Silesia, Duchy of

The German princes become stronger during Frederick's long stays in Italy, and begin a successful colonization of Slavic lands.

Offers of reduced taxes and manorial duties entice many Germans to settle in the east as the area's original inhabitants are killed or driven away.

Because of this colonization, the empire increases in size and comes to include Pomerania, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia.

A quickening economic life in Germany increases the number of towns and gives them greater importance.

It is also during this period that castles and courts replace monasteries as centers of culture.

German medieval literature, growing out of this courtly culture, reaches its peak in lyrical love poetry, the Minnesang, and in narrative epic poems such as Tristan, Parzival, and the Nibelungenlied.

Polish monarch Boleslaw Wrymouth makes complex arrangements intended to prevent fratricidal warfare and preserve the Polish state's formal unity.

Following his concept of seniority, Boleslaw divides the country into five principalities: Silesia, Greater Poland, Mazovia, Sandomierz and Kraków.

The first four provinces are given to his four sons, who became independent rulers.

The fifth province, the Seniorate Province of Kraków, is to be added to the senior among the Princes who, as the Grand Duke of Kraków, is the representative of the whole of Poland.

The stability of the system is supposedly assured by the institution of the senior or high duke of Poland, based in Kraków and assigned to the special Seniorate Province that is not to be subdivided.

This principle breaks down within the generation of Boleslaw III's sons, when Wladyslaw II the Exile, Boleslaw IV the Curly, Mieszko III the Old and Casimir II the Just fight for power and territory in Poland, and in particular over the Kraków throne.

The external borders left by Boleslaw III at his death closely resemble the borders left by Mieszko I; this original early Piast monarchy configuration does not survive the fragmentation period.

For nearly two centuries, the Piasts will spar with each other, the clergy, and the nobility for the control over the divided kingdom.

Wladyslaw II, the former High Duke of Poland, had administered the Kaiserpfalz at Altenburg and its dependencies in the Imperial Pleissnerland during the Second Crusade.

Without waiting for German aid, Wladyslaw and his wife Agnes had gone to the Roman Curia and asked Pope Eugene III for help in restoring Wladyslaw to the Polish throne but this attempt had been unsuccessful.

In 1152, King Conrad III of Germany had died and been succeeded by his nephew Frederick Barbarossa.

With this, the hopes of Wladyslaw II, called the Exile, of returning to Poland had been reborn.

Following the inducements of Wladyslaw and Frederick's aunt Agnes of Babenberg, the Holy Roman Emperor launches a new expedition to Greater Poland in 1157.

The campaign is a success, but unexpectedly Frederick Barbarossa does not restore Wladyslaw to the Polish throne, after Boleslaw IV, apprehended at Krzyszkowo, has to declare himself a vassal to the Emperor andis compelled to pay tribute to him.

In compensation, the Emperor forces Boleslaw IV to promise the restitution of Silesia to Wladylsaw's sons Boleslaw the Tall and Mieszko IV Tanglefoot.

At this time, it appears, Wladyslaw knew that his battle for supremacy in Poland was finally lost.

He remains in exile at Altenburg, where he will die two years later.

It will not be until 1163 that Boleslaw IV finally grants the Silesian province to Wladyslaw's sons.

Poland has divided by 1240 into four states, each under the control of the Piast family.

Kraków’s King Boleslaw V is legally the preeminent ruler, but his cousin Duke Henry II of Silesia is the preeminent lord.

The death of Duke Henry, who had been close to unifying the Polish lands and reversing their fragmentation, has set back the unification of Poland, and also means the loss of Silesia, which will drift outside the Polish sphere of influence until the unification takes place in the fourteenth century.

Charles makes Prague into an imperial city.

Extensive building projects undertaken by the king include the founding of the New Town southeast of the old city.

The royal castle, Hradcany, is rebuilt.

Of particular significance is the founding of Charles University in Prague in 1348.

Charles's intention is to make Prague into an international center of learning, and the university is divided into Czech, Polish, Saxon, and Bavarian "nations," each with one controlling vote.

Charles University, however, will become the nucleus of intense Czech particularism.

Charles dies in 1378, and the Bohemian crown goes to his son, Wenceslas IV.

The fourteenth century in Bohemia, particularly the reign of Charles IV (1342-78), is considered the Golden Age of Czech history.

The Premyslid line has died out by this time, and, after a series of dynastic wars, a new Luxemburg dynasty captures the Bohemian crown.

Charles, the second Luxemburg king, had been raised at the French court and is cosmopolitan in attitude.

He strengthens the power and prestige of the Bohemian Kingdom.

In 1344 Charles elevates the bishopric of Prague, making it an archbishopric and freeing it from the jurisdiction of Mainz and the Holy Roman Empire.

The archbishop is given the right to crown Bohemian kings.

Charles curbs the Czech nobility, rationalized the provincial administration of Bohemia and Moravia, and makes Brandenburg, Lusatia, and Silesia into fiefs of the Czech crown.

In 1355 Charles is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

In 1356 he issues a Golden Bull defining and systematizing the process of election to the imperial throne and making the Czech king foremost among the seven electors.

The Bohemian Kingdom ceases to be a fief of the emperor.

Poland of the thirteenth century is no longer one solid political entity, the sovereignty of the former state having become diffused among a number of smaller independent political units, with only the common bonds of language, race, religion and tradition.

At the death of Ladislaus Odonic Plwacz, duke of Greater Poland, Przemysl, his son by Jadwiga of Pomerania, daughter of Mściwój I, duke of Eastern Pomerania, had inherited the part of Greater Poland controlled by Ladislaus and become duke of Ujście; subsequently he strove to recover the remaining part of Greater Poland.

In 1241, after the death of Henry II the Pious, duke of Silesia at the battle of Legnica, Przemysl and his brother Boleslaus had acquired the duchies of Poznań and Gniezno, and subsequently managed to conquer also the parts of Greater Poland once controlled by Silesia.

In 1244 he had married Elizabeth, Henry’s daughter.

In exchange, he obtained by Wladylaw, duke of Opole, the reincorporation of Kalisz into Greater Poland.

Przemysl had become duke of Poznań and Kalisz in 1247, but had been forced by the local nobility to leave Kalisz to Boleslaus.

He had also obtained Santok (Zantoch) by Boleslaw II the Bald and allied with Bogufal II, bishop of Poznań.

In 1249, he had again exchanged territories with his brother, giving him Gniezno and becoming duke of Poznań and Kalisz.

For unknown reasons, Przemys had had Boleslaus arrested in 1250, becoming in this way the sole ruler of Greater Poland (Poznań, Gniezno et Kalisz) until in 1253, when Boleslaus is freed and given Kalisz and Gniezno.

The Mongols raid Bitom, one of the oldest cities of Upper Silesia.

Chartered by Bohemia only five years earlier, the city had grown owing to its location on a strategic crossroads.

(The city, slowly Germanized from the fourteenth century, will become known as Beuthen but will see its German population expelled in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Today known as Bytom, it is one of the main cities of Poland’s Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union.)

Jews have come to Poland since the tenth century from the west, from Khazaria in the east, and from the Eastern Roman Empire in the south.

Their presence had soon evoked the enmity of the Polish church: a synod convened in 1267 in Breslau (Wroclaw) outlines its anti-Jewish policy; its main aim is to isolate the Jews as far as possible from the Christians, not only from the communion of friendship and table but also to separate them in quarters surrounded by a wall or a ditch “for as up to now the land of Poland is newly grafted on to the Christian body, it is to be feared that the Christian people will more easily be misled by the superstitions and evil habits of the Jews that live among them.”