Boleslaus the Bold (1058-1079) has a particular preference for Cracow. After victorious campaigns in the neighbouring countries, which either served to acquire new tracts of land or to maintain the sovereignty of Poland over those conquered before, he always returns to his royal castle of Cracow. Against the Emperor Henry IV he assumes an attitude of provocation; he allies himself to the insurgent princes of Saxony; when the great historical contest between Pope Gregory VII and the Emperor begins, he enters into close relations with the Pope, and during Henry's journey to Canossa he takes the royal crown.
Now there happens an episode unknown to Polish history before. For reasons not yet explained, a fateful feud kindles between the king and the bishop of Cracow, Stanislas—which ends, for the bishop, in a martyr's death, for the king, in the loss of his throne. The murdered prelate was canonized—like Thomas à Becket in England—the monarch's power, and with it Poland's political position and authority, sank far below what they had been. The dreadful catastrophe had happened in the centre of the oldest fortified settlement at Cracow, viz., on the Skalka, and the place became henceforth the aim of devout pilgrimages. The solemn celebration of the 8th of May as the day sacred to the Saint's memory developed into a Church festival of world-wide renown, attracting people from all countries and much frequented by traders.
The government of Ladislaus Hermann (1079-1102), successor to the deposed king, is of an entirely different stamp: its importance lies not in any political achievements as for these it is rather a period of decline, of complete submission of Poland to the Imperial sovereignty, and degradation from its independent and consolidate position—but in the care Ladislaus Hermann bestowed on raising the general standard of culture. The wooden structures standing till then, this prince replaces by stone architecture, of which some monuments have survived till our times to bear express witness to his exertions for civilization. Through his two wives he entered into close connections with the Bohemian and Imperial court. His first wife, Judith,
