, probably as
early as the ninth century. In the beginning of the tenth, some
attempts were made to introduce the Slavic liturgy into Poland. Both
species of worship existed for some time peacefully side by side; and
even when, through the exertions of the Latin priesthood, the Slavic
liturgy was gradually superseded by the occidental rites, the former
was at least tolerated; and after the invention of printing, the
Polish city of Cracow was the first place where books in the Old
Slavic dialect, and portions of the Old Slavic Bible, were printed.[3]
In the year 965, the duke Miecislav married the Bohemian princess
Dombrovka, and caused himself to be baptized. From that time onward,
all the Polish princes and the greatest part of the nation became
Christians. There is however not one among the Slavic nations, in
which the influence Christianity must necessarily have exerted on its
mental cultivation, is so little visible; while upon its language it
exerted none at all. It has ever been and is still a favourite opinion
of some Slavic philologists, that several of the Slavic nations must
have possessed the art of writing long before their acquaintance with
the Latin alphabet, or the invention of the Cyrillic system; and among
the arguments by which they maintain this view, there are indeed some
too striking to be wholly set aside. But neither from those early
times, nor from the four or five centuries after the introduction of
Christianity, does there remain any monument whatever of the Polish
language; nay, with the exception of a few fragments without value,
the most ancient document of that language extant is not older than
the sixteenth century. Until that time the Latin idiom reigned
exclusively in Poland. The teachers of Christianity in this country
were for nearly five centuries foreigners, viz. Germans and Italians.
Hence arose that unnatural neglect of the vernacular tongue, of which
these were ignorant; the private influence of the German, still
visible in the Polish language; and the unlimited dominion of the
Latin. Slavic, Polish, and heathenish, were to them synonymous words.
Thus, while the light of Christianity everywhere carried the first
dawn of life into the night of Slavic antiquity, the early history of
Poland affords more than any other part of the Christian world a
melancholy proof, how the passions and blindness of men operated to
counterbalance that holy influence. But although so unfavourably
dis
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