Communicating God’s war. Accounts of holy war in Polish medieval narrative sources

Abstract

The authors of Polish medieval narrative accounts from and about Poland communicated episodes of Christian holy war and proto-crusades in a distinct and consistent way from the early twelfth century. In this article I will argue that the anonymous author of the Gesta principum Polonorum presented the Polish conquest of Pomerania as a holy war, and that a hundred years later, the learned Vincentius Bishop of Cracow in his Chronica Polonorum depicted three military campaigns against the Prussian pagans and apostates as crusading expeditions. I will also argue that the first Polish historian Jan Długosz, deliberately celebrated and highlighted these earlier accounts to his contemporary fifteenth century readership, using these histories to position Poland’s rulers as having a longstanding and consistent commitment to crusading, at a time when participation in crusades was a central concern of Poland’s ruling elites. This article will conclude that each of these written works was a commissioned text and part of a deliberate strategy by the rulers of Poland to communicate their engagement in Christian holy wars at the periphery of Christian Europe.