Women in the Piast Dynasty

As elsewhere in Europe, woman belonging to the Piast dynasty in Poland played a siginificant role in the dynastic interchanges inside Europe. New book analyses their role

Women in the Piast Dynasty: A Comparative Study of Piast Wives and Daughters (c. 965–c.1144)
By Grzegorz Pac
Series: Series:
East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, Volume: 80
Brill Publishing 2022

This book analyses the role of women in the Polish Piast dynasty from c. 965 to c.1144. It discusses gender expectations and the literary topoi employed to describe rulers’ wives and daughters as well as showing their importance in religious donations, the creation of dynastic memory, and naming patterns, as well as examining Piast women’s involvement in female monasticism. Pac takes a comparative approach to these themes, analysing Polish sources alongside sources from other areas of early and high medieval Europe.

The book covers the Image of Piast wives in Gallus Anonymous’ Chronicle, the Piast Memoria, The question of nunneries and the naming patterns in the Piast dynasties.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Grzegorz Pac, Ph.D. (2011), is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Warsaw. His recent publications include “Queen-Widow, Family Sepulchre and Ottonian Descent in Eleventh-Century Rhineland” ( Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 2021) and “The Papal Monopoly of Saints’ Canonization and Translation in the Peripheries. The Case of Bohemia until c. 1150″ ( Journal of Medieval History, 2022).