Sigrid Storrada, first to Eric Seger- saller, King of Sweden and Denmark, and then to Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark. She is known as the mother of Canute the Great.
Under Mieszko Poland’s main problems came down to matters that were of vital importance to the Polish plans, in short establishing access to the Pomeranian ports and participating in the goods and metal exchange of that time. Apart from the ties with the Bohemians Mieszko allied himself with the Holy Roman Empire to fight the common foe, the federation of the Veleti. This agreement proved valuable when the Poles parted company with Bohemia.
The territory of the Polish State was finally rounded off in the war with Bohemia for Silesia and Cracow, which in 989-992 Mieszko incorporated into his dominions. The order and chronology in which these lands were conquered is still a subject of controversy. The latest historical and archaeolo- gical data point to the different characteristics and to the high level of the economy and culture of the Polish highlands. Incorporated in the Piast dominions they immediately began to play a prominent role and drew the country into political problems resulting from the proximity of Bohemia, Hungary and Ruthenia.
Mieszko I took it upon himself to perpetuate his acquisitions in the south and in the north by strengthening the Church. It is likely that he had hoped to achieve what was ultimately accomplished by his son, that is to set up a Church metropolis and a Polish archbishop who was to crown the future sovereigns of Poland. Evidence of these diplomatic moves is provided in a document known by the first two words as Dagome index. The document contained a description of the Polish boundaries and of the dedication of the capital town of Gniezno and its environs to St. Peter by Mieszko, that meant a submission of Poland to the special protection of the Pope, a re- ligious rather than political tutelage, for Papal power was weak at this time.
Poland, like some of the Scandinavian and Slavic countries and like Hungary, turned away from the archaic phase of development of her own free will. Poland accepted Christianity and by the same token entered the Christiana respublica, as this loose cultural federation was called by the contemporaries. Unlike the Polabian Slavs, Poland was not the object of the
$2 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
missionary policies of its Christian neighbours. On the contrary, Poland her- self intended to perform a missionary role among her heathen neighbours : the Pomeranians, Pruthenians and Petcheneguians. The architects of the new States were quick to see that the values represented by the Church and the acceptance of its cultural contributions went beyond the core of the policies professed by an Empire which called itself Roman, but which in its essence was Teutonic. The conflict that arose between the ambi- tions of these rulers and the intentions of the German State with regard to
the Church was to be resolved by a test of strength on the diplomatic arena and the battle field.
THE POLISH EMPIRE UNDER BOLESLAW THE BRAVE
Upon the death of Mieszko J in 992, the majority of the lords declared them- selves in favour of maintaining the unity of the State. This attitude enabled Bolestaw, eldest son of Mieszko, to drive out his three younger brothers, born to Mieszko’s second wife, Oda, daughter of Dietrich, Margrave of the North March. Another ruler endowed with a powerful personality ascended the Polish throne. He gave the country thirty three years of energetic po- litical activity and brilliant military operations as he fought to extend his country’s boundaries beyond the territory of the State.
In the first years of his reign, Poland continued the policy of cooperation with the Empire, established by Mieszko in the waning years of his life. The Holy Roman Empire evaluated the events that had come to pass east of the Odra as the birth of a new and vigorous State whose alliance would be of immense value. Interesting prospects of an agreement seemed to have pre- sented themselves during the reign for Otto III, who in the year 1000 came to Gniezno to visit the grave of his friend St. Adalbert who had died a mar- tyr for the Christian faith while conducting a mission to Pruthenia on the instructions of Bolestaw. The negotiations at Gniezno were a conspicuous Polish success. Gniezno was established as a metropolis of the Church, new bishoprics were set up in Wroclaw, Kolobrzeg and Cracow, and the inde- pendence of the Polish duke was recognized. The political programme of Otto III, which proposed to bring Poland into the universal empire as an equal of the German, Italian and Burgundian kingdoms, failed to win the support of the German lords. Under his successor Henry II they launched and continued a long war against Poland.
This meant a reversal of alliances. The pagan Veleti became allies of the Christian King of Germany who also received aid from Bohemia. Poland turned, for assistance to Hungary.
Bolestaw proved to be a formidable neighbour to the Empire. At the close of the tenth century he strove to extend his rule beyond the ethnic
THE POLISH EMPIRE UNDER BOLESLAW THE BRAVE 53
Bolestaw the Brave, c. 1000
boundaries of Polish territories. In 1004, he tried to unite Poland and Bo- hemia under his way, but was checked by Henry II and by the Bohemian lords. Luzyce (Lusatia) and Milsko (Milzenland), lands of the Polabian Slavs which Boleslaw the Brave wished to annex in order to secure the western boundaries of Silesia, became the bone of contention in the subse- quent Polish-German conflict. Bolestaw managed to hold on to Moravia for several years thus establishing an analogous Polish march in the south. Bolestaw the Brave conducted war with the Holy Roman Empire in three separate stages : from 1004 to 1005, from 1007 to 1013 and from 1015 to 1018. The war was concluded by the peace of Bautzen (Budi$yn) which left the controversial territories in Polish hands. The war revealed the mili- tary power and the abilities of the Polish commanders as well as the political acumen of Bolestaw who used every means to penetrate Germany with the purpose of weakening the opponent. Through the marriage of Mieszko, his
THE CRISIS OF THE FIRST POLISH MONARCHY 55
son, with Richeza, the daughter of Herenfried Ezzon, the Palatine of Lor- raine, Bolestaw allied himself with the lords of the western borders of the Empire who were in opposition to the German King. Bolestaw opposed the power of the Empire, superior to that of Poland, with a front that embraced lords, knights and peasants who were roused to take arms in defense against the invader. Despite the heavy burden imposed upon the country, the war was ultimately of benefit to the Polish State. The war led the social forces and more specifically the Polish ruling group to consolidate their ranks.
In 1018 Bolestaw led a successful war of intervention in Kiev on behalf of Prince Svatopolk, his son in law, and annexed to Poland the disputed borderland territory on the upper Wieprz and Bug with the principal castle- towns of Czerwien on the Huczwa river and the lands on the upper San including Przemy$l. The Polish ruler stood at the peak of his success. From Kiev he sent triumphant letters to the Byzantine and Roman Emperors.
In 1025, at the very end of his life, Bolestaw took advantage of the uneasy internal situation of Germany and assumed the royal crown. His son Mieszko II, who succeeded him that same year, also had himself crowned, emphasizing by this act the rank of the Polish monarch, the indivisibility of the State and the consecrated character of his authority.
THE CRISIS OF THE FIRST POLISH MONARCHY
In the first years of his reign, Mieszko II successfully continued the policies initiated by his father. In 1031, however, he found himself face to face with dire peril both inside the country, where his brothers led a rebellion against him, and outside the country, where he was threatened by a coalition of the Holy Roman Empire and Ruthenia. When the Hungarians abandoned their alliance with him, the Polish King found himself in a hopeless situation and fled the country.
His brother, Bezprym, took over the government but had to give up the royal insignia of his brother and father and to renounce title to their con- quests, to Lusatia, Moravia and to the area on the upper Wieprz and Bug. The brief reign of duke Bezprym was filled with terror to which he himself fell victim. Mieszko II returned to the throne but he had to recognize the suzerainty of the emperor and grant to his two brothers a share in the rule of the country. Several months before his death, Mieszko JI succeeded in reuniting the country. He died in 1034, leaving nothing but ruins to his son Casimir.
During the crists, the structure of the State created by the efforts of sever- al preceding generations, showed grave fissures, all the graver because they were internal. Their essence was the trend towards decentralization noted
Cieszyn. St. Nicholas’ Chapel, 11th cent.
$6 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
among the lords who had strengthened their social and economic position in the victorious wars led by Bolestaw the Brave, and now looked with less favour upon the machinery of a strong central authority. As in many other countries of Europe so in Poland, the lords sought greater economic auto- nomy, that is they themselves aspired to the right to exploit the subject population. Some of them even aimed at territorial independence. The incen- tives for expansion, that were instrumental during the reign of Mieszko I and in the first decades under Bolestaw the Brave, were now lacking. The boom of the luxury trade on the Baltic and the influx of silver broke down in the early eleventh century. The economic growth within the country was slow and could not hope to fill the royal coffers left empty when the once vigor- ous, though actually primitive trade, of the heroic age of the Slavs and Varangians in the ninth and tenth centuries began to wither. Ducal authority was broken in the eyes of the lords.
In 1034 Poland broke up into several regions. Power was seized by various lords and Casimir was driven out into Germany. Only one of these lords is known by name, he was called Mieclaw or, as some other sources would have it, Mojstaw or Mastaw, cupbearer to Mieszko II. He ruled over Mazovia for ten years and it seems, that he conducted an active policy of alliances with Pruthenia and Sudovia, which was threatened by the expansion of Kievan Rus (Kiev Ruthenia). There is some speculation whether Mieclaw intended to expand his rule over other Polish lands. Faced by the danger of peasant revolts, a part of the ruling group hastened to join Miectaw’s colours.
The crisis of the monarchy released in a section of Polish territories a mass movement against the social order that had been established by the firm hand of the architects of the Polish State. Soon after power had been seized by the impostor dukes, a peasant insurrection broke out and spread quickly to include the population threatened by the yoke of feudalism, the slaves and lesser officials of the State and to the estates of powerful lords. The insurrection turned against the lords secular and spiritual and at the same time took on an aspect of a pagan resurgence. The Church suffered serious losses in some parts of Poland.
Bretislav I, Duke of Bohemia, took advantage of the anarchy that broke out in Poland. He seized Silesia and pillaged and looted the towns of Great Poland. We know of an impressive list of treasures taken from Gniezno at that time. Among them was the reliquary with St. Adalbert’s remains, which were a spiritual necessity for the organization of an independent Church of the State, which Bretislav needed, in order to promote his plans of establish- ing a bishopric in Prague as an independent See.
The Bohemian invasion, and especially the annexation of Silesia, was a warning signal to the German lords. They were not happy to see a strong Bohemia and professed in this respect the principle of an international equilibrium with the participation of Poland. The exiled Casimir, who had
ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS 57
powerful relatives on his mother’s side, including his uncle the Archbishop of Cologne, was given military assistance. He quickly returned to Poland and mastered the situation by 1040. He also found allies among the Polish lords. For many of them the insurrection of the people was a dire warning. The neighbouring Ruthenian lords also took heed when they experienced simi- lar peasant unrest. Shortly afterwards Casimir concluded an alliance with Ruthenia which was further strengthened by his marriage to Dobronega- Maria, sister of Duke Yaroslav of Kiev. Keeping his own interests in view, Duke Yaroslav helped Casimir in the battle of 1047 waged against Mieclaw of Mazovia.
Ultimately, the maturing social system emerged victorious from the contest while the monarchy suffered painful setbacks which weakened it considerably. Silesia was regained at the price of tribute and the territories of Poland were again restored to their extent as under Mieszko I, although without Western Pomerania and other lands which had been won by Bolestaw the Brave, but it is probable that Gdansk-Pomerania had to accept Polish suzerainty. Under the pressure of adverse circumstances and surrounded by more powerful neighbours, the weakened state had to renounce any plans of regaining her previous acquisitions. The internal situation had changed from that which had prevailed under the Slavic and Nordic empires of the tenth century and during the first decades of the eleventh century. Significant structural changes became apparent in the situation of the Polish oligarchs. Having blazed a trail to the expansion of their estates by subjugating the free population, they would not countenance a reversion to the old order. The knights who ap- peared in this period were intent upon exerting an influence on the superi- or authority. The early medieval monarchy, rebuilt by Casimir the Restorer, entered a period of economic, social and political transformation.
ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ARCHITECTS OF THE STATE
Before continuing the history of the people and the State from its revival in the middle of the eleventh century, it may prove interesting to survey briefly the principal features of the achievements of Mieszko I, Bolestaw the Brave and Mieszko IJ. The most striking feature was the dynamic growth of the new social system and similar progress in the diversification of the culture. The first castle-tcowns which arose in the Polish territories were inhabited by a few lordly families and their retainers. The castle-towns built by the centralized State on the other hand were an agglomeration of large groups of lords and strong military garrisons that evinced a growing demand for consumer goods. The demands were satisfied by the extensive luxury trade, but they also stimulated domestic production.
58 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
In order to make use of and to spur rural production, a system of services for the castle-towns and ducal courts were set up by the Piast monarchy, according to a carefully conceived plan. The system operated within its fundamental framework from the middle of the tenth century to the end of the eleventh century. Artisans and servants (ministeriales) pursued up to fortv different crafts ; cobblers (sutores), shield and bolt makers, bakers (pistores), cooks (coci), men collecting wild bees’ honey (mellifices) and beaver hunters (castorarii) were still included among the agricultural people. The authorities enforced a division of labour in subsidiary occupations for the performance of special duties or provision of articles produced by the different artisans. In this division only a portion of the output capacity and specialized services were organized and then only where they were indispensable to the function- ing of the medieval state. This autarchic method was soon found inefficient. Although place names like Szewce (Cobblers), Kuchary (Cooks), Bobrowniki (Beaver-hunters) and Bartodzieje (Honey-collectors) have survived, indicating the elaborate organization of these services, this type of organization was declining and began to disappear in the second half of the eleventh century. First to go were the craft services, followed much later by these of cattle breeders and hunters. The handicraft industry has arisen independently of this official organization of services. Agricultural surpluses and stocks of cattle increased in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries ; a variety of workshops were set up and a local exchange of products gradually came into being.
The first centre of this economic development was the castle-town (grod) and suburbs (suburbium—podgrodzie), a situation similar to that of the English towns and boroughs in the early Middle Ages, together constituting the first form of town life in Poland and in the neighbouring countries. At the foot of the castle-town proper (described as the castrum or castellum in the Latin terminology of that time) there sprang up a suburbium, beneath the castle walls. The suburbs were usually surrounded by a wall of earth and timber like the castle-town itself. Each performed a different social and economic function.
The castle-town enclosed the residence of the ruler ready to receive him at all times, or the seat of his representative in the person of the lord of the town, later called the castellan, entrusted with wide military, administra- tive, judicial and fiscal powers over the people residing in the neighbourhood. In densely populated areas, the radius of influence of the centre did not exceed 14 km (c. 9 miles), though this could be more on the fringes of the inhabited areas. The suburbs consisted of small built up areas with streets paved with wood, housing a motley population, ranging from members of the ruling group and the rank and file knights of the castle-town, themselves often engaging in foreign trade, to innkeepers, artisans and servants of all kind, as well as fishermen and peasants brought here by the will of the prince, or who settled there of their own accord.
ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS 59
In the eleventh century the castle-towns and suburbs attracted rural ar- tisans and were responsible for the development of the crafts into permanent and distinct trades. Archaeological evidence reveals a beginning of specializa- tion and consequent technical improvement as early as the tenth century in pottery, shoemaking and tanning, in articles made of horn, gold, as well as metalwares. The social conditions of life and work of the artisans are not sufficiently well known to us. It seems that they were dependents of the duke and were compelled to make contributions in kind, both in articles produced by themselves as well as in personal services. Fishermen and ploughmen, for example, were obliged to provide the castle-towns with food the production of which remained the major concern of the entire population.
As centres of growing consumption, castle-towns and suburbs encouraged the expansion and diversification of handicraft production. The margin of eco- nomic initiative expanded despite the fact that the craftsmen were burdened with obligations to the State. They could exchange their articles for food and other goods and valuables. Money, or more strictly speaking silver, both in the form of Arab coins as well as ornaments, soon made its appearance among them. In the tenth and eleventh centuries silver was weighed and there- fore coins and ornaments had to be cut to make smaller transactions pos- sible. Domestic money coined under Mieszko I was not abundant and was a symbol of ostentation rather than a medium of exchange. Markets were known in Poland already during the reign of Bolestaw the Brave as places of public trade and were under the protection of ducal law.
The network of castle-towns and suburbs in the large expanse of Polish territories—250,000 square kilometres—were in direct conjunction with the density of settlements and other factors which encouraged people of princi- pally non-agricultural persuasions to assemble and live together.
On the Baltic littoral most prominent were the early port towns of Western Pomerania, especially those at the mouth of the Odra, like Szczecin, founded as a castle-town at the close of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century, Wolin, established a whole century earlier and Kamien, founded most likely in the early tenth century, Kolobrzeg was built at the mouth of the Prognica river; the sale springs and salt works of Kolobrzeg operated as early as the ninth century. All these towns experienced a period of economic prosperity in the tenth and eleventh centuries both because of the Baltic trade and of the domestic production of pottery and metal and amber articles. The lords who lived in these castle-towns conducted an independent policy and successfully opposed Polish overlordship, which established a firm foothold here only during the reigns of Mieszko I and Bolestaw the Brave. The independence of the towns was demonstrated by the elaborate pagan cult. The temples of Wolin and Szczecin built in the eleventh century vied with the splendour of the churches raised by the Christian rulers of Poland. Archaeo- logical evidence, however, bears out the fact that the material culture of Pomerania, hence the manner of constructing towns and techniques employed
60 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
in the crafts, was homogeneous with that of the remaining towns of central Poland. There is also abundant evidence of mutual trade relations between the coastal and the inland towns.
In the central plains, as well as in the southern highlands, the urban centres of this period were identical with the network of early fortified seats of the dukes. It can be estimated that there were about eighty such castle-towns in the Polish territories under Mieszko I, Bolestaw the Brave and Mieszko II, Pomerania excepted. These castle-towns were not distributed evenly through- out the country, but were communities separated by large forest areas. Some of the castle-towns rose to prominence from the earliest days of their founding as main capitals of the State, or as significant provincial centres. Con- temporary sources endow these centres with the term civitas, by which is meant a large community with diverse functions. Among the most prominent were Gniezno, a fortified ducal seat which expanded to one and then three suburbs in the eleventh century ; Poznan on the Warta was established as a grod at the close of the ninth century and raised to the rank of castle-town of the monarchy in the tenth century with a large suburb from the same period ; Kruszwica on the Gopto lake in existence in the ninth century with a suburb dating from the end of the tenth century and expanded later ; Wloclawek (known as Wlodzistaw) on the Vistula, an important military camp from the early eleventh century, whose suburb originated also in this period ; Plock on the Vistula, founded as a castle-town at the end of the tenth century together with its suburb, was the Piast capital of ancient Mazovia ; Sandomierz on the Vistula, whose gréd and environs lead to the assumption that it was a large community in the tenth and eleventh centuries ; Cracow fortified in the course of the tenth century enclosed a grdéd on the Wawel hill and a suburb together with other neighbouring settlements ; Wroclaw, the castle-town and suburb lying on an island in the middle of the Odra, the most important town centre of Silesia since the end of the tenth century. Finally in the second half of the tenth century, Gdansk, the castle-town, port and suburb, flourished at the mouth of the Vistula, in that part of Eastern Pomerania, which was more closely bound with the Polish State than Western Pomerania. Several more names may be added to these nine centres which were either temporarily as important, such as Giecz, or but slightly smaller, such as Legnica, Glogdw, Opole, Kalisz, Sieradz, Leczyca or as Wislica, Lublin, and Przemysl in the eastern borderlands.
The early Piast castle-town performed a multitude of new functions in the broad areas that surrounded them. They were seats of the State administra- tion, points of armed resistance and military outposts, trade centres for articles and services, religious and cultural centres. The towns were not only related to each other by a common state system, but also, though much more loosely, by trade routes. The routes served more often for the transport of luxury goods designated for the thin upper stratum of society rather than the population at large. The lords of the castle-town eagerly purchased such
Lake Bielidto or Swietokrzyskie
“a x x
x x ~ - -
wy ATT SLUT ae
NOELLE 4
‘7/8. Joannes Bapt. ais 2's. Michaa ui
Ny < i) o , , »
~ ~ > ~ ~ Raa >
~ 3 S 2
rad
Gniezno before the 12th cent. fa) 500 Metres
Oo 500 Yards ns Cathedral
Walls of the castle~town (castrum) and of the suburb $ Church
Wy) Settlements
62 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
articles, exchanging for them raw materials and slaves which Poland of Mieszko I and of Bolestaw the Brave was so capable of providing. The routes travelled by foreign and native traders, served above all as links between the chief castle-towns and between Poland and her neighbours. In addition to the Baltic trade which continued strongly until the first decade of the tenth century, later turning its attention to other commodities than metal from the Orient, one may note the functioning of a whole web of overland routes. They led from Kiev Ruthenia through Mazovia or, crossing the middle Vistula, to Gniezno and other castle-towns in the cradle of the Piast State. The roads continued from here to the mouth of the Odra, or through Lower Silesia and Meissen to Magdeburg and the German countries. Another route from Ruthenia led through Przemysl, where a colony of Jewish merchants was settled in the first years of the eleventh century, and Sandomierz or along the fringes of the foothills to Cracow, and from there either to Gniezno or Wroc- law, and finally through the Moravian Gate to Prague and farther west. Undoubtedly there were also overland routes to Pruthenia which began in Gdansk-Pomerania and Mazovia and roads to Hungary along the Dunajec and Poprad valleys and perhaps also the Dukla Pass.
This trade flowed in a very narrow channel and trickled to the local markets in a very limited assortment. Although it imparted a certain glory to the early towns, trade by itself was not a decisive factor in their growth.
The lords who lived in the towns benefited from special economic, social and political opportunities which in turn led to distinctions in dress, housing and diet. Here, their mounting demands in the intellectual sphere were readily satisfied. The outstanding feature of these times was the desire of the Court and of the lords to hoard their wealth. That is why treasures of silver bullion money and other objects, which could be readily concealed in a safe place, are being discovered at the present time. They were stored as a reserve to use when luxury goods often haphazard in their appearance might arrive. Stores were the mark, the measure and at times the very foundation of the rank and standing of the lords and the monarch. The written records which describe the magnificence of the Court and of the generosity of the dukes are highly credible, an example of which were the gifts which Mieszko I sent to the German emperors and kings, as well as to the Cathedral of Augsburg, and Bolestaw the Brave’s rich gifts to Otto III.
In this period the culture of the Polish lands was preponderantly the native product of developing productive forces. The broad masses of the people were both producers and consumers of this culture. Here we also note a mounting demand and an expanding ability to satisfy their needs. The most tangible evidence are the wooden buildings of the tenth and eleventh centuries raised by carpenters whose skill was admired by Ibrahim ibn-Yaqub and the stone structures which appeared with the conversion to Christianity.
The large complex of church buildings in the suburbs of Poznan, consisting of several structures and a three-nave basilica which served as a cathedral, was
ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS 63
built according to the findings of modern research immediately after 968, as was also the oldest three-nave church of Gniezno whose original foundations have been preserved. It was reconstructed after the fire of 1018 with a coloured majolica floor added at the same time. More modest structures of the same age are two monastery churches, one in Trzemeszno and the other in Leczyca. The palatium, the adjacent palace chapel, that echoes the style of northern Italy and the monastery on an island on the Lednica lake near Gnie- zno, were all constructed at the close of the tenth century. These buildings provide eloquent testimony to the fact, that the Polish monarchs aspired to the level of the neighbouring countries. The palatium is reminiscent of similar, though bigger residences of the German emperors. On the island of the Led- nica lake the stone architecture was combined with masterly timber work which provided the palace with fortifications, using up 40,000 cubic metres (1,420,000 cubic feet) of material. The Lednica complex included a harbour and a 700 metre (2295 foot) long road bridge that joined the island town with both shores of the lake. The royal residence of Giecz, also a centre of authority in Great Poland, was never finished. The construction was interrupted by the Bohemian invasion. Traces of eight such residences have been established. The church of the Virgin Mary' on Wawel hill at Cracow, built on a comp- licated four-leaf plan with the addition of a front porch, was also constructed at the close of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century. It served as a chapel and stood a little apart from the stone dwelling houses of the castle-town.
Other arts and crafts evolved and improved in skill and technique. From the middle of the tenth century, great improvement was noted in the tech- niques employed in pottery. Geometric designs were adapted to the shape of the vessels and for the next hundred years the art of pottery was marked by a very ornate style. Silversmiths likewise achieved their own distinct artistic forms. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the silversmiths attained great technical skill thanks to their imitation of Oriental wares. The local style that evolved contained a wide variety of designs. Apart from non-figurative patterns there were noted, in the eleventh century especially, influences of Romanesque art coming from west Europe and Scandinavia and influences from Ruthenia which embraced motifs of the steppe art, and from Byzantium. Iron and nonferrous metal work also offered scope for the art of ornamenta- tion. Articles of horn and bone found in archaeological excavations reveal a complete technical mastery of these materials and the artists who were capable of producing articles of daily use and for decorative purposes. In contrast with the rather rigid and geometric patterns used to ornament metal, horn and bone, soft woods were ornamented with Scandinavian basket-weave motifs. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs came from the outside world, but they found their way into domestic workshops and gave greater flexibility to the strict limitations of non-representational art. There are individual figurines in wood which may have served some magic purpose and
64 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE POLISH STATE
figures in stone as, for example, the mysterious stone figure of an ox found near the chapel of the Virgin Mary on the Wawel hill.
Simultaneously an intellectual transformation was taking place among the people. Through contacts with the outside world and as a result of sosial transitions, an incompatibility made itself felt between the archaic form of life of the Slavs and the new feudal system. At the close of the tenth century, Christianity began to make a wider and deeper impact. We know from the records of the times that the daughters and sons of magnates took holy vows. The defenders of Niemcza (1017) raised the cross with pride and at the same time with political shrewdness, against the besieging pagan Veleti whose aid had been enlisted by the Christian emperor. The Polish Court used the martyrdom of St. Adalbert as an argument for establishing an independent Church organization and provided the initiative for the writing of his life. Soon afterwards Bruno of Querfurt composed the life of the Five Brothers, Eremites connected with St. Romuald, who had been killed in Poland in 1003 and whose cult was propagated by the ruler and by the Polish Church. The annals brought to Poland by foreign clergy from other countries were contin- ued at the Polish Court. Noteworthy political and ecclesiastical events were recorded there. The annals open with a description of a dynastic event set down under the year 965 relating to the arrival of the Bohemian Princess Dobrava to Mieszko I. The first version of these accounts was collected by the presbyter Sula, later Bishop of Cracow under Casimir the Restorer. This was the beginning of a literature written in Latin which opened for the upper strata an avenue to cultural contacts with the outside world. It has been established that King Mieszko IT knew both Latin and Greek. Contacts with Germany and Ruthenia instructed the Polish Court in a feudal style of life. The foreign clergy played an important role in transmitting it from abroad. Poles may be found among their ranks quite early, for one of the first archbishops of Gniezno had a Polish name: Bossuta-Bozeta.
Besides the distinct culture and political factors which served to create a national Polish community, there were also the conscious attemps to mould a sense of unity among its prominent members. The most tangible evidence is offered by the adoption of one name, both in the native tongue and in the language of the neighbours, to designate the people of this area which was no longer an amorphous grouping of various component parts. This occurred in the lands between the Odra and the Bug rivers at the close of the tenth century when the foreigners began to call these regions by a lasting name of native derivation, a name which was taken from the original core, the small State of the Polanes (Polanie), and extended it to include the whole state. The terms Poland and Poles (Polonia, Poloni), accepted in international usage, reflected the essential fact that the nation and the State had already come into existence. The Latinized form of the country’s name was known in Old High German as Polan, in Old French as Polaine, Paulenne, Puille.
a
} } { 4 ?
GDANSK ( WARMIA
BARTIA
ae Poland in the second half of the 12th cent. Oo 100 Kms 0 50 Miles = Boundaries of the Polish State and other States ——— Boundaries of the Ducal Provinces under Bolestaw , the Curly POZNAN Capital towns CRACOW Capitals of States e Castellaneries +. + Archbishopric, bishoprics
5 imprint PPWK. Zam. 9074/79- X-30 218-10 285 egi Monasteries |
PWN Warsaw 1979
Chapter IV
THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
STRUGGLE FOR INTERNATIONAL POSITION AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ROYAL AUTHORITY
The reconstruction of the State machinery, though on a more modest scale than under his predecessors, together with the organization of the Church, was the real achievement of Casimir the Restorer who died in 1058. The centre of gravity of the State shifted after the reconstruction to the south of Poland, to Cracow, which acquired the status of a ducal seat. Thanks to the consolidation of the monarchy, Casimir’s oldest son Bolestaw II the Bold could pursue the ambitious policy of winning independence from the Holy Roman Empire.
This policy yielded a most impressive result, namely the third coronation of a Polish monarch in the eleventh century. To achieve this end the Polish ruler offered his support to Pope Gregory VII in the conflict with Henry IV. But the most decisive factor was the revival of Poland’s military strength in the struggle with Bohemia, to whom Bolestaw ceased to pay tribute for Silesia. He also waged wars of intervention against Ruthenia on behalf of his brother- in-law Izaslav, later a protégé of Gregory VII, and against Hungary where Bolestaw supported those dukes who were opposed to Germany. The corona- tion of Bolestaw on Christmas Day of 1076 at Gniezno was performed by Archbishop Bogumil assisted by Papal legates, who strengthened the new organization of the Church and reestablished the archbishopric of Gniezno and the bishoprics of Poznaf, Cracow, Wroclaw and Ptock. The coronation was to guarantee the internal consolidation of the monarchy. However, there was not to be another coronation for a few centuries to come. The policy of . Bolestaw spurred on a mobilization of centrifugal forces among the lords, who organized a conspiracy in which Bishop Stanistaw of Cracow and the King’s brother, Wladystaw Herman, took part. The conspiracy was quelled by Bolestaw the Bold. The Bishop was sentenced to death and executed. The King failed, however, to gain control over the situation and had to flee to
5 History af Poland
i) 66 THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
Hungary (1079) where he was killed. The reign of his successor, Duke Whadystaw Herman was fraught with conflicting tendencies represented by the powerful lords. In the international arena, Wladyslaw Herman abandoned all independent political plans and surrendered claims to the royal crown. Poland again found herself a part of the imperial sphere of influence. Wlady- staw Herman married Judith, the sister of Henry IV, and again paid tribute for Silesia to Bohemia.
Sieciech (Sethec), a magnate and powerful palatine of the Court, was for a long time the actual ruler of the country, a fact which rallied the magnates in their opposition to the central authority. Taking advantage of the coming of age of the two sons of the old prince, the magnates demanded that the country be divided between him and his sons. The division occurred in 1097. Attempts to reestablish Polish suzerainty over Pomerania were without effect.
The Polish monarchy was given one more chance to rise to power by taking advantage of the social forces favouring a strong central authority. A Polish ruler who wished to maintain a unified state could rely upon the lower ranks of the knights for they counted on benefits arising from political expansion, namely, prisoners, loot and financial assistance from the prince, and they also attached themselves to influential magnates holding office at Court. Bolestaw III the Wrymouth, the younger son of Wladystaw Herman, undertook and successfully completed this political gambit. Upon the death of his father in 1102, he took the field against his elder brother, Duke Zbi- gniew who ruled in Great Poland and Mazovia. Assisted by the knights, and having finally established an alliance with Hungary and Ruthenia, Bolestaw drove his brother out of the country in 1107. In 1109 he repulsed the expedit- ion of intervention led by the German King Henry V which was shattered against the ramparts of Glogéw and checked in the forefelds of Wroctaw. The chronicler speaks of the “resistance of the dogged peasants” who, together with the knights, repelled the German invasion. As a result of this conflict Bolestaw won complete independence and in 1114 Bohemia renounced all claim to tribute for Silesia. About 1119 he brought Gdansk-Pomerania under direct Polish administration.
To a great extent Bolestaw the Wrymouth owed his successes to the fact that he offered his knights a noteworthy goal as early as 1102, in the invasion and annexation of Western Pomerania, with its inviting attractive centres of industry and maritime trade such as Kolobrzeg, Kamien, Wolin, Szczecin and Uznam (Usedom). In the period of independence from Poland, Western Pom- erania created a state organization which, though unconsolidated internally, was nevertheless aggressive toward her neighbours. The raids of the Pom- eranians were a thorn in the side of Great Poland ; Zbigniew’s attempt to establish an alliance with them compromised him in the eyes even of his followers. On the other hand, Bolestaw the Wrymouth’s plans to subordinate Pomerania secured him the support of the preponderant majority of the Polish lords and knights. About the year 1122, following several military
FEUDAL DISINTEGRATION GAINS UPPER HAND 67
expeditions, the suzerainty of the Polish duke was imposed upon and tribute was exacted from Warcistaw I of Western Pomerania.
Polish arms were followed by missionary activity. The first missions were led by the Spanish missionary Bernard and later with complete success by Bishop Otto of Bamberg. Initially Bishop Otto came to Western Pomerania at the bequest of Poland and with a group of Polish clergy. Later, however, he hoped to subordinate the Church of Pomerania to the influence of the Empire. A new expedition launched by Bolestaw the Wrymouth in alliance with Denmark secured Polish rule up to the Odra river by 1129. The bishopric of Lubusz (Lebus) on the left bank of the Odra, founded in 1124, rounded off the territorial organization of the Polish Church in the west, and the Western Pomerania bishopric, established before 1140 (in Uznam and later in Wolin to be finally moved to Kamien), was to bind these acquisitions to the me- tropolis of Gniezno.
After a period of brilliant successes achieved by the ruling circle, the lords again began to foment discord. The Palatine Skarbimir, the duke’s closest collaborator, rose in rebellion in 1117. Thus at the close of his reign, the international position of Bolestaw the Wrymouth suffered a painful setback. His intervention in Hungarian affairs on behalf of Boris, the anti-German pretender to the throne, failed and invited several retaliatory raids by Bohemia. Eventually Bolestaw the Wrymouth had to submit to the arbitration of Emperor Lothair III and in 1135 paid hommage to the Emperor for the right to Western Pomerania and the island of Riigen on which the Polish duke aimed to establish himself against Danish influence. At this time also the influential Archbishop Norbert of Magdeburg undertook steps to abolish the Polish Church metropolis, but his efforts were successfully checked by the Polish duke and clergy about 1136. The reign of Bolestaw the Wrymouth was drawing to a close in comparative stability which guaranteed the economic and social development of the country.
FEUDAL DISINTEGRATION GAINS THE UPPER HAND (1138-1146)
Like some other European countries in the twelfth century, Poland was to enter upon the course of transformation from old ways of life to new and more highly developed forms. The Polish Court was alive to the fact that some old institutions were obsolete. The concentration of State authority in one person was no longer tenable. As we have seen, the monarchy was embroiled in the conflicting aspirations of local oligarchs, who turned the dynastic quarrels, claims and counterclaims of the ducal brothers to their own im- mediate advantage.
An interesting attempt at compromise with these centrifugal trends was
ge
68 THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
the testament of Bolestaw the Wrymouth, drawn up with the agreement of the bishops and lords, which took effect upon his death in 1138. The act accepted the principle that the country could be divided into duchies between the ruler’s sons, each composed of several castellanies, which corresponded roughly to the old provinces. Three of the sons received their districts immediately, while the remaining two, who were still minors, had to wait for the lands held for life by Dowager-Duchess Salomea, from the house of the Counts of Berg. The testament ruled that the oldest living brother was to be the Grand Duke and that he ‘would enjoy considerable prerogatives in foreign and military affairs and in ecclesiastical matters relating to the country as a whole. In addition to his hereditary district, the Grand Duke was to be heir to Little Poland and acquire suzerainty over Western and Gdansk-Pomerania. Every duke who succeeded to these regions gained an economic, military and political advantage over the other Polish dukes.
In 1138 Wladyslaw II, the oldest son of Bolestaw the Wrymouth, suc- ceeded to Silesia, whose boundaries embraced the dioceses of Wroclaw and Lubusz, and the Grand Duke’s dominions of Cracow and Sandomierz, hence the diocese of Cracow ; he thus stood at the head of the Polish State. The second son, Boleslaw the Curly, held Mazovia and Kujawy, hence the diocese of Plock and a part of the dioceses of Wloctawek and Poznan. The third son, Mieszko III, received Great Poland with the Poznan diocese and part of the archbishopric of Gniezno. The remainder of the archdiocese of Gniezno, included in the territory of Steradz and Leczyca, fell to the Dowager-Duchess Salomea, who died soon afterwards in 1145. The Grand Duke took possession of her lands and immediately came into conflict with his brothers who hastened to the defense of the expected inheritance of the two youngest dukes, Henry and Casimir.
The first trial of strength demonstrated that neither the compromise devised by Bolestaw the Wrymouth nor the restoration of the monarchy were feasible. Wtadystaw II, secure in the feeling that his brother-in-law, the German King Conrad III, would come to his assistance, tried to unify the State at the expense of his brothers. The centrifugal forces reflected a certain course of historical evolution and, as in other eastern and central European countries, led Poland inevitably to feudal disintegration. The powerful magnate Piotr, son of Wlost, declared himself against Wladyslaw and was blinded for his insubordination. Archbishop Jakub (James), Palatine Wszebor and other great lords joined the party of the cadet dukes. A unified State in the old political sense was no longer possible.
Having lost the battle of Poznan in 1146, Wtadystaw II, called the Exile from this time onwards, was succeeded by his brother Bolestaw the Curly in the Grand Duke’s dominions and in Silesia. At the same time Bolestaw continued to hold Mazovia creating a separate duchy of Sandomierz which he gave to his brother, Henry. Boleslaw the Curly and the other dukes paid a ransom to Conrad, the German King, but established relations with the
ast Sanden a.
Wloclawek cup, 10th cent.
opposition inside Germany. Neither the Polish episcopate nor the dukes accepted the excommunication pronounced by the Papal legate nor the inter- diction cast upon the country by Pope Eugene III. In consequence of the second German intervention led by Frederick Barbarossa, Bolestaw the Curly had to pay another ransom in 1157 and pledge fealty to the Emperor but nothing could bring back Wladystaw the Exile.
The division into regional duchies was impressed upon the mind of the society and accepted by it. New subdivisions were made by bequest. Upon the death of Henry of Sandomierz in 1166 in an expedition against pagan Pruthenia, part of his dominion reverted to Casimir, the last of the brothers, as the small Duchy of Wislica. Mieszko the Old, the third Grand Duke, who as the senior of the family ruled from 1173, tried to invest his sovereign
THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
70
1180
c. 1170-
?
Gniezno Doors
VILLAGE AND TOWN 71
authority over the whole of Poland in the full sense of the term, but his actions spurred an open revolt of the lords temporal and spiritual and led to his expulsion from the capital in Cracow.
Contrary to the principle of seniority, Casimir, called the Just, the youngest son of Bolestaw the Wrymouth, was installed on the throne in 1177. In continued conflict the throne of Cracow gradually lost its suzerain status and sank to the rank of the other duchies. Although the authority of the Grand Duke was not formally abrogated, it became extinct however and the Polish State now consisted of a group of independent and sovereign duchies whose numbers continued to grow through the thirteenth century.
ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF THE OLIGARCHY, VILLAGE AND TOWN PRIOR TO THE MID-TWELFTH CENTURY
The old form of the Polish State in the middle of the eleventh century, after its reconstruction, encountered many obstacles and a concerted opposition which it could not surmount. The new social, economic and cultural content of the state aggravated the political difficulties throughout the twelfth cen- tury. As early as the eleventh century, large tracts of land were concentrated in the hands of bishops and abbots who were not satisfied with the old method of payments from the duke’s treasury and asked for a more permanent material basis in the form of large landed estates.
In this manner by 1136 the archbishop of Gniezno had over 1000 peasant farms with about five thousand subjects. Similarly, though at a slower pace, the foundations of the oligarch’s power changed. They tried to create large consolidated estates though most estates still remained dispersed. Family solidarity was cemented by the fact that the estates were hereditary and henceforth Polish law acknowledged the custom of retrait lignager, i.e. the right of all kin to the estate of a deceased without issue. At the close of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries, there emerged several clans of oligarchs with a decisive voice in the affairs of state. The members of these clans held important offices of Church and State from which they drew sizable benefits for their families.
The estate of a great lord of the eleventh or twelfth century may be estimated at from 200 to 600 chimneys, but many lords enjoyed an additional income in salaries paid for services rendered at Court or as a castellan. The lord’s estate was inhabited by peasants who had been free and who in the past had rendered services only to the duke. The peasants now became a mass of dependent subjects exploited mainly by the feudal lords who, enjoying the privilege of immunity, were intent upon restricting the duke’s rights upon their estates. After the suppression of the peasant insurrection in the second quarter of the eleventh century, the population did not rise again in mass
72 THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
rebellion. An elaborate system of names was used to designate various degrecs of subjection of the peasant population, ranging from the free rustici ducis and heredes to the non-free decumi and servi.
The organization of the duke’s own estate also was subject to change. The system of villages following particular crafts or rendering specific ser- vices, both types ministering to the fortified seat of the duke (grdéd), was mostly abandoned. The dukes created their own curiae, expanded the fiscal system and organization of customs and adopted more elaborate monetary and other operations. Although the dukes made land donations to the Church and secular lords, yet it is estimated that in the twelfth century the dukes still held half the land under cultivation in the country.
The rural population sought to alleviate its lot by fleeing to areas that were less developed and where feudal! exploitation was not as harsh. Progress in agriculture, resulting from improved farm implements and a rising popu- lation, factors also noted in the neighbouring countries, stimulated a lively internal colonization in the border regions of the state and on the fringes of old settled regions, such as the south of Great Poland and the foothills of the Swietokrzyskie Mountains.
There are two ways by which it is possible to designate quite closely the eleventh century date that marked the turning point in the life of the castle- towns and suburbs of Poland. Coins provide evidence that the first abun- dant supply of metal coins minted in Poland appeared under Bolestaw the Bold (before 1079). Silver could not be supplied in unlimited quantities to the mints because the flow of foreign silver from the East had stopped com- pletely, the quantities that arrived from the West were negligible, and the output of domestic silver mines was low. Poland, nevertheless, managed to mint her own coins as an indispensable means of exchange and measure of value, bearing the ducal and royal stamp. Silver treasures, characteristic of the period of the rise of the new society, became rare in the second half of the eleventh century. Crude silver was required as coins of nominal value by the money and commodities market still predominantly local, but money was quickly adopted and became a daily necessity, too valuable to be hoarded. In the event of shortage of coins, payments were made in ermine, martin and fox furs, or in barrels of salt. Metal coins were the prevailing currency as witnessed by the fact that in the twelfth century payment of tribute and customs was made partly or wholly in money. Other evidence is provided by the system introduced in Poland between 1136 and 1146 of frequent and compulsory renewal of coinage, under which old money was called in periodically; the operation was carried under the supervision of the ducal mints and new coins were issued.
Not without significance also is the fact that more numerous documents relating to markets appeared in the second half of the eleventh century. Among them are markets growing up beside the castle-towns and in the suburbs, and those that operated in other localities. In the course of the
DOMINION OF THE GRAND DUKE
MIESZKO III
ZY GRAND DUKE
. % O >. ” EZ.
S nf Dy
‘
. -_C. foes 1e separate Polish duchies, 1138 Oo 100 Kms ——— V7-e__—o—_ (9) 60 Miles
az, Soundaries of States during the reign of Bolestaw | the Wrymouth in 1138
““< Boundaries of the duchies
twelfth century, the number of markets rose to total about 250. This figure also includes Western Pomerania which was closely united with Poland in this century.
The number of centres of trade manufactures and services doubled in com- parison with the end of the tenth century. This increase may be explained not only by a rise in population figures alone. It it estimated that under Bolestaw the Brave, in about 1000, Poland (Silesia, Pomerania, Great Po- land, Mazovia and Little Poland) had a population of about 1,250,000. Assuming that the annual population increase of Poland was 0.16 per cent, that is the same as the estimated annual increase for Europe, then it may be reckoned that two hundred years later Poland had a population of about
74 THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
1,700,000, or an increase of 37 per cent. We see that the expansion of towns and markets is connected not so much with the population increase as with the changes that occurred in the social and economic structure of the popu- lation.
The stimulus was provided both by the growing production of urban handicrafts and the rising output of farms which was due in this period principally to the expanding acreage of farmed land and an upward trend in the number of livestock. More noticeable improvement in farming tech- niques was to occur in the following period.
On the other hand, the list of urban crafts, whose products are found in archaeological excavations, increased markedly in the course of the elev- enth and twelfth centuries. While there is evidence of only a few crafts being practiced in the rural areas, and these only as subsidiary occupations, with the exception of metallurgy and mining, about a score of different crafts may be enumerated in the towns. Polish archaeologists have identified over 20 crafts and trades in all: ferrous and non-ferrous metalwork, pottery, tanning, shoemaking, bone and horn work, wheelwrights, shipwrights, glass work, stonecutting and others. The evidence for this is supplied by the traces of workshops, tools, articles of production and waste products, discovered at Gniezno, Gdansk, Opole and elsewhere. The artisans attained great skiil in their trades and produced a wide assortment of articles. Some artisans also combined their crafts with other occupations.
There is more information available about the social conditions among craftsmen. They made articles to order and also produced commodities for direct sale on the market. Sufficient corroboration is provided by the casts for large scale production of metal articles and the large volume of semi- finished products, waste products and raw material found in the excavations as well as written records of “artisans selling their goods” at the market. Less is known of the range of distribution, but it is likely that it varied with each trade and was regulated by the demands of a socially diversified do- mestic market. The subsistence economy of the Polish rural areas existed side by side for a considerable length of time with the commodity-money econ- omy, to which some of the dependent peasants had only sporadic access, being restricted to the purchase of knives and salt. Part of the rural popula- tion as well as the knights and lords made wide and frequent use of the market. From the second half of the eleventh century, the lords began to expand their large land holdings intensively and established residences out- side the towns.
At the close of the eleventh century, even the smallest rural centres had their weekly market day which drew off some of the pressure from the town markets. Some of the new market places were called after the days of the week, such as Wtorek (Tuesday), Sroda and Srddka (Wednesday), Czwartek (Thursday), Piatek (Friday), Sobotka (Saturday). Others were called by some modified form of the word market (targ in Polish). Some of these
VILLAGE AND TOWN 75
were Tarczek, Targowisko, Targowa Gorka. Others took new names in an attempt to designate their new social and economic role in relation to their former function as exclusively a settlement, took the name of miejsce— miescie—which in the Polish of that time is equivalent to the modern miasto (locus according to the Latin sources). The term miasto (town—city) was to become widely used in the Polish, as it did in the Czech language. It soon supplanted the once popular term grdéd (castle-town) in reference to urban centres.
The principal commodities traded at all the markets were articles pro- duced by native artisans in the large and in some small centres. Of some significance also was the import of such mass commodities as western Euro- pean cloth, which appeared in the excavations of Gdansk at the close of the eleventh century, Baltic herring salted in Kotobrzeg, salt from Pomerania, Kujawy, Ruthenia and Cracow, iron in bars and in articles, pottery, glassware and other articles produced by goldsmiths and silversmiths. The hour of Polish grain and livestock export through the Baltic ports had not yet struck and, besides a short Arabian and Scandinavian episode in the tenth and elev- enth centuries, the country concetrated above all on the development of its local economic possibilities for domestic consumption. In exchange for town produced articles, the markets and towns received farm and forest products, principal among which were honey, wax and furs; the towns were likewise consumers of grain, cattle and pigs. The towns, even the larger ones, were still engaged to some extent in farming, fishing and stock breeding.
Market towns and hamlets, in which the crafts were at an early stage of their development, acted as middlemen in contacts with the larger centres of manufacture, but they rose and were supported not only by commerce. Services, an important component of urban function, developed in these centres. By the eleventh century, inns or taverns appeared in large numbers in large as well as in small centres. Every market had its inn (forum cum taberna). The inn served as a place where the people ate, drank beer, caro- used and slept and operated on other than market days as well. Customs and import duties, minting, sale of salt and other manufactures—all these were activities carried on in the inns.
Urban and market settlements also offered cultural services to the sur- rounding villages. Churches, often built near the markets, created a close network of parishes. The rural district was subordinated to the urban church. The ducal administration operating in the towns of the castellan still exten- ded to the peasants, despite the immunity enjoyed by the lords spiritual and temporal, and the market days were the occasion to show the power of the ruler even in the times of Bolestaw the Brave. It may be added here that certain urban trades, such as the butcher’s and baker’s stalls that appeared at the close of this period, provided services that stimulated rural consumption.
The large Polish towns of this period found favour in the eyes of foreign observers who compared them with the towns they knew. The Sicilian geo-
16 THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
grapher, al-Idrisi, wrote about Poland in 1154, in a work based on infor- mation gathered over many years from merchants and Jews, that “her (Poland’s) towns flourish and the population is numerous”’—‘“Among her towns are Cracow (Kraku). It is a beautiful and large town with a great many houses, inhabitants, markets, vineyards and gardens”. He writes in the same manner about Gniezno, Wroclaw, Sieradz and Szczecin. It may be averred on the basis of archaeological excavations, traces of town plans, monuments of church architecture and the more abundant written records of this period, that towns of this category could have become large agglome- rations in the course of the twelfth century, each with a number of settle- ments scattered over a fairly wide area. The settlements performed different functions and were held under different titles. The duke’s castellan’s resi- dential castle-town, played the most important role in the agglomeration. The castle-town frequently had its own chapel and a fortified suburb. As a rule a cathedral or a few churches rose in the provincial or diocesan capitals. From the end of the eleventh century, if not earlier, the population overflowed out of the suburbs and established separate settlements, each with a market, inns and chapels.
The social and legal condition of the people who lived in these centres of urban life was widely differentiated, especially in such large towns as Szczecin and Wroclaw, Gniezno or Cracow. All the inhabitants of the towns, as well as the artisans, merchants and buyers (irrespective of their social derivation) who came to the market, were protected by the law called mar- ket mir (peace) of the duke. The safety of person and goods was guaranteed by the castellan and his deputy. In the twelfth century, if not earlier, the trading centres received a magistrate for the market, who, in addition to this jurisdiction, also performed general administrative duties and acted as an agent of the treasury.
CULTURE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY AND IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY
It may be assumed from the fairly large number of early Polish towns, with a widely diversified population, that they were centres of culture which gradually grew distinct from the culture of the Polish countryside. There the traditional Slavic way of life persisted, but the towns readily accepted and adapted to local needs the influences of both near and distant neighbours. The regional traits were softened and transmitted into original new forms.
The decline of the early medieval monarchy was marked by the univer- sal acceptance of Christianity. The close network of eight dioceses, with Gniezno as the metropolis, was established for centuries to come during the reign of Bolestaw the Wrymouth. The castle-towns each had their own
CULTURAL RELATIONS 77
chapel built in the suburbs or in the market place. At the close of the elev- enth century secular canons were appointed ; this helped reform the cathe- dral chapters and supplemented them with a network of provosts and preb- ends. By the middle of the eleventh century Benedictine abbeys connected with the reform movement of Lorraine were set up, among them Tyniec in Little Poland, Lubin in Great Poland and Mogilno in Kujawy. King Bo- lesltaw the Bold was most generous in building abbeys. In the second quarter of the twelfth century, the canons regular appeared in Trzemeszno and the Cistercian Order was established between 1140 and 1149.
Diplomatic missions and pilgrimages to St. Gilles-en-Provence, to Rome, to the Imperial Court and to Kiev, sporadic travels to the Holy Land, mar- riages contracted with the dynasties of Bohemia, Hungary, Ruthenia, Swabia, Lorraine, Austria and of other principalities of the Empire, not excluding ties with the Imperial Court, Denmark and Sweden, all these factors served to broaden the horizons and link the culture of Poland with the cultural centres of the Latin, Germanic, Scandinavian and Ruthenian countries. Poland and Polish affairs made their appearance on the pages of the chronicles and annals of the neighbouring countries. Some echoes may be found in the learned and literary works of western and southern Europe and in the intel- lectual climate where the Chanson de Roland was composed. The Cru- sading movement, however, never affected the Polish dukes and knights. Only a few rare exceptions, such as Wladyslaw the Exile, or the powerful lord Iaxa, who brought the canons of the Holy Sepulchre to Miechéw, were swept up in the Crusades or pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Polish rulers and knights and the Polish Church were busy fighting the pagans in Pomerania, and later in the twelfth century the more troublesome Pruthenians. Poland also remained largely unaffected by the popular heretical movements which did not find a favourable climate in a country where, though the population was Christian, it nevertheless reconciled for many centuries the teachings of the Church with the folklore of its daily life.
There is evidence that cathedral schools were in existence in the eleventh century. A growing number of Poles occupied the bishop’s thrones and if the Sees were ceded to strangers then this was done by the dukes for the pur- pose of maintaining contact with the world and of sheltering them from the influence of the magnates. We know that Casimir the Restorer and Zbigniew were educated in foreign monasteries. Gertrude, the daughter of King Miesz- ko II and wife of Izaslav of Kiev, wrote Latin prayers and remained faithful to the Roman rite even in Ruthenia. A psalter has been preserved that contains the compositions of this earliest Polish woman writer, set down most prob- ably in her own hand. According to two inventories taken at the beginning of the twelfth century, the library of the Cracow chapter possessed the ba- sic church and secular literature. Polish pupils found their way to leading schools of the West, such as in Laon and Paris. The area of present day Belgium, especially the country on the Meuse produced two outstanding
78 THE AGE OF MATURITY OF THE POLISH MONARCHY
prelates, Alexander and Walter, born in Malonne, who became the Bishops of Ptock and Wroclaw respectively. Their cultural patronage is commemo- rated in several outstanding works of art in Poland.
The court annals were continued. Separate excerpts were made for the use of individual bishoprics and abbeys. The transitory supremacy of cen- tralist trends at the Court of Bolestaw the Wrymouth yielded a work of exquisite literary elegance which defended with great ardour and zeal the policy of state unity and of the specific role of the ducal dynasty, the do- mini naturales of Poland. This Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polo- norum was written in 1116-1119 by an unknown foreign Benedictine monk called by historians as Gallus Anonymus. Based upon years sojourn in the country and infornmtion furnished by persons from the ruling circle his outline of the heroic deeds of Bolestaw the Wrymouth, projected against the background of the history of Poland and of the dynasty, is composed with profound perspicuity and provides evidence of the patriotism of Poles of this age.
In addition to these Gesta ducum there were also the gesta of the mag- nates who, as has been pointed out from the example of Chronicon comitis Petri constituted a grave danger to the former. Piotr of Silesia, son of Wlost was a legendary figure even during his life. Married to a Ruthenian princess, he was reputed to possess a fabulous fortune which he obtained from the ran- som paid for a captured Ruthenian prince. He maintained contacts with many monastic centres of the West from where, namely from Arrovaise, he brought monks whom he installed in the monasteries which he founded at the mount Sleza-Sobétka and Wroclaw. Soon after he was blinded and died, he became the hero of a Latin poem, a genuine Polish chanson de geste which has come down to our times in several versions of a later date.
A similar social phenomenon may be observed at the close of this period as regards monuments of architecture. Like the dukes before them, the lords now appeared as benefactors endowing building construction.
The earliest Romanesque art of Poland bears an unmistakable mark of the influence derived from the ethnically heterogeneous, but culturally rich archidiocese of Cologne as did the whole Polish Church reconstructed after the cataclysm. The western dioceses of the Cologne archbishopric among which Liége was the foremost again exerted an influence on Poland.
Romanesque cathedrals erected mainly in the suburbs according to the style prevailing in western Europe, though adapted to local needs and pos- sibilities and usually reduced in scale, were raised by the effort of dukes and the resourcefulness of the bishops. The most impressive Romanesque structures are preserved to our day within the precincts of Wawel, the castle and cathedral hill of Cracow where the ducal residence was established. The church of St. Gereon and the cathedral of St. Wenceslaus with the St. Leo- nard’s Crypt and nearby the churches of St. Michael and St. George, were built beside the stone-built town. At the close of the eleventh century, Gnie-
CULTURAL RELATIONS 79
zno, the archbishop’s See, was endowed with a new cathedral, built on the classical plan of three naves. The cathedrals of Plock, Wloctawek, Poznan and Wroclaw received a new form of stone in the twelfth century. The abbey churches of Kruszwica, Mogilno and Tyniec were built earlier in the eleventh century. Other churches like that of Trzemeszno, joined their noble company in the first half of the twelfth century. The wave of Romanesque architec- ture lapped the shores of less notable towns. Chapels, usually rotundas with a tower or one-nave churches were constructed to take the typical example of the church of St. Nicholas of Cieszyn.
In the middle of the twelfth century, the lords with their growing finan- cial power challenged the supremacy of the dukes. The previously mentioned Piotr, son of Wlost, comes Poloniae, as he is called in the obituary of the St. Giles abbey, made a truly princely foundation: the St. Vincent abbey at Olbin in Wroclaw. This imposing complex of churches and buildings domi- nated by the abbey basilica with its granite columns was destroyed in the sixteenth century. Other lords, such as the Odrowqz clan at Prandocin, began with smaller chapels built within their residences, where emphasis was laid on sculptured and painted ornaments.
Very few early paintings survived the holocausts of war. Chapter libra- ries contain remnants of Romanesque illuminated volumes which had been acquired in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Notable among these are the magnificent Sacramentarium of Tyniec, originally from Cologne, which dates back to the middle of the eleventh century; from the same period is the Pultusk Codex aureus formerly at Plock, written in gold letters on pur- ple. It has been established that one of the codices, namely the Cracow Pontificale, was definitely produced in Poland at the close of the eleventh century. Manuscripts of Musica scolarum of the eleventh and twelfth cen- turies were also brought to Poland.
Monumental sculpture was much more modest in scale than that found in Lombardy, its place of origin, or in the country of the Walloons, Exam- ples may be found in the rare surviving capitals, portal jambs and other fragments of architectural ornamentation. This art flickered into a bright flame after the middle of the twelfth century and shines with undimmed brilliance in several peerless and impressive works. In spirit, however, it seems to belong to the succeeding period. The monarchy of the early Polish Middle Ages descended into the grave in a severe garb.
Chapter V
THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
The victory of particularism led to the rejection of an obsolete political or- der which, in many instances, constituted an impediment to the new social and economic forces. A new century of progress was inaugurated although a high political price was exacted for it. The defensive forces of the state were weakened, external pressure was not always successfully countered, and its true nature not always recognized.
The index of development is the increase of population mentioned in the previous chapter. An accelerated rate of population growth, resulting from improved economic conditions, is observed in the twelfth century. The gen- eral proliferation of rural settlements proceeded from the wider use of im- proved farming tools, most notably the wheeled plough and from the inte- gration of peasant lands within the framework of large estates. In the course of the thirteenth century this second factor made possible the introduc- tion of the three field system, which marked a great step forward in farm- ing efficiency throughout Europe, to replace the old methods whereby the fields were allowed to lie fallow in alternate years. Agricultural improve- ment was affected in part spontaneously, in part as the result of pressure of the Jords, who were interested in a settled farming system which enabled them to exact consistently large contributions. Encouraged by the higher revenues, the lords eagerly supported the planting of settlements in the vast forest areas. On the other hand, the population of the established settlements must likewise have derived certain advantages from this new situation, be- cause only a pronounced improvement in their conditions could have in- duced them to remain in their old homes.
New settlements were established on the basis of a new Polish law called mos liberorum hospitum, or the customary right of free settlers. The earliest settlements were in Silesia, Little Poland and somewhat later in Great Po- land. In essence the Polish law superseded the earlier services by strictly de- fining a rent in kind or money. It corresponded to the trend which prevailed
Strzelno. Holy Trinity Church, second half of the 12th cent., detail of a Romanesque column
St. ~~ 2 Re: m
2
- —
— me
a Py
\ i
ema 1G A blie\/
Trzebnica. Cistercian Nuns Ghurch, ¢. 1220-1230. Tympanum
in the eleventh century Europe, namely the freeing of peasants from earlier services rendered to the lord. This measure was combined with an agrarian reform. Analogous to the feudal conditions appearing in other, and especially in western European countries, landed estates grew in size in Poland also, partly at the expense of the once boundless ducal estates and partly by in- creasing the area of arable soil by moving into uninhabited regions. These lands were acquired by what was called interdictio or inhibitio hereditatis, that is by occupation with or even without the approval of the duke. The most profitable system both in the old and new settlements was to unite all lands in one area by purchase and getting rid of enclaves. The boundaries of lay and Church estates were staked out by circumequitatio, circuitio, a custom whereby the duke himself or his agent rode around and marked out the boundaries of the area. Judicial and economic immunities granted to these estates brought great economic advantages. The estates were granted independence and immunity in varying degrees from the intervention of the duke’s officials. The Church as well as larger lay estates, founded their fortunes upon these liberties in the course of the thirteenth century.
This new development promoted a division between the estates of the knights. The position of certain groups of knights who owned more land with a larger dependent population was strengthened while that of the lower ranks of knights was weakened. A contemporary observer notes in the Liber fundationis claustri Mariae Virginis in Henrykow in Lower Silesia, the
EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS 83
wane of small land holdings in the thirteenth century and the rise of large estates in the vicinity of the Cistercian monastery which had itself stripped the lower ranks of knights of their property. As was customary in the West, so in Poland many knights took service with a bishop or a lord. A number of knights survived by virtue of being directly subordinated to the duke. A great many knights of lesser rank, derived from the earlier free population, continued to live in the districts of Mazovia where the growth of large es- tates was slow. The main reason for their survival was the fact that this duchy was in constant danger of Pruthenian and Lithuanian invasion. Consequently it was necessary to organize a permanent force by calling into service the knights who as a rule did not own serfs.
The growth of the towns was promoted by similar economic incentives. At the close of the twelfth and in the early thirteenth centuries, a small group of wealthy persons may be noted among the urban population, most certainly the merchants, who, on the basis of personal privileges, granted them by the duke or the bishop as overlords of the urban settlement, came to occupy a leading position among the inhabitants. This group corresponds to what were known in other central European towns as the meliores, the nucleus and backbone of the community, who organized the towns. In Po- land the towns were headed by a scultetus and infrequently by a villicus or procurator, appointed by the duke to what was generally a hereditary office. In the early years of the thirteenth century, the scultetus administered the laws on market days and controlled the settlement, but principally he was the chief magistrate of the growing urban community. This community did not embrace all the permanent or temporary residents of the town, but was restricted to citizens (cives, burgenses) or denizens (hospites) enjoying this privilege in hereditary right. In several known instances these were local men, some of them knights. It comes as no surprise that in seeking the ap- propriate form of legal privilege, Plock granted its hospites the rights of Mazovian knights. From the earliest years of the thirteenth century it is pos- sible to observe the presence of growing numbers of foreign, and especially German merchants. They strengthened the economic and social importance of the burghers of such large townships as Cracow, Wroclaw, Poznan and Gdansk and obtained separate liberties for their language group. Foreign craftsmen also were introduced into the towns. In the twelfth century, Wal- loon weavers settled in the suburbs of Wroclaw and the Italian and German experts who came to Little Poland, enjoyed special mining privileges from about 1220.
At the close of the twelfth century, towns and markets were granted the forum liberum, or rights of a free market, in return for a specified rent. Grant of a forum liberum meant that all were free to use it and were not liable to ducal taxation or subject to the jurisdiction of the castellans and voivodes. No payments in kind, services or money were made to the ducal treasury or to the ducal officials. The scope of immunities was related to the role of the
6*
84 THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
town. The immunities thus evolved into what became the Polish municipal law. The smaller towns adopted this method of organizing their social and economic life throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth and even the fifteenth centuries, abandoning it quite late in favour of another law, the ins Teutoni- cum, which had been tried and tested by the towns of Silesia since the second decade of the thirteenth century.
FOREIGN COLONIZATION AND THE INTRODUCTION OF GERMAN LAW IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
In order to evaluate correctly the role played by foreigners in releasing the social energy that gave impetus to the transition of the material and social life of Polish towns and villages, it is first essential to grasp the fact that Polish towns had already acquired self-government and that they already had a complicated social and administrative structure before the close of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. Foreign settlers, prin- cipally Germans, but Flemings and Walloons and Jews as well, all contrib- uted in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the acceler- ation of progress with regard both to the volume of production and to the quality of urban life.
The foreign immigrants were not evenly distributed in the Polish lands. The largest wave of rural and urban colonists swept into Lower Silesia, Western Pomerania and Pruthenia, bringing about in the course of several centuries a linguistic change in these areas, because the ruling class, the courtiers of the dukes and the feudal lords, came under the influence of the German Janguage while German peasant colonists squeezed out the Slavs and Pruthenians and restricted their development. In Upper Silesia, Great Poland, Gdansk-Pomerania and Little Poland, however, the foreigners left their mark only on a few large towns and only in a very small degree upon the villages. In the majority of cases these foreigners were absorbed into Polish society at the beginning of the modern epoch. In a few important in- stances, such as Gdansk and Torun, they preserved their language within the framework of the then multinational Polish State. In Central Poland, Mazovia and Podlasie, and from the fourteenth century in Ruthenia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the German element was of no numerical significance and was assimilated with the local urban and rural population.
Even in towns ruled by patricians whose language was German and inhabited by German artisans and merchants, the proportion of Poles in crafts and services was quite considerable. The mounting social and political tensions rarely erupted, however, into a conflict of nationalities. Class divi- sions were very complex, causing plebeians of both language groups to unite against the German patricians. Although there was open conflict between the
FOREIGN COLONIZATION 85
German community and the Polish feudal lords, as for example in the revolt of mayor Albert in Cracow in 1311, there were long periods of peaceful cooperation, and many patricians of foreign birth formed the ranks of Polish nobles.
The acceptance of German law by Polish towns was called locatio civi- tatis. It was widely adopted in the first half of the thirteenth century by agency of foreign merchant colonies which enjoyed the protection of Henry the Bearded, the shrewd ruler of Silesia. His urban policy was similar to that pursued by rulers in the neighbouring western states and its aim was to adapt tried legal forms to the country’s commodity-money economy. Without doubt Henry the Bearded was guided not only by fiscal considerations, but also by the desire to invigorate the economy by bringing into the area both foreign merchant capital as well as expert artisans and miners. Henry the Bearded by way of experiment restricted this policy to smaller settlements. Before 1211 he granted the hospites coming to Ziotoryja (in Auro), a famous mining centre of precious ores, the charter given under the law of 1188 to the burghers of Magdeburg by its archbishop. A few years later, but before 1223, a similar charter of a Novum Forum ducis Henrici was granted to Silesian Sroda, a settlement located in fertile farming country on the im- portant route from Lusatia through Glogéw to Wroclaw; this was based on Magdeburg law but with elements of the Flemish law. This was adopted without any changes in Nysa in 1221. Other locationes civitatum in Silesia kept to the version of the Magdeburg law worked out at Sroda and called it the law of Sroda—ius Novi Fori Sredense. It was later generally applied on the whole of the extensive region of central and southern Poland.
As early as 1237 the German merchant community of Szczecin in West- ern Pomerania, was exempted from the jurisdiction governing the urban Slav settlement, while in 1243 Duke Barnim I put the town’s administration according to the Magdeburg law in the hands of the German community. On the other hand, the initially small German colony in Gdansk and several other Pomeranian cities that were linked with the Hansa, adopted the Liibeck law. Another centre of municipal reform established by the Teutonic Order in the course of the thirteenth century, had a much profounder influence. In the area of Pruthenia that the Teutonic Knights had conquered, they destroyed the burgeoning Baltic trade and crafts in the markets and suburbs (called liszki, pilate, palte). The Polish territory, especially the Chetmno Lands, where a new town rose in 1233 close to the old fortified town of Chelmno, became the springboard of their activity in the economic field as well. The Chelmno charter became the model not only for the towns of the Teutonic Order but also for the towns of all northern Poland, including Mazovia, and was known as the ius Culmense.
Despite the wide influence that the administrative system of some towns had upon that of others over the next few centuries, it must not be assumed that the period of the earliest locatio civitatis, which ended in southern Po-
8 THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
land with the Mongol invasion of 1241, constituted a rigid dividing line between one period and another. The search for the best solution was con- tinuous, though some of the methods devised were a failure, others proved hardly adequate. Occasionally the founding charters were renewed, as in Wroclaw in 1242 and 1261. In Cracow evidence of the locatio of a settle- ment near Trinity Church goes back to the reign of Leszek the White, or to be more exact to about 1220; in 1257 Bolestaw the Chaste granted a definitive locatio for the town. The first founding act provided only for the appoint- ment of a scultetus and exempted settlers, usually but not always foreigners from Polish law which remained binding on the native inhabitants of the settlement. The early charters were-a far cry from the charters establishing a municipal self-government. The scultetus remained an official of the duke and the interference of the duke and his administration though still effective was restricted to matters relating to the market facilities. The original privi- lege established standards of court and trade law, but did not concern itself, even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with the political system of the town administration, which was allowed to evolve from local practice that was the outcome of the socio-political power struggle.
In the second period that began in the middle of the thirteenth century, the town charters embraced a broader area of Poland and a greater number of towns, such as Poznan (1253) followed soon by Kalisz (1253-1260), Cracow (1257) and many others. In the thirteenth century 38 towns were reorganized in Great Poland alone. Although privileges under Polish law granted to some inhabitants to the towns are mentioned in the sources still at the end of the thirteenth century, the constant use of identical legal forms led ultimately in the fourteenth century to a situation ‘where the law called German law applied to all the burghers of towns which had been granted the locatio civitatis. For this reason the ius Teutonicum became synonymous with the ims civile, the rights of the citizens of towns. The chief magistrate was the advocatus, though still known as the scultetus in Gdansk-Pomerania. This official was responsible to the duke, but his office was hereditary; he was independent of the town community and collected a large revenue from rents and court fees. Pomeranian communities were the first to aspire to free them- selves from this subjection by purchasing the office and by establishing a town council. In this respect success was achieved by the town of Tczew as early as 1258. Other towns were less fortunate and had to wait many long decades and even centuries for this privilege.
The transformation of the municipal administration was the result of the economic role of the town, both in the local market and in far-flungcommerce. The thirteenth century witnessed changes in rural life (villages founded on the principle of rent law), in consequence of which a considerable part of the peasantry, once they had settled their dues in the form of rents, became valuable trade partners for the burghers. The peasants supplied grain, cattle and pigs and in turn demanded articles produced by the artisans. Such
FOREIGN COLONIZATION 87
products as cloth and ironware reached even remote villages in Poland over a number of centuries.
The growing commodity and money exchange in the local markets led to the slow formation of economic regions and of a hierarchy of towns, ranging from the regional capital through the smaller townships and market settle- ments, a growing number of which were granted the German law. The total number of towns did not change, or grew only slightly. Owing to their diverse functions, however, they performed a new economic role. Large towns, like Cracow, Wroclaw, Poznan, Toran and Gdansk, conducted trade on a local and regional scale and ventured farther afield in their commercial endeavours, attracting goods to their fairs and their markets from the farthest regions of Poland and from abroad. The scope and assortment of luxury goods were extended to include silks and expensive cloth from Flanders and spices. More important were articles of general consumption, such as cheaper cloths, metal goods, precious metals, salt, herrings and beer of a better quality than could be obtained locally. The importance of the Baltic as an area of operation of the Hanseatic towns increased in the second half of the thirteenth century. The town of Liibeck had secured the cooperation of the larger towns on the Vistula which was soon to become the chief waterway of the Polish lands. The Hungarian copper and wine trade, passing through Cracow, Torun, Gdansk or Elblag reached the Baltic. The East-West trade extending from the Black Sea and Ruthenia to the Baltic as well as to Bohemia and Germany car- ried furs, hides, cattle, silk and spices in one direction and metal goods, haber- dashery (called Nuremberg wares) and cloth in the other. Polish towns added their own goods, agricultural produce, mineral salt and lead to the foreign transit trade. The ducal treasury profited from this trade by enforcing the right of way whereby the merchants were allowed to travel along stipulated routes, where they had to pay dues at the numerous land and water customs offices.
The towns sought to obtain a partial or total exemption from custom duties at all the customs houses in the given duchy. Poznan obtained the exemption in 1283, Cracow in 1288-1306. Occasionally, towns like Wroclaw managed to buy the customs houses and themselves collected duties from foreign merchants. In the competitive struggle some towns obtained rights of staple (ius stapulae, depositorii) which obliged foreign merchants in transit to offer their whole cargo for sale to the local merchants, or to put it on sale for a specified number of days. Wroclaw had obtained this privilege in 1274, Szczecin in 1283 and Cracow in 1306.
The changing pattern of urban occupations, the development of crafts and trading, the transformation of the social structure of the burghers and the influence exerted by foreign town charters, brought about a far reaching reform in the lay out of Polish towns. It is noticeable in the large towns but the change was apparent also in the small towns. The fortified castle-town with a suburb and several market settlements, which together formed the
88 THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
twelfth-century Polish town, was replaced in the thirteenth century by closely built up areas, housing the population with streets laid out in a regular plan with a fairly large quadrangular market. The basic element of the town plan was an elongated plot, on whose narrow side contiguous with the square or street, a dwelling with a workshop or merchant shop was built, the rear being occupied by a yard and outbuildings. Despite the striking regularity of the town plans based on central European experience in measuring and city plan- ning, the plots, squares and streets were laid out in diverse patterns and the public buildings, such as the town hall, the public scales, the mercer’s hall, meat and bread stalls, the parish church, walls or ramparts and wooden palisades, the gates and fortified towers were located in different ways.
The choice of a site for a new town development was restricted by the property rights of lords and the clergy, or determined by topographical condi- tions. There were cases, as for example at Trzebnica, where an old settlement was redeveloped within the old boundaries, or where new towns, as in the instance of Gniezno, were located on the site of one of the markets lying close to the castle-town and suburb.
Very often, however, the old town site was abandoned and the new centre was founded by charter some distance, even several kilometres away from the earlier settlement which, though it still bore the name of stare miasto (the old town), declined to the level of village or a suburb. This is what happened at Sandomierz, Leczyca, Radom, Kalisz and a great many other urban centres. Some transfers were fairly complex in nature, as for example in the Sacz valley beneath the point where the Poprad joins the Dunajec and where Podegrodzie (suburb) as well as Stary and Nowy Sacz (Old and New Sacz) are a considerable distance apart (8-12 km). Even when the new chartered towns were located close to the earlier settlement, part of the population left the old town which then became a risidential centre. This may be illustrated by the example of the cathedral or collegiate isles called Ostr6w Tumski in Poznan, Wroclaw and Glogéw. Once a castle-town with its suburb, the Os- trow Tumski now became a religious centre, the residence of the clergy and the servants of the church alone. In some towns there are still fairly distinctive traces of old settlements which have become merged with the planning of the new chartered towns. Grodzka Street in Cracow, for example, was the axis of the old settlement Okél. On the other hand, on the land of Pruthenians the Teutonic Order founded the Prussian towns, in a virgin area, which were notable for their particularly rigid geometric plan, of which one of the finest examples is Reszel.
Occasionally, the new town area failed to accomodate local and foreign trade. This was the case at Torun. The Teutonic Knights settled in Gérsk—Old Torun in 1231. In 1233 they founded a charter town about 10 kilometres up the Vistula. The town was laid out on an irregular pentagon with the Teutonic castle on its eastern wall. In 1264, the New Town of Torun, mostly inhabited
THE DUCHIES OF POLAND 89
by artisans and with its own town government, sprang up next to the castle and the Old Town.
As a rule, however, there was adequate room for construction within the early ramparts or later within the town walls, thanks to the ample allowance made in staking out the plots. The walls were built with the aid of the duke. In a great many cases he moved his seat from the old earth and wood castle- town to the stone castle, which was constructed as a part of the new town’s defense system. This was the case in Wroclaw, Poznan, Leczyca and many other towns.
THE DUCHIES OF POLAND
There were a great many dukes in thirteenth century Poland. The prolific Piast dynasty divided its heritage among its heirs. The dynasty was split into several lines : the Piasts of Great Poland, Little Poland, Mazovia, Kujawy, Lower and Upper Silesia. The dynasty that ruled Western Pomerania was of local origin and was founded by Warcistaw I, who has been mentioned in another connexion, 2 member of a lordly family and a vassal of Bolestaw the Wrymouth. Sobiesltaw who died about 1178, one of the viceroys of Gdansk-Pomerania appointed by the supreme duke, founded another dynasty which soon usurped sovereign power in this region.
The last representative of the system established by Bolestaw the Wrymouth was Mieszko III the Old who died in 1202. He ascended the throne of Cracow on four different occasions amid the conflicts between various groups of lords. The last demonstration of the Grand Duke’s claims was the journey to Gdansk made in 1227 by Leszek the White, successor of Mieszko III in Cracow and son of Casimir the Just. The journey resulted in the tragic death of the Grand Duke which occurred on his passage home, following the conspiracy of two allied regional rulers, the dukes of Great Poland and Gdansk. Beginning with 1202, the formed senior duchy of Cracow and Sandomierz was treated as a province subject to the same laws of succession as the other provinces.
We may now turn to consider the salient political events that took place in each of the duchies into which the Polish State had been split.
Upon the death of Leszek the White, power in the Cracow-Sandomierz duchy passed into the hand of the great lords, who during the minority of Bolestaw the Chaste, the son of Leszek, placed various princes on the throne. One of them, Wladyslaw Spindleshanks of Great Poland, son of Mieszko the Old, granted the lords in 1228 a privilege at Cienia in which he promised to observe “just and noble laws according to the council of the bishop and the barons”. The privilege of Cienia is recognized as the first charter of a general nature granted to the higher nobility. Henry the Bearded and Henry the
90 THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
Pious, dukes of the Silesian line who for several years were the rulers of Cracow and Sandomierz, tolerated the government of the Palatine Teodor of the Gryf clan, who styled himself “We by the Grace of God Palatine of Cracow”. With the aid of the clergy Bolestaw the Chaste, faithful servant of the Church, tried to enlist the clergy to weaken some of the lordly families and their retainers, but he met with rebellious opposition as did his successor Leszek the Black (1279-1288), a duke of the line of Kujawy, who died without an heir. Leszek the Black clashed with the Bishop of Cracow, Pawel of Przemankowo, and the Palatine Janusz of the Starza clan. Both in Silesia and in Cracow, the burghers were emerging as a new social force. They defended Cracow from the rebels and upon Leszek’s death installed on the throne Henry IV Probus of Wroclaw, one of the first champions of the reintegration of Poland.
In 1163 Silesia returned to the sons of Wiadystaw II the Exile with the agreement of Bolestaw the Curly, Grand Duke of Poland. They were allowed to inherit the lands of their father. They soon divided the Silesian territories into three provinces which in the course of the thirteenth century disintegrated further into still smaller districts. The swift economic growth of these lands, the leading economic role of the Duchy of Wroctaw in particular, enabled Henry the Bearded, who ascended the throne in 1202, to attempt to expand his dominions. He managed to seize different titles of succession from various relatives, or to set himself up as the guardian of the juvenile heirs to the territories of southern Great Poland, most of Silesia and the whole of Little Poland. In 1238, these considerable though still loosely integrated possessions were inherited by his son, Henry the Pious. Upon his death in 1241 his sons’ succession was restricted to Lower Silesia which they divided between them- selves. Eventually Henry IV Probus reestablished his supremacy over the lords who strove to break his power. Most dangerous was the Bishop of Wroclaw, Thomas II, who fought for the privilegium fori for the Church lands. Henry IV formulated the programme of the integration of the Polish territories ; he seized Little Poland and attempted to revive the royal title, but he did not live to carry out this plan. When he died in 1290 he bequeathed Little Poland to Przemyst II, the energetic Duke of Great Poland, who a few years later was to place the royal crown on his head.
Great Poland entered upon the course of disintegration belatedly and then only for a short period. It was guided for 64 years by the firm hand of Miesz- ko the Old, the exponent of traditions of the old monarchy. Mieszko assigned to his sons separate provinces only under pressure and then only for a brief period. His successor and son, Wladystaw Spindleshanks, restricted and later removed his nephew and co-ruler Wladystaw, son of Odo, who yielded to the bishops and the abbots. Wladyslaw Spindleshanks was a representative of the traditional relations between the duke and the Church ; he opposed the Gre- gorian emancipation of the Church. Hence such measures as the election of bishops by chapters, freedom from taxes and celibacy of the clergy, were
THE DUCHIES OF POLAND 91
delayed in reaching Poland by almost hundred years. The Archbishop of Gniezno, Henryk Kietlicz, won this battle by turning for help to other dukes, who were hostile to Wladyslaw Spindleshanks and his plans for expansion. Two meetings of the dukes, the first in 1210 at Borzykowa and the second in 1215 at Wolborz, laid the foundations for the evolution of the economic and judicial immunity of the Church in Poland. In 1247 Great Poland was finally divided by Bolestaw the Pious and Przemyst I, nephews and heirs of Wladystaw Spindleshanks. When Przemyst I died, shortly afterwards the two areas were merged again. Thus Great Poland formed a solid base for all plans that aimed at the reintegration of the Polish duchies, especially under the rule of Przemyst II (1279-1296), the son of Przemyst I.
In Mazovia and Kujawy, however, the process of disintegration went far deeper. The irresponsible policy of Conrad of Mazovia, the younger brother of Leszek the White, who was established in the duchy from 1202, ultimately failed to deliver into his hands the coveted throne of Cracow. On the contrary, his policy prevented Mazovia from carrying out its principal task, in regard to the rest of the Polish territories, namely to defend them from the raids of the Baltic peoples. Conrad’s sons were the founders of two dynastic lines. Casimir I founded the dynasty of Kujawy which produced Wladyslaw the Short, the toughminded ruler who was to unify the Polish Kingdom. He was surrounded by a countless progeny of brothers and nephews whose sway frequently extended over one castellan’s district only. The Mazovian line, descendent from Siemowit I, was even more prolific, dividing and subdividing Mazovia and ruling over it until the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
The territories of Pomerania were for years composed of two separate units, Western Pomerania and Gdansk-Pomerania, each with its separate history. At the close of the twelfth century Gdansk-Pomerania dissolved its ties with the Grand Duke. The rulers of the country came from a family of court officials and consequently designated themselves until 1227 by the Latin title of princeps rather than dux, the title used by other Polish rulers. This family also divided the country about 1220 with unreserved support of the lords who were hostile to powerful rulers. The country prospered owing to the grain trade of the Vistula valley and by its water-way, of which there is evidence as early as the thirteenth century. Gdansk, the capital of the chief duchy in this region, began to play a decisive role by its ties with German ports on the western Baltic coastline through the small colony of Libeck immigrants who settled among the native population. Gdansk-Pomerania was a prize coveted from different sides. On the one hand the margraves of Brandenburg, moving through Lubusz (Lebus) Land from the middle of the thirteenth century, drew menacingly close to the Pomeranian duchies ; on the other hand, in the east, the Teutonic Order was to become a still more formi- dable neighbour. Caught between the two, Duke Mestvin II (Mésciwdj), who succeeded to the whole of Gdansk-Pomerania after the death of his kinsmen, concluded in 1282 a secret pact with Przemyst II of Great Poland, whom he
92 THE CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL TRANSITION
named heir to the duchy. In the face of this deadly external peril, the lords of Pomerania agreed to the terms of the pact, which became one of the first steps toward the integration and the revival of the Kingdom of Poland.
In the twelfth century, Western Pomerania was divided into the duchies of Wotogoszcz (Wolgast) lying on the left bank of the Odra and Szczecin mostly on the right bank. In 1177 Duke Bogustaw I of Szczecin appeared at a meeting held in Gniezno by the Grand Duke Mieszko the Old. In order to escape becoming vassal of the Danes, he paid homage to Frederick Bar- barossa in 1181. This fact did not deter Denmark from exacting fealty from Western Pomerania three years later, but as the power of Denmark declined at the beginning of the second quarter of the thirteenth century, Western Pomerania owed fealty to no one for a brief span of time. Despite the opposition of the dukes, the Bishop of Kamien won in the course of the thirteenth century virtual territorial sovereignty for his ecclesiastic estates in the Kolobrzeg region, and strove to create an independent episcopal princi- pality. At the close of the twelfth century he dissolved all ties by which he was bound to the archdiocese of Gniezno and became instead directly sub- ordinated to Rome. The rapid growth of the towns of Pomerania, in which the German element became dominant in the first half of the thirteenth century, led to a close association with the Hanseatic towns. The Court and the nobility succumbed to Germanization in the thirteenth century, the monastic orders as the Cistercians of Kotbacz, brought in German colonists. The Slavic population lost all political influence. The castellan system in Pomerania developed upon the Polish model now decayed and was replaced by town administrations headed by advocati and burgraves. In 1278, upon the death of Barnim I, the ruler over the whole of Western Pomerania, the territories were again divided into the two duchies of Szczecin and Wolo- goszcz. The towns and the lords organized themselves into a state representa- tion and compelled the dukes in 1283 to sign the land peace of Rostock. They acquired thereby a share in the government and the right to resist rulers, who failed to observe the provisions of the pact.
Brandenburg likewise constituted a formidable external threat to Pom- erania as well. In the course of the thirteenth century the margraves imposed vassalage upon territories extending as far as Szczecin. For this reason Bogu- staw I concluded an alliance with Mestvin II of Gdansk and Przemyst II of Great Poland in 1287. Neither, however, was able to help Western Pomerania. The dukes of Szczecin finally severed their feudal ties with the March of Brandenburg in 1320, and in 1338 became vassals of the Holy Roman Empire. The dukes of Wologoszcz did not recognize the sovereignty of. the Emperor until 1348. One line had its seat after 1340 in Stawno and Slupsk, on the eastern border of Western Pomerania, and was bound politically with the renascent Kingdom of Poland.
GROWING EXTERNAL DANGER 93 THE GROWING EXTERNAL DANGER
The political disintegration of the former monarchy was accompanied by the ambitious plans of its neighbours to expand their power over Polish territories.
The tributary and feudal relations with the Holy Roman Empire estab- lished by individual Polish dukes in the course of the twelfth century, the last of these being in 1184 by Casimir the Just, were actually very loose. The decline of the power of the Hohenstaufens frustrated all hope of reestablishing the imperial position. Meanwhile Pope Innocent III at the express wish of several Polish dukes extended his protection to Poland. In the middle of the thirteenth century virtually all the Polish dukes established a feudal relation- ship with the Papacy for the purpose of neutralizing the claims of William of Holland, King of Germany. This formal dependence did not produce any political effects. Its tangible consequence was the reform of St. Peter’s Pence which had been levied upon the population probably since the times of Mieszko I, and in the second half of the thirteenth century the increased activity of Papal legates in matters affecting the Polish Church.
Of real danger was the open or hidden aggression of the German rulers in the west and north, and the destructive Baltic and Mongol invasions from the east. The Tartar armies, as the contemporary European documents called the Mongols, wrought havoc wherever they passed. In 1241 their first invasion swept through the southern and central part of Poland up to Legnica in Lower Silesia. Here the knights of Silesia and Great Poland, the miners of precious ores and the peasants of Silesia, with some detachments of the Templar, Joannite and Teutonic Knights, united under the command of Henry the Pious. The Duke fell in battle and the remainder of his army fled to seek cover at the castle-town of Legnica, which resisted the Tartar onslaught. The nomads turned back and set out for Hungary. From 1240, the year the Mongols overran Ruthenia, Poland found herself on the borders of the powerful Mongol Empire from which further destructive raids were launched. In 1259 Lublin, Sandomierz, Cracow and Bytom were burned down, and in 1287 only the fortified towns of Sandomierz and Cracow could resist the invaders.
The north-eastern frontier lands of Poland were harrassed by the looting and pillaging invasions of the Baltic peoples, Pruthenians, Sudovians and Lithuanians. The attacks grew in intensity as the political organization of these peoples grew in size and permanence. In the thirteenth century the duchies of Mazovia, Cracow and Sandomierz, together with Halicz Ruthenia, opposed Sudovia and Lithuania. Futile attempts were made to convert Sudovia by missions sent from the ephemerial diocese in Lukow (1257), and likewise Lithuania where a Polish Dominican went as a missionary bishop in 1255. The Lithuanian raids repeated at intervals of several years wrought great damage and made incursions into central Poland. In the attack of 1262 the castle-town of Jazdéw at an important ford on the Vistula was razed by fire,
Noted
ee
The expansion of the Teutonic Order State, i \ see a g Niaip Miedniki
1230 - 1329 O 100 Kms —— OOO” fe] 60 Miles || Dominions Conquests Conquests | FFA in 1230 (IMD ip to 1283 up to 1329 i ull i mn
p y c S , & | i Soy el ; 1 Konigsberg \S
i ny ae ig )
il ls y Lidzbark
4 Malbork
bOstréoda
ED ase SEA Su OR
f Tucholaa ell UL ra
Wizna oNakto ?
Inowroctaw oCiechanoéw fo)
Bus
—
Some thirty years later the town of Warsaw was built a little below Jazdéw in order to guard this important route. The raids of the Sudovians ended with the last quarter of the thirteenth century when the power of this people was weakened by a Polish-Ruthenian coalition and afterwards completely crushed by the Teutonic Knights.
The Order emerged as a formidable military force in consequence of the short-sighted policy of Conrad of Mazovia. Despite the many military efforts and attempts at trade and missionary penetration in the twelfth century and the early thirteenth century, a solution of the Pruthenian problem was beyond the strenght of a divided Poland. A Polish bishopric for Pruthenia was created in 1216 and Bishop Christian of the Cistercian Order established himself in the castle-town of Chelmno. Polish dukes organized coalitions against the Pruthenians who replied with renewed attacks against the Chelmno Land, Mazowia and Gdansk-Pomerania. Other measures were taken to strengthen the defense of the frontiers, in Mazovia with the aid of the small order of the Knights of Christ, called the Dobrzyn friars after the castellanship granted to them, and in Gdansk-Pomerania with the aid of a small Spanish colony of the Calatrava Order established in Tymawa. These measures proved useless.
GROWING EXTERNAL DANGER 95
Conrad of Mazovia therefore resolved in 1226 to invite the Teutonic Knights to Chelmno for the purpose of organizing its defense and the counter-attack. The German Order of St. Mary, called in Poland the Knights of the Cross, settled on Polish soil when their large convent was banned from Hungary for trying to establish the sovereignty of their lands and to throw off the authority of the Hungarian kings. From the start the Teutonic Knights set out to establish by fire and sword their territorial authority at the expense of their Polish benefactor and patron. Before they had settled in Poland they had received an Imperial golden bull which granted them Pruthenia as a fief. Some years later they also acquired Pruthenia from the Pope as an “estate of St. Peter” and forged a document by which Duke Conrad in 1230 had allegedly made them a gift of the Chefmno Lands and of all of Pruthenia. In 1253 Chel- mno and Torun were granted town charters according to the German law. The Teutonic Knights launched a systematic and cruel campaign of conquest against the pagan population of Pruthenia. For this purpose they brought in reinforcements of western knights and built fortified castles. In 1237 the Livonian Order of the Knights of the Sword joined as a separate branch the Teutonic Order. Despite the resistance of the conquered population, Prussia was subdued by about 1283. Thus a powerful centralized state rose north to Poland, hostile both to Poland and Lithuania. German colonists came in number to a country whose Pruthenian population had been decimated. The new towns organized the exploitation of the country under the watchful eye of the Order and established close contacts with the Hansa through the town of Elblag, founded in 1237.
Another enemy grew and expanded in the west, namely the March of Brandenburg. It rose in the twelfth century in the territories of the Polabian Slavs and now cast its covetous eye upon Polish lands. The first to fall to the expansionary pressure of Brandenburg was Lubusz (Lebus), a frontier castle- town on the left bank of the Odra which succumbed in the middle of the thirteenth century. From then on the margraves began to drive a wedge up the Warta at the expense of Great Poland and Western Pomerania. The area cal- led New March with its capital in Gorz6w (Landsberg) was the springboard for the plans of further conquest in Gdansk-Pomerania, where the Teutonic Order had similar plans of conquest.
Though these two bases of aggression, the Teutonic Order and the March, foreshadow the dual power of the Prussian state of the modern era, attention must be drawn to the rapid economic expansion of the Polish territories which offered ample opportunities for the settlement of large numbers of German colonists. How dangerous the colonists came to be was soon learned in these parts of Poland which in the last quarter of the thirteenth century made an effort to rebuild a united state. A rebellion of German burghers against the Polish duke occurred in Cracow in 1311 and was put down only with great effort. Western Pomerania dissolved its political ties with the remainder of the Polish territories owing to the influence of the German lords who infiltrated
Wachock. Cistercian Monastery, 13th cent.
EFFORTS AT UNIFICATION 97
Sulej6w. St. Thomas’ Church, first half of the 13th cent. Keystone
the feudal class of the province, to the Germanization of the Duke’s Court and the Church, as well as to the preponderance of Germans in the towns. The same factors may be noted in Silesia, although German influence was much weaker there and weakest above all in Upper Silesia. The State of Poland, which became reunited in the fourteenth century, recovered only small portions of Silesia and Pomerania.
EFFORTS AT UNIFICATION IN THE LATE THIRTEENTH AND JHE EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
The territorial disintegration did not nullify the previously enumerated factors that kept the State and the people together. The concept of gens Polonica sur-
7 History of Poland