holdings, such as was practiced at Plasy, worked against this tendency, but it remained rare even in the late twelfth century (see Chapter 2).
Appraising ducal landholding is more difficult still than any assessment for medieval Czech society as a whole, even though much of the discussion above rested upon charters issued by the duke himself.30 Because the charter evidence tells us only about lands given away, the amount retained by the donor remains undetermined. The 1169 grant to the Hospitallers, however, reflects the diversity of the duke’s holdings:
And these are the villages which I gave and assigned to the brothers of the aforesaid Hospital of Jerusalem, namely four in the circuitio next to Plasy, that is Hodovice, Osojný Dvůr, Pláně, Kuchov. Moreover I add and confirm for the same house of the Hospital the possession, which my father Duke Vladislav granted to my relatives, Vratislav and Micus, but which returned again into my use when they died a short time after. Manětin from the Nečtiny boundary up to the Plasy boundary with all its appurtenances, namely Lipí, Kuchov with the forum, Vískov with the adjacent river Manětin as far as Plasy, granting to them every sort of liberty for doing whatever, whether fishing or erecting a mill on the same river. Also the forest named “Cozodre” and other adjacent forests I grant by legitimate right and confirm to be possessed perpetually. I also give and confirm two villages in the province of Bílina named Bořislav and Hrbovice, which pertain to my crown [que corone mee adiacebant]. At the request of my brother Henry, I add for them the village named Lovín and a certain forest necessary for their use, next to “Olesnice” reaching to the middle of Mount Chvojen to the river called Libouchec and to the village Kamenice and to Prosetín, and thence to “Tesik” and then to the Red Well and thus adjacent to the said river Libouchec where it takes its source.31
This document is quite typical, though there is a great deal of variation among the extant charters in the types and amounts of lands granted. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there is no record of a ducal grant of small plots; in cases where the duke owned only a portion of the village he wished to donate, he first purchased the remainder.
Both chronicles and charters give the impression that the vast breadth of unsettled forest belonged to the duke. Cosmas reports that a group of conquered Poles requested resettlement in Bohemia, and Duke Břetislav I “gave them not a small part of the forest called Crnína.”32 Dukes similarly made grants of mountains, though they were not alone in this.33 The charter for the Hospitallers just cited includes a broad tract of forest, with mountains and rivers; in the case of “Cozodre” the woods alone are mentioned and thus seem not simply to be pertinent to a village. As elsewhere in medieval Europe, the customary rights that went with forests—for hunting, foraging, woodcutting, and so forth—made them valuable village assets. Yet such huge tracts of Czech territory lay unsettled during this period that much forested land surely fell outside village boundaries. If all uncleared land not appurtenant to other holdings belonged to the duke, to him also belonged considerable control over later expansion and its profits. Such broad uncultivated tracts may, alternately, have belonged to no one and thus been open to anyone ready to exploit them. Landclearing, however, required no small investment of resources; these the Přemyslid duke possessed in abundance.
The 1169 donation to the Hospitallers also demonstrates that the duke was bound to the same legal norms of acquisition as everyone else. An earlier charter for the same house, in which similar language appears, reflects this even more explicitly as it lists the means of acquisition for each piece of property granted:
I give to the same church to be possessed by perpetual right certain land pertaining to the crown of my realm [ad coronam regni mei pertinentem] in Prague next to the bridge by the water between the four roads, and the water itself from the upper part of the lower island up to the bridge, with fishing and all other uses, which are able to be had there. I also add and confirm to the same place, for my salvation and that of my freemen and all my predecessors, the village which is called Letky, which had been Bora’s, who was hung in Prague, with the vineyard and all other appurtenances. I add moreover near the same village one field pertaining to my crown [ad coronam meam pertinentem] named “Ostruzen.” For the growth of the same new plantation, that is, the church to be built, I add and confirm the possessions which were Henry’s, son of Hartmann, and which he gave to me after the death of his wife to be possessed by perpetual right, when he committed himself to me against his father34 before many noble Czechs. I confirm also the possessions which [the Hospitallers] acquired for themselves in other just ways, …35
The language of this grant also begins to indicate differences between the duke and other Czech landowners. He had, for instance, another means of acquisition at his disposal, namely the administration of justice.36 A charter issued to the chapter of Vyšehrad in 1187 constitutes the first grant to an ecclesiastical institution of the profits from jurisdictional rights: “If one of the men of the church is condemned to execution, his property should go to the church and his head to the noose.”37 This exceptional document provides telling evidence: the right to land forfeit in capital cases must routinely have been very lucrative for the duke.
With regard to the origins of ducal landholdings, the lines between conquest, usurpation, and legitimate confiscation were extremely thin. Since the eleventh- and twelfth-century chronicles recount innumerable stories of magnates summarily executed, imprisoned, or driven into exile by the duke, one can easily imagine that he had little compunction with regard to taking over their lands. For instance, in 1096 Břetislav II exiled Mutina, one of the Vršovici, and confiscated his property; in 1105, those who backed Bořivoj’s effort to seize the throne were similarly punished.38 When the Vršovici were universally massacred with their women and children, in 1108, their lands were surely seized by Duke Svatopluk;39 in fact, according to Cosmas, he promised the land of two of them, Božej and his son, to whoever killed them.40 In this light, the language of the grant to the Hospitallers from midcentury sounds rather defensive; the need to assert that all the lands granted were owned or acquired legitimately and according to “just ways” acknowledges the dukes’ occasional willingness and ability to abuse their power and seize the lands of their political opponents.
The magnitude of lands at the duke’s disposal far outweighed those available to any other member of society. When one of the Vršovici (for whom we may assume some prominence given the need to eliminate them so thoroughly41) donated everything he owned to the chapter at Vyšehrad, it consisted of “five villages … the whole familia, and whatever I have.”42 In contrast, a grant of five villages is routine from dukes; many monasteries and chapters, for whom mostly ducal grants are recorded, held considerably more. The Vyšehrad chapter, for instance, which was the recipient of Němoj’s five villages, obtained nine from Duke Soběslav in 1130 for the specific use of the brothers, though this grant was considerably augmented by monetary income from a variety of sources.43 By the end of the twelfth century, when a series of forged foundation charters were drawn up, the Vyšehrad chapter named some eighty villages which they claimed to have received from Vratislav II (1061–92).44 The duke gave away a great deal of land; we can only assume that he possessed substantially more.
The Czech Lands on the whole, even in local regions, were a patchwork of variegated holdings and owners. Partible inheritance assured that consolidated holdings fragmented, even as some landowners inherited distant properties. The breadth of the duke’s holdings means that he had land in every corner of Bohemia. The legal or de facto right to unowned land also meant that the landed resources at the duke’s disposal were almost inexhaustible, something ordinary freemen could only wish for. This, more than any legal distinctions—and especially in their absence—must have separated the duke from other landowners. In the legend told by Cosmas, messengers were instructed to find Přemysl ploughing land possessed by no one, surrounded by fields owned by others. The legend thus reflects—as a curious parallel if nothing else—the same basic presumption found in the charters: land is owned individually, in units
