W historiograficznym cieniu? Czternastowieczni Piastowie z linii opolskiej między Krakowem a Pragą

Abstract

Piotr of Byczyna wrote in his work Cronica principum poloniae (dated at end of the 14th century) about the impossibility of finding information about Piasts of Opole. The medieval Silesian historiography did not devote them much attention. However, it does not have to mean that they were of low historic importance. It is suggested by the analysis of creations such as the duke’s mausoleum in St. Anna’s chapel in the church of Franciscans in Opole. The tombs from the years 1379–1382, by presenting three generations of local dukes are a manifestation of documenting, in the form of monuments, the revindication policy whose aim was to unite the once magnificent Duchy of Opole that had been dispatched since the end of the 13th century. Self-awareness and political ambitions of the dukes of Opole can be supported by not only spectacular and well-known doings of Vladislaus II of Opole (+1410) but also, among others, by the attitude of Bolko I of Niemodlin, who in the years 1358–1359 advised emperor Charles VI on the appropriate way of proceeding in his court dispute with the bishop of Wroclaw. Other manifestations of the dukes’ power include a crown that appeared on the seals of the rulers from Opole, and a peculiar similarity between the seal of duchess Euphemia of Niemodlin and the seal of Louis I of Brzeg and – at the same time – the Wroclaw starost seal of Charles IV with the bust of the emperor. Dukes of Opole not only manifested their aspirations for the Polish crown but also, in the person of Henry of Niemodlin, discreetly accentuated their claims to Wroclaw (Henry was a son of Euphemia, who was a daughter of the last Piast of Wrocalw, Henry IV). Their testimony is not only Henry’s document that founded the collegiate church in Głogowek, but also the form of the church that referred to the collegiate of the Holy Cross in Wroclaw. Piasts of Opole, due to their careers on the Bohemian court (for example, Bolko II of Niemodlin was a court judge in Prague) and the debt that Wenceslaus IV, king of Germany and Bohemia owed them for over 20 years, remained in close relation with the sovereign. They showed it, among others, by ornamenting the colbers of the collators’ lodge in the parish church in Kropkowice with the effigies of Wenceslaus IV and his wife. This servility distinguished the Piasts of Opole from the attitude of their relatives from Legnica and Brzeg – the employers of Piotr from Byczyna. Louis I of Brzeg, his son and nephews, in the era of the beer war or the war of priests (1380–1383) almost openly competed with the Bohemian sovereign. The difference in the attitude towards Wenceslaus could be the reason why Piotr of Byczyna not only did not find any information about the Piasts of Opole but deliberately did not provide too much of it, or at least not in a separate chapter. Fragments of information scattered throughout the voluminous chronicle caused that the Piasts of Opole underwent a historiographic degradation.