Bolesław the Brave paid a saint's weight in gold and won a kingdom
When the missionary bishop Adalbert of Prague was martyred in 997, Duke Bolesław of Poland ransomed his body by paying its weight in gold. It looked like piety, and it was, but the new saint's shrine at Gniezno soon brought an emperor to Poland and set the country on the road to independence.
Emperor Otto III had Adalbert canonised in 999 and in early 1000 made a pilgrimage to his tomb. At this meeting, the Congress of Gniezno, Otto allowed Poland its own archbishopric at Gniezno, free of the German see of Magdeburg, plus three new bishoprics including Kraków, and Bolesław stopped paying tribute to the empire. A German chronicler grumbled that Otto had made a lord out of a tributary. Bolesław made sure to impress: after three days of feasting, he reportedly had all the gold and silver cups, bowls, plates and drinking horns gathered up and presented to the emperor.
He had come to power with some ruthlessness. The son of Mieszko I and the Bohemian princess Doubravka, born around 967, he took control of Lesser Poland while his father lived. When Mieszko died in 992 leaving the realm to several heirs, Bolesław expelled his stepmother and half-brothers and reunited the country, with what a chronicler called fox-like cunning. His coins, first struck around 995, honoured Duke Wenceslaus of Bohemia, his mother's uncle, as a patron saint.
Once Otto died in 1002, Bolesław fought a long series of wars with his successor, Henry II, ending in the Peace of Bautzen in 1018. That summer he also captured Kiev and put his son-in-law Sviatopolk on its throne. Legend says he nicked his sword on Kiev's Golden Gate, and a jagged blade called Szczerbiec later became the coronation sword of Polish kings.
He conquered lands in today's Slovakia, Moravia, Lusatia and beyond, built churches, forts and waterways, and introduced the grzywna, the first Polish monetary unit, worth 240 denarii. In 1025 he was crowned the first King of Poland, and he died that year on 17 June.
Source: Bolesław I the Brave
