Polish Historians of the Romantic Period on Richeza the Queen on Poland: in the Circle of Historical Myths

Abstract

The author attempted to answer a question regarding the eventual mythologising efforts applied by historians referring to the concept of J. Lelewel’s notion of the role and attitude of Richeza, the wife of Mieszko II.  The reflection upon the sources, preceding the primary part of the article, was aiming at indicating the foundations of areas evaluating the queen, outlined by some historians. These, by contrast, comprised of varied reception or distortion of chronicles’ motives. Such distortions (falsification of historical knowledge) or simplifications of Richeza’s image should be interpreted as the expression of mythical thinking.
Auxiliary tools were engaged in this reflection: the categories of familiarity and strangeness, the confrontation between the Occident and the native character, and the power of commoners were used for the interpretation of assessing Richeza’s figure as well as for an attempt to give answer to the question of the reasons behind mythologising (if such measure was noticed). Moreover, the author pointed at other factors, associated with ideology for instance, specifying the measures of mythologising as a creation of the ethnical stereotype.