3
PIAST
The Polanian Dynasty (to 1370)
Reputedly, Piast was a peasant. According to the Anonymous Gaul writing
some 250 years later, he ascended the throne in succession to the wicked Popiel
who, also reputedly, was eaten by mice in the dungeon of Kruszwica. He is thus
a figure which links Poland's legendary past with its recorded history. Before his
time, the historian is dealing with the tribal tales of Lech, Czech, and Rus - the
three Slav brothers who founded respectively the Polish, Czech, and Ruthenian
peoples - and of King Krak, who killed the dragon of the Vistula. Lech built his
'Eagle's Nest' at Gniezno; Krak built his castle above the dragon's cave on
Wawel Hill in Cracow; and Wanda, Krak's daughter, jumped to her death in the
river rather than marry a German prince. For his part, Piast was said to be in his
garden celebrating the coming-of-age of his son, when two strangers prophesied
that the people would choose him to rule over them. From later evidence, it is
clear that he must have lived in the middle of the ninth century, and ruled over
the Polanians,* the most prominent of the West Slav tribes settled between the
Odra and the Vistula. He would have been alive when in the west the Empire of
Charlemagne was divided into the three Frankish kingdoms, and, when to the
south the Great Moravian Empire was approaching its brief ascendancy. At this
period, in France, civil war and Viking raids had reduced the country to help-
lessness; in England, the young King Alfred of Wessex was preparing to resist
the Danish advance; in Russia, Rurik's Varangians were exploring the route
from Novgorod to Kiev; in the Mediterranean, Byzantium having weathered the
onslaught of Islam, and the convulsions of Iconoclasm, was about to enjoy a
new lease of life under the Macedonian dynasty. Christianity, spreading from its
twin oracles in Rome and Constantinople, was slowly reaching out toward the
Slavs. Bulgaria was on the point of conversion. The mission of Saints Cyril and
Methodius was at work amongst the Moravians and possibly amongst the
Vistulanian tribes also.
From his humble beginnings, Piast was to launch a dynasty which lasted for
five centuries, and which, after many vicissitudes, was to join the neighbouring
tribes into one Polish kingdom. A linguistic theory, which draws on the Polish
word piastowac, meaning 'to cradle in one's arms', and by extension 'to hold
* In Polish, Polanie: appears in English variously as 'Polanians', or as 'Polians'.