New Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Gdańsk, Poland and Prussia

Beata Możejko, Beata Możejko

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351805438
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: World History

New Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Poland and Prussia: The Impact of Gda?sk draws together the latest reseach conducted by local historians and archaeologists on the city of Gda?sk and its impact on the surrounding region of Pomerania and Poland as a whole.

Beginning with Gda?sk's early political history and extending from the 10 th to the 16 th century, its twelve chapters explore a range of political, social, and socio-cultural historical questions and explain such phenomena as the establishment and development of the Gda?sk port and city. A prominent theme is a consideration of the interactions between Gdansk and Poland and Prussia, including a look into the city's links with the State of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the Kingdom of Poland under the rule of the Piast and Jagiellonian dynasties. The chapters are placed in the historical context of medieval Poland as well as the broader themes of religion, the matrimonial policy of noble families or their contacts with the papacy.

This book is an exciting new study of medieval Poland and unparalleled in the English-speaking world, making it an ideal text for those wanting to deepen their knowledge in this subject area.

1 The political history of Gdańsk from the town beginnings to the sixteenth century

Błażej Śliwiński and Beata Możejko

1.1 The political history of Gdańsk: from the early tenth to the fourteenth century¹

The city name

The first written mention of Gdańsk is recorded in the Vita prior Sancti Adalberti. This life of St Adalbert dates from 997–998 and was written in Rome based partially on the accounts of those who accompanied the saint on his missionary voyage to Prussia, which ended in his martyrdom (Karwasińska, 1962, cap. 27). The text recounts that in April 996, on his way to Prussia, the future saint arrived at a place (‘urbs’) named ‘Gyddanyzc’, on the coastal periphery of the state ruled by the then King of Poland, Bolesław I Chrobry (Boleslaus the Brave). The name given in this source material is read as either ‘Gdaniesk’ or ‘Gdansk’, and in earlier studies (up until the nineteenth century) it was considered to be a location facing Denmark, somewhere where Polish rulers held Danish prisoners, founded by Danish settlers or by the Goths. In the twentieth century it was concluded that the name derives from words relating to water. After deliberating whether it came from the Old German ‘gud’ – meaning ‘pour’ or ‘flow’ – or the Old Prussian ‘danske’ – meaning ‘swamp’ – Polish linguists ascertained that it originates from the Slavic ‘gdanie’ – denoting a ‘marsh’ or ‘wet, damp’ place. The most recent findings have determined that the name derives from that of the River Gdania, which is identified with the present-day Potok Siedlecki – a stream that flows through the city (Górnowicz, 1978; Górnowicz, 1999; Śliwiński, 2006). During the twelfth to thirteenth centuries the name was noted in written records (in Latin) as: Gdantz (1198), Gdanzk (1220–1227), and Gdansk (1235–1268) (Perlbach, nos. 9, 33, 52, 232). When settlers from German cities founded an autonomous town in the thirteenth century, the consonant cluster ‘gd’, which they would have found difficult to pronounce, was simplified to ‘d’, giving rise to the first recorded instance of the name ‘Danzk’ in 1263. Further German-language changes to the name took place when the consonant ‘s’ was replaced with the German ‘ts’, represented graphically as ‘cz’, resulting in ‘Danczk’ – a version of the name noted in 1311. Finally, to make the Slavic name easier to pronounce an ‘i’ was added between the ‘ts’ (‘cz’) and the ‘k’ producing the name ‘Danczik’, first recorded in 1399, which then became ‘Danzig’. To Poles the city name was always Gdańsk. The Latinised version was ‘Gedanium’ or ‘Dantiscum’.

Gdańsk’s earliest history

Gdańsk’s past, from its origins up until the end of the Second World War in 1945, has been the subject of numerous hypotheses, though many of them have not been substantiated either by written sources or by archaeological evidence. The wartime devastation inflicted on the city centre (around 80 per cent of which was destroyed) in March 1945 and the subsequent need to rebuild it presented an opportunity to carry out large-scale pre-emptive archaeological excavations. During 1948–1956 systematic archaeological investigations were conducted in Gdańsk by the University of Łódź Expedition led by Konrad Jażdżewski (Jażdżewski, 1958; Jażdżewski, 1961) and later by Janina Kamińska (Kamińska, 1962). It was established at the time that the Gdańsk stronghold, located at the point where the River Motława empties into the Vistula, around 5 km from where the Vistula enters the Gulf of Gdańsk, was founded in the 960s by Mieszko I. A prince of the Piast dynasty, Mieszko ruled over the Polanian tribe inhabiting the lands around Gniezno and Poznań. By conquering neighbouring territories over many years he became the principal founder of the first Polish state (Labuda, 2002; Piskorski, 2002).

In 1956 the Archaeological Unit of the Polish Academy of Science’s Institute of History of Material Culture resumed excavations in Gdańsk, principally under the direction of Andrzej Zbierski. In 1967, in a different part of the city (now known as the Main Town, near the town hall) he discovered some modest timber structures which he deemed the remains of a large settlement (covering around 1 ha) dating from the latter half of the ninth to the early tenth century, hence pre-dating the stronghold (Zbierski, 1978). The next phase of excavations, conducted by Gdańsk Archaeological Museum, directed by Henryk Paner, took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Dendrochronological analysis revealed that the stronghold at the mouth of the Motława dated from a later period than originally thought, its construction having begun in the mid-eleventh century. The timber structures in the Main Town yielded early tenth-century dates, but represented the remains of a small building. Despite concerted efforts, no further evidence was found of the purported settlement (Gołębiewski, 2005; Paner, 2006).

Historian Błażej Śliwiński sought to interpret the divergent results produced by these excavations (Śliwiński, 2009a). He looked at the results of archaeological work in Gdańsk in combination with those obtained from excavations in the local and wider neighbourhood, and re-examined written sources concerning the rise to power of the Polish princes in Pomerania. Particular attention was drawn to a discovery made in the 1970s in Puck, around 50 km from Gdańsk, where the remains of a large sea port submerged in the Gulf of Gdańsk (as a result of destruction and rising water levels) had come to light (Stępień, 1998).

In conjunction with other observations this provided the grounds for postulating that the origins of Gdańsk were most probably connected to the growing economic importance of a Pomeranian tribe inhabiting lands around the Gulf of Gdańsk in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. This tribe was centred on the Kępa Oksywska uplands and on a port – a trade emporium near Puck. Trade emporia were a characteristic feature of the economic landscape of the time. Located on sea coasts at multiple trade route intersections, they became hubs of economic activity, not only for local trade, but primarily for international transactions, chiefly with traders from the Arab world who came to the Baltic coast in search of amber, and above all slaves. The established network of coastal emporia along the Polish stretch of the Baltic coast: Wolin – Kołobrzeg – Truso (near Elbląg), was broken up at the turn of the ninth century by the destruction of Truso. The tribe living on the Gulf of Gdańsk probably took advantage of this event to build their own port in Puck. Landward access to the new emporium, and to the tribe’s lands in general, was protected by building fortified strongholds. Thus, the earliest Gdańsk settlement was most probably one of several local, frontier strongholds safeguarding the Southern and Eastern approaches, and featuring a small sea-river harbour, not yet widely used at that time (Śliwiński, 2009a).

The expanding Polanian state attacked the lands on the Gulf of Gdańsk in the 950s in an attempt to gain control of important traffic routes (to garner the proceeds derived from them). The port in Puck was destroyed in battle (as evidenced by traces of fire). In keeping with the Polanians’ customary approach to conquered territories – namely relocating existing administrative centres to previously peripheral locations – Gdańsk became the leading centre in Eastern Pomerania. The Polanian rulers in Gniezno and Poznań would have reasoned that Gdańsk lay closer to the open sea and, moreover, at the mouth of the Vistula. The Polanians’ gradual incorporation of lands along the Vistula into their own realm resulted in the entire river coming under their control, thus gaining enormous economic significance. At that point Gdańsk became the largest sea port in the Polish state. It played a vital role in trade with Scandinavia (Żak, 1967)

Given that the most recent archaeological findings rule out the possibility that the stronghold discovered at the mouth of the Motława prior to the Second Word War could have been the earliest one in Gdańsk, its precursor must have been located in the vicinity of the hill known as Grodzisko (Hagelsberg), on the banks of the Potok Siedlecki. This hill (46 m a.s.l., and previously higher), which affords an excellent view of movements around the Vistula estuary and the Gulf of Gdańsk, played a key role in the city’s military history, particularly during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Without seizing control of this point it was practically impossible to capture the city from the landward side. In consequence, it was redeveloped (successive fortifications being built) so many times that virtually all of the early medieval occupation levels were obliterated. Nevertheless, as early as the sixteenth to seventeenth century local scholars already believed that it had been the site of the earliest stronghold in Gdańsk. Pre-Christian cremation burials were discovered there at the time, as well as dirhams dating from the ninth to tenth centuries – a period of Arab commercial penetration of the Baltic coast. Similar coin finds are still occasionally encountered (part of a Samanid dirham struck between 913 and 943 was discovered in 2000, while in 2005 a fragmentary dirham of the Abbasid dynasty, minted between 812 and 820, came to light) (Śliwiński, 2009a).

Mieszko I’s burgeoning state adopted Christianity from Rome in 966, though most of Gdańsk’s inhabitants were not baptised until the reign of his son and heir Bolesław Chrobry, who reigned from 992 to 1025 and was the first to wear the crown of the Kingdom of Poland, which he created. He was baptised in April 997 by St Adalbert, who was on his way to neighbouring Prussia for his final mission, a fact referred to in the first written mention of Gdańsk (Powierski, 1997; Labuda, 2000).

In the eleventh century, Pomeranians rose up against Poland’s rulers on several occasions, temporarily denying them control of their lands and renouncing Christianity. The first such incident took place either during the reign of Bolesław Chrobry (d. 1025) or that of his son, Mieszko II (d. 1034), the second King of Poland. The loss was recouped around 1047 by Mieszko’s son, Kazimierz I Odnowiciel (Casimir the Restorer), and it was most probably at his command that work began on building a new and much larger stronghold in Gdańsk – the one at the mouth of the Motława, discovered by archaeologists after the Second World War. Construction work on the stronghold continued after the death of Prince Kazimierz I Odnowiciel (1058), during the reign of his son, Bolesław II Śmiały (Boleslaus the Bold), Poland’s third king. The new stronghold was initially the fortified residence of a Polish functionary, which attracted artisans, merchants and fishermen, rapidly creating an adjacent fortified settlement. Thus, by the eleventh century the entire stronghold complex occupied an area of about 2.25 ha with around 1,200 inhabitants. Beyond the fortifications there were also smaller open settlements, the most important of which was one at a site known as Kępa Dominikańska, next to the later Church of St Nicholas. The old Grodzisko stronghold was demoted to the rank of an observation point (extant lookout towers were still marked on post-medieval maps) (Śliwiński, 2009a).

Pomeranians rejected Polish sovereignty for the second time in 1069, during the reign of Bolesław II Śmiały (d. 1081). His younger brother and successor Władysław Herman (d. 1102) tried to reverse this situation. During an expedition sometime around 1089, he captured Pomerelia ‘right up to the coast’, hence including Gdańsk; however, when the Polish governors he appointed were unable to retain these strongholds, he ordered that they all be burned down. In theory, the Gdańsk stronghold at the mouth of the Motława may also have perished at that time, though there is no archaeological evidence of this (Śliwiński, 2000).

Ultimately, the problem of Pomerelia’s (and Gdańsk’s) inclusion in the Kingdom of Poland was resolved by Władysław Herman’s son, Prince Bolesław III Krzywousty (Boleslaus III Wrymouth d. 1138). After a lengthy struggle, in 1119 he finally conquered Gdańsk and installed his own officials at the stronghold. He built a church dedicated to Mary the Mother of God, and placed the entire area under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishopric of Włocławek. In keeping with a papal bull of 1148 issued by Pope Eugene III, the bishop was entitled to tithes, including those from the tolls levied at the Gdańsk stronghold on ships entering the port (Perlbach, 1881/1882, no. 2). All that survives of the stronghold’s church are fragmentary remains of its architectural details in the form of seven late Romanesque column bases that had already been reused in other buildings by the fourteenth century (Samól, 2009).

The 1186 foundation charter of Pomerelia’s first Cistercian abbey, located in Oliwa (now a district of Gdańsk), features the earliest written mention of Gdańsk’s sea port and quays, which the monks of the new abbey were meant to repair (Perlbach, 1881/1882, no. 6). A document issued by Duke Świętopełk (Swantopelk) in the early 1220s (more of which later) indicates that during his predecessors’ time in office large numbers of merchants, in particular from German Lübeck, had already been reaching Gdańsk. Further details about the port have been gleaned from archaeological excavations. Recent discoveries include a sizeable quantity of sintels, which were used in the repair of ships known as cogs, which by the twelfth century were the principal trading vessels of Northern Europe. This not only means that these modern types of merchant ships were reaching Gdańsk, but also attests to the existence of local shipyards capable of servicing them. Research into the evolution of shipbuilding carried out by the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, coupled with the use of dendrochronological analysis, has also recently shown that two large boats (circa 13 m long, accommodating a crew of 18–20) discovered between 1933 and 1934 in Orunia (a district of Gdańsk) were fighting vessels built on-site in the latter half of the twelfth century. They were part of a flotilla of boats, propelled by oars or sails and manned by armed crews, which controlled shipping and were the naval force of the Polish rulers’ deputies holding office in Gdańsk (Ossowski, 2010; Ossowski, 2016).

Gdańsk’s growing participation in Baltic trade during the twelfth century not only resulted in merchants visiting the city, but also led to groups of merchants from Lübeck settling there for longer. The aforementioned document issued in the early 1220s by Duke Świętopełk guaranteed them any necessary assistance if their ships were to run aground in Gdańsk’s port or report difficulties in sailing to the port. It also specified the exact amount of duties levied in Gdańsk on larger ships (cogs) and smaller vessels. Finally, defining it as a precedent, the document also limited application of the right of shipwreck, which had hitherto entitled owners of coastal territories to seize people and goods washed ashore from a shipwreck. Records about duties levied not only on merchants arriving in Gdańsk by sea but also on those travelling overland reveal that the main commodity they imported and distributed via Gdańsk was broadcloth (Perlbach, 1881/1882, no. 33).

Świętopełk’s document – and subsequent ones – were witnessed by representatives of the Lübeck colony in Gdańsk, referred to in January 1227 as burghers (burgenses) led by a sołtys (scultetus) – an elected elder (Perlbach, 1881/1882, no. 34; Jasiński, 1996). They settled in an area several hundred metres West of the stronghold, with the Kępa Dominikańska settlement immediately to the North, centred around St Catherine’s Church. Construction work began on this church in the 1180s, probably marking the period when the Lübeck merchants first settled in Gdańsk. At the nearby Kępa, and practically at the same time, St Nicholas’ Church was built for the native population inhabiting the settlement at that site. Researchers are currently debating whether it was the German merchant colony that led to the first phase of an autonomous town being founded in Gdańsk in 1227, based on the principles of law in force in Lübeck. This is suggested not only by the fact that members of the German colony were referred to as burghers, but also because of the decision taken in 1226 to bring Dominican friars to Gdańsk and give them St Nicholas’ Church (which took place in January 1227), where they would go on to found a friary (Możejko et al., 2006). Measures were clearly taken to transform Gdańsk’s urban landscape. Archaeological work carried out during 2001–2007 revealed evidence of the first phase of construction of both St Nicholas’ Church and the friary, including a very well preserved refectory, which is to date the earliest (and only excavated) example of late Romanesque architecture in Gdańsk (Szyszka, 2008).

A number of crucially important political events that must have had an impact on planned objectives took place in 1227. Świętopełk, the Polish princes’ steward in Gdańsk, who in 1224 had taken part in a crusade against the pagan Prussians at the side of his overlord, Leszek Biały (Leszek the White), Duke of Krakow (grandson of Bolesław Krzywousty, d. 1227) raised a rebellion against him. Where the stewards of Gdańsk hailed from has been one of the most hot...