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
