(I): Piast Poland

chapter 17 New Powers (I): Piast Poland According to the anonymous author of the Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, who wrote in the early 12th century, the origins of the ruling dynasty of Poland were neither foreign, nor noble. Mieszko was a descendant of the family of a plowman named Pazt, who, “although just a poor man, he was kind.”1 The second section of the late 9th-century Bavarian Geographer (see chapter 2) lists a number of peoples located to the north of the river Danube and to the east of the Frankish realm, each with a number of civitates (strongholds). However, the Bavarian Geographer contains no mention of Polanians, the people who supposedly gave their name to the country—Poland.2 Meanwhile, and on the basis of St. Methodius’ prophecy (see chapter 11), some have advanced the idea of a “Vislanian” (Vistulan) polity in southern Poland.3 The archaeological evidence suggests that during the second half of the 9th century, the trade centers on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, in Pomerania, participated in a flourishing trade network (see chapter 13). How 1 Gallus Anonymus, The Deeds I 1, p. 19. Scholars now assume that Pazt is a modified form of Piast, the name of the dynasty, which is otherwise known only from 16th-century sources. The legend of Pazt the plowman and of his wife Rzepka (a name derived from the Polish word for “turnip”) have been the subject of numerous studies. The most influential was the structuralist approach inspired by the work of Georges Dumézil and Mircea Eliade. That approach, best represented by Banaszkiewicz, Podanie, is based on the assumption that the story in the Deeds reflects genuine folk (oral) traditions and is not the learned construction of Gallus Anonymus. Ever since Deptuła, Galla Anonima mit, however, that assumption has been questioned and exposed to much criticism. See Żmudzki, “Spór”; Urbańczyk, “‘Zamach stanu’”; Wiszewski, “At the beginning” and Domus Bolezlai, pp. 157–83. For a survey of new approaches to Gallus, see Mühle, “Cronicae.” Two recent monographs illustrate the tension still existing between the traditional interpretation and studies inspired by the “literary turn” of the late 20th-century historiography (Tapolcai, Lengyelország történeti; Wenta, Kronika). 2 Very few peoples mentioned by the Bavarian Geographer are actually known from other sources, and even fewer can be located with any degree of geographic precision. Nonetheless, historians and archaeologists continue to move names on the map in order to establish the “pre-Polish” Slavic population of Poland. See Witczak, “Z problematyki” and “O dwóch prapol- skich plemionach”; Czapla, “Terytorium”; Buko, The Archaeology, pp. 75–82; Fokt, “Śladami,” pp. 273–77. For a critique of such an approach to the Bavarian Geographer, see Urbańczyk, “Before the Poles,” pp. 203–06; Berend et al., Central Europe, pp. 87–88. For civitates in the Bavarian Geographer, see Rossignol, “Civitas,” pp. 85–88. 3 Life of Methodius 11, in Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives, p. 119. For the “state of the Vislanians,” see Widajewicz, Państwo; Wyrozumski and Grodziski, Dzieje, pp. 66–68; Sikora, “Die Anfänge,” pp. 143–44. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395190_018 342 chapter 17 far into the interior did that trade reach? Some 550 hoards, and over 1,800 finds of single dirhams are so far known from the Polish lands, and their chronol- ogy and distribution suggest a gradual expansion of the trade network from the coast to the interior. Late 9th-century hoards are quite large, and many constituent coins are fragmented (cut). They typically appear in Pomerania, but also in Lesser Poland (the southeastern part of present-day Poland, around Cracow).4 An important change seems to have taken place around 900, as large hoards appear in eastern Poland, Greater Poland (the west-central region of present-day Poland around Poznań), as well as Pomerania. In addition to whole coins, such hoards also include silver ornaments.5 Another change oc- curred around 970, when large hoards began to appear which, besides dirhams, included West European deniers and Byzantine silver coins, as well as silver ornaments. Unlike the earlier series of hoards, both coins and ornaments in those late 10th- and early 11th-century hoards are fragmented (hacksilver).6 The latter characteristic is commonly interpreted as a clear sign of moneti- zation, as both coins and ornaments were divided in order to obtain smaller units of exchange. Moreover, the mixed composition of the late 10th- and early 11th-century hoards suggests that the coins in those collections were obtained by means of several, separate transactions taking place in different locations.7 4 Bartczak, “Finds”; Suchodolski and Malarczyk, “Die Zustromwege”; Bogucki, “The use of money,” pp. 135 and 137; Adamczyk, Silber, pp. 121–23. For coin finds in Lesser Poland, see Butent-Stefaniak et al., Frühmittelalterliche Münzfunde. Jankowiak, “Two systems,” p. 137 is wrong when claiming that no hoards earlier than 960 are known from Lesser Poland. 5 Łosiński, “W sprawie ‘wschodniej drogi’”; Adamczyk, Silber, pp. 167–92 and 293–96 (with a list of 10th-century hoards). For examples of early 10th-century hoards, see Felczak et al., “Skarb”; Ilisch, “Zum Schatzfund”; Bogucki et al., “Skarb”; Kędzierski, “Skarb”; For coin finds in eastern Poland, see also Gorlińska et al., Frühmittelalterliche Münzfunde. 6 Bogucki, “The use of money,” p. 136. For a spectacular example of a late 10th-century hoard of hacksilver, see Bartczak, “The early medieval silver hoard” and Nowakowicz, “Ozdoby.” For West European deniers, see Suchodolski, “Die erste Welle” and “Die Münzen”; Ilisch, “Die Pfennigströme.” For Byzantine silver coins, see Gliksman, “Some remarks.” 7 The same conclusion results from the absence from any of those hoards of two or more fragments of one and the same piece of jewelry. That no hoard has so far been found, which contains multiple fragments from the same artifacts, suggests that hacksilver circulated a lot before being hoarded. The reason(s) behind the burial of hacksilver hoards has recently been at the center of a lively debate among Polish scholars. Some have advanced the idea that only elites used silver, and not for trade, but for gift giving. As a consequence, hoards did not represent accumulation of wealth resulting from trade, but the deliberate destruction (through burial) of “ceremonial” silver (Urbańczyk, “Wczesnośredniowieczne skarby,” “Kto deponował skarby,” and “The Polish discussion”). Others have pointed out that the fragmen- tation of coins and jewels was not the result of “ritual” destruction, but a way to obtain smaller “denominations,” as indicated by the standard weight of pieces of silver in Greater Poland (0.2–0.3 g, but also 0.6–0.7 g.) (Bogucki, “Reasons” and “The use of money,” pp. 143–45)..

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