The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages . They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries. The West Slavic languages diversified into their historically attested forms over the 10th to 14th centuries.
15-794: The Bethenici (also Bethenzi or Bechelenzi ) were a West Slavic people living east of the Elbe river in the ninth century. They lived near the confluence of the Elbe and the Havel , probably between the rivers alongside the Smeldingi . In 811, according to the Chronicle of Moissac , the Frankish emperor Charlemagne dispatched an army of Franks and Saxons across the Elbe against "those Slavs, who are called Linai and Bechelenzi." The Linai, as Linones , are also mentioned in
30-620: A certain class of "citizen warriors" in Meissen under Margrave Gunzelin of Kuckenburg , were called Vethenici in Slavonic . This may indicate that the name was never that of a people, but of a class of warriors. West Slavs Today, groups which speak West Slavic languages include the Poles , Czechs , Slovaks , Silesians , Kashubians , and Sorbs . From the ninth century onwards, most West Slavs converted to Roman Catholicism , thus coming under
45-618: A territory rather than a population, is a matter of scholarly debate. The early Slavic expansion reached Central Europe in the 7th century, and the West Slavic dialects diverged from common Slavic over the following centuries. The West Slavic tribes settled on the eastern fringes of the Carolingian Empire , along the Limes Saxoniae . Prior to the Magyar invasion of Pannonia in the 890s,
60-614: The Royal Frankish Annals for 811. The Annals of Aniane , which are related to the Chronicle of Moissac , use the spelling Bethenzi. Other variations that appear in the manuscripts are Bethenzr and Bethelclereri. The Chronicle of Moissac and its variants are the only Frankish annals to mention the Bethenici. The Bethenici are mentioned in the Catalogue of Fortresses and Regions to
75-757: The Bavarian Geographer made a list of West Slavic tribes who lived in the areas of modern-day Poland , Czech Republic , Germany and Denmark : Limes Saxoniae The Limes Saxoniae ( Latin for "Limit of Saxony "), also known as the Limes Saxonicus or Sachsenwall ("Saxon Dyke"), was an unfortified limes or border between the Saxons and the Slavic Obotrites , established about 810 in present-day Schleswig-Holstein . After Charlemagne had removed Saxons from some of their lands and given it to
90-755: The North of the Danube , which was produced at the court of the Frankish king Louis the German between 844 and 862. They are grouped with the Smeldingi and Morizani and the three are said to have eleven fortresses between them. The Linones are said to live to their north. To their south lived the Hevelles . Writing over a century later, Thietmar of Merseburg says that the Kuckenburgers,
105-657: The Obotrites (who were allies of Charlemagne), he finally managed to conquer the Saxons in the Saxon Wars . In 811 he signed the Treaty of Heiligen with the neighbouring Danes and may at the same time have reached a border agreement with the Polabian Slavs in the east. This border should not be thought of as a fortified line, however, but rather a defined line running through the middle of
120-456: The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia spanned much of Central Europe between what is now Eastern Germany and Western Romania. In the high medieval period, the West Slavic tribes were again pushed to the east by the incipient German Ostsiedlung , decisively so following the Wendish Crusade in the 11th century. The early Slavic expansion began in the 5th century, and by the 6th century
135-752: The border zone, an area of bog and thick forest that was difficult to pass through. According to Adam of Bremen 's description in the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum about 1075, it ran from the Elbe river near Boizenburg northwards along the Bille river to the mouth of the Schwentine at the Kiel Fjord and the Baltic Sea . It was breached several times by the Slavic Obotrites (983 and 1086) and Mieszko II Lambert of Poland (1028 and 1030). The Limes
150-634: The cultural influence of the Latin Church , adopting the Latin alphabet , and tending to be more closely integrated into cultural and intellectual developments in western Europe than the East Slavs , who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and adopted the Cyrillic alphabet . Linguistically, the West Slavic group can be divided into three subgroups: Lechitic , including Polish , Silesian , Kashubian , and
165-632: The domination of the Holy Roman Empire after the Wendish Crusade in the Middle Ages and had been strongly assimilated by Germans at the end of the 19th century. The Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony . Various attempts have been made to group the West Slavs into subgroups according to various criteria, including geography, historical tribes, and linguistics. In 845
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#1732858763450180-706: The extinct Polabian and Pomeranian languages ; Sorbian in the region of Lusatia ; and Czecho–Slovak in the Czech lands . In the Early Middle Ages , the name " Wends " (probably derived from the Roman-era Veneti ) may have applied to Slavic peoples. However, sources such as the Chronicle of Fredegar and Paul the Deacon are neither clear nor consistent in their ethnographic terminology, and whether "Wends" or "Veneti" refer to Slavic people, pre-Slavic people, or to
195-886: The following West Slav tribes in the 11th century from "the coastlands and hinterland from the aby of Kiel to the Vistula, including the islands of Fehmarn, Poel, Rügen, Usedom and Wollin", namely the Wagrians , Obodrites (or Abotrites), the Polabians , the Liutizians or Wilzians, the Rugians or Rani, the Sorbs, the Lusatians, the Poles, and the Pomeranians (later divided into Pomerelians and Cassubians). They came under
210-734: The groups that would become the West, East , and South Slavic groups had probably become geographically separated. One of the distinguishing features of the West Slavic tribes was manifested in the structure of the Pagan sanctuaries of the closed (long) type, while the East Slavic sanctuaries had a round (most often open) shape ( see also : Peryn ). Early modern historiographers such as Penzel (1777) and Palacky (1827) have claimed Samo's Empire to be first independent Slavic state in history by taking Fredegar's Wendish account at face value. Curta (1997) argued that
225-637: The text is not as straightforward: according to Fredegar, Wends were a gens , Sclavini merely a genus , and there was no "Slavic" gens . He further states that " Wends occur particularly in political contexts: the Wends, not the Slavs, made Samo their king." Other such alleged early West Slavic states include the Principality of Moravia (8th century–833), the Principality of Nitra (8th century–833), and Great Moravia (833–c. 907). Christiansen (1997) identified
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