History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 194, the Baltic Crusades, the Christianization of Poland.

Hello again.

Last week we took time out from the Baltic Crusades to do some background on the Teutonic Knights.

This week we will be taking some time out to do some background on the Christianization of Poland.

Why? Well, because two listeners contacted me and pointed out that I had brushed over the establishment of Christianity in Poland and pointed out that the comment I made in episode 191 that Christianity in Poland was established by Emperor

Otto wasn't entirely correct.

Well, I went off to do some research and found out that not only was it not entirely correct, it was pretty much fundamentally wrong, and that the coming of Christianity to Poland was actually a fascinating subject that totally

deserved its own episode.

So sorry Poland and everyone please disregard everything I said about Poland in episode 191 and replace it with this episode.

On a related matter, you know how I said in episode 191 that the wrong bird-towned

Stetine was in Prussia? Well, it's not. It's in Pomerania. And in fact fact Stetin isn't the correct name for the town it's the

German version of its actual name which is Stetchin. You will be happy to know that from now on in I will be

pronouncing the names of towns in their own language wherever appropriate. So a big thank you to listeners, Marius and Parvel for putting me on the right track.

Actually, I get the feeling that this sort of thing might start happening quite a bit.

So if you are from Eastern Europe and you find Western biases creeping into my narrative,

or if I say something fundamentally wrong that has you clutching your head and

moaning don't suffer in silence. There's only one thing worse than getting something wrong in a history podcast, and that's getting

something wrong in a history podcast without realizing it.

So if you hear me make a clanger contact me via Facebook or Twitter or on email at crusades pod at gmail.com.

Okay, so we have now arrived at the question we need to ask, and that question is, why was Poland

Christian at the time of the Baltic Crusades. We've seen in our examination of the

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