The Baptism of Mieszko I of Poland

Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg in Saxony, writing about fifty years later, tells that Mieszko I, duke of the Poles, took a noble wife from Bohemia, the sister of Boleslav the elder. Her name, Dobrawa, he says, means “good” in the Slav tongue, and she, a Christian, set herself to win her pagan husband for the faith. In the first Lent after the wedding she gave way when he asked her to break her fast, so that he might listen to her more readily another time; some said she ate meat in one Lent, others in three (Thietmar, Chronicle 4.55–56, pp. 194–196). At her repeated urging, Thietmar goes on, Mieszko cast off the unbelief he was born into and was baptized. His people followed their lord, and Jordan, their first bishop, laboured hard among them. Dobrawa then bore a son, Boleslav (Thietmar, Chronicle 4.56, p. 196).

A chronicle of the Polish dukes, composed in the early twelfth century, tells it differently. Mieszko, it says, had seven wives. Dubrovka refused to marry him unless he gave up that custom and promised to become a Christian. She came to Poland with a great following of clergy and laymen, and did not share his bed until he had renounced paganism and joined the church. So, the chronicler concludes, the first duke of the Poles came to the grace of baptism through his faithful wife (Gallus Anonymus, Deeds of the Princes of the Poles 1.5–6, p. 428).

Neither writer gives a year. The annals of the Kraków chapter enter Dubrovka’s coming under 965 and the baptism under 966 (Annals of the Kraków Chapter, years 965–966, p. 585).

A note made at Rome in the 1080s records a document from the time of Pope John XV, by which a “judge Dagome”, his wife Ote and their sons Misica and Lambert gave to Saint Peter a city called Schinesghe with its territory, bounded by the sea, Prussia, Rus’, Kraków and the Oder. The cardinal who made the note did not know who they were (Dagome iudex (Deusdedit, Collection of Canons 3.199) p. 359). One manuscript of the note reads “Schinesne of the province of the Poles” (Dagome iudex (Deusdedit, Collection of Canons 3.199) p. 359). Thietmar says that Mieszko’s second wife was named Oda, that she bore him a son Miseco, and that he died in 992 (Thietmar, Chronicle 4.57–58, pp. 196–198). On these grounds the document is read as Mieszko’s gift of his land to the Roman see.

In 1000 the emperor Otto III came to Gniezno to pray to the martyr Adalbert, whose body, the Polish chronicle says, Mieszko’s son Boleslav had bought from the Prussians and laid there (Gallus Anonymus, Deeds of the Princes of the Poles 1.5–6, p. 428). He entered the town barefoot, Thietmar says, and at once founded an archbishopric there, which he gave to the martyr’s brother Radim, with the bishops of Kolberg, Kraków and Wrocław under him. Thietmar hopes that this was lawfully done; it was done, he adds, without the consent of the bishop of Poznań, to whose diocese the whole region belonged (Thietmar, Chronicle 4.44–45, pp. 182–184). A generation after the baptism the Polish church had its own metropolitan.