Adalbert had been martyred trying to convert the pagan Prussians, who are shown in some scenes, giving a rare near-contemporary record of their appearance; the Prussians remained largely pagan at the time the doors were made. To illustrate the life of a single saint on such a monumental scale was most unusual at this period, and the doors are the only Romanesque ones in Europe with such a programme. The designs perhaps followed a now lost cycle in an illuminated manuscript of the life of the saint, though even in this sort of works such an extended pictorial treatment of a saint's life was unusual. Two lives of Adalbert have survived, written around 1000, soon after his death, but no illuminated copies that throw light on the visual sources for the doors, though their texts help explain the scenes. Whatever the origin of the designs, the compositions show the borrowings from more common subject compositions to which early medieval artists usually resorted when confronted with a novel subject; devising new compositions was not part of their training. Some scenes adapt subjects from the "Life of Christ" and other models. The left door shows his early life and life in Christian territory; the right one his missionary activities, apparently ignoring those outside modern Poland. Their iconography "clearly shows they were made as a political statement".