Civitas Schinesghe


Civitas Schinesghe is the first recorded name related to Poland as a political entity first attested in 991/2. The original deed is missing, but is mentioned in an 11th-century papal regesta called Dagome iudex. It states that the Piast duke wife Oda von Haldensleben had given the guidance of unam civitatem in integro, que vocatur Schinesghe over to the Holy See.
Though a state of Poland is not explicitly mentioned, the name Schinesghe most likely refers to Gniezno, one of the main settlements of the West Slavic Polans. Their duke Mieszko had himself baptised upon his marriage to Princess Dobrawa of Bohemia in 965. In 1000 at the Congress of Gniezno the first Polish archdiocese was established and Mieszko's son Duke Bolesław I Chrobry was acknowledged as frater et cooperator of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Otto III.

The borders of Mieszko I's state

Analysis of the document can help reconstruct the borders of the Polish realm:
The last statement suggests that Schinesghe is on the Oder and on the Baltic coast and becomes clear only after reversing "sch" to "chs" giving clearly understandable Chsinesghe which is "książęce" in modern Polish, so "civitate Schinesghe" reads as "the cities of the Duke".