Simon Grunau
Encyclopedia
Simon Grunau was the author of Preussische Chronik,Full title: Cronika und beschreibung allerlüstlichenn, nützlichsten und waaren historien des namkundigenn landes zu Prewssen or Chronicle and description of the most amusing, useful and true known history of the Prussian land the first comprehensive history of Prussia. The only personal information available is what he wrote himself in his work: that he was a Dominican priest
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

 from Tolkemit (now Tolkmicko
Tolkmicko
Tolkmicko is a town in northern Poland, on the Vistula Lagoon, about 20 km northeast of Elbląg. It is located in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in Elbląg County. Its population is 2,766 -History:...

) near Frauenburg (now Frombork
Frombork
Frombork is a town in northern Poland, on the Vistula Lagoon, in Braniewo County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. It had a population of 2,528 as of 2005....

) just north of Elbing (Elbląg)
Elblag
Elbląg is a city in northern Poland with 127,892 inhabitants . It is the capital of Elbląg County and has been assigned to the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship since 1999. Before then it was the capital of Elbląg Voivodeship and a county seat in Gdańsk Voivodeship...

 in Royal Prussia
Royal Prussia
Royal Prussia was a Region of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth . Polish Prussia included Pomerelia, Chełmno Land , Malbork Voivodeship , Gdańsk , Toruń , and Elbląg . It is distinguished from Ducal Prussia...

. He preached in Danzig (now Gdańsk
Gdansk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

) and claimed to have personally met Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...

 and Polish King Sigismund I the Old
Sigismund I the Old
Sigismund I of Poland , of the Jagiellon dynasty, reigned as King of Poland and also as the Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 until 1548...

. The chronicle was written in the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 sometime between 1517 and 1529. Its 24 chapters deal with Prussian landscape, agriculture, inhabitants, their customs, and history from earliest times to up to 1525 when Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

 Duchy of Prussia was created. It also contains a short (about a hundred words) vocabulary of the Prussian language, one of the very few written monuments in this extinct language. While often based on fantasy and dubious sources, this work became very popular and is a the principal source of information on Prussian mythology
Prussian mythology
The Prussian mythology was a polytheistic religion of the Old Prussians, indigenous peoples of Prussia before the Prussian Crusade waged by the Teutonic Knights. It was closely related to other Baltic faiths, the Lithuanian and Latvian mythologies. Its myths and legends did not survive as Prussians...

. The chronicle circulated as a frequently copied manuscript and was first published in 1876. Modern historians often dismiss the Preussische Chronik as a work of fiction.

Author bias

Grunau lived at the time of political division and fierce religious conflicts in Prussia, and as a Catholic priest, was biased against Protestants. In 1525, the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights
Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights
The State of the Teutonic Order, , also Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights or Ordensstaat , was formed in 1224 during the Northern Crusades, the Teutonic Knights' conquest of the pagan West-Baltic Old Prussians in the 13th century....

 was transformed into the Duchy of Prussia, the first Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...

 state in the world. Royal Prussia
Royal Prussia
Royal Prussia was a Region of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth . Polish Prussia included Pomerelia, Chełmno Land , Malbork Voivodeship , Gdańsk , Toruń , and Elbląg . It is distinguished from Ducal Prussia...

, under the sovereignty of the Polish Crown, also became largely Lutheran; only the Bishopric of Warmia remained Catholic.

Traditions of the Old Prussians
Old Prussians
The Old Prussians or Baltic Prussians were an ethnic group, autochthonous Baltic tribes that inhabited Prussia, the lands of the southeastern Baltic Sea in the area around the Vistula and Curonian Lagoons...

, the indigenous people of the region prior to the Prussian Crusade
Prussian Crusade
The Prussian Crusade was a series of 13th-century campaigns of Roman Catholic crusaders, primarily led by the Teutonic Knights, to Christianize the pagan Old Prussians. Invited after earlier unsuccessful expeditions against the Prussians by Polish princes, the Teutonic Knights began campaigning...

 and influx of German colonists
Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...

, were used in an attempt to find a common ground. Under such circumstances, Grunau was extremely critical of the Teutonic Knights
Teutonic Knights
The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem , commonly the Teutonic Order , is a German medieval military order, in modern times a purely religious Catholic order...

 and favored local Prussians, emphasizing their non-German origin. He wrote about their origins, customs, and religion trying in order to differentiate the Prussians from the Germans.

Legendary content

Grunau claimed that he incorporated an ancient chronicle, written by the first Prussian bishop Christian
Christian of Oliva
Christian of Oliva , also Christian of Prussia was the first missionary bishop of Prussia.Christian was born about 1180 in the Duchy of Pomerania, possibly in the area of Chociwel...

 (died in 1245). Supposedly Grunau discovered the manuscript, called Liber filiorum Belial, three hundred years after it was written. Christian's manuscript itself used three sources: personal observations by Christian, a book written by parish priest Jaroslav from Płock, and notes by naturalist Dywonys, who was a sole survivor of an expedition stranded in Prussia by accident. Dywonys kept a diary in Russian using the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

. His notes were discovered only 1200 years later by Christian. No such manuscripts are known to exist and scholarly consensus is that the entire story was invented by Grunau.

For the history of more recent times Grunau used all available sources (such as chronicles by Peter von Dusburg, official documents of the Teutonic Knights, and especially works by Erasmus Stella) and added his own imagination. For example, he took a description of Prussian holy place Romove (Romuva temple
Romuva (temple)
Romuva or Romowe was a pagan worship place in western part of Sambia, one of the regions of the pagan Prussia. In contemporary sources the temple was mentioned only once by Peter von Dusburg in 1326...

) from Peter von Dusburg and improved it by adding an eternally green oak, decorated with portraits of three idols and guarded by vestal virgins. Scholars agree that this addition was most probably borrowed from Adam of Bremen
Adam of Bremen
Adam of Bremen was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. He is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum .-Background:Little is known of his life other than hints from his own chronicles...

 and his description of the Temple at Uppsala
Temple at Uppsala
The Temple at Uppsala was a religious center in Norse paganism once located at what is now Gamla Uppsala , Sweden attested in Adam of Bremen's 11th century work Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum and in Heimskringla, written by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century...

.

These stories were widely copied by other authors and spread into folklore. In 1853, Max Toeppen was the first to draw serious criticism to historical accuracy and value of Grunau's work. Modern historians almost universally dismiss the chronicle as work of fiction except for excerpts about events that Grunau eye-witnessed himself. However, some Lithuanian researchers, including Gintaras Beresnevičius
Gintaras Beresnevicius
Gintaras Beresnevičius was a Lithuanian historian of religions specializing in Baltic mythology. He together with Norbertas Vėlius is considered to be the best specialist in Lithuanian mythology....

, believe such approach is overly critical and the chronicle should be more carefully analyzed to identify possibly valid information.

Prussian dictionary

To prove that Prussians had their own language, which was different from the Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

 and from Lithuanian language
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...

s, Grunau included a hundred-word dictionary in the chronicle. Some words are distorted, but as one of the very few written sources for now extinct Prussian language, it is still valuable. Grunau claimed that he could speak some Prussian, but he often mixed in Polish or Lithuanian words as if they were Prussian. Grunau also included Lord's Prayer
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...

, allegedly written in Prussian. In 1983, Wolfgang P. Schmid proved that the prayer is actually a mixture of Latvian
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

 and Curonian language
Curonian language
The Curonian language or Old Curonian is an extinct language spoken by the Curonian tribe, who lived mainly on the Courland peninsula and along the nearby Baltic shores....

s. Since the only other Prussian dictionary is the Elbing-Prussian Vocabulary from about 1350 and no written sources of Lithuanian or Latvian existed till after Grunau's death, the list by Grunau is still a very important document for the study of the Baltic languages.

External links

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