"She came to Poland, but not before she shared the marriage bed with him, until he renounced the mistakes of paganism" - wrote Gall Anonymous about the marriage of Dobrawa and Mieszko. It is not true that the Czech princess tried to blackmail her husband. She had other and very good reasons for refusing him his wedding night.
According to the Czech chronicler Cosmas, each pagan wedding ended with "giving the rest of the night to Venera and Hymen." The saintly monk did not want to say it directly, but under the enigmatic reference to the deities patronizing physical love, there was in fact a reference to the old custom of the planks. It was a ritual intercourse of newly weds, performed almost in front of the guests and even during the wedding feast.
This rite, vanishing in the depths of time, was an indispensable element of a traditional wedding. Only he confirmed the validity of the concluded relationship and, in a sense, sealed it. But it wasn't just about the sex itself. Visible signs were still needed to complete the ritual. Immediately after the intercourse, the groom was required to present his spouse's sheet or shirt so that all guests could see the traces of blood with their own eyes.
The proud Dobrawa did not intend to fulfill Mieszko's every whim ... A drawing based on a 19th-century lithography.
If so, the feast continued amid general joy. However, if the intercourse was not accompanied by bleeding, it was tradition that the wedding be interrupted and all related utensils destroyed. Meanwhile, the relationship itself was considered non-existent, or at least doomed to failure.
Virtue test… for widows and divorced women?
The coverings survived in Poland until the Sarmatian times, when, among the fights for sabers and mugs of beer, bloody cloths were still presented with pride. It is usually assumed that the custom was to confirm that the bride lived a virtuous life and was a virgin at the time of her marriage. In the 16th or 17th century it might have been so, but in the times of Mieszko and Dobrawa a similar interpretation would have made no sense at all.
The Slavs were famous in the 10th century for their moral freedom, not to say promiscuity. The Jewish traveler Ibrahim ibn Jakub explained that when one of their maids "fell in love with a man, she went to him and satisfied her lust with him." Such behavior among our distant great-great-grandmothers was, in the opinion of the traveler from Andalusia, expected.
"When a spouse marries a girl and finds her a virgin, he says to her:" If there was anything good in you, men would desire you and you would certainly choose someone to take your virginity, "wrote Ibrahim. In his opinion, it was this discovery that could have led to the breakup and sending the wife back to her parents, not the other way around.
If we are to believe the account of Ibrahim ibn Jacob, our distant ancestors did not sin in particular sexual abstinence ....
Blood sacrifice to idols
Historians consider the cited account to be rather credible. However, it does not in any way conflict with the decking ritual. In this early period, it was not a test of virtue at all. And it could not even be, because the passing of a blood test was expected both from the current virgins and from widows who remarried. The meaning of the rite was completely different and incomparably more profound.
It is believed that sex on the wedding night was considered an act of sacrifice to the gods in pagan times. It was the highest form of cult devotion - a kind of physical prayer. In the time of Mieszko it was believed that the blood was confirmation that the gods had accepted the sacrifice and accepted the marriage. The lack of it, however, announced - as the ethnologist Ludwik Stomma claimed - that the victim was rejected, and the union itself did not gain the approval of supernatural forces.
Dobrawa did not intend to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Wanda. She did not make a martyr of herself, but that does not mean that she was ready to give her body to a heathen ...
Of course, there had to be measures in place to ensure that the bloodstains appeared. In many cases, the "problem" was solved by the husband's brutal approach to sex, which hurt the newly married wife not only in a psychological sense. At other times, the blood could be sneaked on a sheet as long as the ritual was done.
Whatever the case, no one was afraid that Dobrawa would not pass the test, nor would anyone allow it. The problem was quite another. The princess - and now the duchess - firmly refused to participate in the decks. As a devout Christian, she did not even allow the thought that she could sacrifice her body to idols.
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They have no place in the works of scientists, and the authors of the encyclopedia stubbornly repeat that nothing is known about them. Dobrawa, Oda and Emnilda have been almost completely erased from our history. Completely wrong. Kamil Janicki proves that if not for these women, Poland would not exist at all. And that a lot can be said about their lives without resorting to presumptions and fairy tales. This is the fascinating story of the ruthless, ambitious and power-hungry partners of the first Piasts.
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The article is based on the literature and materials collected by the author during the work on the book "Iron Ladies. The Women Who Built Poland ” .