The baptism of Poland in historiography and the historical consciousness of the poles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Abstract

Polish national identity has long been caught up with questions of Christianity and Catholicism, with some scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries arguing that a turn to Christianity in the tenth century was a turn away from a more glorious non- Christian identity and that ties with Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy was a betrayal of a Slavic heritage. The question of whether Catholicism has helped or hindered Poland is much debated and Polish history is read through the lens of this controversy, which itself is a product of Polish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has tended to downplay the significance of religion in political and social life and sought to understand Polish relationships with Germans and Russians. Appreciating this means that the question about when Poland became Christian admits of no straightforward answer.