Duchy of Greater Poland

The Duchy of Greater Poland was the Piast cradle-duchy, the home ground of the Polish state, lasting from 1138 to 1320. When Bolesław Wrymouth quartered Poland among his sons, the western share around Poznań, Gniezno and Kalisz, the oldest Piast lands, became a duchy of its own. The dukes guarded Poland's first capitals and its baptismal churches while the senior throne wandered to Kraków; in 1177 the duchy itself split into Poznań, Gniezno and Kalisz after the nobles deposed the authoritarian Mieszko the Old. For a century Greater Poland balanced fragmentation against memory: every duke claimed to guard the cradle until Poland should be whole again. Przemysł II did it: reuniting the duchy in 1279, he had himself crowned king of Poland in 1295, the first coronation in two centuries. Murdered within a year, he left the work unfinished, but in 1320 his lands folded into the restored kingdom, and the cradle-duchy's task was done.