Mieszko I
Mieszko I founded the Polish state and made it Christian. He appears in the record around 960 as ruler of the Polans, a Slavic people in Greater Poland around Gniezno and Poznań, and had already assembled a substantial territory by conquest before any outside source noticed him. The Jewish traveller Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, writing around 966, described him as ruling the largest of the Slavic lands and maintaining three thousand armoured retainers whom he equipped and supported entirely. His decisive act was the baptism of 966. He married Dobrawa, a Christian Bohemian princess, the year before, and accepted Christianity from Bohemia rather than from the German church. The choice was political. The Holy Roman Empire was expanding east under the banner of converting the pagan Slavs, and the Polabian peoples between the Elbe and the Oder were being subjugated in exactly that way. A baptised ruler could not be the object of a crusade, and a Latin church staffed from Rome rather than from Magdeburg kept the German archbishops out. A bishopric was established at Poznań in 968 answering directly to the papacy. He fought the Germans successfully at Cedynia in 972, took Silesia and Lesser Poland from Bohemia around 990, and manoeuvred among imperial factions with some skill. Near the end of his life he placed his realm under the protection of the Holy See in the document known as Dagome iudex, which is the first description of Poland's borders. He died in 992. The Polish state has dated its existence from his baptism ever since.
- Lived: 935 CE – 992 CE
- Nationality: Polish
- Roles: ruler
