Bolesław the Brave and the Congress of Gniezno
Otto III came to Gniezno in March 1000 to pray at the tomb of Adalbert, and left having recognised Poland as a Christian kingdom rather than a mission field. Adalbert had been Bishop of Prague, had gone to convert the Prussians at Bolesław's expense, and had been killed by them in 997. Bolesław bought the body back for its weight in gold and enshrined it, which turned his capital into a pilgrimage site and gave him a saint of his own. The Congress of Gniezno was the consequence. Otto was pursuing his idea of a renewed Roman empire as a commonwealth of Christian peoples rather than a German hegemony, and he acted on it: he took the diadem from his own head and placed it on Bolesław's, called him brother and cooperator of the empire, and gave him a replica of the Holy Lance. Crucially, he agreed an independent Polish archbishopric at Gniezno with bishoprics at Kraków, Wrocław and Kołobrzeg. That freed the Polish church from the German archbishop of Magdeburg permanently, and it is the institutional foundation of Polish independence. Whether Otto also granted a royal crown is disputed and was disputed then. Otto died in 1002 at twenty-one, and his successor Henry II reversed the policy and fought Bolesław for sixteen years. Bolesław was crowned king in 1025, weeks before his death, and Poland was a kingdom rather than a duchy from that point. The gilded bronze doors of Gniezno cathedral tell Adalbert's story. The Gniezno archbishopric has existed continuously since, and its holder is the primate of Poland.
- Year: 992 CE
- Category: Political
