Poland's first Christian ruler borrowed his church vocabulary from Czech
When Mieszko I was baptised in 966, placing Poland in the orbit of Western Christianity, the new faith arrived with a Czech accent. Polish words for baptism, church, prayer, sermon and bishop were adopted from Czech, most likely carried by the entourage of his Bohemian bride, the princess Dobrawa.
Mieszko ruled as Duke of Poland from 960 until his death on 25 May 992 and founded the first unified Polish state, known in a papal document as Civitas Schinesghe. His early life is almost blank. One chronicle gives a birth date, but modern historians distrust it and suggest anywhere from 922 to 945. A legend recorded by Gallus Anonymus claims he was blind for his first seven years, a standard medieval metaphor for paganism rather than a real affliction. Even the long-held idea that Mieszko is short for Mieczysław is now rejected by most scholars.
He inherited a patchwork of tribal lands around the Polans and Kuyavia, held together mainly by tribal ties, and set about welding them into a state. He probably took Masovia and part of Gdańsk Pomerania early on, fought for years over Western Pomerania until he reached the lower Oder, and late in life seized Silesia and much of Lesser Poland from Bohemia. Not every campaign went well: a Saxon noble, Wichmann the Younger, beat him twice, and a brother whose name is lost died in the fighting around 963. A Jewish traveller from Spain, Abraham ben Jacob, described him around 966 as one of four Slavic kings, ruling a large northern realm with a formidable army.
Diplomacy mattered as much as war. Mieszko married Dobrawa, daughter of Boleslaus I of Bohemia, in 965, and was baptised the next year, perhaps at Regensburg or perhaps at Gniezno or Ostrów Lednicki. Historians debate his motives: drawing closer to the Czechs, denying German margraves an excuse for forced conversion, sidelining pagan priests, or, as the chroniclers claimed, his wife's persuasion, a credit medieval writers routinely gave to royal wives. By 967 Saxon sources called him a friend of the emperor, and he became known as the Clovis of Poland.
His family reached far beyond Poland. A document from about 1085, Dagome iudex, records him as Dagome, possibly from a Christian name Dagobert. One daughter became a queen of Denmark, making Mieszko grandfather of Canute the Great. His son Bolesław I the Brave inherited a much enlarged country.
Source: Mieszko I
