were more concerned for their souls, they could devote the bulk of their newly acquired lands to the establishment of monasteries. The holdings of these magnates could still not compare with those of the duke, but no longer could lesser freemen become their equals, however proficient in arms or trusted in ducal service. In earlier times, it was possible for a lesser man to be raised to an important court office or castellany by the duke and to be given extra lands by him to augment his small holdings, thereby effectively becoming the equal of wealthier men from more prominent families. In the early thirteenth century, it would be far more difficult for such a man to wield influence comparable to his wealthier, better established colleagues by means of a gift of land from the king. In other words, beginning at the end of the twelfth century, the Czech magnates, led by enterprising individuals, slowly began transforming themselves into a more traditional landed nobility.
There is no doubt that these are instances of a dramatic change, one that deeply affected both social mobility and shared interests, as described above. We cannot know whether these changes also resulted from, or precipitated, other socioeconomic developments rendered invisible by the extant source materials. But, consciously or unconsciously, the magnates were indeed taking pages out of the duke’s own book. If his superiority was based on large amounts of land, they could increase their own holdings through smart management, consolidation, and colonization. If the duke drew his supporters from those subject to him, they could bring more people—peasants and warriors—under their own control. If the duke could count on the spiritual support of ecclesiastical institutions that he founded and endowed, they could establish new monasteries. But such changes did not yet fundamentally alter the nature and exercise of political power in the Czech Lands. Those privileges and prerogatives that formed the basis of ducal power remained in his hands: huge tracts of land, cultivated and uncultivated; rights of tax, toll, and coinage; jurisdiction; military command; and castles. The political structure of the Czech Lands, the “balance and interdependence” to which we turn in the next chapter, had not yet been transfigured.
3. INTERDEPENDENCE
The previous chapters took institutional and social-structural approaches to political life in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Czech Lands, focusing on the duke and the freemen respectively. Neither, however, suffices alone to describe the exercise of, or resistance to, power. Having thus laid the groundwork, we turn here to consider relations between the duke and the freemen, that is, between the extensive lordship ascribed to the Přemyslid ruler and the composition of lay society as deduced from the sources. The duke had significant and far-reaching rights over his subjects, although common sense suggests that he required the aid and services of many individuals to govern his realm. Freemen of all levels, for their part, saw in the duke’s service the path to social advancement and greater wealth. All this should be clear enough already. This chapter, however, offers further elaboration of, and somewhat qualifies, the conclusions reached in Chapters 1 and 2. For the freemen, for instance, the social mobility that characterized their lives, in which the duke played a crucial role, was profoundly constrained by violence at his hands. Analysis of lordship in the Czech Lands, meanwhile, requires consideration of succession to the ducal throne at Prague and of the dynasty that dominated it.
The fundamental bases of power for the duke of Bohemia hardly changed from the mid-eleventh to the end of the twelfth century, while the structure of society for freemen at the highest and lowest levels began to be transformed only slowly in the last years of this period. Yet the chronicles, and the coins and charters too in their way, portray a world far from static; each quarter century differed in many respects from the previous or the next. Understanding the consequences of Czech social structure for the duke’s power, and Přemyslid lordship for the fortunes of the freemen, is the foundation for the give-and-take reported in the chronicles and analyzed in Part II. The key, this chapter argues, lies in the interdependence and tense balance between the duke and the freemen. And the ramifications for political affairs were far-reaching. The goal, here and in succeeding chapters, is not merely to make the case for such a model, but to understand and demonstrate how it functioned, how it evolved over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and, within it, how the Czechs adapted to—and often instigated—new challenges and opportunities.
Critical Transitions: The Case of 1109
In 1107, Svatopluk successfully unseated his cousin, Duke Bořivoj, and was enthroned duke of Bohemia. A similar attempted overthrow launched the previous summer had narrowly failed, but Bořivoj’s hold on power was already so tenuous that he was unable decisively to defeat Svatopluk, then vice-duke of Olomouc; simply, he did not trust the loyalty of his army to pursue his cousin into Moravia. Once ousted, Bořivoj fled into exile and from there continued to press his claim to rule for the next several years, always unsuccessfully. The instability that immediately followed Svatopluk’s accession, marked by Bořivoj’s ineffectual incursions and the new duke’s own efforts to consolidate power in Bohemia—one way to interpret his massacre of the Vršovici in 1108—had finally begun to settle by summer 1109. The duke thus turned to more routine affairs and joined Henry V on campaign in Poland in September. On the move with his men, he was speared in the back by an assassin, ostensibly at the instigation of one of the surviving members of the Vršovici. In the subsequent several days, the killing of Svatopluk had two political results: first, his younger brother, Otto, was immediately chosen as his successor by the freemen assembled in camp; second, four days later, Vladislav, the younger brother of the ousted Bořivoj, was enthroned. Duke Vladislav I would govern the Czech Lands until his death in 1125.
A close look at Svatopluk’s assassination and its immediate aftermath, as related by Cosmas, is intriguing—and quite illuminating. “As we heard from those telling of it afterwards,” Cosmas says, the assassin was a “warrior sent by John, son of Csta of the Vršovici gens.” When the army began to move at dawn, after the siege of Glogov, this man “spurred his horse, quickly mixed himself into the midst of the army, and with all his strength threw his spear between the duke’s shoulderblades.”1 For John the motive for the murder seems simply to have been revenge, the act of a single individual with no broader political aims, a member of no live faction. The murder was committed independently of any effort to install a specific pretender or further the political efforts of a particular group of freemen. Nor was there, apparently, a designated “second-in-command” to whom the Czech freemen could automatically turn. The immediate consequence of Svatopluk’s death was disarray. Faced with chaos in one contingent of his army, Henry stepped in—not, as one might expect of an overlord, to name Svatopluk’s successor, but merely to restore order and calm everyone’s nerves. As Cosmas tells it: “With the morning, the king arrived to grieve for his comrade. He granted to all the Czechs present that they should elect as their duke whomever they wanted from the sons of their princes.” The chronicler continues: “Then, as he was mourning, Vacek asked with tears rising to his eyes that they should choose Otto, the brother of the murdered prince, as their duke. The king instantly praised him, and throughout the camp the foolish people cried ‘Kyrie Eleison’ three times.” 2
Otto did not become duke, however, because he was unable to follow his election with enthronement:
Without delay and with only a few knowing, Detrišek, the son of Buša, ran at full speed and at dawn on the fourth day led to Prague Otto, whom Vacek and everyone from Moravia bustled to raise to the summit of the princely seat. Since they tried to bring it about without the consent of the Bohemians and the bishop, their audacity was frustrated, and the oaths given earlier in the midst of council were recited. For when they enthroned Svatopluk as duke, all the Bohemians had confirmed with oaths that after his death Vladislav, if he lived, would be raised to the throne.3
The oaths previously sworn by the Czech freemen to back Vladislav’s accession did not ensure that he would succeed automatically; in this case, as in
