Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Vol. 69 (1988): Our Past

Articles

Chroniclers' reflections on the Christianization of Poland

  • Brygida Kürbis
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52204/np.1988.69.97-114  [Google Scholar]
Published: 1988-06-30

Abstract

The article deals with the chroniclers' reflections on the Christianization of the country. The written tradition has two aspects. One of them is knowledge about the event passed down from book to book, from generation to generation. The second is the work of imagination, which can serve different purposes and meet different needs. The author deals with the tradition within the country, the tradition operating in Poland. It shows how difficult it is to maintain knowledge about the basic facts of the Christianization of Poland and what paths the imagination followed regarding these facts. The author demonstrates how learned thought, accustomed to pragmatism, moralizing, allusions and symbols, dealt with this problem, and how our medieval work recorded the very Christian quality. There was much fiction in the stories about how Poland once became Christian. The limited number of recorded facts led to the development of a stereotypical history of the introduction of Christianity. This stereotype included several easily remembered phrases. Such "memoria" entered various chronicles, compilations of chroniclers and exhibits. They circulated in Poland in large numbers at the end of the Middle Ages and effectively competed with the new scientific work of Jan Długosz - "Annales Incliti Regni Polonorum". However, it is worth appreciating the efforts of average historians and commentators on Polish history, despite the many false corrections they introduced. They filled the gaps and gaps with specific dates, places and circumstances, often using one short word. Among the corrections made by our ancestors, we can also include attempts to activate Duchess Dobrawa. Dobrawa was to deal not only with the conversion of her husband, but also the entire population. Perhaps this can be attributed to the faint trace of memory of the first Christianization campaign that came from Bohemia and was sponsored by the Czech clergy; that's where Dobrawa's servants came from. This oldest Christianization also allowed the celebration of the Slavic mass. The greatest achievement of historiography at the beginning of Christianity in Poland is the presentation of the beginnings of the Piast dynasty, tinged with a sacred element, contained in the story of Gallus Anonymous, and in another story, written in a similar way, about the miraculous recovery of sight by Mieszko I. These stories were widely disseminated not only among groups professionally dealing with literature, but also widely disseminated in society and have been popularized. The climate of Christian life was reflected in the annals and hagiographies in an extremely interesting way. They included the world of ideas, types of experiences, participation in church liturgy, moral ideas, condemnation of evil, understanding of the social and family order, and the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authority.

References

  1. Graus F., Lebendige Vergangenheit im Mittelalter und in den Verstellungen vom Mittelalter, Köln 1975. [Google Scholar]
  2. Kürbis B., Sacrum i profanum. Dwie wizje władzy w polskim średniowieczu, 1977. [Google Scholar]
  3. Labuda G., O katalogach biskupów krakowskich przed Długoszem, „Studia Żródłoznawcze” 27, 1983. [Google Scholar]

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.