Gniezno
A town in western Poland where, according to Thietmar of Merseburg, the emperor Otto III founded an archbishopric in 1000 at the resting place of the martyr Adalbert. The Polish court chronicle calls it a metropolis.
Gniezno lies in western Poland, north-east of Poznań. Thietmar of Merseburg tells how the emperor Otto III was led there by Mieszko’s son Boleslav, entered barefoot, prayed to the martyr Adalbert and founded an archbishopric, with bishops at Kolberg, Kraków and Wrocław under it (Thietmar, Chronicle 4.45, pp. 182–184). The Polish court chronicle says that Boleslav had bought Adalbert’s body from the Prussians for its weight in gold and laid it at Gniezno, which the chronicler calls a metropolis (Gallus Anonymus, Deeds of the Princes of the Poles 1.6, p. 428).
The “city called Schinesghe” that a Roman note of the 1080s records as given to Saint Peter under Pope John XV is read as Gniezno; one manuscript of the note has “Schinesne of the province of the Poles” (Dagome iudex (Deusdedit, Collection of Canons 3.199) p. 359). The timeline sets the baptism of Mieszko here by convention; no source read for that entry names the place of the baptism.
What happened here
- AD 966, estimated dateThe Baptism of Mieszko I of Poland
Mieszko, duke of the Poles, marries the Bohemian princess Dobrawa and is baptized, and his people follow him. The annals of the Kraków chapter date the baptism to 966. In 1000 the emperor Otto III founds an archbishopric at Gniezno.