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
