Deeds of the Princes of the Poles
A chronicle of the Polish dukes, composed by a foreign cleric at the court of Duke Boleslav III. Its account of Mieszko’s baptism was set down about a hundred and fifty years after the event.
The author does not name himself; a later tradition calls him Gallus, “the Gaul”. He wrote for the court of Boleslav III, and his book is a history of that duke’s ancestors and deeds. What he tells of Mieszko I and Dobrawa is the tradition of the ruling house as it stood in the early twelfth century: the pagan duke with seven wives, the Christian princess who would not be his wife until he gave them up, and the baptism that came “through his faithful wife”.
The edition’s table of contents describes the chronicle as running to 1113. The year numbers printed in its margins are the editors’ and are not in the text.
Cited in
- AD 966, estimated date