Following his marriage to the Christian Doubravka of Bohemia, the pagan ruler of the Polans, Mieszko I, converts to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.

Doubravka of Bohemia, Dobrawa was a Bohemian princess of the Přemyslid dynasty and by marriage Duchess of the Polans.

Paganism is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi. Alternative terms used in Christian texts were hellene, gentile, and heathen. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".

The Polans, also known as Polanians or Western Polans, were a West Slavic and Lechitic tribe who inhabited the Warta River basin of the contemporary Greater Poland region starting in the 6th century. They were one of Central Europe's main tribes and closely related to the Vistulans, Masovians, Czechs and Slovaks. According to Zygmunt Gloger, their name was derived from the word "pole", meaning "field", thus denoting them as "men of the fields".

Mieszko I was Duke of Poland from 960 until his death in 992 and the founder of the first unified Polish state, the Civitas Schinesghe. A member of the Piast dynasty, he was the first Christian ruler of Poland and continued the policies of both his father Siemomysł and his grandfather Lestek, who initiated a process of unification among the Polish tribes and the creation of statehood.