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1. DUCAL LORDSHIP

In the story of the first duke Přemysl, as told by Cosmas, the Czechs become dissatisfied with appealing their disputes only to arbiters, however wise, and so choose to subject themselves to a single ruler with the power to enforce decisions. Libuše, a prophetess and their most respected judge, is deemed unsuitable for the task as a woman. She agrees to take a husband, who might become the first Czech duke, yet warns them at length of the risks:

O most pitiable people, who do not know that they live free and that no good man leaves freedom except with death. You flee that freedom not unwillingly and submit your necks voluntarily to unaccustomed servitude. Alas later you will regret it in vain, as the frogs regretted it when the serpent, whom they had made their king, began to kill them. If you do not know what the rights of a duke might be, I will try to tell you in a few words. It is especially easy to appoint a duke, but very difficult to depose one appointed, for he who is now under your power, whether you established him duke or not, when later he is established, you and everything yours will be in his power. In his presence your knees will tremble and your mute tongue stick to a dry palate. Because of great fright you will hardly respond to his voice: “Yes lord, yes lord,” since by his command alone and without your forejudgment he will damn this one and slaughter that one, order these sent to prison and those hung from the gallows. He will make you yourselves and those among you whom he pleases some servants, some peasants, some tributaries, some tax-collectors, some executioners, some heralds, some cooks or bakers or millers. He will establish for himself tribunes, centurions, villagers, farmers of vineyards and fields, reapers of corn, makers of arms, shoemakers of various hides and skins. He will place your sons and daughters among his followers; from even your oxen and horses and mares and cattle he will take, at his pleasure, whichever are best. Everything yours, whatever is better in villages and towns, in fields and meadows and vineyards, he will take away and render for his own use.¹

The Czechs persist in the face of this admonition: the new duke, a ploughman named Přemysl, thus gains power directly from those he rules. The legend, in Cosmas’s telling, seeks less to glorify the Přemyslid dynasty than to account for the origins of ducal lordship. In the process, the passage conjures a striking picture of raw power. The considerable disadvantages associated with a monarch are not attributed exclusively to bad rulership or usurpers, but depicted as inherent in ducal authority from the start. The tone of the speech, and the attitude toward power it betrays, belong unmistakably to Cosmas. Yet in attributing these words to a famously discerning seer, he intended them to resonate with his present while simultaneously explaining the past.

The myth of Libuše and Přemysl, or any other consideration of the origins of Přemyslid overlordship, cannot answer questions about the exercise of power in the Czech Lands. Libuše’s speech is not construed, nor surely was it intended by the chronicler, as a depiction of the ruler’s actual rights and privileges. Yet it points in the right direction. We begin therefore, almost as Cosmas did, by taking stock of the resources, rights, and obligations comprising the lordship of the duke of Bohemia. Since the duke was undoubtedly lord of all the Czech lands and inhabitants, far and away the preeminent authority in his territory, we need to consider more closely the foundations for such power. This is to ask institutional questions of a sort, although, since bureaucratic institutions of governance based on written records had not yet been established and law was customary and oral, explicitly institutional or legal methodologies cannot be employed.² Extant materials remain limited and rarely answer directly the questions put to them, thus also disallowing a quantitative approach.³ Preoccupied with the duke and with political affairs, the authors of extant sources, whether chroniclers describing the notable events of their day or scribes redacting charters, took for granted basic issues of social and political structure. The method applied here endeavors to read between the lines, to look for patterns that manifest across time and varied materials, and to search for the structures behind the deeds the sources recount. Libuše describes ducal power, from its outset and by its very nature, as extensive and invasive, affecting the lives of the duke’s subjects in very tangible ways. This chapter seeks to determine whether it was indeed so, that is, to understand the depth and extent of the duke’s reach.

Understanding the ways in which secular lordship permeated the lives of eleventh- and twelfth-century Czechs requires, in addition, attention to the fundamentals of medieval Czech social structure. Even if power relations were not quite the zero-sum game Cosmas envisioned, Libuše’s admonition serves as a reminder that for one to have, say, the right to judge, others must stand among the judged. Although the focus in this chapter is the duke, the significance and breadth of his rights and assets emerge by comparison with conditions prevailing in Czech society as a whole during this period. Put simply: to determine the degree to which control of land formed a basis for the duke’s power, we must comprehend the nature of landholding generally and among the freemen specifically; to assess the importance of control of castles, we must speculate as to their function; to imagine the duke’s judicial authority, we must know something about the law. For all these issues, and particularly with regard to military service, the duke’s rights must be weighed by their limitations as well as his obligations. How far above or outside the community of the governed this Přemyslid ruler stood becomes clear only by close analysis of the circumstances of broader lay society—though such a picture remains only partial without independent consideration of the Czechs themselves, the subject of Chapter 2.

Land

Material resources largely form the basis of social and political power in any age. The importance of more liquid assets in monetized economies should not be discounted, but real property carried particular value. We begin, therefore, with analysis of the land resources available to the Přemyslid duke of Bohemia. Given the erratic nature of the documentation, including the absence of central administrative records, reconstructing a complete list of the duke’s lands and sources of income is simply impossible. The charters record only those lands relinquished, usually to ecclesiastical institutions. Yet since wealth is always measured relatively and mobilized in a specific culture and context, the duke’s assets cannot be considered in isolation. This section thus describes the nature of landholding generally in the Czech Lands of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the comparative breadth of the duke’s resources.

None of the extant sources comments directly on the nature of land ownership per se, but the basic terminology of the charters is nonetheless revealing, as are a few exceptionally telling phrases. In reference to landholdings, whether villages, arable fields of different sizes, or various appurtenances, almost all the documents speak of “possessiones.” The nouns “patrimonium” and “hereditas”⁴ appear regularly and, in all the charters, the verb most frequently used is “possidere.”⁵ Many charters also explicitly note the conditions under which the recipient was to hold the land. From the end of the eleventh century, and routinely in the last quarter of the twelfth, such properties were given “perpetuo possidendam,” “iure perpetuo possidendas,” or “hereditario iure possidendum.”⁶ A charter from 1197 explicitly links these suggestive phrases, noting that Zdeslav “sold by legitimate right” his “inheritance” at Bdeněves, “which he owned according to hereditary right.”⁷ In another case, the Vyšehrad bellringers clarified that they exchanged lands with Marcant “according to the good and proper order, to be possessed in hereditary right by him or his sons or transferred to another whom he chooses.”⁸ Whether by an individual or an institution, lands were owned outright before and after any transfer. Grants conditional upon the death of a wife or heir, leased back to the donor for the remainder of his lifetime, or dependent upon the donor’s return or death on crusade, so stipulate.⁹ The possessions themselves could range considerably in size and seem not to have been legally distinguished. Whole mountains could be traded as easily as tiny plots.¹⁰ Likewise, landowners probably were not legally differentiated, though individual wealth must have varied greatly.¹¹

Because land was owned by laymen or churchmen of every station, it could be traded freely as a commodity, that is, acquired through purchase or exchange as well as by means of inheritance or grant. A ducal grant to the Hospitallers from 1169 states plainly: “I assigned certain of my villages, which I either bought justly with my money, exchanged by just transfers or acquired legitimately by other just means, according to the judgement of the senior nobles of Bohemia.”¹² The donor in this case is the duke, but the charter states that he was simply acting within the legal norms of his society. In fact when the frequency of documentation increases, trading or selling land is revealed as routine among landowners. A grant to Plasy made “by hereditary right” on the part of a woman named Agnes, for example, included a village: “bought back from Drslav with my own money, which my husband Kuno had sold to him before our marriage.”¹³ Plainly these are not instances of subinfeudation or the like, as the verb is consistently “emere” for sales, while an exchange is usually labeled as “concambium.” The property in these transactions is valued in terms of money: either a sum is paid directly for a piece of land, or the values of two plots are compared and a sum paid to even out the trade as necessary. For instance, at the request of the abbot of Plasy, Soběslav II agreed to an exchange: “giving them an estate named Újezd for theirs, which is called Sušany, with eight talents added from their side so that the exchange would be of equal value.”¹⁴ Another charter records that the bishop of Prague, in need of money, sold a village to Mechtfrid of Slavčeves for 15 marks of pure silver, though the latter promised that the property would be returned after his death should his five children die without heirs.¹⁵ Among the Czechs, then, land was owned absolutely, and the owners were free to exploit or alienate their possessions as needed or desired.¹⁶

Ownership was the normative way in which people and land were connected. Nowhere in the charters does the word “feudum” appear, with a single telling exception. In a document from 1185, issued to the Austrian ministerial Hadmar of Kuenring, Duke Frederick states that, “we undertook to bind him to us by a promise of fidelity, granted him part of our land adjacent to Austria … by right of benefice, and enfeoffed him without objection.”¹⁷ In its entirety, the language of this document contrasts sharply with all other Czech charters from the period, reflecting instead the norms of the recipient—or at least the duke’s understanding of them. The phrase here, “sibi iure beneficii concessimus et … infeudavimus,” highlights all the more those grants routinely made iure hereditario. Beyond this document feudum appears only in Cosmas’s chronicle, where the phrase “pheodo vel allodio” is used twice.¹⁸ In the first passage, the author is making a broad, inclusive statement about Bishop Ekkehard’s institutution of a tithe that everyone was to pay, regardless of status, while the second comes in a description of the arrangement by which the new bishopric of Olomouc was endowed with lands taken from the bishop of Prague.¹⁹ The first, understood in context, is not a technical usage, and the latter is sufficiently detailed to make clear that no fief was involved. Neither here nor in any other source is feudum, or some like term, used to describe a layman’s relationship to his land. In one charter, a magnate named Čéč sold to a monastery land that he received as a reward for service—not which he holds in service—and thus possessed on the same basis as all his other holdings.²⁰ As will be discussed further with regard to castles, the duke had castellans who must have received income from lands designated for their upkeep, but such property was not in the castellan’s power to alienate and, for this reason, never appears in the charters recording land transactions.

Unfortunately, the documents provide little information about perhaps the most important point: the norm of inheritance. On the basis of a few charters in which the donor grants lands from his patrimony combined with others bought from a brother or other relatives, it appears likely that some sort of partible inheritance prevailed. The canon Zbyhněv, for instance, refers to “fields which I bought for my own patrimony from my brother.”²¹ Likewise, the foundation of Strahov includes a gift from Bishop John of Prague of “the whole of his patrimony, what he had in Lochenice and what he bought there from his relatives, named Msteň and his sons, and from other relatives.”²² From the latter, and other instances in which donors attempted to assure that their relatives would not dispute their gifts to monasteries, it seems that legal claim to land was shared by a range of relations, denoted in the plural.²³ The foundation charter for Hradiště mentions the property of Vice-duke Otto’s wife, Euphemia, but since it seems to provide for his daughter, Bohuslava, only if she remains unmarried, it is difficult to ascertain the conditions under which daughters customarily inherited land.²⁴ Partible inheritance, division among several claimants, and provisions for women would have meant that the size, composition, and ownership of arable land shifted almost constantly throughout the Czech Lands as a whole, and even in specific localities.

In the charters, land is most frequently mentioned in terms of whole named villages, which included a wide array of appurtenances usually unspecified, or in smaller units ad aratra.²⁵ “Ad x aratra,” shorthand for “ad aratrum sufficientem,” that is, “land sufficient for one plough,” or a certain number of ploughs, became the normal means of measuring out parcels of land.²⁶ This also indicated that it was arable and for tilling, rather than for pasturage or some other use. Although in one instance forty are counted,²⁷ measurements of one, two, or three aratra appear most commonly. The charter issued ca. 1141 by Bishop Henry Zdík of Olomouc, testifying to all the holdings of his church, lists countless villages in which the bishop owned only a few aratra.²⁸ The bulk of the Moravian church’s property, in fact, consisted of such plots. Villages could also be subdivided, thus references to “halves.” In their efforts to secure Čečín in its entirety, for instance, the Cistercians at Plasy dealt with a magnate named Hermann, Duchess Helicha, and the bishop of Prague, each of whom owned a significant portion of the village.²⁹ These cases illustrate two fundamental characteristics of landholding in the Czech Lands. First, though villages with their appurtenances were conceived as wholes, they comprised landowners, sometimes many—and some of them probably absentee—who farmed plots of different sizes. Second, those with more property, whether individual laymen or ecclesiastical institutions, possessed holdings that were fragmented and diffuse. Both conditions were probably perpetuated by partible inheritance. Only a concerted effort to consolidate holdings, such as was practiced at Plasy, worked against this tendency, but it remained rare even in the late twelfth century (see Chapter 2).

Appraising ducal landholding is more difficult still than any assessment for medieval Czech society as a whole, even though much of the discussion above rested upon charters issued by the duke himself.³⁰ Because the charter evidence tells us only about lands given away, the amount retained by the donor remains undetermined. The 1169 grant to the Hospitallers, however, reflects the diversity of the duke’s holdings:

And these are the villages which I gave and assigned to the brothers of the aforesaid Hospital of Jerusalem, namely four in the circuitio next to Plasy, that is Hodovice, Osojný Dvůr, Pláně, Kuchov. Moreover I add and confirm for the same house of the Hospital the possession, which my father Duke Vladislav granted to my relatives, Vratislav and Micus, but which returned again into my use when they died a short time after. Manětin from the Nečtiny boundary up to the Plasy boundary with all its appurtenances, namely Lipí, Kuchov with the forum, Vískov with the adjacent river Manětin as far as Plasy, granting to them every sort of liberty for doing whatever, whether fishing or erecting a mill on the same river. Also the forest named “Cozodre” and other adjacent forests I grant by legitimate right and confirm to be possessed perpetually. I also give and confirm two villages in the province of Bílina named Bořislav and Hrbovice, which pertain to my crown [que corone mee adiacebant]. At the request of my brother Henry, I add for them the village named Lovín and a certain forest necessary for their use, next to “Olesnice” reaching to the middle of Mount Chvojen to the river called Libouchec and to the village Kamenice and to Prosetín, and thence to “Tesik” and then to the Red Well and thus adjacent to the said river Libouchec where it takes its source.³¹

This document is quite typical, though there is a great deal of variation among the extant charters in the types and amounts of lands granted. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there is no record of a ducal grant of small plots; in cases where the duke owned only a portion of the village he wished to donate, he first purchased the remainder.

Both chronicles and charters give the impression that the vast breadth of unsettled forest belonged to the duke. Cosmas reports that a group of conquered Poles requested resettlement in Bohemia, and Duke Břetislav I “gave them not a small part of the forest called Crnína.”³² Dukes similarly made grants of mountains, though they were not alone in this.³³ The charter for the Hospitallers just cited includes a broad tract of forest, with mountains and rivers; in the case of “Cozodre” the woods alone are mentioned and thus seem not simply to be pertinent to a village. As elsewhere in medieval Europe, the customary rights that went with forests—for hunting, foraging, woodcutting, and so forth—made them valuable village assets. Yet such huge tracts of Czech territory lay unsettled during this period that much forested land surely fell outside village boundaries. If all uncleared land not appurtenant to other holdings belonged to the duke, to him also belonged considerable control over later expansion and its profits. Such broad uncultivated tracts may, alternately, have belonged to no one and thus been open to anyone ready to exploit them. Landclearing, however, required no small investment of resources; these the Přemyslid duke possessed in abundance.

The 1169 donation to the Hospitallers also demonstrates that the duke was bound to the same legal norms of acquisition as everyone else. An earlier charter for the same house, in which similar language appears, reflects this even more explicitly as it lists the means of acquisition for each piece of property granted:

I give to the same church to be possessed by perpetual right certain land pertaining to the crown of my realm [ad coronam regni mei pertinentem] in Prague next to the bridge by the water between the four roads, and the water itself from the upper part of the lower island up to the bridge, with fishing and all other uses, which are able to be had there. I also add and confirm to the same place, for my salvation and that of my freemen and all my predecessors, the village which is called Letky, which had been Bora’s, who was hung in Prague, with the vineyard and all other appurtenances. I add moreover near the same village one field pertaining to my crown [ad coronam meam pertinentem] named “Ostruzen.” For the growth of the same new plantation, that is, the church to be built, I add and confirm the possessions which were Henry’s, son of Hartmann, and which he gave to me after the death of his wife to be possessed by perpetual right, when he committed himself to me against his father³⁴ before many noble Czechs. I confirm also the possessions which [the Hospitallers] acquired for themselves in other just ways, …³⁵

The language of this grant also begins to indicate differences between the duke and other Czech landowners. He had, for instance, another means of acquisition at his disposal, namely the administration of justice.³⁶ A charter issued to the chapter of Vyšehrad in 1187 constitutes the first grant to an ecclesiastical institution of the profits from jurisdictional rights: “If one of the men of the church is condemned to execution, his property should go to the church and his head to the noose.”³⁷ This exceptional document provides telling evidence: the right to land forfeit in capital cases must routinely have been very lucrative for the duke.

With regard to the origins of ducal landholdings, the lines between conquest, usurpation, and legitimate confiscation were extremely thin. Since the eleventh- and twelfth-century chronicles recount innumerable stories of magnates summarily executed, imprisoned, or driven into exile by the duke, one can easily imagine that he had little compunction with regard to taking over their lands. For instance, in 1096 Břetislav II exiled Mutina, one of the Vršovici, and confiscated his property; in 1105, those who backed Bořivoj’s effort to seize the throne were similarly punished.³⁸ When the Vršovici were universally massacred with their women and children, in 1108, their lands were surely seized by Duke Svatopluk;³⁹ in fact, according to Cosmas, he promised the land of two of them, Božej and his son, to whoever killed them.⁴⁰ In this light, the language of the grant to the Hospitallers from midcentury sounds rather defensive; the need to assert that all the lands granted were owned or acquired legitimately and according to “just ways” acknowledges the dukes’ occasional willingness and ability to abuse their power and seize the lands of their political opponents.

The magnitude of lands at the duke’s disposal far outweighed those available to any other member of society. When one of the Vršovici (for whom we may assume some prominence given the need to eliminate them so thoroughly⁴¹) donated everything he owned to the chapter at Vyšehrad, it consisted of “five villages … the whole familia, and whatever I have.”⁴² In contrast, a grant of five villages is routine from dukes; many monasteries and chapters, for whom mostly ducal grants are recorded, held considerably more. The Vyšehrad chapter, for instance, which was the recipient of Němoj’s five villages, obtained nine from Duke Soběslav in 1130 for the specific use of the brothers, though this grant was considerably augmented by monetary income from a variety of sources.⁴³ By the end of the twelfth century, when a series of forged foundation charters were drawn up, the Vyšehrad chapter named some eighty villages which they claimed to have received from Vratislav II (1061–92).⁴⁴ The duke gave away a great deal of land; we can only assume that he possessed substantially more.

The Czech Lands on the whole, even in local regions, were a patchwork of variegated holdings and owners. Partible inheritance assured that consolidated holdings fragmented, even as some landowners inherited distant properties. The breadth of the duke’s holdings means that he had land in every corner of Bohemia. The legal or de facto right to unowned land also meant that the landed resources at the duke’s disposal were almost inexhaustible, something ordinary freemen could only wish for. This, more than any legal distinctions—and especially in their absence—must have separated the duke from other landowners. In the legend told by Cosmas, messengers were instructed to find Přemysl ploughing land possessed by no one, surrounded by fields owned by others. The legend thus reflects—as a curious parallel if nothing else—the same basic presumption found in the charters: land is owned individually, in units both large and small, while vast lands, arable and uncultivated, fell to the duke.⁴⁵

Income

In addition to land, the duke of Bohemia held the right to a variety of taxes and tolls, as well as exclusive minting rights. Our knowledge of these sources of income comes incidentally, from charters to ecclesiastical institutions granting them all or a fixed amount of the income from tolls or taxes, although never the right to erect a new toll. Evidence from both numismatic analysis and written sources indicates that already from the eleventh century the Czech economy was monetized—that is, people of all stations were accustomed to carry and use coin daily. Although the numismatic literature has traditionally seen the duke’s primary source of income in his control, and supposed manipulation, of the coinage,⁴⁶ it was actually quite stable, rarely debased, and not routinely exchanged. Rather than relying on minting itself, the duke profited from a variety of taxes, some fixed and others from which the income must have fluctuated according to economic conditions. From these, without doubt, the duke of Bohemia derived considerable wealth and a supply of ready cash.

Frequent references in all the extant sources point to the widespread use of money in medieval Czech society.⁴⁷ It was used for purchasing land and as a valuation of property, collected by the duke through tolls and taxes, and, from all indications, used as a means of everyday exchange. The Přemyslid duke monopolized the right to mint the silver coinage in common use during the eleventh and twelfth centuries,⁴⁸ though in Moravia it was delegated to the vice-dukes and, for a time, the bishop of Olomouc.⁴⁹ Although Bohemia would later become famous for its silver mining, the only information about mining before the thirteenth century appears in a charter from ca. 1188, granting Plasy “twelve marks of silver to be paid every year from the silver mine on the upper Mže [river].”⁵⁰ As in later centuries, this mine was in the duke’s hands. The role of locally mined silver in minting, its effect on the medieval Czech economy, and its exact contribution to the duke’s treasury unfortunately cannot be determined.

Přemyslid rulers could count on both silver and minting as sources of income, but greater profit lay in taxation. The duke’s income from taxes may be divided into three categories: tolls on travel, commerce-related taxes, and fixed annual levies. Tolls are most frequently mentioned at roads but noted as well for rivers, bridges, and border crossings. In 1078, Vice-duke Otto of Olomouc granted the monastery he established at Hradiště: “from the Olšava [river] the sixth denár, and from the bridge of the castle of Břeclav the sixth denár, and from the road which leads to Poland past the castle of Hradec the sixth denár, and from the mint the tenth denár.” ⁵¹ In an earlier charter, dated ca. 1057, the chapter at Litoměřice was to receive the toll paid by all ships passing the town on the Elbe, including those whose cargo was too small to merit taking a portion: free or unfree, their owners were to pay 15 denáry, if foreign, as much in denáry as they were carrying, or, for peasants from Litoměřice or neighboring Bílina, 12 denáry.⁵² These constitute major commercial routes, upriver from Meissen toward Prague on the Elbe, across Moravia to Cracow, and south through Břeclav to Hungary and points east. The other important trade route ran from Regensburg to Prague through Plzeň; from the mid-eleventh century a toll was collected at the border crossing at Domažlice.⁵³ A ducal grant to Teplá from 1197 mentions a toll there, on the twelfth-century route from Žatec through Sedlec to Staufer Eger, pertaining both to a market and to a border gate.⁵⁴ Control of transport routes, including the most heavily travelled, must have been a steady and lucrative source of ducal revenue—one which could easily adapt and grow according to economic circumstances.

Among the commercial taxes, a grant to the chapter at Vyšehrad from 1130 describes what must be considered a sales tax: “At Kamenec they have and should have the tenth coin in sales, as was established in antiquity.”⁵⁵ It hardly seems likely that such sales taxes were limited only to Kamenec. If levied in bustling towns like Prague, Vyšehrad, Litoměřice, or Žatec, they must have generated considerable income. The mid-eleventh-century endowment of the collegiate chapter in Litoměřice mentions income from the “sales of foreigners.”⁵⁶ The duke apparently taxed, if not monopolized, the trade in salt.⁵⁷ He seems also to have controlled, perhaps even licensed, taverns. The so-called Břetislav Decrees explicitly prohibit taverns and drinking generally, while the charter of privilege for the Prague Germans speaks of “secret taverns.”⁵⁸ Possibly alcohol was not sold or consumed publicly in the Czech Lands throughout the later eleventh and twelfth centuries. Given the many references to drunkenness, an alternative scenario might be that, in the course of enforcement of the restrictions announced by Břetislav I, infractions overlooked by the duke soon translated into “exemptions” and thus into de facto oversight of the trade in potables.⁵⁹

Finally, there exists evidence of general taxation, although its origin or rationale is impossible to determine. Soběslav I’s grant to the Vyšehrad chapter includes the tenth mark of the “annual tribute” collected from sixteen of the most prominent castles, including Prague, as well as from three “provinces.”⁶⁰ This may, or may not, be the same as the “tributum pacis,” mentioned in Soběslav II’s reform and confirmation of the chapter’s income almost fifty years later.⁶¹ Another charter issued to Vyšehrad, this time by Frederick in 1187, allows the church to collect “venditio seu collecta generalis” from the people on its own lands.⁶² Hradiště, given a similar privilege in 1160, was allowed to collect both “tribute” and tithe.⁶³ At the end of the twelfth century, Duke/Bishop Henry absolved the newly established monastery at Teplá from paying “the collection of pennies, which is accustomed to be collected throughout Bohemia.”⁶⁴ Whether these comments all refer to the same general levy, or several, they together indicate that the duke garnered income from a tax collected annually, in castles and in the countryside by province, paid by every Czech regardless of the land on which he lived.

These passing references in charters undoubtedly describe only a small portion of the duke’s earnings: whenever a monastery was granted a tenth of the tax, the duke reserved the other nine portions; for every toll income donated, he retained several others; and besides the “tribute” he allowed monasteries to collect, everyone else’s payments went into his coffers. Since the charters record legally binding grants to ecclesiastical institutions, they must also reflect the degree to which dukes felt secure about the cash in their treasury. The duke of Bohemia was not only quite wealthy, but rich in cash. Such liquid assets could prove most valuable in a pinch, say, for securing troops from the emperor to aid in a succession conflict.⁶⁵ Viewed from another perspective, people everywhere in Bohemia carried coins with the duke’s name and image, and used those coins not only for routine transactions. High and low, rich and poor, everyone paid taxes when they sold their goods, as they traveled, and once a year directly to the duke himself.

Jurisdiction

No legal codes are extant from the eleventh or twelfth centuries, even as redacted in later times. When legal historians have approached this period looking for sources—outside ordinary charters—they have found only three.⁶⁶ None is, in fact, strictly a text of law; two are charters of privilege and another appears in Cosmas’s chronicle. This last, the “Břetislav Decrees,” concerns Christianization and thus will be discussed in Chapter 4. One of the two charters of privileges, usually called the “Statutes of Conrad Otto,” though conventionally dated to 1189, pertains to the early thirteenth century.⁶⁷ Here the focus is upon the third item, a privilege granted to the German community in Prague. It opens a tiny window onto law and rights of jurisdiction, which are of particular relevance to the analysis of ducal power.

This exceptional legal privilege, a document recording the grant by Soběslav II to the German community in Prague ca. 1174–78, merits citation in its entirety. (To summarize its content would take almost as much space and inevitably be less lucid.)

I Soběslav, duke of the Bohemians, make it known to all those present and future, that I take into my grace and defense the Germans who dwell in the suburb of Prague. It pleases me that, just as these Germans are a different nation from the Czechs, so also are they divided from the Czechs by their law or custom. I concede to these Germans [the right] to live according to the law and justice of the Germans, which they had from the time of my grandfather, King Vratislav. I grant a parish priest, whom they themselves should elect freely to their church, and similarly a judge, and the bishop should in no way contradict their petition. Seven ought to swear by hands [compurgation] for theft and for that which is called nadvore. They ought to go on no expedition, except in order to fight for the fatherland [pro patria]. If the duke is outside Bohemia on an expedition, then the Germans should guard Prague with 12 shields. To judge concerning homicide pertains to the prince, namely for such homicide 10 talents of Regensburg money should be paid to the prince or the right hand of the killer, or it is to be ordained according to grace. Whoever breaks the peace among them, should pay 10 talents to the prince, whoever is guilty. If a Czech should have a case with a German, which ought to be proved by witnesses, the Czech should have before the German two Germans and one Czech, all Christians. Similarly, if a German should have a case with a Czech, then the German should have before the Czech two Czechs and one German, but Christian. Similarly concerning “Romans” [Romance language speakers] and Jews. If a Czech or Roman or whoever should accuse a German, then the high chamberlain should send a messenger to the Germans’ judge and the Germans’ judge himself will decide that case and nothing more will pertain to the chamberlain. I also concede to the Germans, that they should be free from guests and pilgrims and immigrants. You should know that the Germans are free men. Whatever immigrant or guest coming from whatever land should wish to remain in the city with the Germans, he should hold the law and custom of the Germans. If theft is to a German, [the thief] ought to be seized with the Germans’ judge present. If the thief is German, then the prince will judge him. If the thief is captured at night, he will be hanged. If he is captured during the day, he should be scourged in public and ordered out of the city; if later he is captured, he will be hanged. Whatever the Germans do, they will not be captured nor put in prison if they have fideiussores or their own house. In whatever matter the Germans should be guilty, their children and wives will suffer no harm or shame. If anyone enters through the villages of the Germans at night and does not have a torch, if that person is killed, the Germans are blameless. If false or broken money should be found in the box of a German, he is guilty whosever box it is. But if it should be found in a courtyard or house, he is blameless whosever house or courtyard it is, on account of evil and bad men who are accustomed to throw such money into houses or courtyards. If a stolen horse should be recognized among the Germans, he who recognized the horse will swear to have lost it earlier by theft; afterward the German will swear, standing in a circle made with a sword in the ground, that it was not a stolen horse or any such thing, but had been bought, and he did not know the seller or his house. The Germans ought never to swear except in front of the church of St. Peter, except by command of the prince. If a secret tavern should be found in the house of a German, the lord of the house should be seized, with the Germans’ judge or his messenger present, and no one else.⁶⁸

Dukes may have granted similar privileges for the Jewish and Romance-speaking communities in Prague mentioned here. The claim in the document, that Soběslav was merely affirming a custom already established by his grandfather Vratislav (r. 1061–92), rings true: Cosmas reports that his predecessor Spitihněv (r. 1055–61)had summarily expelled all Germans from Bohemia, and thus it would not be surprising to find that they sought, and Vratislav granted, more clearly enumerated rights when they or others returned.⁶⁹ The practice of granting special jurisdictional rights to non-Czech communities is attested even earlier: Cosmas says that Břetislav I transplanted a group of conquered Poles to Bohemia in 1039, at their request, “establishing for them one man from among them as prefect and judge, and decreed that both they and their descendants should forever live under the law which they had had in Poland.”⁷⁰

The privilege makes no reference to the customary “law of the land” and provides only the barest clues about what its norms might have been—that witnesses were sworn to testify before judges; that trespass, counterfeiting, and especially theft carried heavy penalties; that mitigating circumstances were recognized, whether in favor of the accused or the victim. It does, however, show the exercise of ducal jurisdiction, specifically stipulating that the duke should decide cases of homicide and certain instances of theft. It may be that the duke simply held special jurisdiction in and around Prague or specifically over foreign communities. However, evidence of ducal jurisdiction over capital crimes surfaces in other documents in which property is declared to have been acquired by the duke from men whowere hanged.⁷¹ More fundamentally, it was for the duke to give these jurisdictional rights to the Germans’ judge, to reserve certain decisions to himself, and to prejudge particular circumstances. The duke not only granted these privileges, he must also have been the sole authority ensuring their enforcement.

No cases involving peasants, free or unfree, are recorded to indicate whether ordinary people had access to the duke’s justice. Cosmas, in an anecdote he uses to prophesy the death of Spitihněv, relates that on his way to war the duke was approached on the road by a widow who asked him to vindicate her against her adversary. When he tried to put off her case, she asked whom he would send to vindicate her if he did not return from the campaign. According to Cosmas, “immediately, at the petition of a single widow, he interrupted the expedition and vindicated her against her adversary by a just judgment.”⁷² Since Cosmas follows this with an injunction to “modern princes” not to neglect the defense of widows and orphans, a common trope of good Christian rulership, this story can hardly be admitted as proof that the duke’s jurisdiction was accessible to any Czech who asked for it. On the other hand, Gerlach of Milevsko reports that Soběslav II was such a just judge that he was commonly called the “prince of the peasants” because he defended the claims of the poor against the magnates and rendered judgment without respect to person.⁷³ Since Gerlach’s point is to emphasize Soběslav’s particular zeal, it was probably not common for dukes to put peasants before the more powerful men of the realm. Yet even if “prince of the peasants” was meant with irony or as outright ridicule, it must argue that, whatever the practical obstacles, no legal impediment existed to prevent the lowest freemen and women from appealing to the duke.

The privilege granted the Prague Germans includes a clue about procedure: cases were initiated when brought to the attention of the duke’s chamberlain, who made some decision about venue before they went before the duke. About this same time, first ca. 1170 and regularly thereafter, the iudex curiae appears in witness lists among other court officers, although his precise function is unknown.⁷⁴ The few actual suits described in charters, however, reveal that controversies between lay or ecclesiastical magnates were not decided by the duke and his servants alone. In the dispute over Němoj’s grant to the chapter of Vyšehrad, the old charter was read aloud before the duke and his court.⁷⁵ The chronicles report the same. In 1130, when Soběslav I got wind of a plot to assassinate him, he called “three thousand” men, “noble and ignoble,” to Vyšehrad for the interrogation and sentencing of those involved.⁷⁶ The duke possessed jurisdiction over the important men of the realm, but their fellow magnates could expect to be present and consulted when such matters arose. Concerning lands exchanged with and then denied by the sons of Slavek, Hartmann of Miřkov avowed: “But producing witnesses, from the law of this land I obtained my right before the king and all the princes of the land.”⁷⁷ In important cases, not merely the duke but the “princes of the land” were also present.⁷⁸

More than any other right, jurisdiction was explicitly associated with rulership. The need for respected persons who could solve disputes was seen, by Cosmas at least, as a natural political development, and it was the belief that such judges needed the power to enforce their decisions which, in the tale of Libuše and Přemysl, led to the appointment of the first Czech duke.⁷⁹ That jurisdiction could be a formidable, and easily abused, basis for power is expressed in Libuše’s own admonition to the Czechs. Her speech seems to voice the worry that the duke would be the sole arbiter of the law, standing virtually above it. Yet Hartmann pressed his case not merely before the duke but according to “the law of the land.” The phrase ius terrae appeals to a law recognized among the Czechs, founded on custom, and independent of the duke. Likewise, the charter in which the duke claims to have acquired the lands granted “legitimately by other just means, according to the judgment of the senior nobles of Bohemia” asserts that the Přemyslid ruler was indeed bound by such laws. Transactions were performed and disputes resolved in the company of various lay and ecclesiastical magnates as well as the duke. These, and the other witnesses assiduously noted in twelfth-century charters, must have served as de facto coadjudicators. Justice was too important to be treated in private, to be left to one man alone, and their presence must have assured that the duke abided by custom.

Castles

The duke of Bohemia controlled all castles within his territory. Archeological evidence shows that the destruction and rebuilding of castles accompanied the Přemyslid expansion of power in the ninth and tenth centuries.⁸⁰ Whether this process established the duke’s direct and absolute lordship over castles in the Czech Lands, or some legal justification prevailed, all fortifications of any size and function without any doubt belonged to the duke in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He built and refortified them, and assigned his followers to them at will. Castles as structures were less valuable than the allegiance of those that manned them; oversight rather than ownership was the real issue, and in many cases their importance was more political than military. The ruler’s delegation of authority over castles and his means of maintaining control profoundly affected the social, political, and economic conditions of laymen, especially those of middling and high rank. For this reason, questions of appointment and oversight will be treated more fully in the next chapter. We need here, however, to reflect upon the number and function of castles in the Czech Lands and upon the duke’s monopoly.

As usual, the evidence demands a cautious approach: it is impossible to determine the total number, location, or relative prominence of castles throughout Bohemia and Moravia at any given time. Many more fortifications of various sizes and functions must have existed than are noted in the written sources. On the basis of topographical, archeological, and written evidence, Jiří Sláma lists 144 known or suspected castles in Bohemia, but this number has not been adjusted to account for changes over time or to specify sites of activity during particular eras.⁸¹ How many of the ninth- or tenth-century walled sites were destroyed or declined in importance by the eleventh or twelfth centuries therefore remains unknown. Sláma’s own analysis of Přemyslid expansion and consolidation demonstrates that castles were systematically destroyed.⁸² Cosmas describes ancient sites overrun with trees.⁸³ A few of the older fortifications are known or presumed to have been put to more benign uses, becoming sites of early monasteries: Ostrov, Hradiště (at Olomouc), Rajhrad, Postoloprty, and later Mnichovo Hradiště.⁸⁴ Even Mělník and Stará Boleslav, two castles of considerable importance in the tenth century, were later notable mainly as sites of collegiate chapters.⁸⁵

The other handicap is that the written sources, typically, employ terminology very loosely.⁸⁶ A castle may be indicated by civitas, urbs, castrum, castellum, oppidum, arx, munitio, or presidium.⁸⁷ Yet none of these variants exclusively denote differences between castles, for instance, to distinguish critical border posts from minor guard-towers, major urban centers, ducal hunting residences, or stopping points on trade routes.⁸⁸ Regardless of terminology, context sometimes offers clues about specific sites. Chlumec, the site of many battles, was obviously a border post on a well-traveled road.⁸⁹ Tachov and Přimda are likewise located near the border, but in deeper isolation—hence Přimda’s use as a prison for Soběslav II.⁹⁰ Křívoklát too is known from Cosmas as a prison for lesser Přemyslids, but lies in central Bohemia.⁹¹ Though important in their own way, none of these four is associated with a “province,” nor are their castellans noted in witness lists. By contrast, Litoměřice and Žatec were less defensive posts than urban centers.⁹² Places like Plzeň and Kladsko, located on major roads to Bavaria and Poland respectively, may have begun as relatively isolated stopping points but clearly developed into towns of some prominence—even as Kladsko probably remained critical for defense.⁹³ Whether the outposts in southern Bohemia—Pracheň, Doudleby, Netolice—developed similarly in this period remains uncertain.⁹⁴ So too does the fate of a number of castles in eastern Bohemia, some quite old, such as Čáslav and Kouřim.⁹⁵

Map 1. Civitates listed in CDB no. 111 (1130).

Which of these castles and castellans had administrative functions, and what sort, remains a matter of speculation. Precisely because most of those of the first rank later developed into towns, chartered from the mid-thirteenth century, they may have served as regional economic centers in the earlier period as well. When Duke Spitihněv granted to the collegiate chapter at Vyšehrad a tenth of the yearly tax in sixteen civitates, we recognize the same most important Bohemian castles mentioned in other sources: Prague, Vyšehrad, Žatec, Sedlec, Litoměřice, Bílina, Děčin, (Mladá) Boleslav, Kamenec, Hradec (Kralové), Opočno, Chrudim, Kouřim, Plzeň, Libice, and Vratno⁹⁶ (see Map 1). Charters and chronicles occasionally mention “provinciae” and some of the same names appear there, most notably Litoměřice, Žatec, Bílina, and Sedlec.⁹⁷ That these provinces are not labeled according to geographic location (in other words, “North Bohemia”) or with reference to natural monuments (such as the “west Elbe area”) points to the pivotal role played by these castles within the region.

Conceivably, castles served as centers for tax collecting and the oversight of markets, for organizing raiding parties and defense against foreign invaders, or within a system of courts. In positing administrative districts oriented around castles, however, we must exercise caution.⁹⁸ At no time do the sources permit a complete picture, allowing us to subdivide all of the Czech Lands into clearly bounded provinces or castellanies. There is no way to determine which among the known castles formed centers for administrative districts, or precisely when. Surely Litoměřice and Žatec did throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, so too Plzeň. But settlement patterns shifted dramatically. None of the civitates listed in the grant of annual tribute to the Vyšehrad chapter lies in southern Bohemia but there, and elsewhere, colonization must have increasingly challenged whatever organizational structures had previously existed. Central Bohemia presents as many difficulties, paradoxically because more castles are known there, the territory was more densely populated, and the duke’s own capital at Prague was located close by. It remains uncertain whether Prague and Vyšehrad constituted regional administrative centers, as well as of Bohemia as a whole—or how they related to one another. The castellany of Vyšehrad was undoubtedly considered among the most prominent of appointments, but the castellan of Prague, a man rarely mentioned, seems charged only with the defense of its fortifications.⁹⁹ Other questions too—for instance, about how assets were allocated to castellans and/or garrisons according to the needs and purposes of each castle, and as economic and demographic circumstances changed—are crucial for understanding the tasks castellans were expected to perform; but they cannot be answered.

One thing, at least, is certain: only the duke is ever mentioned constructing, strengthening, or refortifying castles of any kind. When a group of Germans crossed the border and erected a castle in Bohemia, the stronghold was swiftly seized and its occupants slaughtered.¹⁰⁰ Castle-building was expensive: most likely the duke alone had or could command sufficient resources for the task. Only he could compel freemen to take part in their construction or re-fortification (see below). In the twelfth-century chronicles, these construction projects merit mention on their own, among the most noteworthy events of the year. The Canon of Vyšehrad begins his entry for 1129 by reporting simply two events: “Vratislav, son of Oldřich, was captured by Soběslav and afterward sent into exile. The castle Kladsko was renovated and strengthened by Soběslav.”¹⁰¹ Apparently, so exclusively did the task fall to the duke that he even rebuilt a castle before giving it away: “Duke Břetislav [II], coming with an army into Moravia, rebuilt the castle Podivín and returned it to the power of Bishop Hermann [of Prague], as it had been earlier.”¹⁰²

Despite this last reference, castles were never alienated in the manner of property, whether to lay or ecclesiastical magnates; the status of Podivín was exceptional—and therefore revealing. Located not far from the Austrian border, Duke Vratislav had given it to the newly established bishop of Olomouc, apparently withdrawing it from the bishop of Prague.¹⁰³ It changed hands and was a bone of fierce contention between the bishops of Prague and Olomouc for almost a century. By the 1140s, the powerful bishop of Olomouc, Henry Zdík, secured it for his own see. The ducal charter—the only one in which a castle is granted¹⁰⁴—provides the key to these disputes: “Intending to reform the rights of age-old institution concerning this castle, we ordered that a mint be there, as there had been in the beginning.”¹⁰⁵ The castle served primarily as the site of the mint. Since there is no sure evidence that coins were minted separately in Moravia after this time, Podivín may have reverted to the duke (and thence to the vice-duke of Znojmo) when the mint ceased to function.¹⁰⁶ In 1178, when a portion of the income from the “toll below Podivín” was given to the chapter of Vyšehrad, this amounted to only two denáry.¹⁰⁷ The only other mention of Podivín is a witness list from 1174, in which one Tvrdša is listed as its castellan; since the same man appeared in an earlier list as castellan of Hodonín, he was probably not from the bishop’s entourage, but among the prominent magnates of Moravia who served as castellans throughout the region.¹⁰⁸ Whatever its allocation at the close of the twelfth century, the recurring disputes in preceeding decades over the exceptional episcopal castle and mint at Podivín seems to emphasize all the more how a different norm governed the disposition of all other castles in Bohemia and Moravia.

Castles, of whatever distinction, were undoubtedly manned by someone; the question is under what conditions and with what accompanying rights. Given the purposes known with certainty, the man or men charged with their control must be viewed as functionaries, rather than feudatories. Certainly their job was to hold the castle and to defend it against intruders. When, during the conflict with the emperor in 1041, a castellan deserted the castle under his charge in exchange for a bribe, Břetislav I ordered him dismembered and thrown from a bridge.¹⁰⁹ Castellans were undoubtedly rewarded for their services. Two charters, issued by the duke and referring to “land pertaining to the castle,” suggest that castellans received produce from lands specifically allocated for maintenance of the castle and garrison.¹¹⁰ They may also have received a percentage of taxes collected locally, though no sure evidence supports this conjecture. Still, income from markets would have made the castle of a thriving town, such as Žatec or Litoměřice, quite a plum appointment—an impression reinforced throughout the sources.

How these men were installed, and how tenuous and dependent their position, is best illustrated by the assorted references in the chronicles to castellans deposed, or worse, by the duke. Soběslav II, for instance, in revenge for the many years he spent in prison at Přimda, in 1174 captured its castellan and executed him publicly, in spite of his promise of grace and security.¹¹¹ But the removal of castellans was not necessarily accompanied by their violent deaths: it could be as simple as a whisper in the ear. According to Cosmas, soon after Vratislav’s accession to the throne, Mstiš, the castellan of Bílina invited him to a church dedication there, although surely aware that the new duke harbored ill-will against him for the mistreatment of his first wife while imprisoned at Lštění some years before, under Mstiš’s care.¹¹² Vratislav agreed to attend, saying “I will come, I will make my city joyful, and I will do what the affair and justice demand.”¹¹³ The duke apparently felt that justice called for the public disgrace and deposition of Mstiš at his own party: “While feasting, a messenger came who said in the ear of the comes: ‘The castellany of the city is withdrawn from you and given to Kojata, son of Všebor,’ who was at that time first in the ducal palace. To this the comes answered: ‘The duke is also the lord; let him do with his castle what he pleases.’”¹¹⁴ This story, whatever its basis in fact, demonstrates well the duke’s undisputed control of both castles and castellans. Still another remark by Cosmas is telling: After the assassination of Duke Svatopluk in 1109, when it was still undetermined whether Bořivoj or Vladislav would succeed, Fabian, castellan of Vyšehrad and undoubtedly among the most prominent magnates, “having left his city of Vyšehrad, tarried in villages in its neighborhood, dependent upon the uncertainty of fate.”¹¹⁵ Nothing in the sources suggests that appointments as castellan were ever more than temporary, or expected to be. The witness lists to charters of the late twelfth century provide an equally vivid, and more reliable, picture of the rotation of magnates in and out of castellanies and court offices; because of the profound effect this arrangement had upon the structure of the medieval Czech nobility, these documents will be treated in detail in the next chapter.

For our purposes here, it suffices to note the success and significance of the duke’s dominion over castles, large and small, and over the men who administered them—an argument that may also be made compellingly from negative evidence. In the many revolts and occasional battles against invaders from outside, none of the decisive confrontations centered on castles. In fact, virtually all of the military engagements described by chroniclers were waged in open terrain. The chief and most notable exception is Prague itself, which, as the emblem of the duke’s authority and site of his throne—the object of every pretender’s ambition—was frequently besieged.¹¹⁶ Likewise only the castles on both sides of the Austro-Moravian border functioned as bases from which to launch or wait out raids.¹¹⁷ Although Soběslav II successfully holed up in a castle, remaining at Skála for the better part of 1179 after Frederick managed to oust him from the throne, on no other occasion was a magnate or any other Přemyslid able to do so, whether seeking to establish an independent lordship or simply to avoid the duke’s wrath.¹¹⁸

The information available from written sources or archeological research remains inadequate for resolving many crucial issues with regard to castles in the Czech Lands: the origins of the duke’s exclusive lordship; their defensive, economic, or other administrative functions; the organizational divisions obtaining within Bohemia and Moravia at specific times; and the privileges, duties, and assets of castellans. We can be certain, however, that they played a significant social and political role, and that the thorough domination of all castles constituted a vital foundation of the Přemyslid duke’s power. Accountability was enforced and ensured as a matter of routine by treating castellanies, like court offices, as temporary if lucrative appointments to which no magnate had a specific or lasting claim. Nevertheless, since castellanies were, by definition, meaningless in the absence of a garrison and its leadership, ducal control of castles rested upon the loyalty of the freemen. Castles thus occupied a central place in the delicate balance and interdependence of the Czech duke and freemen; their fates hung together—as we shall see in Chapter 3.

Military Service

In 1039, when Duke Břetislav I prepared to attack Poland, taking advantage of a succession crisis there to expand his realm, Cosmas reports: “Having taken counsel with his men, he ordered them to attack and immediately pronounced a terrifying sentence, sending throughout the province of all of Bohemia a collar of twisted cork as a sign of his command, so that whoever came out into camp slowly would know without a doubt by the given sign that he would be hanged by such a collar in the gallows.”¹¹⁹ The atmosphere of fear is palpable, so it hardly comes as a surprise that “in the blink of an eye and to a man they gathered into one.”¹²⁰ The resort to coercion seems designed to induce speed, however, not to press into service men unaccustomed to it. Nothing in the story suggests that the call to campaign was unusual, or considered unjust. This occasion, then, was like so many others throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries: the duke summoned an army of freemen, as was his right, and served as its leader, as was his obligation. The Czechs, for their part, took up their arms, as was customary, expected, and mandatory.

It is impossible to know which men fought in particular military engagements, under what conditions they served, or how they were organized.¹²¹ The little extant evidence indicates only—and not insignificantly—that the duke had the right to issue a universal muster and that this applied to freemen at all levels of society. Cosmas, in describing the factions aligned with Vratislav against his son Břetislav in the summer of 1091, mentions “the whole army of ordinary people,” who stood with the king.¹²² In 1158, Vladislav II announced his intention to participate in the imperial campaign against Milan, for which he had already promised troops. The chronicler, Vincent, who himself traveled to Italy with the army, reports that throughout the realm there was great excitement as everyone readied their weapons and bade farewell to their families. Even the peasants, he says, put down their ploughs for swords: “In their songs and in their words the seige of Milan resounded; everywhere arms were prepared and arms were repaired, and not only the youth of the nobles but also many from the people, throwing off peasant work, fit their hands, more suited to hoes and ploughshares than to shields, lances and the rest, to military arms.”¹²³

Later still, concerning 1174, Gerlach of Milevsko says of Duke Soběslav II: “Whenever an expedition loomed before him, when his magnates were in chariots and on horses, he was not confident unless he saw the poor people also with him, some on horses, others footsoldiers, according to the means of each.”¹²⁴ Some of these “poor people” had sufficient resources to fight mounted, indicating that this was a practical matter rather than a privilege. By the late twelfth century, military service among the lowest ranks of freemen may have become exceptional, however, since Gerlach describes Soběslav’s reliance on ordinary men as something unusual. Still, these passing references provide clear evidence, even for the later twelfth century, that more than an elite group of freemen were prepared for and accustomed to warfare, and that they expected to serve at the duke’s call.

The duke’s right to impose a universal muster is reflected not only by campaigns in which lesser freemen served, but by the exemptions from service he granted. In the case of the Milan campaign, for instance, the duke did not in fact mandate universal participation. When Vladislav II announced to the men at court his plans to proceed against Milan, they objected strenuously to his promising aid to the emperor without consulting them. He therefore absolved them from mandatory service while offering rich rewards to those willing to join him. Vincent of Prague ascribes these words to the duke: “Whoever intends to help me in this matter, I will adorn him with fitting honor and the money necessary for this, as is proper. But whoever declines, content with women’s games and leisure, may sit at home secure in my peace.”¹²⁵ Vincent tells a similar story of the objection to Vladislav’s plan to intervene in a Hungarian succession crisis, although on that occasion the magnates joined without delay once release was granted.¹²⁶ Selected documents also show the duke granting permanent exemption from obligatory military service. In a mid-twelfth-century charter for the bishop of Olomouc, the duke declares that the Moravian vice-dukes may not press the bishop’s people, whether free or servile, into military service: “no one should dare disturb them for the rebuilding of castles located in that land or for going on any kind of campaign.”¹²⁷ Similar immunity was given to Hradiště in 1160.¹²⁸ The Germans of Prague were absolved from fighting unless pro patria, but they remained obliged to defend the city if the duke was away.¹²⁹ It was surely a mark of their exceptional position in the land for these Germans to be released from military service, but even they—merchants probably—were responsible for defense.

When the duke absolved the bishop’s men from military service, as protection against the unscrupulous exercise of the rights held in his name by the Moravian vice-dukes, the absolution was directly linked with exemption from building castles; so also at Hradiště. Such an onerous job, one which could not supply the glory and booty available on campaign, must have been an unwelcome aspect of military service. Cosmas, in a story about the tyrannical behavior of Boleslav I “the Cruel” (929–955), provides an explanation for the obligation’s origin:

He [Boleslav] immediately called the leaders of the people into one and to a man. Leading them to a place on the Elbe and pointing to this place he opened up to them the secret of his heart: “Here,” he said, “I want and command, that you build for me the walls of a city in the Roman manner very high and in a circle.” To this they said: “We who are the mouth of the people and hold the staffs of honor, we refuse you, because we do not recognize and do not want to do what you command, and nor did our fathers do such a thing before. Behold, we stand in your presence and we submit our necks to your sword rather than to such unbearable servitude. Do what you wish, but we will not obey your commands.”¹³⁰

Boleslav called this bluff and, brandishing his sword in a terrifying manner, killed a man who was “first among the seniores” in order to help the people decide “whether it was lighter to submit their necks to the sword or to the bond of servitude.” They instantly capitulated, agreed to do whatever the duke ordered, and built a city—named Boleslav—according to his desires.¹³¹ Although in this case the story recounts the construction of an entirely new castle, most references specify or imply the refortification of existing sites. That men could be pressed to this task, as well as active military service, is reported in a simple fashion by the Canon of Vyšehrad: “At that time, the Czechs rebuilt certain fortifications, which are called Přimda, Zhořelec, and Tachov in Slavic.”¹³² The obligation to erect castles was linked to mandatory military service, and like it, seems to have applied universally to all freemen. The Czechs were also obliged to fell trees as a defense against invaders along certain forest roads, a barrier called přeseka. Soběslav II absolved the men of the monastery of Kladruby from this “cutting of the forest,” except in one location.¹³³ Road and bridge building obligations are also mentioned in the Hradiště immunity, although whether they also arose out of military obligations, for instance, in accordance with the need to move men through the territory for its defense, remains uncertain.

The duke’s right to muster the Czech freemen was undoubtedly associated with his role as their chief military leader. His obligation to lead expeditions personally must have been taken for granted. The chroniclers, for instance, apparently felt no need to state something so obvious: the Přemyslids whose blindings they report were thereby automatically removed from the line of succession because this disability prevented them from leading men into battle. The only military engagement mentioned in which the duke is not present was a raiding party apparently undertaken with his permission.¹³⁴ For imperial campaigns in Italy, which occurred regularly during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa and were apparently considered outside customary military service, the duke sometimes designated another Přemyslid to lead the army in his place.¹³⁵ The only duke ever shown to be unwilling to fight is the mythical Neklan, whose very name translates as “not esteemed.” In Cosmas’s story, Neklan contrives to place his closest counsellor in command, dressed in his own clothes and on his horse. This man, called Tyro, likewise assumed the duke’s task of exhorting his men to fight valiantly in the imminent battle, noting at the outset of his speech: “It is fitting for a duke to add strength to his warriors with words.”¹³⁶

Přemyslid rulers no doubt derived substantial authority from their military role and prowess. As Cosmas says, “What would limbs do without a head, or warriors in battle without a duke?”¹³⁷ Besides the benefits to the duke’s personal prestige, say, from the successful expansion of his territory, much political clout—especially in the eleventh century—must have depended upon his leadership of bounty raids, profitable to ruler and warriors alike. The alternative was also true: Duchess Elizabeth apparently had more military sense than her husband, Frederick, and, according to Gerlach’s account, prevented his overthrow by Soběslav in 1179 by her forethought.¹³⁸ Not surprisingly, the chronicler speaks in another context of “Lady Elizabeth, who governed Bohemia more than her husband did.”¹³⁹ Ultimately, the duke of Bohemia was charged with defending the realm and its inhabitants, and his subjects with assisting him in that endeavor. As with jurisdiction, this was not a task the duke could fulfill alone, as Cosmas notes as a corollary to his earlier question: “just as a warrior without arms lacks his function, so a duke without warriors has not even the title of duke.” ¹⁴⁰

The Přemyslid duke of Bohemia must have enjoyed extraordinary wealth and indisputed predominance in the Czech Lands. He maintained complete control of all fortifications and their castellans, and held supreme jurisdiction. Minting in Bohemia was centralized at Prague and coins were issued in the duke’s name alone. The Czechs could be compelled to perform military service at the ruler’s command, as well as being required to build castles, bridges, roads, and přeseky. The duke amassed a substantial treasure from a wide array of taxes, from sales, tolls, and annual collections. And he had at his disposal far more land, arable and especially unsettled forest, than even the wealthiest magnate. The power of the duke of Bohemia was vast and—outside Moravia—hardly delegated. The worries of the mythic prophetess Libuše seem, then, to have been justified. But the Czech freemen were not so disenfranchised before their duke as her speech made out. The ruler did not himself stand above the ius terrae but was charged with upholding it and, in many instances, bound by it. He had no claim to land owned by others, whatever their status; they were free to utilize their property as they wished. His right to demand labor services was limited by custom, and his warriors stood ready to remind their leader of that fact. The realities of politics, most importantly, were a potent and omnipresent constraint upon the duke’s exercise of his extensive rights and privileges.