The Polish Crown of Wenceslas II

JAN 01 1300 · 12:00

Wenceslas II enthroned, miniature from the Codex Manesse (c. 1305-1340); king of Bohemia and now of Poland. Place: Cathedral of Gniezno Figures: Wenceslas II, king of Bohemia and now Poland · Archbishop Jakub Świnka of Gniezno, who crowns him · Władysław the Elbow-High, dispossessed and exiled · the Cistercians of Zbraslav, the king's monastery near Prague Wenceslas II is twenty-nine. He has rebuilt his father's kingdom (the part of it that did not go to Vienna in 1278) and added to it. He mints the Prague groschen, the silver coin that becomes Central Europe's currency for the next two centuries, struck from the new silver of Kutná Hora. He founds the Cistercian monastery of Zbraslav, where he means to be buried. He inherits, in 1296, a claim to the Polish throne by his betrothal to Richeza, daughter of the murdered Przemysł II. In 1300 the Polish nobles invite him to make the claim good. He marches in unopposed. Władysław the Elbow-High, his rival, flees south. Archbishop Jakub Świnka, who has the right to crown a king of Poland and the only one to do so, crowns Wenceslas at Gniezno cathedral. The act restores the Polish crown, vacant since 1296. It also unites Bohemia and Poland under one sovereign for the first time.