| dc.description.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. | en |
