emerges with particular salience when issues of power are involved. The structure of power in Bohemia and Moravia deviates from the norm, without constituting an exception to it. Thus it challenges, if sometimes only very subtly, the lessons scholars of medieval politics have learned from other regions. The Přemyslids were a ruling dynasty, recognized as charismatic and patently self-conscious, yet their internal structure was altogether different from a “dynasty” (or Geschlecht) classically defined. The Czechs came late to the use of written records, and yet their coinage, in it use and in its production, was precocious. The duke of Bohemia was, apparently, a vassal of the German emperor, and yet he had no vassals under him. More examples will emerge in the pages that follow. Many characteristics of the Czech polity appear atypical even as they offer up a series of unquestionably familiar scenarios. For this reason, they enable us to anatomize the commonalities underlying all medieval polities. Analyzing a duke made king, and his successor made duke again, or the interplay between the religious and political functions of the cult of Saint Václav, enriches our knowledge of medieval kingship and of “national” or dynastic patron saints, for instance. But at a deeper and more rudimentary level, this procedure yields new concepts and vocabulary (interdependence, leadership, community) with an implicitly universal scope, and therefore determinedly comparative application. The particulars of Czech political culture, by the same token, potentially challenge the meanings ascribed to succession conflict, to political violence, to lordship, to dux or regnum. The Czech case thus points toward novel ways of conceiving the exercise of power in the Middle Ages.
* * *
Very few readers outside the Czech Republic are familiar with events in Bohemia and Moravia during the Middle Ages and the efforts of nearly two centuries of Czech- and German-speaking historians to explain and interpret them. This book is not a survey, an introduction to Bohemia,20 nor does it offer a narrative account of Czech history. Some analyses deal explicitly with change over time, most notably the chapters of Part II, but only as they affect or shed light upon the matter at hand, the exercise of power. It may, unfortunately, be disorienting to follow the analysis without some familiar points of reference to serve as guideposts. Readers should have frequent recourse to the list of dukes provided here (Table 1), the genealogical chart of Přemyslid men in Figure 1 and the list of bishops of Prague and Olomouc in Chapter 4, Table 6. As further orientation, the paragraphs that follow provide a cursory overview of the 150 years discussed in succeeding chapters.
This study takes as its rough starting point the end of the reign of Duke Břetislav I. The four decades after his death in 1055 were dominated by his five sons: Spitihněv, duke from 1055–61; Vratislav, duke from 1061–92 and king after 1086; Conrad, vice-duke of Brno and duke of Bohemia for less than a year in 1092; Jaromír, bishop of Prague from 1068 to 1090; and Otto, vice-duke of Olomouc. Spitihněv died relatively young, leaving his four brothers locked in mutual fear and antagonism for the next thirty years. Otherwise this period is most notable for developments in ecclesiastical affairs: the establishment of a bishopric in Moravia, at Olomouc; the fight over the Catholic Slavonic liturgy at the Benedictine monastery of Sázava; the first recorded visit of papal delegates; and a general intensification of contacts with the papacy. These activities, together with a host of others both known and unknown to us, furthered and substantially completed the Christianization of Czech society in this period. Vratislav’s reign also witnessed new, closer connections to the German emperor, as both the duke and Bishop Jaromír allied themselves with Henry IV in the civil wars that rocked the Empire. As a reward for his staunch military support, Henry crowned Vratislav king in 1086.
TABLE 1. DUKES OF BOHEMIA
| Duke | Reign |
| Břetislav I | 1037–55 |
| Spitihněv | 1055–61 |
| Vratislav | 1061–92, king after 1086 |
| Conrad | 1092 |
| Břetislav II | 1092–1100 |
| Bořivoj | 1100–1107; 1117–20 |
| Svatopluk | 1107–9 |
| Vladislav I | 1109–17; 1120–25 |
| Soběslav I | 1125–40 |
| Vladislav II | 1140–73, king after 1158 |
| Soběslav II | 1173–78 |
| Frederick | 1173; 1178–89 |
| Conrad Otto | 1189–91 |
| Václav | 1192 |
| Přemysl Otakar | 1193; 1198–1232 as king |
| (Bishop) Henry | 1193–97 |
| Vladislav Henry | 1197 |
The deaths of Vratislav and Conrad, both in 1092, marked the end of one generation of Přemyslids; the next generation, comprising Břetislav I’s eleven grandsons, created a situation considerably more complicated. This period began peaceably enough with the accession to power of Vratislav’s eldest son, Břetislav II. But a series of assassinations, succession conflicts, and attempts at deposition ensued after Břetislav’s murder in 1100. In essence, only the enthronement of Soběslav I and his subsequent victory in February 1126 over Otto II of Olomouc, the only other living Přemyslid of his generation, brought the dynastic strife to an end. Cosmas, in Book III of the Chronica Boemorum, describes in detail the intense jockeying between freemen around the duke and various Přemyslid pretenders of this period. Its most spectacular result, perhaps, hardly concerned the throne at all: the widespread massacre of a broad kin-group (perhaps) called the Vršovici, ordered by Duke Svatopluk (1107–9) in 1108. On the whole, however, these were not decades of chaos. Outside specific instances of conflict, in preparations for and actually fighting on the battlefield, life in the Czech Lands went on as usual. The reigns of Vladislav I (1109–25) and Soběslav I (1125–40), in particular, were long, relatively quiet ones.
Vladislav II succeeded his uncle, Soběslav, in 1140. Almost immediately thereafter, in 1142, he successfully defended his hold on power against a massive revolt of senior freemen and Přemyslids; in his camp were his brothers, Theobald and Henry, a substantial number of younger magnates, and the German ruler, Conrad III. Together with the powerful, activist, Premonstratensian bishop of Olomouc, Henry Zdík (1126–50), Vladislav supported a renaissance in monastic life: many new monasteries were established throughout Bohemia and Moravia, including convents for women as well as houses for Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and Hospitallers. Both Henry Zdík and Bishop Daniel of Prague (1148–67) assiduously cultivated contacts in the Empire and in Rome; they were frequent travelers, the former even preaching to the pagan Prussians and the latter serving as imperial diplomatic envoy. Perhaps the most noteworthy pair of events of the twelfth century came at the midpoint of Vladislav’s long rule: his elevation to the rank of king in 1158 and the participation of a Czech army in Barbarossa’s war against Milan. The king’s last years were spent trying to secure the succession of his eldest son Frederick, in whose favor he abdicated in 1173.
Vladislav’s reign, first as duke and then as king of Bohemia, hardly passed free of dynastic tension. His efforts to contain
