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2. THE FREEMEN

In Cosmas’s account of the mythic origins of ducal lordship, Libuše prophesied “what the rights of a duke might be” and predicted the duke’s indisputed domination of medieval Czech society. He would, she said, do with the Czechs and their property as he pleased. Indeed, in the preceeding chapter the duke of Bohemia’s rights and assets proved extensive; he exercised comprehensive oversight in his territory and enjoyed a near monopoly of the institutional bases for power. Libuše warned the Czechs that the decision to subject themselves to a duke would result in their own near-total disempowerment. Yet throughout the Chronica Boemorum and the chronicles which succeeded it appears ample evidence that Czech laymen were by no means powerless, their lives and goods disposed according to the duke’s whim. Nor, as Chapter 6 demonstrates at length, were they too terrified of their lord to oppose him.

All power, it goes without saying, entails relationships. Even at the highest political levels, there always existed some connection—real or idealized—between ruler and ruled. We need, therefore, to bring the Czech freemen out from behind the duke’s shadow, to treat them in their own right. Only then will it be possible to understand their motivations, constraints, and internal dynamics, as well as their stance toward the dukes they were so often ready to depose. Nevertheless, understanding the “ordinary folk” in medieval Czech society is exceedingly difficult, often quite frustrating, because most of what can be known about laymen per se must be deduced from their relations to the duke, around whom the narrative and documentary materials are oriented. The duke’s subjects, the lay inhabitants of the Czech Lands, comprised a wide array of individuals, nearly all of whom lived and died beyond the purview of the extant sources.¹ It is impossible to put faces and names to more than a few men, rare to know any background for those, and altogether futile to look for any comment about their mothers, wives, or daughters. Distinguishing between laymen of different stations, even knowing what the defining social strata were, likewise relies largely on guesswork, as do assumptions about the apparently “elite” men who appear in the sources.

In the last one hundred years of scholarship on the medieval Czech Lands, historians have tried to remedy the dearth of sources by recourse to sociological models or by extrapolating backwards from conditions obtaining in later centuries. Such approaches have invariably led more to distortion than to clarification. For instance, the nineteenth-century preoccupation with the origins of later medieval and early modern noble families has generally obscured our knowledge of the magnates during this crucial time because many of the assumptions about the nobility in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century depend upon conceptions of lineage, especially those partrilines later associated with specific castles and heraldic devices, which we cannot be certain prevailed in the twelfth century.² At the other end of the spectrum, the Marxist effort to study the peasantry relied on anachronistic assumptions about conditions among a class oppressed by “feudal” lords. Far less information is available concerning the unfree than for those that might be construed as “the elite,” but even so no evidence supports the assumption that the countryside was populated by substantially more unfree peasants, or slaves, than freemen.³ Bridging these two approaches, however incongruously, is the “družina model” presumed by all current scholarship.⁴ It seeks to describe the Czech protonobility, to explain their relationship to the duke, and to understand the structure of lay society in Bohemia and Moravia in terms of an early medieval retinue. The assumption of its institutional existence has been taken as a starting point, rather than as the subject of focused research, with the result that every reference in the narrative sources to cum suis, clientes, satellites, cum militibus, comitatus, and any other description of men traveling with other men is taken as evidence of družiny.⁵ The flaws in such a circular argument are self-evident. A fourth approach attempts to combine all these assumptions, together with those about state development, ducal administration, and castle districts (discussed above), in order to chart a trajectory for the “development of the nobility” over several centuries; the resulting theories have only the slimmest grounding in the extant evidence.⁶ We must move away from such misguided approaches, whether the convenient short-hand designations by which kin-groups are identified in the historiography or abstract conceptual categories like the družina, in order to begin to examine the freemen’s own consciousness of kinship and lineage, notions of property and inheritance, and social, economic, and political relations with their ruler.

One final note before proceeding: The term “freemen” is used throughout this study broadly to designate laymen in Czech society in this period, though we hardly know enough about them to determine the English term that would most accurately represent the group of individuals described by any given reference in the written sources. In other instances, “magnates” seems to be the term that approximates most closely the usage of such words as comites in the Latin sources and is also analogous to the medieval Czech župani. At the same time, even “magnate” risks misunderstanding, since it implies an elite group whose preeminence is based on landowning; the latter is certainly not the case in the Czech Lands, and we have few means of determining how “elite” individuals or groups among the Boemini, milites, or meliores were. Because they were not a closed, hereditary social group, as we shall see, “nobility” is inappropriate. The broader term “freemen” is therefore used as the basic term for the free, land-owning warriors of all ranks. “Freemen,” “magnates,” and “Czechs”—understood without explicitly ethnic connotations—are employed loosely, and deliberately so.

Identifying the Freemen

As with ducal lordship, consideration of the Czech laymen, their circumstances and interactions, must begin at the most basic level. Although the answers often remain elusive, structural questions need to be asked about distinctions between the free and the unfree, between those with and without landed property, among those bearing titles and moving in the duke’s circle, among various kin-groups or lineages, and between individuals of different ethnic origins. Such queries attempt to understand the Czechs in collective terms, whether in self-consciously identified groups or within the social stratifications defined by custom. This section takes another, complementary tack by examining the circumstances and careers of selected individuals. Some freemen step out of the sources by name, whether because they played a key role in the events described by chroniclers or were listed as donors or witnesses to late-twelfth-century charters. Examining their lives and roles, and the differences between these various men, offers a striking counterweight to analysis of abstract notions of status. Both the social-structural and prosopographical methods proceed by recourse to charters and chronicles, where passing remarks often provide the only clues. At times, the soundest conclusions to be drawn are negative or inconclusive. Still, while a roster of all that is not known easily becomes tedious, it can also prove revealing, especially where it helps dislodge assumptions made too easily or casually.

Categories of Status and Lineage

The Czech Lands, the previous chapter argued, comprised a society of landowners, most of moderate means. Small plots simply meant small landowners. Since there were no legal distinctions between lands, none apparently separated their property owners. Categories of personal status, free and unfree, remain altogether unclear, however, as does their relationship to landowning. Specific individuals are almost never described in either narrative or documentary sources as servus or liber, but a few passing comments indicate that such distinctions did exist. The Germans living in Prague, for instance, were all “free” according to the privilege issued ca. 1174.⁷ Several grants to monasteries include as part of the donation men, and sometimes women, defined according to their professions; long lists appear in the mid-eleventh century grant to the chapter at Litoměřice, and in the foundation charter for the Moravian Benedictines at Hradiště.⁸ The Hradiště charter from 1078 also makes provisions for subject peasants who wished to become free:

It should be known that among those whom we have listed, some are servi and others are to be inducted by a fee. Four fishermen, seven ploughs with ploughmen: these are entirely to be inducted by fee; for the head of each a fee of 300 denarii is to be given, with the stipulation that, if at any time anyone of them wishes to leave servitude, he should pay the fee that was given for him, and from that fee someone else should be inducted into the same profession.⁹

What sort of arrangement such “servitude by fee” constituted remains unclear—this passage provides the only evidence—but it appears to have been a temporary subjection from which freedom was possible. Since these people were forced to pay their lord to redeem themselves, they were not simply hired laborers; as the bargain, for both subjection and freedom, was to be struck between lord and unfree individual rather than two owners, it seems not to imply slavery. A grant from the turn of the century likewise speaks of emancipating the unfree. Having listed the villages and familia he ceded to the chapter at Vyšehrad, the magnate Němoj concluded: “This is the familia which is given to perpetual freedom: Tutana, Bohumila, Radohna, Bratrohna, Vratena, Ubicest, Decana.”¹⁰ In other instances phrases such as “whether free or servile” lay emphasis on the categories, even as they efface them by stipulating that tithes or taxes, for instance, are to be paid regardless of status.¹¹

All Czechs owed the duke military and pecuniary obligations. Moreover, no evidence indicates that landless men were universally exempted from such payments and service; nor were those inhabiting property owned by someone else. Even ecclesiastical institutions only rarely secured, to their own profit, exemptions from these obligations for the people on their lands: in the 1140s the bishop of Olomouc, in the 1160s the house at Hradiště, and in the 1190s the Bohemian Benedictines at Kladruby.¹² Outside these documented cases, people on church lands continued to pay tribute to the duke, to gather in his army, to work on castles, bridges, and roads, and to bring suits before, or be punished by, ducal courts. There is no doubt that such immunities were exceptional; it was a long and hard-fought struggle between Bishop Andreas of Prague and King Přemysl Otakar I from 1216 to 1222 to secure them for episcopal lands in Bohemia.¹³ Whether this means that freemen could live on lands owned by others and still remain obliged to the duke by virtue of that freedom, or whether such persons were in fact unfree but retained a measure of his protection, we cannot know. This does, however, reinforce the impression that the distinction between free and unfree was not a rigid dichotomy, but a gradation of statuses and circumstances.¹⁴ Some freemen may have lived in conditions little different from their servile neighbors, and unfree people might have shared rights and obligations with freemen even of the highest rank.

Distinctions among elite freemen are equally difficult to determine. Below the Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia and Moravia, styled either dux or princeps, no system of ranking by title existed. When given any title, individual lay magnates are most frequently described in the narrative sources as comes. It is not at all clear from usage, however, what the specific significance of this title might have been. I have not translated it anywhere in this study because the traditional English translation “count” implies a position in a hierarchy which simply did not obtain in the Czech Lands; rather, the meaning tends more toward the classical Latin usage signifying “companion,” from which comitatus derives. Yet comes was not tossed around arbitrarily by the chroniclers. It is never used when listing young men killed in battle, for instance. But was it a title of honor or stature the chronicler could assign at will? Was it used by contemporaries for men of particular prestige or standing?¹⁵ Was it given to men holding particular offices? A man may occasionally be designated comes of a place, though whether because he was appointed to an office or because he was a comes and happened also to hold the castle is not definite.¹⁶ In witness lists for late twelfth-century charters, prefectus is used interchangeably with castellanus, and castellanus with comes in reference to the same individuals and locations.¹⁷ While prefectus and castellanus mean quite certainly “castellan” and are therefore always given with the name of a castle, we must still be wary of assuming that this was the only, or chief, significance of comes. All that seems certain is that no hierarchic titulature was used to distinguish hereditary strata among the magnates, though prestigious and administrative titles did exist.¹⁸

Analysis of continuity or heritability within an “elite” group of magnates is further hampered by lack of knowledge about specific individuals and their families. Occasionally a narrative source provides the name of a man’s father, more rarely his grandfather, sometimes his brother. Individuals who did not figure prominently in notable events are named only among the men killed or wounded in battle or, from the mid-twelfth century, as witnesses to charters. Even when some of these names can be reliably connected with others, this rarely provides continuity over a long period. Cosmas, for example, tells of Olen’s son Borša, who helped Břetislav II (not yet duke) kill Zderad in 1091, and later mentions one Olen, wounded reclaiming Tachov from the Germans in 1121 and identified as the son of Borša.¹⁹ Of Olen, Borša, and Olen we can only guess that men of three generations from the same family were of sufficient prominence around the turn of the twelfth century to merit mention by the chronicler. Though in neither case do Borša and Olen occupy important positions—the first is a companion of the duke’s eldest son and the second is simply a “warrior of the duke” on a routine errand—both seem to be young at the time of the event. Prominence at a young age could reflect the eminence of the family, while close association with the duke demonstrates that such was the path to improving and maintaining the family’s fortunes. Although this is a rare instance when naming patterns reveal, with reasonable certainty, more than two generations in a family, beyond these two references and after 1121 they disappear completely from the sources.²⁰

More often, the evidence argues against the construction of magnate lineages on the basis of patterns in personal names. One particular case provides a clear example of how naming patterns can be misleading—and of how dismal the situation is with regard to information about the Czech freemen. In the middle decades of the twelfth century four men called Hroznata are named in the sources. One is identified as the husband of Přibislava and father of Severus, who died before 1132; another, the provost of Mělnik, is a witness to a charter from ca. 1146–48; the third, called comes and identified as the son of Hermann, traveled to Jerusalem in 1152; the fourth, listed as castellan of Kladsko, witnessed two documents in 1169. The third and fourth may be identical, but otherwise four separate men carry the same name, and significant consanguinal connections between them are unlikely or, at least, uncertain. None of these can be surely linked with the various Hroznatas who appear in witness lists from 1175–98, including Hroznata the Curly-Haired (a.k.a. Hroznata of Peruc) and Hroznata the Bald, or with Blessed Hroznata, founder of the monastery at Teplá in 1197 and a leading magnate under Přemysl Otakar I in the early thirteenth century.²¹

In spite of these difficulties, almost all descriptions and analyses of the magnates at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century in the current historiography refer to them by group designations, such as the “Hroznatovci” or “Drslavici.”²² These entirely modern designations are plural patronymics, formed by the addition of the suffix -ici or -ovci to a man’s name: Hrabiše—Hrabišici, Vítek—Vítkovci, Marquard—Markvartici, and so forth.²³ Singular Czech patronymics do appear in the witness lists, e.g., Hermann “Markvartic,”²⁴ but the only plural form known from this period is applied by Gerlach of Milevsko to the cadet branch of the Přemyslid dynasty descended from King Vladislav’s brother Theobald, who died in 1167: “This Theobald, dying, left behind him a boy of great character, named Theobald, who was the father of those who are now the ‘Dipoltici’ … ”²⁵ Writing in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Gerlach plainly states that “Děpoltici” is what they are called “now.” In this case the “founder” of the lineage was self-evident, being the person through whom the cadet branch deviated from the main dynastic line, whose son and grandson likewise bore the name Theobald, and who briefly governed a portion of eastern Bohemia as vicedukes.²⁶ Naming patterns provide inadequate support for the assumption that the individuals in a lineage, as identified by modern scholars, conceived themselves as a coherent group in relation to a particular man: Hermann, the son of Marquard, indeed named one of his sons Marquard, but another he called Zaviše after his own brother, while his eldest bore the name Beneš (see Appendix A). These people should not be called “Markvartici” merely because the first traceable individual in this family is Marquard, who served as chamberlain to Vladislav II in 1159.²⁷ Furthermore, many of the genealogies that can be constructed on the basis of witness lists begin with brothers whose father is entirely unknown to us. There is no modern designation, no “Ratibořici” say, for the family which included Bohuše and Ratibor, extremely prominent castellans in the last quarter of the twelfth century (see Appendix A).

A look back at the early twelfth century and the Vršovici, a large group of men, women, and children from across Bohemia summarily massacred in 1108, serves as a potent reminder of the inadequacies and dangers of these collective designations.²⁸ The term “Vršovici” was indisputably a medieval one, but we have no means of determining its origin. No man is known in the sources as “Vrš” or “Vršov.” No pattern of names appears among the men mentioned by Cosmas, nor are many blood relationships indicated.²⁹ Božej and Mutina, identified as Vršovici and as “relatives,” were sufficiently influential that, according to Cosmas, Duke Bořivoj felt obliged to allow their return from exile and reinstate them as castellans of Žatec and Litoměřice; this was patently an act of appeasement in an effort to shore up his rule.³⁰ It is impossible, however, to assess the power wielded by them, or its foundation. Božej’s land, or at least his residence, was at Libice in eastern Bohemia while “all” the possessions of Mutina’s uncle, Němoj, granted to the chapter at Vyšehrad, lay scattered in central Bohemia³¹ (Map 2). For Cosmas, the Vršovici were the quintessential domestic enemies, men of prominence whom he blamed for specific acts of violence against dukes both at the turn of the eleventh century and at the beginning of the twelfth. He describes them with equal frequency as a gens or a natio, and once as a generatio; in the duke’s naming them as “the enemies of our gens,” it is not clear whether gens indicates his lineage or all the Czechs. The Vršovici are the only men who played a significant role in Czech political life—such as Kojata, Zderad, Vacek, Načerat, Marquard, Hrabiše—who are explicitly identified or associated with a group.³² Yet we know little beyond speculation about the basis for their collective identity, or how it translated into influence of the sort that Dukes Bořivoj and then Svatopluk perceived as a powerful threat. The best we can assume is that the Vršovici were a large kin group, often in the inner circle of the duke or other Přemyslid, conscious of an ancient lineage and retaining a measure of group solidarity; although there is little evidence of their acting in concert, it is clear that the duke saw this as a dangerous possibility, and that they were easily identified by their murderers.³³ Thus, the Vršovici—while undoubtedly exceptional—exemplify all that cannot be known about the eleventh and twelfth century freemen, even the most influential.

Map 2. Vršovici lands.

The same care is required for questions of ethnicity as for kinship or identity. We must be cautious, in other words, about classifying persons with German names as ethnically German. There is little doubt that many people immigrated to the Czech Lands from German-speaking regions—and elsewhere—and some rose to great prominence. Although many laymen of the eleventh and twelfth centuries with obviously German names appear to have been immigrants, nothing specific is known of their origins, much less about what German ethnicity or identity meant to them. As with one of the Hroznatas, the son of Hermann, or the sons of Marquard, named Hermann, Zaviše, and Gall, a German name is often linked with a clearly Slavic one. Probably, at some time, a German and a Czech were married and their children bear names from both ethnic groups, or simply from both sides of the family, and such names continued to be passed down among descendants. Some names appear frequently so we cannot be sure whether the name itself had simply become common, for example, Hermann or Marquard; this is further true for German names used by Přemyslid dynasts, particularly Oldřich (Ulrich), and with the names of Christian saints, such as Henry. For the majority of laymen, there is often no way to determine whether they were indeed born and raised in a German-speaking land before coming to the Czech Lands or, more important, what connections they maintained with relatives and friends there.³⁴

In reference to freemen, twelfth-century chroniclers routinely use comparative nouns, describing men, both individuals and groups, simply as “those more noble,” “wiser” or just “better” (nobiliores, saniores, meliores), or speaking of “the elder” and “the younger.” Thus, the written sources eschew altogether designations reflecting legal conditions of status, kinship, or titular rank. Because seniores is regularly juxtaposed against iuniores, moreover, there is little doubt that the term had nothing to do with lordship (like French seigneur). To be “elder” probably did not indicate any specific or even advanced age, but instead a combination of maturity, prowess, wealth and wisdom, respect, and experience that set them apart. Distinctions between iuniores and seniores primarily differentiate those eager to make their name, increase their wealth, and occupy positions of prominence, and men who had already done so. Neither narrative nor documentary sources indicate that social categories—outside free and unfree—were legally defined, ranked objectively, or hierarchically arranged as “orders.” It is crucially important not to overinterpret, institutionalize, or generate rigid social categories from Cosmas’s oft-cited remark that “all the Czechs of the first and second rank loved [Soběslav I] and supported his cause,” for it simply expresses this same broad, comparative distinction among the leading men of the realm.³⁵ Nobiliores appears far more frequently than nobiles, a word used most often to head lists of witnesses in charters—akin to but less common than primates, optimates, comites, or, once, the Czech term, župané (equivalent to comites). Here again we get the clear impression that comites broadly signified “better” men, as primates generally did “leaders” among the freemen.

In charters from the mid-twelfth century testifying to their donations to or foundations of ecclesiastical institutions, freemen identify themselves in the same relative terms. Miroslav, founder of a Cistercian monastery on his extensive lands at Sedlec in the mid-twelfth century, was styled merely “one of the leading men of Bohemia” (“quidam de primatibus Boemie”).³⁶ The foundation charter of 1197 for Teplá likewise opens: “I Hroznata, by the grace of God, descending from one of the more illustrious lines of the leaders of Bohemia … ” (“Ego Hroznata dei gratia de primatum Boemie clariori stemate descendens”).³⁷ Such phrases, applied to specific individuals—even by a magnate of himself—affirm the inherent fluidity of differences within the ranks of Czech freemen, including those among the “leading men” or the descendents of “more illustrious lineages.” Outside their membership in such a loose collection of prominent individuals, men like Hroznata and Miroslav stand relatively isolated in these documents. While both make provisions for their immediate families in the body of the grant (their sisters and, in Miroslav’s case, his children), neither mentions his parents. Hroznata’s charter bears his personal seal, showing a set of antlers (which may be an early heraldic device).³⁸ Neither of these two, nor any other lay donors to monasteries, identifies themselves by reference to court offices or castellanies, though some may be seen in the witness lists to have held such appointments. However frustrating it may be to speak generally of “Czechs,” “magnates,” or “more prominent men,” these are the very terms—collective and comparative—by which twelfth-century freemen understood themselves.

The Circle at Court

As a consequence of the medieval preference for loose, comparative classifications and the ostensible absence of rigidly defined strata among the free, this study routinely refers broadly, and in a deliberately inspecific way, to “freemen”—as already noted. Before completely resigning ourselves to speaking of the Czechs as an undifferentiated mass, however, we must take a closer look at the individuals who emerge from the sources. The most detailed evidence concerning Czech laymen at any social level comes from the witness lists to charters issued in the second half, and especially the last quarter, of the twelfth century. They are invaluable—and underexploited—records of continuity and of change among the men around the duke. Certain magnates of the highest echelon are also mentioned in the chronicles, as advisors to dukes, leaders of insurrection, or men entrusted with special tasks, such as diplomatic missions. The chroniclers sometimes offer other small indications about the situation of these individuals. The witness lists, on the other hand, provide detailed information about promotion to court offices and castellanies. To these we now turn, in an effort to bring to life those individual Czech freemen who rise out of the largely faceless crowd and the group of men that might be called “the circle at court.”

In the most dramatic events of Czech political life described by the chroniclers, not only dukes and lesser Přemyslids take the stage but their closest associates and counselors. Duke Spitihněv, for instance, entrusted the care of his exiled brother’s wife to Mstiš, son of Boris, in 1055 castellan of Lštění and by 1061 promoted to Bílina.³⁹ Cosmas describes him as “a man of great boldness, greater eloquence, and less prudence.” Mstiš fled into exile when Vratislav replaced him with Kojata, son of Všebor, as castellan of Bílina. Although nothing is known of his connections to other magnates or his landed resources, at the time of his appointment to Bílina, Kojata was “first in the duke’s palace.”⁴⁰ Seven years later, still described as “palace comes” and standing to the immediate right of Vice-duke Otto, Kojata led the opposition to Duke Vratislav’s episcopal candidate at the colloquium at Dobenina, then again on the battlefield.⁴¹ These two men, Mstiš and Kojata, represent two slightly different types of “favorites.” Mstiš earned the castellany of Bílina after performing a delicate task to Spitihněv’s satisfaction, while Kojata was already the preeminent magnate at Vratislav’s court. Both lost office upon losing the duke’s grace, one by outright insurrection and the other, when the occupant of the throne changed, by the very deed that had earned him his duke’s gratitude.

Another type was Zderad, described only as Vratislav’s villicus; he died at the hand of Vratislav’s own son over a petty insult—and was, so Cosmas reports, mourned by no one but the king.⁴² Whatever his rank vis-à-vis other freemen, this hated “bailiff” had sufficient standing in the king’s presence to publicly mock his son. Another “homo peior pessimo,” as Cosmas says, was Vratislav’s chamberlain a few years earlier, Vitus, son of Želibor; in 1088 he was the only man to accompany the king in a private interview with Beneda, son of Jurata, in which both Vratislav and Beneda were badly wounded.⁴³ Since Cosmas explicitly notes that he was “reinstated” in that post upon Bořivoj’s accession in 1100, Mutina, of the Vršovici, was apparently castellan of Litoměřice at the time of his exile by Břetislav II in 1096, yet the chronicler describes him then as Břetislav’s “side-kick and secretary” (“collateralem et secretarium”).⁴⁴ These examples demonstrate a clear correspondence between a close relationship to the duke, high office, and others’ acknowledgment—and resentment—of their influence. However, the circumstances of these individuals varied. Below the highest-ranking men, many others undoubtedly fulfilled lesser but equally vital tasks for the duke, whether by virtue of appointment to castellanies, household offices, and other posts, or as specially requested favors.⁴⁵

In the frantic days of the early twelfth century, the troubled times Cosmas himself observed at close hand, the Chronica Boemorum provides a vivid picture of freemen jockeying for position, forming small factions, and earning the favor of the duke or other Přemyslids. A bewildering array of names appear: men offering counsel, acting as messengers, dying in battle. Similar machinations, with another dizzying array of names, continued from Svatopluk’s assassination in 1109 to Soběslav’s accession in 1125. The magnate who most shamelessly—and effectively—exploited the atmosphere of distrust that prevailed in the early twelfth century, the most prominent individual in the years between 1105 and 1113, was a lowborn man named Vacek.⁴⁶ Cosmas, the only source for these years, patently despised him, even breaking into the chronology of his narrative to vituperate against him (at the end of Book I of his chronicle).⁴⁷ When he makes his first appearance in the course of events, in 1105, Vacek is among Svatopluk’s counselors, fighting to depose Bořivoj.⁴⁸ A few years later, it was he who orchestrated the massacre of the Vršovici, by convincing Duke Svatopluk that Mutina had been suspiciously lackluster in defending Bohemia against an incursion by Bořivoj.⁴⁹ When Svatopluk was assassinated soon afterwards, Vacek argued for Otto to succeed as duke.⁵⁰ Several months after Vladislav was enthroned instead, he fought for Otto’s cause; since their forces served to fend off Bořivoj as well, Vacek and Otto may have been able to trade their army for the new duke’s favor.⁵¹ When a band of Bořivoj’s supporters were apprehended, John of the Vršovici, the man who arranged Svatopluk’s murder, was blinded at Vacek’s order.⁵² Although the peace between Vladislav and Otto was tenuous (within six months Otto was in prison⁵³), Vacek seems to have remained in the duke’s inner circle. In 1110, together with Bishop Hermann of Prague, he helped arrange a reconciliation between Vladislav and his youngest brother Soběslav, allowing the latter’s short-lived return from exile.⁵⁴ In the end though, when a rumor reported that Vacek was advising Duke Vladislav to have him seized, Soběslav arranged Vacek’s murder.⁵⁵ In the period when the Czech freemen and Přemyslids themselves were most intensely factionalized, he turns up on various sides, always with the duke’s ear and often inciting violence. Although central to the events of the decade, Vacek remains for us an isolated individual whose motives are largely unfathomable.

In the reigns of Vladislav I and Soběslav I things quieted down, except for the attempt by plotters against Soběslav’s life in 1130 (see below). Of these dukes’ inner circles little is known. Cosmas tells of a converted Jew who, after Duke Vladislav himself, was the highest ranking man at court; his enemies, obviously including the chronicler himself, cast aspersion on his adherence to Christianity, and he was imprisoned.⁵⁶ Although Soběslav’s “right-hand men” remain unnamed, at his death in 1140 a magnate named Načerat stepped forward; the freemen who gathered to determine succession to the throne agreed to abide by his determination.⁵⁷ Two years later Načerat led the revolt against the duke he helped enthrone, Vladislav II, and was killed.⁵⁸ The chronicles explicitly indicate that the rebellion was instigated by seniores, prominent men who expected greater privileges from the duke they had selected.⁵⁹ He might, therefore, be the same man who served as a messenger before the battle at Chlumec in 1126.⁶⁰ Načerat’s colleague at that time, Smil, also died in the 1142 revolt, together with his sons, though he fought on Vladislav’s behalf.⁶¹ The besieged duke was himself a young man, as were most of his supporters. With the death and defeat of freemen like Načerat and Smil, new men must have risen to assume positions of greater influence. One such was Velislav, a friend to Vladislav since boyhood, appointed castellan of Vyšehrad until his death in 1144.⁶² Whether concerning schemers like Vacek, men of acknowledged prominence such as Načerat, or the ducal favorite Velislav, the stories told by Czech chroniclers help elaborate what it meant to be considered “elder” or “better” among the freemen, while also demonstrating that a variety of paths led to such positions of respect and influence.

The picture of the magnates around the duke alters dramatically with the survival of charters including witness lists, beginning with two documents issued by Duke Vladislav II to the church of Olomouc ca. 1146–48. The laymen listed, not including Přemyslids, are as follows: “Comes Drslav, Miroslav, Časta, Soběslavec, Conrad dapifer, Budislav pincerna, Ruprecht, Beneš, Svojša, Slava with his son Braniš, Zbraslav, Bavor, Střežimír, Mstihněv, Marquard of Doubrava, Budiš, Zaviše, Načaz, Jurík agazo, Bun with his brothers Přibran and Bicen, Němoj, Jarohněv, Chválek, Vecel, Hrděbor, Olen, Zvejs-lav, William, Vacek, Jarohněv of Žatec, Velislav son of Peter.”⁶³ This group of names, the same in both charters, is the only witness list for another dozen years.⁶⁴ All the witnesses are men; some are listed with their titles, several stand with their relatives, a few have explicitly German names, two are distinguished by a place designation and another by a patronymic. Jarohněv was probably castellan of Žatec, though the inclusion of de Satc seems chiefly to distinguish him from the other man of that name present. Men from these charters appear in the later documents as well: in 1159, Načaz was castellan of Prague, Chválek castellan Vadicensis, Zvejslav castellan of Hradec, Zaviše castellan of Sedlec, Vecel pincerna, and Marquard chamberlain.⁶⁵ By 1160, Drslav had become castellan of Plzeň.⁶⁶ Though one Henry held the position in 1159, Jarohněv is named as castellan of Žatec again in 1160 and 1165.⁶⁷ Marquard “of Doubrava” remained among the most prominent magnates at Vladislav’s court, and his sons feature in witness lists throughout the twelfth century. This earliest witness list and those that follow provide dramatically different information than the chronicles do, for they show these men in groups, ranked perhaps in some order, sometimes with place or patronymic designations, and occasionally bearing the titles associated with their ever-shifting appointments to court offices and castellanies.

TABLE 2. SOBĚSLAV II’s OFFICERS

February 1177 (CDB no. 279)
Zdeslav	chamberlain
Vítek	dapifer
Dluhomil	pincerna
Hermann	marscalcus
Čéč	judge
Jarohněv	castellan of Žatec
Sežima	castellan of Plzeň
Blah	castellan of Litoměřice
Rivin	castellan of Kladsko
(and others)
March 1177 (CDB no. 280)
Zdeslav	castellan of Žatec
Blah	castellan of Litoměřice
Sežima	comes of Bílina
Dluhomil	marscalcus
Vítek	castellan of Kladsko
Čéč	judge
Hermann	chamberlain
Stephen	pincerna
(and others)

Among other things, the witness lists conclusively demonstrate the rotation of castellans and court officers among various high-level posts. The most dramatic evidence comes from two charters expressly dated to February and March 1177, which reveal a shuffle among Soběslav II’s officers in the space of a month, although the chroniclers give no indication that these were weeks of particular turmoil (Table 2). The list and titles given in the first charter, on the whole, accord with an earlier document of Soběslav’s from 1175, except that Hermann was there agazo.⁶⁸ In the late winter of 1177, however, Hermann was promoted from marscalcus to chamberlain and Dluhomil from pincerna to marscalcus, while an apparent newcomer, Stephen, became pincerna. Two men moved from court to castellany: Vítek, from dapifer to Kladsko on the Polish border, and Zdeslav, from the office of chamberlain to Žatec. Sežima was transferred from Plzeň to Bílina. Neither Rivin nor Jarohněv appears in the second document, and the posts they held at Žatec and Kladsko have been reallocated.⁶⁹ The two may have died, “retired,” or fallen permanently from favor; for all we know, these events may even have initiated the rotation. Not every office experienced a turnover: Čéč remained court judge and Blah retained Litoměřice.

One of the preeminent administrative posts in Bohemia, without any doubt, was that of duke’s chamberlain; like all other offices, it was filled on a temporary basis. King Vladislav had four chamberlains in ten years: in 1159, Marquard; in 1160, Němoj; by 1165, Stibor, promoted from castellan of Bautzen;⁷⁰ and by 1169, Bohuslav.⁷¹ Adding the chamberlains of his successors shows a small group of prominent magnates dominating the office, but still rotating in and out. Zdeslav was Soběslav II’s chamberlain, although Hermann, son of Marquard, held the post in March 1177.⁷² Frederick had three: Hrabiše, Hroznata the “Curly-Haired,” and Lothar, with Hrabiše appointed again at the end of his reign.⁷³ Hermann, son of Marquard, returned to the position under Conrad Otto in 1189.⁷⁴ After him, Hrabiše was reappointed, serving from 1192 through 1197 under both Duke Přemysl and Duke/Bishop Henry.⁷⁵ Some correspondence patently existed between turnover among chamberlains and a change on the ducal throne. Mentioned for the first time by Cosmas (concerning the year 1088), ducal chamberlains had existed well before the later twelfth century; yet, as with castellans, their precise duties remain obscure.⁷⁶ The chronicler’s remarks concerning the duke’s camera invariably involve sums of money, yet the privilege granted the Prague Germans ca. 1174 indicates a judicial function for the camerarius.⁷⁷

These charters from the second half of the twelfth century provide the first indication of the organization of offices at the duke’s court; not only chamberlains and chancellors appear but, as we have seen, men bearing the titles dapifer, pincerna, and agazo. The nature of these offices, traditionally translated “seneschal,” “butler,” and “footman,” remains altogether obscure (and for this reason are here given consistently in the Latin). They may have been merely honorary titles, or ones superficially adopted from foreign courts. Although the shift in documentation, whereby witness lists are recorded in charters, may account for the apparent innovation of these court offices, it may also be that Vladislav, during his long reign as duke and then king, reorganized the court: the first references to a chancellor, as well as pincerna, dapifer, and agazo, and especially the “court judge” (iudex curie) appear under his rule.⁷⁸ The first chancellor named, Bartholomew, also appears at this time; while no charter mentions his name, Vincent reports that he died in 1147.⁷⁹ Certainly, by the late twelfth century, both the ruler’s wife and the bishop of Prague adopted a similar court organization.⁸⁰ Queen Judith, for instance, sent her “highest chamberlain,” Sežima, to escort her granddaughter for marriage to the grandson of the Byzantine emperor, in 1165. Ultimately, we simply do not know what it meant for a man to be, for instance, the “seneschal” or, literally, “plate-bearer” of the duke of Bohemia.

The witness lists provide evidence concerning the constitution of the duke’s court and about the nature of office-holding among leading freemen, but may also be analyzed as a corpus for more general patterns. Compared to imperial charters, the most striking aspects of the Czech witness lists are that titles are rarely given for laymen and that they are listed without strict regard to them when included. This is congruent with the absence of titulature or hierarchy noted for the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a whole. The apparent failure to order the names of lay witnesses seems not to have resulted from cartulary norms or from the quirks of particular scribes: the clergy in Czech witness lists are indeed ranked strictly, and members of the Přemyslid dynasty, when present, are always identified first among all witnesses. When court officers (dapifer, agazo, pincerna) appear, they may be in any order, grouped together or separate, at the beginning or in the middle of the list, and so forth. Though the chamberlain (camerarius) is often listed first, or at least toward the top of the list, no fixed pattern prevails. This holds even when the same individuals are concerned, so we may be certain that it does not result from social rankings not associated with titles or offices (see Table 2).⁸¹ On the other hand more important men do tend to appear toward the beginning, particularly if a list is long, while men who make only one appearance in our corpus of lists are most often in the second half.

A careful reading of the lists of lay witnesses gives two other strong impressions. The first is that there was no fixed group at court or in castellanies.⁸² In the second half of the twelfth century, no two lists are the same.⁸³ Shorter lists show more stability, but presumably they have been limited to only the most noteworthy witnesses. Even among the court officers, the dapifer may be present, while the agazo or pincerna is not—keeping in mind here that offices are not always specified. Furthermore, taking 1175 as an arbitrary starting date, a rough average of half the names in long witness lists thereafter are new at the time of their first appearance;⁸⁴ many will not appear again. The other strong impression one gets from the witness lists is that the same laymen continually resurface, though without pattern. Remarkably, Table 3 shows no significant turnover after the accession of new dukes. Some men appear only in Frederick’s charters and some are one-timers, but many appear in one or more documents before or after this one from 1187, and even in those of Sobeslav II whom Frederick deposed.⁸⁵ The same sort of table could be drawn up based on a different sample charter with similar results, since some of those who are not listed here also appear quite frequently. Accounting for sanguinal connections—for instance, when the son or brother of a magnate named in one charter appears in another—reinforces the impression that, however much variation appears from list to list at first glance, the witnesses were largely being drawn from the same circle of men.

TABLE 3. WITNESSES TO DUKE FREDERICK’S CHARTER OF 2 MAY 1187 (CDB NO. 317)

a. I have given here the documents’ CDB numbers, preceded by the duke’s initial as follows: S=Soběslav II, F=Frederick (none from first reign), C=Conrad Otto, P=Přemysl Otakar I (first reign), H=Henry (simultaneously bishop), VH=Vladislav Henry. The range of dates is 1175–98. I have not noted, for lack of space, the few occasions in previous or subsequent documents when a title is provided for the individual named. In consideration of “previous” documents I have not included those of Duke/King Vladislav because it is difficult to assume that men from as much as forty years earlier with the same names are identical to the individuals listed here.

b. With Christian names, is itmuch more difficult (ormerely seems so) to be sure that identical individuals are signified by the same names. I have not ventured to guess here unless I can make a determination from other evidence—for example, by family relations. In the case of John, he appears as either Johannes or Jan with the title iudex in all the documents listed in this table.

c. The trouble here is deciding whether this is the same Sežima we find in Soběslav II’s documents (cf. Table 2) or whether this is the nephew of Vitek listed in C323. As he appears as pincerna here, my hunch would be the former but there is no way to be certain.

d. On the assumption that Slavibor is not the same as Slajbor, this is his only appearance.

e. There are two men named Hermann in this list. I am assuming that one is probably this Hermann, the son of Marquard and brother of Záviše.

f. Two men named Budivoj appear in the document. The subsequent three documents concern the same Budivoj, brother of Ben, but whether he is the same as Budivoj here is uncertain.

g. In CDB no. 342 Kuno’s wife Agnes makes a donation to Plasy for his soul, so wemay assume he was dead by 1193.

The witness lists paint pictures simultaneously of constant change and of continuity. If titles were provided more often, the impression of frequent shuffling would probably be even stronger. On the other hand, if we could be more certain of blood or affinal relationships the continuity might be more striking. One thing is certain: all the men depicted here constitute a minute percentage of population, however calculated, and therefore represent an elite. Sufficient overlap exists to reassure us that the evidence from the two very different genres, charter and chronicle, indeed represents the same society. Yet the number of men who appear as witnesses, court officers and castellans even, but absent from the chronicles, and the occasional reverse case, serve chiefly as a reminder of how far beyond our view the lives of the Czech freemen are. And whether named in chronicles or charters, they are a motley crowd. Certainly—most obviously in the first half of the twelfth century but surely before and after that time—the freemen were sometimes divided into one or more factions. Unfortunately, as we will see in Chapter 6, the chroniclers rarely give any indication what characterized these groups, their size or motivation. No wonder, then, that the chroniclers so often refer to the Czech freemen collectively, in loosely defined groupings, rather than as individuals or specific lineages.

Social Mobility and Shared Interests

The analysis of the Czech magnates presented so far has made no mention of the so-called družina, or ducal retinue. This omission has already been noted and explained; yet, given its central place in current scholarship, it seems important to revisit the model and to juxtapose it with the evidence just presented. Studies of the early and high medieval Czech Lands have universally presumed that the retinue of faithful followers formed the fundamental unit of social and political organization. Small retinues, they argue, evolved into a “state” družina centered on the duke, a political elite from whom the duke selected castellans and court officers and upon whom he relied for counsel.⁸⁶ Assuming a družina institutionalized at any social level or stage of development is unjustified, however. Certainly contemporaries knew who was allied with whom, who was dependent upon whom, who could be expected to fight for whom, but we have no evidence that this was conceived in terms of membership in a družina. Did one formally enter or exit? Were there conditions of membership? Did a magnate have authority over his družina? Was its leader their lord? No evidence provides answers to these questions. At the highest level, the družina model has the disadvantage of positing the družina’s abject dependence upon the duke, a circumstance not supported by the sources, without offering analytical precision in a broader interpretive scheme. It offers no insight into the workings of the duke’s court nor to the role of castellans, and one can only guess whether or how the court or castellans are to be included in a model družina. The witness lists themselves give no impression of a družina, either ducal or “state,” precisely because of the fluidity and stability they simultaneously reflect. Undoubtedly there were rich magnates whose favor with the duke was uncertain, lesser men who ranked high in his favor, great men who were powerful by virtue of both, and lower-ranking men who had little to gain or lose either way. Since these people can be fit into a družina model only awkwardly, in place of the družina I would suggest two fundamental characteristics that governed relations among freemen, as well as the political and social circumstances of individuals in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: social mobility and shared interests.

Analysis of status and of the circle at court showed the potential for social mobility among Czechs at all levels of society, both elite and servile. Even the slim evidence concerning the poorest folk shows them moving not only into but out of servitude, whether release was gained by purchase or through another’s munificence. A few, admittedly exceptional, “rustics” like Vacek achieved the highest ranks. Having led rescuers to Duke Jaromír, half-dead after the Vršovici attack on him, a servus named Hovora was proclaimed “noble” and granted the office of hunter at Zbečno, which, Cosmas says, his decendents held from that time (ca. 999) to his own.⁸⁷ Hunter at the duke’s chief hunting residence was a lesser if privileged post; Hovora’s case is thus a reminder that ducal service offered opportunities not only at the superior level of chamberlain and castellan. Men like Hovora or Vacek—or Zderad, villicus and counselor to King Vratislav—must have been powerful exemplars to other ambitious freemen of their day. By the same token, the men at the very top were vulnerable, liable to a decline in prestige with the rise of another favorite or more serious losses if forced into exile by the duke’s anger.⁸⁸

In the Czech Lands, however, neither poverty and disgrace nor wealth and prominence were altogether heritable from one generation to the next. Office-holding at court and as castellan must have been lucrative according to the responsibilities of the position but rarely were such appointments permanent, much less hereditary. The same may have been true of the wide array of lesser posts; perhaps Hovora’s case was legendary because such heritability was exceptional. Property, on the other hand, was owned in perpetuity by all freemen and their heirs. These persons owned land varying in quantity and quality, and their holdings were quite dispersed. Certain families—through wealth, birth, prowess, prestige—were probably prominent across generations, and perhaps there was an accepted and acknowledged, if fluid, ranking of men and families among the magnates. Nevertheless, vast potential for mobility was imbedded in the structure of property ownership: if partible inheritance was practiced, rich men could quickly find their lands divided among a number of heirs; since land could be freely bought or sold, anyone could put liquid assets to the purpose of increasing or consolidating his lands. Although almost no women appear in the sources, except for duchesses,⁸⁹ in the day-to-day business of life in the medieval Czech Lands, freemen married the daughters and sisters of other freemen, thereby—probably deliberately—forging alliances.⁹⁰ If daughters were given dowries, good marriages must have constituted one way for prominent or wealthy families to remain so, and for low-ranking, upwardly mobile men to augment the land the duke might give them. Of course, as happens everywhere in every age, some men must sometimes have squandered their fortunes, ruined their names, fallen from grace, while others made good marriages, managed their property well, and profited from service to the duke. With heritable landowning, rich men probably had the advantage in perpetuating and increasing their holdings but because all freemen were able to own land and expected to bear arms, there existed no rigidly defined elite or lower strata. Social mobility, both upward and downward, must be assumed as a fundamental characteristic of Czech society of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

While there probably remained a large class of unfree peasants and artisans, the middling group of freemen might range from craftsmen to farmers owning small plots, to magnates with several villages or vast lands, and upward to the most important men of the realm. These men owned lands in a society in which this was the chief form of land tenure at all levels, they performed military service with all other freemen simply as the duke’s subjects, and owed no special obligations contingent upon their landholding. None, even the elite of the elite, were able to control castles independently of the duke at any time in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Since immunity was only granted exceptionally late to a few ecclesiastical institutions, there is little reason to doubt that all Czechs paid annual tribute and various tolls to the duke, were summoned to military service and related labor duties, and were equally subject to ducal jurisdiction. People at every level transacted business through the medium of the duke’s pennies; only in Moravia, where the vice-dukes were allowed their own mints, was any other coin routinely used. This gave the Czech freemen coherence, in spite of differences in wealth, prestige, and prominence at court.

For all freemen, whether the most prominent or the most denigrated, the means to augmenting their resources and improving their status were substantially the same. Most especially freemen of every rank, perhaps more so those with fewer resources and from less exalted lineages, all shared hope for improvement of personal and family fortunes through service to the duke (or a prospective duke). The duke disposed of all castellanies, from guard-posts to the administration of flourishing towns, as well as court offices, from which profit and prestige could be acquired and maintained. Office-holding or other appointment to ducal service was not the only means to profit at the duke’s hand, moreover. Dukes were known to alienate land permanently as a reward for faithful service.⁹¹ The duke also called and led the military campaigns and raids, especially in foreign lands (and sometimes against Moravia), that provided booty for everyone, if not to all equally. When he promised extraordinary support to the emperor, he paid the army outright. The alacrity with which young men, in particular, responded to Vladislav II’s expedition to Milan bears witness to the lure of such prizes.

Freemen, naturally, had friends among themselves, relatives or comrades whom they especially trusted, or perhaps despised. Their decisions as to which factions to join in succession conflicts were surely as motivated by feelings toward the freemen in their own or opposing parties as by views of the Přemy-slid pretenders. General oaths of fidelity, however, were sworn neither to the ruler nor, so far as we know, among personal friends or bands of comrades.⁹² There is likewise no indication of feud or “self-help” among Czech freemen at any time during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Since the means to profit, or the risk of harm, lay with the Přemyslid ruler, there was no advantage to feuding among themselves; rather, a great deal was to be gained by solidarity, as we shall see. This is not to say that the magnates were always in harmony, that resentments and lawsuits did not arise among them, nor even that they never killed one another.⁹³ Tension manifest between individuals or factions—at least when reported in the chronicles—was, however, invariably mediated by the duke; that is, enemies are attacked by inciting the duke against them. Where a magnate is seen plotting against another, the reason given is always that the latter has undue influence over the duke or is excessively favored by him.⁹⁴ Such a picture may simply result from duco-centric sources, which provide virtually no information about how medieval Czech magnates related to each other, especially in the localities in which they and their families lived. By the same token, there is no sign that the duke acted positively to resolve conflict between men or kin-groups, or was asked to do so.

Social mobility and shared interests among the freemen had profound political consequences, both structurally and in specific cases. These are examined more closely in Chapters 3 and 6. Nevertheless, a single dramatic and directly pertinent example suffices to drive the point home, namely the account by the anonymous Canon of Vyšehrad of the discovery and trial of plotters against Duke Soběslav I in 1130.⁹⁵ The two men captured claimed to have been sent by Miroslav, the son of Comes John, and his younger brother Střežimír. With them seized in turn, Soběslav called some three thousand Bohemians, “noble and ignoble,” to Vyšehrad, as well as the canons of Prague and Vyšehrad, including the chronicler. Upon public questioning from one of his fellow magnates, Miroslav claimed to have been approached by Bolesa, a warrior of Soběslav’s nephew Břetislav, and by Soběslav’s own chaplain Božík. Miroslav then reported Božík’s persuasive words: “Dear son, was anyone more noble or more wise in this province than your father? But you are considered least among the magnates of this land. Moreover, will you allow your own brother, a long time in chains for nothing, to incur such evil? It is, therefore, better that, having thrown over this exceedingly proud duke, we enthrone such a one from whom we will have, without a doubt, everything that we might want.”⁹⁶

Božík then led Miroslav to Bishop Meinhard of Prague, to whom he pointed as the source of the plot. Miroslav reported that, in order to secure their cooperation: “Bishop Meinhard ⋯ placed two fingers on relics of the saints, and said words of this sort to me: ‘If you take the life of the duke, you willwithout doubt possess with honor whichever you choose among these five, namely Žatec, Litoměřice, the office of chamberlain, dapifer, or agazo, this on my promise and by the grant of Duke Břetislav.’ ”⁹⁷ More testimony followed, after which Miroslav, Střežimír, and several others were publicly and brutally dismembered. As the Canon of Vyšehrad tells it, Miroslav and Střežimír were frustrated that the status their father had achieved did not reflect upon them and translate into their own prominence in the realm; their hope for improvement lay in the offices the duke could bestow and, not having received any, their recourse was to impose a new duke. Scheming toward his own ends, the bishop tempted them with the most appealing choices: the castellanies of Žatec and Litoměřice, or the three court offices of chamberlain, dapifer, and agazo. He did not suggest they seize them but instead promised that Břetislav would grant them if they made his enthronement possible. Miroslav and Střežimír, notably, did not attempt to raise their ranking vis-à-vis their fellow magnates by usurping others’ lands or positions, or by assailing them with arms or lawsuits, but instead sought to replace the duke with one who would favor them at the expense of others.

One side effect of social mobility, however, reflected in the events of 1130, was avid jockeying for position. This kind of outright competition sheds new light on Vacek’s scheming, and on the resentment harbored by the duke’ own sons against men like Zderad and Vojslav. No wonder men jumped at the chance to eliminate the Vršovici, to profit from the confiscation of others’ lands at the duke’s order. It was a game that could be played quite ruthlessly by both dukes and freemen. The duke of Bohemia, and thus Prague, stood at the center of it all—a point to which we return in the next chapter. How, when, and why the freemens’ manuevering translated into rebellions will be considered at length in Chapter 6. Meanwhile, both for the most ambitious magnates and for other ordinary families, men of middling or less wealth and prestige, and primates too, the combination of good luck and sound management of land and other assets remained the best way to assure their well-being. In the long run, as the twelfth-century closed, the charters show a few men working more assiduously at this level to alter the degree to which their fortunes depended upon the duke. They would thus initiate a broader transformation of lay Czech society, one that culminated only in the first half of the thirteenth century. While those decades lie outside the scope of this study, consideration of the late twelfth-century manifestations of these changes provides vital clues toward understanding the freemen during the preceding one hundred years.

Toward Independence

The thirteenth century in Bohemia and Moravia was a time of enormous, fast-paced change: the duke became a king, wide tracts of forest were cleared for agriculture, huge silver deposits were discovered and exploited, both new and long-established towns were granted charters of privilege, and waves of Germans immigrated to become farmers, miners, and townsmen. By 1250, moreover, the Czech freemen had become a nobility that looked altogether different than one hundred, or even fifty, years earlier. The seeds of this change, with regard to landholding and personal status in particular, were planted in the closing decades of the twelfth century. In sharp contrast to the discussion with which this chapter began, this “transitional” period provides the best evidence for conditions among the top, or even middle, rank of freemen. By means of contrast, the sources thereby shed light on the situation of the freemen before, and for most of them during, this last quarter of the twelfth century. Whereas earlier all the extant charters were analyzed for general principles and broad social conditions, the remainder of this chapter will focus on exceptional items in a few documents, which point to shifts in prevailing norms. Although anomalies will be stressed here, it is crucial to keep in mind that patterns of content and language, about possessiones, say, persist in these as well as earlier charters. Likewise, while this chapter examines in greater detail documents of sale, exchange, and monastic foundation, it does not alter the conclusions reached earlier, for instance about the legal norms of property ownership. It is important, in fact, to emphasize overall continuity with conditions that obtained in previous decades and the gradual nature of the changes suggested here. Rather than indicating systemic transformations as yet, the documentation points toward the activities of a few enterprising individuals (and ecclesiastical institutions).

Consolidation of Land

Close attention to the nature and content of the charters from this time—by far the majority of those that survive from the eleventh and twelfth centuries—reveals newcircumstances behind their redaction. In the second half of the twelfth century, for instance, more charters than ever before record transactions involving parties other than the duke, particularly lay freemen. This shift accompanied new patterns of land management. Of the fourteen charters pertaining to magnates from 1170 to 1198, half document exchanges or sales, rather than outright donations, to monasteries. These charters make plain that among the legitimate ways for laymen and clerics to acquire land, sales and trades allowed the most control over where and how much land would change hands. Gifts of land from the duke, for instance, could prove less advantageous than expected; two charters record freemen disposing of their rewards soon after receiving them. Circa 1180–82, Čéč sold Plasy two villages and a circuitus, which “the glorious Duke Frederick, mindful of my service, gave me in the first year of his reign”; he then used the money to buy an estate else-where.⁹⁸ Since Frederick became duke in 1178, Čéč must have made the sale only a few years after receiving the land. Hermann, son of William, similarly traded with Plasy part of a village “acquired by him for the faithfulness of his service.”⁹⁹ The duke’s gifts were certainly valuable and these magnates were grateful to receive them, but they also knew best how to profit by them. Without any doubt, exchange was incited by the desire to consolidate landholding. In a trade with George of Milevsko in 1184, Bishop Henry of Prague made his motivation clear:

We discovered episcopal fields dispersed here and there and mixed with fields of George of Milevsko. So it was agreed between us and George, that we would cede to him from ours and receive a fitting exchange from him—namely four villages: one called Stranné, another Bratřejov, a third Budov, and a fourth Chrastná. We made this exchange from mutual goodwill, not from any necessity of ours or his, except that our field was adjacent to his and was less useful to us, while his was not far from our court at Roudnice.¹⁰⁰

How George acquired villages near Roudnice so far north of his “seat” at Milevsko—whether by ducal grant, marriage, or inheritance from a near or distant relative—cannot be determined, but they must indeed have been inconvenient to administer. The documents, thus, show laymen and ecclesiastical institutions making mutually beneficial deals with one another as they tried to improve their wealth.

It must have been as troublesome for monasteries as for bishops and freemen to own scattered properties. Plasy, the Cistercian monastery with which both Čéč and Hermann traded land, was particularly aggressive in consolidating its holdings in the last years of the twelfth century. Of thirteen extant charters pertaining to Plasy from the years 1175 to 1194, seven are sales or exchanges of some form. In trading the salt tax from Děčin back to the duke for a village named Kopidlo, the charter describes one disadvantage of distant holdings: “They held the toll in salt at Děčin, ⋯ the profit from which they were unable to bring back to the monastery without serious danger to their souls on account of the length of the road and the plots of thieves.”¹⁰¹ On the other hand, the monks were so eager to retain the estate of Lomany granted by Oldřich in 1193, that they paid 22 marks and another estate quasi concambium to compel Oldřich’s father and uncle to quit their claim to Lomany the following year.¹⁰² In another instance, they traded Luhov and 12 marks for part of Čečín, acquired another estate in the same village from Duchess Helicha, and then made an exchange with the bishop and chapter of Prague for another estate there.¹⁰³ Earlier they had received Luhov from Duke Soběslav II in exhange for Erpužice, further west.¹⁰⁴ The Cistercians at Plasy were not interested merely in amassing sufficient resources to support the community but were busily and deliberately engaged in consolidating their holdings in a narrow area close to home (Map 3). This kind of activity, not atypical for Cistercians elsewhere in Europe, may have spurred their wealthier lay neighbors to act likewise.¹⁰⁵

Plasy was not the only landowner willing to pay a high price for choice pieces of land. The document written by the chapter at Vyšehrad confirming an exchange with Marcant demonstrates that an entrepreneurial spirit inspired some men in their efforts to acquire more profitable lands. It reads, in part:

Marcant made an exchange of fields in Zaběhlice with bellringers of our church, namely Krazon and his brother Krisan, who gave to Marcant from their fields—moved by no command of necessity, but inflamed with the spirit only of good will ⋯ And similarly Marcant made an exchange such that he gave his fields and his money—generously—for the orchard and farm and a certain mountain, ⋯ On which mountain he then began to construct a vineyard. After this deed, Marcant promised the bellringers that, if any trouble should come to them concerning the fields he gave them, he would then give them other fields for those fields.¹⁰⁶

Map 3. Land consolidation by Plasy before 1198.

Marcant was so avid to get his vineyard planted that he was willing to promise the bellringers other fields than those originally exchanged if the need later arose. In fact, to sweeten the deal, Marcant “willingly” gave the Vyšehrad chapter two gilded candelabra and a mark of silver, and promised a tenth of the produce from the vineyard in perpetuity.¹⁰⁷ Whether similar payments “to even out” exchanges were offered simply to entice the second party to trade cannot be known but certainly seems plausible. Noteworthy, in Marcant’s document, as in the agreement between the bishop and George of Milevsko, is the emphatic assertion that the parties entered into the exchange willingly and not “from necessity”—an obvious euphemism for coercion or duress. The stakes, like the profits, in these land exchanges must have been quite high. More importantly perhaps, the stress on the will of the donor demonstrates that the actions were taken by individuals of their own power and, again, in light of a conception of their own best interests.

Marcant apparently saw a profitable use for previously uncultivated land; he established a vineyard on the mountain almost immediately. Although we have little direct testimony, the second half of the twelfth century seems to have witnessed the intensification of a movement to clear and colonize uncultivated lands.¹⁰⁸ When such colonization began, or markedly increased, remains uncertain; probably the clearing of new lands was a regular feature of local life from the earliest times. The second half of the twelfth century, however, provides clearer written confirmation of such activities. The most common evidence appears in grants of újezdy (the Czech term is usually employed in the Latin documents) and villages so named. One charter defines an újezd as an ambitum (meaning “circuit” literally, “edge” in practice), in this case located “in the forest of the province of Sedlec.”¹⁰⁹ Although here no village is named, in other instances it seems to have been the forest at the outer perimeter of a village or town. These újezdy were the logical places for medieval Czechs to begin extending the land under cultivation. Thus many villages, presumably new, were themselves simply named Újezd or Újezdec, and the progress of twelfth-century colonization can be partially traced by analysis of such place names.¹¹⁰ Hroznata’s foundation charter for Teplá makes clear that colonization was encouraged. Men holding land “in the forest” could apparently continue to do so but the monastery was not obliged to pay them, presumably because the lands were not yet guaranteed as profitable and would require substantial effort from both those living there and the monastery to make them so.¹¹¹

Although largely undetectable in this period, colonization must have offered great opportunities to individual magnates willing and with the resources to take advantage of them.¹¹² Milhost’s foundation endowment for Mašt’ov reflects this, as does the grant Hroznata of Peruc made to the Hospital of St. John in Prague (Maps 4 and 5).¹¹³ Curiously, the lands on the Elbe Hroznata donated to the Hospital—“all his possessions”—are rather far from Peruc, the village by which Hroznata was identified and which he retained.¹¹⁴ Although the specific villages are not listed, the new foundation of Teplá seems to have received similarly cohesive holdings from the other Hroznata, who used his more far-flung lands to buy off his relatives and reward his chaplains.¹¹⁵ Teplá’s lands, and Hroznata’s before, lay in a region previously sparsely inhabited. We might surmise that Hroznata saw greater opportunity for expansion in his lands “on the frontier” than in the villages he owned near Litoměřice; with his relatives in control of all nearby villages, consolidating his holdings around Litoměřice would have been difficult, while the colonization of new lands in the west presented Hroznata with no such problems. By combining colonization with the consolidation of their holdings, some freemen were able to amass fairly large, compact tracts of land. By the mid-thirteenth century, colonization and consolidation would produce large landed estates. At the end of the twelfth century, however, it gave magnates the freedom to move away from their kin, to pick and trade for better lands, and to choose the most congenial “seat” for their consolidated holdings.

Map 4. Lands of Hroznata of Peruc, Měsko of Peruc, and Hroznata (of Teplá).

A secondary but significant effect of the consolidation of land by magnates is reflected in the striking increase in place-name designations among magnates in thirteenth-century documents, where they serve as the primary means of identification for witnesses to important transactions.¹¹⁶ At the turn of the century, the primary purpose of such designations in charters, witness lists, and chronicles—as for patronymics—was simply the identification of individuals who might otherwise have been confused.¹¹⁷ This is borne out by the fact that one fairly early place designation is used for a man—among several—named Hroznata, that is, Hroznata of Peruc, who was also known as “the curly-haired,” while another Hroznata was sometimes called “the bald.”¹¹⁸ Designations are also given, however, for men who must have been widely known: Hroznata, for instance, was Frederick’s chamberlain, and is so listed in the same charter which identifies him as “of Peruc.”¹¹⁹ The earliest designation by place is for Marquard “of Doubrava” circa 1146–48;¹²⁰ he and his sons appear so frequently in charters without this place-name, it is hard to imagine it was required for identification. None of the place designations were castles or towns; they seem rather to have been ordinary villages. In 1197 Ratibor is listed as “of Čečkovice,” as he and his son Jaroš were in 1177,¹²¹ in spite of the fact that, in the intervening two decades, he had been castellan of Netolice, Vyšehrad, and Kladsko as well as court judge.¹²² In the case of Hroznata of Peruc, we know for certain that Peruc was an ordinary village, located, as we have seen, relatively distant from his other possessions.¹²³ These men must have perceived themselves in relation to that place and expected their contemporaries to do so as well; yet whether a designation derived from a man’s birthplace, main property holding, or conception of an ancestral seat cannot be determined. Mapping the actual locations of the village designations in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century lists yields a significant pattern, however.¹²⁴ Most fall in those areas that had been heavily forested and would later undergo intense colonization activity, especially west of Plzeň. With a few exceptions, none are in the core area of old settlement, nor do they cluster around important castles.¹²⁵

Map 5. Milhost’s foundation of Mašt’ov, 1196.

These changes, developing at the turn of the thirteenth century, prove especially revealing by contrast with the earlier era. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries it was not uncommon for freemen, especially wealthy ones, to own lands scattered throughout Bohemia or Moravia. (It seems to have been rare, however, for a freeman based in Bohemia to own lands in Moravia, and vice versa.) For even the most prominent magnates, this dispersion of lands meant that neither individuals nor families had a local base of power, isolated from the events and influences which shaped society in the Czech Lands as a whole. The freemen’s identification as a community remained centered around the duke and his capital at Prague, and their increasing local influence as wealthy landowners translated into greater leverage at that level only slowly. The occasional use of place-name designations, and their routine employment in witness lists during the thirteenth century, reinforces the impression that the consolidation and colonization of land was the means by which certain individual magnates, and others who followed their example, made themselves rich and prominent—and thereby less dependent upon the duke. At the end of the twelfth century, neither laymen nor ecclesiastics were banking their fortunes on the duke’s favor alone, but working instead to exploit their own properties more actively and to amass sufficient resources to continue to do so.

Warriors and Servitude

Hroznata’s foundation charter for Teplá from 1197—virtually the last charter issued in Bohemia during the twelfth century—refers strikingly to “warriors, who hold my estates from me.”¹²⁶ Here, then, is a hint that prevailing conditions of military service were beginning to change, whether by limiting participation to specialists or by connecting military activity to landholding. Certainly, at the end of the twelfth century, lesser freemen still were capable and expected to participate in military activities. The German merchants of Prague, we recall, were obligated to fight pro patria and to contribute “shields” to the city’s defenses when the duke was away. In his chronicle, Gerlach could still describe armies made up of both warriors and “rustics” (“milites et rusticos”) in the last quarter of the twelfth century—even as such a description simultaneously points to a new meaning for the term miles.¹²⁷ Soběslav II’s insistence upon having pauperes in his army at all times was noteworthy perhaps because it ran against the trend.¹²⁸ Vincent, who gives a vivid description of peasants turning in their ploughs for swords in eagerness to join the imperial campaign to Milan in 1158, provides a clue to the beginnings of more restricted military participation: “For the selection of an army against Milan, a court at Prague was announced to the Czechs, at which suitable warriors were chosen.”¹²⁹ Not everyone who volunteered was allowed to take part. One can imagine Vladislav II surveying the assembled men and immediately selecting all those better-trained and better-armed and ordering many part-time warriors home. However far it may have progressed at the turn of the century, the increasing limitation of military tasks to specialists surely contributed to widening the gulf between ordinary free farmers and wealthy magnates, especially in conjunction with consolidation and colonization.

This begs the further issue of whether the emergence of specialized warriors’ activities might have begun to alter the relationship between military service and landholding. Hroznata’s charter points to a new group forming in the growing gap between smallholders and landed magnates, for it speaks of men “who hold my lands from me.”¹³⁰ Differentiated in the document from Hroznata’s unfree familia, they held whole villages but were not the owners of the land, as the redundant “my lands from me” emphasizes. Certainly, when Hroznata donated all his property to Teplá these lands were included. Because such warriors, like Hroznata himself, would have been obligated to muster at the duke’s call, it is difficult to imagine a military rationale for Hroznata’s maintaining his own knights. One possible explanation for this apparent infeudation is that, in the general land-grabbing atmosphere, Hroznata felt the need to secure his relatively broad territory with warriors who would defend it as their own. Elsewhere, usurpers seized lands belonging to the German monastery of Waldsassen, who turned to the duke to have them returned.¹³¹ Hroznata perhaps took measures to assure that such problems did not arise, infeoffing (or something like it) men who would assist his colonization efforts—effectively promoting, even farming out, the hard work of landclearing and settlement. For this reason then, even after ownership was transferred to the new monastery, the warriors living on Hroznata’s lands in the forest, that is, the newest lands, were entitled to keep them without the payment of any fee.¹³²

The infeudation of poorer warriors necessarily lagged behind the consolidation and colonization of lands that made it feasible. Of all the men listed in the witness lists from the twelfth century, and even into the first quarter of the thirteenth, only three are named as the “warriors” of other men. The charter, in which one Dethleb grants land to Plasy from his and his brother’s holdings, concludes: “Klusen with his brother Baviar, Dluhomil, and Peter their miles.” ¹³³ The ducal confirmation of Milhost’s foundation of Mašt’ov similarly lists: “Agna and Peter, sons of Milhost, Conrad and Siegfried his warriors.”¹³⁴ Although the reference to “their” in the first charter is obscure, the two knights listed here are clearly attached to Milhost.¹³⁵ That only one or two men are named in both cases and the fact that they fall at the very end of the witness lists are suggestive.¹³⁶ The striking coincidence that the same men, like Milhost and Hroznata, who held broad lands and established monasteries should have been those with whom knights can be associated may, as usual, be a function of the sources. Yet it also reflects something more, because the crucial innovation appears not in the association of middling and lesser warriors with, or even their employment by, the most prominent magnates, but the role of land as a means of permanent, or at least long-term and formal, bond between them.

Consolidation of land by certain wealthy men had another, more pervasive and better documented, effect. For some men to expand their holdings, others had to lose theirs. To be sure, with the colonization of new lands this need not have been a zero-sum game, especially given how much of the Czech Lands was still unsettled in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, people were needed to work the newly cleared territory, creating conditions of abundant land and scarce labor resources. The demand for labor must have increased dramatically as forest areas were settled.¹³⁷ And as some landowners gained more and more land, they must have begun to dwarf their neighbors; ordinary freemen were probably less able to defend themselves and their lands from the encroachment of wealthy and powerful magnates. Consolidation and colonization thus had two profound social consequences: some men of middling rank, more capable warriors perhaps, became knights of other magnates and settled on their land, as we have seen; meanwhile the poorest freemen, most of whom must have been farmers and craftsmen with small plots, became the subjects of lords and thus progressively indistinguishable from the unfree peasantry.

The dearth of information about the peasantry—free or unfree—makes it difficult to trace with accuracy their fate in the late twelfth century. One reference, however, from as early as the 1140s, provides an intriguing clue. The foundation of Strahov includes the duke’s grant of:

his court at Radonice with all its appurtenances, namely villages, unfree men and women, and other various pertinent things of theirs. The names of the unfree are these: Bus, Milan, Blas, Onata, Všan, Ban, Druhan, Jakub, Bohdan, Ostoj, keeper of horses, Čelek, cobbler, Modlak, Nedoma, Lubata, Radosta, blacksmith, Dedon and Straž, makers of pitch-huts. In the same village these voluntarily subjected themselves to servitude: Hradata, Sudar, Bohdan, Božepor, Gogul, a gardener, Vilkon, Bohuta, Soběstoj.¹³⁸

Assuming tentatively that all the heads of household in Radonice are listed here, two-thirds of the inhabitants were unfree, including several craftsmen. Without more information about legal privileges or attendant obligations, it is impossible to know what led eight more to alter their status voluntarily from free to unfree. One can imagine plenty of incentive for the lord, lay or ecclesiastic, to bribe, cajole, or compel them to become his subjects, thus ensuring complete control of the village with its appurtenances. Small-time farmers, owning modest plots and wishing to maintain their independence, must have been under extraordinary pressure in a village largely controlled by a single landlord. The indication that freemen willingly became subject to Strahov at the time of the grant contrasts with the two documents from the end of the eleventh century cited at the beginning of this chapter: the description of servitude by “fee” in the Hradiště foundation charter from 1078 and Němoj’s manumission of members of his familia around the turn of the century. The Strahov charter issued fifty years later reflects a clear shift, people moving into servitude rather than out of it.

The charter recording Strahov’s foundation is noteworthy too in that it deliberately names those subject individuals included in the grant. Only a few extant documents considered genuine and datable to the eleventh or twelfth centuries contain such lists but, tellingly, they appear quite often in forged documents from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.¹³⁹ Such forgeries are especially revealing, in particular since several are alleged foundation charters, purporting to date much earlier, and their purpose was clearly to list the bulk of the institution’s holdings. In the four versions of the forged foundation charter for the chapter at Vyšehrad, the listing of names of subject peasants shows the most variation.¹⁴⁰ In the A version, additions made in other hands and inks are quite obvious, and most of these provide the names of subject peasants. In three of the four versions, an addition of several lines is made at the bottom, following what was obviously the original end of the text (after “Amen” in the B versions):

These are the names of the familia of the church: From the village Podlesín the wife of Svohboh named Tulna with three sons and a daughter named Radohna; from the same village Tehna with a son and a daughter named Hostena; there also a quaz named Krabava with a daughter named Nebraha, another named Ziznava, and a third Čejka. From the village Libušín Milica, her daughter Rozneta with daughters Kojs, Visemila, and Mutina; Milehna the sister of the aforesaid Milica with her two daughters, Svatava and Bohumest; Sirava with son; Malovia the wife of Scit; Deucik with two daughters Radohna and Ubicest.¹⁴¹

Whereas the persons enumerated in the genuine charters were often men, with their professions noted, this appendix to the Vyšehrad foundation charter consists almost entirely of women’s names, mothers with their daughters. These forgeries were drafted approximately one hundred years after the chapter’s foundation. By that time none of the named individuals would have been alive, but the church could presumably lay claim to their descendants; for that women could be as important as men. (Local and family memory must have preserved the names of previous generations, or such references would have been entirely meaningless.) While these spurious documents cannot be dated more accurately than ante 1222, evidently at the time of the forgery it had become as important to lay claim to people as lands.

The Vyšehrad forgeries are not the only charters to have names added. The donation made to the collegiate chapter at Litoměřice by Duke Spitihněv circa 1057 survives both as an original eleventh-century charter and as copied into a charter of confirmation, issued by Přemysl Otakar I in 1218.¹⁴² The latter is virtually identical to the original until the end, where the names and occupations of thirty-five men have been appended; most are small landowners, whose property forms part of the donation.¹⁴³ In some instances, only professions are noted.¹⁴⁴ The original charter also includes three additions to the bottom: the first, according to Gustav Friedrich, written in a hand aping the original, is the grant of a man, his sons, and brother, and includes witnesses; the second, inserted over an erasure, lists the names of nine peasants “from this civitas”; and the last, written in a thirteenth-century hand, partly in Latin and partly in Czech, records several grants of land, the last including two peasants.¹⁴⁵ Again, it is striking to find that, by the time of the early thirteenth-century confirmation of the chapter’s holdings, the names of individuals who could not have been alive had been added to the charter. Whether intended to lay claim to their descendents or, perhaps, to the men in specific professions in the villages in question, remains uncertain. Taken together with the Vyšehrad forgeries, this charter too provides ample reason to assume that the long lists of names in several forged charters represent not some version of the original donation, but interpolations made in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to lay permanent claim to lesser free and unfree individuals.

At times, ambitious freemen employed more heavy-handed tactics to pressure their weaker neighbors. Gerlach of Milevsko comments that Duke Soběslav was zealous to prevent excesses, perhaps of this very sort:

It always was his care to free the poor and helpless from the powerful, to whom he was not a supporter, giving judgment to all those suffering injury and to all the people of the land without regard to person. He so gave his heart to those needing defense that he did not shrink from offending the nobles on account of the poor, and was commonly called prince of the peasants. ⋯ What more can I say: all his efforts and his whole mind were to protect the poor and preserve the laws of his land.¹⁴⁶

Such behavior doubtless did not endear him to the wealthier and more ambitious freemen, who withdrew their support from Soběslav in favor of his cousin Frederick a few years later. Gerlach has the same to report of Bishop Henry, who took up the cause of the poor during Frederick’s reign; the chronicler describes not only magnates, but the duke and other Přemyslids actively involved in, and sanctioning, such oppression.

He [the bishop] so gave his heart to defending the poor that he did not shrink from incurring the offense of the leading men of the land for their defense, terrifying them away from such activities. ⋯ Duke Theobald, nephew both of the bishop and of duke Frederick, by whose grace he ruled a quarter [of the land], so loosed the leash for his bailiffs that they did whatever they pleased. ⋯ Similarly even Duke Frederick and Duchess Elizabeth dared to do similar things, nay worse, against the church of God through their officials.¹⁴⁷

In this second passage, Gerlach clearly equates the “poor” with the church; Bishop Henry would have to appeal to the emperor to secure immunity for the Bohemian church from the duke’s interventions.¹⁴⁸ Still, expectations about the just treatment of peasants according to “the laws of his land” prevailed at the end of the twelfth century, even as they were apparently being violated. For Gerlach, Soběslav II was notable for attempting to uphold customary law and keep such abuses contained, while Frederick was equally infamous. Nonetheless, both descriptions, of the efforts of Soběslav II and of Bishop Henry, reflect a general atmosphere of tension between the wealthy and powerful, and the lesser people of the realm.

In the thirteenth century colonizing efforts would far outpace the growth of the native population, creating opportunities for German immigrants willing to move east.¹⁴⁹ If, in the second half of the twelfth century, people became as valuable a resource as land, it is little wonder that lords undertook to be certain of the assets under their control and perhaps to draw in others. Small landowners in long-settled areas too would have been vulnerable to the desire of magnates and monasteries for consolidated holdings. We should not overemphasize the increasing subjection of free peasantry, however. Marcant’s agreement with the bell ringers of Vyšehrad in 1184 was witnessed not only by the chapter’s canons, by the duke and officers of the court, but also by small landowners from neighboring villages.¹⁵⁰ Marcant himself must have been a minor, if ambitious, freeman rather than a more prominent magnate, or perhaps a merchant, as his name suggests.¹⁵¹ Many others like him may have sought to profit from their limited assets by making deals with others of greater or lesser means, or by exploiting resources yet untapped. It would be some time before categories of status became fixed, and the process would begin at the lower, not the elite, levels of society: in other words, among those of restricted means and, if military service was indeed becoming limited, increasingly cut off from participation in the dynamic of Czech politics.

If we can assume that there was always an operative distinction between wealthier, more powerful freemen and ordinary free farmers and craftsmen, that gap began to widen at the end of the twelfth century. Those in possession of the requisite resources of land, people, and money to exploit uncultivated forest, to plant vineyards, and to trade whole villages for others better situated, surely profited greatly by such activities. As a result, they would have had more land, people, and money available for more colonization and consolidation. They could even establish on their lands a few fellow warriors, men who would be obligated chiefly, if not yet exclusively, to them. If they were more concerned for their souls, they could devote the bulk of their newly acquired lands to the establishment of monasteries. The holdings of these magnates could still not compare with those of the duke, but no longer could lesser freemen become their equals, however proficient in arms or trusted in ducal service. In earlier times, it was possible for a lesser man to be raised to an important court office or castellany by the duke and to be given extra lands by him to augment his small holdings, thereby effectively becoming the equal of wealthier men from more prominent families. In the early thirteenth century, it would be far more difficult for such a man to wield influence comparable to his wealthier, better established colleagues by means of a gift of land from the king. In other words, beginning at the end of the twelfth century, the Czech magnates, led by enterprising individuals, slowly began transforming themselves into a more traditional landed nobility.

There is no doubt that these are instances of a dramatic change, one that deeply affected both social mobility and shared interests, as described above. We cannot know whether these changes also resulted from, or precipitated, other socioeconomic developments rendered invisible by the extant source materials. But, consciously or unconsciously, the magnates were indeed taking pages out of the duke’s own book. If his superiority was based on large amounts of land, they could increase their own holdings through smart management, consolidation, and colonization. If the duke drew his supporters from those subject to him, they could bring more people—peasants and warriors—under their own control. If the duke could count on the spiritual support of ecclesiastical institutions that he founded and endowed, they could establish new monasteries. But such changes did not yet fundamentally alter the nature and exercise of political power in the Czech Lands. Those privileges and prerogatives that formed the basis of ducal power remained in his hands: huge tracts of land, cultivated and uncultivated; rights of tax, toll, and coinage; jurisdiction; military command; and castles. The political structure of the Czech Lands, the “balance and interdependence” to which we turn in the next chapter, had not yet been transfigured.