1025 and All That?
What value does discussing medieval coronations, and the traditions of the Polish crown, have in the twenty-first century? Is it not merely an antiquarian interest in the past? An interest that has little influence today on the lives of the people, even in contemporary Poland. Is engaging with the coronation of the powerful figure, Bolesław Chrobry, in 1025—whose thousandth anniversary we celebrate this year—not akin to being enthralled by the Avengers or the Star Wars saga? It even seems that enthusiasts of contemporary fantasy are more numerous than those interested in the Polish monarchy of the Middle Ages. What, then, is the purpose of writing about the origins of the Kingdom of Poland?
In common opinion, monarchical theory and the practice of medieval power are far too remote for us to identify with today; too distant to see ourselves reflected in those past centuries as in a mirror, or to seek in the depths of history answers to the problems that trouble people now. Polish history is no Mirror of Galadriel, foretelling what is, what has been, and what has yet to unfold. At the same time, the reconstructed history of the Piast ruling family is not fantastical enough to allow us to be captivated by the mystique surrounding the dynasty’s past and, thanks to it, escape for a moment from the burdensome reality of the twenty-first century. If only one of the Bolesławs, or some Mieszko, had fought dragons or other monsters, practiced magical rites, turned stone into gold. Unfortunately, the monarchy of the first Piasts is too distant from the circumstances of contemporary life and at the same time insufficiently enchanted. Thus, the Polish past is plagued by an unbearable closeness in its remoteness.
Discussion of medieval monarchy is also complicated by the fact that, in the popular opinion of modern people, especially those who consider themselves educated, the monarchical system does not conform to criteria now regarded as rational or just. According to this view, the king is cast in the role of a despot, a monarch wielding nearly absolute power who did not need to take the opinions of others into account. In this vision, there is essentially no distinction between a king and a tyrant. Moreover, royal power is thought to have been obtained according to criteria now considered absurd, for instance primogeniture. The likelihood of an ordinary medieval person gaining power would today be comparable to Bob winning the lottery.
Furthermore, the religion that formed an essential ideological element of medieval monarchy appears to many primarily as an instrument of legitimization, a kind of propaganda by which subjects were forced into obedience. The absurdity of such arrangements, from a contemporary perspective, was expressed by the peasant woman in the Monty Python film, who says to King Arthur holding Excalibur: “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
How could pouring oil on a man and placing a metal circlet on his head determine the direction in which a political community would move? A modern Netflix viewer might well ask whether such a system made any sense at all. Should we not, therefore, simply laugh off the coronation of 1025, much as was done in the now-classic satire of British history entitled 1066 and All That?
Of course, those who have reached for more than a popular medieval-themed TV series, a YouTube channel, or yet another bestselling book promising the history of everything from the dawn of the world to today, know well that scholars now view the monarchical system of the Middle Ages quite differently. The principle of primogeniture was not universally in force—certainly not in the first centuries of the Piast monarchy—and it was by no means exceptional for non-firstborn sons to be destined for rulership, provided they showed good prospects of fulfilling the role. A dynasty could always be replaced if it was deemed that the existing one no longer met the needs of the community (see: the Carolingian coup).
We must also dispel the myth of absolute medieval power, imagined on the model of enlightened monarchies known from the early modern era. The desire to forge consensus within the elite played a decisive role in the political culture of the Middle Ages. In Poland, until 1295, one might even say that the result of this consensus was that the monarchical idea was not particularly popular either among members of the ruling dynasty or within the ranks of the magnates—given that only three rulers chose to wear the royal crown, and only in the eleventh century. Curiously, the oldest surviving Polish annal, compiled in the twelfth century, does not even mention Bolesław Chrobry’s coronation of 1025!
Moreover, royal unction, though a rite of profound significance, brought with it numerous limitations and challenges. Few managed to live up to the ideal set forth at coronation, hence the many accusations of tyranny, violations of local and ecclesiastical law, depositions, and uprisings against rulers. The political culture of the Middle Ages was not at all as irrational as it is usually thought to be—or perhaps no more irrational than what we experience today in political life.
Farce-like ceremonies or the distribution of swords were not, in fact, the only elements constituting governance. Coronation rites were most often the result of agreements between the candidates and their political backing, composed of the aristocracy and the Church hierarchy. It was not uncommon for the course of the ceremony and the wording of the prayers spoken during the anointing to be meticulously negotiated. The aim of the celebration was to manifest to those gathered the supernatural significance of the royal office, but within the logic of belief in other Church rites—for example, the Eucharist, baptism, or the ordination of clergy.
Medieval power bore, at least in the early and high Middle Ages, a sacramental character. The ruler was, in a sense, God’s icon (imago), a sign of faith in the eternal kingship of Christ, just as the presbyter or bishop made visible on earth the truth of the priesthood of the Son of God. Solus Christus verus rex et verus sacerdos, but the individual sacramental offices represented on Earth the two powers of Christ—as priest and as king. The rite of anointing was therefore not so much a sacralization, that is, an absolutization of royal power, as rather its placement within the proper hierarchy—beneath God, from whom the anointed received the graces necessary to rule, and between clergy and people, whom he was to lead to salvation: rex est mediator cleri ac plebis, as read in one of the coronation prayers.
The sacramentality of royal power rested on relationality, which also included subordination, and not solely the absolutization of authority. The heavens, with their rules manifest in the laws of the Church and the local laws of the community, always hung above the anointed king—laws to which the elected ruler committed himself in the solemn promise made during the coronation (promissio regis).
Why speak of the sacramentality of power in an increasingly non-religious and anti-hierarchical society? Although today’s secularized West is rather an anomaly among other regions of the globe, where religion still plays a key role to such an extent that political scientists speak of our age as God’s Century (M. Duffy Toft, D. Philpott, Timothy S. Shah) rather than A Secular Age (Ch. Taylor), it is nonetheless difficult today to translate the sacramentalism of medieval power into a more accessible language. With the collapse of the liturgical calendar—replaced by Black Friday and Boxing Day—and with indifference toward liturgy, for which the soccer World Cup or Super Bowl have become substitutes, faith in the Church’s sacraments has likewise been discarded.
To many today, the sacraments appear as customs devoid of substance or as clever religious fundraising. Politically, moreover, we live today in a democracy whose goal, as sung in Les Misérables, is that everyone will be a king. Why speak of political theories from before the French Revolution? Does anyone wish to return to the past and restore the medieval system? By no means! Nevertheless, if I were to point to what is worth preserving from the sacramental idea of royal power, alongside the new political narrative of which I will say more below, it would be the metaphysical point of reference for political authority. What do I mean by this?
In recent decades, alongside the inflation of human rights and the resulting rejection of the principles formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many countries have witnessed a retreat from what once seemed to be obvious principles that ought to guide the life of societies. Globally, there is no longer an international consensus on fundamental questions that determine life and death and the welfare of millions of people around the world. The formulation of new principles appears extraordinarily urgent if peace is to be a privilege not only for a small fraction of the world’s population. Otherwise, the settlement of conflicts will always be delivered by brute force, ever ready to act.
In the past, the idea of sacramental power provided values which, although subject to interpretation like every element of Tradition, were not invented entirely ad hoc according to the political needs of the moment. There was also an authority to which one could appeal in moments of dispute (in the High Middle Ages, this was above all the bishop of Rome). Today, the role of the UN and its various agencies—despite their continued efforts to assume the role once attributed to the medieval papacy—is globally minimal and practically ineffective.
In Western societies, there is a palpable need to live according to common values that are neither invented by individuals nor arbitrarily imposed by the state, which holds the monopoly on the use of force and has eagerly exercised it in recent decades (see: the works of W. Cavanaugh). One senses today the need for a certain mystique of power, one that could enchant societies and forge principles of consensus acceptable both to elites and to lower social groups. Yet, twentieth-century European history has shown how dangerous such a mystique of power can be, and to what tragic results it has led.
For this reason, a return is necessary to enduring Christian social values, values which we have not shortsightedly invented for ourselves under the pressure of the moment, guided by an ideology needed to legitimize new power or shaped by the transformations of geopolitical circumstances. European and global political culture, instead of absolutizing violence, needs to rediscover relationality as the fundamental criterion of all political authority: before whom, and within what hierarchy, do I answer as a person entrusted with power?
In this process of social reform, it nonetheless seems essential to rediscover a new political narrative, whose security will rest on its subordination to the aforementioned metaphysics of authority inspired by Christian principles. In the case of Poland, the outlines of a new political story may be supplied by narratives of Polish medieval history—narratives that will be the result of a critical analysis of history, far removed from sacral-patriotic rhetoric or nationalist primordialism, yet also reaching beyond the confines of the kind of deconstruction or ideologization of history now typical for many scholars, often pursued at the expense of a rigorous selection of sources and their rational interpretation. The history of the Piasts, like the catalogue of Christian principles, cannot be invented entirely ad hoc to suit the needs of the moment.
The history of the Polish monarchy has been anchored for a thousand years in the historical sources of a political community that around the year 1000 was already called Polonia. This name, though still far from the meanings it would acquire in the course of centuries, constituted the foundation upon which the builders of the community we today call Poland laid their work. Likewise, Bolesław Chrobry’s coronation of 1025—obscured though it was by his swift death and the loss of the regalia by his son, Mieszko II—nonetheless created the tradition of the regnum Poloniae, to which even the un-crowned Piasts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries referred, as did, later, the successive architects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and in more recent times, the builders of the Polish Republic.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This essay is a translation of a text published in 2025 in the volume, Obecność Korony: Raport o wielkiej tradycji państwowej.
