drove their garrison from the town, in which, according to old tradition, St. Adalbert (called Wojciech in Polish), before he went to win the palm of martyrdom at the hands of the heathen Prussians, is said to have preached in the market-place (now Central Square), where a small church in Romanesque style, erected to his memory, is still standing. The news of the Saint's death produced a great impression over all Europe; the Emperor Otto III, who had been his personal friend, undertook, A.D. 1000, the famous pilgrimage to the martyr's tomb at Gniezno and visited the Polish monarch Boleslaus, on whose royal head he set, on that occasion, a golden crown, presenting him also thelance said to have been St. Maurice's and preserved to the present time in the treasury of the Cathedral—both as insignia of recognised royal power. It would appear that this warlike prince, Boleslaus Chrobry, the heroic founder of Poland's independence, fortified the river-castle on the Wawel. At this time also the archbishopric of Gniezno was founded, whose sphere included the diocese of Cracow. The Bishop of Cracow occupied the first rank, under the Metropolite of Gniezno, in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Poland. His residence was on the fortified Skalka (nowadays St. Michael's Church of the Pauline Fathers), where a deep pond at the foot of the rocky mound became the first natural baptismal font of Cracow; here the common people washed off their heathendom. The temporal monarchs resided on Wawel Hill, opposite this seat of the spiritual power.
In the early Middle Ages both Wawel and Skalka, with its church of St. Michael, were probably made water-fortresses. Skalka, much smaller than Wawel, was embraced fork-wise by the waters of the Vistula, and it was probably here that the first cathedral stood, with the bishop's residence, fortified by walls and ramparts. The old river-bed, separating the two castle-mounds, was filled up with earth in the nineteenth century, when it became the broad street now called after President Dietl. The Wawel Hill was on most sides surrounded by waters either stagnant or running. To the north-west, where nowadays we find the fine municipal garden plots and "Canons' Street" (ulica Kanonicza), nothing
2*
