On 2007-11-26 11:55, tgpedersen wrote:
> Posen [the area around Poznan´, of which I don't know the Polish name]
It's Wielkopolska, often translated as Greater Poland or Great Poland
(Ger. Großpolen, Lat. Polonia Maior in Mediaeval documents), as opposed
to Mal/opolska (Polonia Minor) for the southeastern part of the country,
with Cracow (Kraków) as the capital city. The present-day political
centre of gravity (Mazowsze/Masovia, with what is now Warsaw) was not
fully incorporated into the Polish kingdom until the 16th c.
The adjectives Maior and Minor don't refer to the size of the provinces
(Lesser Poland was actually the bigger of the two) but to the historical
order of "becoming Polish": Greater Poland was where the state was first
established and given its name. Kraków (previously incorporated into
Bohemia) was conquered by the Polish rulers in the last decades of the
10th c. in circumstances that are not quite clear.
Piotr