manner of property, whether to lay or ecclesiastical magnates; the status of Podivín was exceptional—and therefore revealing. Located not far from the Austrian border, Duke Vratislav had given it to the newly established bishop of Olomouc, apparently withdrawing it from the bishop of Prague.103 It changed hands and was a bone of fierce contention between the bishops of Prague and Olomouc for almost a century. By the 1140s, the powerful bishop of Olomouc, Henry Zdík, secured it for his own see. The ducal charter—the only one in which a castle is granted104—provides the key to these disputes: “Intending to reform the rights of age-old institution concerning this castle, we ordered that a mint be there, as there had been in the beginning.”105 The castle served primarily as the site of the mint. Since there is no sure evidence that coins were minted separately in Moravia after this time, Podivín may have reverted to the duke (and thence to the vice-duke of Znojmo) when the mint ceased to function.106 In 1178, when a portion of the income from the “toll below Podivín” was given to the chapter of Vyšehrad, this amounted to only two denáry.107 The only other mention of Podivín is a witness list from 1174, in which one Tvrdša is listed as its castellan; since the same man appeared in an earlier list as castellan of Hodonín, he was probably not from the bishop’s entourage, but among the prominent magnates of Moravia who served as castellans throughout the region.108 Whatever its allocation at the close of the twelfth century, the recurring disputes in preceeding decades over the exceptional episcopal castle and mint at Podivín seems to emphasize all the more how a different norm governed the disposition of all other castles in Bohemia and Moravia.
Castles, of whatever distinction, were undoubtedly manned by someone; the question is under what conditions and with what accompanying rights. Given the purposes known with certainty, the man or men charged with their control must be viewed as functionaries, rather than feudatories. Certainly their job was to hold the castle and to defend it against intruders. When, during the conflict with the emperor in 1041, a castellan deserted the castle under his charge in exchange for a bribe, Břetislav I ordered him dismembered and thrown from a bridge.109 Castellans were undoubtedly rewarded for their services. Two charters, issued by the duke and referring to “land pertaining to the castle,” suggest that castellans received produce from lands specifically allocated for maintenance of the castle and garrison.110 They may also have received a percentage of taxes collected locally, though no sure evidence supports this conjecture. Still, income from markets would have made the castle of a thriving town, such as Žatec or Litoměřice, quite a plum appointment—an impression reinforced throughout the sources.
How these men were installed, and how tenuous and dependent their position, is best illustrated by the assorted references in the chronicles to castellans deposed, or worse, by the duke. Soběslav II, for instance, in revenge for the many years he spent in prison at Přimda, in 1174 captured its castellan and executed him publicly, in spite of his promise of grace and security.111 But the removal of castellans was not necessarily accompanied by their violent deaths: it could be as simple as a whisper in the ear. According to Cosmas, soon after Vratislav’s accession to the throne, Mstiš, the castellan of Bílina invited him to a church dedication there, although surely aware that the new duke harbored ill-will against him for the mistreatment of his first wife while imprisoned at Lštění some years before, under Mstiš’s care.112 Vratislav agreed to attend, saying “I will come, I will make my city joyful, and I will do what the affair and justice demand.”113 The duke apparently felt that justice called for the public disgrace and deposition of Mstiš at his own party: “While feasting, a messenger came who said in the ear of the comes: ‘The castellany of the city is withdrawn from you and given to Kojata, son of Všebor,’ who was at that time first in the ducal palace. To this the comes answered: ‘The duke is also the lord; let him do with his castle what he pleases.’”114 This story, whatever its basis in fact, demonstrates well the duke’s undisputed control of both castles and castellans. Still another remark by Cosmas is telling: After the assassination of Duke Svatopluk in 1109, when it was still undetermined whether Bořivoj or Vladislav would succeed, Fabian, castellan of Vyšehrad and undoubtedly among the most prominent magnates, “having left his city of Vyšehrad, tarried in villages in its neighborhood, dependent upon the uncertainty of fate.”115 Nothing in the sources suggests that appointments as castellan were ever more than temporary, or expected to be. The witness lists to charters of the late twelfth century provide an equally vivid, and more reliable, picture of the rotation of magnates in and out of castellanies and court offices; because of the profound effect this arrangement had upon the structure of the medieval Czech nobility, these documents will be treated in detail in the next chapter.
For our purposes here, it suffices to note the success and significance of the duke’s dominion over castles, large and small, and over the men who administered them—an argument that may also be made compellingly from negative evidence. In the many revolts and occasional battles against invaders from outside, none of the decisive confrontations centered on castles. In fact, virtually all of the military engagements described by chroniclers were waged in open terrain. The chief and most notable exception is Prague itself, which, as the emblem of the duke’s authority and site of his throne—the object of every pretender’s ambition—was frequently besieged.116 Likewise only the castles on both sides of the Austro-Moravian border functioned as bases from which to launch or wait out raids.117 Although Soběslav II successfully holed up in a castle, remaining at Skála for the better part of 1179 after Frederick managed to oust him from the throne, on no other occasion was a magnate or any other Přemyslid able to do so, whether seeking to establish an independent lordship or simply to avoid the duke’s wrath.118
The information available from written sources or archeological research remains inadequate for resolving many crucial issues with regard to castles in the Czech Lands: the origins of the duke’s exclusive lordship; their defensive, economic, or other administrative functions; the organizational divisions obtaining within Bohemia and Moravia at specific times; and the privileges, duties, and assets of castellans. We can be certain, however, that they played a significant social and political role, and that the thorough domination of all castles constituted a vital foundation of the Přemyslid duke’s power. Accountability was enforced and ensured as a matter of routine by treating castellanies, like court offices, as temporary if lucrative appointments to which no magnate had a specific or lasting claim. Nevertheless, since castellanies were, by definition, meaningless in the absence of a garrison and its leadership, ducal control of castles rested upon the loyalty of the freemen. Castles thus occupied a central place in the delicate balance and interdependence of the Czech duke and freemen; their fates hung together—as we shall see in Chapter 3.
Military Service
In 1039, when Duke Břetislav I prepared to attack Poland, taking advantage of a succession crisis there to expand his realm, Cosmas reports: “Having taken counsel with his men, he ordered them to attack and immediately pronounced a terrifying sentence, sending throughout the province of all of Bohemia a collar of twisted cork as a sign of his command, so that whoever came out into camp slowly would know without a doubt by the given sign that he would be hanged by such a collar in the gallows.”119 The atmosphere of fear is palpable, so it hardly comes as a surprise that “in the blink of an eye and to a man they gathered into one.”120 The resort to coercion seems designed to induce speed, however, not to press into service men unaccustomed to it. Nothing in the story suggests that the call to campaign was unusual, or considered unjust. This occasion, then, was like so many others throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries: the duke summoned an army of freemen, as was his right, and served as its leader, as was his obligation. The Czechs, for their part, took up their arms, as was customary, expected, and mandatory.
It is impossible to know which men fought in particular military engagements, under what conditions they served, or how they were organized.121 The little extant evidence indicates only—and not insignificantly—that the duke had the right to issue a universal muster and that this applied to freemen at all levels of society.
