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
