Duchy of Opole

The Duchy of Opole was one of the duchies of Silesia ruled by the Silesian branch of the Polish Piast dynasty, born of the medieval fragmentation of Poland into provincial duchies. Its capital was Opole in Upper Silesia. After his long years of civil war Boleslaw III Wrymouth decreed in his will of 1138 that Poland should be divided into four hereditary principalities for his four sons, one of them Silesia; Boleslaw the Tall and his brother Mieszko Tanglefoot then split Silesia into the duchies of Wroclaw and Raciborz. Following a long dispute between Boleslaw's sons, the Duchy of Opole was formed in 1172 with Jaroslaw as its first duke, who soon gave up rule for an ecclesiastical career and became bishop of Wroclaw. On Jaroslaw's death in 1201 the duchy reverted to his father and was shortly joined to Raciborz by Mieszko, only to be recreated in 1281 for Casimir and Bolesko, sons of Wladyslaw of Opole. It shrank through the fourteenth century and expanded again from the mid-fifteenth, until Jan II the Good reunited it with Raciborz in 1521. He died childless in 1532, the Opole Piasts became extinct, and the lands passed as a fief to the Bohemian crown, later to the Hohenzollern margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach by a 1522 treaty and to Prussia in 1742.