The Province Of Bydgoszcz A Thousand Years Ago [antikvár]

Great national anniversaries usually direct our thoughts to the past. The Polish Millennium celebrated in 196066 awakens interest, above all, in that period of history, in which the Polish State was born and in spite of many internal frictions and the pressure of the enemy from without became strong and consolidated. Thus we mentally return to the half legendary figures of the first Piast princes, to the great personality of the first crowned ruler of Poland, Bolestaw i Chrobry the Brave (b. 966 or 967; d. 1025, reigned between 9921025); we live through the breakdown of the young state and its restoration in the middle of the 11th century; we rejoice at the coronation of Bolestaw II (b. 1039; d. 1081, reigned between 1058 and 1079) and the repulsion of the imperial German invaders by Bolestaw III Krzywousfy Wrymouth (b. 1086; d. 1138, reigned between 11021138). If is, however, not always easy to turn back in our minds to those times. We all feel almost palpably that tremendous distance in time which separates us from events of a thousand years ago, a distance which makes those events alien and removes them to the confines of a legendary world.We can approach that remote period of history by realizing two facts. Firstly the geographic setting of those far-off events is in a measure the same as that surrounding us today. Secondly there is more evidence of the activity of our forefathers, dating even from a very distant period, than we expect. They are relics of spiritual and material