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
