The Slavs of the North Mark had been resentful at the coming of the Christians and of the strange new religion which forbade the worship of their fertility goddesses and the shrines to the spirits of nature. Worse still, the new masters had forced them to pay tributes to the Germanic religious fortresses, payments which were extracted by sheer force if necessary. When the Slavs heard the news of Otto II’s disastrous defeat in Italy they were encouraged to take up arms. The response was the Great Slav Uprising of 983.
The revolt was led by the Hevellians, who were determined to retake their holy capital of Brennabor. In a well-orchestrated attack they set upon the city, sacking the new Ottonian church and massacring the Christian inhabitants there. On 29 June 983 the bishopric of Havelberg was destroyed, and the small church at the Spandauer Burg was decimated three weeks later. The Slavs then swept through the Mark, killing monks and settlers. By July most German outposts had been razed to the ground, and although a handful of bishops dared to remain they were forced into hiding and lived without cathedrals or diocese.35 The rest of the population reverted to their pagan practices. The Germanic Christian drive eastward had been halted and Magdeburg once again became the true boundary of the German Christian world. Otto was devastated and died in 983 in the knowledge that he had failed at his most important task – the defence of Christendom against the heathen. The unhappy emperor was buried at St Peter’s in Rome. Unfortunately for the Slavs in the North Mark, Otto’s death was not the end of the threat to their way of life. The leader of a completely different area had also recently undergone conversion to Christianity and was now eager to expand his territory in the name of the Church. This place lay not in German lands, but far to the east of the Spree and Havel in a place which would soon be known as Poland. The Slavs of the Berlin area were now sandwiched between two powerful Christian blocs. The race was on to see which side could conquer it first.
The coming of Christianity to Poland was of immense importance not only to the Slavs of the Berlin area but to the unfolding history of the entire region. The presence of a vast Catholic kingdom to the east of Germany would shape the history of central Europe and of Berlin for centuries to come, not least because of the rivalry which even now emerged between the German Christians and their Polish counterparts.
The Germans had hoped to Christianize all of northern Europe by pushing eastward from Magdeburg and on to Kiev Rus, knowing that under the Ottonian system the establishment of religious centres was inextricably linked to political conquest. The sudden emergence of Poland foiled their plans. The early history of the Piast dynasty remains obscure but by the third quarter of the tenth century the Polish ruler was rising to prominence as quickly as the Saxon rulers had in the west. The first Polish prince, Mieszko I, was keen to extend his power throughout the region.36 This posed a problem for the Germans, and in particular for Otto I.
When Otto made Magdeburg an archbishopric in 961 he had seen it as the base from which all territory from Saxony to Russia would be Christianized, a move which would in turn have brought all of east central Europe under German control. Mieszko objected. Not only did he want to prevent German meddling in his affairs; he also wanted to increase his own territory. The first Polish ruler was still relatively weak compared to his powerful Saxon rival and had to tread carefully; indeed at one point he only managed to forestall an invasion by agreeing to accept German Christian missions on his land.37 To Otto’s fury, however, in 966 he did the unthinkable. Instead of accepting Christianity from Germany Mieszko turned instead to Bohemia. By adopting Christianity from the south he had in one momentous act prevented the religious, administrative and political domination of Poland by the Holy Roman Emperor. Henceforth – to the annoyance of the Germans – Poland would grow to become an entirely separate and independent entity which would never succumb to the German vision of the Drang nach Osten – the idea that they had a civilizing mission in the east.
For a time it looked as if the religious compromise between Poland and the Germans would hold. The new Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, who was half Greek and had been brought up in Italy, regarded his own people as somewhat primitive and was not obsessed by German domination of the east. On the contrary, he had been deeply shaken by the Slav uprising and by the Borderlands between Germany and Poland, 10th–11th Century disastrous campaigns of the 990s and was willing to leave the conversion of the troublesome pagan Slavs in the east to the Poles as long as they joined the confederation of Christian princes under his ultimate control. Unlike his predecessors he had a vision of Europe organized as a hierarchy of kings; indeed a diptych painted at the end of the tenth century shows him receiving the homage of four crowned women: Germany, Gaul, Rome and Slavonia – the Slavic lands.38 He was sympathetic to the idea of Polish independence and, to the fury of leading German ecclesiastics, planned to set up a number of churches there which would be free from all German control.
Such German generosity to Poland is rare in history, but it had in part to do with the Polish response to a particular event which had deeply affected Otto III. This pious emperor had been a friend of Adalbertus, the former bishop of Prague. In 996 Pope Sylvester I had sent Adalbertus on a mission to convert the fierce East Prussians, and on his journey north that year the new Polish leader Boleslaw the Brave, Mieszko I’s son, generously received him with full honours. The action was duly noted in Rome. Adalbertus continued on to East Prussia where the local tribesmen, who were not keen on conversion, simply murdered him. Rather than ignore his death the Poles purchased his body for a vast sum – its weight in gold – and created a shrine for him at Gniezno. Pope Sylvester I was so impressed by this show of piety that he took the unusual step of canonizing Adalbertus, elevating Gniezno to an archbishopric and creating bishoprics at Wroclaw (Breslau), Kolobrzeg (Kolberg) and Krak–w (Cracow). It was the creation of a new archbishopric which finally severed the Polish Church from control of the German archbishopric at Magdeburg. The Poles now had an independent administration and took to Christianizing the west Slavic tribes with as much gusto as the Germans had done – the great bronze doors of Gniezno Cathedral depict King Boleslaw distributing blessings and assisting at baptisms, while his sword bearer stands beside him ready to strike down those who refuse to convert.39 The Poles were emerging as a powerful Christian country in their own right.
Adalbertus continued to play a role in Polish – German affairs from beyond the grave. In the year 1000 Otto III made a pilgrimage to his tomb, not only to pay homage to his murdered friend but also to determine what place Poland should have within the Holy Roman Empire. He was so impressed by Boleslaw’s extraordinary welcome and the wealth of the Polish court that, according to the chronicler monk Gallus, ‘Seeing his glory, his power and his riches the Roman Emperor cried out in admiration: “By the crown of my Empire! What I see far exceeds what I have heard!” ’ He took his own diadem and placed it on Boleslaw’s head as a sign of union and friendship, gave him ‘a nail from the Holy Cross and the lance of Saint Maurice, in return for which Boleslaw gave him the arm of Saint Adalbertus. And they felt such love on that day that the Emperor named him brother and associate in the Empire.’40 To the horror of the German prelates Otto III decided that Poland should not be a mere tributary duchy of the Holy Roman Empire but should be treated as a kingdom alongside Germany; an (almost) equal partner in a federation of Christian kingdoms. During his stay Otto not only spoke of friendship and co-operation between Germany and Poland but even of marriage between Boleslaw’s son Mieszko and his own niece Judith.
Had