In the second part of the Brief History of Poland series, Notes from Poland editor-at-large Stanley Bill looks at the Piast dynasty in the period between 1025 and 1370. He examines the development of the dynasty, the feudal fragmentation of the kingdom and its restoration, the rising conflict with the Teutonic Knights, the dazzling reign of Kazimierz the Great, and the oldest known Polish song - Bogurodzica.

The Brief History of Poland series will cover over a thousand years of Polish political and cultural history, from 966 until today.

The first episode is available here.

Producer: Sebastian Leśniewski


Music credit: Collegium Vocale (under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license).

Excerpt from Bogurodzica: Translated by David Welsh, in Monumenta Polonica: The First Four Centuries of Polish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology, ed. Bogdana Carpenter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Slavic Publications, 1989).

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