[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.
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