Oxford Handbook of Medieval Central Europe 9780190920715, 9780190920739, 0190920718

Table of contents :
Cover
The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Central Europe
Copyright
About the Editors
Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Preface
Selected Bibliography
Introduction: “Central Europe”: Perceptions, Definitions, and Comparisons in a Historiographical Context
Part I. Land, People, and Structures of Power
1. Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment
2. From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms in Central Europe: Population and Settlement, 700–​1100
3. The Central European States: From Monarchy to Ständestaat
4. Government: Central and Local Administration
5. Law and the Administration of Justice
6. Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization
7. Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War within and around Central Europe
Part II. Society and Economy
8. Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe
9. Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe
10. Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe
11. Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe
12. Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe
13. Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe
Part III. Culture and Religion
14. Cultural Landscapes: Education and Literature
15. A History of Social Communication in East-​Central Europe: Words, Scripts, and Beyond
16. Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe
17. Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life
18. Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants) in Medieval Central Europe
19. The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy
20. Jews in Medieval Central Europe
21. Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–​c. 1550)
Part IV. Images of the Past
22. The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature
23. Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe
24. The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages: Popular Traditions and Medievalism
Index

Citation preview

T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

M E DI E VA L C E N T R A L E U ROP E

The Oxford Handbook of

MEDIEVAL CENTRAL EUROPE Edited by

NADA ZEČEVIĆ and DANIEL ZIEMANN

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Zečević, Nada, editor. | Ziemann, Daniel, editor. Title: Oxford handbook of medieval Central Europe / Nada Zečević, Daniel Ziemann. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021056067 (print) | LCCN 2021056068 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190920715 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190920739 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Europe, Central—History—To 1500. | Europe, Central—Civilization. | Civilization, Medieval. Classification: LCC DAW1046 .O94 2022 (print) | LCC DAW1046 (ebook) | DDC 943/.01—dc23/eng/20220105 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056067 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056068 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190920715.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

About the Editors

Nada Zečević teaches the history of the Balkans at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of the Balkans. She earned her PhD in Medieval Studies from the Central European University (CEU), Hungary (2004). Dr. Zečević’s research focuses on the history of the Balkan peninsula and its global relations, the historical societies of this region, and interpretations of its past. Daniel Ziemann is Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. He is a medieval historian and received his PhD in history from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt on the Main in 2002. Prior to his appointment at CEU in 2009, he taught at the University of Cologne. He researches the political and legal history of the early and high Middle Ages with a special focus on Southeast and Central Europe.

Contents

Contributors Acknowledgments Preface Nada Zečević and Daniel Ziemann Selected Bibliography Introduction: “Central Europe”: Perceptions, Definitions, and Comparisons in a Historiographical Context Nada Zečević

xi xiii xv xix 1

PA RT I .   L A N D, P E OP L E , A N D ST RU C T U R E S OF P OW E R 1. Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment András Vadas 2. From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms in Central Europe: Population and Settlement, 700–​1100 Daniel Ziemann

23

39

3. The Central European States: From Monarchy to Ständestaat Julia Burkhardt

77

4. Government: Central and Local Administration János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan

99

5. Law and the Administration of Justice János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak

113

6. Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization Attila Bárány

131

viii   Contents

7. Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War within and around Central Europe Gerald Schwedler and Paweł Figurski, with contributions by László Veszprémy, Emir O. Filipović, and Christian Raffensperger

157

PA RT I I .   S O C I E T Y A N D E C ON OM Y 8. Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe Cosmin Popa-​Gorjanu

175

9. Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe Stefan Donecker

191

10. Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe Michaela Antonín Malaníková, Witold Brzeziński, and Marija Mogorović Crljenko

213

11. Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe Edit Sárosi

239

12. Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder

267

13. Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy

291

PA RT I I I .   C U LT U R E A N D R E L IG ION 14. Cultural Landscapes: Education and Literature Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová 15. A History of Social Communication in East-​Central Europe: Words, Scripts, and Beyond Anna Adamska

321

339

16. Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

359

17. Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life Gerhard Jaritz

413

Contents   ix

18. Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants) in Medieval Central Europe Stanislava Kuzmová

431

19. The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum

457

20. Jews in Medieval Central Europe Tamás Visi

483

21. Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–​c. 1550) Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, with contributions by Marek Derwich and Beatrix Romhányi

507

PA RT I V.   I M AG E S OF T H E PA S T 22. The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature Levente Seláf

533

23. Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe Paweł Gancarczyk

553

24. The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages: Popular Traditions and Medievalism János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay

567

Index

589

Contributors

Anna Adamska, Utrecht University, Utrecht János M. Bak, 1929–​2020 Attila Bárány, Debrecen University, Debrecen Witold Brzeziński, Uniwersytet Kazimierza Wielkiego, Bydgoszcz Julia Burkhardt, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, University of Rennes Marek Derwich, University of Wrocław, Wrocław Lucie Doležalová, Charles University, Prague Stefan Donecker, Austrian Academy of Sciences—​Institute for Medieval Research, Vienna Farkas Gábor Kiss , Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Paweł Figurski, University of Warsaw, Warsaw Emir O. Filipović, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo Paweł Gancarczyk, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw Gerhard Jaritz, Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna Gábor Klaniczay, Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna Stanislava Kuzmová, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava Michaela Antonín Malaníková, Palacký University, Olomouc Suzana Miljan, Institute of Historical and Social Sciences, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb Marija Mogorović Crljenko, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Pula Grzegorz Myśliwski, University of Warsaw, Warsaw Balázs Nagy, Eötvös Loránd University and Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna Zoë Opačić, Birkbeck College, London Cosmin Popa-​Gorjanu, “1 Decembrie 1918,” University of Alba Iulia, Alba Iulia

xii   Contributors Christian Raffensperger, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH Igor Razum, Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna Beatrix Romhányi, Gáspár Károli Calvinist University, Budapest Edit Sárosi, Budapest History Museum, Budapest Felicitas Schmieder, FernUniversität Hagen, Hagen Gerald Schwedler, University of Zürich, Zürich Levente Seláf, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Béla Zsolt Szakács, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba and Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna Katalin Szende, Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna András Vadas, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest László Veszprémy, Institute of Military History, Budapest Tamás Visi, Palacký University, Olomouc Yuriy Zazuliak, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv Nada Zečević, Goldsmiths University of London, London Agata Zielinska, University College, London Daniel Ziemann, Central European University, Budapest/​Vienna

Acknowledgments

“A tale is but half told when only one person tells it,” says a wise medieval maxim. Our group’s work on this Handbook would never have been complete without the gracious support of: Dr. Judith Rasson, Los Angeles, whose meticulous language scrutiny, experience in editing, and incredible degree of collegial patience helped us align our thoughts and formats with standard English usage and our dialects with the standards and style of native English expression. Professor Katalin Szende, Medieval Studies Department, Central European University, Vienna/​Budapest, director of the Medieval Central European Research Network (MECERN), who patiently used MECERN’s diverse resources to address all our needs for interdisciplinary expertise and smoothed our outreach to the members of the network. The Humanities’ Initiative at Central European University of Vienna/​Budapest, for generously providing the funds to foster discussion among the volume’s contributors at MECERN’s conferences in Olomouc and Zagreb (2016 and 2018), and for supporting the costs of preparing this volume for publication in the English language. Csilla Dobos, administrator of the Medieval Studies’ Department at the Central European University, Vienna/​Budapest, for her detailed and dogged support of this project. The late Professor János M. Bak, without whose incitement, encouragement, and scholarly input our work would have been far less motivated and intellectually rewarding. Our friends, colleagues, and dear ones, whose love and patience shielded us from all sorts of discomforts and challenges. We dedicate this Handbook to those among them whom we sadly lost during our journey.

Preface

Several years ago, a group of international medieval scholars (there must have been more than thirty individuals of various backgrounds and career stages) had a lively discussion over brown-bag lunches in the cafeteria of the University of Olomouc (Czech Republic), where they had gathered after a long session at MECERN’s Second Biennial Conference (Medieval Central European Research Network). The topic of their discussion was this collection. The idea for a handbook had been around for several years, raised intermittently in discussions at the Medieval Studies Department of Central European University. These conversations kept returning to the need to compare the diverse local interpretations of the region’s past and update the generally vague picture that this this region has in international, especially English-​speaking, literature. Publications of this scale are usually delineated, structured, and coordinated by a single editor or a small editorial team; but, in this case, it was the lively, casual meeting—under the baroque arches of the Olomouc university’s cafeteria, with its participants of diverse ages, academic positions, backgrounds, and interests—that established the conceptual framework for this volume. Unusual in mainstream humanities circles, this meeting and its informal modus operandi were, in fact, entirely justified. It was the only way to gather the initial critical input for such a project, in the form of a direct exchange of opinions from scholars of remarkable diversity and dispersion across the world. During the meeting, one heard a rare mixture of the world’s languages, marked by variable dynamics and accentuation of international English, the tones and undertones of which became one common voice after the group agreed that it did not want to produce a conventional report on the “glorious accomplishments” of the regional knowledge of the medieval period, but rather innovative and challenging accounts that blended critical debates, controversies, and contributors’ personal views of the field’s current trends and future perspectives. The group agreed that it also wanted to take a more flexible approach to the field’s usual “borders.” This is how medieval Central Europe became larger in this volume than the usually assumed space of its three “core” medieval kingdoms (Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary), stretching to the shores of the Baltic, the Adriatic, and the Black Sea, to accommodate and examine even modern geopolitical interpretations of the past; and to tie the “usual” medieval timeline (500–​1500 ce) to “the chronology of the space” that extends, when needed, to the reception and transmission of Late Antiquity and the Early Modern era, even to the present day. The final major agreement of the Olomouc cafeteria meeting was to experiment with authorship and collaborative networking. Instead of leaving it solely to the editors to decide upon and solicit chapter authors among the most

xvi   Preface visible and established scholars (determined by the criteria of seniority and specialization), the group agreed that the handbook should facilitate participation from all interested contributors, regardless of their formal positions within academia. Well aware of the professional backlash that medievalists meet in today’s commodifying world, the group was firm in their belief that the handbook should accommodate important but underrepresented scholarly voices—​junior researchers who are just embarking on their careers, and also scholars from less privileged parts of Europe who have little or no access to the international medievalists’ exchanges and networks; and colleagues from “industry,” who do not formally belong to academia but still provide prominent signposts and resources for studying medieval Central Europe. Over the next few years, this ambition turned into a series of exciting and fruitful communications. Some materialized into individually authored (or, better to say, centrally coordinated) chapters pieced together by many different contributors from all over the region and the world—​almost like a giant puzzle—​leading to some chapters representing larger, individually tailored pieces that were then scrutinized by interdisciplinary teams. Blending different disciplinary perspectives and levels of academic and personal experience, these mixtures yielded tangible and colorful “added value,” such as new questions and combined disciplinary perspectives. It took a while to align them with the conventions of academic publication and the handbook’s original timeline; it also required a complex approach to the handbook’s standard apparatus technicus, where even details commonly known to everyone but represented in a variety of ways— for instance, the names of the local rulers or bibliographic entries quoted differently in different local traditions—had to be discussed and formulated according to a consensus. These details needed to be worked out with meticulous diligence, with special help from the colleagues whose names are singled out in our Acknowledgments. The editors hope that dialogue and collaboration of this kind will continue and inspire new and innovative opportunities in the field. From the beginning, the spiritus movens of this Handbook was János M. Bak (1929–​ 2020), reputed for his endless energy in shaping medieval studies in Central Europe, especially at the Department of Medieval Studies’ at the CEU in Budapest, which, owing to his and his colleagues’ commitment, became a world-​renowned institution in innovative and global studies. To the international scholarly community, János is best known by his nickname, The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways, which he merited for his valuable and daring approaches to exciting topics such as medieval rulership, legal practices, structures of the region’s medieval society, folklore, and the uses and abuses of the past. He meticulously collected, translated, and interpreted primary sources of narrative and documentary type. Scholars of Central Europe also know János as a powerful academic (powerful in the very best sense of the word), who truly lived the region: His childhood in Budapest’s Újlipótváros in the 1930s, amid the smell of cakes and the sound of table cutlery coming from the open windows of his neighborhood; the memory of a teenage boy who avoided the Holocaust by wandering the familiar streets of Budapest that shielded him from the notorious Red Arrows militia (on one occasion, a narrow escape after “Oh, let’s leave him, it is just János”), and the determination of a

Preface   xvii young scholar to choose life in exile for more than thirty years over Soviet tanks and life in fear of their local puppets. With such personal experience already accumulated in his youth, what else would János offer as an academic and senior colleague but brave challenges and daring boundary crossings in every aspect of the discipline? János’s Central Europe was a place—​ perhaps better to say, a “theme”—​ where his courage, creativity, and life experience produced serious scholarship that some colleagues would describe as “German-​style precision” and a “cold-​blooded” critical approach that allowed no mercy for pro forma and artificially forced work. He never failed to express his opinion openly or prompt the existing state-​of-​the-​art, just as he never avoided acknowledging his colleagues’ accomplishments. Among all contributors to this Handbook, János, at ninety-​one years of age, was the first to submit his contributions by the deadline, and he worked on their revisions, fully focused and committed, even three days before he passed away. Among all our colleagues, he knew best the potential pitfalls of the protracted, “asymmetrically” structured dialogue that we adopted in organizing this volume, but he believed deeply in every participant, especially the less experienced ones. That we came to the end of this journey is largely the outcome of his unconditional support, which motivated all the contributors involved in this project. The medieval Central Europe residing in János M. Bak and his scholarly contri­butions cannot but generate strong and undivided emotions. Scholarship in the region will continue to rely on his marvelously conceived, informative, incredibly useful publications, just as it will evoke his intolerance of scholarship that lacks integrity or is motivated by dishonesty, arrogance, or rivalry. His students will continue propagating his lessons in the field, as well as values such as curiosity, lucidity, and humanity that prioritize the essence, the pleasure, and the common benefit of learning over form. This Handbook and its chapters, each in its own way, continue this legacy. Nada Zečević Daniel Ziemann London–​Budapest–​Vienna–​Cologne August 2020

Selected Bibliography

The selection of titles listed here is given for the convenience of the reader when summarizing the resources used by contributors in this account of medieval Central Europe. It does not represent, by any means, a comprehensive list of the topic’s bibliography.

Primary Sources Archdeacon Thomas of Split/​Thomae Archidiaconi Spalatensis. Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum/​History of the Bishops of Salona and Split. Latin text by Olga Perić. Edited, translated, and annotated by Damir Karbić, Mirjana Matijević Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney. Central European Medieval Texts 4. Budapest: CEU Press, 2006. Bak, János M., ed. Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae/​The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of ​ no/​4/​. Hungary. All Complete Monographs. Online, 2019. https://​dig​ital​comm​ons.usu.edu/​lib_​mo Charles IV. Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and His Legend of St. Wenceslas. Edited by Balázs Nagy and Frank Schaer. Budapest: CEU Press, 2001. Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae. Edited by Jakov Stipišić and Miljen Šamšalović. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1967. Constantine Porphyrogenitus. De administrando imperio. Edited by Gyula Moravcsik. Translated by R. J. H. Jenkins. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967. Cosmas of Prague. Chronica Bohemorum/​The Chronicle of the Czechs. Edited and translated by János M. Bak, Pavlina Rychetrová, et al. Budapest: CEU Press, 2019. Decreta regni medievalis Hungariae/​The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, Martyn Rady, et al. 5 vols. Idyllwild, CA–​Budapest: Schlacks–​Dept. of Medieval. Studies Central European University, 1989–​2007. Fontes rerum Bohemicarum. 8 vols. Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1871–​1932. Friedrich, Gustav, ed. Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris regni Bohemiae. Prague: Wiesner, 1904–​1907. [Gallus Anonymous]. Gesta principum Polonorum/​The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles. Translated and annotated by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer. Central European Medieval Texts 4. Budapest: CEU Press, 2003. Gerard of Csanád. Deliberatio Gerardi Moresanae ecclesiae episcopi Supra hymnum trium puerorum. Edited by Béla Karácsonyi and László Szegfű. Szeged: Scriptum, 1999. The Illuminated Chronicle: Chronicle of the Deeds of the Hungarians from the Fourteenth-​ Century Illuminated Codex/​Chronica de gestis Hungarorum e codice picto saec. xiv. Edited and translated by János M. Bak and László Veszprémy. Central European Medieval Texts 9. Budapest: CEU Press, 2018. Legenda vetus, acta processus canonizationis et miracula sanctae Margaritae de Hungaria/​The Oldest Legend, Acts of the Canonization Process, and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Hungary.

xx   Selected Bibliography Edited by Ildiko Csepregi, Gabor Klaniczay, and B. Péterfi. Translated by Ildiko Csepregi, C. Flanigan, and L. Perraud. Budapest: CEU Press, 2018. Joannis Dlugossi Annales seu cronicae incliti regni Poloniae, liber decimus, liber undecimus, liber duodecimus. Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985. Jus regale montanorum: Právo královské horníkuov. Edited by Jaroslav Bílek. Kutná Hora: Kuttna, 2000. Kadłubek, Vincentius. Chronica Polonorum. Edited by Marianus Plezia. Cracow: Secesja, 1994. Liber vetustissimus Antiquae Civitatis Pragensis 1310–​1518. Edited by Hana Pátková et al. Prague: Archiv hlavního města Prahy & Scriptorium, 2011. Monumenta Poloniae historica: Pomniki dziejowe Polski. 6 vols. Edited by Wydał A. Bielowski. Warsaw: Wydawn. Naukove, 1864–​1893. Monumenta Poloniae historica: Series nova. Instytut historii. Warsaw: Państwowe wyd. Naukowe, 1946–​present. Pfeifer, Guido Christian. Ius Regale Montanorum: Ein Beitrag zur spätmittelalterlichen Rezeptionsgeschichte des römischen Rechts in Mitteleuropa. Ebelsbach am Main: Aktiv, 2002. Sacri canones editandi. Edited by P. Krafl. Brno: Reprocentrum, 2017. Scriptores rerum hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis arpadianae gestarum. Vol. 1. Edited by Emericus Szentpétery. Budapest: Typographiae Reg. Universitatis Litterarum Hungarie, 1938. Scriptores rerum hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis arpadianae gestarum. Vol. 2. Edited by Kornél Szovák and László Veszprémy. Budapest: Nap, 1999. Sermones de sancto Ladislao rege Hungariae. Edited by Edit Madas. Debrecen: Debreceni Egyetem, 2004. Simon of Kéza/​Simonis de Kéza. Gesta Hungarorum/​The Deeds of the Hungarians. Translated and edited by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer. Central European Medieval Texts 1. Budapest: CEU Press, 1999. Statuty Kazimierza Wielkiego/​The Statutes of Casimir the Great. Edited by Oswald Balzer. Poznań: Nakl. Poznanskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciól Nauk, 1947. Vitae Sanctorum Aetatis Conversionis Europae Centralis (Saec. X–​ XI)/​ Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe (Tenth–​ Eleventh Centuries). Edited by Gábor Klaniczay. Translated by Cristian Gaspar and Marina Miladinov. Budapest: CEU Press, 2013. Werbőczy, Stephen. The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary &c./​Triparititum opus iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariae &c. Edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, and Martyn Rady. Idyllwild, CA; Budapest: Schlacks; Department of Medieval Studies, CEU, 2005.

Secondary Literature Adamska, Anna, and Marco Mostert, eds. The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Almási, Gábor, and Lav Šubarić, eds. Latin at the Crossroads of Identity. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Antonín, Robert. The Ideal Ruler in Medieval Bohemia. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Armstrong, G., and I. N. Wood, eds. Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Baár, Mónika. Historians and Nationalism: East-​Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Selected Bibliography   xxi Bachrach, Bernard S., and David S. Bachrach. Warfare in Medieval Europe, c.400–​c.1453. London: Routledge, 2017. Bak, János M., Jörg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet, and Bernd Schneidmüller, eds. Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–​21. Jahrhundert/​Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th–​21st Century/​Usages et mesusages du Moyen Age du XIXe au XXIe siècle. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009. Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Berend, Nora, ed. Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Berend, Nora, ed. The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds. Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Bjork, Robert E., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Blanchard, Ian. Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages. Vol. 3, Continuing Afro-​ European Supremacy, 1250–​1450. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005. Borgolte, Michael, and Bernd Schneidmüller, eds. Hybrid Cultures in Medieval Europe. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010. Bylina, Stanisław. Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages: Christianity and Traditional Culture in Central and Eastern Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019. Castaño, Javier, Talya Fishman, and Ephraim Kanarfogel, eds. Regional Identities and Cultures of Medieval Jews. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2018. Classen, Albrecht, ed. East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Classen, Albrecht, ed. Handbook of Medieval Culture. Vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Craciun, Maria, and Elaine Fulton, eds. Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–​1800. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Curta, Florin, ed. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Curta, Florin, and Roman Kovalev, eds. The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Dalewski, Zbigniew. Ritual and Politics: Writing the History of a Dynastic Conflict in Medieval Poland. Leiden: Brill, 2008. de Cevins, Marie-​Madeleine, Enikő Csukovits, Olivier Marin, Martin Nejedlý, and Przemysław Wiszewski. Démystifier l’Europe centrale. Bohême, Hongrie et Pologne du VIIe au XVIe siècle. Paris: Passés composés –​Humensis, 2021. de Cevins, Marie-​Madeleine, and Olivier Marin, eds. Les saints et leur culte en Europe centrale au Moyen Âge (XIe–​début du XVIe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. de Cevins, Marie-​Madeleine, and Ludovic Viallet, eds. L’économie des couvents mendiants en Europe centrale (Bohême, Hongrie, Pologne, v. 1220–​v. 1550). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018. Doležalová, Lucie, Gábor Kiss Farkas, and Rafał Wójcik. The Art of Memory in East Central Europe. Edited by Gábor Kiss Farkas. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016. Engel, Pál. The Realm of Saint Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–​1526. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001.

xxii   Selected Bibliography Erdélyi, Gabriella. Negotiating Violence: Papal Pardons and Everyday Life in East Central Europe, 1450–​1550. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Europa Jagellonica, Art and Culture in Central Europe under the Jagiellonian Dynasty. Prague: Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region, 2012. Fajt, Jiří, and Markus Hörsch, eds. Kaiser Karl IV 1316–​2016. Prague: National Gallery, 2016. Frost, Robert. The Oxford History of Poland-​Lithuania. Vol. 1, The Making of the Polish-​ Lithuanian Union, 1385–​1569. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Freedman, Paul, and Monique Bourin, eds. Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Gajewski, Alexandra, and Zoe Opacic, eds. The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture. Turnhout: Brill, 2007. Gancarczyk, Paweł, and Agnieszka Leszczyńska, eds. The Musical Heritage of the Jagiellonian Era. Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki PAN, 2012. Garipzanov, Ildar H., Patrick J. Geary, and Przemyslaw Urbańczyk, eds. Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Gecser, Otto, Jószef Laszlovszky, Balasz Nagy, Marcell Sebők, and Katalin Szende, eds. Promoting the Saints: Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for His 60th Birthday. Budapest: CEU Press, 2011. Girsztowt, Aleksandra, Piotr Kitowski, and Andrzej Gierszewski, eds. Origines et mutationes: Transfer–​Exchange–​Power. Cracow: Widawnictwo-​Filop Lohner, 2017. Górecki, Piotr, and Nancy van Deusen, eds. Central Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages: A Cultural History; Essays in Honour of Paul W. Knoll. London: Tauris, 2009. Jaritz, Gerhard, and Katalin Szende, eds. Medieval East Central Europe in Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Land in Focus. London: Routledge, 2016. Homza, Martin. Mulieres suadentes—​Persuasive Women: Female Royal Saints in Medieval East Central and Eastern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Horníčková, Kateřina, and Michal Šroněk, From Hus to Luther: Visual Culture of the Bohemian Reformation. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Hunyadi, Zsolt, and József Lászlovszky, eds. The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity. Budapest: CEU Press, 2001. Jacobsen, Grethe, and Heide Wunder, eds. East Meets West: A Gendered View of Legal Tradition. Kiel: Solivagus Verlag, 2015. Jamroziak, Emilia. The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe, 1090–​1500. London: Routledge, 2013. Jaritz, Gerhard, T. Jorgensen, and Kirsi Salonen, eds. The Long Arm of Papal Authority: Late Medieval Christian Peripheries and Their Communication with the Holy See. Budapest: CEU Press, 2005. Jaritz, Gerhard, and Katalin Szende, eds. Forgotten Region: East Central Europe in the “Global Middle Ages.” London: Routledge 2016. Jaritz, Gerhard, and Katalin Szende, eds. Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus. London: Routledge, 2016. Jovanović, Kosana, and Suzana Miljan, eds. Secular Power and Sacred Authority in Medieval Central Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2018. Jung, Elżbieta, ed. What Is New in the New Universities? Learning in Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages (1340–​1500). Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2018. Kalous, Anton. The Late Medieval Papal Legation: Between the Council and the Reformation. Rome: Viella, 2017. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013.

Selected Bibliography   xxiii Keene, Derek, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende, eds. Segregation, Integration, Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Klaniczay, Gabor. Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Klaniczay, Gábor, and Balázs Nagy, eds. Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects: Selected Studies. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Klăpśtě, Jan. The Czech Lands in Medieval Transformation. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Klassen, John. The Nobility and the Making of the Hussite Revolution. New York: University Presses of California, Columbia, and Princeton, 1978. Kleingärtner, Sunhild, Timothy P. Newfield, Sébastien Rossignol, and Donat Wehner, eds. Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe: Interactions between Environmental Settings and Cultural Transformations. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013. Est. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Kłoczowski, Jerzy, ed. Histoire de l’Europe du Centre–​ France, 2004. Kłoczowski, Jerzy, Pawel Kras, and Wojciech Polak, eds. Christianity in East-​Central Europe. Late Middle Ages. Lublin: KUL, 1999. Kouřil, Pavel, et al., eds. The Cyril and Methodius Mission and Europe: 1150 Years since the Arrival of the Thessaloniki Brothers in Great Moravia. Brno: The Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014. Kras, Paweł, and James D. Mixson, eds. The Grand Tour of John of Capistrano in Central and Eastern Europe (1451–​1456). Transfer of Ideas and Strategies of Communication in the Late Middle Ages. Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk-​Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2018. Láng, Benedek. Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Louthan, Howard, and Graeme Murdock, eds. A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Machaček, Jiři. The Rise of Medieval Towns and States in East Central Europe, Early Medieval Centres as Social and Economic Systems. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Mell, Julie L. The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Miladinov, Marina. Margins of Solitude: Eremitism in Central Europe between East and West. Zagreb: Leykam International, 2008. Miljan, Suzana, Éva B. Halász, and Alexandru Simon, eds. Reform and Renewal in Medieval East and Central Europe: Politics, Law and Society. Cluj-​Napoca: Romanian Academy of Sciences; Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts; London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2019. Mielke, Christopher, and Andrea-​ Bianka Znorovszky, eds. Same Bodies, Different Women: “Other” Women in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2019. Mortensen, Lars Boje, ed. The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–​1300). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2006. Nagy, Balasz, Felicitas Schmieder, András Vadas, eds, The Medieval Networks in East Central Europe: Commerce, Contacts, Communication. London: Routledge, 2019. Nowakowska, Natalia, ed. Remembering the Jagiellonians. London: Routledge, 2019. O’Doherty, Marianne, and Felicitas Schmieder, eds. Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.

xxiv   Selected Bibliography Opačić, Zoë, ed. Prague and Bohemia: Medieval Art, Architecture and Cultural Exchange in Central Europe. Leeds: Maney, 2009. Ostrowski, Donald, and Christian Raffensperger, eds. Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900–​1400. London: Routledge, 2018. Pánek, Jaroslav, and Oldřich Tůma, et al., eds. A History of the Czech Lands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Piskorski, Jan, ed. Historiographical Approaches on the Medieval Colonization of East Central Europe: A Comparative Analysis against the Background of Other European Inter-​Ethnic Colonization Processes in the Middle Ages. Boulder: Columbia University Press, 2002. Rady, Martyn. Customary Law in Hungary: Courts, Texts and the Tripartitum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Rossignol, Sébastien, and Anna Adamska, eds. Formen der Schriftkultur im Ostmitteleuropa des Mittelalters (13.–​14. Jahrhundert). Vienna: Böhlau, 2016. Rychterová, Pavlína, ed. Pursuing a New Order. Vol. 1, Religious Education in Late Medieval Central and Eastern Central Europe. Vol. 2, Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Rychterová, Pavlína, Gábor Klaniczay, Paweł Kras, and Walter Pohl, eds. Times of Upheaval: Four Medievalists in Twentieth-​Century Central Europe; Conversations with Jerzy Kłoczowski, János M. Bak, František Šmahel, and Herwig Wolfram. Budapest: CEU Press, 2019. Sárosi, Edit. Deserting Villages, Emerging Market Towns: Settlement Dynamics and Land Management in the Great Hungarian Plain, 1300–​1700. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2016. Selart, A. Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century. Translated by F. Robb. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Shoham-​ Steiner, Ephraim, ed. Intricate Interfaith Networks: Quotidian Jewish-​ Christian Contacts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Spinei, Victor. The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-​Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Šmahel, František, and Ota Pavlíček, eds. A Companion to Jan Hus. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Takács, Imre, ed. Sigismundus rex et imperator: Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismund Von Luxemburg, 1387–​1437. Mainz: Phillipp von Zabern, 2006. Endre Tóth, Tivadar Vida, and Imre Takács, eds. Saint Martin and Pannonia: Christianity on the Frontiers of the Roman World. Pannonhalma-​Szombathely: Abbey Museum–​Museum Savariense, 2016. Salamon, Maciej, Marcin Wołoszyn, Alexander Musin, and Perica Špehar, eds. Rome, Constantinople and Newly-​Converted Europe, Archaeological and Historical Evidence. 2 vols. Cracow: Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas, Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN, Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2012. Trencsényi, Balázs, Maciej Janowski, Mónika Baár, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopeček. A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. van Dussen, Michael. From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Verkholantsev, Julia. The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome: The History of the Legend and Its Legacy, or, How the Translator of the Vulgate Became an Apostle of the Slavs. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014. von Güttner-​Sporzyński, Darius. Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–​1230. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Zaoral, Roman, ed. Money and Finance in Central Europe in the Later Middle Ages, Part II: Medieval Court Funding. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Introduction

“Central Eu rope ” Perceptions, Definitions, and Comparisons in a Historiographical Context Nada Zečević

If you ask me what is my native country, I answer: I was born in Fiume, grew up in Belgrade, Budapest, Pressburg [Bratislava], Vienna and Munich, and I have a Hungarian passport, but I have no fatherland. I am a very typical mix of old Austria-​Hungary: at once Magyar, Croatian, German, and Czech; my country is Hungary; my mother tongue is German. (Ödön von Horváth)

Starting a handbook of medieval Central Europe by repeating the widely known myth of Austro-​Hungarian multiethnicity from the turn of the twentieth century couldn’t be a better introduction to historical reflections about Central Europe and its medieval past. In the romantic terms of its own time, this quotation shapes the region, showing it as a vast portion of the European continent that stretches from the Alps to the Dniester and from the Baltic to the Adriatic, marked by a unique, shared historical experience of multiethnic cohabitation. Once conjoined by the mighty Dual Monarchy, today this region is centered on the modern states of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria, to which one can add neighboring Germany, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-​Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, or even the countries of the Soviet East, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, when attempting to examine the region’s long-​term historical interactions. Central Europe was never a fixed territory nor was it ever a formally unified polity. Perceptions and representations of it are mental constructs, fabricated, reshaped and even changed radically over time according to various needs. Some would call this space an imagined realm of many different faces—​nostalgic images of the Habsburg “cauldron of nations,” but also landscapes of survival in an “ambiguous,” unknown, and unstable zone. As a distinctive mental projection, Central Europe existed as early as

2   Nada Zečević

Figure I.1.  Opicinus de Canistris, Vaticanus latinus 6435—​phantasmic anthropological map. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 6435 77r, 1335–​1338.

Introduction: “Central Europe”    3 the Middle Ages, when it was depicted as an obscure territory, blurred and peripheral in relation to the centers of medieval Europe.1 The phantasmic anthropological map created by Opicinus de Canistris (1337), for instance, shows it as the continent’s obscene body part—​the lower back of Europa, presented as a young woman carrying a child in her womb (the space between today’s Lombardy-​Germany), with apparent genitals (Europe as a gentrix nationum?) positioned around Venice, and a monster threatening immediately behind her back (see Figure I.1).2 Another famous anthropological map, Sebastian Münster’s imperial Europa Regina (1570), places Central Europe on the lower parts of the queen’s dress, descending from Germany positioned at her waist (again, with a baby in the queen’s belly), to Hungaria and Polonia placed where the queen’s reproductive organs should be, then Sclavonia, Lithuania, and Livonia around the queen’s knees, and Skythia, Moscowia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Morea (the Peloponnese) covering her feet (see Figure I.2).

Figure I.2. Munster Europa Regina map, 1590.

4   Nada Zečević When we think of Central Europe today, we usually view it with a variety of modern geopolitical concepts that started to circulate increasingly from the nineteenth century. Among them, the basic “formative” delineation was the view of German imperial expansionism, which projected a need to advance toward the Baltic and the Slavic East in order to “restore” the Germans’ “natural”/​ancestral life space (Lebensraum; see Figure I.3). During the events of 1848, when the German question was actualized, the Austrian bureaucrat Karl Ludwig von Bruck and German administration scholar Lorenz von Stein used this projection to coin the term Mitteleuropa, by which they meant a common space with interlocking economic confederations, all dominated by the Germans. As its essence was the idea of pan-​German unity, the notion of Mitteleuropa was equally embraced by two German imperial polities of the time, Prussia and Austro-​ Hungary. Following their mutual conflict in 1866, however, this conception eventually branched into two separate notions, each reflecting different territorial ambitions. For the Habsburgs, Mitteleuropa meant the zone of the Großdeutsche Lösung (Greater German Solution) that targeted multiethnic zones of the Habsburg’s interest in the Danube basin (as far as today’s Transylvania and the routes toward the Black Sea) and the Ottoman/​post-​Ottoman Balkans (hence including Greece and later Turkey so as to enter the Aegean). Prussia laid a more northern-​oriented claim of Kleindeutsche Lösung (the Small German Solution) that allowed its Drang nach Osten (Drive toward the East), colonialism by settlers directed toward the Baltic and territories of the Russian Empire.3 In validating this essentially colonial view, German national ideologists turned to the German Romantic national scholarship that had already started to

Figure I.3.  The Nazi Lebensraum Map, 1933, as from Deutscher Schulatlas: Heimatteil Gau Baden. Berlin: Gemeinschaftsverlag Deutscher Schulatlas-​Verleger, 1942.

Introduction: “Central Europe”    5 examine historical themes that justified the presence of their ancient German “ancestry” in the area between the Elbe and Saale Rivers (so-​called West-​Central Europe), then Pomerania and the Baltic, along the eastward flow of the Oder and the Danube (designated as East-​Central Europe).4 These interpretations backed the views of the German “restauration” as a cultural hegemony, proposing germanization as the most powerful tool for dominating the non-​German locals of the realm—​various groups of ethnic Slavs, settled there since the early Middle Ages and designated as an inferior, wild, and uncivilized race by the European West since the Enlightenment era.5 The end of World War I brought some important changes to the imperial view of Mitteleuropa. In 1915, Friedrich Neuman projected a utopian and liberal, but still essentially state-​centric and hegemonic perception, seeing the region’s population as Wirtschaftsvolk (economic people) economically bound to Germany.6 Another interpretation was essentially revisionist, proposing the use of the military force as a radical way of “continuing” German medieval colonization in the East by first eliminating the region’s non-​Germanic inhabitants, eventually leading to the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and Roma people.7 The post–​ World War I views of Mitteleuropa also reflected the geopolitical perceptions of other European and world powers.8 At the Paris Peace Conference (1919), the Allies of the Entente Coalition, for instance, prompted the concept of the Heartland (out of which grew the French view of Europe centrale; see Figure I.4), which had to act as a “soft” or “gray” buffer zone in order to prevent any new attempt at German expansion, and, even more importantly in that moment, to protect the European West from the newly risen communist Soviet East. In this mission, the Heartland view assigned a special role to the region’s non-​Germanic nations—​Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians,

Figure I.4.  Macinder’s Heartland map. (Available from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-​SA 4.0.)

6   Nada Zečević Hungarians, South Slavs, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Greeks, whose national countries were newly recognized, significantly reshaped, or formally confirmed at the Paris Peace Conference. Perceived as pivots, and sometimes together called a “wedge” in the region’s eastern section (again, reflecting a view of the region as East-​Central Europe), over time these states were further valued as an antemurale for any global threat to the West that would come from the (Far) East.9 The Heartland concept prompted local national perceptions, too. Among them was the notable Polish idea of Intermarium (Międzymorze, a space between the seas), which proposed a Slavic federation centered in the newly rising Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth, linked in the south with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929) and thus connecting the Baltic with the Adriatic along the lines of the pan-​Slavic unity that had been widely propagated in the region since the end of the French revolution.10 The Heartland concept eventually left its mark on later visions of Central Europe, namely, those of the “Third Europe,” in which East-​Central Europe is classified as Zwischeneuropa—​a separate part of European civilization, positioned between the (Latin/​Catholic) West and (Slavic/​Orthodox) East. Among some of most recent interpretations generated by this view, the EU’s concept of the “New Europe” gathers the countries of the ex-​Soviet bloc that joined the EU between 2005 and 2015 and local projects promoting regional and transregional protection and collaboration, such as the Visegrád Group or the Danube initiative, and even radical ideas based on Huntington’s views of the clash of civilizations, by which the region’s right-​wing regimes or movements (e.g., the Hungarian prime-​minister Viktor Orbán, the Polish nationalist Law and Justice party, Slovakia’s neo-​fascist Kotleba, or Serbia’s far-​right movement Dveri) attempt to justify their countries as the defense zone of modern Christian Europe.11 Soviet control of Central Europe from 1945 to the 1990s brought another significant shift in the perception of Central Europe, moving it toward the sphere of an ideologically stereotypic imagination. With the Berlin Wall dividing the capitalist West and the socialist East, Soviet troops stationed in the region, and local communist satellite regimes, Central Europe’s eastern parts became territorially disconnected from their western sections, turning into a rimland—​a border area “on the enemy’s side” located “behind” the Iron Curtain, and commonly perceived as a different, menacing, and backward “Other.”12 It took almost forty years for the local dissident intelligentsia—​ sympathetically received in the West—​to challenge this perception with a perspective on the region’s suppressed Western identity, “kidnapped” by the communist East (Milan Kundera).13 Reflecting the “inside” critique of the regime after the Hungarian revolution (1956) and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), and sustained by the postmodern thought of the early 1980s, this view eventually fused diverse assumptions of Polish philosophy, Czech avant-​garde literature, and Hungarian social theory into common perceptions of the region, seen as an area of “uncontrolled” contacts and exchange by Leszek Kołakowski, as a pluralist way of “viewing things” (Weltanschaung) by György Konrád, or a specific “state of mind” by Czesław Miłosz—​all highlighting the region’s history in an attempt to invent Central Europe—​a construct that claims the region’s “restored geographic centrality,” cultural “westernity,” and the need of its people to integrate into the EU.14

Introduction: “Central Europe”    7 The framework that directed modern historiographic interpretations of Central Europe’s past was constructed over two hundred years and influenced by various political agendas emphasizing the region’s historical features. Research on medieval times is no exception here, regardless of how detached it may look from the point of view of the modern political agenda.15 Justifying the imperial expansionism and ideas about the German “restoration” in the Slavic East, nineteenth-​century German medievalists studied the northern parts of medieval Central Europe (the Baltic and Pomerania) as a space closely linked with their ancestral origin (Jordanes Gothiscandza as a vagina nationum), valuing with a particular patriotic pride themes such as the Völkerwanderung (The Great Migration, ad 200–​700) or the German colonization of the East fostered by rulers from Charlemagne (768–​814) and his successors to the Hohestauffen dynasty and the Teutonic Order.16 The early-​and mid-​twentieth-​century national historiographies of the region’s non-​German states, from their side, historicized their own nations, stressing—​some even affecting triumphant and nationalist views in our current times17—​the historical processes that made their polities genuinely distinctive from other parts of medieval Europe, thus grounding the development of their modern national states and the need to connect within the region. In this, the Polish historian Oskar Halecki (a World War II émigré to the United States) was particularly prominent coining the modern phrase “East-​Central Europe” to explain a space that included not just the region’s core territories but also Finland, Greece, and Turkey at its eastern borders and the German medieval polities to its west. This emphasized medieval East-​Central Europe as a place “between” two major juxtapositions, which he saw as key in the region’s history—​the Slavic East and the German West.18 This further evolved into a concept devised by the Czech scholar Francis Dvornik (himself an émigré to the United States), who presented this juxtaposition more as a line that divided Western/​Latin culture from an Eastern culture that was essentially Slavic, but dominated by the universal Byzantine/​Greek Empire.19 The Romanian nationalist historian Nicolae Iorga took a similar position, as did the Russian noble émigré Georg A. Ostrogorsky, whose Byzantinist disciples in Belgrade prioritized the relations of the southeastern Slavic realm with Byzantium, setting the stage for Dimitri Obolensky’s later proposition of the “Byzantine Commonwealth,” seen as a Slavic space dominated by the “superior” Byzantine civilization.20 In Hungary, Jenő Szűcs laid similar stress on the region as a separate entity of civilization positioned between the medieval East and West. Importantly, in his view of medieval East-​Central Europe, Szűcs suggested viewing the region as a “connecting bridge” rather than a line of separation, proposing a focus on various forms of transmission and exchange that took place between the two halves of medieval Europe. This stance further influenced his conclusions about the quick and compressed development of the region’s core medieval polities, the Kingdoms of Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia, after the tenth century, but also his assumptions that the prevailing influences there were those of the medieval European West, thus basically backing the modern claims to the region’s “Western” identity.21 Szűcs’s views, no doubt, fitted well the post-​Soviet calls for European integration, and with them came the region’s new identification as Central Europe, with a quest for re-​examining its medieval past as a whole and comparing its diverse parts. Since 2015,

8   Nada Zečević within the region itself, this quest has been promoted by a comprehensive network of local medievalists (Medieval Central European Research Network, MECERN) that is acting globally, liaising with other centers and researchers all over the world interested in medieval Central Europe. One outcome of this exchange is this Handbook, initiated at MECERN’s First Biennial Conference in Budapest in 2014. Summarizing the main directions of research about medieval Central Europe from the mid-​1990s until today (2021), one has to note the comparative and global views that gave rise to a perception of the region’s medieval past as an entity consisting of many different but interacting (local and global) entities. At its core, this perception has been affirmed by re-​examining medieval borders and their characteristics that allowed fluctuation, exchange of influences, and dynamic interactions between the German West and Slavic/​Byzantine East, also integrating Eastern and Southeastern Europe into the narrative22 as well as other parts of the medieval globe with which medieval Central Europe communicated in many diverse ways.23 Debates about the formation of medieval Central Europe have revived scholars’ interest in migrations and some new insights into the region’s Others, focusing on groups coming from the East such as the Magyars, Cumans, Mongols, and even local Jews, previously interpreted as marginal in the context of the region’s national historiographies, or surveyed largely from the perspective of these observed communities’ segregation.24 Another important theme that emerged as a factor of the region’s medieval integration—​but also of conflicts in and about it—​was Christianization. There, scholarship took into account the zones of the region’s interaction with the centers of medieval Europe’s Christianity, but also its distant peripheries such as the Nordic North and Orthodox Rus.25 In viewing the region’s populations, scholars have recently paid more attention to the lower strata of the elites and commoners; this micro-​approach “from below” has yielded valuable comparable case studies on structures of authority, power, and collaboration26 as well as the spheres of private and daily life, common memory, and manifestations of shared cultures,27 all previously ignored by traditional national historiographies.28 Applied to more detailed comparisons of feudal relations, now seen more as multiple loyalties than ideally structured hierarchies, and also to the nature of landholding and legal/​customary practices,29 the micro-​approach has also proved valuable in discerning some new aspects of human life in the Central Europe during the Middle Ages, such as the region’s environmental resources, interactions of its humans with nature, urban life, space-​and power relations,30 local economies, communication and literacy, and the region’s image as seen in other parts of medieval Europe.31 Encouraged by the recent calls to re-​examine their own profession, the region’s medievalists and their colleagues worldwide who specialize in medieval Central Europe have compared modern historiographic interpretations of Central Europe’s medieval past and their presentalist uses and abuses (“medievalism”),32 generating advanced ways of integrating their knowledge into responsible popular education about the region’s common heritage,33 and facilitating the inclusion of Central Europe into the “all-​European (or even global) view of the past.”34 Yet, despite this increased focus on comparisons and enhanced medieval connections (including their divergences), as far as the European/​Global West is concerned, medieval Central Europe still remains a somewhat underesteemed scholarly subject. Far from

Introduction: “Central Europe”    9 specialized centers dealing with the region, old, stereotyped views of Central Europe still seem to be rooted in international medieval historiography that projects a common perception of the realm as incomprehensible and “exotic,” drawing from patchy and fragmented old knowledge about its history. In the West, these views are often unclear just because of a lack of knowledge of the regional languages, which becomes especially apparent when this knowledge is aligned with some well-​illuminated areas of medieval Europe, such as France or the Mediterranean, with scholars’ detailed focus on Italy at the center, and “peripheral” zones such as the Iberian peninsula and the Byzantine East.35 Even in the region itself, knowledge about medieval Central Europe sometimes tends to be hermetic and self-​isolated, and this is especially seen in the national establishments that prefer to portray the glories of their nations or the bright moments of their pasts led by triumphant heroes.36 With this in mind, the aforementioned First MECERN Biennial Conference in Budapest in 2014 and the subsequent publication of its key papers (2016) informed international medieval scholarship of diverse stances for viewing medieval Central Europe as “forgotten,” proposing a new debate about the fluidity of its borders and taxonomies, and highlighting the need to address the patches and fragments of knowledge about the region’s medieval commonalities.37 Another important contribution to laying the groundwork for this debate was recently provided by Florin Curta (in 2019), whose two-​volume Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300), although not specifically taking the stance of a Central European narrative, gave a comprehensive bibliographic list of field publications, focusing comparatively on the most remarkable sociopolitical aspects of the region’s High Middle Ages and proposing a model for studying the change across the region’s diverse areas that reflected close interactions with both the East and the West.38 More recently, an attempt to systematize the current methodological approaches by research trends was made at the MECERN Biennial conferences in Olomouc (2016) and Zagreb (2018), where a core group of the authors of this Handbook was formed. Their aim was to present a summary of discussions in the form of a reference book that would allow them to demonstrate the guiding principles of what the current generation of scholars sees as medieval Central Europe and how it proposes to study this region by using advanced interdisciplinary methodologies.39 To do this, the Handbook’s authors mobilized a larger group of contributors, in which well-​established names were paired with their students and junior scholars—​altogether, more than fifty authors and their collaborators at diverse stages of their careers were put in constant dialogue while working on their contributions, thus resonating professional voices of different experiential backgrounds and diverse scholarly cultures. We believe that the diversity of these synergies will be greatly beneficial for academic readers worldwide, and also for general global readers, who increasingly extend their trips to Central Europe, and tend to seek more focused directions into the region’s medieval past while they explore heritage or visit off-​the-​beaten-​track sites rarely even mentioned in commercial guidebooks. The collaborations initiated at and through MECERN biennial conferences and other activities of this network are reflected in the Handbook’s structure. Here, chapter authors and their joint research groups—​some operating as coauthors, some as less formal circles of collaboration—​were invited to take diverse disciplinary and methodological

10   Nada Zečević approaches, address assigned topics in their own style, use various taxonomies, and express their personal opinions about the topics’ perspectives. In organizing this group, the primary aim was not to gather the leading experts in subject fields, as is usually done, but rather to consciously promote the heterogeneity of authors in their approaches, regional distribution, and the varieties of their academic statuses, thus putting into the Handbook a rare attestation of local scholarly diversity and a unique field dialogue about the very nature of medievalists’ discipline and profession. In terms of Central Europe’s spatiality, readers will notice that the Handbook goes far beyond the borders of the region’s core medieval monarchies (Hungary-​Bohemia-​ Poland), following, wherever possible, the lines of its transregional and global connections, thus covering areas that are usually seen as outside or marginal to Central Europe—​among them, most notably the Balkans, the Rus’ East, Italy, and Scandinavia (see Figure I.5). To track such a vast and ambiguous space, the Handbook also adopted a broader chronological framework. It starts with medieval Central Europe’s “formative moments,” seen as the points in time when key changes occurred in the region around the year ad 800, most notably early medieval migrations, Christianization, and foundation of medieval polities, ending around the year ad 1500, which is seen as a common

Figure I.5.  Modern physical map of Central Europe and its surroundings. (Available from FreeWorldMaps.net.)

Introduction: “Central Europe”    11 period of change from medieval to early modern contexts, marked by large transformative processes such as the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans (1453–​1500) and Hungary (1526), Humanism in Italy, and the (pre)Reformation period.40 Within this time frame, chapter authors made their own chronologies that reflect the specific dynamics of their topics, diverting, when necessary, to Late Antiquity or even modern times to show the long-​lasting effects of medieval-​period transmissions and the epoch’s reception. The outcome of these approaches is the Handbook’s division into four main sections. The first, “Land, People, and Structures of Power,” introduces the key shapes, natural resources, and actors that participated in the political, social, and cultural interactions in medieval Central Europe. Chapter 1, by András Vadas, thus deals comparatively with the specifics of the region’s climate, its landscapes, and natural resources, surveying how these factors affected the region’s medieval population. Adding to this outline, c­ hapter 2, by Daniel Ziemann, introduces medieval people—​diverse groups settled here from the East during the early Middle Ages, including the Avars and Slavs (sixth to eighth century), their encounters with the Franks in the West, and later settlers, such as the Hungarians (ninth to tenth century) and other nomadic groups that followed during the High Middle Ages. Polities that developed from these migrations after the tenth century are introduced by Julia Burkhardt in c­ hapter 3, where she presents examples of political community and its legitimization during the High Medieval period as kingdoms or early-​modern Ständestaat. Within these polities, ­chapter 4 by János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan explores administrative practices, while legal systems and jurisdictions are examined in ­chapter 5 by János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak, singling out medieval laws as important factors of diversity, their relation to Christianization, and also a variety of structures and practices applied in legal administration (urban, village, royal, ducal, and so on) and jurisdiction. As these legal practices frequently led to open conflict, ­chapter 6 introduces medieval war and warfare. Here, Attila Bárány highlights two distinct phases of conflict that dominated the region during the Middle Ages—​the first was characterized by the tribal military organization of nomadic Hungarian and Slavic migrations, and the second, by warfare that developed in the period, which lasted until the Ottoman conquest of Hungary in 1526. In ­chapter 7, László Veszprémy also deals with conflicts, but places them into a broader social perspective, tracing their various forms and methods of collaborative resolution. Emir O. Filipović reviews the forms of Christianity and relations its processes formatted in the Slavic Balkans, while Pawel Figurski discusses dynastic attitudes to the crown in medieval Poland. Viewing the methods that prompted conflicts, Gerald Schwedler focuses on approaches to religious controversies, such as the Hussites, to which Christian Raffensperger adds the processes of separation, interconnectedness, and othering in the Slavic East. How natural resources and contexts of residence and government affected the region’s social relations is the topic of the Handbook’s second section, “Society and Economy.” In ­chapter 8, Cosmin Popa-​Gorjanu takes a deep dive into the nobility of Central Europe—​ first reviewing their self-​perception and our modern understanding of what it meant to be noble in medieval Central Europe, then elaborating the stratification of the region’s aristocracies by their roles in administration and landholding. In this, he pays special

12   Nada Zečević attention to the lesser nobility—​a circle that has often been disregarded in twentieth-​ century historiography. Similarly, in c­ hapter 9, Stephen Donecker challenges old static overviews of the region’s ideal social order, observing the complex interplay of various migratory relations, namely, those between migrants and their host societies, as well as diverse forms of social mobility that did not necessarily reflect the region’s usual ethnic or social distinctions. Taking the concept of mobility further into the sphere of the family, ­chapter 10 by Mihaela Antonín Malaníková, Witold Brzeziński and Marija Mogorović Crljenko recounts converging structures and patterns of familial exchange (marriage), as they were documented in diverse public records across the region; the authors’ main interest was in the node of marital relations and social interactions that determined gender and familial roles, especially those of women, which modern historiographers have largely underestimated up until recently. From familial structures, in c­ hapter 11 Edit Sárosi shifts our focus to wider structural relations in the region’s food production. Showing how management of rural resources changed to expand the rural production from the thirteenth century on, she points out the important transformations in food-​ production patterns, and new technologies that made the region comparable to parts of the European medieval West. From rural landscapes, c­ hapter 12 by Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder, takes us toward the region’s urban structures, where, prior to the thirteenth century, they find Church and princely or royal initiatives to be the key driving forces of urbanization. They trace subsequent changes, especially apparent in the eastern parts of Central Europe, in regional and long-​distance trade and production based on settlers who followed ius Theutonicum—​a flexible juridical concept created to accommodate newcomers’ immunities and obligations in areas that were not under the tight control of the Holy Roman Empire. Chapter 13, authored by Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy, turns, then, to a more substantial focus on urban production and commerce. It comparatively addresses the circumstances that prompted the region’s trade, such as minting, credit management, and monetary reforms, then focuses on the flow of locally and transregionally exchanged goods, and touches on long-​distance routes that connected Central Europe with other parts of Europe. This raises some new questions, such as common difficulties in urban production and commerce (e.g., technical problems in mining), indicating some new types of primary sources (e.g., customs’ books) that need to be scrutinized in future research. Cultural assets and relations prompted by the region’s socioeconomic development, as well as the ways in which these assets were used to create a comparable transregional experience, are all arranged in the Handbook’s third section, “Culture and Religion.” The section opens with ­chapter 14, in which Lucie Doležalová and Farkas Gábor Kiss describe diverse landscapes of education and literacy. In these segments of the region’s culture they address education infrastructures and their relations to Western European models, as well as the emerging literary languages of Central Europe’s eastern areas, assessing the common elements of literacy and education as given by modern national literary histories. Chapter 15 by Anna Adamska directs us toward various other forms of social communication and symbolism that framed the meanings of the spoken word, letters, and images. Focusing on elements of nonverbal communication, she examines

Introduction: “Central Europe”    13 the diverse communication capacities of particular regional groups, as well as the varying expectations in the region’s sociocultural interactions. Similarly, Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić make a cross-​cultural analysis of the nonverbal language of the region’s art in c­ hapter 16, presenting the entangled examples of artistic patronage across diverse genres, as well as how visual strategies, technical achievements, and stylistic developments were affected by historical change. From word culture, orality, and art, ­chapter 17 by Gerhard Jaritz takes us to the region’s material culture and its reception, zooming in on some rarely studied daily practices such as drinking beer, or visiting a religious house, but also topics that have only recently started to attract scholarly attention, among them the attitudes of the region’s societies toward food consumption and management of health and disease. ­Chapter 18 by Stanislava Kuzmová traces the common aspects of the region’s religious practices, while ­chapter 19 by Agatha Zielinska and Igor Razum addresses the political aspects of the presence of the Roman Curia in medieval Central Europe, reflecting on diverse forms of the Church’s power relations in Central Europe, and more liberty given in Poland or the Baltic region as opposed to more constraint put on Bohemia and its direct attachment to the papacy. As a special paradigm of the regional Other, in ­chapter 20, Tamas Visi reviews the practices of the world of Jewish communities, comparing their structures, legal frameworks, economy, rabbinic movements, intellectual life, and culture across the region, and summing up their influence on the key modern anti-​Semitic and anti-​Jewish views projected during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Another paradigm of the region’s specific community—​monasticism—​is addressed by the group of authors who worked on ­chapter 21 under the direction of Marie-​Madelaine de Cevins. Noting the differences in the density of the monasteries in Central Europe and the European West, as well as a somewhat belated appearance of these communities compared to the European medieval West, this group depicts a special diversity patterned by monastic foundations and “Western” models in the organization of monasteries’ structures, also noting some important links deriving from the proximity of Oriental Christianity, especially apparent in the monastic landscape of medieval Hungary. Various outcomes of the regional interactions, as well as the region’s perceptions in other parts of the medieval and modern world, are the topic of the Handbook’s fourth section, “Images of the Past.” There, c­ hapter 22 by Levente Seláf analyzes stereotypes by which the local population was described in the medieval West and their image reshaped over centuries by diverse Western influences, highlighting especially perceptions of the Slavs. In his reflection on music, in ­chapter 23, Paweł Gancarczyk challenges traditional interpretations that profiled the musical culture of Central Europe in its relation to the European West, showing how in different parts of the region various models arose from the influence of France, the Netherlands, and Italy, and also how they transformed into specific musical forms that are nowadays recognized as a distinctive regional contribution to the broader identity of medieval Europe. Chapter 24, by János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay closes this Handbook with a reflection on popular memories and various manifestations of interest in the real or imaginary Middle Ages circulated in the past three centuries. Often connected with political agendas that we tend to classify as

14   Nada Zečević “medievalism,” they bring in some important fragments of Central Europe’s “culture of memory” and ways in which modern colonial establishments use its past, “softly” shaping it to justify the recent revival of dictatorship in modern Central Europe. Closing this rare dynamic scholarly synergy that gathered several dozen historians from Central Europe and worldwide, of different ages, career levels, education, disciplinary interests, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, we must mention the extraordinary circumstances and challenges that shaped the contributions of this Handbook of Medieval Central Europe in many different ways. The general readership may imagine the process of writing a scholarly work in a stereotypic way, as being done by scholars who are nested in the tranquility of stable institutional environments. Such a conception could not be more mistaken. As we are putting out final remarks to this Handbook, numerous challenges are arising for the region’s medieval historians. The region’s medieval past is being abused for modern political agendas,41 while bias toward medieval research has become a commonplace in modern neonational state projects and lavishly funded grants that commodify the knowledge of modern political relations. Institutions of academic excellence oriented toward global collaboration and exchange are being reduced or even closed down, as is best seen in the recent controversy about Central European University in Budapest. The recent Covid-​19 pandemic has imposed unprecedented limits on physical access to knowledge and its exchange, but it has also opened some new opportunities that yet need to be explored in crossing the newly imposed borders of the region’s physical space; among them, the priority certainly stands on the possibilities to create comprehensive virtual communities that foster free dialogue, collegial solidarity, and global exchange of ideas. Because of all this, the editors of the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Central Europe are proud to have had a rare historical privilege of taking part in a collaboration that was powerful enough to efficiently overcome the challenges and still be able to present medieval Central Europe as a place of many different but interacting Others and a special paradigm of the European historical experience of multicultural life.

Notes 1. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, “Did Central Europe Exist in the Middle Ages?,” in Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300, edited by Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1–​10. 2. Opicinus de Canistris, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat 6435, fol. 77r. Compare also Sylvain Piron, Dialectique du monstre: Enquête sur Opicino de Canistris (Brussels: Zones sensibles, 2015). 3. Henry Cord Meyer, Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815–​1945 (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1955); Jorg Brechtefeld, Mitteleuropa and German Politics: 1848 to the Present (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996); William M. Johnston, Österreichische Kultur-​und Geistesgeschichte: Gesellschaft und Ideen im Donauraum 1848 bis 1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2006). 4. Carola Sachse, “Mitteleuropa” und “Südosteuropa” als Planungsraum: Wirtschafts-​und kulturpolitische Expertisen im Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010).

Introduction: “Central Europe”    15 Certainly the most important scholarly project of this kind was the institution of Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH)—​a comprehensive series initiated by Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Stein in 1819 with the Romantic nationalist aim of collecting, comparing, and publishing primary sources of narrative and documentary character used in studying Northwestern and Central European history from the final stages of the Roman Empire to the year 1500. 5. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 6. Friedrich Naumann, Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1915). Naumann’s study appeared in the aftermath of a plan devised by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-​ Hollweg to create a Central European Economic Union (1914), where France would be added as a part of a Central European Customs Federation. Thus conceived, Central Europe was to have its ports in Flanders and the Netherlands and local administrations in Belgium and Poland. 7. Cf. Helmut Rumpf, “Mitteleuropa: Zur Geschichte und Deutung eines politischen Begriffs,” Historische Zeitschrift 165, no. 3 (1942): 510–​527. 8. David Atkinson and Klaus Dodds, eds., Geopolitical Traditions: Critical Histories of a Century of Geopolitical Thought (London: Routledge, 2000). 9. Halford J. Macinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History: A Lecture Read on January 25, 1904,” Geographical Journal 23, no. 4 (1904): 421–​437; reprinted in Geographical Journal 170, no. 4 (2004): 298–​321. 10. Daniel Z. Stone, The Polish-​ Lithuanian State, 1386–​ 1795 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014); Zenonas Norkus, An Unproclaimed Empire: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania: From the Viewpoint of Comparative Historical Sociology of Empires (New York: Routledge, 2018). A useful recent account of the pan-​Slavic idea in Central Europe, but also its earlier post-​Renaissance and Romantic predecessors (slavinstvo and the Illyrian movement) which generated the modern project of South-​Slavic unity (Yugoslavia) in Anna A. Grigorieva, “Pan-​Slavism in Central and Southeastern Europe,” Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities and Social Sciences 3, no. 1 (2010): 13–​21 (https://​core.ac.uk/​downl​oad/​pdf/​38633​132.pdf, accessed May 20, 2020). 11. Jacques Le Rider, “Mitteleuropa, Zentraleuropa, Mittelosteuropa: A Mental Map of Central Europe,” European Journal of Social Theory 11, no. 2 (2008): 155–​169; Seán Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe: Czech Transformation and Right-​Wing Politics, 1989–​ 2006 (New York: Routledge, 2011); Otilia Dhand, The Idea of Central Europe: Geopolitics, Culture and Regional Identity (London: Tauris, 2018). 12. Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1944), stresses the importance of resources in rim areas and their role in balancing power relations. Compare also Winston Churchill, “The Iron Curtain,” in Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill, edited by David Cannadine (Boston: Mifflin, 1989), 303–​305. 13. Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” New York Review of Books (April 26, 1984): 33–​38. 14. György Konrád, “Der Traum von Mitteleuropa,” in Konrád, Antipolitik: Mitteleuropäische Henning Paetzke (Frankfurt/​ Main: Suhrkamp, Meditationen, translated by Hans-​ 1985); György Konrád, “Is The Dream of Central Europe Still Alive?,” Cross Currents 5 (1986): 109–​121; Leszek Kołakowski, “In Stalin’s Countries: Theses of Hope and Despair,” Politique d’Aujourd’hui (July–​August 1971), from a document containing an English

16   Nada Zečević translation by Kevin Devlin of a version published in French (original in Polish), in Open Society Archives, Budapest, Radio Free Europe Research, France and Poland: Party Media Translation (September 16, 1971), no. 1130, p. 19 (https://​stor​age.osaa​rchi​vum.org/​low/​ 23/​52/​2352e​c23-​187b-​40d7-​972c-​b28​06a3​0a2e​2_​l.pdf, accessed May 22, 2020); Czesław Miłosz, “Central European Attitudes,” Cross Currents 5 (1986): 101–​108. 15. Cf. William Mallinson and Zoran Ristić, The Political Poisoning of Geography: The Threat of Geopolitics to International Relations: Obsession with the Heartland (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). 16. Karl Schlögel, Die Mitte liegt ostwärts: Die Deutschen, der verlorene Osten und Mitteleuropa, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Siedler 1989); Jan Maria Piskorski, “The Historiography of the So-​Called ‘East Colonisation’ and the Current State of Research,” in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways . . . : Festschrift in Honour of János M. Bak, edited by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 654–​667; Arne Søby Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a Migration Myth (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002). 17. See also a debate on modern exile/​migration, based on Jan Piskorski’s monograph Die Verjagten: Flucht und Vertreibung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Siedler, 2013) by Michael Schwartz (www.hsozkult.de/​publicationreview/​id/​reb-​19439, accessed July 20, 2020). 18. Oskar Halecki, The Limits and Divisions on European History (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1950; Oskar Halecki, Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe, 2nd ed. (New York: Ronald Press, 2000). See also his posthumously published work Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe, edited by Thaddeus V. Gromada (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1991). Cf., more recently, Jerzy Kłoczowski, ed., Histoire de l’Europe du Centre-​Est (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004). 19. Francis Dvornik, “Western and Eastern Traditions of Central Europe,” Review of Politics 9 (1947): 463–​481; Francis Dvornik, “The Mediaeval Cultural Heritage of the Mid-​European Area,” Review of Politics 18, no. 4 (1956): 487–​507; Francis Dvornik, “The Slavs between East and West,” Marquette University Slavic Institute Papers, no. 19 (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1964). For a further expansion of this idea, see Alan Palmer, The Lands Between: A History of East-​Central Europe since the Congress of Vienna (New York: Macmillan, 1970); Jerzy Kłoczowski, ed., Central Europe between East and West (Lublin: Towarzystwo Instytutu Europy Środkowo-​Wschodniej, 2005). A position similar to that of Dvornik had been applied to the late nineteenth–​early twentieth century by Konstantin Jireček in his consideration of the border between the Western and Eastern Roman Empire in the Balkans (“the Jireček line”); this demarcation was later adopted by Yugoslav socialist historiography that commonly assumed eastern Bosnia (the Drina River) and Montenegro (the Piva and upper Zeta rivers) as a line that divided the medieval (Roman/​Catholic) West and the (Greek/​Orthodox) East, accepting, though, the porousness of this line and a continuous stream of mutual influences, e.g., Anto Babić, “O pitanju formiranja srednjovjekovne bosanske države [On the question of the formation of the medieval Bosnian state],” Radovi ND BiH 3 (1955): 57–​79. 20. Nicolae Iorga: On National Culture, English translation by Mária Kovács in Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeastern Europe 1770–​1945, Vol. 4: Anti-​Modernism—​ Radical Revisions of Collective Identity, edited by Diana Mishkova, Marius Turda, and Balazs Trencsenyi (Budapest: CEU Press, 2014). For Serbia, see Božidar Ferjančić,

Introduction: “Central Europe”    17 Vizantija i južni Sloveni [Byzantium and Southern Slavs], 2nd ed. (Belgrade: Ethos, 2009); Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–​1453 (London: Cardinal, 1971). 21. Jenő Szűcs, Les trois Europes, introduction by Fernand Braudel, translated by Véronique Charaire, Gábor Klaniczay, and Philippe Thureau-​Dangin (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985); for a revisit to this idea, see Márta Font, “Mitteleuropa-​Osteuropa-​Ostmitteleuropa? Bemerkungen zur Entstehung einer europäischen Region im Frühmittelalter,” Jahrbuch für Europäischen Geschichte 7 (2006): 101–​125, claiming that the historical separation between East Central and Eastern Europe took place in late twelfth century. 22. Besides the increasing inclusion of Southeastern Europe in many recent comparative editions on medieval Central Europe, a remarkable forum where young scholars can compare their work to the contributions from the other parts of Central Europe is the Medieval Workshop at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka (Croatia), organized biennially since 2013. 23. Jan M. Piskorski, Historiographical Approaches to Medieval Colonization of East Central Europe: A Comparative Analysis against the Background of Other European Inter-​Ethnic Colonization Processes in the Middle Ages (Boulder; New York: East European Monographs; Columbia University Press, 2003); Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary c. 1000–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, edited by Nora Berend with David Abulafia (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002); Nora Berend, The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); Mladen Ančić, Jonathan Shepard, and Trpimir Vedriš, Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (Oxford: Routledge, 2018). 24. Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–​ 1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Florin Curta, The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Lonnie Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300), 2 vols., Brill’s Companions to European History, vol. 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). For the Jews, see Lukas Clemens and Christoph Cluse, The Jews of Europe around 1400: Disruption, Crisis, and Resilience (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018). 25. Nora Berend, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Anti Selart, Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Donald Ostrowski and Christian A. Raffensperger, Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900–​1400 (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018). 26. János M. Bak, Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects: Central Europe and Beyond, edited by Gábor Klaniczay and Balázs Nagy (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010); János M. Bak, Secular Power and Sacral Authority in Medieval East-​Central Europe, edited by Kosana Jovanović and Suzana Miljan (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018); János M. Bak, Reform and Renewal in Medieval East and Central Europe: Politics, Law and Society, edited by Éva B. Halász, Suzana Miljan, and Alexandru Simon (Cluj Napoca; Zagreb; London: Academia Romana; Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti; University College London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2019). 27. Piotr Gorecki and Nancy van Deusen, Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages: A Cultural History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009).

18   Nada Zečević 28. Felicitas Schmieder, Balázs Nagy, and András Vadas, eds., The Medieval Networks in East Central Europe: Commerce, Contacts, Communication (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019 [2018]). 29. Martyn Rady, ed., Custom and Law in Central Europe (Cambridge Centre for European Law, 2003); János M. Bak and Peter Banyó, Werbőczy: The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary: A Work in Three Parts (the Tripartitum) (Budapest: CEU and Schlacks, 2005). 30. Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende, eds., Segregation, Integration, Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); Kateřina Horníčková, ed., Faces of Community in Central European Towns: Images, Symbols, and Performances, 1400–​1700 (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018). 31. Roman Zaoral, ed., Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Piotr Pranke and Miloš Zečević, eds., Handel interregionalny od X do XII wieku: Europa Srodkowa, Srodkowo-​Wschodnia, Pólwysep Skandynawski i Pólwysep Balkanski: Studium porównawcze [Interregional trade between the tenth and twelfth century, Middle and Middle Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Balkans: A comparative study] (Torun: UMK, 2016); Balázs Nagy, Martyn Rady, Katalin Szende, and András Vadas, eds., Medieval Buda in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2016). A remarkable example of regional scholarly collaboration took place in 2016, when the exhibition “On [a]‌Common Path,” presented in Budapest’s Historical Museum, brought material evidence from the tenth to the seventeenth century from museums of Budapest (Hungary) and Cracow (Poland) to represent comparatively the development of these two towns during the Middle Ages. 32. János M. Bak, Patrick Joseph Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay, Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-​Century Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 33. For an example of a recent integration of Central Europe’s medieval studies into studies of the regional heritage and its management, see the Cultural Heritage Studies Program (MA) at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University in Budapest (https://​medi​eval​stud​ies.ceu.edu/​chs, accessed May 22, 2020). Cf. UNESCO’s Interactive Map (https://​whc.une​sco.org/​en/​inte​ract​ive-​map/​, accessed May 22, 2020). 34. Robin Okey, “Central Europe/​Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 102–​133; János M. Bak, “What Did We Learn? What Is to Be Done? Some Insights and Visions after Reading This Book,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 254–​256. For a recent global positioning of the region in a wider European narrative, see Felicitas Schmieder, Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). Pan-​European discourse in many cases means, in fact, Western Europe, leaving Eastern Europe still on the margins of the European debate, especially its links with Central Europe. For some spade work in that direction, see Thomas S. Noonan, “European Russia, c. 500–​c. 1050,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3: c.900–​c.1024, part III: Non-​Carolingian Europe, edited by Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 485–​513; and his focus on intermediaries between Europe’s East and Asia, e.g., Thomas Reuter and Thomas S. Noonan, “Khazaria as an Intermediary between Islam and Eastern Europe in the Second Half of the Ninth Century: The Numismatic Perspective,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 5 (1985): 179–​204.

Introduction: “Central Europe”    19 35. E.g., Peter Frigyes Sugar and Donald Warren Treadgold, A History of Central Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974). See also Florin Curta’s remarks on Chris Wickham’s, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–​800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), in Curta, Eastern Europe, p. 5, n. 19. 36. More recently, the work of the region’s young scholars is being presented to the international audience by two series of monograph, Brill’s East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450, edited by Florin Curta, and Central European Medieval Studies, edited for Amsterdam University Press by Nada Zečević. 37. Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende, Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zone to Lands in Focus (New York: Routledge, 2016). Scholars pursued the idea of Central Europe as a “forgotten” region during the 1980s and 1990s, e.g., Jean W. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–​1500 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), one of the multivolume series A History of East Central Europe. This idea, however, was more linked to the vague Western knowledge of the region as standing behind the Iron Curtain, while a more recent view targets misconceptions and fragmentation of the current knowledge. 38. Curta, Eastern Europe. For his earlier summary review of the region, compare his East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). 39. János M. Bak and Péter Banyó, eds., Issues and Resources for the Study of Medieval Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest; Cambridge, MA: Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University; Committee on Centers and Regional Associations of the Medieval Academy of America, 2001). 40. For a critical evaluation of this historiography and its deficiencies, see Curta, Eastern Europe, vol. 1, 11–​14. 41. Jacques Rupnik, “Evolving or Revolving? Central Europe since 1989,” English translation of “Nach 1989: Die ewige Wiederkehr Mitteleuropas,” Transit—​Europäische Revue 50 (2017) (https://​www.euroz​ine.com/​evolv​ing-​or-​revolv​ing-​cent​ral-​eur​ope-​since-​1989/​ #footn​ote-​10, accessed May 22, 2020).

Further Reading Berend, Nora. The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds. Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Curta, Florin. Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300). 2 vols. Brill’s Companions to European History 19. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Kłoczowski, Jerzy, ed. Histoire de l’Europe du Centre–​Est. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004. Nagy, Balázs, and Marcell Sebők, eds. The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways . . . : Festschrift in Honour of János M. Bak. Budapest: CEU Press, 1999.

Pa rt I

L A N D, P E OP L E , A N D ST RU C T U R E S OF P OW E R

Chapter 1

Geo graphy, Nat u ra l Resou rce s , a nd Environ me nt András Vadas

The geography of Central Europe is a conglomeration of different landscapes and geomorphological features that were all important to the economic development of the individual polities in the region and allowed connections between these polities and other areas of Eurasia.* This chapter provides a brief geographical sketch of the region with special attention to the natural resources that were instrumental in the development of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary.1 While the main geographical features have changed little over time, this chapter focuses on the period of state-​formation processes in these countries, that is, from around the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth century. The tenth century was important because it was the time when the basic features of medieval economies started to take shape in the polities; and the sixteenth century is the period when the Habsburgs took power in both Bohemia and Hungary, Hungary’s political map was completely redrawn by the Ottoman occupation, and the Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth came into existence. All these developments caused major transformations in the regional economies, impacting resource use in all these countries. Foreigners who passed through Central Europe during the Middle Ages in many cases noted the fertility and wealth of the land, although the people and urban settlements seemed poorer to them than the people and towns of contemporary Western Europe. In terms of access to food—​most importantly grain and meat—​the conditions in Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary were no worse than in the western part of the continent at that time, as in general the environmental conditions of the lands of the three countries were all favorable to agricultural production. The most productive areas were the lowlands and the foothills around the margins of the Great Hungarian (or Pannonian) Plain in the Carpathian Basin, the areas enclosed by the mountains of Bohemia and Moravia, and finally, the Polish Plain. The dense network of rivers and substantial areas of arable

24   András Vadas land supported a relatively stable supply of food, although regional and local shortages were recurrent phenomena in the region just as in Western Europe. Was this fertility and the richness of the land only a bias of travelers who came from more densely inhabited areas where the land had to support much larger populations, or were these lands indeed rich? How much did the geographical conditions facilitate the economic development of these medieval polities? Are there parallels in the ways natural resources were exploited in the different polities of the region? There are different approaches to the study of the past geographical conditions of Central Europe. Scientific investigations, archaeology, and historical documentary sources are used to understand the main features of the lands in premodern times. Historians frequently use narrative sources to make an overall assessment of the main features of the lands described there.2 When it comes to describing the lands of a region or country, sources are rare that give a comprehensive detailed account, because their purposes varied; the sources only describe small parts of these lands. For Central Europe, sources similar to the Doomsday Book or the late medieval land conscriptions in England mostly date to the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but even the different sources connected to legal or economic matters seldom cover a representative part of the countries in question. There are, however, notable exceptions, such as the so-​called zemské desky (land tables in English or Landtafel in German) that record land transactions preserved in Moravia allowing a relatively nuanced view of land use.3 On a local scale, sources are fundamentally different; those connected to legal procedures are usually the most valuable. A number of legal procedures involved the physical investigation of the land, walking boundaries (such as perambulations) or describing the different land-​use patterns on a certain piece of land (such as land estimations).4 (See ­chapter 13 by Nagy and Myśliwski, this volume.) Narrative sources, too, are frequently added to describe the historical geography of an area, both domestic narrative sources and foreign narratives, most importantly travel accounts and geographical descriptions. Both travel literature and geographical descriptions are key sources as they demonstrate how these areas were perceived by foreigners and what the most notable features of the landscape were in the Middle Ages. The earliest medieval travel accounts that refer to the Central European polities date as early as the mid-​tenth century. The early works, written by Jewish and Arabic travelers, seldom refer to the landscape, nature, or elements not directly related to the economy.5 A proliferation of chronicle literature, mostly from the twelfth century onward, provides at least a few references to the geography as perceived by chroniclers. Some authors came from Western Europe but had spent part of their lives in Central Europe, so they had personal experience of the space they described, while others were born in the region but had spent part of their lives in Western Europe.6 The most concise and systematic geographical description of Central Europe from the medieval period is the so-​called Descriptio Europae orientalis (Description of Eastern Europe). The Descriptio, written at the beginning of 1308, was authored by an as-​yet-​unidentified but supposedly French Dominican author who traveled the region as part of a diplomatic mission. The author of the Descriptio was not interested in presenting the countries

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    25 of Central Europe and the Balkans evenly; the longest descriptions are those of the Byzantine Empire (Imperium Constantinopolitanum) and the Kingdom of Hungary (Hungaria) because the context of the Descriptio was the Crusades. This source dates to the period shortly after the fall of Acre, the last Christian fortress in the Holy Land, beyond which lay areas of the Near East of interest in the strategic thinking of the French monarchy. Even more importantly, the work emphasizes the importance of reuniting the Orthodox “schismatics” in order to take back Byzantium for the West. In this context, Hungary, lying on the route to the east, was more important than Bohemia or Poland. The anonymous author, therefore, while discussing the different countries in similar ways, seeing the lands as rich, gives more details about Hungary: Its [Hungary’s] land offers good pasture and [is] extremely fertile in grain, wine, meat, gold and silver; concerning the abundance of fish it excels almost every country apart from Norway where fish is eaten like bread or rather instead of bread. The land is generally flat, varied with small hills; in other places, however it has very high mountains; in the Transylvanian parts there are enormous mountains of salt and from these mountains one can carve out salt just like stone, and it is transported all over the country and to all the neighboring lands. The land [Poland] is rich in pastures, wooded, and has a vast area. It abounds in bread, but lacks wine altogether. It is irrigated by the said river Vandal, and the Odera, the Neisse, the Bober and the Magara rivers. It abounds in fish and meat, and it also has silver mines and mountains of salt. There are also tigers, unicorns, beavers and untamed horses. . . . they [the Bohemians] are mighty because from all the money that they have from the silver mines they hire many mercenaries. It abounds in bread, but lacks altogether wine, unless it is transported there from elsewhere. But it has good beer.7

The author describes the main landscape features, partly focusing on the agricultural possibilities, woodlands, and the main rivers, but also refers to the most important products of the countries, the ores, which were important for medieval economies.

Climate and Its Impacts The most important element in this source is the agricultural capacities of the polities in the region, among which the climatic conditions are the most important. The basic features of the climate have not changed fundamentally from premodern times. The region is mainly characterized by the features of the humid Oceanic climate and by features of the less humid Continental climate. In the northern areas, such as parts of Poland, the Oceanic climate is expressed more, while in the southern and eastern regions such as most of the Great Hungarian Plain, the Continental is more prevalent.8 The northern part of the region is frequently affected by cold masses of air arriving from the Arctic, while the southern and southwestern areas of the Carpathian Basin

26   András Vadas are also influenced by the circulation patterns of the Mediterranean. Although the climatic conditions vary significantly in different parts of Central Europe, mostly because of differing altitude and the significant north–​south extent of the area, low-​lying areas from the Baltic Sea down to the Balkan Peninsula have the potential to grow not only grain crops but also vegetables, fruit, and in many areas, grapes for wine. The northern areas, of course, have shorter growing seasons, and the agricultural potential of the low-​ lying areas of Bohemia and Hungary are somewhat better, nonetheless the extent of the lowlands in Poland made the region one of the biggest exporters of grain by the late medieval period.9 Even so, the medieval narratives and other sources recurrently tell of weather-​related food crises.10 Neither the Descriptio nor the local medieval narratives discuss the climate of Poland, Bohemia, or Hungary specifically, but they do record the different crops that can be grown, inseparable from the characteristics of the climate. Research sketched out the modern climate of the region about a century ago, when the institutional background of the meteorological services was established in the three, later four, modern countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia). This, however, is not sufficient for discussing possible changes in the climatic conditions in historical times. In recent decades, however, significant efforts have been made in all three countries to understand the main fluctuations of the climate in the Middle Ages.11 Scholars have made achievements in both reconstructing the main trends of temperature and precipitation fluctuations in the Middle Ages and in understanding weather patterns and related events, such as floods, droughts, and famines.12 Western European research has identified two major fluctuations in the high and late medieval climate. The period of state foundations in Central Europe coincided with the centuries called the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA) in the literature, which was favorable for growing crops in most parts of region, but from the fourteenth century onward the agricultural potential of marginal areas changed in many parts of Europe. The beginning of this period, the Little Ice Age (LIA), varies from region to region, and the form that changing climatic conditions took is not identical in all areas. Thus, even though the most recent scholarship is not unambiguous in dating the beginning of the Little Ice Age to the turn of the thirteenth century, the high number of weather-​related extremes seen in the context of Western Europe has also been demonstrated for Central Europe.13 Research has shown that many of the crisis periods can be associated with the transition from the Medieval Climatic Anomaly to the Little Ice Age, while the “years without summer” in the mid-​ 1310s, usually studied in the context of northern and northwestern Europe, did not fully spare Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia.14 Similarly, the floods of 1342 and 1343, disastrous in many parts of Western Europe, also occurred in Central Europe,15 as did heat waves and droughts like the one recorded in 1540,16 all causing economic difficulties or sometimes even more serious food crises. In general, although the climatic conditions in all three medieval polities favored agricultural production, in both the short and long terms weather and climatic conditions impacted the agricultural capacities, settlement processes, and demographic situations.

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    27

Landscape Features and Vegetation In his recent book on the environmental history of medieval Europe, Richard Hoffmann gives a brief overview of what landscapes can mean in different contexts. It is used by ecologists and geographers, as well as in cultural terms in largely different meanings. This subchapter has two goals: to present a general description of the landscape as used by geographers, i.e., to discuss the main geographical features and provide a brief sketch of the vegetation that prevailed in the Middle Ages in different parts of Central Europe and to indicate some of the main steps in its transformation in the medieval period.17 The natural relief of Central Europe is largely a patchwork where lowlands and hilly regions are scattered among mountain ranges that in some cases acted as frontiers between polities in the medieval period. The most important of these mountains are those that surround Bohemia—​known as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains), and the Sudetes—​ and the Carpathians, which surrounded the Kingdom of Hungary. Even though Bohemia is encircled by mountains, they seldom rise above 1,000 meters (1,093 yds), and low passes from most directions provide good communication channels in different directions. This never restrained medieval chroniclers, however, from presenting the mountains as high and almost impossible to cross. Gallus Anonymous, for instance, described the frontiers of Moravia and Poland—​the southern fringes of the Sudetes—​as: “For Moravia is walled with such high mountains and thick forests on the Polish side that the roads are regarded as dangerous and very difficult even for peaceful travelers or light-​armed foot-​soldiers.”18 This is clearly a mental map in which Poland and the Czech lands are strongly separated by natural features. If that is true for the mountains between Moravia and Poland, then it is even more-​so in the case of the Kingdom of Hungary and the surrounding polities because of the Carpathians, which provided only a few low passes apart from the northwestern areas. Interestingly, one of the most detailed accounts of the natural resources of Hungary, written by an Italian diplomat around 1462, the so-​called Landus report, does not focus on the difficulties of crossing these mountains, but rather sees even these areas as “landscapes of possibilities.”19 This can be connected to the fact that the Carpathians were rich in precious metals and other ore deposits.20 The Polish landscape, in this sense, was somewhat different. Not only was the soil less rich, but the area of the Kingdom of Poland was not particularly mountainous. It was a lowland area with hilly regions that provided diversity in the landscape. Only the southern and southwestern areas of the country had higher elevations, where the lower foothills of the Carpathians and Sudetes were the dominant landscape elements. From the lowlands that characterized the Polish Kingdom, most importantly its northern half, to the basin area encircled by the Carpathians in Hungary, as well as to the Czech and the Moravian basins in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the landscape was dominated by rivers and their floodplains. The polities lay in partly different watersheds;

28   András Vadas the Elbe River collected most of the waters in the Czech Basin, the Danube’s tributaries brought the waters east from the Moravian Basin and from most of the Carpathian Basin to the Black Sea, while in Poland, the catchment areas of the Vistula and Odera rivers were the most important. The possibilities of using the lowlands and settling there were, to a large extent, influenced by the extent of the flood-​free areas. These floodplain areas were fertile, however, which proved to be important for the economies of the region’s countries. The rivers also provided significant income from extensive fishing. They were the most important providers of water-​power energy for different industries, including grain milling, brewing, textile fulling, and paper and gunpowder production as well as being instrumental in the communication routes of the different countries. Water was essential not only in providing energy but also in crafting many of the products of medieval industries. No less importantly the rivers were used for drinking and bathing as well as sewage drains.21 In the period of state foundation in all three polities, lands in the hilly regions and, most importantly, in the mountain areas below the tree line, were probably dominated by forests. The lowland areas, according to the traditional view, were also densely forested before modern times. This view, however, has been challenged by ecologists. They have shown that in the past millennia the forests in the lowland areas became more and more sparse; especially in the Great Hungarian Plain, forests probably never dominated the landscape in the high and late medieval periods.22 Comprehensive scientific investigation in the past decades has shown that by the year 1000 the landscapes throughout Central Europe had already been affected by human activities, but increasing colonization significantly affected the forested areas only in the later centuries of the Middle Ages.23 The lowland areas and the lower hilly regions were transformed more significantly than the marginal areas such as the higher mountains; forest clearance opened land for plowing and provided timber. Cutting or burning trees to provide land for growing crops, however, started long before the settling of the Poles, Bohemians, Moravians, and Magyars in the region.24 By the late medieval period, the lowlands in the entire region had lost most of their forests and were used for growing crops or herding animals, while the remaining oak woodlands were suitable for grazing cattle and pigs. This provided important income for the local economies, but the growing importance of cattle-​herding on cleared areas may have been one of the most important obstacles to forest regeneration in many areas of Central Europe. The remaining forests were also used extensively for firewood, as has been demonstrated on the examples of Moravia and Hungary, where these forests seem to have regenerated relatively easily.25 In sum, most of the lands in Central Europe were suited for settlement as they could facilitate the production of agricultural goods. The most important factor in settlement was altitude. Neither the lowlands, prone to flooding, nor the mountain areas, steep, with little land for fields, were densely populated, rather it was the areas in between that provided enough land to sustain higher populations than in the early Middle Ages.

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    29

Minerals Besides climatic conditions and the main features of the land, minerals were a third aspect that was important in the development of the region, particularly in Central Europe, as precious-​metal ores discovered there provided major financial assets for the royalty in Hungary and Bohemia; Silesia had silver and minor, although notable, deposits of gold. Other metal ores like copper, tin, and iron also brought significant income. Additionally, salt mines are mentioned in the Descriptio. The metal deposits were so important on a European scale that in the late thirteenth century, in a list of goods transported to the town of Bruges, gold, silver, and copper were noted as goods that regularly came from Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland.26 Poland is mentioned as the source of metals, not primarily because they were mined there, but because most of the metals arrived as cargo in ships from Poland. Research has focused on dating the beginning of mining for precious metals in the region. The beginnings are usually associated the arrival of foreign settlers in the region in the twelfth through the thirteenth century, when expert miners from Western Europe arrived in the three polities and also in Bosnia.27 Although this dating is largely correct, in Poland and Hungary the mining of silver and gold clearly took place from the early period of the Piast and Árpádian rule in the eleventh through early twelfth centuries.28, 29 In Bohemia, prospecting for precious metal deposits started in the late twelfth century, but mining only became a major source of income and an object of trade in the mid-​thirteenth century.30 Even if mining precious metal ores had been done earlier in Hungary and Poland, and then in Bohemia, it was only in the thirteenth century, especially after the Mongol invasion of 1241–​1242, that mining became a widespread and highly lucrative source of income for the region’s monarchs.31 This is true for Hungarian gold mining and for salt mining in Lesser Poland. In Bohemia, silver was the most important, with mines first developed in the area around Jihlava and Německý Brod. The output of silver, however, became significantly higher when major deposits were discovered at Kutná Hora. Here, production probably began in the early thirteenth century, but the discovery of the richest deposits did not occur until the 1290s. Apart from silver, lead was also an important ore in the region. The relatively limited gold mines in Bohemia were partly in the area around Prague and partly in the Bohemian Forest. Although the production of silver started to decline at Kutná Hora from the early fourteenth century onward, other mines partially compensated for the declining production there, such as Příbram, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Prague, and silver remained an important source of income until the early fifteenth century. In present-​day Poland, mining activity first began in Silesia, which started to provide income for the Czech kings in the fourteenth century. Although not comparable in importance to the mining in Hungary and the Czech lands, it still provided important income in Poland. Silver mines were first opened in the areas around Bytom and Opava;

30   András Vadas the most important center of gold mining was the vicinity of Legnica. The lead-​mining centers in Silesia were located around Olkusz, and Bytom also had major lead deposits along with the silver. In Silesia, mercury mined with the lead made it the most important area for supplying Europe with this metal.32 Salt in Poland was first extracted in the north, where salt springs were widespread. The major salt deposits in Lesser Poland were opened somewhat later than the silver and gold mines (the most important being Złotoryja); they functioned from the mid-​thirteenth century onward. The two most important salt mines were located at the vicinity of Cracow, Bochnia (in its telling German name, Salzberg), and Wieliczka.33 The soil of the Carpathians in Hungary also hid major precious metals and copper as well as salt deposits. The locations of the earliest gold and silver mines, however, are not entirely clear. The mid-​twelfth-​century Arabic traveler Abu-​Hamid al-​Garnati, mentions that Hungary’s “mountains hide much silver and gold,” but he does not refer to the exact places where these metals were mined.34 Written evidence alluding to mining activities is relatively late compared to the supposed beginning of mining activities in the two most important mining areas of the region in Upper Hungary (present-​day Slovakia) and Transylvania (present-​day western Romania). Research based on circumstantial evidence suggests that mines operated in Slovakia from the time of King Stephen I (1000–​1038). Among these early mining areas, the surroundings of Banska Štiavnica, with its silver resources, is the most frequently referred to, while gold was probably panned originally rather than mined in the early Árpádian period.35 Mining seems to have become widespread in Upper Hungary after 1200, while after the 1240s a significant number of settlers from German-​speaking areas, usually referred to as Saxons, settled there to promote mining as the most important sphere of economic life in the High Middle Ages. The main centers of gold mining were located in a well-​defined area around the Upper Hungarian mining towns. Although never referred under this term in the Middle Ages, they clearly represented a common space, a concentration of mines in the vicinity of the Hron River valley,36 such as Kremnica, Banská Stiavnica, Dobrá Niva, and Krupina. In Transylvania, the most important gold-​mining towns were Abrud, Baia de Arieș, Baia de Criș, and Zlatna, followed by Baia Mare somewhat later, in the mid-​fourteenth century.37 The most important centers for silver mining were Banská Bystrica, Pukanec, Kremnica, and the towns later referred to as Upper Hungarian mining towns: Gelnica, Jasov, Smolník, and Rožňava.38 From the fourteenth century onward, Banská Bystrica became the main center of copper mining, too, followed by other towns in the Slovak Ore Mountains such as Ľubietova and Brezno.39 Smaller quantities of lead and tin were also mined in Upper Hungary (Slovakia). By the late thirteenth century, mining output from this area reached distant ports; documentary sources record how ore mined in Central Europe made its way to Flanders40 and Venice.41 In Hungary, mining incomes from the Angevin period until the reform of taxation in the middle of the fifteenth century far exceeded the incomes from other spheres;42 nor was the situation different for the kings of Bohemia. The gold and silver mines of the region were important not only on a regional but also on a European scale. Their output exceeded that of any other region in late medieval Europe;

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    31 some calculations suggest that probably more than two-​thirds of European gold and more than half of its silver came from Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland.43 Poland probably profited less from precious metals, but the salt mines of Lesser Poland became an important source of income for the rulers. *** The resources in the landscape features of Central Europe proved to be essential in medieval economic developments on many levels. First, the climatic conditions allowed growing crops in practically all nonmountainous parts of the region, while the climate of the region’s southern parts was well suited to wine production. Even though climatic conditions were generally favorable, sources suggest numerous weather-​related problems, extremes such as droughts, heat waves, and cold spells as well as floods and famines. The late medieval period seemingly saw a lasting decrease in temperatures that can be associated with the Little Ice Age, although it is still unclear how strong this climatic shift was for the entire region. Throughout Central Europe, most of the land was suitable for agriculture, not only because of the climatic conditions but also because of the prevalence of lowlands and hilly areas in the regional landscape. But the Carpathians and the mountains around Bohemia also enhanced the regional outlook. While the lowland areas were not predominantly forested, the densely wooded mountain areas remained uninhabited up to the high or late medieval period. The settling of the region prompted by mining further transformed the region by early modern times. Present in different forms since the early kingdoms in Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, local mining centers became key for the local economy from the thirteenth century onward. They extracted major quantities of precious-​metal ore, copper, lead, and salt, provided monarchs with important financial assets, and supplied many other parts of Europe.

Notes * Readers are referred to the physical map of Central Europe at the end of the Introduction to this volume. 1. This paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I am grateful for the suggestions of Balázs Nagy on a draft version. 2. For Hungary, see Balázs Nagy, “The Towns of Medieval Hungary in the Reports of Contemporary Travellers,” in Segregation-​Integration-​Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 169–​178, and more recently Enikő Csukovits, Hungary and the Hungarians Western Europe’s View in the Middle Ages, Viella Historical Research 11 (Rome: Viella, 2018), for Bohemia see, Leoš Jelecek and Zdenek Bohác, “Mountains, Forests, Rivers: Medieval Bohemia in the Context of Central Europe,” in Montagnes, fleuves, forets dans l’histoire: Barrières ou lignes de convergence? Travaux présentés au XVIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Stuttgart, août 1985, edited by Jean-​François Bergier (St-​Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1989), 147–​166;

32   András Vadas and for Poland, see Piotr Górecki, A Local Society in Transition: The Henryków Book and Related Documents, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 155 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007). 3. Cf. Péter Szabó et al., “Intensive Woodland Management in the Middle Ages: Spatial Modelling Based on Archival Data,” Journal of Historical Geography 48 (2015): 1–​10. 4. Péter Szabó, Woodland and Forests in Medieval Hungary, Archaeolingua Central European Series 2, BAR International Series 1348 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005), 29–​32. 5. Dmitrij Mishin, “Ibrahim Ibn-​Ya’qub at-​Turtushi’s Account of the Slavs from the Middle of the Tenth Century,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 1994–​1995 (1996): 184–​199. See also István Zimonyi, “A New Muslim Source on the Hungarians in the Second Half of Tenth Century,” Chronica 4 (2004): 22–​31. 6. See the most important early narratives for the three polities: Gesta principum Polonorum/​ The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, translated and annotated by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, preface by Thomas N. Bisson, Central European Medieval Texts 3 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), esp. chap. 1, 15; Cosmae Pragensis [Cosmas of Prague], Chronica Bohemorum/​The Chronicle of the Czechs, edited by János M. Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, Central European Medieval Texts 10 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2019); [Anonymous], Anonymi Bele regis notarii, gesta Hungarorum/​The Deeds of the Hungarians, translated by Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy, Central European Medieval Texts 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010). 7. Katalin Szende, unpublished translation. For the most recent edition of the source, see Tibor Živković, Vladeta Petrović, and Aleksandar Uzelac, eds., Anonymi descriptio Europae orientalis (Belgrade: The Institute of History, 2013). 8. Gábor Mezősi, The Physical Geography of Hungary, Geography of the Physical Environment (Cham: Springer, 2017), 101. 9. Historical Atlas of Poland in the 2nd Half of the 16th Century, edited by Marek Słoń (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014). 10. For Central Europe in general, see Grzegorz Myśliwski, “Central Europe,” in Agrarian Change and Crisis in Europe, 1200–​ 1500, edited by Harry Kitsikopoulos (New York: Routledge, 2012), 250–​291. For Hungary, see Andrea Kiss, Ferenc Piti, Ferenc Sebők, and Éva Teiszler, “Food Crises in Fourteenth-​Century Hungary: Indicators, Causes and Case Studies,” and András Vadas, “Little Ice Age and the Hungarian Kingdom? Sources and Research Perspectives,” both in The Crisis of the 14th Century: Teleconnections between Environmental and Societal Change?, edited by Martin Bauch and Gerrit J. Schenk, Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 13 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 100–​129 and 263–​279, respectively. For Bohemia, see Robert Antonín and Michaela Malaníková, “Když se jídla nedostává: České středověké reflexe hladových let v evropském kontextu” [“When one is not fed”: Medieval relations about “the Years of Hunger” in the Central European region], in Historia naturalna jedzenia: Miedzy antykiem a XIX wiekiem [A natural history of food: Between antiquity and the nineteenth century], edited by Beata Możejko and Ewa Barylewska-​Szymańska (Gdańsk: Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Gdańska and Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2012), 70–​80, and Rudolf Brázdil, Oldřich Kotyza, and Martin Bauch, “Climate and Famines in the Czech Lands prior to AD 1500: Possible Interconnections in a European Context,” in Famines during the “Little Ice Age” (1300–​1800), edited by Dominik Collet and Maximilian Schuh, Socionatural Entanglements in Premodern Societies (Heidelberg: Springer, 2017), 91–​114, and Martin

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    33 Bauch, “Jammer und Not. Karl IV. und die natürlichen Rahmenbedingungen des 14 Jahrhunderts,” Český Časopis Historický 115 (2017): 983–​1016. 11. For Hungary, see Andrea Kiss, “Historical Climatology in Hungary: Role of Documentary Evidence in the Study of Past Climates and Hydrometeorological Extremes,” Időjárás 113 (2009): 315–​339, and more recently, András Vadas, “The Little Ice Age and the Hungarian Kingdom?” For the possibilities of research into medieval weather events, see Andrea Kiss, “Weather and Weather-​Related Environmental Phenomena Including Natural Hazards in Medieval Hungary I: Documentary Evidence on the 11th and 12th Centuries,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 66 (2013): 5–​37; and“Weather and Weather-​Related Natural Hazards in Medieval Hungary II: Documentary Evidence from the 13th Century,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 68 (2014): 5–​46; for Poland, see Rajmund Przybylak, Jacek Majorowicz Rudolf Brázdil, and Marek Kejna, eds., The Polish Climate in the European Context: An Historical Overview (New York: Springer, 2010) and for Bohemia, see Brázdil, Kotyza, and Bauch, “Climate and Famines in the Czech Lands Prior to AD 1500” (all with extensive bibliographies). 12. On floods: Andrea Kiss, Floods and Long-​ Term Water-​ Level Changes in Medieval Hungary, Springer Water (Cham: Springer, 2019); Rudolf Brázdil et al., Historické a současné povodně v České Republice/​Historical and Recent Floods in the Czech Republic (Brno; Prague: Masaryk University; Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, 2005). For an overview, see Rudolf Brázdil, Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, and Gerardo Benito, “Historical Hydrology for Studying Flood Risk in Europe,” Hydrological Science Journal 51 (2006): 739–​764. On droughts: Rudolf Brázdil et al., “Documentary Data and the Study of Past Droughts: A Global State of the Art,” Climate of the Past 14 (2018): 1915–​1960, Andrea Kiss and Zrinka Nikolić, “Droughts, Dry Spells and Low Water Levels in Medieval Hungary (and Croatia), I: The Great Droughts of 1362, 1474, 1479, 1494 and 1507,” Journal of Environmental Geography 8, no. 1–​2 (2015): 11–​22; Andrea Kiss, “Droughts and Low Water Levels in Late Medieval Hungary II: 1361, 1439, 1443–​4, 1455, 1473, 1480, 1482(?), 1502–​3, 1506: Documentary versus Tree-​Ring (OWDA) Evidence,” Journal of Environmental Geography 10, no. 3–​4 (2017): 43–​56; On famines: Myśliwski, “Central Europe”; Kiss et al., “Food Crises.” 13. See most recently: Christian Rohr, Chantal Camenisch, and Kathleen Pribyl, “European Middle Ages,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History, edited by Sam White, Christian Pfister, and Franz Mauelshagen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 267–​269; and Bauch and Schenk, The Crisis of the 14th Century. 14. See note 12. 15. Rudolf Brázdil and Oldřich Kotyza, History of Weather and Climate in the Czech Lands I (Period 1000–​ 1500), Zürcher Geographische Schriften 62 (Zürich: Geographisches Institut Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, 1995), 114–​115, 168; and Andrea Kiss, “Floods and Weather in 1342 and 1343 in the Carpathian Basin,” Journal of Environmental Geography 2, no 3–​4 (2009): 37–​47. 16. Oliver Wetter et al., “The Year-​Long Unprecedented European Heat and Drought of 1540—​ A Worst Case,” Climatic Change 125 (2014): 349–​363; Ulf Büntgen et al., “Commentary to Wetter et al. (2014): Limited Tree-​Ring Evidence for a 1540 European ‘Megadrought,’” Climatic Change 131 (2015): 183–​ 190; and Christian Pfister et al., “Tree-​ Rings and People: Different View on the 1540 Megadrought; Reply to Büntgen et al. 2015,” Climatic Change 131 (2015): 191–​198.

34   András Vadas 17. Richard C. Hoffmann, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 113–​114. 18. “Nam de parte Polonie Morauia arduitate moncium ac densitate silvarum adeo est obstrusa, quod et pacificis viatoribus itinera ac peditibus expeditis.” Gesta Principum Polonorum, ­chapter 24, 164–​165. Cf. Jelecek and Bohác, “Mountains, Forests, Rivers.” 19. “Situs huius regionis est bene dispositus quia participat de montibus et planitie sed montes non sunt steriles neque nimis asperi sed soecundi. Pars maior est planities, sed cum aliquot collibus non nimis asperis, sed qui possunt omnes colli.” For the Latin version of the originally Italian text: Martinus Georgius Kovachich, Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum minores, vol. 2 (Budae: Typis regiae Universitatis, 1798), 13–​32. For the Italian version, see Johann Christian Engel, Geschichte des ungarischen Reichs und seiner Nebenländer, vol. 2 (Halle: Johann Jacob Gebauer, 1798), 6–​17, here 8. On the Landus report, see István Draskóczy, “A ‘Landus jelentés’ kéziratai” [The manuscripts of the “Landus report”] in “Fons, skepsis, lex”: Ünnepi tanulmányok a 70 esztendős Makk Ferenc tiszteletére [Studies in honor of the seventieth birthday of Ferenc Makk], edited by Tibor Almási, Éva Révész, and György Szabados (Szeged: Szegedi Tudományegyetem Történeti Segédtudományok Tanszék and Szegedi Középkorász Műhely, 2010), 85–​ 94, and Gábor Mihály Tóth, “Trivulziana Cod. N. 1458, a New Testimony of the Landus-​Report,” Verbum Analecta Neolatina 10 (2008): 139–​158. 20. See the following subchapter and ­chapter 13 in this volume. 21. For mills, see the studies in the following volumes: Martina Maříková and Christian Zschieschang, eds., Wassermühlen und Wassernutzung im mittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2015); Christoph Mielzarek and Christian Zschieschang, eds., Usus aquarum: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Nutzung und Bedeutung von Gewässern im Mittelalter, Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mitteleuropa 54 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2019). For fish ponds and water management, see, for Bohemia: Jiří Andreska, “Development of Fish-​Pond Culture in Bohemia,” in The Fishing Culture of the World, 2 vols., edited by Béla Gunda (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984), vol. 1, 77–​83; Frantisek Graus, Dějiny venkovského lidu v Čechách v době předhusitské [History of the rural population in Bohemia in the pre-​Hussite period], 2 vols. (Prague: Státnínakladatelstvi politické literatury, 1953–​ 1957), vol. 2, 32–​35 and 483–​486; for Hungary, see Csilla Zatykó, “Aspects of Fishing in Medieval Hungary,” in Processing, Storage, Distribution of Food: Food in the Medieval Rural Environment; Ruralia VIII, 7th–​12th September 2009, Lorca, Spain, edited by Jan Klápště (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 399–​408; László Bartosiewicz et al., “Animal Exploitation in Medieval Hungary,” in Economy of Medieval Hungary, edited by József Laszlovszky et al., East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 138–​142, 149; László Ferenczi, “Water Management in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., Economy of Medieval Hungary, 238–​252; and András Vadas, “Who Stole the Water? The Control and Appropriation of Water Resources in Medieval Hungary,” PhD dissertation, Central European University, 2020. In general, see Richard C. Hoffmann, “Development of Aquatic Ecosystems in Medieval Europe,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 631–​669. 22. Mariann Bíró and Zsolt Molnár, “Az Alföld erdei a folyószabályozások és az alföldfásítás előtti évszázadban” [The forests of the Great Hungarian Plain in the century before the river regulations and reforestation], in Környezettörténe: Az utóbbi 500 év környezeti eseményei történeti és természettudományi források tükrében [Environmental history: The

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    35 environmental events of the last 500 years in light of historical and scientific data], edited by Miklós Kázmér, Környezettörténet 1 (Budapest: Hantken Kiadó, 2009), 169–​206. 23. Alexander Brown, “Vegetation Change in Prussia: The Palynological Data,” in Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States: Terra Sacra 1, edited by Aleksander Pluskowski, Environmental Histories of the North Atlantic World 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 293–​332. 24. For Bohemia, see Jan Kolář, Martin Macek, and Péter Szabó, “Using Archaeology for Population Estimates and Land Use Reconstructions: A Perspective from Central Europe,” Past Global Changes Magazine 26 (2018): 30–​31. 25. Szabó et al., “Intensive Woodland Management”; Péter Szabó, “‘Wann es zw 7 jarn chumpt’: Medieval and Early Modern Woodland Management in Moravia,” Forum Urbes Medii Aevii 6 (2012): 252–​259, and András Vadas and Péter Szabó, “Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees? Ottoman-​Hungarian Wars and Forest Resources,” Hungarian Historical Review 7, no. 3 (2018): 477–​509. 26. “Dou royaume de Hongrie vient cire, or et argent en plate. Dou royaume de Behaingne vient cire, or et argent et estain. Dou royaume de Polane vient or et argent en plate, cire, vairs et gris et coivre,” Hansische Urkundenbuch, vol. 3, edited by K. Höhlbaum (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1882–​ 1886), 419 n. 1. Cf. Ian Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy, and Minting in the Middle Ages, Vol. 3, Continuing Afro-​ European Supremacy, 1250–​1450 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005), 936. 27. E.g., Konrad Gündish, “‘Saxones’ im Bergbau von Siebenbürgen, Bosnien und Serbien,” in Die Deutschen in Ostmittel-​und Südosteuropa: Geschichte, Wirtschaft, Recht, Sprache, 2 vols., edited by Gerhard Grimm and Krista Zach, Veröffentlichungen des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerks B, 53, 73 (Munich: Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1995–​1996), vol. 2, 119–​132; S. Božanić, “Rudarstvo u srednjevekovnoj Srbiji i Bosni” [Mining in medieval Serbia and Bosnia], Spomenica Istorijskog arhiva Srem 1 (2002): 77–​141. 28. Piotr Boroń, “Where Did the Piasts Take Silver From? The Research on Metallurgy and Mining Centre on the Border of Silesia and Lesser Poland in the Early Middle Ages,” in Economies, Monetisation and Society in the West Slavic Lands, 800–​1200 AD, edited by Mateusz Bogucki, and Marian Rębkowski (Szczecin: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN, Wydział Humanistyczny Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego, 2013), 209–​222. See also Sławomir Witkowski, “Górnictwo srebra i ołowiu w świetle Bulli Gnieźnieńskiej z 1136 roku: Lokalizacja osady Zversov” [Silver and lead mining in the light of the Gniezno charter of 1136: The location of the Zversov settlement], in Gospodarka na Przemszą i Brynicą od pradziejów do początków XX wieku w świetle badań interdyscyplinarnych [Economy on Przemsza and Brynica from prehistory to the beginning of the twentieth century in the light of interdisciplinary research], edited by Dariusz Rozmus and Sławomir Witkowski (Dąbrowa; Górnicza: Muzeum Miejskie “Sztygarka” w Dąbrowie Górniczej, 2009), 149–​162. See also Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300), 2 vols., Brill’s Companions to European History 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), vol. 1, 439. 29. Zsolt Simon, “Az aranykitermelés kezdetei a középkori Erdélyben” [The beginnings of medieval gold production in Transylvania], in Certamen: Előadások a Magyar Tudomány Napján az Erdélyi Múzeum-​Egyesület I. Szakosztályában, II [Certamen: Papers presented on the Day of Hungarian Science, at the Transylvanian Museum Society], edited by Emese Egyed, Zsolt Bogdándi, and Attila Weisz (Cluj-​Napoca: Erdélyi Múzeum-​Egyesület, 2014), 217–​229; Zoltán Batizi, “Mining in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., Economy of Medieval Hungary, 166–​181.

36   András Vadas 30. Josef Žemlička, Počatky Čech kralovskych 1198–​1253: Proměna statu a společnosti [The beginnings of the Kingdom of Bohemia, 1198–​1253: The transformation of state and society] (Prague: Lidove Noviny, 2002), 303–​312. See also Jan Klapště, The Archaeology of Prague and the Medieval Czech Lands, 1100–​1600 (Sheffield: Equinox, 2016), 180–​184. More recently, see Roman Zaoral, “Mining, Coinage, and Metal Export in the Thirteenth Century: The Czech Lands and Italy in Comparative Perspective,” in The Medieval Networks in East Central Europe: Commerce, Contacts, Communication, edited by Balázs Nagy, Felicitas Schmieder, and András Vadas (New York: Routledge, 2019), 209–​226, 212 ff. Some even date the growing importance to the end of the century: Nora Berend, Przemyslaw Urbańczyk, and Przemyslaw Wiszewski, eds., Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c. 900–​c. 1300, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 281. 31. Cf. János Barta and Gábor Barta, “Royal Finance in Medieval Hungary: The Revenues of King Béla III,” in Crises, Revolutions and Self-​Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History 1130–​1830, edited by M. Ormrod, M. Bonney, and R. Bonney (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1999), 22–​37. See more recently, see Csaba Tóth, “Minting, Financial Administration and Coin Circulation in Hungary in the Árpádian and Angevin Periods (1000–​1387),” and Márton Gyöngyössy, “Coinage and Financial Administration in Late Medieval Hungary (1387–​1526),” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 279–​294 and 295–​306, respectively. 32. Danuta Molenda, “Der polnische Bleibergbau und seine Bedeutung für den europäischen Bleimarkt vom 12. bis 17. Jahrhundert,” in Montanwirtschaft Mitteleuropas vom 12. bis 17. Jahrhundert. Forschungsprobleme: Stand, Wege und Aufgabe der Forschung, edited by Werner Kroker and Ekkehard Westermann (Bochum: Verlag Glückauf, 1984), 187–​198. 33. Jerzy Wyrozumski, Państwowa gospodarka solna w Polsce do schyłku XIV wieku [State economics of the salt industry in Poland to the end of the fourteenth century], Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego 178 (Cracow: Nakladem Uniwersytetu Jagielloriskiego, 1968); Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Salzhandel im mittelalterlichen Polen,” in Salz—​Arbeit und Technik: Produktion und Distribution in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, edited by Christian Lamschus (Lüneburg: Salzmuseum, 1989), 271–​280; and Antonina Keckova, “Polish Salt-​Mines as a State Enterprise (XIII–​XVIIIth centuries),” Journal of European Economic History 10 (1981): 619–​631. 34. Hansgerd Göckenjan, “Legende oder Wirklichkeit? Nachrichten über das östliche Europa im Werk des arabischen Reisenden Abu Hamid al Andalusi al-​Garnati (1080–​1170),” in Erkundung und Beschreibung der Welt: Zur Poetik der Reise-​und Länderberichte; Vorträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 19. bis 24. Juni 2000 an der Justus-​Liebig-​ Universität Gießen, edited by Xenja von Ertzdorff and Gerhard Giesemann, Chloe 34 (New York: Rodopi, 2003), 233–​265. 35. Batizi, “Mining in Medieval Hungary,” 168. See also György Györffy, Áz Árpád-​kori Magyarország történeti földrajza [The historical geography of Árpádian-​age Hungary], 4 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1963–​1987), vol. 3, 243–​247. Panning is mentioned in the gesta of Anonymus, see P. Magistri, qui Anonymus dicitur, Gesta Hungarorum, edited by Aemilius Jakubovich in Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, vol. 1, edited by Emericus Szentpétery (Budapest: Academia Litter. Hungarica atque Societate Histor. Hungarica, 1937), chap. 25. 36. On the mining towns in the surroundings of the River Hron, see Gusztáv Wenzel, Magyarország bányászatának kritikai története [Critical history of mining in Hungary] (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1880), 52–​68.

Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment    37 37. Simon, “Az aranykitermelés kezdetei” (with reference to the previous literature). 38. For silver mining, see Boglárka Weisz, “A nemesérc-​bányászathoz kötődő privilégiumok az Árpád-​és Anjou-​korban” [Precious ore mining privileges in the Árpádian and Angevin periods], Bányászattörténeti Közlemények 3, no. 2 (2008): 21. 39. Martin Štefanik, “Kupfer aus dem ungarischen Konigreich im Spiegel der venezianischen Senatsprotokollen im 14. Jahrhundert,” In Der Tiroler Bergbau und die Depression der europaischen Montanwirtschaft im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, edited by R. Tasser and E. Westermann, Veröffentlichungen des Südtiroler Landesarchivs 16 (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2004), 210–​226, and Örs Kollmann, “Az észak-​gömöri központi helyek középkori es kora újkori fejlődése” [The development of the central places of northern Gömör County in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period], in Bártfától Pozsonyig. Városok a 13–​17. században [From Bardejov to Bratislava: Cities in the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries], edited by Enikő Csukovits and Tünde Lengyel, Társadalom-​es Művelődéstörteneti Tanulmányok 35 (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Történettudományi Intézet, 2005), 47–​122. 40. On trade toward Flanders from Central Europe, see The Copper Ship: A Medieval Shipwreck and Its Cargo/​Miedziowiec: Wrak średniowiecznego statku i jego ładunek, edited by Waldemar Ossowski (Gdańsk: National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, 2014). 41. See Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy, and Zaoral, “Mining, Coinage, and Metal Export in the Thirteenth Century.” 42. István Draskóczy, “Egy olasz követjelentés tanúsága Mátyás bevételeiről (szempontok középkori bányászatunk történetéhez)” [An Italian report on the incomes of Matthias I (on the problem of mining in medieval Hungary)], in Ünnepi kötet Dr. Blazovich László egyetemi tanár 70. születésnapjára [Studies in honor of the seventieth birthday of Dr. László Blazovich], edited by Elemér Balogh and Mária Homoki-​Nagy (Szeged: Szegedi Tudományegyetem Állam-​és Jogtudományi Kar, 2013), 173–​183, and Gyöngyössy, “Coinage and Financial Administration,” 303. 43. Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy, 938–​956.

Further Reading Blanchard, Ian. Mining, Metallurgy, and Minting in the Middle Ages, Vol. 3: Continuing Afro-​ European Supremacy, 1250–​1450. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005. Brázdil, Rudolf, and Oldřich Kotyza. History of Weather and Climate in the Czech Lands I (Period 1000–​1500). Zürcher Geographische Schriften 62. Zürich: Geographisches Institut Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, 1995. Kiss, Andrea. Floods and Long-​Term Water-​Level Changes in Medieval Hungary. Springer Water. Cham: Springer, 2019. Maříková, Martina, and Christian Zschieschang, eds. Wassermühlen und Wassernutzung im mittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2015. Szabó, Péter. Woodland and Forests in Medieval Hungary, Archaeolingua, Central European Series 2 and BAR International Series, 1348. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005.

Chapter 2

From Avar s a nd Sl avs to th e Fi rst M edieval King d oms i n Central Eu rope Population and Settlement, 700–​1 100 Daniel Ziemann

Central Europe is nothing more than the retrospective construction of an artificial historic region, but it can serve as a useful heuristic tool that helps to identify specific features that would have remained unrevealed if the research framework were limited to political entities. Using Central Europe in this way, the period between 700 and 1100 is the time when the general structure of the region took shape. The specific political landscape of Central Europe was formed by migration processes, the emergence and disappearance of tribes and peoples, religious developments with the sometimes violent spread of Christianity, the emergence of ruling elites, and the monopolization of power by certain dynasties. In Central Europe both the state-​building processes, and Christianization came later than in the regions of the Latin West and the Greek East of the former Roman Empire. Between the mid-​ninth century and the year 1000, large polities emerged that developed more centralized structures. The population of the region was diverse. There were indigenous groups, descendants of an old European population, Celtic and some Germanic peoples who remained in place and did not migrate further south and west. Slavic-​speaking groups that shared a common archaeologically identifiable culture populated the region from the sixth century onward, and groups from the so-​called steppe cultures entered the region from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. There were also minor populations, e.g., religious minorities like Jews or Muslims, the descendants of displaced or resettled persons,

40   Daniel Ziemann warriors, and prisoners of war from regions outside Central Europe, and social groups like merchants, missionaries, and priests.

Central Europe before the Slavs: The Impact of Germanic Peoples Although this chapter focuses on the period from ad 700 onward, the situation in previous centuries had a significant impact on the population of the region. Groups of peoples—​the Marcomanni, Suebi, Goths, Lombards, Herules, Gepides, Vandals, and many others—​passed through Central Europe and later entered the Roman Empire, where they established polities of varying sizes. Recent research emphasizes that these relocations should not be understood as the movement of closed ethnic units but as complex migration, assimilation, and formation processes. Many of these groups were multiethnic. Recent archaeological research tries to avoid equating a specific linguistic group or archaeological culture with a particular ethnic group.1 How far this criticism of traditional ethnic interpretations should go is still debated. It is now widely accepted that identities, including ethnic ones, are constructions that are built, developed, and actualized depending on specific situations.2 The problem of equating an archaeological culture with a particular ethnic group can be outlined in a few examples. The first is the Marcomanni, regarded as part of the Suebi, who moved to Bohemia under their ruler, Marbod, around ad 9. In the Marcomannic Wars during the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–​180), the Marcomanni and their allies proved to be a strong and persistent enemy of the Roman Empire. Around the time of Emperor Galienus (253–​268), the Marcomanni were settled in Pannonia superior. In the fifth century, some of the Marcomanni moved to Pannonia prima and Noricum ripense. Later, they disappear from the sources and may have merged with the Lombards or Bavarians. Archaeologically, certain aspects of the material culture from cemeteries are linked to the Marcomanni. Richly equipped burials in places like, e.g., Prague-​Bubeneč, Radovesice, Straky, Zliv, and Holubice, are associated with the realm of Marbod, while the so-​called king’s grave in Mušov, dated to the second half of the second century, might mark the center of a tribal subgroup.3 The Goths are another example. Jordanes, one of the main sources for the early history of the Goths, relates the story of a Gothic migration from Scandinavia that crossed the Central European heartland to the northern shore of the Black Sea.4 Some scholars identify the archaeological culture called Wielbark, known from large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, with the Goths and their dwelling places, although this view is debated.5

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    41 The Lugii and Vandals are similar cases, associated with the Przeworsk archaeolgical culture from the end of the third until the beginning of the fifth century in today’s southern Poland, Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. They probably settled for some time on the upper Tisza River and Hungarian plain.6 It seems clear that the groups who settled at some point in Central Europe did not leave completely. The fluctuation and complexity of ethnogenetic processes suggests that some of the population stayed or merged with other groups. Later migrations did not enter completely depopulated areas and assimilated the inhabitants, “Germanic” peoples as well as substrates of earlier indigenous populations.

The Early “Slavs” in Central Europe Defining the Term “Slavs” The term “Slavs” has various dimensions. The linguistic dimension is clear: the Slavic language group with its subdivisions. Closely linked to the linguistic aspect but more problematic is the notion of “Slavs” as a broad ethnic community of common ancestry. In the last decades, interest has increased in questions concerning the early Slavs, with a growing number of monographs attempting to synthesize the results of numerous archaeological excavations and historical studies.7 In contrast to the highly disputed notion of “German” and “Germanic,”8 the term “Slavs” is still broadly used. There is no consensus, however, concerning what “Slavs” means in archaeological terms. Some scholars identify it with a “culture area,” others stress that the term is constructed and claim that Byzantine authors invented and used it, mainly as an umbrella term for a variety of groups living north of the Danube River.9

The Slavs’ Origin and Expansion The main question is whether this population is the product of large migration processes from an area outside of Central Europe, or whether the spread of a language group or archaeological culture can occur without the movement of a population. Some linguists have suggested that the Slavic language spread from the region south of the Pripyat and west of the Dniepr in today’s Belarus and Ukraine.10 The Slavic language spread in all directions in Eastern Europe, where it came soon in contact with Baltic, Finno-​Ugric, and Iranian language groups.11 While most scholars keep to the established concept of migration from an area of origin,12 others have proposed a model of Slavic as a lingua franca that does not necessarily require a migration process.13

42   Daniel Ziemann

The Early Slavs in Archaeology Archaeologists have labeled some elements as Slavic, like, e.g., pit (semisubterranean) houses, a special type of pottery, and cremation burials in urns.14 In recent years, genetic studies become more important and broaden the scope of analysis, although how such information can be interpreted with regard to ethnic belonging is debated.15 The earliest traces of Slavs appear in written sources around ad 500, which is also the time when archaeological cultures emerged that are commonly linked with the Slavs. The so-​called Prague-​Korčak-​culture extended from the Bug River to the middle section of the Dniepr River in its initial phase. Its main archaeological characteristics are simple handmade ceramic vessels without ornamentation, sunken-​floored pit-​houses, and cremation burials.16 Archaeological material characteristic of the “Prague-​Korčak culture” is found in the Carpathians, along the lower Danube, in today’s Slovakia, Moravia, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, and along the middle Elbe River.17 This spread is normally interpreted in terms of Slavic expansion to the west, be it only an expansion of settlement structures or a migration process. The chronology of the Slavic expansion from an archaeological point of view is difficult to ascertain. What is clear, however, is that a significant cultural change—​a different settlement pattern and a new type of material culture—​occurred in Central and East-​Central Europe around the turn of the sixth century. Connections to the Late Classical Germanic cultures in Central Europe remain unclear. Dendrochronological data from water wells in “Germanic” dwelling places extend to the middle of the fifth century ad; the earliest data from Slavic settlements date from around ad 700. Some scholars assume that during this chronological gap some regions were completely depopulated; others argue in favor of a continuous population presence. Archaeological research clearly shows a decline in population and reduced land-​use, but there are also signs of continuity.18

The Early Slavs in Written Sources The earliest mentions of Slavs in written sources come from the Eastern Roman Empire during the time of Emperor Justinian I (527–​565). Most of them refer to raids on the Byzantine provinces south of the Danube River, but at the same time Slavs were recruited for Justinian’s armies in the extensive wars in Italy and elsewhere.19 As to the origin of the term “Slavs” itself, there are good arguments in favor of deriving the word from a self-​denomination, which can probably be traced back to a Slavic word “*slov-​ĕne.”20 The available sources refer to areas north of the Danube as the main areas where Slavic groups settled. Among the earliest written sources about Slavs is a passage in Jordanes’s Getica from the mid-​sixth century. He mentions the enormous territorial spread of the Veneti, who are, he says, chiefly called Sclaveni and Anti. This pair, the Slavs and Antes,

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    43 also appear in other written sources from this period.21 According to Jordanes, their dwelling places ranged from the city of Noviodunum (probably today’s Isaccea on the lower Danube) and a lake called Mursianus (maybe near the mouth of the Drau River in the vicinity of the antique city of Mursa, today’s Osijek in Croatia) to the Danaster (Dniester), and northward as far as the Vistula.22 During the sixth century Slavs are mentioned often, mostly as invading groups who entered the territories south of the Danube River. A frequently quoted passage from Procopius, around 550/​555, mentions that the Slavs were not governed by one single person; instead they lived in a democratic order; they believed in one single God and lived in pitiful hovels far apart from one another.23 The passage on the Slavs is quite extensive compared to similar ethnographic descriptions from that period. At the same time, it is full of stereotypes, even though Procopius was probably in real contact with Slavs who fought in Justinian’s armies.24 Written sources are less reliable concerning the territories in the far north. Theophylactus Simocattes relates the story of three captured Slavs who were questioned by Emperor Maurice in 592. Explaining their refusal to join the Avar army, they claimed to come from far away, from the end of the Western Ocean, which might have been either the Atlantic or the Baltic Sea. They said they had traveled for fifteen months.25 This is, however, weak evidence for Slavic settlement near the Baltic Sea.

The Avars in the Carpathian Basin The Avars had certainly a significant impact on the region, especially the Carpathian Basin and its surroundings, which they held under control for almost three centuries. While the Avars disappeared almost completely from the written sources after the middle the seventh century, the enormous amount of archeological remains associated with them testifies to their great influence also on their neighbors.

The Avars and Other Steppe Peoples The emergence of Central Europe as a historic region with specific characteristics can certainly be seen as a result of close contacts with the steppe world and the great recurrent waves of invading peoples from Central Asia like the Huns, Avars, Magyars, Cumans, and Mongols.26 Research on steppe peoples including the Avars has increased over the last decades in the context of global history and connected histories.27 A growing interest in Eurasia as a region plays an important role, as research on invading steppe peoples allows for questions of connectivity between the Mediterranean and the West, on the one hand, and China and East Asia in general, on the other.28

44   Daniel Ziemann

The Origins and Early History of the Avars The origins of the Avars are not entirely clear, although it seems certain that they entered the Eastern European steppe region from Central Asia.29 Theophylakt Simocates relates a passage about who the Avars are, claiming that they are actually false Avars, Pseudo-​ Avars. According to him, they were a small group of peoples called Var and Chunni who fled their ancestral tribe and settled in Europe. They took the name Avars because of the reputation of the real Avars.30 While the trustworthiness of this passage is hard to prove, it shows, nevertheless, a consciousness of the flexibility of ethnogenetic processes.31 In 558, an Avar embassy arrived in Constantinople seeking an alliance with Emperor Justinian I. The Byzantine chronicler Theophanes mentions that their appearance was astonishing, especially their hairstyle, as “they wore their hair very long at the back, tied with ribbons and plaited.”32 The main goals of the Avars were to offer military service against the enemies of the empire, to receive yearly payments, and to find a fertile place to settle.33 Emperor Justinian agreed and sent the gifts they requested.34 In the following years the Avars entered the region north of the Black Sea and defeated the Sabirs, Utigurs, and Antes. In 561/​562 an Avar delegation to Constantinople demanded the land promised for settlement, but refused the region that was offered, part of the province Pannonia secunda between the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Herules had once lived.35 The Herules had established a polity near the Morava River in the middle Danube region in the mid-​ fifth century that only survived for a few decades.36 An important step for finally finding a place to settle was an alliance with the Lombards against the Gepids, who already lived in the Carpathian Basin at that time.37 By the mid-​fifth century, after the fall of the Hunnic Empire, the Gepids had established a realm east of the Tisza River in the central and southern parts of what was later known as Transylvania.38 The kingdom of the Lombards was situated in Pannonia, west of the Gepids.39 After the Gepids under King Cunimund suffered a disastrous defeat by the Lombard king, Albion, the Avars entered the land of the Gepids and started to settle in the Carpathian Basin. In 568 the Lombards also left Pannonia, which was now completely occupied by the Avars.40

The Expansion of the Avar Khaganate The Avars launched their campaigns from their new home in the Carpathian Basin. After years of Avar attacks and fruitless negotiations with the Byzantine emperor, in 574 a decisive victory over the troops of Emperor Tiberios resulted in a peace treaty with a yearly payment of 80,000 gold solidi.41 The Avar Empire in the Carpathian Basin was a heterogeneous entity with different degrees of integration among various Slavic groups, Bulgars, Gepids, Herules, and others.42 Some of them had to pay tribute and join the army on frequent raids. For

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    45 others, a formal acknowledgment of the khagan as the supreme ruler and yearly gifts sufficed. The structure of the Avar khaganate depended on a constant influx of tribute, prestige goods that could be distributed among the elite and warriors. This kind of rulership required constant expansion, increasing tributes, and military success. In 582, after a three-​year siege, Sirmium was conquered and a new treaty was concluded with the Byzantine Empire, including a yearly tribute of 80,000 solidi. Three years later this sum increased to 100,000 solidi after the Avars had conquered Singidunum (Belgrade), Augusta, and Viminacium.43 In 586, many cities on the lower Danube were plundered; one year later the Avars attacked cities in Thrace and on the Black Sea coast.44 After further Avar successes a new peace treaty, concluded in 598, raised the yearly tribute paid by the Byzantines to 120,000 solidi.45 The turning point was the large-​scale siege of Constantinople in 626 by an army composed of various peoples including—​apart from Avars—​Slavs and Bulgars. The siege failed, which was a major blow for the Avar Empire, where centrifugal tendencies increased.46 The various groups and peoples who were bound together by the military strength of the Avar ruling class now started to split off. One Bulgar leader who aspired to become khagan eventually failed in 630/​631. He fled with his people to Bavaria, where many of them were killed.47

The Seventh and Eighth Centuries Archaeological research can reveal some features of the social and economic structure of Avar culture,48 which had a clearly recognizable style.49 Scholars distinguish several Avar periods, early (626–​670), middle (650 or 670–​700/​7 10), and late (from 700/​7 10).50 There are signs of change during the middle Avar period and after the mid-​seventh century, when Avar material shows signs of increasing homogeneity.51 The Middle Avar period has sometimes been seen as a period of transition and mass migration; the area of settlements seems to have expanded. In what are today Slovakia and the Vienna Basin, archaeologists have also found increased settlement density.52 New types of material emerge during this period and objects of Byzantine origin reappear.53 The archaeological material shows signs of a growing population and perhaps a change toward a sedentary lifestyle. Instead of a few richly equipped elite graves as in the early Avar period, the later Avar period shows a larger number of more modest graves, probably belonging to representatives of a small but more numerous elite.54 The archaeological material of the eighth-​century Carpathian Basin is extraordinarily rich, with an increasingly homogeneous culture stretching from the Vienna Woods to the Iron Gates. The influx of Byzantine material came to an end during this period, and gold is rarely found. There are exceptions, however, like the famous hoard from Nagyszentmiklós/​Sânnicolau Mare, a rich treasure that stands out from the normal eighth-​century archaeological pattern.55 The end of the Avar Empire came rather quickly. Starting in 791, the Franks under Charlemagne defeated the Avars and put an end to Avar rule in eight years. In 795 they sacked the famous “ring,” maybe a fortified place with the khagan’s residence and probably the center of the Avar khaganate.56 The Frankish biographer Einhard summarizes

46   Daniel Ziemann the victory by stating that after great bloodshed Pannonia was emptied of human inhabitants, the khagan’s palace left no trace of human habitation, and the entire nobility of the Huns, as he calls the Avars, perished.57

Early Polities in Central Europe While there is abundant evidence for Slavic settlements in the region from the sixth century onward, the sources do not mention any large-​scale political formations before the beginning of the nineth century.

Samo The earliest trace of a polity among the Slavs of Central Europe is the realm of Samo, probably a Frankish slave trader, who is said to have established an important polity probably in the region of today’s Bohemia and Moravia. Around 623/​624, Samo, whom Fredegar, the only source for these events, calls natione Francos de pago Senonago—​a Frank from Soignies (today’s Belgium or Sens in Burgundy)—​came with his men to the land of the Slavs called Winedi. Samo and his companions successfully supported a Winedi uprising against the Avars and as a result the Winedi appointed Samo as their ruler; Fredegar calls him rex, “king.” He ruled the Winedi for thirty-​five years.58 A large-​scale military campaign in 631 or 632 by the Frankish king, Dagobert, also involving Alemanni and Langobardi, failed after a defeat at Wogastisburg castle.59 The name Wogastisburg has played an important role in identifying the region where Samo reigned.60 While some scholars have suggested placing it on the upper Saale and east of the Naab River,61 the rebellion against the Avars suggests maybe Bohemia or even Moravia.62 Samo’s reign has been discussed frequently. Some scholars have interpreted Samo and his realm as an early form of Slavic state formation,63 while others have been reluctant to concede much importance to this episode.64 The fact that Samo is called king and that he successfully repelled attacks by the Franks and the Avars suggest that his realm was quite large and that he had the necessary resources to defend it. Samo’s realm was short-​lived and unlikely to have had a major impact on later developments in the region, but in traditional historiography Samo is a major figure as the first Slavic king.65

Great Moravia One of the most influential polities in ninth-​century Central Europe was certainly Great Moravia. The name is derived from De Administrando Imperio, compiled by

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    47 the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos (913–​959), who called it μεγάλη Μοραβία.66 The exact territory of Great Moravia is difficult to ascertain; the core area was probably in today’s Moravia and Slovakia around Staré Mĕsto, Mikulčice, and Nitra.67 Great Moravia is a subject for both historians and archaeologists,68 figuring in the self-​ identification processes in former Czechoslovakia and in today’s Czech and Slovak republics. There is no earlier name for a group living in this region that could be connected with what became Great Moravia.69 Since place names cannot be identified with confidence, some scholars have challenged the established location of Great Moravia and suggested other regions, for instance, Pannonia, with a core area near the confluence of the Mures/​Máros and Tisza in today’s northern Serbia, western Romania, and southeastern Hungary.70 These attempts at identifying a different location, however, have not been widely accepted. The first known ruler was Mojmír I (830–​846). He expelled a certain Pribina from Nitra between 833 and 836. After Mojmír’s death, the Frankish king, Louis the German (817–​876), appointed Mojmír’s nephew, Rastislav (846–​870), as his successor and in 864 forced Rastislav to pay tribute. It seems that the Bohemian princes acted in accordance with Rastislav, which would suggest some sort of political dependence. His most influential act was to request Byzantine Emperor Michael III (842–​867) and Patriarch Photios (858–​867 and 877–​886) to send missionaries from Byzantium, which resulted in the invitation to Cyril and Methodius to come from Thessaloniki. Methodius was appointed papal legate for Moravia and Pannonia in 868 and elevated to the rank of archbishop of Sirmium in 870.71 But these actions were mainly targeted against the king of the Eastern Franks, Louis the German, who reacted accordingly. Rastislav was captured with the help of his nephew, Svatopluk, blinded, and sent to a monastery. Methodius was held captive in a monastery, probably Reichenau in Southern Germany, and only freed after frequent papal interventions in 873. Svatopluk (870–​ 894) retained an independent position and in 880 Pope John VIII (872–​882) bestowed papal protection on him, but the conflict between the Frankish and Byzantine clergy remained and the Frankish clergy prevailed. Methodius died in 885; his students were expelled in 893 and fled to Bulgaria. Svatopluk expanded his realm toward Bohemia and Silesia. He promised fealty and peace to Emperor Charles III (881–​888) in 884.72 He met with the successor of Charles, Arnulf of Carinthia (887–​899), in 890.73 Svatopluk’s successor, Mojmír II (894–​c. 902/​ 907), who prevailed against his brother, Svatopulk II, was not able to keep control of his large territories, and the Bohemians and others refused to support him. Although he stabilized his rule c. 900, a Magyar onslaught in 906/​907 destroyed Great Moravia and put an end to the rule of the House of Mojmir.74 Although political power collapsed, the population remained; archaeological research suggests continuous settlement.75 Eastern Great Moravia became part of the Hungarian kingdom, and the west came under the influence of the Bohemians.76

48   Daniel Ziemann

Slavic Groups between the Elbe and Oder Rivers The situation in the regions between the lower Elbe and Vistula rivers beyond the reach of the Byzantine or Frankish observers remains largely unknown.77 These regions were inhabited by Germanic peoples that had migrated south during the period of the Migration Period (fourth to sixth century ad).78 In the second half of the seventh century, Slavs entered almost depopulated areas, coming from Bohemia, the upper Elbe drainage, and Silesia. The archaeological material in this region seems to show migration processes and not features of acculturation. This migration affected areas at the margins, e.g., the island of Rügen, later than the regions such as today’s Brandenburg.79 The Slavic settlers were part of the Sukow archaeological culture, characterized by above-​ground log buildings. In the early period the social structure seems to have been relatively simple, as there are no finds that could be attributed to differentiated social strata. From the eighth to the tenth century population density and social diversification increased significantly, accompanied by signs of long-​distance trading activities, e.g., with Scandinavia.80 Between the second half of the eighth and the end of the ninth century the first fortification works were constructed, such as the large earthwork ramparts at Feldberg, which can also be seen as a mark of an emerging ruling class.81 This is the time when written sources first mention these regions. In 789, Charlemagne entered an alliance with the Abodrites and Sorbs in the area of the Wilzes, whose king, Dragovit, submitted himself together with other princes and nobles.82 In 822, the Royal Frankish Annals mention all the “Slavs” who attended the assembly in Frankfurt, namely, the Abodrites, Sorbs, Wilzes, Bohemians, Moravians, Praedenecetians, and Avars from Pannonia.83 Mentions of the Abodrites and Wilzes together with Bohemians and Moravians hints at the development of larger political structures in these regions. Many of these groups acknowledged the overlordship of the Frankish rulers.84 A good example of this situation is the case of the Abodrites, who were split into four parts in 844.85 Large fortification structures had already been built in the northern part of the region between the Elbe and Oder before ad 800, and just at the end of the ninth century smaller ramparts began to be built in the southern areas. In recent years they have been researched extensively and dated by dendrochronology. These small ramparts may show the establishment of smaller units and could have served as residences for a ruling elite in these regions.86

The Bohemians in the Ninth Century The geographical situation of Bohemia is quite specific; being surrounded by mountains provided an ideal setting for the creation of a more or less independent polity. The Bohemian basin is further divided into subregions.87 Graves identified as Germanic can even be dated to the first half of the sixth century, and Slavic settlement probably

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    49 began in the second third of the sixth century.88 Bohemia was not depopulated between the Germanic and Slavic periods, however; the Slavic settlement can be regarded as a long-​term process of migration waves and assimilation processes that was completed during the eighth century ad, when the first fortified settlements appear.89 Material culture changed as well, as seen in ceramic production.90 The intensity of settlement increased from the eighth century onward. Graves with rich grave goods that can be attributed to an elite only appear in increasing numbers in the second half of the ninth century.91 While earlier scholars assumed the existence of various “Czech” tribes, more recent research has rejected this idea.92 Written sources mention just one group, the Bohemians, Bohemi or Behaimi in the Latin sources, while the name Czech only appeared in the tenth century.93 In 805, Charlemagne led a campaign against the Behaimi without great success.94 Envoys of the Behaimi appeared at the Frankish court in Frankfurt in 822.95 The status of these Behaimi is not entirely clear; independence from the Franks secured by the payment of tribute is likely. The degree of centralization is uncertain; there may not have been a ruler who reigned over the Bohemians in the ninth century. On January 13, 845, fourteen Bohemian princes (duces) were baptized in Regensburg,96 but this event only had a temporary impact. Four years later, the Bohemians defeated a Frankish army.97 In 856/​857, payment of tributes resumed.98 In 872, the sources mention six princes by name, one of whom, Goriwei, could be Bořivoj I (d. 895), the first known member of the Přemyslid dynasty.99 Bořivoj I was probably baptized in Moravia; sometime between 869 and 885. According to Cosmas of Prague and the Legenda Christiani, Bořivoj was baptized by Archbishop Methodius.100 He returned together with a priest called Kraich and founded a church in the castle called Gradic (Levý Hradec). The archaeological interpretation of the remains of a rotunda that could have been part of this early church is debated.101 A pagan rebellion against the Christianization was only suppressed with the help of the Moravians. After his victory, Bořivoj founded another church, the Saint Mary church in the fortress of Prague, the first known historical building on the Hradčany.102 After the death of Bořivoj and a short period of Moravian domination, the Bohemians appear again in the sources in 895 in Regensburg, when several Bohemian dukes and two primores, Spytigneuo (certainly Bořivoj’s son and successor, Spytihnĕv), and Witozla (maybe a ruler of a part of Bohemia that was not controlled by the Přemyslids),103 acknowledged the supremacy of the Frankish King Arnulf of Carinthia (887–​899).104 Written sources about the reigns of Spytihnĕv (895–​905/​915) and Vratislav (905/​15–​ 921) are quite scarce. Archaeological research revealed circular ramparts that began to be built from the middle of the ninth century onward. Some of them are quite large with a settlement inside the fortified area. The walls consist of wood and earth and in some cases have a frontal screen wall. The ramparts were often divided into several parts by walls. The central parts can be identified as elite residences, which were also separated off by walls. Certain regions show a considerable density of these ramparts, for instance, Central Bohemia, with Prague-​Šárka, Budeč, Levý Hradec, and maybe also

50   Daniel Ziemann Prague-​Bohnice and Prague-​Butovice.105 During the tenth century, Prague developed into a regional center, finally becoming the main center of Bohemia.

The Hungarians The Hungarians arrived in Central Europe with social structures similar to previous equestrian peoples but managed to survive and transform themselves into a medieval state with a territorial organization. The Hungarians came at a time when the power structures in Western and Central Europe were undergoing a period of particularization.106

Early Hungarian History The Ural region has been identified as where the ancestors of the Hungarians might have lived in the first millennium bc. In recent years, this theory has also been tested through genetic studies.107 Reliable information on the Hungarians in Eastern Europe starts toward the end of the ninth century. The Pověst’ vremennykh lět, the twelfth-​century Russian Chronicle, mentions Угъри Чьрнии (Black Ugrians) who passed Kyiv during the time of Prince Oleg (879–​912).108 This could, indeed, refer to Hungarians. The main source for the so-​ called conquest period is Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s De administrando imperio, which was probably compiled around ad 950. The information on the Hungarians certainly derived from embassies like that of Tormás/​Termacsu (Prince Árpád’s great-​ grandson) and Bulcsú to Constantinople in 948. Mainly ­chapter 38 presents a detailed account of the early history of the Hungarians.109 It relates a story of seven tribes who lived together with the Khazars for three years. After a defeat by the Pechenegs they split into two groups, one of which moved westward to a new homeland, the so-​called Etelköz, the location of which is much debated but could be somewhere between the Don and Danube rivers. The chapter also relates how Árpád, the ancestor of the dynasty, came to power. The De administrando imperio provides a great deal of information on the Hungarians, such as the names of eight tribes and the existence of a dual rulership.

The Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin The Hungarians appear in Western sources from the 860s onward, when their raids extended to areas of Central Europe, and they also played a decisive role in the destruction of Great Moravia. The reason for their migration from Etelköz to the Carpathian Basin seems to have been the invasion of the Pechenegs, a Central Asian steppe people who probably settled east of the Etelköz. The Pechenegs devastated the dwelling places

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    51 of the Hungarians as allies of Symeon of Bulgaria (893–​927), who sought a way to stop the Hungarian invasion of Bulgaria. The Hungarians acted in the interests of the Byzantine Empire, defeated the Bulgarians, and raided their land. But soon afterward, Pecheneg attacks on Hungarian settlements caused them to migrate westward toward the Carpathian Basin.110 The conquest is commonly dated to 894/​895.111 During the last years of the ninth century, the Hungarians began frequent and devastating raids on the Frankish kingdoms and Italy. Year by year the sources tell about their raids and battles. One of these battles took place at Pressburg/​Bratislava in 907, when a Bavarian army was annihilated.112 The raids continued, affecting regions of the Eastern Frankish kingdom as well as Italy and even the Western Frankish kingdom. In 933, the Eastern Frankish/​German king, Henry I, defeated the Hungarians, but without significant long-​lasting effect113 until 955, the battle at Lechfeld near Augsburg,114 when Henry’s successor, the future emperor King Otto I, achieved a major victory that ended Hungarian raids in the West. Raids to the southeast, to Bulgaria and Byzantium, however, continued throughout the tenth century.115 The situation within the realm of the Hungarians has to be reconstructed mainly through archaeological research and the linguistic analysis of toponyms.116 When the Hungarians arrived the Carpathian Basin was a region where other groups had lived for centuries. Archaeologists have analyzed more than 25,000 graves and a significant number of settlements. Some cemeteries, when the newcomers used a cemetery begun by their predecessors, suggest a change in the population.117

The Emergence of Christian Kingdoms in Central Europe The Croats The origin of the Croats is debated, a delicate issue as it affects issues connected to today’s national identity.118 Various theories date the ethnogenesis of the Croats at different times.119 The main source, as in the case of the Hungarians, is the De administrando Imperii of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (913–​959).120 Like similar groups, the Croats migrated from north of the Black Sea toward the west in the first centuries ad. In the first half of the seventh century the Croats probably left the regions of the upper Vistula and migrated toward the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia. Few written sources mention the Croats during the seventh and eighth centuries. At the beginning of the ninth century there seem to have been two regional polities, one led by Borna, the dux Guduscanorum or dux Dalmatiae atque Liburniae, near the coast roughly between Zadar and Split. Further east, centered in Sisak (60 km southeast of Zagreb) a certain Liudewit is mentioned as dux Panoniae inferioris.121 Both rulers, although they competed with each other, seem to have been under the overlordship of

52   Daniel Ziemann the Frankish Empire.122 In 812, by the so-​called treaty of Aachen, the Byzantine and the Frankish Empires agreed on the rough division of the region. The coastal parts of northern Dalmatia remained under Byzantine rule while the Franks claimed the hinterland.123 The interior area established more independent structures and connections with Aquileia, Rome, and the west.124 Borna’s successors succeeded in establishing an independent polity near the coast. From c. 845 a certain Trpimir extended his rule toward the mountainous hinterland and also promoted the spread of Christianity.125 Trpimir’s son and successor, Zdeslav, had difficulties in maintaining his position and was replaced by a certain Domagoj. Conflicts between Byzantine and papal influence might have played a role in these events.126 A certain Branimir, another ruler, managed to get papal acknowledgment and protection.127 Tomislav (c. 910–​after 925), Trpimir’s grandson, seems to have held quite remarkable power; Constantine Porphyrogennetos mentions 60,000 horsemen and 100,000 foot soldiers. This was probably exaggerated,128 but Tomislav had enough resources to defend his realm successfully against Bulgarian expansion under Tsar Symeon (893–​927).129 A period of inner conflict followed Tomislav’s death with the rulers Trpimir II (928–​ 935), Krešimir I (935–​945), Miroslav (945–​946), Krešimir II (949–​969), and Stjepan Držislav (969–​997).130 In the second half of the eleventh century, under the reign of Peter Kresimir IV (1058–​1074/​75) and Dmitar Zvonimir (1075–​1089), Croatia experienced a period of political expansion toward Slavonia and Dalmatia. As in similar cases in the neighboring realms, Zvonimir received royal insignia from Pope Gregory VII by promising fealty and support of the Church reform movement. In 1075 he was crowned king of the Croats and Dalmatians.131 There were no heirs from his marriage to the Hungarian princess Jelena, daughter of King Bela I (1060–​1063), and Jelena’s brother, the Hungarian king, Ladislaus I (1077–​1095), claimed the succession. Ladislaus and his successor, Coloman (1095–​1116), enforced their claims through several military campaigns. In 1097, the Croats were defeated at the Gvozd River. Coloman was crowned king of Croatia in 1102, which initiated a period of personal union between the kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia.132

Slavic Polities between Elbe and Oder Rivers During the tenth century the situation changed for the Slavic groups between the Elbe and Vistula as they lay between emerging and expanding polities that established stable territorial structures; in the west, Denmark with Harald Bluetooth (Harald Blåtand) (c. 958–​c. 986) and his successors, in the east, Mieszko I (c. 960–​992) and the Piast dynasty, in the south Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty, and with the Ottonians as Eastern Frankish/​German kings and Roman emperors. King Henry I subdued the Hevelli in 928/​929, he campaigned against the Daleminzi, he suppressed a rebellion of the Wilzi, in 931 he defeated the Abodrites, and one year later the Milzes. This expansion mainly took the form of developing a system of borderland marches; existing fortification walls were sometimes reused, and new ones were

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    53 built.133 Furthermore, Christianization, with the development of ecclesiastic structures like the foundation of new bishoprics, played a crucial role in these processes. Bishoprics were founded in Brandenburg, Havelberg probably in 948, and Meißen, Merseburg, and Zeitz in 968. In the second half of the tenth century, however, the newly erected power structures proved unstable. A rebellion of the Abodrites was suppressed in 955, but the situation changed a few years later. In 983, Havelberg and Brandenburg were sacked. A large-​scale revolt of the Liutitians in 983, followed by a rebellion of the Abodrites in 990, reversed the expansion and pushed the frontier back to the west.134 The Abodrites, e.g., developed stable structures and a ruling dynasty. From the second half of the tenth century until the 1130s, the names are known of successive rulers like Nakon (955–​965/​ 967), Mstivoj (965/​967–​995), Mstislav (995?–​1018), Uto (1018–​1028), Ratibor (1028–​ 1043), Gottschalk (1043–​ 1066), Budivoj (1066–​ 1072/​ 1075), and Heinrich (c. 1090/​ 1093–​1127).135 The realm of the Abodrites was far from unimportant.136 The Jewish traveler Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʿqūb described Nakon as one of the mightiest Slavic rulers.137 As in larger polities, the rulers tried to convert the population to the Christian faith, but the often-​violent enforcement of Christianity met resistance. In 1066, a pagan revolt broke out and Prince Gottschalk was killed. Heinrich expanded the polity in the direction of Brandenburg, but after his death the realm of the Abodrites declined and finally ceased to exist. Similar attempts at creating independent polities occurred elsewhere, e.g., in the case of the Hevellians, although the sources provide less information. The Liutitians were a confederation, according to Adam of Bremen.138 In 983, this confederation succeeded in organizing a major revolt against the German nobility, who had expanded their rule toward the east in previous decades. According to Thietmar of Merseburg, this alliance of various groups was organized around a general placitum, an assembly of the people,139 although the priores, some sort of nobility, held the decisive vote.140 Otto III from the west and Mieszko I from the east tried to suppress the Liutitian confederacy, but in vain. In 1003, the situation changed, with frequent conflicts between Emperor Henry II (1002–​1024) and Boleslav Chrobry (992–​1025). Henry II concluded an alliance with the pagan Liutitians that was criticized by many of his contemporaries, but did not last long. Henry’s successor, Conrad II (1024–​1035), managed to get the acknowledgment of formal overlordship. In 1057, an internal war broke out between different groups of the Liutitian alliance; Saxons and Danes were involved, and during the following decades the Liutitian confederation lost its importance. In the long run, no independent polity survived in the region between the Elbe and Oder rivers after 1100. The position between the greater powers made it impossible to develop long-​lasting political structures.141

Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty Hungarian raids continued during the tenth century, especially toward the southeast. Géza, who succeeded in concentrating power as the sole ruler, took the first steps

54   Daniel Ziemann toward Christianization and supported the mission of Brun (or Brunward) from the monastery of St. Gall as “bishop of the Hungarians.” He was baptized, together with several thousand other Hungarians, and tried to eradicate paganism. In 973, Géza sent envoys to the court of Emperor Otto I in Quedlinburg. In 983–​985 he supported Emperor Otto III against the Bavarian duke Henry the Quarrelsome, but later arranged a marriage between his son Vajk (later: Stephen) and Gisela, the daughter of Henry the Quarrelsome and sister of the future German king Henry II (1002–​1024).142 His son and successor, Vajk, who adopted the name Stephen after his baptism, first met some resistance, but prevailed against his uncle, Koppány, with the help of Bavarian knights. Stephen followed the path of his father and promoted Christianity. On Christmas 1000 or on January 1, 1001, he received, with the consent of Emperor Otto III, a crown and a blessing.143 This is what Thietmar of Merseburg relates.144 Later sources, the life of St. Stephen by Hartwich of Győr, record that Pope Sylvester II (999–​1003) sent him a crown.145 The sources have been hotly debated,146 but the year 1000 is commonly regarded as the founding of Hungary because Stephen started to count his years as rex Ungrorum from that date. While Stephen was on good terms with Emperor Henry II (1002–​1024), his brother-​in-​law, he came into conflict with Henry’s successor, Conrad II (1024–​1039), who failed in an attack on Hungary in 1030.147 Stephen’s succession also initiated a series of internal conflicts. After his son, Emeric, died in a hunting accident, he appointed Peter Orseolo, son of the duke of Venice and Géza’s daughter. But Peter was unable to gain acceptance and fled to Germany, where he sought the support of the German king, Henry III (1039–​1056). The Hungarians elevated Aba as king with the Christian name Samuel (1041–​1044), but in 1044, after a victory at the battle of Ménfő on June 5, King Henry III deposed Aba and restored Peter to the Hungarian throne. But Peter could not maintain his position for long. After a period of internal conflicts, Andreas I (1046–​1060), a member of the Árpád dynasty and son of Prince Vazul, became king and prevailed against internal opponents as well as attempts by Henry III to replace him. Several attempts to invade Hungary failed.148 Andrew reigned together with his brother Béla, who was appointed duke and entrusted with the eastern parts of the kingdom. While this system of corulership worked for some time, it caused problems with the succession, which Andrew wanted to secure for his son, Solomon, who was crowned king before Andrew’s death. In 1058, Solomon married Judith, daughter of the late Emperor Henry III. When Béla (1060–​1063) took power after Andrew’s death, Solomon was taken to Germany, where King Henry IV received him. In 1063, a large-​scale campaign by Henry IV restored Solomon as Hungarian king. Béla died, and his sons, Géza, Ladislaus, and Lambert, fled to Poland. Solomon, however, tried to cooperate with Béla’s sons and entrusted Géza with his father’s duchy, continuing the model of corulership to a certain extent. In 1074, conflict broke out again. Solomon was defeated at the battle of Mogyoród, and Géza (1074–​1077) succeeded him on the Hungarian throne. After his death in 1077 he was followed by his brother Ladislaus (1077–​1095), who became one of the most famous Hungarian rulers.149 He supported the development of the Church and was canonized in 1192. His greatest political success was changing the succession of the

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    55 Croatian throne. In 1091, he occupied Croatia, which became part of the Hungarian kingdom from that time onward.150

Bohemia and the Přemyslid Dynasty The written sources about Bohemia remain quite limited during the tenth century; among them are hagiographic texts such as the Legenda Christiani, which relates the story of the two Christian martyrs, Ludmila (d. 921), Bořivoj’s wife, and her grandson, Wenceslaus (d. 929/​935), and the work of Cosmas of Prague, compiled in 1119/​1125.151 Boleslav I’s (929/​935–​967/​972) murder of his brother, Wenceslaus (921–​929/​935), made Wenceslaus a saint important for the later image of the Přemyslid dynasty. The Přemyslid dynasty seems to have centralized its power structures by the first half of the tenth century, although the details are debated.152 Archaeological research gives some hints, such as signs of destruction at southern Bohemian castles, but the dating and exact circumstances are uncertain. New castles were built in this period around the center in Prague. A hypothesis has been formulated (and criticized) of a so-​called Přemyslid domain, with the castles of Mĕlník in the north, Libušin in the northwest, Tetín in the southwest, Lštĕní on the southeast, and Stará Boleslaw in the northeast.153 Dendrochronological analysis dates a modification of the wall construction at the castle of Prague between 908 and 917.154 During the reign of Spytihnĕv (895–​905/​915) new churches were built, for example, St. Mary, where he was later buried, and the rotunda of St. Peter in Budeč, the oldest ecclesiastical building that still exists in Bohemia.155 His brother, Vratislav (905/​ 15–​ 921), married a certain Dragomira, daughter of the ruler of the Stodorani/​Havolani (Hevelli), which is an example of the efforts the Přemyslids took to establish long-​distance connections with other polities in East-​ Central Europe.156 A period of internal struggles followed Vratislav’s early death in 921. Ludmila, Bořivoj’s widow, was killed in 921, and Dragomira took over the regency for her minor sons, Wenceslaus and Boleslav. Wenceslaus probably started to take power in 924 or 925. In 929, he had to submit to the Eastern Frankish/​German king, Henry, who came to Prague with a large army, as Widukind of Corvey tells.157 This is the first mention of Prague in written sources.158 In 929 or 935, Wenceslas was murdered by followers of his brother, Boleslav (929–​967/​973), who seized the throne. After several conflicts with the East Frankish/​German king, Otto I (936–​973), he promised fealty to King Otto I in 950.159 Widukind calls the Bohemian ruler rex on this occasion as well as in 929 and says that the Bohemians participated in the battle of Lechfeld in 955 with 1,000 knights as the eighth legion of Otto’s army, against the Hungarians.160 Boleslav expanded his realm toward the north in the direction of Silesia and Lesser Poland. He issued his own coins and tried to establish marriage alliances with the Piasts and Saxonian nobles.161 His son and successor, Boleslav II (967/​973–​999), continued to centralize power;162 under his rule Prague became a bishopric. In 995, according to the life of St. Adalbert, members of the Slavnik family, Adalbert’s family (one of the most important families in Bohemia), were massacred, a glimpse into the internal struggles among the ruling

56   Daniel Ziemann families in Bohemia.163 The Přemyslid dynasty eventually succeeded in monopolizing its position in Bohemia and suppressing the ambitions of competing groups and families, a process that can also be seen in their castles. In the first half of the tenth century, all the castles outside the realm of the Přemyslid dynasty were abandoned, and new ones were built, often smaller.164 The reign of Boleslav III initiated a period of difficulties. As early as 965, Dobrava, daughter of Boleslav I, had married Mieszko I, the prince of Gniezno, an important alliance that enhanced the connections between Přemyslids and Piasts. But after Dobrava’s death in 977 the relationship with Poland weakened. Dobrava and Mieszko’s son, Boleslav Chrobry, conquered Bohemia and Moravia in 1003. Although Bohemia did not remain under his control for long, he succeeded in keeping Moravia and the eastern areas. Polish rule was terminated with the help of Emperor Henry II, who helped Jaromir, a brother of Boleslav, take over the Bohemian duchy as his vassal.165 Some decades later the situation changed. Břetislav I (1034–​1055) conquered Cracow and other central points in Poland such as Gniezno, from where the relics of Saint Adalbert were taken to Prague in 1039. After the death of Břetislav, Bohemia experienced a period of internal struggles. In the long run, in contrast to Poland or Hungary, Bohemia developed as an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire, where it played an important role. In 1085, Vratislav II (1061–​1092) was elevated to the rank of king; in 1114 Vladislav I (1109–​1117, 1121–​1125) became cupbearer of the empire. The Golden Bull by Emperor Charles IV in 1356 established the position of Bohemian king as one of the seven electors.166

The Piasts and Poland The aforementioned Prague-​Korčak culture is generally interpreted as the first wave of Slavs and the Sukow culture as the second wave. Archaeological remains show changes in burial practices and settlement structures. One interesting phenomenon are the earthen ramparts that began to be constructed from the middle of the ninth century onward. These ramparts seem to coincide with a social diversification in society and perhaps the development of an elite.167 From the second quarter of the tenth century the settlement structure of Greater Poland changed. Several ramparts were destroyed, others were constructed, e.g., in Poznań (dated to 943), Gniezno (dated to 940/​941), Giecz (940/​941), Grzybowo (929–​ 939), and Ostrów Lednicki (after 928).168 The ramparts are surrounded by areas of intensified settlement. This means that from an archaeological point of view the area between Poznań and Gniezno, so important for establishing the rulers of the Piast dynasty, can be identified as a central zone where new power structures emerged.169 The name Poland appeared quite late, not mentioned at all in the ninth and tenth century. Dendrochronology for castle mounds only yields dates for the tenth century.170 The first historic figure for whom there are sufficient written sources is Mieszko I (c. 960–​992). Widukind of Corvey’s Saxonian history first mentions him as Misaca, rex of

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    57 the Licicaviki, when Margrave Gero defeated him and killed his brother.171 After this defeat, Mieszko seems to have changed his strategy. In 965 Mieszko married Dobrava, the daughter of Boleslav, the Bohemian duke. One year later he was baptized and supported the Christian mission. In 968, the bishopric of Poznan was founded. From the core area around Gniezno, Mieszko successfully expanded his rule toward the northwest and northeast; Masovia came under his rule, Kujavia and great parts of Pomerania were subdued. According to the Jewish traveler, Ibrahim ibn Jakub, the land is rich in bread, meat, honey, and fish. Mieszko collected taxes, from which he paid his 3,000 men in armor.172 Mieszko also tried to subdue Silesia and Lesser Poland. According to the intensively debated Dagome iudex, a regest (summary or copy) of a charter from the canon law collection compiled by Cardinal Deusdedit c. 1086/​1087, Mieszko and his wife, Oda of Haldensleben, submitted the realm, which is called “Civitas Schinesghe” (Gniezno), to the apostolic See in 990/​991.173 If this document is indeed based on an authentic charter, it gives the first territorial description of this realm. By the charter Mieszko and Oda might have tried to secure the succession for their minor children against Boleslav Chrobry, the son of Mieszko’s first wife. Boleslav Chrobry (992–​1025) prevailed against his half-​brothers and succeeded his father. He intensified the dynastic connections with Saxonian nobility and maintained the dominant position of his realm east of the empire. He conquered Silesia and Cracow and for some time even Bohemia, Moravia, parts of today’s Slovakia, and the Lausitz (Lusatia). Although the western areas were lost during conflicts with Emperor Henry II (1002–​1024), he even managed to conquer Kyiv in 1018. After the death of Bishop Adalbert during his missionary work among the Pruzzi in 997, Boleslav transferred his relics to Gniezno. A visit by Otto III in the year 1000 was a significant event that has caused great debates among scholars.174 Boleslav gave Otto an arm relic of Adalbert and perhaps a copy of the holy lance. Whether Otto III elevated Boleslav to the rank of king, as Gallus Anonymous states, is still debated.175 At the same time and against the resistance of the archbishop of Magdeburg, Gniezno became an archbishopric with suffragan bishoprics in Kołobrzeg (Kolberg), Wrocław (Breslau), and Cracow.176 In 1024, after the death of Emperor Henry II, Boleslav had himself crowned king, probably with the agreement of Pope John XIX (1024–​1032).177 His son, Mieszko II (1025–​1034), succeeded him, after which a period of conflicts and decline began.178 Mieszko II had to struggle with his older half-​brother, Bezprym, as well as King Konrad II (1024–​1039) and Jaroslav of Kyiv (1019–​1054). In 1031, Mieszko was defeated and had to flee to Germany.179 Although he reestablished himself as king after the murder of Bezprym, he had to accept the distribution of some of his lands by Konrad II in 1033. A peasant revolt in 1037/​1038 and a pagan reaction caused Kazimierz I Odnowiciel (1034–​1058) to move the central see from Gniezno to Cracow, which became the new capital.180 Boleslav Śmiały (the Bold) also called Szczodry (the Generous) (1058–​1079), succeeded in reviving the former importance of his realm. He was crowned king in 1076, but his autocratic style of governing provoked opposition among the powerful nobility. In 1079, he maimed Bishop Stanisław of Cracow, whom he accused of treason; open rebellion broke out, and Boleslav fled to Hungary, where he died soon

58   Daniel Ziemann afterward.181 Even though his brother and successor, Wladyslav Herman (1080–​1102), did not claim to be king, he met strong opposition from the nobles. He relied on the palatine, Sieciech, but he was not able to control the nobility’s opposition. In 1093 he was forced to submit Silesia to his son, Magnus Zbygniev, whom he wanted to exclude from the succession. Zbygniev, however, was imprisoned by his father after only a short period of time in Silesia. After a reconciliation with his father, he received Greater Poland. After Wladyslav Herman’s death, however, the younger son, Boleslav III Krzywousty (1102–​1138) prevailed after a period of conflict, and in 1108/​1109 Zbygniev fled to Bohemia. The subsequent Bohemian-​Polish war, in which the German king, Henry V, fought on the side of the Bohemians, ended with the reconciliation of the stepbrothers in 1111, but finally Boleslav III blinded Zbygniev. With Boleslav III, Poland returned to a period of military expansion and political unity, which ended with a failed succession after his death in 1138.182 Until 1320 Poland remained divided into several dukedoms.

Centralization and Christianization The political landscape of Central Europe was the product of complex processes during the early Middle Ages, which shaped the region in a specific way. Dominant features of the early Middle Ages in Central Europe were the more or less parallel processes of Christianization and state building that started in the ninth century in the Western areas and was concluded by the main political players by the eleventh century. This development saw the centralization of power at certain places and the monopolization of power structures by families who succeeded in subduing or integrating competing families. The development of ecclesiastic structures enhanced the centralization process, as the religious elites depended on the ruler and therefore supported the monopolization of power structures. While some groups, tribal units, or confederations, for various reasons, did not develop successfully in this direction, it was mainly Bohemia with the Přemyslid dynasty, Poland with the Piasts, and Hungary with the Árpádians who completed such a process. Others, like the Abodrites and Moravians, encountered obstacles that prevented them from becoming or continuing as sustainable kingdoms.

Notes 1. Siân Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997); Lynn Meskell, “Archaeologies of Identity,” in Archaeological Theory Today, 2nd ed., edited by Ian Hodder (Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017), 187–​213; The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion, edited by Margarita Díaz-​Andreu García (London: Routledge, 2005); Ian Hodder, Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Sebastian Brather, Ethnische Interpretationen in

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    59 der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Geschichte, Grundlagen und Alternativen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004); for a different view see, e.g., Volker Bierbrauer, “Zur ethnischen Interpretation in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie,” in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters, edited by Walter Pohl (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2004), 45–​84; see the discussion in Gillet Andrew, ed., On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Age, Series: Studies in the Early Middle Ages, vol. 4 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2002). 2. Walter Pohl, “Telling the Difference: Signs of Ethnic Identity,” in From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms, edited by Thomas F. X. Noble (New York: Routledge, 2006), 120–​167. 3. Peter Kehne and Jaroslav Tejral, “Markomannen,” in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 290–​308; Peter Kehne and Jaroslav Tejral, “Markomannenkrieg,” in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19, 308–​321. 4. Jordanes, Romana et Getica, edited by Theodor Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882), chap. 4, 25–​XXIV, 130, pp. 60–​92. 5. Herwig Wolfram, Die Goten: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts; Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie (Munich: Beck, 1990); Peter J. Heather, The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); David M. Gwynn, The Goths: Lost Civilizations (London: Reaction Books, 2017). Concerning the Wielbark culture and the Goths: Volker Bierbrauer, “Archäologie und Geschichte der Goten vom 1.–​7. Jahrhundert. Versuch einer Bilanz,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 28, 1 (1994): 51–​171, esp. 52–​72; see the contributions in Aleksander Bursche, Anna Zapolska, and John Hines, eds., The Migration Period between the Oder and the Vistula, 2 vols. (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020). 6. For the Vandals, see Konrad Vössing, Das Königreich der Vandalen: Geiserichs Herrschaft und das Imperium Romanum (Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern, 2014); Roland Steinacher, Die Vandalen: Aufstieg und Fall eines Barbarenreichs (Stuttgart: Klett-​Corra, 2016); A. H. Merrills and Richard Miles, The Vandals (Chichester, Wiley-​Blackwell, 2010). 7. Sebastian Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen: Siedlung, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im früh-​und hochmittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008); P. M. Barford, The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, ca. 500–​700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Karol Modzelewski, Barbarzyńska Europa [Barbarian Europe], (Warsaw: Iskry, 2004); English translation: Barbarian Europe, translated by Ewa Macura, editorial work by Elena Rozbicka (Frankfurt: Lang, 2015); Tibor Živković and Srđan Rudić, eds., The World of the Slavs: Studies on the East, West and South Slavs: Civitas, Oppidas, Villas and Archeological Evidence (7th to 11th Centuries AD) (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2013); Felix Biermann et al., eds., Die frühen Slawen—​von der Expansion zu gentes und nationes: Beiträge der Sektion zur Slawischen Frühgeschichte des 8. Deutschen Archäologiekongresses in Berlin, 06.–​10. Oktober 2014, vol. 1 (Langenweissbach: Beier & Beran, 2016); Eduard Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter zwischen Idee und Wirklichkeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 2020). 8. Jörg Jarnut, “Germanisch: Plädoyer für die Abschaffung eines obsoleten Zentralbegriffes der Frühmittelalterforschung,” in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen. Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters, edited by Walter Pohl (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences 2004), 107–​ 113; Walter Pohl, “Vom Nutzen des Germanenbegriffes zwischen Antike und Mittelalter: eine forschungsgeschichtliche Perspektive,” in Akkulturation: Probleme einer germanisch-​romanischen Kultursynthese in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter: In

60   Daniel Ziemann memoriam Friedrich Prinz, edited by Jörg Jarnut, Dieter Hägermann, Wolfgang Haubrichs, et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 61–​78. 9. “Kulturraum” like, e.g., Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 31 (culture area); Curta, The Making of the Slavs, 347–​349. 10. Jürgen Udolph, Christian Lübke, and Marek Dulinicz, “Slawen,” in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 29 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), 45–​59. 11. Zbigniew Gołąb, The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguist’s View (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1992); O. N. Trubachev, Etnogenez i kul`tura drevnejshikh slavyan. Lingvisticheskie issledovaniya [The ethnogenesis and culture of the ancient Slavs. Linguistic research] (Moscow: Nauka, 1991); Hanna Popowska-​ Taborska, Wczesne dzieje Słowian w świetle ich języka [The early history of the Slavs in light of their language] (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1991); Witold Mańczak, De la préhistoire des peuples indo-​europeens (Cracow: Nakładem Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1992); Zbigniew Babik, Najstarsza warstwa nazewnicza na ziemiach polskich: W granicach wczesnośredniowiecznej Słowiańszczyzny [The oldest layer in Poland: Within the boundaries of the early medieval Slavic region] (Cracow: Universitas, 2001); Jürgen Udolph, “Heimat und Ausbreitung slawischer Stämme aus namenkundlicher Sicht,” in Die frühen Slawen—​von der Expansion zu gentes und nationes. Beiträge der Sektion zur Slawischen Frühgeschichte des 8. Deutschen Archäologiekongresses in Berlin, 06.–​10. Oktober 2014 Teilband 1, edited by Felix Biermann, Thomas Kersting, Anne Klammt, et al. (Langenweissbach: Beier & Beran, 2016), 27–​51; for a different view, see Florin Curta, Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics and Archaeology in Eastern Europe (ca. 500–​ca. 700) (New York: Routledge, 2020), 169–​177. 12. Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 83–​ 90; these ideas originated from earlier research among which, see the eleven volumes of Lubor Niederle, Slovanské starožitnosti (Prague: Bursík & Kohout, 1906). 13. Curta, The Making of the Slavs, 345–​350. 14. Mühle, Die Slaven im Mittelalter, 85–​86. 15. Patrick Geary, “The Use of Ancient DNA to Analyze Population: Movements between Pannonia and Italy in the Sixth Century,” in Le migrazioni nell’alto medioevo. Spoleto, 5–​11 aprile 2018 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2019), 45–​62; Eva Seemanova, Raymonda Varon, Jan Vejvalka, et al., “The Slavic NBN Founder Mutation: A Role for Reproductive Fitness?,” PLOS ONE 11, no. 12 (2016) (https://​doi. org/​10.1371/​jour​nal.pone.0167​984, accessed August 31, 2020); Alena Kushniarevich and Alexei Kassian, “Genetics and Slavic Languages,” in Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, edited by Marc L. Greenberg (http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1163/​2589-​6229_​ ESLO​_​COM​_0 ​ 32​367, accessed August 31, 2020). 16. Kazimierz Godłowski, “Über die Forschungen zur Ausbreitung der Slawen im 5.–​7. Jahrhundert n. Chr.,” in Frühe Slawen in Mitteleuropa: Schriften von Kazimierz Godłowski, edited by Jan Bemmann and Michał Parczewski (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2005), 85–​122. 17. Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 55–​57. 18. Ibid., 59–​62. 19. All the Greek sources mentioning Slavs have been collected in Günter Weiss, Das Ethnikon Sklabenoi, Sklaboi in den griechischen Quellen bis 1025 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1988). 20. Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 51; Herbert Schelesniker, Der Name der Slaven: Herkunft, Bildungsweise und Bedeutung (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1973), 4; J. Peter Maher, “The Ethnonym of the Slavs-​ Common Slavic

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    61 *slověne,” Journal of Indo-​ European Studies 2 (1974): 143–​ 156; Gottfried Schramm, “Venedi, Antes, Sclaveni, Sclavi: Frühe Sammelbezeichnungen für slawische Stämme und ihr geschichtlicher Hintergrund,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas n.s. 43, no. 2 (1995): 161–​200; Gottfried Schramm, Nordpontische Ströme; Namenphilologische Zugänge zur Frühzeit des europäischen Ostens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 105–​113. 21. Bartłomiej Szymon Szmoniewski, “The Antes: Eastern ‘Brothers’ of the Sclavenes?,” in Neglected Barbarians, edited by Florin Curta (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 53–​82. 22. The exact localization of Mursianus is debated; see Alexandru Madgearu, “About Lacus Mursianus (Jordanes, Getica, 30 and 35),” Byzantinoslavica 58, no. 1 (1997): 87–​89, for a location near Novodinum. But Osijek in Pannonia seems more plausible. See Walter Pohl, Die Awaren: Ein Steppenvolk im Mitteleuropa, 567–​822 n. Chr. (Munich: Beck, 2002), discussion on p. 97. Francesco Giunta and Antonino Grillone, Jordanis De origine actibusque Getarum (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1991), chap. 5, 34sq., p. 16, English translation in Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version with an Introduction and a Commentary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915), 59; Schramm, “Venedi, Antes, Sclaveni, Sclavi,” 169–​171; Pohl, Die Awaren, 97 and 368 with fn. 28. For the question of trying to connect this information with archaeological research, see Pavel Markovich Dolukhanov, The Early Slavs: Eastern Europe from the Initial Settlement to the Kievan Rus (New York: Routledge, 2013), 146–​154 and 160–​167; Barford, The Early Slavs, 45–​66. 23. Jakob Haury and Gerhard Wirth, eds., Procopii Caesariensis Opera omnia, Vol. 2, De bellis libri V–​VIII, [Bellum Gothicum], 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 2001), VII, 14, 22–​28, 357–​358; English translation in Procopius, Vol. 4, History of the Wars, Books VI (continued) and VII, translated by H. B. Dewing, (London; Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann; Harvard University Press, 1962), 270–​271; Otto Veh, ed., Prokop, Gotenkriege (Munich: Heimeran Verlag, 1978), 526–​529; Hans Ditten, “Zur Bedeutung der Einwanderung der Slawen,” Byzanz im 7. Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zur Herausbildung des Feudalismus, edited by Friedhelm Winkelmann, Helga Köpstein, Hans Ditten, et al. (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 1978), 73–​160, 79; Matthias Hardt, “Aspekte der Herrschaftsbildung bei den frühen Slawen,” in Integration und Herrschaft: Ethnische Identitäten und soziale Organisation im Frühmittelalter, edited by Walter Pohl and Maximilian Diesenberger (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2002), 249–​255. 24. Curta, The Making of the Slavs, 36–​38. 25. Carl de Boor and Peter Wirth, eds., Theophylacti Simocattae historiae (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1972), 6, 2, p. 223; Marcin Wołoszyn, Theophylaktos Simokates und die Slawen am Ende des westlichen Ozeans—​die erste Erwähnung der Ostseeslawen? Zum Bild der Slawen in der frühbyzantinischen Literatur: eine Fallstudie/​Teofilakt Simokatta i Słowianie znad brzegu Oceanu Zachodniego—​najstarsze świadectwo obecności Słowian nad Bałtykiem? przyczynek do studiów nad obrazem Słowian w literaturze wczesnobizantyńskiej (Cracow: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2014); Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire, translated by William Sayers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 140. 26. Michael Schmauder, “Huns, Avars, Hungarians—​Reflections on the Interaction between Steppe Empires in Southeast Europe and the Late Roman to Early Byzantine Empires,” Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millennium CE, edited by Jan Bemmann and Michael Schmauder (Bonn: Universität Bonn, Institut für vor-​und frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, 2015), 671–​692.

62   Daniel Ziemann 27. Walter Pohl, “The Role of the Steppe Peoples in Eastern and Central Europe in the First Millennium A.D.,” in Origins of Central Europe, edited by Przemysław Urbańczyk (Warsaw: Naukowa Oficyna Wydawnicza Scientia, 1997), 65–​78; Csanád Bálint, Kontakte zwischen Iran, Byzanz und der Steppe im 6.–​7. Jahrhundert (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Archeológiai Bizottság, 2000); Jürgen Paul, ed., Nomad Aristocrats in a World of Empires (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2013); Iaroslav Lebedynsky, Les seigneurs de la steppe: Royaumes et empires nomades d’Eurasie (Lacapelle-​Marival: Éd. Archéologie nouvelle, 2012); Michael Maas and Nicola Di Cosmo, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–​750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 28. Maas and Di Cosmo, Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity; Iaroslav Lebedynsky, Huns d’Europe, Huns d’Asie: Histoire et culture des peuples hunniques; IVe–​VIe siècle (Arles: Editions Errance, 2018); Hyun Jin Kim, Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, and Selim Ferruh Adalı, eds., Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Contact and Exchange between the Graeco-​Roman World, Inner Asia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Bemmann and Schmauder, Complexity of Interaction; Paul, Nomad Aristocrats; Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 29. Tividar Vida, “To the Inner Asian Roots of the Avars,” Studia mediaevalia Europaea et Orientalia: Miscellanea in honorem professoris emeriti Victor Spinei oblata, edited by George Bilavschi and Dan Aparaschivei (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2018), 29–​46. 30. De Boor, Theophylacti Simocattae historiae, chaps. 7, 8, p. 259; Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, The History of Theophylact Simocatta: An English Translation with Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); on Theophylactos Simokates, see Peter Schreiner, ed., Theophylaktos Simokates, Geschichte (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1985) and Michael Whitby, The Emperor Maurice and His Historian: Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare (Oxford-​New York: Clarendon Press-​Oxford University Press, 1988). 31. See the discussion of this passage in Pohl, The Avars, 38–​47, and Theophylaktos Simokates, Geschichte, 187 and n. 966–​970; Hans Walther Haussig, “Theophylakts Exkurs über die skythischen Völker,” Byzantion 23 (1953): 275–​462. 32. Carl de Boor, ed., Theophanis Chronographia, Vol. 1, Textum graecum continens (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883), 232; The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284–​813, translated with introduction and commentary by Cyril A. Mango, Roger Scott, and Geoffrey Greatrex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 339–​340; Ioannes Thurn, ed., Ioannis Malalae chronographia (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 420; Pohl, The Avars, 21. 33. Roger Charles Blockley, ed., History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation and Historiographical Notes (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 2006), frag. 5, 1, p. 48. 34. Ibid., frag., 5, 2, p. 50. 35. Ibid., frag., 5, 4, p. 52; Pohl, The Avars, 54. 36. Roland Steinacher, “The Herules: Fragments of a History,” in Curta, Neglected Barbarians, 319–​360; Alexander Sarantis, “The Justinianic Herules: From Allied Barbarians to Roman Provincials,” in Curta, Neglected Barbarians, 361–​402. 37. Blockley, History of Menander the Guardsman, frag. 12, 1, p. 128. 38. István Bóna, A l’aube du moyen age: Gépides et Lombards dans le bassin des Carpates (Budapest: Corvina, 1976); István Bóna, Der Anbruch des Mittelalters: Gepiden und Langobarden im Karpatenbecken (Budapest: Corvina, 1976); Walter Pohl, “Die Gepiden

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    63 und die Gentes an der mittleren Donau nach dem Zerfall des Attilareiches,” in Die Völker an der mittleren und unteren Donau im fünften und sechsten Jahrhundert. Berichte des Symposions der Kommission für Frühmittelalterforschung, 24. bis 27. Oktober 1978, Stift Zwettl, Niederösterreich, edited by Herwig Wolfram and Falko Daim (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1980), 239–​305 39. Walter Pohl, “Awaren, Langobarden, Byzantiner—​Umbruch in Pannonien,” in Eastern Central Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Conflicts, Migrations and Ethnic Processes, edited by Walter Pohl, Cristina Spinei, and Cătălin Hriban (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2008), 265–​274; Tivadar Vida, “Die Langobarden in Pannonien,” in Die Langobarden. Das Ende der Völkerwanderung: Katalog zur Ausstellung im Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn, 22. 8. 2008–​2. 1. 2009, edited by Michael Schmauder et al. (Darmstadt: Primus, 2008), 72–​89; Jörg Jarnut, “Die Langobarden zwischen Pannonien und Italien,” in Herrschaft und Ethnogenese im Frühmittelalter: Gesammelte Aufsätze; Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Matthias Becher, with the collaboration of Stefanie Dick and Nicola Karthaus (Münster: Scriptorium, 2002), 291–​297; István Bóna, “Die Langobarden in Pannonien,” in Die Langobarden: Von der Unterelbe nach Italien, edited by Ralf Busch (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1988), 63–​74. 40. Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 2, 26, 103; Pohl, The Avars, 60–​68. 41. De Boor, ed., Theophanis Chronographia, 247; The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 365–​ 366; Adelheid Hübner, ed., Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica: Kirchengeschichte, griechisch–​ deutsch (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), vol. 5, chap. 11; Evagrius Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, translated with an introduction by Michael Whitby (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 270; Blockley, History of Menander the Guardsman, frag. 15.5, p. 150; Pohl, The Avars, 77–​78. 42. Tivadar Vida, “Conflict and Coexistence: The Local Population of the Carpathian Basin under Avar Rule (Sixth to Seventh Century),” in The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans, edited by Florin Curta and Roman Kovalev (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 13–​46. 43. De Boor, Theophylacti Simocattae historiae, 1, 6, 4–​6, pp. 51–​52; Whitby and Whitby, The History of Theophylact Simocatta, 28; Pohl, The Avars, 83–​94. 44. Pohl, The Avars, 94–​100. 45. Ibid., 187–​190. 46. Ibid., 294–​305. 47. Bruno Krusch, ed., Fredegarii et aliorum Chronica: Vitae Sanctorum (Hannover: Hahn, 1888), vol. 4, 72, p. 157; Daniel Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Großmacht: Die Entstehung Bulgariens im frühen Mittelalter (7.–​9. Jahrhundert) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), 130–​133; Pohl, The Avars, 318–​320. 48. Pohl, The Avars, 198–​279 and 344–​372; Falko Daim, “Avars and Avar Archaeology: An Introduction,” in Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, edited by Hans-​Werner Goetz, Jörg Jarnut, and Walter Pohl (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 463–​570. 49. Falko Daim, “The Gold of the Avars: Three Case Studies,” in Dalle steppe al Mediterraneo: Popoli, culture, integrazione; Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Fondazioni e rituali funerari delle aristocrazie germaniche nel contesto mediterraneo, Cimitile-​ Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 18–​19 giugno 2015: atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Oriente e Occidente fra tarda antichità e Medioevo: Popoli e culture dalle steppe al Mediterraneo,

64   Daniel Ziemann Cimitile-​Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 16–​17 giugno 2016, edited by Carlo Ebanista and Marcello Rotili (Naples: Guida editori, 2017), 407–​422. 50. Pohl, The Avars, 336. 51. Ibid., 338. 52. Ibid., 338. 53. Ibid., 339. 54. Ibid., 343. 55. Birgit Bühler, Viktor Freiberger, Falko Daim, et al., Der Goldschatz von Sânnicolau Germanischen Mare (ungarisch: Nagyszentmiklós) (Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-​ Zentralmuseums, 2015); Csanád Bálint, Der Schatz von Nagyszentmiklós: Archäologische Studien zur frühmittelalterlichen Metallgefäßkunst des Orients, Byzanz’ und der Steppe (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2010). 56. Matthias Hardt, “Der Ring der Awaren,” in Lebenswelten zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte: Festschrift für Falko Daim zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, edited by Thomas Kühtreiber, Jörg Drauschke, Tivadar Vida, et al. (Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-​Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2018), 185–​192; Walter Pohl, Die Awarenkriege Karls des Grossen 788–​803 (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1988); Pohl, The Avars, 376–​389. 57. Georg Heinrich Pertz and Georg Waitz, eds., Einhardi Vita Caroli Magni, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Stuttgart, Leipzig: Hahn, 1911), 13, pp. 15–​ 16; Thomas F. X. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 33. 58. Krusch, Fredegarii Chronica, 4, 48, p. 144; for the Frankish background, see Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–​751 (London: Longman, 1999), 145; for Fredegar, see Roger Collins, Die Fredegar-​Chroniken (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2007); Helmut Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–​850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 166–​239. 59. Krusch, Fredegarii Chronica, 4, 68, pp. 154–​155. 60. Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 66 with fn. 181; Sebastian Brather, “Wogastisburg,” in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 34 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 189–​190; Hansjürgen Brachmann, “Als aber die Austrasier das castrum Wogastisburc belagerten . . . (Fredegar IV 68),” Onomastica Slavogermanica 19 (1990): 17–​33. 61. Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 66. 62. Wolfgang Hermann Fritze, “Zur Bedeutung der Awaren für die slawische Ausdehnungsbewegung im frühen Mittelalter,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 28 (1979): 498–​ 545; Heinrich Kunstmann, “Samo, Dervanus und der Slovenenfürst Wallucus,” Welt der Slaven 25, no. 1 (1980): 171–​177; Heinrich Kunstmann, “Über die Herkunft Samos,” Welt der Slaven 25, no. 1 (1980): 293–​313; Bohuslav Chropovský, “Die frühslawischen und vorgroßmährische Entwicklung im Gebiet der Tschechoslowakei,” in Grossmähren und die Anfänge der tschechoslowakischen Staatlichkeit, Translated from the original: Velká Morova a počátky československé státnosti, edited by Josef Poulik, Bohuslav Chropovský, and Jana Axamitová (Prague: Academia, 1986), 90–​119; Pohl, The Avars 310–​311, 509 and fn. 187 with further literature. 63. Gerard Labuda, Pierwsze państwo słowiańskie: Państwo Samona [The first Slavic state: The state of Samo] (Poznań: Księgarnia Akademicka, 1949). 64. Heinrich Kunstmann, “Was besagt der Name Samo und wo liegt Wogastisburg?” Welt der Slaven 24 (1979): 1–​21.

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    65 65. Labuda, Pierwsze państwo słowiańskie; Vaclav Chaloupecký, “Considerations sur Samon, le prèmier roi des Slaves,” Byzantinoslavica 11 (1950): 223–​239. 66. Constantine Porhyrogenitus De administrando imperio, Greek text edited by Gyula Moravcsik, English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967), chap. 13, p. 64, chap. 38, p. 172. 67. Eduard Mühle, “Altmähren oder Moravia? Neue Beiträge zur geographischen Lage einer frühmittelalterlichen Herrschaftsbildung im östlichen. Europa,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-​Forschung 46 (1997): 205–​223. 68. Lubomí Havlík, Velká Morava a středoevropstí Slované/​Velikaja Moravija i slavjane Srednej Evropy [Great Moravia and the Central European Slavs] (Prague: Statni Pedagogické Nakladatelství, 1964); Imre Boba, Moravia’s History Reconsidered: A Reinterpretation of the Medieval Sources (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971); Josef Poulík, Velká Morava a pocátky ceskoslovenské státnosti: (k 1100. výrocí smrti Metodeje) [Great Moravia and the beginnings of Czech statehood (on the 1100th anniversary of the death of Methodius)] (Prague: Academia, 1985); Krzysztof Polek, Państwo wielkomorawskie i jego sa̜siedzi (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej, 1994); Velká Morava mezi východem a západem: Sborník příspěvků z mezinárodní vědecké konference [Great Moravia between East and West: Proceedings of an International conference], edited by Luděk Galuška, Pavel Kouřil, and Zdeněk Měřínský (Brno: Archeologický ústav Akademie Ved České Republiku Brno, 2001); Maddalena Betti, The Making of Christian Moravia (858–​882): Papal Power and Political Reality (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Great Moravia and the Beginnings of Christianity, edited by Pavel Kouřil (Brno: The Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno, 2014); The Great Moravian Tradition and Memory of Great Moravia in the Medieval Central and Eastern Europe: Die Grossmährische Tradition und Gedächtnis an Grossmähren im Mittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa, edited by Robert Antonín (Opava: Slezská Univerzita v Opavě, Filozoficko-​přírodovědecká fakulta, Ústav historických věd, 2014), for earlier literature, see Lumír Poláček, “Großmährisches Reich,” in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 13 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999), 78–​85; the sources are presented in Magnae Moraviae fontes historici/​Prameny k dejinám Velké Moravy, 5 vols., edited by Dagmar Bartoňková (Brno: Univerzita Jana Evangelisty Purkyně): 1: Annales et chronicae, 1966; 2: Textus biographici, hagiographici, liturgici, 1967; 3: Diplomata, epistolae, textus historici varii, 1969; 4: Leges, textus iuridici, supplementa, 1971; 5: Indices, edited by Lubomír Havlík, 1977. 69. An exception might be the Golasici (Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 68); for the early Slavic settlement, see Zdeněk Měřínský, České země od příchodu Slovanů po Velkou Moravu I [The Czech lands from the arrival of the Slavs in Great Moravia] (Prague: Libri, 2002); Dagmar Jelínková, “The Origins of Slavic Settlement in Moravia,” in Great Moravia and the Beginnings of Christianity, edited by Pavel Kouřil (Brno: The Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014), 24–​34. 70. Martin Eggers, Das Grossmährische Reich: Realität oder Fiktion? Eine Neuinterpretation der Quellen zur Geschichte des mittleren Donauraumes im 9. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1995); different suggestions for location came from Charles R. Bowlus, Franks, Moravians, and Magyars: The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788–​907 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), and Boba, Moravia’s History Reconsidered. 71. The abundant literature on the Cyrillo-​Methodian mission cannot be listed here; see “Konstantin-​Kyril Filosof,” in Kirilo-​Metodievska Enciklopedija, vol. 2, edited by Petăr Dinekov (Sofia: Marin Drinov, 1995), 388–​423, and Svetlana Nikolova, “Metodij,” ibid.,

66   Daniel Ziemann 632–​650; see older literature in Kirilo-​metodievska bibliografija: 1516–​1934 (Sofia: Bălgarska Akademija na Naukite, Kirilo-​Metodievski Naučen Centăr, 2003) (first publ. 1934); Kirilo-​metodievska bibliografija: 1934–​1944, edited by Svetlina Nikolova (Sofia: Bălgarska Akademija na Naukite, Kirilo-​Metodievski Naučen Centăr, 2010); Kirilometodievska bibliografija za 1934–​1940 god., edited by Michail Georgievič Popruženko and Stoîan Romanski (Sofia: Dăržavna Pečatnica, 1942); Kirilometodievska Bibliografija: 1940–​1980, edited by Ivan Dujčev, Angelina Kirmagova, and Anna Paunova (Sofia: Sofijski Universitet “Kliment Ochridski,” Universitetska Biblioteka, 1983); the sources are collected in Constantinus et Methodius Thessalonicenses fontes/​Konstantin i Metodije Solunjani–​izvori, edited by František Grivec and France Tomšič (Zagreb: Staroslovenski institut, 1960). 72. Georg Heinrich Pertz and Friedrich Kurze, eds., Annales Fuldenses sive annales regni Francorum orientalis (Hannover: Hahn, 1891), ad an. 884, p. 113; Lubomír Havlík, Svatopluk Veliký, král Moravanů a Slovanů [Svatopluh the Great, king of the Moravians and Slavs] (Brno: Jota, 1994), 64; Martin Wihoda, “Großmähren und seine Stellung in der Geschichte,” in Zentralisierungsprozesse und Herrschaftsbildung im frühmittelalterlichen 91; Simon Ostmitteleuropa, edited by Przemysław Sikora (Bonn: Habelt, 2014), 61–​ Maclean, Kingship and Policy in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 138–​139. 73. Annales Fuldenses, ad an. 890, pp. 118–​119; according to Regino of Prüm the eastern Frankish king, Arnulf of Carinthia (887–​899), acknowledged his rule over Bohemia in 890; Friedrich Kurze, ed., Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon cum continuatione Treverensi (Hannover: Hahn, 1890), ad an. 890, p. 134, however, this contradicts the statements of the Annals of Fulda, see Ernst Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches: 2. Auflage, 3. Band. Die letzten Karolinger. Konrad I. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1888), 339, fn. 4; Annales Fuldenses, ad an. 895 and 897, pp. 126 and 131; concerning Svatopluk, see Lubomír E. Havlík, “Územni rozsah Velkomoravské ríše v dobe posledních let vlády krále Svatopluka: K problematice vzájemných vztahu stredoevropských Slovanu,” Slovanské štúdie 3 (1960): 9–​79; Havlík, Svatopluk Veliký, král Moravanů a Slovanů; Dušan Treštík, “Von Svatopluk zu Boleslaw Chrobry: Die Entstehung Mitteleuropas aus der Kraft des Tatsächlichen und aus einer Idee,” in The Neighbours of Poland in the 10th Century, edited by Przemysław Urbańczyk (Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2000), 111–​145; Alena Ovčačíková, “Svatopluk Olomoucký,” Moravský historický sborník 1999/​2001: 409–​438; Július Bartl, “Opat o královskom titule Svätopluka I.,” Historicky casopis 62 (2014): 325–​334; Matúš Kučera, Kral̓ Svautopluk: 830?–​ 846–​894 (Martin: Matica slovenská, 2010); David Kalhous, “Svatopluk I.—​kníže nebo král?” [Svatopluh I: Prince or king?], Historia slavorum occidentis 2 (2016): 64–​89. 74. Pavel Kouřil, “The Magyars and Their Contribution to the Collapse and Fall of Great Moravia: Allies, Neighbours, Enemies,” in The Fall of Great Moravia: Who Was Buried in Grave H153 at Pohansko near Br̆eclav, edited by Martin Wihoda and Jiří Macháček (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 62–​93. 75. László Koszta, “Kontinuität oder Diskontinuität zwischen dem 9. und 10./​11. Jahrhundert mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das Karpatenbecken,” in The Great Moravian Tradition and Memory of Great Moravia in the Medieval Central and Eastern Europe/​Die Grossmährische Tradition und Gedächtnis an Grossmähren im Mittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa, edited by Robert Antonín (Opava: Slezská Univerzita v Opavě, Filozoficko-​přírodovědecká fakulta, Ústav historických věd, 2014), 83–​102.

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    67 76. Ivo Štefan, “Great Moravia, the Beginnings of Premyslid Bohemia and the Problem of Cultural Change,” in Wihoda and Macháček, The Fall of Great Moravia, 151–​186; Ivan Štefan, “ ‘Great’ Moravia and the Premyslid Bohemia from the Point of View of Archaeology,” in Antonín, The Great Moravian Tradition and Memory, 9–​36. 77. For the archaeological research, see Marek Dulinicz, Frühe Slawen im Gebiet zwischen unterer Weichsel und Elbe: Eine archäologische Studie (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2006); Felix Biermann, “Zentralisierungsprozesse bei den nördlichen Elbslawen,” in Sikora, Zentralisierungsprozesse, 157–​194, esp. 161–​170; Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 62–​66. 78. Achim Leube, “Germanische Völkerwanderungen und ihr archäologischer Fundniederschlag. Das 5. und 6. Jahrhundert östliche der Elbe: Ein Forschungsbericht (I),” Ethnographisch-​Archäologische Zeitschrift 36 (1995): 5–​84; Achim Leube, “Germanische Völkerwanderungen und ihr archäologischer Fundniederschlag. Slawisch-​germanische Kontakte im nördlichen Elb-​Oder-​Gebiet: Ein Forschungsbericht (II),” Ethnographisch-​ Archäologische Zeitschrift 36 (1995): 259–​298. 79. Biermann, “Zentralisierungsprozesse,” 157–​158. 80. Ibid., 158–​164. 81. Joachim Herrmann, “Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede im Burgenbau der slawischen Stämme westlich der Oder,” Zeitschrift für Archäologie 1 (1967): 206–​258. 82. Annales Regni Francorum inde ab an. 741 usque ad an. 829 qui dicuntur Annales Laurissenses Maiores et Einhardi (Hannover: Hahn, 1895), ad an. 789, pp. 84–​85; Bernhard von Simson, ed., Annales Mettenses priores (Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn, 1905), pp. 77–​78. 83. Annales Regni Francorum, ad an. 822, p. 159. 84. Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 65. 85. Annales Fuldenses, ad an. 844, p. 35. 86. Biermann, “Zentralisierungsprozesse,” 168–​170. 87. Michal Lutovský, “Der Verlauf der Zentralisierungsprozesse im frühmittelalterlichen Böhmen,” in Sikora (ed.), Zentralisierungsprozesse, 93–​126, p. 93. 88. Eduard Droberjar, Věk barbarů: České země a stěhování národů z pohledu archeologie [The age of barbarians: Czech lands and the migration of nations from the viewpoint of archaeology] (Prague: Paseka, 2005), 201–​208; Rastislav Korený, “Čechy v 6. století: K problému konce germánského osídlení Čech” [Bohemia in the sixth century: On the problem of the end of Germanic settlement in Bohemia], Archeologie ve středních Čechách 9 (2005): 459–​522. 89. Lutovský, “Der Verlauf der Zentralisierungsprozesse,” 93. 90. Ibid., 94. 91. Ibid., 98. 92. Dušan Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců: Vstup Čechů do dějin (530–​935) [The beginnings of the Přemyslids: The entry of the Czechs into history] (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1997), 54–​73. 93. Měřínský, České země od příchodu Slovanů po Velkou Moravu; Petr Sommer, České země v raném středověku: Sborník vznikl jako cyklus přednášek konaných roku 2002 v Lobkovickém Paláci u příležitosti Výstavy “Evropa Okolo Roku 1000” [The Czech lands in the Early Middle Ages: The collection was created as a lecture series in the Lobkovický Palace on the occasion of the exhibition “Europe around the Year 1000” (Prague: Nakl. Lidové Noviny, 2006); Lutovský, “Der Verlauf der Zentralisierungsprozesse,” 93. 94. Annales Regni Francorum, ad an. 805, p. 120; RI I n. 411b, in Regesta Imperii Online (http://​ www.rege​sta-​impe​rii.de/​id/​0805-​00-​00_​1_​0_​1_​1_​0_​11​01_​41​ 1b, accessed September 6, 2020).

68   Daniel Ziemann 95. Annales Regni Francorum, ad an. 815, p. 142 (whether the wording omnes orientalium Sclavorum primores et legati venerunt includes the Bohemians is unclear), but they are mentioned for 822, p. 159; RI I n. 766a, in Regesta Imperii Online (http://​www.rege​sta-​ impe​rii.de/​id/​0822-​00-​00_​1_​0_​1_​1_​0_​17​19_​7​66a, accessed September 6, 2020); Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 63–​64. 96. Annales Fuldenses, ad an. 845, p. 35; Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 199. 97. Annales Fuldenses, 38–​39. 98. Ibid., 47. 99. Ibid., 76. 100. Bertold Bretholz and W. Weinberger, eds., Cosmae Pragensis Chronica Boemorum/​Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923), 1, 10, p. 22; Jaroslav Ludvíkovský, ed., Legenda Christiani: Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius/​Kristiánova legenda: Život a umučení svatého Václava a jeho báby svaté Ludmily/​K vydání připravil: Přeložil a poznámkami (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1978), Chap. 2, pp. 18, 20. 101. Kateřina Tomková, Levý Hradec v zrcadle archeologických výzkumů: Díl 1 (Prague: Archeologický ústav Akademie věd České republiky, 2001), 191–​233. 102. Nejstarší sakrální architektura Pražského hradu: Výpověď archeologických pramenů [The oldest sacral architecture of Prague castle: The testimony of archaeological sources], edited by Jan Frolík et al. (Prague: Peres, 2000), 7–​96. 103. Jiři Sláma, “Vitislav (ui utizla),” in Seminář a jeho hosté: Sbornák prací k 60. narozeninám doc. dr. Rostislava Nového, edited by Blanka Zilynská, Jiří Pešek, and Zdeněk Hojda (Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 1992), 11–​19. 104. Annales Fuldenses, ad an. 895, p. 126. 105. Lutovský, “Der Verlauf der Zentralisierungsprozesse,” 102. 106. Walter Pohl, “Huns, Avars, Hungarians: Comparative Perspectives Based on Written Evidence,” in Bemmann and Schmauder, Complexity of Interaction, 693–​702. 107. Veronika Csáky, Dániel Gerber, Bea Szeifert, Egyed Balázs, et al., “Early Medieval Genetic Data from Ural Region Evaluated in the Light of Archaeological Evidence of Ancient Hungarians,” bioRxiv, 1–​19 (https://​www.bior​xiv.org/​cont​ent/​10.1101/​2020.07.13.20015​4v1). 108. Donald Ostrowsky, David J. Birnbaum, and Horace Lunt, eds., The Pověst’ vremennykh lět: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 12, 12, p. 62. 109. Moravcsik and Jenkins, De administrando imperio, ­chapter 38, pp. 170–​175. 110. Tibor Ákos Rácz, “The Hungarian Conquest and the 9th–​10th Century Settlements of the Pest Plain,” in Settlement Change across Medieval Europe: Old Paradigms and New Vistas, edited by Niall Brady and Claudia Theune-​Vogt, (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2019) 359–​370. 111. Moravscik and Jenkins, De administrando imperio, 174–​179, 250–​253; Staffan Wahlgren, ed., Symeonis Magistri et Logothetae chronicon (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), ch. 133, 18–​20, pp. 276–​277; Immanuel Bekker, ed., Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata, Symeon magister, Georgios monachus (Bonn, 1838), 359; George T. Dennis, The Taktika of Leo VI (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), 18, § 40, pp. 452–​453; Annales Fuldenses, 129–​130; Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon, 131–​132; Gyula Kristó, Hungarian History in the Ninth Century (Szeged: Szegedi Középkorász Műhely, 1996), 183–​190; András Róna-​Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 332–​336.

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    69 112. Johann Friedrich Böhmer, Engelbert Mühlbacher, and Johann Lechner, Regesta Imperii I, 1. Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern 751–​918 (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1908), No. 2044a, 814–​815; Roman Zehetmayer, Schicksalsjahr 907: Die Schlacht bei Pressburg und das frühmittelalterliche Niederösterreich. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Niederösterreichischen Landesarchivs, 3. Juli bis 28. Oktober 2007 in der Kulturfabrik Hainburg (St. Pölten: Niederösterreichisches Landesarchiv, 2007). 113. Johann Friedrich Böhmer and Emil von Ottenthal, Regesta Imperii II: Die Regesten des Kaiserreiches unter den Herrschern aus dem sächsischen Hause 919–​1024 (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1893), No. 43d, pp. 27–​28. 114. The traditional localization has been challenged by Charles R. Bowlus, The Battle of Lechfeld and Its Aftermath, August 955: The End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West (Aldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); Walter Pötzl, “Der Ort der Ungarnschlacht des Jahres 955: von der Schlacht ‘bei Augsburg’ oder ‘am Lech’ zur Schlacht ‘auf dem Lechfeld,’” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 76 (2013): 83–​96. 115. Daniel Ziemann, “Der schwächelnde Nachbar: Bulgarien zwischen Ungarn und Byzanz in der zweiten Hälfte des 10. Jahrhunderts,” in A Kárpát-​medence, a magyarság és Bizánc/​The Carpathian Basin, the Hungarians and Byzantium, edited by Terézia Olajos (Szeged: Szegedi Tudományegyetem, Bizantinológiai és Középlatin Filológiai Tanszéki Csoport, 2014), 367–​382. 116. Ádám Bollók, “Excavating Early Medieval Material Culture and Writing History in Late Nineteenth-​and Early Twentieth-​Century Hungarian Archaeology,” Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 2 (2016), 277–​304; Péter Langó, “Archaeological Research on the Conquering Hungarians: A Review,” in Research on the Prehistory of the Hungarians: A Review; Papers Presented at the Meetings of the Institute of Archaeology of the HAS, 2003–​ 2004, edited by Blázs Gusztáv Mende (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2005), 175–​340. 117. László Révész, “The Cemeteries of the Conquest Period,” in Hungarian Archaeology at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by Zsolt Visy and Mihály Nagy (Budapest: Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, 2003), 338–​343; Langó, “Archaeological Research on the Conquering Hungarians,” 178. 118. See overviews of Croatian history in Nada Klaić, Povijest Hrvata u ranom srednjem vijeku [The history of Croatia in the Early Middle Ages] (Zagreb: Školska Knjiga, 1971); Ivo Goldstein, Hrvatski rani srednji vijek [The Croatian Early Middle Ages] (Zagreb: Zavod za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 1995); Zrinka Nikolić Jakus, ed., Nova zraka u europskom svjetlu: Hrvatske zemlje u ranome srednjem vijeku (oko 550−oko 1150) [New rays in European light: The Croatian lands in the early Middle Ages (ca. 550–​ca. 1150] (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 2015). 119. Danijel Džino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-​Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 14–​73 with a discussion of the scholarship on this topic. 120. Moravcsik and Jenkins, De administrando imperio, ch. 31, 146–​153. 121. Annales Regni Francorum, 149, 151, 155, 161. 122. For the general development of the relationship with the Franks, see Petar Štih, “Integration on the Fringes of the Frankish Empire: The Case of the Carantanians and their Neighbours,” in Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire, edited by Danijel Džino, Ante Milošević, and Trpimir Vedriš (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 103–​122; Ivan Majnarić, “Aemulatio imperii and the South-​Eastern

70   Daniel Ziemann Frontier of the Carolingian World,” in Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812), edited by Danijel Džino, Ante Milošević, and Trpimir Vedriš (London: Routledge, 2018), 43–​56; Miljenko Jurković, “Istria under the Carolingian Rule,” in Džino, Milošević, and Vedriš, Migration, Integration and Connectivity, 123–​152. 123. See the contributions in Džino, Milošević, and Vedriš, Imperial Spheres. 124. Mladen Ančić, “Lombard and Frankish Influences in the Formation of the Croatian Dukedom,” in L’Adriatico dalla tarda antichità all’età carolingia: Atti del convegno di studio, Brescia 11–​13 ottobre 2001, edited by Gian Pietro Brogiolo and Paolo Delogu (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2005), 213–​228. 125. Neven Budak, “Hrvatska u vrijeme Trpimira” [Croatia in the time of Trpimir], Kaštelanski zbornik 3 (1993): 58–​63. 126. Ivo Goldstein, “Kroatien und Dalmatien zwischen Byzanz und dem Westen,” in Byzanz und das Abendland im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert, edited by Evangelos Konstantinou (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997), 161–​181. 127. Mirjana Matijević Sokol and Vladimir Sokol, Hrvatska i Nin u doba kneza Branimira [Croatia and Nin in the time of Prince Branimir] (Zagreb: Hrvatski studiji Sveučilišta, 2005). 128. Moravcsik and Jenkins, De administrando imperio, 150; Tibor Živković, “Contribution to the New Reading about the Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ Statement on the Numbers of Croat Horsemen, Foot Soldiers and Sailors in Early 10th Century,” Byzantinoslavica 65 (2007): 143–​152. 129. Ivo Goldstein, “O Tomislavu i njegovom vremenu” [About Tomislav and his times], Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskoga fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 18, no. 1 (1985): 23–​55. 130. Ludwig Steindorff, Die dalmatinischen Städte im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zu ihrer politischen Stellung und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung (Cologne: Böhlau, 1984), pp. 42–​43. 131. Ivo Goldstein, ed., Zvonimir, kralj hrvatski: Zbornik radova [Zvonimir, king of the Croats: Proceedings] (Zagreb: Hrvatska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1997). 132. Jan Budak, “Der ungarische Staat und die Kroaten,” in Die ungarische Staatsbildung und Ostmitteleuropa, edited by Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: Europa Institut Budapest, 2002), 221–​228. 133. Joachim Henning, “Der slawische Siedlungsraum und die ottonische Expansion östlich der Elbe: Ereignisgeschichte -​Archäologie -​Dendrochronologie,” in Europa im 10. Jahrhundert: Archäologie einer Aufbruchszeit. Internationale Tagung in Vorbereitung der Ausstellung ‘Otto der Große, Magdeburg und Europa,’” edited by Joachim Henning (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2008), 131–​146. 134. Joachim Herrmann, “Der Liutizenaufstand 983. Zu den geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen und den historischen Wirkungen,” Zeitschrift für Archäologie 18 (1984): 9–​17; Manfred Hellmann, “Grundzüge der Verfassungsstruktur der Liutizen,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa im Mittelalter: Gesammelte Aufsätze, edited by Manfred Hellmann (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1988), 281–​291; Christian Lübke, “Der Aufstand der Elbslawen im Jahr 983 und seine Folgen,” in Svatý Vojtěch, Čechové a Evropa. Mezinárodní sympozium uspořádané Českou Křestʹanskou Akademií a Historickým Ústavem Akademie Věd ČR 19.–​20. listopadu 1997 v Praze [St. Adalbert, the Czechs, and Europe. International symposium organized by the Czech Christian Academy and the Historical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic 19.–​20. November 1997 in Prague], edited

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    71 by Dušan Třeštík and Josef Žemlička (Prague: NLN, 1998), 109–​121; Wolfgang Hermann Fritze,“Der slawische Aufstand von 983–​ eine Schicksalswende in der Geschichte Mitteleuropas,” in Festschrift der Landesgeschichtlichen Vereinigung für die Mark Brandenburg zu ihrem hundertjährigen Bestehen: 1884–​1984, edited by Eckart Henning and Werner Vogel (Berlin: Landesgeschichtl. Vereinigung für d. Mark Brandenburg, 1984), 9–​55. 135. Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 82; Nils Rühberg, “Obodritische Samtherrscher und sächsische Reichsgewalt von der Mitte des 10. Jahrhunderts bis zur Erhebung des Fürstentums Mecklenburg 1167,” Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 110 (1995): 21–​50. 136. Wolfgang Hermann Fritze, “Probleme der abodritischen Stammes-​und Reichsverfassung und ihrer Entwicklung vom Stammesstaat zum Herrschaftsstaat,” in Siedlung und Verfassung der Slawen zwischen Elbe, Saale und Oder, edited by Herbert Ludat (Giessen: Schmitz, 1960), 141–​219; Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 308–​313. 137. Semen Rapoport, “On the Early Slavs: The Narrative of Ibrahim-​Ibn-​Yakub,” Slavonic and East European Review 8, no. 23 (1929): 331–​341. 138. Berhard Schmeidler, ed., Adam von Bremen, Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte: Magistri Adam Bremensis Gesta Hamaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 2 (Hannover: Leipzig, 1917), II, 21, schol. 16 and III, 22, pp. 77 and 165. 139. Robert Holtzmann, ed., Thietmari Merseburgensis Episcopi Chronicon/​Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre Korveier Überarbeitung, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum NS, 9 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1935), vol. 6, 25. 140. Holtzmann, Thietmar von Merseburg, vol. 7, 64. 141. Wolfgang Brüske, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Lutizenbundes: deutsch-​wendische Beziehungen des 10.–​12. Jahrhunderts: 2., um ein Nachw. vermehrte Aufl. (Cologne: Böhlau, 1983); Mühle, Die Slawen im Mittelalter, 297–​315. 142. Gábor Varga, Ungarn und das Reich vom 10. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert: Das Herrscherhaus der Árpáden zwischen Anlehnung und Emanzipation (Munich: Verlag des Ungarischen Instituts, 2003), 58–​60. 143. Ibid., 69–​76. 144. Holzmann, Thietmar von Merseburg, vol. 4, 59 (38), p. 198. 145. Emma Bartoniek, “Legenda Sancti Stephani regis maior et minor, atque legenda ab hartvico episcopo conscripta,” in Imre Szentpétery, ed., Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum. II (Budapest: Academia Litter. Hungarica et al., 1938), 363–​440, esp. 412–​413. 146. See Jenő Szűcs, “König Stephan in der Sicht der modernen ungarischen Geschichtsforschung,” Südostforschungen 31 (1972): 17–​40; György Györffy, István király és műve: 3. bővített, javított kiadás [King Stephen and his work: 3d expanded and improved edition] (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2000). 147. Harry Bresslau, ed., Wiponis Opera/​ Wipos Werke: Editio Tertia, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn, 1915), vol. 26, pp. 44–​45; Wilhelm von Giesebrecht and Edmund von Oefele, eds., Annales Altahensis Maiores, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum; editio altera (Hannover: Hahn, 1891), ad an. 1030, p. 18. 148. Daniel Ziemann, “Der schwierige Nachbar: Heinrich III. und Ungarn,” in Heinrich III: Dynastie–​Region–​Europa, edited by Gerhard Lubich and Dirk Jäckel (Cologne: Böhlau, 2018), 161–​180.

72   Daniel Ziemann 149. János Karácsonyi, Szent-​László király élete [The life of King St. Ladislaus] (Budapest: Szent István Társ., 1926). 150. Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–​1526 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 30–​37. 151. Stefan Albrecht, “‘Von der Anarchie zum Staat’—​einige Überlegungen zu Cosmas von Prag,” in Der Wandel um 1000. Beiträge der Sektion zur slawischen Frühgeschichte der 18. Jahrestagung des Mittel-​und Ostdeutschen Verbandes für Altertumsforschung in Greifswald, 23. bis 27. März 2009, edited by Felix Biermann, Thomas Kersting, and Anne Klammt (Langenweissbach: Beier & Beran, 2011), 177–​189. 152. See Marzena Matla-​Kozłowska, Pierwsi Przemyślidzi i ich państwo (od X do połowy XI wieku): Eskpansja terytorialna i jej polityczne uwarunkowania [The first Przemyslids and their country: (From the tenth to the mid-​eleventh century): Territorial expansion and political conditions] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2008), with the abundant literature on the topic. 153. Jiří Sláma, Střední Čechy v raném středověku, III, Archeologie o počátcích přemyslovského státu [Central Bohemia in the early Middle Ages, Vol. 3, Archaeology about the beginnings of the Czech state] (Prague: Univerzita karlova, 1988), 71–​80; Ladislav Varadzin, “K vývoji hradišt v jádru Čech se zřetelem k přemyslovské doménĕ (příspĕvek do diskuse)” [On the development of fortifications in the core of Bohemia with regard to the Přemyslid domain (A contribution to the discussion)], Archeologické rozhledy 62, no. 3 (2010): 535–​554. 154. Ivana Boháčová, “Pražský hrad a jeho nejstarší opevňovací systémy” [Prague castle, and its oldest fortification systems], in Pražský hrad a Malá Strana [Prague Castle and lesser town], edited by Martin Ježek and Jan Klápště, (Prague: Archeologický Ústav, 2001), 179–​301. 155. Emanuel Vlček, Nejstarší přemyslovci: Atlas kosterních pozůstatků prvních sedmi historicky známých generací Přemyslovců s podrobným komentářem a historickými poznámkami [The oldest Přemyslids: Skeletal remains of the first seven historically known generation of Přemyslids with detailed commentary and historical notes] (Prague: Vesmír, 1997); Miloš Šolle, “Rotunda sv. Petra a Pavla na Budči” [The rotunda of St. Peter and Paul in Budča], Památky archeologické 81 (1990): 140–​207. 156. Petr Charvát, The Emergence of the Bohemian State (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 118 (English translation of Petr Charvát, Zrod českého státu: 568–​1055 [Prague: Vyšehrad, 2007]); see a review by Eduard Mühle in Sehepunkte 12, no. 9 (2012) (http://​www.seh​epun​kte.de/​2012/​ 09/​22128.html). 157. Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von Korvei/​Widukindi Monachi Rerum Gestarum Saxonicarum Libri Tres, edited by Paul Hirsch and H.-​E. Lohmann, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 60 (Hannover: Hahn, 1935), vol. 1, 35, pp. 50–​51. 158. Lutovský, “Der Verlauf der Zentralisierungsprozesse,” 111. 159. Hirsch and Lohmann, Widukind von Korvei, vol. 3, 8, pp. 108–​109. 160. Ibid., vol. 3, 44, p. 125. 161. Zdeňek Petráň, První české mince [The first Czech coins] (Prague: Set out, 1998). 162. Petr Sommer, ed., Boleslav II.—​der tschechische Staat um das Jahr 1000: Internationales Symposium Praha 9.–​10. Februar 1999 (Prague: Filosofia, 2001). 163. Jadwiga Karwasińska, ed., Św. Wojciecha biskupa i męczennika żywot pierwszy/​S. Adalberti Pragensis episcopi et martyris vita prior: Wydala, wstępem i komentarzem opatrzyla/​ edidit, praefatione notisque instruxit, Pomniki Dziejowe Polski, Seria II—​Tom IV, Część

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    73 1/​Monumenta Poloniae Historica, ns, vol 1. Fasc. 1 (Warsaw: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe, 1962, 25, p. 38. 164. Michal Lutovský and Jan Michálek, “Die südböhmischen Burgwälle im 9. und 10. Jahrhundert: Bemerkungen zu Struktur, Chronologie und historischen West-​und Zusammenhängen,” in Archäologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ostbayern/​ Südböhmen 16. Treffen. 21. bis 24. Juni 2006 in Plzeň-​Křimice, edited by Miloslav Chytráček, Jan Michálek, Michael M. Rind, et al. (Rahden, Westf.: Marie Leidorf, 2007), 255–​265. 165. Holzmann, Thietmar von Merseburg, vol. 6, 12 (9), 288, 290. 166. Karl Zeumer, Die Goldene Bulla Kaiser Karls IV.: Erster Teil: Entstehung und Bedeutung der Goldenen Bulle (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1908); Kaiser Karl IV (1316–​ 1378) und die Goldene Bulle: Begleitbuch und Katalog zur Ausstellung des Landesarchivs Baden-​Württemberg, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, edited by Erwin Frauenknecht and Peter Rückert (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2016); Ulrike Hohensee et al., eds., Die Goldene Bulle: Politik–​Wahrnehmung–​Rezeption, vol. 1 and 2 (Berlin: Akademie-​ Verlag, 2009). 167. Przemysław Sikora, “Die Anfänger der Zentralisierungsprozesse im frühen Mittelalter in Polen,” in Sikora, Zentralisierungsprozesse, 127–​156, esp. 138–​148. 168. Ibid., 148–​149, with the relevant literature. 169. Robert F. Barkowski, Die Piasten und die Anfänge des polnischen Staates (Berlin: Parthas, 2018). 170. Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen, 75. 171. Hirsch and Lohmann, Widukind von Korvei, vol. 3, 66, p. 141. 172. Józef Widajevicz, “Studia nad relacją Ibrahima ibn Jakuba” [Studies of the account of ibn Jakuba], in Polska Akademia Umiejętności, Rozprawy Wydziału Historyczno-​ Filozoficznego, S. II, 46/​1, 94–​101; Georg Jacob, Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Fürstenhöfe aus dem 9. und 10. Jahrhundert ins Deutsche übertragen und mit Fußnoten versehen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1927), 13–​14; English translation in Rapoport, “On the Early Slavs: The Narrative of Ibrahim-​Ibn-​Yakub,” 336–​337; Mustafa Switat, “Arab Travelers about Poland: The Image of Ibrāhīm Ibn Ya‘qūb and the Image of the Slavs,” in Geographies of Arab and Muslim Identity through the Eyes of Travelers, edited by Laura Sitaru (Bucharest: Editura Universitãții din București, 2018), 217–​226. 173. Przemysław Nowak, “Recent Work on the Dagome iudex in the Collectio Canonum of Cardinal Deusdedit,” in Sacri canones editandi: Studies on Medieval Canon Law in Memory of Jiří Kejř, edited by Pavel Krafl (Brno, 2017), 25–​39; Adam Łukaszewicz, “O ‘Dagome iudex’ czyli papirus a sprawa polska,” Przegląd Historyczny 103 (2012): 365–​380; Krystyna Lukasiewicz, “‘Dagome Iudex’ and the First Conflict over Succession in Poland,” The Polish Review 54 (2009): 407–​429; David Kalhous, “Dagome iudex: Zamyšlení nad výpovědní hodnotou jednoho pramene,” in Ad laetitiam: Studenti doc. Vladimíru Vašků k 75. narozeninám (Anglická a německá resumé), edited by Martina Kotlíková, Jaroslava Plosová, and Sixtus Bolom (Brno: Brněnská studentská sekce České archivní společnosti; Masarykova univerzita, 2008), 73–​80; Charlotte Warnke, “Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der Schenkung Polens an den heiligen Petrus,” in Europa Slavica—​ Europa Orientalis: Festschrift für Herbert Ludat zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Klaus-​ Detlev Grothusen and Klaus Zernack (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot 1980), 127–​177; Brygida Kürbisówna, “Dagome iudex. Studium krytyczne,” in Początki państwa polskiego I: Księga Tysiąclecia, edited by Kazimierz Tymieniecki (Poznań: Poznanskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 1962), 363–​424.

74   Daniel Ziemann 174. Johannes Fried, Otto III. und Boleslaw Chrobry: Das Widmungsbild des Aachener Evangeliars, der “Akt von Gnesen” und das frühe polnische und ungarische Königtum (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2001); Gerard Labuda, “O badaniach nad zjazdem gnieźnieńskim roku 1000: Spostrzeżenia i zastrzeżenia,” Roczniki Historyczne 68 (2000): 107–​ 56; Gerard Labuda, “Zjazd i synod gnieźnieński roku 1000 w nowym oświetleniu historiograficznym,” Cognitioni gestorum: Studia z dziejów średniowiecza dedykowane Profesorowi Jerzemu Strzelczykowi, edited by Dariusz A. Sikorski and Andrzej M. Wyrwa (Poznań: Wydawn DiG, 2006), 163–​184; Jerzy Strzelczyk and Zjazd gnieźnieński (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej Biblioteki Publicznej, 2000); Tomasz Jasiński, “Tytulatura Bolesława Chrobrego na zjeździe gnieźnieńskim,” Memoriae amici et magistri: Studia historyczne poświęcone pamięci Prof. Wacława Korty, 1919–​1999 (Polish and German), edited by Wacław Korta, Marek Derwich, Wojciech Mrozowicz, and Rościsław Żerelik (Wrocław: Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2001), 23–​31. 175. Karol Maleczyński, ed., Galli Anonymi Cronica et Gesta Ducum sive Principum Polonorum/​Anonima tzw. Galla Kronika Czyli Dzieje Książąt i Władców Polskich, Monumenta Poloniae Historica Nova Series–​Tomus II (Kraków: Nakładem Polskiej Akademii Umiejȩtności, 1952), chap. 6, 19; Paul W. Knoll, Frank Schaer, and Thomas N. Bisson, eds., Gesta principum Polonorum/​Chronicles and Deeds of the Duke and Princes of the Poles (Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2002), chap. 6, 36–​37. 176. Later, in 1012, Posnan was added to this list. 177. Martina Giese, Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 72 (Hannover: Hahn, 2004), 578. 178. Gerard Labuda, Mieszko II: Król Polski w czasach przełomu, 1025–​1034 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej Biblioteki Publicznej, 1994). 179. An overview of the relationship between Poland and the empire in Norbert Kersken and Przemysław Wiszewski, Neue Nachbarn in der Mitte Europas: Polen und das Reich im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2020), 26–​70. 180. Klaudia Dróżdż, Kazimierz Odnowiciel: Polska w okresie upadku i odbudowy (Wodzisław Śląski: Wydawnictwo Templum, 2009). 181. Tadeusz Grudziński, Bolesław Śmiały-​Szczodry i biskup Stanisław (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Interpress, 1982); Tadeusz Grudziński, Bolesław Szczodry: Zarys dziejów panowania (Toruń: Nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego w Toruniu, 1953). 182. Stanisław Rosik, Bolesław Krzywousty i jego czasy (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2002); Zdzisław Stanisław Pietras, Bolesław Krzywousty (Katowice: Śląsk, 1978).

Further Reading Brather, Sebastian. Archäologie der westlichen Slawen: Siedlung, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im früh-​und hochmittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 61. Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, 2008. Curta, Florin. Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics and Archaeology in Eastern Europe (ca. 500–​ca. 700). Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2021. Mühle, Eduard. Die Slawen im Mittelalter zwischen Idee und Wirklichkeit. Cologne; Weimar; Vienna: Böhlau, 2020.

From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms    75 Pohl, Walter. The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–​822. Translated by William Sayers. Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 2018. Przemysław, Sikora, ed. Zentralisierungsprozesse und Herrschaftsbildung im frühmittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa. Studien zur Archäologie Europas, vol. 23. Bonn: Habelt, 2014. Zsolt, Visy, and Mihály Nagy, eds. Hungarian Archaeology at the Turn of the Millennium. Budapest: Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, 2003.

Chapter 3

The Cen t ra l Eu ropean Stat e s From Monarchy to Ständestaat Julia Burkhardt

The Development of Central European States in Research Debates During the High and Late Middle Ages, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary were politically organized into monarchies.* The process of state formation went hand in hand with a dynamic development of political ideas and thought. While at first the king was regarded as the main legitimate source and representative of political rule, a slow shift to the principle of elective monarchy opened the path to consensual politics. The growing influence of the “political community” (later institutionalized as the Stände) was accompanied by definitions of legitimate modes of power representation and the codification of common law. The question of what exactly makes a premodern state a state compared to modern definitions of the term and of when and why states came into existence in the Middle Ages has been discussed by generations of scholars. Most attempts to define the cornerstones of medieval state-​building in Central Europe refer to the years 1000 and 1500; the year 1000 marks the “Christianization” of the Central European realms of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland and with it the establishment of Western-​styled Christian monarchic states, while 1500 stands as a symbol for the dawn of a new age, represented by the dynamics of the Protestant Reformation and the appearance of “modern” forms of state organization.1 Political arguments have also been raised in order to prove the directions of cultural adaptations (such as a supposed sovereignty of “Western modernism” over “Eastern backwardness”).2 The core issue of most studies, however, is the same: How can political structures be adequately described in a period that often produced scarce and terminologically

78   Julia Burkhardt ambiguous sources?3 Earlier studies, approaching this question from political or constitutional history, have seen the marks of statehood in the rise of the Central European monarchies and the meaning of the respective crowns, rules of royal succession, establishment of centrally organized administrative structures and respective personnel, the role of the nobility, and ways of passing laws.4 Comparative approaches have underlined striking parallels in the development of the realms of medieval Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, especially the chronological proximity of the Christianization processes, the continuation of the Piast, Přemyslid, and Árpád dynasties, the size and social position of the nobility, the principles of succession, and the development of modes of political participation.5 Sometimes this has even been interpreted as a specific Central European pattern.6 One of the most influential models to explain the formation of political entities in Central Europe was developed by the Hungarian scholar Jenő Szűcs in the 1980s. According to Szűcs, it was the development of a “civil society” or a body politic (corpus politicum) that characterized and distinguished the realms of East-​Central Europe, especially in the fourteenth century. In his seminal study “The Three Historical Regions of Europe,” Szűcs distinguished three regions: Western Europe, East-​Central Europe, and Eastern Europe. What made East-​Central Europe (particularly Hungary) special for him as an area between East and West were precisely its contemporary “ideas about the separate, autonomous position of ‘political society’ within the state.”7 Late medieval sources seemed to support this hypothesis, as collective terms such as “political community” (communitas) were indeed used frequently by contemporaries at this time.8 During recent decades, scholarly debates about political history in the Middle Ages in general, and especially in Central Europe, have undergone essential changes. These “turns” had much to do with influence from neighboring disciplines like social and economic history, studies on symbolic communication and rituals, the history of religion and cults, and, of course, the history of orality/​literacy and historiography.9 Most significantly, attention to the various dimensions of political communication prepared the ground for an analytical switch from the ruler as the main agent of politics to societal ways of participation and decision-​making, and to forms of factions and their political identities.10 Just as certain noble families or royal dynasties attracted further interest, so did the nobility in general. Recent studies have compared the political influence of various societal structures with contemporary approaches to (royal) rule and existing modes of succession.11 This has also led scholars to examine more closely medieval “tools” for legitimizing power participation, such as history, dynastic memory, or the argument of idoneitas (suitability or appropriateness) as well as descriptions of royal power and political community in historiography.12 Closely connected with such research approaches is the focus on saints’ cults and their integrative meaning for medieval dynasties and politics.13 Finally, spatial and material arguments have fruitfully entered the discussions about forms of exerting and distributing power. Towns or residences have been examined as sacred places or politically significant platforms of communication, and consideration of regional interconnections and the spatial

The Central European States    79 dimensions of power have widened the debate about the political history of medieval Central Europe.14 More recent studies have suggested taking different dimensions into account in order to clarify the ambiguous phenomenon of medieval “states,” their formation, characteristics, and contemporary reflections. A combination of legal and symbolic dimensions, of administrative structures and concepts of societal power-​sharing, of single agents and family or community connection helps to shed light on how Central European states came into being and what characterized them. Against this background, a medieval “state” can be understood as a specific territory (defined by more or less fixed borders) with a structured framework of a centrally organized administration and a single-​headed authority which had permanent interactions with a political community (nobility) that regulated the making and implementing of decisions. These relationships were intended to provide internal and external peace with universal validity (at least claimed) for the entire realm.15

Christian Monarchies after 1000: Organization and Tools of Legitimization Political organization in Central Europe before the Christianization around the year 1000 was characterized by joint rule, namely, by the close cooperation of groups of relatives based on equal rights of political participation.16 “society without a state” or “acephalous societies.”17 The development from these societies to monarchical forms of rule has been an important research issue. The foundation and development of monarchies in Central Europe was rather uneven. Some early (seventh-​to ninth-​century) attempts failed; the monarchies established at the beginning of the second millennium stabilized after different types of crises, mainly by the fourteenth century. Thereafter, by the end of the Middle Ages, they had gradually developed into corporate entities (the so-​called Ständestaat) of somewhat similar types. A proper analysis of the rise of the Christian monarchies that lasted for centuries needs to consider the “failed” attempts at state-​building that preceded the successful ones. Most of them were connected with the collapse of the Avar domination of the Carpathian Basin and environs and East Frankish polities on the Roman Empire’s eastern borders. Best known are the “Empire of Samo” (c. 623–​658), Carinthia (c. 743–​7 77), Illyria (818–​823), and Moravia (c. 830–​897) and the similarly ephemeral tribal alliances of the Polabian-​Baltic Obodrites and Luticians in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Discussions about the reasons why certain forms of social organization persisted and others collapsed (such as Great Moravia in the ninth century) have revealed the challenge of characterizing premodern “states.”18

80   Julia Burkhardt Some interpretations have approached the topic from the concept of ethnogenesis, a problematic term meaning “the formation or emergence of an ethnic group,” the subject of much controversy. They emphasize the meaning of internal social transformation processes (such as the establishment of gentes) and discuss the importance of a “national” consciousness for stable forms of political organization. Other studies focus on external influences from the West such as Christianization and on the functioning of administrative structures.19 Undoubtedly, one of the most essential consequences of the Christianization process in the tenth century was the establishment of a hierarchically organized rule by a single person (king or duke) over different, formerly rather separate, territorial units.20 The first representatives of that new Christian monarchic rule who actually achieved a royal crown were the Árpád Stephen I in Hungary (1000/​1001), the Piast Bolesław Chrobry in Poland (1025), and the Přemyslid Vratislav II in Bohemia (1085).21 The young Central European dynasties applied the same tools for legitimizing their monarchic rule as the other Christian kings in Europe: ecclesiastic confirmation of their status by anointment and coronation, unique signs and symbols of power, majestic residences, representative portraiture, legendary genealogies, and the cult of dynastic saints. The details of coronation rites are known only from the later Middle Ages, when they seem to have been borrowed from the German-​Roman Empire or papal ceremonial books. Based on mentions in chronicles and on a similar sword symbology, scholars assume that the Hungarian ordo went back to the Dunstan-​ordo of Anglo Saxon England that was transferred to Hungary in the eleventh century. From the fourteenth century onward, the papal ordo of Durandus was applied.22 The coronations in Prague and Gniezno, later Cracow, also followed papal-​imperial ordines.23 Charles IV added some French elements to the Czech ceremonies and some changes were introduced into all of them in the course of time. Parts of both ecclesiastic and subsequent secular rites (e.g., coronation oaths) were mutually borrowed in the three Central European monarchies. The locations of coronations had, as elsewhere, symbolic significance. Prague was the unchallenged caput regni in Bohemia, established with the legendary guidance of the seer Libuša.24 In Hungary, Fehérvár (Alba Regia), founded by the first king, Stephen of Hungary, on the newly opened pilgrimage route to the Holy Land, was also a royal necropolis (though not for all kings) and remained the coronation site, even if it did not become the kingdom’s “capital.”25 In fourteenth-​century Poland, the ancient center of the early Piast state, Gniezno, changed to the new capital, Cracow, which also had a mythical prehistory, but some kings were crowned in both places, just for good measure.26 Coronation jewels were also similar to those in other European realms: crown, scepter, and orb with or without sword or lance. Some of the regalia survived longer than elsewhere and acquired legendary—​ and finally constitutional—​ significance. Several items, as was also usual elsewhere, were ascribed to the founding kings or saints: St. Wenceslas’s spear, St. Stephen’s crown, Bolesław I’s sword, and so on.27 Their political significance is indicated by such acts as King Mieszko II’s being forced to return the (unknown) insignia of the coronation of Bolesław I the Brave (1025) when he lost out to Emperor Conrad II in 1032.28 Much later, after the second partition of Poland, the

The Central European States    81 crown jewels arouse covetousness among the Prussian kings: In 1794, Frederick William II of Prussia had them taken from Wawel Castle, probably for material reasons; and around 1811, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, they were melted down on command of Frederick William III. Only the ceremonial sword, Szczerbiec, survived.29 The oldest surviving pieces in the region indeed go back to the beginnings of the monarchies. It was King Stephen’s spouse, Queen Gisela, who sponsored the cope (pluviale) that became the Hungarian coronation mantle and the Hungarian crown is one of the oldest royal jewels in Europe.30 From the mid-​thirteenth century, it was referred to as the Holy Crown and remained an irreplaceable sign of legitimacy.31 During the interregna in the fifteenth century, the lords of the realm governed the country in the name—​and under the seal—​ of the Holy Crown.32 A copy of the Holy Lance that Emperor Otto III gave to Bolesław Chrobry in 1000 is still preserved in Wawel Castle in Cracow, but it does not seem to have been included in the Polish coronation insignia.33 Charles IV, underscoring the legitimacy of the new Luxembourg dynasty in fourteenth-​century Bohemia, sponsored all the surviving Bohemian insignia, soon to be ascribed to St. Wenceslas, to whom the king-​emperor dedicated them.34 Insignia were commonly connected to relics. When the Hungarian “Holy Crown” was not available, a crown from the head-​reliquary of St. Stephen was used; and when the orb was missing, as in 1303, King Wenceslas/​Ladislas of Hungary held the arm-​relic of Stephen in his right hand.35 The crown sponsored by Charles IV was kept in the chapel of St. Wenceslas. The sanctity of the holy rulers was thus “transferred” to the signs of power.36 Equally important for the rulers’ legitimization were—​in the eyes of their subjects—​ the “secular” acts of inauguration. In Cracow (at the altar) and in Fehérvár (on a hill outside the church) the new king swung his sword to the four cardinal directions, symbolizing that he would protect the realm from all enemies.37 In Prague, the king was enthroned on an ancient stone throne, probably dating back to pre-​Christian traditions.38 Usually, the ruler passed judgment immediately, in some cases to indicate his role as the highest judge, and then rode through the town to demonstrate that he had been made king.39 The coronation banquet for lords and burghers made the king a symbol as the source of riches and good life. Beyond that, the king’s festive entry into the coronation city or other towns was always an occasion to have the liberties of the townsfolk confirmed and to demonstrate publicly consensus between the ruler and community.40

Dynasty, Crown, and Community: Royal Succession and Political Participation The medieval realms of Central Europe were characterized by a remarkable dynastic tradition: While the families of the Piasts, Přemyslids, and Árpáds ruled over Poland,

82   Julia Burkhardt Bohemia, and Hungary between c. 1000 and 1350, members of the Jagiellonians, Luxemburgs, and Anjou ruled between 1300 and 1500. Although these families claimed a preeminent right to their respective thrones, their positions depended significantly on the consensus of various groups, including the different branches of the ruling families. Accordingly, the rules of succession were defined situationally, especially in times of political crises or attempted changes to the existing models. With regard to such frictions, the period covered here (c. 1000–​1500) can be divided into three phases: a phase of the formation of monarchic (that is, single) rule and dynasties (c. 1000–​1200), a phase of fundamental conflicts about legitimate ways to the throne (1200–​1300), and a phase of consolidation (though including highly dynamic changes, as described below) (1300–​1500). The fact that the rulers of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary had “ascended” to the circle of Western Christian kings should, however, not suggest that the Western principle of primogeniture was adopted in their realms.41 Rather, monarchic power was regarded as belonging to the entire ruling family, including closer and more distant relatives of the ruler, who all held equal rights. The power to rule was therefore understood to be a common attribute of an entire family instead of a particular branch that had the closest proximity of kinship to the ruler. Accordingly, succession was organized following the principle of senioratus, which (theoretically) saw all (male) members of a dynasty as entitled to rule. When a ruler died, his titles and territorial responsibilities should consequently be divided among his sons, brothers, or cousins with one of them (the senior) presiding over the others; after some time, the senior position should be passed to the next candidate, thereby following the principle of rotation.42 Though not legally fixed, this principle was at least partly implemented in eleventh-​ and twelfth-​century Poland and Bohemia, where the Piast and the Přemyslid dynasties had several family branches with claims to the throne. In Poland, this development took quite a particular turn after Bolesław III “Wrymouth” (1086–​1138) established a system of divided succession attempting both to maintain the unity of the realm and to satisfy the competing pretenders to the throne. After Bolesław’s death in 1138, responsibilities in the realm were divided among his sons, who were supposed to rule in cooperation under the control of a senior duke. Although territorial indivisibility was originally intended, this model of succession in fact led to repeated divisions and to struggles among the participating parties. Instead of maintaining unity, the country became divided among the different Piast family branches, who each sought to establish as much influence over one territory as they could.43 Just as in Poland and Bohemia, there was no specific order or rules of succession in Árpád Hungary. This changed in the eleventh century, when severe dynastic crises broke out in all of these realms. In order to gain control over competing claims to the thrones, the kings of Hungary and Poland, like the duke of Bohemia at the time, tried to limit the right to rule to a specific branch of the family and to thereby turn the ruling kin group into a “narrow and hierarchical dynastic structure.”44 Still, all attempts to transform the succession systems in these three Central European kingdoms remained unsuccessful until the thirteenth century due to ongoing resistance by relatives from the rulers’ families or by the political elites in each realm.

The Central European States    83 The thirteenth century saw fundamental political and social transformations that had a lasting influence on Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia. External factors like the Mongol invasion, economic changes, the establishment of fortified towns, a growing number of German-​speaking settlers (and with them the need to reorganize communal life spatially and legally) contributed to these changes, as did internal dynastic conflicts and continued interactions with noble elites, which increasingly demanded political participation and rights.45 The monarchies of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary however, followed considerably different development patterns. In Bohemia, Duke Přemysl Otakar I managed not only to achieve the royal crown but also to establish close cooperation with his brothers that guaranteed a joint rule over Bohemia and Moravia within one family branch. The 1198 ascent to the rank of royalty and its confirmation by Frederick II in the “Golden Bulls of Sicily” (1212) meant another significant change for the Bohemian monarchy. Henceforth, Bohemian rulers from the Přemyslid family assumed a hereditary royal title and the concept of primogeniture was imposed in legal form.46 Although primogeniture succession was also applied in Hungary at that time, the thirteenth century saw several dynastic disputes among the ruler, competing relatives, and various groups of nobles, which resulted in important legal documents concerning power distribution in the realm. In 1222, the Hungarian King Andrew II—​in reaction to a momentous revolt—​consented to issue the “Golden Bull of Hungary”; the document restored noble liberties from earlier times, defined judicial and administrative settings, and also gave the nobility the right of resistance in case the king did not respect the codified promises. This principle served as a basis for regular meetings of the nobility and the king in order to adjust or complement the latter’s politics—​the concept of shared political responsibilities had been put into legal form.47 In contrast to Bohemia and Hungary, rule in thirteenth-​century Poland was organized through a continued division and rotation according to the principle of senioratus. While the senior position was tied to the seat of Cracow, the different principalities that Poland had been divided into were gradually assigned to particular branches of the Piast family so that each region of the realm would have its own specific tradition of rule. Instead of unification and juridification, the realm was characterized by territorial division and continued agreement among the family branches. In order to strengthen their position, the Polish dukes tried to win the support of the growing nobility, a cooperation that also became visible in the increasing role of local assemblies (colloquia).48 With regard to the development of political organization and communication, the fourteenth century has been described as the peak in the rise of Central Europe.49 Such ascriptions are based on economic, scientific, cultural, and political achievements. Still, a fundamental problem is evident; political peaks can be seen in different sociopolitical features: strengthening monarchic rule concurrent with growing political participation by the nobility and the formation of constitutional order (apparent in the law codifications of the time). Examples of each of these features can be found in the fourteenth century. Władysław Łokietek’s and Casimir III the Great’s reunification of Polish lands (1320/​1333) or Charles IV’s rule as Bohemian king could all serve as examples of strong monarchic rule. The dynastic changes at the end of the fourteenth century in

84   Julia Burkhardt both Poland (from Piast to Anjou to Jagiellonian rule) and Hungary (from Anjou to Luxemburg rule) and the nobles’ ability to appoint a monarch, however, rather reflect the formation of an increasingly engaged political society. And indeed, the period between 1300 and 1500—​often marked as a time of consolidation—​was highly dynamic, characterized by the establishment of “new” dynasties in all the Central European monarchies, the implementation of primogeniture succession, and a growing impact of the nobility or noble groups that acted as one legitimate “representative” of the realm. In a remarkable parallelism, both Bohemia and Hungary experienced dynastic changes at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In Bohemia, severe conflicts about the legitimate way to the throne erupted after the death of the last male descendant of the Přemyslid dynasty. During the short interregnum (1306–​1310), basically three forms of legitimate succession were discussed: election by Bohemian nobles and town representatives, granting the Bohemian realm as a fief, and hereditary rights in the form of close ties to the Přemyslid dynasty through a marital connection with one of its female descendants. It was probably a combination of all these aspects that enabled Emperor Henry VII’s son John of Luxemburg (who was married to the Přemyslid princess, Elisabeth) to achieve the Bohemian crown in 1310, thereby laying the groundwork for more than a century of Luxemburg rule in Bohemia.50 In Hungary, the short interregnum that followed the death of the last Árpád king (Andrew III, 1265–​1301), ended with the coronation of Charles Robert of Anjou as the Hungarian king in 1308. Although Charles Robert faced severe opposition by Hungarian magnates throughout his entire reign, he gradually managed to establish an Anjou rule in Hungary that lasted for almost a century.51 While the coronation of his son, Louis, in 1342 appeared to be a logical consequence of succession traditions, the ascent of Louis’s daughter, Mary, in 1382 is much more noteworthy; for the first time, the royal crown was passed to a female heir.52 Since no consensus existed on the necessary arrangements of government, regency, or a husband for the princess, Mary’s succession, like her marriage to Sigismund of Luxemburg (a grandson of John, the first Luxemburg king in Bohemia, and son of Charles IV), became the center of political discussions. In 1386, when the young queen and her mother had been imprisoned by a competing noble party, a council of nobles that acted “on the behalf of the realm’s inhabitants” and used its own seal (sigillum regnicolarum) took their place. This forum of nobles considered themselves entitled to decide about accession to the throne. Consequently, when Mary’s husband, Sigismund of Luxemburg, attempted to attain the Hungarian crown, his way to the throne was made dependent on the consent of the nobles, a shift that determined the course of the Hungarian monarchy on a long-​term basis.53 The kingdom of Poland experienced a somewhat similar development at the end of the fourteenth century. This process was also connected with Louis I, who had ruled over Hungary and Poland in personal union since 1370. When the Piast, King Casimir III, died without a son that same year, Louis quickly advanced to the throne due to the existing Polish–​Hungarian inheritance contracts.54 Lacking a male heir, Louis tried to secure the Polish throne for one of his daughters. In return for the nobles’ consent, he issued the famous Privilege of Koszyce in 1374, which officially defined the Polish nobility

The Central European States    85 and made it an influential community with specific codified rights.55 Shortly after Louis I’s death in 1382, the Polish nobles demonstrated that the right to decide the royal succession belonged to them. They had Louis’s daughter, Hedwig/​Jadwiga, crowned “King of Poland,” took charge of governmental duties, and decided on Hedwig’s marriage. Soon after Hedwig’s coronation in 1384, a marriage union was negotiated and arranged with the Lithuanian duke Władysław Jagiełło, and, in 1386, the duke was baptized and crowned king (1386–​1434).56 In their announcement of the marriage, the Polish nobles emphasized that it was thanks to their actions that the kingdom was able to carry on. From then on, the idea that the continuity of the monarchy as well as the well-​being of “public affairs” (res publica) had been secured by the noble community was an integral part of political debates. Again and again, Polish nobles tried to claim their role as the safeguard of the public good as a reason for an increase in their political participation. Consequently, they also attempted to have their political role legally documented, thus securing their status and power for the future.57 Between the High and the late Middle Ages, the systems of succession changed fundamentally in all three of the Central European kingdoms. The principle of senioratus (provided it was applied) had gradually been replaced by the concept of a hereditary monarchy (based on the principle of primogeniture succession); from the fourteenth century onward, the nobles’ influence increased in the appointment of the monarch. The argument that royal succession was dependent on the nobles’ consent was crucial insofar as a possible consequence for royal misbehavior could be opposition to or even deposition of the king. Around the year 1400, this right was put into practice in Germany, where the seven electors deposed King Wenceslaus, and in Bohemia, where a league of nobles imprisoned the same Wenceslaus (who ruled Bohemia as Wenceslaus IV).58 Together with the formation of modes of succession and hence a definition of the monarch’s position in the realm, important configurations affecting the distribution of political power were developed during this period.59

Forms and Ideas of Power Representation The tradition of debates between the ruler and the noble community was not a late medieval phenomenon. From the tenth century, various forms of colloquia and negotiations were documented, but only scantily described in greater detail by contemporary observers. This ambiguity involves several methodological problems. Due to the vagueness of earlier descriptions of political assemblies, it is not possible to say much in detail about the composition of the group of people who participated, about the forms of debates and decision-​making or about the outcome of such meetings. Another problem arises in the narrative description of larger gatherings, since royal festivities and “political” assemblies were not always (and maybe could not be) clearly distinguished. Finally,

86   Julia Burkhardt contemporaries used different terms when naming assemblies (e.g., conventus, colloquium, dieta), but did not explicitly differentiate whether they thereby referred to specific organizational forms.60 With regard to the increasing documentation of governmental activities and the changing character of the gatherings, much more can be said about fourteenth-​and fifteenth-​century political assemblies. In all three realms examined here, general assemblies were regarded as adequate forums for negotiating and deciding matters of the kingdom with the king. They were usually called by the ruler and composed of members of the nobility, church dignitaries, town representatives, and foreign envoys. While we cannot yet explicitly identify these groups as “estates” or Stände (Ständestaat), their growing influence in the context of late medieval political assemblies is undeniable. The actual composition and size of an assembly could, of course, differ—​depending on the sociopolitical configuration of the particular realm:61 General assemblies in Poland and Hungary were mainly attended by the upper nobility and representatives of the lesser nobility. The composition of the Bohemian assemblies differed in two respects: with regard to regional specifics, since Bohemia and Moravia had their own diets besides the general assembly, and with regard to confessional memberships since the Hussite period in the fifteenth century.62 This variance was also mirrored in the choices of venues; Bohemian assemblies were held at different places, but Poland and Hungary had more or less fixed traditional venues (Piotrków, Pressburg, and Buda).63 The agenda was set by the ruler and usually included military or financial issues, which emphasizes the importance of the ruler’s authority. By gathering participants who were considered entitled to negotiate matters of the realm or who simply felt justified in doing so, however, the general assemblies appear to have been central forums of political discourse. The assembly itself, but specifically plenary debates, were of great importance for the formation of a joint political identity. Since a public space was only defined when the attendees actually gathered, the political community was particularly visible in their interaction or concurrence. Consequently, the social hierarchy—​the rank and position of each participant—​was the decisive factor for the order of seating during sessions.64 A core issue of medieval political debates was the question of who should be responsible for the peace and safety of the realm. Besides the king, a more or less well-​defined political community could claim this responsibility in most medieval realms. In order to legitimate this prominent role, collective terms such as the communitas or universitas were used by contemporaries in order to emphasize that their actions were not individually motivated but dedicated to the realm and its “common good.”65 A terminological problem was inherent, however: speaking of a “community” did not necessarily imply that a large number of nobles were actually acting consensually.66 Often enough, it was only a limited circle of prominent political players whose influence was based on wealth, offices, or noble family traditions.67 In fact, strong oligarchic forces opposed the king while claiming to act in the name of the entire realm or the entire communitas. Still, they strengthened the meaning of the political communitas by continuously referring to it, as the term could (depending on the specific political constellations) imply social circles

The Central European States    87 of differing sizes.68 Such collective ideas were implemented differently and accordingly had different impacts. In Poland and Hungary, where the entire nobility enjoyed the same legal status, nobles were provided with legal documents to which they could (and did) refer (e.g., Golden Bull of Hungary 1222, the Privilege of Koszyce 1374). These privileges did not naturally establish new structures of power nor automatically grant the nobles’ influence. Still, they marked an important point of reference from which the nobles could assert their claims to governmental participation, to a joint responsibility for the kingdom, and the representation of the realm.69 Just as with the term “community,” the concept of the “crown of the realm” (corona regni) was pivotal for the history of political representation in medieval Central Europe. It was referred to especially in fourteenth-​and fifteenth-​century Poland and Hungary during debates about legitimate ways to the throne or the right to rule. When, for example, a ruler was absent for various reasons, the “crown of the realm” (corona regni) was a key term for noble councils to legitimate their taking charge of the country’s affairs. Since the crown was regarded as a subject of the realm, it could be represented and governed by a council acting in the name of that crown.70 This idea of joint power representation made it clear that the consensus of the political community (or later the Stände) was regarded as the pivotal legitimate source of political rule. An important point of reference in contemporary debates, especially strong at the turn of the fifteenth century, was the community’s influence in the appointment of the monarch, which led to a slow shift to the principle of elective monarchy.71 Another development corresponds with that process; at the turn of the sixteenth century, central laws and legal books were compiled and distributed in many Central European countries for the very first time in order to present standardized law in a generally applicable form.72 During the years c. 500 to c. 1500, the Central European kingdoms were not only shaped and broadly acknowledged but also underwent a fundamental change. Consensual rule and political participation were established—​in a nutshell, it was a development from monarchy to Ständestaat.

Notes * The title of this article goes back to János M. Bak, who also kindly contributed to the text in several passages (see footnotes below). With the (albeit much debated) term of the so-​called “Ständestaat” he succinctly put the rise of societal forms of participation in a nutshell. 1. Nora Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Joachim Bahlcke and Arno Strohmeyer, eds., Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa: Wirkungen des religiösen Wandels im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert in Staat, Gesellschaft und Kultur (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999). 2. Gábor Klaniczay, “The Birth of a New Europe about 1000 CE: Conversion, Transfer of Institutional Models, New Dynamics,” in Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances, edited by John Pall Arnason and Bjorn Wittrock (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 99–​129.

88   Julia Burkhardt 3. Cf. Márta Font, “Mitteleuropa–​Osteuropa–​Ostmitteleuropa? Bemerkungen zur Entstehung einer europäischen Region im Frühmittelalter,” Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte 7 (2006): 101–​125. See also Piotr Górecki, “Ambiguous Beginnings: East Central Europe in the Making, 950–​1200,” in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, edited by Thomas F. X. Noble and John Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 194–​228. 4. František Graus, “Die Entstehung der mittelalterlichen Staaten in Mitteleuropa,” Historica 10 (1965): 5–​65. See also the contributions in Corona Regni: Studien über die Krone als Symbol des Staates im Späteren Mittelalter, edited by Manfred Hellmann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961). 5. Gottfried Schramm, “Polen–​Böhmen–​Ungarn: Übernationale Gemeinsamkeiten in der politischen Kultur des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit,” in Ständefreiheit und Staatsgestaltung in Ostmitteleuropa: Übernationale Gemeinsamkeiten in der politischen Kultur vom 16.–​18. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Bahlcke, Hans-​Jürgen Bömelburg, and Norbert Kersken (Leipzig: Universitäts-​ Verlag, 1996), 13–​ 38; Stanisław Russocki, “Pour une histoire de la culture politique et juridique du Centre-​Est de l’Europe,” Acta Poloniae Historica 62 (1990): 191–​201; Karol Górski, “Les débuts de la représentation de la communitas nobilium dans les assemblées d’états de l’Est Européen,” in Karol Górski, Communitas, Princeps, Corona Regni: Studia Selecta (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), 72–​83. Recently, the question of patterns has been discussed by Jan Klápštĕ, “The Medieval ‘Europeanization’ of the East of Central Europe: Consensus or Violence?,” in Consensus or Violence? Cohesive Forces in Early and High Medieval Societies (9th–​14th c.), edited by Sławomir Moździoch and Przemysław Wiszewski (Wroclaw: Institute of History at the University of Wroclaw, 2013), 14–​24. 6. Barbara Krzemieńska and Dušan Třeštik, “Wirtschaftliche Grundlagen des frühmittelalterlichen Staates in Mitteleuropa (Böhmen, Polen, Ungarn im 10.–​11. Jh.),” Acta Poloniae Historica 40 (1979): 5–​31. 7. Jenő Szűcs, “The Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline,” Acta Historica Academiae 184; Gábor Klaniczay, “Von Ostmitteleuropa Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1983): 131–​ zu Westmitteleuropa: Eine Umwandlung im Hochmittelalter,” in Böhmen und seine Nachbarn in der Přemyslidenzeit, edited by Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011), 17–​48. 8. Julia Burkhardt, “Frictions and Fictions of Community: Structures and Representations of Power in Central Europe, c. 1350–​1500,” Medieval History Journal 19, no. 2 (2016): 1–​38. On contemporary political terminologies, see also Kazimierz Orzechowski, “Communitas terrae w polskich zródlach do kónca XIV wieku,” Sląski kwartalnik historyczny Sobótka 38 (1983): 173–​ 186; on methodological problems, see Sébastien Rossignol and Donat Wehner, “Methodologische Überlegungen zur interdisziplinären Erforschung der Herrschaft am Beispiel Ostmitteleuropas vom 9 zum 13 Jahrhundert,” in Potestas et communitas: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Wesen und Darstellung von Herrschaftsverhältnissen im Mittelalter östlich der Elbe, edited by Sébastien Rossignol, Aleksander Paroń, Bartolomiej Szymon Szmoniewski, and Grischa Vercamer (Warsaw: Wydawnictvo. Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2010): 23–​52. 9. Gerd Althoff, “Questions and Perspectives: Medieval Studies in Germany and the ‘Performative Turn,’” in Political Order and Forms of Communication in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Yoshihisa Hattori (Rome: Viella, 2014), 33–​51.

The Central European States    89 10. Christina Lutter, “Negotiated Consent: Power Policy and the Integration of Regional Elites in Late 13th-​Century Austria,” in Disciplined Dissent: Strategies of Non-​Confrontational Protest in Europe from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century, edited by Fabrizio Titone (Rome: Viella, 2016), 41–​ 64; Burkhardt, “Frictions and Fictions”; Zbigniew Dalewski, “Political Culture of Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Aggression and Agreement,” in Political Culture in Central Europe (10th–​20th Century), Part 1: Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, edited by Halina Manikowska (Prague: Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2005), 65–​85; Dušan Zupka, Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty (1000–​1301) (Leiden/​Boston: Brill 2016). 11. János M. Bak, “Probleme einer vergleichenden Betrachtung mittelalterlicher Eliten in Ostmitteleuropa,” in Das europäische Mittelalter im Spannungsbogen des Vergleichs. Zwanzig internationale Beiträge zu Praxis, Problemen und Perspektiven der mittelalterlichen Verlag, 2001), 49–​ Komparatistik, edited by Michael Borgolte (Berlin: Akademie-​ 64; Zbigniew Dalewski, “Patterns of Dynastic Identities in the Early Middle Ages,” 43; Piotr Górecki, “Words, Concepts, and Acta Poloniae Historica 107 (2013): 5–​ Phenomena: Knighthood, Lordship, and the Early Polish Nobility, c. 1100–​c. 1350,” in Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations, edited by Anne Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 115–​155; Katalin G. Szende and Ivan Jurković, “Variations on Nobility in Central and South-​Eastern Europe: An Introduction,” in Secular Power and Sacral Authority in Medieval East-​Central Europe, edited by Kosana Jovanović and Suzana Miljan (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2018), 29–​36; János M. Bak, ed., Nobilities in Central and Eastern Europe: Kinship, Property and Privilege (Krems: Medium Ævum Quotidianum Gesellschaft, 1994). 12. Cristina Andenna and Gert Melville, eds., Idoneität–​Genealogie–​Legitimation: Begründung und Akzeptanz von dynastischer Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015); Norbert Kersken and Grischa Vercamer, eds., Macht und Spiegel der Macht: Herrschaft in Europa im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert vor dem Hintergrund der Chronistik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013). For a comparative approach to the topic, see the contributions in Ondřej Beránek, Pavlína Cermanová, and Jakub Hruby, eds., Jedno slunce na nebi, jeden vládce na zemi: Legitimita moci ve světvě 14. století [A sun in the sky, a ruler on earth: The legitimacy of power in the fourteenth century] (Prague: Academia, 2017). 13. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Aleksander Gieysztor, “Politische Heilige im hochmittelalterlichen Polen und Böhmen,” in Politik und Heiligenverehrung im Hochmittelalter, edited by Jürgen Petersohn (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994), 325–​ 341; Zbigniew Dalewski, “Sakralność władzy królewskiej pierwszych Piastów,” Historia Slavorum Occidentis 14, no. 3 (2017): 43–​57. 14. Wojciech Fałkowski, “Centres and Structure of Power in Late Medieval Poland,” in Places of Power/​ Orte der Herrschaft/​ Lieux du pouvoir, edited by Caspar Ehlers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 263–​275; József Lászlovszky, “Crown, Gown and Town: Zones of Royal, Ecclesiastical and Civic Interaction in Medieval Buda and Visegrád,” in Segregation, Integration, Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Derek J. Keene, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 179–​204; Károly Goda, “The Medieval Cult and Processional Veneration of the Eucharist in Central Europe: Festive Culture in the Royal Cities of Cracow and Buda in Comparative Perspective,” Mediaevalia Historica Bohemica

90   Julia Burkhardt 18, no. 1 (2015): 101–​184; Márta Font, Im Spannungsfeld der christlichen Großmächte: Mittel-​ und Osteuropa im 10–​12. Jahrhundert (Herne: Schäfer, 2008). 15. Susan Reynolds, “The Historiography of the Medieval State,” in The Middle Ages without Feudalism: Essays in Criticism and Comparison on the Medieval West, edited by Susan Reynolds (Farnham: Ashgate Variorum, 2012), 117–​ 138; Bernd Schneidmüller, “Vor dem Staat: Über neuere Versuche zur mittelalterlichen Herrschaft,” Rechtsgeschichte 13 (2008): 178–​186; Bernd Schneidmüller, “Rule by Consensus: Forms and Concepts of Political Order in the European Middle Ages,” Medieval History Journal 16, no. 2 (2013): 449–​471; Walter Pohl, “Staat und Herrschaft im Frühmittelalter: Überlegungen zum Forschungsstand,” in Staat im frühen Mittelalter, edited by Stuart Airlie, Walter Pohl, and Helmut Reimitz (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), 9–​38; Matthias Becher, “Macht und Herrschaft: Vormoderne Konfigurationen intranskultureller Perspektive,” in Macht und Herrschaft transkulturell: Vormoderne Konfigurationen und Perspektiven der Forschung, edited by Matthias Becher, Stephan Conermann, and Linda Dohmen (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2018), 11–​42. 16. Parts of the following section were written by János M. Bak and inserted into this article with his kind permission. 17. Christian Lübke, “Mitteleuropa, Ostmitteleuropa, Östliches Europa: Wahrnehmung und frühe Strukturen eines Raumes,” in Die “Blüte” der Staaten des östlichen Europa im 14. Jahrhundert, edited by Marc Löwener (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), 15–​43. 18. Herwig Wolfram, “Die ostmitteleuropäischen Reichsbildungen um die erste Jahrtausendwende und ihre gescheiterten Vorläufer: Ein Vergleich im Überblick,” in Böhmen und seine Nachbarn, edited by Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky, 49–​90; Great Moravia and the Beginnings of Christianity, edited by Pavel Kouril (Brno: Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2015). On methodological aspects, see Matthew Dimick, “Lords and Order: Credible Rulers and State Failure,” Rationality and Society 27, no. 2 (2015): 161–​194. 19. Wolfram, “Die ostmitteleuropäischen Reichsbildungen”; František Graus, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980); Dušan Treštík, “The Czech State in the Era of Przemyslid Princes and Kings (from the Beginning of the 11th Century to 1306), 1, Consolidation of the Czech State in the Era of the Princes,” in A History of the Czech Lands, edited by Jaroslav Pánek and Oldřich Tůma (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2009), 83–​94. On current methodological debates, see Walter Pohl, “Introduction—​Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile,” in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, edited by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 1–​64, and Walter Pohl, “Introduction: Ethnicity, Religion and Empire,” in Visions of Community in the Post-​ Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–​1100, edited by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 1–​28. 20. This article is neither able nor intends to deal with the Christianization of the Central European states around 1000 in greater detail. The variety of arguments on the matter is well documented in Berend, Christianization, and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk, ed., Early Christianity in Central and East Europe (Warsaw: Semper, 1997). 21. Marianne Sághy, “The Making of the Christian Kingdom in Hungary,” in Europe around the Year 1000, edited by Przemysław Urbańczyk (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2001), 451–​ 464; János M. Bak, “Some Recent Thoughts of Historians about Central Europe in 1000 A.D.,” in Hortus Artium Mediaevalium 6 (2000): 65–​7 1; Zbigniew Dalewski and Dlaczego

The Central European States    91 Bolesław, “Chrobry chciał koronowac się na króla?” [Why did Bolesław Chrobry want to be crowned king?], in Gnieznienskie koronacje królewskie i ch srodkowoeuropejskie konteksty, edited by Józef Dobosz, Marzena Matli, and Leszka Wetesko (Gniezno: Urząd Miejski w Gnieźnie, 2011), 21–​42; Josef Žemlička, “Dux ‘Boemorum’ und rex Boemie im mitteleuropäischen Wettstreit (nicht nur aus tschechischer Sicht gesehen),” in Böhmen und seine Nachbarn, edited by Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky, 91–​136; Josef Žemlička, “Transformation of the Dukedom of ‘the Bohemians’ into the Kingdom of Bohemia,” in Manikowska, Political Culture in Central Europe, 47–​64. 22. Erik Fügedi, “Coronation in Medieval Hungary,” in Erik Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, edited by János M. Bak (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), vol. 1, 159–​189. See also the collection of medieval sources in János M. Bak, Königtum und Stände in Ungarn im 14.–​16. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973), appendix 2, 165–​190. 23. On Prague: Václav Žůrek, “Korunovace českých králů a královen” [Coronations of the Czech kings and queens], in Slavnosti, ceremonie a rituály v pozdním středověku [Festivities, ceremonies, and rituals in the late Middle Ages], edited by Frantisek Smáhel and Martin Nodl (Prague: Argo, 2014), 15–​68; Demeter Malaťák, “Korunovace přemyslovských králů,” in Stát, státnost a rituály přemyslovského věku: Problémy, názory, otázky; Sborník příspěvků z konference konané dne 18. října 2005 v Brně (Brno: Matice moravská, 2006), 47–​66. On Cracow: Aleksander Gieysztor, “Gesture in the Coronation Ceremonies of Medieval Poland,” in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, edited by János M. Bak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 152–​162; Zbigniew Dalewski, “Polish Coronation Ceremonial,” in Imagines potestatis: Insygnia i znaki w Królestwie Polskim i Zakonie Krzyżackim, edited by Janusz Trupinda (Malbork: Muzeum Zamkowe, 2007), 93–​100. 24. The idea of Prague as the caput regni goes back to the prophesy of the seer Libuša as described in the chronicle by Cosmas of Prague. See Franz Machilek, “Praga caput regni,” in Stadt und Landschaft im deutschen Osten und in Ostmitteleuropa, edited by Friedhelm Berthold Kaiser and Bernhard Stasiewski (Cologne: Boehlau, 1982), 67–​125. 25. Hansgerd Göckenjan, “Stuhlweißenburg: Eine ungarische Königsresidenz vom 11–​13. Jahrhundert,” in Beiträge zur Stadt-​und Regionalgeschichte Ost-​und Nordeuropas: Herbert Ludat zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Klaus Zernack (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971), 135–​152. 26. Gerard Labuda, “Przeniesienie koronacji królewskich z Gniezna do Krakowa w XIV wieku” [The transfer of royal coronations from Gniezno to Cracow in the fourteenth century], in Cracovia–​Polonia–​Europa: Studia z dziejów średniowiecza ofiarowane Jerzemu Wyrozumskiemu w sześćdziesiątą piątą rocznicę urodzin i czterdziestolecie pracy naukowej, edited by Waldemar Bukowski (Cracow: Secesja, 1995), 47–​59. See also Paul Crossley, “Ara patriae: Saint Stanislaus, the Jagiellonians and the Coronation Ordinal for Cracow Cathedral,” in Künstlerische Wechselwirkungen in Mitteleuropa, edited by Jirí Fajt and Markus Hörsch (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2006), 103–​122. 27. János M. Bak, “Magicheskie i dinasticheskie legitimatsiia” [Magic and dynastic legitimization], in Drugie srendie veka: 75-​letiju A. Ia. Gurevichu (Moscow: Universitetskaia kniga, 2000), 165–​173; Karel Otavský, Die Sankt-​Wenzelskrone im Prager Domschatz und die Frage der Kunstauffassung am Hofe Kaiser Karls IV (Bern: Lang, 1992); Michał Rożek, Polskie koronacje i korony [Polish coronations and crowns] (Cracow: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnictwo, 1987).

92   Julia Burkhardt 28. See the description of the episode in Annales Hildeheimenses, edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Staatsschriften 3 (1839), here 89. On Mieszko II, see Gerard Labuda, Mieszko II król Polski w czasach przelomu 1025–​1034 [Mieszko II, king of Poland in a time of change 1025–​1034] (Cracow: Secesja, 1992). 29. Zdzistaw Zygulski Jr., “The Szczerbiec: The Polish Coronation Sword,” Artibus et Historiae 32, no. 63 (2011): 285–​309. 30. Tibor Kovács, ed., The Coronation Mantle of Hungarian Kings (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2005). 31. From the extensive literature, see Josef Deér, Die Heilige Krone Ungarns (Vienna: Böhlau, 1966), and also Endre Tóth and Karóly Szelényi, eds., The Holy Crown of Hungary: Kings and Coronations (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 1996). See also the latest studies: János M. Bak/Géza Pálffy, Crown and Coronation in Hungary, 1000–1916 A.D. Budapest 2020 and Endre Tóth, The Hungarian holy crown and the coronation regalia. With essays by Attila Horváth, Géza Pálffy and Attila Zsoldos, Budapest 2021. 32. See Bak, Königtum und Stände, 33–​35. See also László Péter, “The Holy Crown of Hungary, Visible and Invisible,” Slavonic and East European Review 81 (2003): 421–​510. For the metaphor’s history in the Central European kingdoms, see the studies in Hellman, Corona regni. 33. Zbigniew Dalewski, “Die Heilige Lanze und die polnischen Insignien,” in Europas Mitte um 1000, edited by Alfred Wieczorek and Hans-​Martin Hinz (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2000), 907–​911. 34. Karel Otavský, Sankt-​Wenzelskrone, and Uwe Tresp, “Karl IV. und der Adel der Wenzelskrone,” in Ecclesia als Kommunikationsraum in Mitteleuropa: (13.–​16. Jahrhundert), edited by Eva Doležalová and Robert Šimůnek (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 81–​117. 35. János M. Bak, “Sankt Stefans Armreliquie im Ornat König Wenzels von Ungarn,” in Festschrift Percy Ernst Schramm zu seinem 70. Geb., edited by Peter Classen and Peter Scheibert (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1964), vol. 1, 175–​188. 36. János M. Bak, “Holy Lance, Holy Crown, Holy Dexter: Sanctity of Insignia in Medieval East Central Europe,” in Anfologion: Vlast’, obshchestvo, kultura v slavianskom mire v srednie veka k 70-​letiiu Borisa Nikolaevicha Florii, edited by G. G. Litavrin (Moscow: Indrik, 2008), 56–​65. 37. Annamária Kovács, “Coronation in Székesfehérvár,” in Medium Regni: Medieval Hungarian Royal Seats, edited by Ilona Sebestyén (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), 77–​81; Zbigniew Dalewski, “Monarchic Ceremonies in late Medieval Cracow,” in Krakau, Prag und Wien: Funktionen von Metropolen im frühmodernen Staat, edited by Marina Dmitrieva and Karen Lambrecht (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000), 245–​254. 38. Roderich Schmidt, “Die Einsetzung der böhmischen Herzöge auf den Thron zu Prag,” in Aspekte der Nationenbildung im Mittelalter, edited by Helmuth Beumann and Werner Schröder (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1978), 438–​463; see also Dušan Třeštík and Agnežka Merhautová, “Die böhmischen Insignien und der steinerne Thron,” in Wieczorek and Hinz, Europas Mitte um 1000, 904–​906. 39. Mieczysław Rokosz, “Ceremonia hołdu pokoronacyjnego na rynku krakowskim” [The ceremony of postcoronation homage in the main market square in Cracow], in Historia vero testis temporum: Księga jubileuszowa poświęcona Profesorowi Krzysztofowi Baczkowskiemu w 70. rocznicę urodzin, edited by Janusz Smołucha (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego “Societas Vistulana”: Instytut Historii Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2008), 537–​552.

The Central European States    93 40. Goda, “The Medieval Cult”; Zoë Opačić, “Architecture and Ceremony in Cracow and Prague, 1335–​1455,” in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cracow and Lesser Poland, edited by Agnieszka Rożnowska-​Sadraei (Leeds: Routledge, 2014), 95–​117; Balázs Nagy, “Royal Summits in and around Medieval Buda,” in Medieval Buda in Context, edited by Balázs Nagy, Martyn Rady, Katalin Szende, and András Vadas (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 345–​365. On the ritual of the “joyous entry,” see Tomasz Mojsik, “Adventus regis: Wejście jako praktyka komunikacyjna w perspektywie historyczno-​antropologicznej” [Adventus regis: The joyous entry as a practice of communication in a historical-​anthropological perspective], Przegląd Historyczny 106, no. 2 (2015): 249–​286, and the contributions in Peter Johanek and Angelika Lampen, eds., Adventus: Studien zum herrscherlichen Einzug in die Stadt (Köln; Weimar; Wien: Böhlau, 2009). 41. Dalewski, “Patterns of Dynastic Identities.” 42. For methodological thoughts on the principle of seniority, see (with regard to Kievan examples), see Janet Martin, “Calculating Seniority and the Contests for Succession in Kievan Rus’,” Russian History 33, nos. 2–​4 (2006): 267–​281. 43. On the Polish system of succession and its perception in contemporary historiography, see Przemysław Wiszewski, Domus Bolezlai: Values and Social Identity in Dynastic Traditions of Medieval Poland (c. 966–​1138) (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Cf. also Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds., Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 172–​176. 44. Zbigniew Dalewski, “Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Viator 46, no. 1 (2015): 43–​60, p. 55. 45. On these developments, see (with no claim to completeness) Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages, 408–​491; Piotr Górecki, Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland 1100–​1250 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992); Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1301 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994). On the development of Hungarian towns, see also the latest work by Katalin Szende, Trust, Authority, and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). 46. On Přemysl Otakar and his reign, see Josef Žemlicka, Přemysl Otakar I.: Panovník, stát a ceská spolecnost na prahu vrcholného feudalismu [Přemysl Otakar: Ruler, state and Bohemian society in the High Middle Ages] (Prague: Svoboda, 1990); and Josef Žemlicka, Počátky Čech královských 1198–​1253: Proměna státu a společnosti [The beginnings of royal Bohemia 1198–​1253: The transformation of state and society] (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2002). See also Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages, 409–​418. On Frederick’s privileges for the Bohemian rulers, see Martin Wihoda, Die sizilischen Goldenen Bullen von 1212: Kaiser Friedrichs II. Privilegien für die Přemysliden im Erinnerungsdiksurs (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012); on medieval concepts and discourses about the Bohemian monarchy, see Robert Antonín, The Ideal Ruler in Medieval Bohemia (Leiden/​Boston: Brill, 2017). 47. On the Golden Bull of Hungary, see Martyn Rady, “Hungary and the Golden Bull of 1222,” Banatica 24, no. 2 (2014): 87–​108; Attila K. Molnar and Levente Völgyesi, “The Hungarian Experience of Freedom: The Tradition of the Golden Bull,” in Magna Carta: A Central European Perspective of Our Common Heritage of Freedom, edited by Zbigniew Rau,

94   Julia Burkhardt Przemysław Żurawski vel Grajewski, and Marek Tracz-​Tryniecki (London: Routledge, 2016), 37–​78. See also the recent study by Attila Zsoldos, The Golden Bull of Hungary, Budapest 2022. 48. Janusz Bieniak, “Die Großen und die Einheit der piastischen Monarchie im 11.–​12. Jahrhundert,” in Studien zum Adel im mittelalterlichen Polen, edited by Eduard Mühle (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 171–​220; Antoni Barciak, “Tage und Debatte im Beisein des Herzogs in Polen. Zur Funktionsweise von Tagen (wiece) des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Ritualisierung politischer Willensbildung: Polen und Deutschland im hohen und späten Mittelalter, edited by Wojciech Fałkowski, Bernd Schneidmüller, and Stefan Weinfurter (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 67–​78. 49. Oskar Halecki, Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); see also the contributions in Löwener, Die “Blüte.” 50. Robert Antonín, “Probleme bei der Gründung einer neuen Dynastie,” in Moździoch and Wiszewski, Consensus or Violence, 188–​201; Ivan Hlaváček, “Politische Integration der Böhmischen Krone unter den Luxemburgern,” in Fragen der politischen Integration im mittelalterlichen Europa, edited by Werner Maleczek (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), 325–​ 374. On the history of the Luxemburg dynasty in Bohemia, see the contributions in Johann und Elisabeth: Die Erbtochter, der fremde Fürst und das Land; Die Ehe Johanns des Blinden und Elisabeths von Böhmen in vergleichender europäischer Perspektive, edited by Michel Pauly (Luxembourg: Centre Luxembourgeois de Documentation et d‘Etudes Médiévales, 2013) and in Lucemburkove: Ceska koruna uprostřed Evropy [The Luxemburgs: The Bohemian crown in the center of Europe], edited by František Šmahel and Lenka Bobková (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2012). 51. Gyula Kristó‚ “Anjou-​kor,” in Magyarország története 1301–​1526 [History of Hungary, 1301–​ 1526], edited by Pál Engel, Gyula Kristó, and András Kubinyi (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó és Szolgáltató, 2005), 27–​120; Pál Engel, “Die Monarchie der Anjoukönige in Ungarn,” in Löwener, Die “Blüte,” 169–​181; Julia Burkhardt, “Regno Ungariae sede vacante: Ungarn zwischen Árpáden und Anjou (1301–​1308),” in Interregna im mittelalterlichen Europa: Konkurrierende Kräfte in politischen Zwischenräumen, edited by Stefan Tebruck and Norbert Kersken (Marburg: Verlag Herder-​Institut, 2020), 153–​169. 52. Dániel Bagi, “Changer les règles: La succession angevine aux trônes hongrois et polonais,” in Making and Breaking the Rules: Succession in Medieval Europe, c. 1000–​c.1600/​Établir et abolir les normes: La succession dans l’Europe médiévale, vers 1000–​vers 1600, edited by Frédéricque Lachaud and Michael Penman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 89–​95; in the same volume, see Martyn Rady, “They Brought in an ‘Ox as King; They Elected and Installed Him’: The Royal Succession in Later Medieval Hungary,” 61–​69. On Mary of Hungary, see Jaroslav Perniš, “Posledná Anjouovská král’ovná Mária Uhorská (1371–​1395),” Historicky Časopis 47, no. 1 (1999): 3–​17. 53. Bak, “Königtum und Stände,” 11–​26 and Julia Burkhardt, Ein Königreich im Wandel: Ungarn um 1400, in: Biuletyn Polskiej Misji Historycznej/ Bulletin der Polnischen Historischen Mission 11 (2016), 407–437. Online: http://apcz.umk.pl/czasopisma/index. php/BPMH/article/view/BPMH.2016.013 54. On Louis’s reign, see the recent studies by Andrzej Marzec, Pod rządami nieobecnego monarchy: Królestwo Polskie 1370–​1382 [Reigned by a king in absence: The kingdom of Poland 1370–​ 1382] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Societas Vistulana, 2017); Andrzej Marzec, “New King and New Elites: The Reign of Luis the Great in Poland 1370–​1382,”

The Central European States    95 in Hungaro-​Polonica: Young Scholars on Medieval Polish–​Hungarian Relations, edited by Dániel Bagi, Gábor Barabás, and Zsolt Máté (Pecs: Történészcéh Egyesület, 2016), 189–​224. 55. Paul W. Knoll, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–​ 1370 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). On Koszyce, see Robert Frost, The Oxford History of Poland-​Lithuania, Vol. 1: The Making of the Polish–​Lithuanian Union, 1385–​1569 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 5–​17, 65–​67; and Dániel Bagi, Az Anjouk Krakkóban: Nagy Lajos lengyelországi uralmának belpolitikai kérdései [The Anjou in Cracow: Domestic policy issues of King Louis’s I Polish rule] (Pécs: Kronosz Kiadó, 2014). 56. On the context, see Jarosław Nikodem, Jadwiga, król Polski [Jadwiga, king of Poland] (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 2009). 57. Wacław Uruszczak, “Das Privileg im alten Königreich Polen (10.–​18. Jahrhundert),” in Das Privileg im europäischen Vergleich, vol. 2, edited by Barbara Döhlemeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1999), 253–​274; Julia Burkhardt, “Das zerstückelte Versprechen: Thronfolgeabkommen im jagiellonischen Polen um 1400,” in Der Bruch des Vertrages: Die Verbindlichkeit der Diplomatie und ihre Grenzen, edited by Georg Jostkleigrewe and Gesa Wilangowski (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2018), 283–​308. 58. On Germany, see Ernst Schubert, Königsabsetzung im deutschen Mittelalter: Eine Studie zum Werden der Reichsverfassung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005): 362–​434; on Bohemia, see Ivan Hlaváček, “König Wenzel (IV.) und seine zwei Gefangennahmen (Spiegel seines Kampfes mit dem Hochadel sowie mit Wenzels Verwandten um die Vorherrschaft in Böhmen und Reich),” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 18 (2013): 115–​149; Klara Hübner, “‘Mit syns selbes hand ( . . . ) auch vil andere erbar lude ermordet’: Die Verwertung der Absetzungsurkunde Wenzels IV. in der reichsstädtischen Chronistik des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Studia historica Brunensia 65, no. 1 (2018): 153–​167. 59. On developments in early modern times, see Robert Frost, “Monarchy in Northern and Eastern Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Europe, Vol. 2: Cultures and Power, edited by Hamish Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 385–​417. 60. János M. Bak and Pavel Lukin, “Consensus and Assemblies in Early Medieval Central and Eastern Europe,” in Political Assemblies in the Earlier Middle Ages, edited by P. S. Barnwell, and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 95–​113; Stanisław Russocki, “Consilium i Consensus otoczenia książęcego w dokumentach polskich XIII wieku” [Consilium and consensus in the ducal environment in Polish documents of the thirteenth century], in Społeczeństwo Polski Średniowiecznej V [Polish society in the Middle Ages], edited by Stefan K. Kuczyński (Warsaw: PWN, 1992): 202–​209. 61. Julia Burkhardt, “Procedure, Rules and Meaning of Political Assemblies in Late Medieval Central Europe,” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 35, no. 2 (2015): 153–​170; Joseph Holub, “La représentation politique en Hongrie au Moyen Age,” in Xe Congrés International des Sciences Historiques, Rome 1955: Études présentés á la Commission Internationale pour l’Histoire des Assemblées d’États 18 (Leuven: Université de Louvain, 1958), 77–​121; Christopher Nicholson, “The Bohemian Diet in the Jagiellonian Period (1471–​1526): Towards a Comparative Perspective,” in Between Worlds: The Age of the Jagiellonians, edited by Florin Ardelean, Christopher Nicholson, and Johannes Preiser-​Kapeller (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013), 141–​156. see also Julia Burkhardt, Assemblies in the Holy Roman Empire and the East Central European Kingdoms: A Comparative Essay on Political Participation and Representation, in: Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe. Power, Rituals and Legitimacy in Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, ed. Grischa Vercamer/Dušan Zupka (East

96   Julia Burkhardt Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, Volume: 78), Leiden/Boston 2022: 198–214 62. Winfried Eberhard, “The Political System and the Intellectual Traditions of the Bohemian Ständestaat from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century,” in Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Robert John Weston Evans and T. V. Thomas (London: Macmillan in association with the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies University of London, 1991), 23–​47; Ernst Werner, “Ständebildung und hussitische Reformation in Böhmen bis 1419,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 35 (1987): 601–​618; Jana Janišová and Dalibor Janiš, “King, Estates and the Czech Crown: The Legal Sources of the Ideas of Freedom in the Medieval and Early Modern Czech Lands,” in Rau, Grajewski, and Tracz-​Tryniecki, Magna Carta, 79–​126. 63. János M. Bak and András Vadas, “Diets and Synods in Buda and Its Environs,” in Nagy et al., Medieval Buda in Context, 322–​344; Julia Burkhardt, “Spätmittelalterliche Reichsversammlungen in Polen und Deutschland,” in Frühneuzeitliche Reiche in Europa/​ Empires in Early Modern Europe/​Das Heilige Römische Reich und Polen-​Litauen im Vergleich/​The Holy Roman Empire and Poland-​Lithuania in Comparison, edited by Tomasz Gromelski, Christian Preusse, Alan Ross, and Damien Tricoire (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 27–​ 66; Krzysztof Baczkowski, “Die Städte in den Ständevertretungen Ostmitteleuropas gegen Ende des Mittelalters,” Bohemia 30 (1989): 1–​17; Fałkowski, “Centres and Structure,” 263–​275. 64. On the meaning of rank, see the contributions in Princely Rank in Late Medieval Europe: Trodden Paths and Promising Avenues, edited by Thorsten Huthwelker, Jörg Peltzer, and Maximilian Wemhöner (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011); and in Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse, eds., Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999). 65. See the contributions in Eirik Hovden, Christina Lutter, Christina Pohl, and Walter Pohl, eds., Meanings of Community across Eurasia (Leiden: Brill, 2016), and in Élodie Lecuppre-​ Desjardin and Anne-​Laure van Bruaene, eds., De bono communi: The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th–​16th c.)/​Discours et pratique du Bien Commun dans les villes d’Europe (XIIIe au XVI siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). 66. Wim Blockmans, “Who Has a Say? The Conditions for the Emergence and Maintenance of Political Participation in Europe before 1800,” in Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200–​c. 1690), edited by Mario Damen, Jelle Haemers, and Alaistair J. Mann (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 285–​308; see also the discussions in Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein, and Jon Mathieu, eds., Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe 1300–​1900 (Farnham: Routledge, 2009); Mathieu Caesar, “Did Factions Exist? Problems and Perspectives on European Factional Struggles (1400–​1750),” in Factional Struggles: Divided Elites in European Cities and Courts (1400–​1750), edited by Mathieu Caesar (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1–​17. 67. Bak, “Probleme einer vergleichenden Betrachtung,” 49–​64. 68. Górski, “Les débuts de la représentation,” 72–​83. 69. Lübke, “Mitteleuropa,” 36; Burkhardt, “Frictions and Fictions.” 70. Bak, Königtum und Stände,” 33–​ 35. See also József Karpat, “Die Idee der Heiligen Krone Ungarns in neuer Beleuchtung,” in Hellman, Corona regni, 349–​398. For Polish and Bohemian examples, see Jan Dąbrowski, “Die Krone des polnischen Königtums im 14. Jahrhundert: Eine Studie aus der Geschichte der Entwicklung der polnischen 548; and Joachim Bahlcke, ständischen Monarchie,” in Hellman, Corona regni, 399–​

The Central European States    97 “Corona, corpus, constitutio, confoederatio: Verfassungsideen und Politikmodelle im spätmittelalterlich-​frühneuzeitlichen Böhmen,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 113 (2005): 90–​107. 71. Julia Burkhardt, “Ostmitteleuropa als politische Region: Österreich, Ungarn und Böhmen im 15. Jahrhundert,” in König Rudolf I. und der Aufstieg des Hauses Habsburg im Mittelalter, edited by Bernd Schneidmüller (Darmstadt; Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2019), 393–​410. 72. Julia Burkhardt, “Negotiating Realms: Political Representation in Late Medieval Poland, Hungary, and the Holy Roman Empire,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (Oxford: Routledge, 2016), 62–​77.

Further Reading Bak, János M. Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects: Central Europe and Beyond. Compiled by Balázs Nagy. Farnham: Ashgate Variorum, 2010. Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds. Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Dalewski, Zbigniew. “Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages.” Viator 46, no. 1 (2015): 43–​60. Frost, Robert. The Oxford History of Poland-​Lithuania. Vol. 1: The Making of the Polish–​ Lithuanian Union, 1385–​1569. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Chapter 4

Governme nt Central and Local Administration János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan

Medieval government was much less pervasive than that of modern states.* Its main tasks were to maintain the peace, protect the resources of the country, defend the borders against invaders (and also, if possible, expand them),1 and, above all, raise the money to cover the expenses for all this. Thus, government agents, few in number compared to modern civil servants, were in most cases also the administrators of justice, commanders of armed forces, and tax collectors. The notion of “administration,” other than that of justice, is a relatively modern concept; it is frequently difficult to define precisely the remit of the various office-​holders in the Middle Ages. They were usually rewarded by a share of the revenues and frequently granted landed properties for a job well done. In the monarchies in Central Europe (the kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia, kingdom of Bohemia, and kingdom of Poland), government more and more came into the hands of the politically enfranchised nobility, just like law and politics in general. The more or less informal ducal and royal councils, initially probably consisting of the trusted men of the ruler, from around the thirteenth century came to comprise exclusively prelates and aristocrats (the former being mainly from the ranks of the latter).2 Throughout the Middle Ages, however, lesser nobles increasingly demanded to be included in government, and, in the later period, they occasionally succeeded, although with little influence, at least in Hungary and Bohemia.3 The chief royal officer in Hungary was the count palatine (nádorispán),4 the same as in Poland (wojewoda), while in Bohemia this position was filled by the lord chamberlain (summus camerarius).5 In Hungary, there was only one count palatine, whose office was strictly bound with that of the king; in Poland, there were more than one count palatine. This was due to the political divisions of the country into a number of semi-​independent territorial principalities governed by different members and branches of the Piast dynasty (Velkopolska, Malopolska, Silesia, Mazovia, and others); the count palatine became the chief officer of each unit. In the case of Hungary, it is important to stress

100    János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan that from the beginning of the twelfth century the composite monarchy also included the kingdom of Croatia-​Dalmatia, where the chief royal officer held the title of ban. The ban’s position differed from that of the count palatine in Hungary proper because the king was absent while he was in office, meaning that he was the king’s deputy in an area relatively remote from the center of political power. The voivode of Transylvania held a similar position, but to even lesser degree.6 Both the ban and the voivode were thus more independent in their activities, but lower in rank in the sphere of political influence. In Central Europe in general, the lesser office-​holders at the court were the various “masters,” of the horse, the butlers, and so on, and these office-​holders were, just as in Western European courts, ever less in charge of the tasks in their titles, but in fact members of what may be called the “central government.” These offices (whose holders were called barons in Hungary, barones or proceres in Bohemia, and principes and/​or comites in Poland), though not formally hereditary, remained in the hands of quite a limited number of great landowning families.

The Chancellery A chancellery, as the most important government office, is first mentioned in twelfth-​ century Bohemia, and the chancellor was, ever since 1223, the provost of Vyšehrad. By the thirteenth century, the title had become formal and the chancellery, which developed fully in the Luxemburg Age, was in fact run by magistri protonotarii.7 In Hungary, a regular chancellery was established in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, replacing the royal chapel that had previously issued a few charters. The introduction of written petitions and a formal chancellery has traditionally been attributed to Béla III (1172–​1190), but Canon Roger of Oradea (who wrote in 1242–​1243) credited his king, Béla IV (1235–​1270), with it.8 Pragmatic literacy indeed developed only in his time, although oral transactions remained prevalent for centuries on both the central and local levels.9 In the mid-​thirteenth century, the number of charters increased greatly, although few survive. The actual output of the royal chancellery cannot be established because the royal archives—​whatever they may have contained—​perished when the court fled from the Ottomans in 1526.10 The age of King Matthias Corvinus (1458–​1490) was a particularly important period for the development of the chancellery in Hungary; his court was well known due to the presence of intellectual humanists—​the chancellor John Vitéz and vice-​chancellor Janus Panonius. A similar situation developed in Poland at the Jagiellonian court in the late fifteenth century. In Poland, the position of chancellor (kanclerz) is noted from the twelfth century. He was the head of the royal chancellery, which was in charge of foreign policy and production of documents (registry of documents is called the Metryka Koronna). In the period of internal division, each principality had its own chancellor, but after unification in the fourteenth century the provincial chancellors’ positions were abolished and the chancellor of Cracow (Little Poland) remained the only one, with the title of

Government   101 crown chancellor. In the early period, the position was held by clerics, usually canons of different dioceses and archdioceses. The position was strong but not very secure, as is evident from events in 1239, when the duke detained, tortured, and executed the chancellor of Mazovia.11 After the unification with Lithuania in 1569, each part of the Polish-​ Lithuanian Commonwealth had its own chancellor and vice-​chancellor, who were also members of the senate. After the fourteenth century, civil laymen with university degrees and legal education appear in the sources. They were mostly employed as chancellery staff, for example, Janko Czarnkőw (1366–​1371), vice-​chancellor of the realm of Kazimir the Great (1330–​1370), who also authored a chronicle. In Bohemia, the chancellery experienced a major transformation when Charles the Fourth (1346–​1378) became the emperor and the imperial court, for the most part, was transferred to Prague. This strengthened the German influence and language in the chancellery, led by John of Neumarkt (1352–​1373).12 At the same time, Bohemia’s position within the composite monarchy of the Luxemburgs was also increasing. At the time when Wenceslas IV was imprisoned, the rebellious lords also succeeded in taking control of the chancellery. A more important change in the propagation of written legal culture and its influence on royal chancelleries occurred when the Angevins came to the region (influencing both Hungary and Poland). In the Angevin period, a general increase in the quality of legal culture is evident, mainly influenced by the transmission of legal culture coming from Italy and Germany. The number of university-​educated lawyers increased greatly, as did their importance in staffing the royal administration, particularly the higher courts.13 A similar increase in legal culture is also visible on the local level, particularly in the regions closer to Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, such as the Dalmatian city communes, the cities in Bohemia, the western part of Hungary, and Slavonia.14

Finances One of the main tasks of government was to supply the needs of the ruler and his retinue, and, later, the costs of defense, ever more with the increased use of paid soldiers. Many historians propose that in the early centuries of statehood in Central Europe the court’s maintenance was based on a system of so-​called service settlements, i.e., settlements of privileged groups among the population entrusted with specific tasks related to providing for the ruler and his court. This arrangement, reconstructed mainly on the basis of place names indicating crafts and other products, seems to have been typical for tenth-​to twelfth-​century Bohemia, Hungary, and the old centers in Poland. Some scholars have suggested that it was inherited from the early medieval Moravian state, but this cannot be proven; others argue that it was established much later.15 It seems that in Croatia and Dalmatia the ruler possessed a number of estates (curtes) that had formerly belonged to the Roman province of Dalmatia, which were still in use until the union with Hungary at the beginning of the twelfth century. Data on this is rather scarce,

102    János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan however, mainly coming from royal donations of land to the Church and monasteries and from archaeological excavations of villae rusticae.16 The earlier system of certain villages supplying foodstuffs or craft products or providing food and clothing for a traveling king and his entourage when visiting royal domains became obsolete—​mainly because ducal/​royal land was given to churches and laymen. The result was that maintaining the government was ever more based on levies of various types—​in money, in kind, and in services—​collected by royal agents. Before monetization, the supplies of the court in Hungary were administered by the magister tavernicorum (master of the treasurers; the name probably comes from the Slavic tovor, “casket”), who later became a judge of the towns. Royal taxes were collected by the county ispáns, who were also judges, and commanders of freemen, allowed to keep a certain amount.17 As early as the thirteenth century, financial administration was “privatized”: papal legates protested against the employment of Jewish and Muslim minters and tax-​farmers.18 More detailed information is available from Angevin times, when, in the 1330s, formal contracts were signed with the “counts of the chamber” (mostly foreign merchants) about farming out the mints.19 The major income of the royal treasury was a direct tax called the chambers’ profit (lucrum camerae), which replaced the earlier royal income that had come from regularly devaluing the coinage, and from the fifteenth century onward, the regularly levied “extraordinary” subsidium. In addition, income was derived from mining (salt and precious metals20), customs’ duties (the so-​called thirtieth), taxes of the towns, of the Jews and other groups. For example, the inhabitants of Slavonia rendered an ancient tax, the marten-​pelt tax, called mardurina, which was later paid in money, and the Transylvanian Romanians/​Vlachs owed a fiftieth tax. The annual income of the kings of Hungary is known from the late twelfth century21 and then again from the mid-​fifteenth century and later. In the early Middle Ages and then—​after serious decline over centuries mainly due to the alienation of the royal domain—​in the best years of well-​organized taxation under King Matthias Corvinus in the 1470s, it reached 800,000 ducats.22 In the age of the Jagiellonians, however, these incomes declined sharply due to concessions that the kings were forced to grant the nobility, reduced to almost a quarter of the previous value. The income of Béla III (1173–​1196) may have been comparable to that of the kings of France or England of his time, but by the late Middle Ages the Hungarian budget had fallen far behind that of other European kingdoms and its main enemy, the Ottoman Empire. In the early sixteenth century, the estates made attempts to control the finances, but in general talented royal treasurers proved to be more successful.23 The situation was similar in Bohemia to some extent. It is commonly accepted that all the freemen paid the duke a tax called tributum pacis, and that it was an important part of ducal incomes, but is now debated. In the historiography it is also considered that most of the ducal incomes derived from the idea that all land under cultivation belonged to the ruler in addition to a share of the products. The ruler also distributed land to his men and supporters, who in return rendered him different services. Such a vision, however, is greatly constructed on the general notion of feudalism, so it is rather arguable how much it is connected with reality in early medieval Central Europe. Research has shown

Government   103 that even in the earliest times there was a great deal of private property. It is documented particularly from the thirteenth century, but there is no reason to doubt that the fluctuation of ownership of property existed even earlier, signifying that the ruler’s income from land had to have been much smaller in amounts. In any case, the ruler’s estate was vast, comprising many different categories of income. Among these, the forest economy was particularly important because the greatest part belonged to the ruler, but the agricultural part cannot be disregarded either. Groups of dependent people (slaves) existed that specialized in the production of goods needed to sustain the ruler and his court. They were organized around the centers of the ruler’s estates (curiae), which in the later period developed into urban settlements. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such settlements would have been integrated and partially delegated to local administration of the castle system (hrady), which set the scene for the later urbanization of Bohemia. Even so, the ruler always kept some of the prerogatives of his rule (and income) there. Besides the incomes mentioned already, which were primarily paid in kind, with the strengthening of monetary economy tolls were also introduced—​theloneum forense and theloneum fori. Fines also became an important part of the ruler’s finances because fines were always defined in monetary value; they were mostly paid in money, but they might also be paid in equivalents in kind. Spoils of war also played a certain role, sometimes considerable, but also dependent on circumstances. Spoils were distributed to a ruler’s supporters and allies (particularly to the emperor) and in cases of successful campaigns it was also lucrative for the duke. There were also reverse situations, however, so the influence of the spoils of war on the general finances of Bohemia should not be exaggerated. Some income also came from ducal monopolies such as mining. In the Bohemian case, however, direct exercise of the monopoly right by the ruler decreased from the thirteenth century onward and indirect profits created by the transfer of such monopolies to new colonists and settlements increased greatly.24 The colonization process mentioned previously greatly influenced changes in the country’s economy and consequently the structure of the ruler’s incomes from the thirteenth century on. New towns and villages, founded by locatores and settled mostly by German immigrants, strengthened the influence of urban economy; the incomes coming from such settlements and general improvement of agricultural techniques led to even greater productivity. The monopoly on silver mining was still strong in the second half of the thirteenth century and had a strong influence on the political activity and ambitions of the late Přemyslids. With the arrival of the Luxemburgs as the imperial dynasty, the political and economic role of Bohemia within the empire increased and Prague became a flourishing imperial capital. With the foundation of the university and the attraction of long distance trade routes, Prague became the largest Central European city, with approximately 40,000 inhabitants. In spite of the great consequences of the Hussite wars, the Bohemian economy remained strong and the urban elite played an increasing role in politics and economy in the later period.25 The ruler’s incomes in early medieval Poland are documented less well. It appears that ducal and royal estates played the primary role, but the details are not known. In the earlier period, the spoils of war had a much more pronounced role, particularly in the

104    János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan period of Bolesław I the Brave (992–​1025) and Bolesław II the Bold (1058–​1079). Unlike the Bohemian case, there does not seem to have been something comparable to the tributum pacis, the tax paid to the ruler in Bohemia, but up to the twelfth century, it is difficult to reconstruct the system of income. Certain dues and taxes were paid to the ruler; sometimes we even know their names—​dues paid in kind to the duke on crops or farmland (poradlne) and on livestock (narzaz). Like most medieval courts, the court was itinerant, meaning that there was no real capital, but the ruler and his retinue traveled around the country, dispensing justice and thereby strengthening the public’s consciousness of belonging to the same political unit. There were also more prosaic reasons for such itinerancy, however, it was hard to accumulate enough resources for its maintenance in one place. Thus, moving around the country, the court was sustained by local communities (vicinia or opole), with the obligation of feasting, providing sustenance (called stan), and organizing transport (called przewóz). The castle system, the maintenance and manning, was also covered by local communities (stróża). An important part of royal income came from fines and monopolies (regale). The ruler had the exclusive right to mint coins, or to be precise, the right to replace the circulating coins with the new ones (usually debased). This was regular, twice per year, as early as the twelfth century. The ruler also had a monopoly on hunting; earlier research considered this to be an exclusive ducal/​royal privilege, but recent studies have shown that it was not exactly so. Certain hunting grounds were used and managed by specific groups of peasants that depended on them exclusively. The sources reveal beaver-​ keepers (bobrowniki), dog-​keepers (psary), falconers (sokolniki), shooters (strzelce), and so on. The rulers, as everywhere else in Central Europe, had a monopoly on mining, but this right was exercised in a limited way. The process started to increase significantly during the twelfth century. It occurred first with gold mining in Silesia, which again is reflected in the topographical names of places (Złotoryja, or Goldberg). Lead-​mining was present the most in Silesia and Lesser Poland from the thirteenth century onward, and salt-​mining in Lesser Poland from the mid-​thirteenth century. Significantly, these processes also flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.26 From the twelfth century, connected with partitions of the country, various other tolls are mentioned for the greater ducal strongholds, which led to the fragmentation of the ruler’s income and that of the country itself. After the reunification of Poland in the period of the last Piasts after 1320 there was great progress in both royal income and documentation about it. In general, this was a period of successful warfare, successful peace-​making, and peace-​keeping, followed by a centralization of administration and unification of law, which again led to increased income. Royal protection improved the position of peasants and the Jews, who immigrated to Poland in great numbers. Similarly to the situation in Bohemia, the foundation of the university of Cracow also increased the importance and attraction of trade routes. In contrast to Bohemia, however, Polish towns never reached the size and development level of Prague or any other major Bohemian town. Thus, the ruler’s income from the urban milieu in Poland was much less.27

Government   105

Local Government In Hungary, the local unit of administration was the county (comitatus, Hung.: megye), founded by King Stephen I (king c. 1000–​1038), developed in the course of the following centuries. The number of counties in his time is debated, but there were at least fifty, which ultimately increased to over seventy. Each was headed by an ispán (in the Latin sources: comes)28 who administered both the royal property with its dependent people and, increasingly, the nonroyal estates of freemen as well. He resided in the central castle of the county, collected taxes, administered justice, and commanded the local armed forces. The origin of counties has long been debated; hypotheses for some kind of continuity from earlier-​settled Slavic peoples have not been substantiated, while Western (Frankish and Bavarian) models cannot be excluded. György Györffy connected the counties with the areas of settlement of ninth-​tenth-​century kindreds,29 while Gyula Kristó tried to detect tribes in their beginnings.30 Both based their arguments on place-​ names and later data on property-​holdings; since neither of these hypotheses can be substantiated it is best to admit that we do not know the exact origins of the counties.31 Toward the boundaries of the kingdom, larger border-​counties were established first, open for colonizing the frontier areas that were protected by wide wastes with obstacles (indagines, gyepü) and a few guarded gates.32 They were later divided into smaller units. In the thirteenth century, with the decrease of royal property which had been overwhelming at the time of the monarchy’s foundation—​the counties gradually became units self-​administered by the local nobility. The transition was gradual; the ispán remained a royal appointee, even if his deputy (vicecomes, alispán), the actual administrator of the county, usually a retainer33 of the absentee comes, was ever more frequently elected by the local community. This was not as fundamental change of quality as older, noble-​oriented, historians depicted it, even if in modern times the counties became the counterweight to the “foreign” court. In the fourteenth century, under the Angevins, the administrative institution of honors came to be prevalent; it combined baronial court dignities with the comital office of one or—​usually—​more counties.34 While Pál Engel argued that the honor-​holders also had the right to the income of the counties, Erik Fügedi saw in them less fief-​like benefice holders then royal officers.35 The “noble county” also usually elected, four magistrates (iudex nobilium, szolgabíró) from among the better-​off nobles. To what extent were they representatives of the community or rather helpers of the ispán is debated;36 probably both at the same time. It seems to have been a burdensome task, as there is evidence that noblemen had to be coerced to serve as magistrates and the acceptable reasons for being excused were limited.37 Within the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary, there were certain regions where the development of local counties was specific to some extent, primarily Slavonia, where a great number of smaller counties existed whose origin was much debated in both Hungarian and Croatian historiographies alike from the nineteenth century onward, mostly connected with the Hungarian and Croatian political clashes of that time and the political orientation of the border areas between two nations.38 There are

106    János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan no confirmations, however, from either historical or archaeological sources of their Slavic or non-​Slavic origin. From the time of written records, the existence of great number of castle districts (in the sources called comitatus) is noted under the larger units of counties (again called comitatus in the sources, thereby causing even greater confusion in the historiography). On the administrative level of the county, the system was almost identical to that existing in Hungary proper, although, the structure of the nobility residing there was somewhat different. First, in Slavonia there was a much greater variety in the types of lesser nobility (which were organized around the castle districts and called iobagiones castri or later nobiles castri, or who lived on ecclesiastical estates and were called praediales). From the fifteenth century they were unified as the county nobility, a process which had started a century earlier with the idea of una eademque nobilitas.39 Further south, in the kingdom of Croatia, the existence of counties is noted from the tenth century. After the union with Hungary, however, because the center of royal power moved to distant Pannonia, these counties were gradually transformed into hereditary lordships of noble kindreds and families whose leading members bore the title of counts (comes, knez). In that respect they were rather different from their Hungarian counterparts, who only exceptionally had titled ranks and received them abroad (like the counts of Szentgyörgy, who got the title from the empire). In most cases, the hereditary counts (the Šubići, Frankapani, Krbavski, Nelipići) succeeded in establishing even greater lordships, usually comprising several counties under their power.40 This had unfortunate consequences for the development of noble autonomy in the region, however, because the lesser nobility was heavily dependent on the lords. An important change occurred when the Angevin kings started to rebuild royal authority in Croatia in the mid-​fourteenth century by relying on the support of lesser nobility against magnate families and organizing a number of counties directly subject to royal representatives (the bans of Croatia-​Dalmatia). The first such county was Luka, in the immediate hinterland of Zadar (at that time the capital of the kingdom), which caused a strong organization of local autonomy of noblemen, which was reflected in the institution of the “nobility of the twelve noble kindreds of the Kingdom of Croatia” (nobiles duodecim generationum regni Croatie).41 In Bohemia and Poland, the development was in basic accordance with the Central European model explained on the example of Hungary, even though the sources do not make it possible to follow the process in greater detail. In Bohemia, local administration in the earlier period (until the end of the twelfth century) was based on the authority of a royal officer called suppanus in the sources, the head of ducal administration in the province. The subordinates of the suppanus were castellani, who were in charge of governing lower administrative units. The castellanus had a double function; he represented the duke before the local community and at the same time the local community before the ruler. He also cooperated with the magistrate (iudex) while exercising the judicial authority. In the second half of the twelfth century, the role of local nobility started to increase. In Poland, the oldest administrative units were called opole. They had economic and judicial functions. Some of them were governed directly by royal officers

Government   107 and some by the aristocracy. In the late eleventh century the castle district became a more important territorial unit, first commanded by a comes (wojewoda) and from the twelfth century onward by a castellan. The castellan was in principle the ruler’s man, usually appointed from among the magnates. He also had judicial and military roles as well as the economic function of collecting taxes. Restructuring the local autonomy and authority raised constant conflicts among the members of the Piast dynasty in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries because they depended on the support of the high aristocracy of their dukedoms. This caused the dukes to establish many strong territorial lordships. The lesser nobility under the command of such aristocracy profited and developed into a knightly class that played an important role on the local level. After Władysław IV Łokietek restored central authority, he began to appoint his own officials, styled starostas (elders), who were responsible only to the king because the local nobility influenced former castellans and other officials.42 In all Central European countries, on the lowest level, matters of the villagers and townsmen were in the hands of reeves (in most cases called villici) or elected municipal magistrates. Villici were charged in the early laws with supervising the observance of Christian duties and they later assisted the tax collectors of different types (for which, in Hungary, they were exempt from the tithe, among other things). Different types of privileges and town laws governed urban administration.43 *** The institutions of government and administration of the three great kingdoms of Central Europe experienced similar developments in many respects. Similarities and differences in the development of governmental and political structures, however, were mostly influenced by the different levels of unification in each kingdom. Hungary and Bohemia were more unified, while Poland shifted constantly from a unified to a highly decentralized and partitioned state. In all the kingdoms of Central Europe, the central government depended greatly on the ruler, whose court consisted of loyal men, chosen primarily from the ranks of the aristocracy. Bearers of court functions were therefore mostly selected on the basis of their power, practical skills in handling political matters, and their personal relations with the ruler. In contrast, the function of the chancellor was more professional and based more on education (particularly legal), which also applied to other staff of the chancellery. The process of professionalizing court services was gradual, strengthened in the Angevin fourteenth century, and reaching a peak in the period of the fifteenth century under the Luxemburg and Jagiellonian dynasties. Another important common characteristic of the political and governmental life of the area was also the process of a slow but constant rise of local autonomies and parliamentary institutions, mostly dominated by middle and lesser nobility. The level of success of such institutions, however, was rather divergent in time and space. In Hungary, it resulted from the relatively weak parliamentary influence of the lesser nobility, which played a strong role in local institutions on the county level. In Poland, the opposite case applied, of relatively underdeveloped institutions of local autonomy, but a strong

108    János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan parliament of the Republic of Noblemen in Poland. The case of Bohemia was somewhere in between, but with a stronger urban influence on both central and local government.

Notes * János M. Bak worked on his contributions to this Handbook right up until his passing in 2020. Please see the Handbook preface for an account of his formative impact on this volume and on Central European medieval studies as a whole. 1. On that, see ­chapter 6 in this volume, by Bárány. 2. See András Kubinyi, “Barone im königlichen Rat,” in Stände und Ständestaat im spätmittelalterlichen Ungarn (Herne: Schäfer, 2011), 41–​166. 3. See András Kubinyi, “Beisitzer aus dem mittleren Adel,” in Stände und Ständestaat, 233–​252; John Klassen, The Nobility and the Making of the Hussite Revolution (New York: University Presses of California, Columbia, and Princeton, 1978). 4. Originally in charge of the court, he became the highest officer, deputy of the king, judge itinerant, and frequently commander of the army. Characteristically, by the mid-​ fourteenth century, he changed his title from palatinus regis to palatinus regni, whereby regnum (Hung.: ország) meant the “estate” of the enfranchised nobility; see Norbert C. Tóth, “Az ország nádora” [The palatine of the realm], Középkortörténeti tanulmányok 7 (2012): 439–​452. 5. He was first in charge of the royal properties and collector of revenues, heading the chamberlains who represented the ruler in court, but lost his importance with the growth of the competence of the Land Register. 6. Martyn Rady, “Voivode and Regnum: Transylvania’s Place in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary,” in Historians and the History of Transylvania, edited by László Péter (Boulder: East European Monographs; New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 87–​101. 7. See Ivan Hlavaček, Das Urkunden-​und Kanzleiwesen des böhmischen und römischen Königs Wenzel (IV.) 1376–​1419: Ein Beitrag zur spätmittelalterlichen Diplomatik, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 23 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1970); Márta Kondor, “The Ginger Fox’s Two Crowns: Central Administration and Government in Sigismund of Luxembourg’s Realms 1410–​1419,” PhD dissertation, Budapest: Central European University, 2017. 8. Rogerius, “Epistle,” in Anonymous and Master Roger, The Deeds of the Hungarians: Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars, translated and annotated by János M. Bak and Martyn Rady, Central European Medieval Texts 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), 145–​147, 152–​153. 9. See Erik Fügedi, “Verba volant . . . Oral Culture and Literacy among the Medieval Hungarian Nobility,” in Erik Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, edited by János M. Bak (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), c­ hapter 6. A somewhat different situation developed in medieval Dalmatian cities, where written culture in the public sphere replaced predominantly oral forms as early as the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century due to the influence of notarial services, influenced by the development of legal studies and culture in neighboring Italy. In terms of Central European development, however, this constitutes only an exception and not a general rule. For the development of written culture in Dalmatian communes, see also Branka Grbavac, “The Professional Formation of Public Notaries in Dalmatia from the Second Half of the

Government   109 Twelfth Century to the End of the Fourteenth Century,” in Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns, edited by Marco Mostert and Anna Adamska, Medieval Urban Literacy 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 285–​312. 10. The present holdings of the National Archives for the centuries up to 1526 have now been digitized and are available at http://​archi​ves.hung​aric​ana.hu/​en/​chart​ers/​sea​rch (accessed June 30, 2020). 11. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds., Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 422. 12. Jean W. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–​1500, History of East Central Europe 3 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 443. 13. György Bónis, A jogtudó értelmiség a Mohács előtti Magyarországon [The legal culture of Hungary before Mohács] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1971); Enikő Csukovits, ed., L’Ungheria angioina (Rome: Viella, 2013). 14. Branka Grbavac, “Notarial Service in the City of Zadar: Changes in Theory and Practice,” in Reform and Renewal in Medieval East and Central Europe: Politics, Law and Society, edited by Suzana Miljan, Éva B. Halász, and Alexandru Simon (Cluj–​Napoca: Romanian Academy; Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts; London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2019), 391–​410; Tomislav Popić, Krojenje pravde: Zadarsko sudstvo u srednjem vijeku (1358.–​1458.) [Tailoring justice: Zadar’s judiciary in the Middle Ages (1358–​1458)] (Zagreb: Plejada, 2014). 15. See Dušan Třeštík and Barbara Krzemienska,“Zur Problematik der Dienstleute im frühmittelalterlichen Böhmen,” in Siedlung und Verfassung Böhmens in der Frühzeit, edited by František Graus and Herbert Ludat (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1967), 70–​103; Karol Modzelewski, “The System of the ius ducale and the Idea of Feudalism (Comments on the Earliest Class Society in Medieval Poland),” Questiones medii aevi 1 (1976): 71–​99; Gusztáv Heckenast, Fejedelmi (királyi) szolgálónépek az Árpád-​korban [People serving the princes and kings of the Árpád era] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1970). 16. Mladen Ančić, “Od vladarske curtis do gradskoga kotara: Bijaći i crkva sv. Marte od početka 9. do početka 13. stoljeća” [From the ruler’s curtis to the village of a city district: Bijaći and the church of St. Martha from the beginning of the ninth to the beginning of the thirteenth century], Starohrvatska prosvjeta 3 (1999) 26: 189–​236. 17. See Boglárka Weisz, “Royal Revenues in the Árpádian Age,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, edited by József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Péter Szabó, and András Vadas, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 255–​264. 18. Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c.1000–​c.1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 19. See, e.g., the Cameral contract, February 2, 1342, in DRMH 2, 131–​140. For the new and improved online edition, see the online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae./​The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary at https://​dig​ital​comm​ons.usu.edu/​lib_​m​ono/​4/​ (accessed June 30, 2020). 20. Zoltán Batizi, “Mining in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 166–​181; see also ­chapter 13 in this volume, by Nagy and Myśliwski. 21. See Gábor Barta Jr. and J. Barta, “Royal Finance in Medieval Hungary: The Revenues of King Bela III,” in Crises, Revolutions and Self-​Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal

110    János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan History 1130–​1830, edited by M. Ormrod, M. Bonney, and R. Bonney (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1999), 22–​37. 22. János M. Bak, “Monarchie im Wellental: Materielle Grundlagen des ungarischen Königtums im späteren Mittelalter,” in Das spätmittelalterliche Königtum im europäischen Vergleich, edited by R. Schneider (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), 347–​387; the title hints at the disadvantageous development. By the late Middle Ages, the king of Hungary’s income was a third of that of the king of France and less than half than that of the Ottoman sultan. 23. See György Bónis, “Ständisches Finanzwesen in Ungarn im frühen 16. Jahrhundert,” in Nouvelles études historiques; Publiées à L’Occasion du XIIe Congrès Internationale des Sciences Historiques Par la Commission Nationale des Historiens Hongrois (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1965), vol. 1, 83–​103. 24. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages; Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages. 25. Robert E. Bjork, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 273–​276. 26. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages; Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages. 27. The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 1323–​1326. 28. The word itself probably goes back to a Slavic loanword, župan, but the office was different; župans were usually heads of small units of population or area. 29. György Györffy, “A magyar nemzetségtől a vármegyéig, a törzstől az országig” [From the Hungarian kindreds to the counties, from the tribes to the realm], Századok 92 (1958): 12–​ 87, 567–​615. 30. Gyula Kristó, A vármegyék kialakulása Magyarországon [Development of the counties in Hungary] (Budapest: Magvető, 1998). 31. The best up-​to-​date summary on the development of the counties is István Tringli, “Le contee in Ungheria nel periodo degli Angiò,” in L’Ungheria angioina, edited by Enikő Csukovits (Rome: Viella, 2013), 139–​178. 32. See Hansgerd Göckenjan, Hilfsvölker und Grenzwächter im mittelalterlichen Ungarn (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1972). 33. On the “institution” of familiaritas, see, among others, Martyn Rady, Land, Nobility and Service in Medieval Hungary (London: Palgrave, 2000). 34. Pál Engel, “Honor, castrum, comitatus: Studies in the Government System of the Angevin Kingdom,” Questiones Medii Aevi Novae 1 (1996): 91–​100, summarizes his detailed studies in Hungarian. 35. Erik Fügedi, “Királyi tisztség vagy hűbér” [Royal office or fief], Történelmi Szemle 25 (1982): 482–​509. 36. See Attila Zsoldos, “A szolgabírói tisztségnév kialakulásának kérdéséhez” [On the question of the origins of the name of the iudex servientium], Levéltári Szemle 38 (1988): 12–​19. 37. The law of March 8, 1435: 2 even imposed a fine on noblemen who refused to serve as magistrates. 38. Éva B. Halász and Suzana Miljan, eds., Diplomatarium comitum terrestrium Crisiensium (1274–​ 1439)/​ A Körösi comites terrestres okmánytára (1274–​ 1439)/​ Isprave križevačkih zemaljskih župana (1274.–​1439.) (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum, Szegedi Tudományegyetem, Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára Magyar Medievisztikai Kutatócsoportja, 2014), 105–​115.

Government   111 39. János M. Bak, “Una eademque nobilitas? Domini i familiares među srednjovjekovnim plemstvom Kraljevine Ugarske” [Una eademque nobilitas? Domini and familiares among medieval nobility in the kingdom of Hungary], in Izabrane teme iz hrvatske povijesti, edited by Suzana Miljan and Marko Jerković (Zagreb: Hrvatski studiji Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 2007), 85–​96. 40. Damir Karbić, “Hrvatski velikaši i plemići i ugarska kruna u razdoblju kasnih Arpadovića i Anžuvinaca/​Horvát főurak, nemesek és a Magyar Korona a kései Árpád-​korban és az Anjou királyok idején” [Croatian magnates and nobles and the crown of St. Stephen in the age of the Late Arpadians and Angevins], in A horvát-​magyar együttélés fordulópontjai: Intézmények, társadalom, gazdaság, kultúra/​Prekretnice u suživotu Hrvata i Mađara: Ustanove, društvo, gospodarstvo i kultura, edited by Pál Fodor, Dénes Sokcsevits, Jasna Turkalj, and Damir Karbić (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet; Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2015), 119–​125, 177–​183. 41. Ivan Majnarić, Plemstvo zadarskog zaleđa u XIV. i XV. stoljeću [The nobility of the hinterland of Zadar in the fourteenth and fifteenth century] (Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru, 2018); Damir Karbić, “Defining the Position of Croatia during the Restauration of Royal Power (1345–​1361): An Outline,” in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways . . . : Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, edited by Marcell Sebők and Balázs Nagy (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 520–​526. 42. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 277–​278. 43. See ­chapter 12 in this volume, by Szende and Schmieder.

Further Reading Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds. Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Curta, Florin, ed. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Sedlar, Jean W. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–​1500. A History of East Central Europe 3. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. Wandycz, Piotr S. The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. London: Routledge, 1992 and 2001. Zaoral, Roman, ed. Money and Finance in Central Europe in the Later Middle Ages, Part II: Medieval Court Funding. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Chapter 5

L aw and t h e Adm inistrat i on of Ju sti c e János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak

A gloss in a fifteenth-​century Hungarian formulary counsels the judge to consider that custom (consuetudo) may have to be given preference in judgment, “since royal statutes may not be known to all.”* It also explains that law (lex) confirms all that has been decided by the holy fathers, while custom derives from practice in the given place.1 Custom observed over time, however, becomes lex. Decree may not override custom, save for the time of the reign of a king. Right (ius), in turn, is higher than all these as it emanates from God and assures that all obtain what is theirs (unicuique qui suum est, from Justinian).2 This multiplicity of sources of law was characteristic for medieval legal practice in the entire region of Central and Eastern Europe. Custom, for a long time unwritten but “known,” prevailed for centuries, to a certain extent even beyond the Middle Ages.3 Accordingly, some of the most detailed sources for the “law” in the region are collections of custom, in fact, “private” books that became de facto guidelines for sentencing and other judicial decisions, such as Stephen Werbőczy’s Tripartitum opus juris consutudinarii inclyti regni Hunagriae (The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary) (1514 to 1517) or Ondřej (Andreas) of Duba’s Rights in the Czechs Lands (Práva zemská česká of 1413 or the Book of Tovačov for Moravia, which then remained the basis of judgments for quite a long time.4 Case law was connected to custom—​regarded as becoming law when practiced for a time. Although case law of the type of English common law was never formally accepted in the region, there is no doubt that through the records of judgments such as the Czech zemské desky (land records), the Polish Metryka Koronna (the Records of the Crown), and formularies, precedent was an important source of judgments. Actually, in his Proposals of 1415–​1417 to the royal council, King-​Emperor Sigismund suggested recording sentences “so that in the future in similar cases like decisions be made.”5

114    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak Ducal or royal legislation’s place in the legal life of Central Europe was rather equivocal. When initiated by the ruler, statutes may have been seen as attempts at regulating the customary rights of elites, knightly and urban dwellers alike and opposed by them. When the Estates proposed legislation they often encountered resistance or even rejection from the crown. The extent of royal legislation also differed in the region, yet even where it was extensive little is known about its impact on the administration of justice. Much of what came to be law was, in fact, privilege granted to a community within the realm, most importantly to the nobility, the major free cities or religious or “ethnic” minorities. Official collections of royal legislation were planned repeatedly, but only materialized at the end of the Middle Ages, if at all. Finally, another source of legal practice, especially for written law, was learned law (Roman and canon) or, the ius commune of medieval Europe, which reached the region through students of law and the books compiled by glossators and legists. Technical terms and the structure of legal collections reflect this influence, even if the term “reception” is no longer used.6 Thus, for example, Gozzio of Orvieto (author of the Czech Ius regale montanorum, 1300–​1305) followed the structure of Justinian’s scheme of “persons—​ things—​ obligations” and Werbőczy also attempted to do the same.

Laws of Christianization The establishment of the Christian monarchies demanded the regulation of the changed conditions: observance of the new religion, the underpinning of royal authority, and many rules pertaining to peace and property. Laws of this period survive in writing only from eleventh-​to early twelfth-​century Hungary, references to them from Bohemia and Croatia, and very little from Poland.7 The books of law and synodal statutes assigned to the kings of Hungary, St. Stephen (1000–​1038), St. Ladislas (1077–​1095), and Coloman (1095–​1116)—​but perhaps issued partly by other kings of the eleventh century—​are known in small part from the twelfth century, but mainly only from early modern codices.8 Stephen’s two books contain borrowings from Bavarian and Carolingian law and the so-​called Pseudo-​Isidorian forgeries (in fact, from the Collectio Danielana) but are adjusted to local conditions.9 These laws prescribe the observance of Christian precepts and also matters of property and violence. For example: I. 6. Royal concessions of the free disposition of goods. We, by our royal authority have decreed that anyone shall be free to divide his property, to assign it to his wife, his sons and daughters, his relatives or to the church; and no one should dare to change this after his death.

Law and the Administration of Justice     115 I. 14. On homicide. If someone driven by anger and arrogance willfully commits a homicide, he should know that according to the decrees of our council he is obliged to pay one hundred ten gold pensae [equal to one Byzantine gold solidus—​Eds.] from which fifty will go to the royal treasury, another fifty will be given to relatives, and ten will be paid to arbiters and mediators. The killer himself shall fast according to the rules of the canons. While I:6 attempted to change (probably unsuccessfully) the traditional inheritance within the kindred in favor of the church, I:14 hints at the development of the administration of justice, keeping the tradition of man-​price (wergeld), but involving the king, some kind of chosen judgers, and, finally, the church.10 The laws of Ladislas I reflect the restoration of order after the upheavals of the mid-​ eleventh century by, among other things, increasing the punishment for theft and the flight of slaves. They begin thus: 1 Theft by anyone related to a nobleman. In the first place we have all established by oath that if any relative of a nobleman is discovered in a theft beyond the value of a hen, no one of them may conceal or defend him. It was also ordered that a thief, unless he retreats into a church, shall be hanged and all his property completely destroyed. And if through the carelessness of the man who caught him, he should flee to a church, or to the king’s court, or to the feet of a bishop, it should cost him who did not take good care, the price of the theft. . . . 2 Theft by a servus. If a servus is caught in theft it is not possible to commute the price of his nose, unless he retreats to a church or the royal court or to the feet of the bishop; and if he does retreat, it should cost his keeper the price of the theft. And if he is caught the second time, he shall be hanged.11 The importance of church asylum is worth noting, and the severe punishment—​in the case of a servant, cutting off his nose—​suggest the need to protect private property. The synod of Szabolcs in 1092, attended by both secular and spiritual lords, treated, besides church matters such as visiting clerks, the holding of ordeals, establishing the list of saints to be venerated, and also issues of marriage, rape, and manslaughter. In the preface to his law, King Coloman was styled the superedificator of the laws of St. Stephen and claimed that there is no longer any need to enforce Christian observance: When he [Coloman] saw that, owing to civil wars which grew even worse down to his own time, the legal order of the kingdom which had already lost in large measure its ancestral traditions was destroyed and that the honor of the court was held for naught, fearing lest the warrior unused to peace and the settled guest unused to valor should become irrevocably men of iniquity, he assembled the magnates of the kingdom and reviewed with the advice of the entire council the text of the laws of the said King

116    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak Stephen of holy memory. From this, if you examine the matter closely, he did not take anything away, but rather added to it, not however as a “founder” but as a “continuator” so that the tender seedlings showered, as it were, by this wholesome watering may attain the growth of justice.12 Both Ladislas and Coloman also legislated about Jews and Muslims, the latter attempting (in all likelihood successfully) the assimilation of the “Ishmaelites.” Some of the more than 300 articles (paragraphs, canons) of these early laws may have been known in the Middle Ages, as vague references to them are found in later legislation.13 However, only a few of their measures (such as those on the tithe) survived into the age of regular royal legislation of the High and Later Middle Ages. As to the Czech lands, some scholars believe that the “Сourt law for people” (Zákon sudnyj ljudem), a Slavic-​language excerpt from the Byzantine Ekloga that survived in many copies in Rus’, originated in ninth-​century Moravia during the mission of St. Methodius.14 That is debatable. The “statutes” of Duke Břetislav, uttered at the grave of St. Adalbert in Gniezno in 1039, have been preserved in the Chronicle of Cosmas of Prague.15 When the Czechs were unable to open the sarcophagus of the martyr-​bishop, they were admonished in a vision that they would only have access to the relics when they abandoned their sins. Thereupon the duke commanded them to confirm his commands under oath: Here is my first and principal commandment: let your marriages that you have hitherto had as if in brothels and common, like among brute animals, be in accordance with the canons of the church, lawful, singular and indissoluble, so that a husband lives content with one wife and a wife with one husband. . . . Bishop Severus said: “Whoever shall do differently shall be anathema!”

Additional commands prescribed burial in holy ground, the sanctification of Sunday, and the prohibition of taverns, likewise to be punished by anathema. It seems that there were no written laws in Dalmatia and Croatia before the thirteenth century. The Synods of Split (925, 928, and 1060), however, attended by King Tomislav (c. 910–​c. 925) and King Peter Krešimir IV (1060–​1074) respectively, treated not only church matters but also such questions as Christian marriage and punishments for serious crimes.16 The oath of King Zvonimir at his coronation in 1075 mentions some of the issues that are also covered in the early laws of Hungary and Bohemia. He promised to obey all the pope’s orders, to respect justice and defend churches, to secure the tithe for the church, to protect the poor, widows, and orphans, to annul illegal relationships between relatives and establish marriage with a ring and a priest’s blessing, and also that he would oppose the selling of people.17 No records of this kind survived from Poland, for which we have merely some “rumors” recorded by Thietmar of Merseburg, who wanted it known that blasphemous persons had their teeth broken and adulterers had their testicles nailed to bridges.18 In contrast, however, the Księga elblągska (The Book of Elblag/​Elbing), a German-​ language law book with a rhymed introduction from the later thirteenth century, offers

Law and the Administration of Justice     117 some insight into ancient customs. Probably put into writing for the Teutonic Order, the rhymed prologue claims that the Poles were, in contrast to the Germans, never defeated and have their own law and custom—​presented there.19 Records of customary law in parts of Croatia similar to the Book of Elblag were usually written down when the region was taken over by a new lord (mostly the Republic of Venice). The law codes of Vinodol, Poljica, Vrana, and other places contain a wide range of custom, from rules of inheritance, theft and robbery to damage caused by animals in gardens and vineyards or arrangements for avoiding a blood feud. While the surviving texts are from thirteenth to fifteenth century, formulated by persons trained in written (Roman, Canon) law, many parts go back to much earlier times, just like Werbőczy’s Triparitum, with which they have many similarities.20

Written Law: Privilege, Statute, and Law Books Privilege as Law Considering the “personality of the law” in the Middle Ages (i.e., the different rights and duties of persons and groups of different statuses) the charters of liberties and immunities for churchmen, nobles, and towns may count as the first written laws. These were issued by the kings and dukes of the founding dynasties when the top layers of freemen developed into what became the estate of “nobility” (see ­chapter 8 in this volume, by Popa-​Gorjanu). The 1189 Statutes of Duke Conrad of Bohemia, issued at a meeting of the elite, can be added to this type of legislation as well. They aimed at guaranteeing the freedom of noble property, proper summons to courts, jurisdiction in cases of the major theft, female inheritance, and procedures in ordeals.21 The Golden Bull of Andrew II of Hungary (1204–​1235) in 1222, and that of Košice in 1374 of Louis of Anjou for Poland became the basis of noble rights such as habeas corpus and limits on taxation in return for military service.22 The Golden Bull closes with these words: We have also decreed that if we or any of our successors at any time should seek to oppose the terms of this settlement, both the bishops and other baronial retainers as well as the nobles of the realm, singularly and in common, both present and future generations, shall by this authority have the right in perpetuity to resist and speak against us and our successors without the charge of high treason—​the right of resistance against tyranny.23

Although, remarkably, few of the several medieval or early-​modern revolts against the kings claimed to act on the basis of this right, the noble diet formally renounced it only in 1687, “in gratitude to the crown for the liberation of the country from the Ottomans.”

118    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak From the thirteenth century, the Wahlkapitulationen (promises to maintain the liberties of the land) of the kings of Bohemia can also be regarded as general privileges. They were inscribed into the Land Register from the late fifteenth century onward. Privileges, usually issued at noble assemblies, came to be the major legal acts in later medieval Poland, which enlarged the political rights of the Polish nobility and led to their growing predominance in the political life of the kingdom. During the first half of the fifteenth century, King Władysław II Jagiełło (1386–​1434) issued a range of important privileges forbidding the confiscation of patrimonial estates and guaranteeing habeas corpus for all noblemen. In Nieszawa in 1454, his son repeated the promise not to raise new taxes and not to call the nobles to military campaigns without consulting the regional diets (sejmiki), the local institutions of noble self-​government.24 Some of these privileges became parts of statutes. The privileges granted to foreign settlers also fall into this category, such as the one for the Germans of Prague by Soběslav II (1174–​1178) and the Andreanum for the Transylvanian “Saxons” by King Andrew II in 1224.25 The Jews were another significant minority; privileges regulating their legal status protecting them as special subjects of the ruler were issued in the thirteenth century in all three countries (see c­ hapter 12 by Szende and Schmieder, this volume). Other “ethnic” or religious communities also received privileges or similar charters, for example, the Cumans in Hungary.26

Statute Law Rulers issued decrees more or less regularly, frequently at noble assemblies from the fourteenth century onwards. Following a few royal decrees from the short-​lived corporate episode in the late thirteenth century,27 the first surviving complete decretum from fourteenth-​century Hungary is that of 1351. There, Louis I (1342–​1382) confirmed the tradition of clan property and inheritance (aviticitas, valid until 1848, comparable to Czech nedíl, abolished in the sixteenth century) as well as the equal status of all nobles, rich and poor, national and regional, and, parallel to it, the general legal position of tenant peasants (jobagiones, Hungarian: jobbágy). The kings of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries issued a great number of statutes, beginning with a coronation decree, guaranteeing the liberties of the regnum, that is, the enfranchised nobility, and the churches. The statutes attempted to regulate, though not systematically, military, financial, and jurisdictional matters, trying to curb violence and other felonies. Sigismund (1386–​1437) and Matthias I Corvinus (1458–​1490) attempted to issue all-​inclusive decreta, expected to be valid in perpetuum, which they were not.28 There is, however, only scattered evidence for the statutes having been referred to in the courts. In Bohemia, King Wenceslas II (1283–​1305) made the first attempt to issue a royal law code, sometime in the years between 1300 and 1305. He invited the Italian lawyer, Gozzio of Orvieto, to compile a code of law for the country. Only one—​though important and influential—​part was completed, however, the so-​called Ius regale montanorum (Royal law of mines). This law found its way into many areas of Central Europe and was

Law and the Administration of Justice     119 included in later Czech collections as well.29 A major project in royal legislation was Charles IV’s (1346–​1378) unsuccessful proposal of a codification in 1355, traditionally called the Maiestas Carolina.30 This code would have strengthened the power of the king, and the nobility was strong enough to resist its introduction. Charles had to promise to burn it, which, in fact, he did not. Its text, hidden in Karlstejn castle, was discovered in 1610. No similar plan was attempted for a century and a half, when Vladislaus II (II. Ulászló) (1471–​1516) issued a codification of Bohemian law, the so-​called Vladislavian Constitution (Vladislavské zřízení zemské [VZZ]), compiled by the royal attorney Albrecht Rendl from Oušava (ante 1451–​1522) and confirmed in 1502.31 This time, it was the estate of the towns that opposed its implementation and a veritable civil war broke out between the nobility and the estate of the towns. It took fifteen years for peace to be achieved in the so-​called Saint Wenceslas Agreement (1517), in which the lords and the knights recognized most of the political and economic rights of the towns.32 The gap in royal legislation was bridged by several law books, discussed further below. In Poland, royal statute legislation began with the two Statutes of King Casimir the Great (1333–​1370).33 Two-​thirds of them refer to criminal matters, including such issues as fathers and sons not being liable for each other’s misdeeds, but lords being punished by outlawry for crimes of their retainers. These statutes laid the foundation for the further development of law over the next few centuries, during which they were repeatedly re-​written. The so-​called Kraków-​Warta Statutes were initially issued in 1423 at the diet and then confirmed by the king. One of the most important provisions gave lords the right to confiscate property from disobedient village officials called soltys (Schultheiss). The Statutes of Warta and those of Casimir the Great were often copied together and regarded as a single collection of Polish land law. Some scholars see the emergence of such united statutes as evidence of a growing unification of the legal system in the kingdom. At the same time, considerable doubts have been raised about the knowledge of statute law in fifteenth-​century Poland and Hungary. The text of the united Statutes is best known through the so-​called Dygesta. This version of the Statutes was printed in 1488 as Syntagmata. By order of the constitution of Radom (1505) they were republished in a collection of Polish statute law by Chancellor Jan Łaski in 1506 under the title Commune incliti Poloniae regni privilegium constitutionum et indultuum publicitus decretorum approbatorumque (The commonly approved issue of the privileges, constitutions, and decrees of the glorious Kingdom of Poland). At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, legislation was more or less taken over by the estates in regular assemblies. The special constitution of the Polish diet from 1505 (Nihil novi) forbade the king from issuing new laws without the consent of the diet’s two chambers. In Bohemia, in the post-​Hussite era, the three estates—​lords, knights, and towns—​became the de facto lawgivers. The decisions of the estates—​in the beginning even of local assemblies—​were inscribed into the Land Register and thus became law. In the last decades of the independent kingdom, political and legal life in Hungary was dominated by the—​often tumultuous and armed—​diets with many thousands of participants. Several times the nobility called a diet and passed decisions, many of which

120    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak were not approved by the king; they were more political programs than laws. Finally, in contrast to Poland, where a high royal official published such a collection, in Hungary it was the spokesman of the lesser nobles, Stephen Werbőczy, who compiled the famous Tripartitum (printed in Vienna in 1517).34

Urban and Village Law The medieval statutes of cities were in a class of their own, particularly significant in highly urbanized regions such as Dalmatia and Bohemia-​Moravia. Most of them were more or less dependent on the urban laws of older cities such as the Magdeburg law (for northwestern Bohemia, Poland, and some parts of Hungary),35 the municipal law of south German towns (for the southern Czech cities and those along the Danube, such as Pressburg and Buda), and the law of Lübeck for the Polish Baltic coast. The oldest surviving town law in Czech lands is that of Old Town of Prague, the Liber vetustissimus statutorum et aliarum rerum memorabilium Veteris Urbis Pragensis (the Book of the most ancient statutes and other memorable deeds of the Old City of Prague), from 1310 to 1518, with mixed entries in Latin, German, and Czech.36 From Brno, the Sententiae Brunensis survives, commonly called the Book of the Scribe John (1353), and the summary of the city’s law by John of Gelnhausen (late fourteenth century).37 The codification of the town law of Bohemia, the Práva městská, by the chancellor of Old Town Prague, Pavel Kristián from Koldín (1530–​1589), was completed in 1579.38 Urban law in Hungary grew out of the privileges for immigrants (hospites) during the thirteenth century. The model for most of them was first the rights of Alba Regia/​ Székesfehérvár of 1237, including exemption from tolls.39 Later, the statutes of Buda came to be the standard, based on a privilege from 1244, written down in the fifteenth century.40 In the same period, the major towns connected to long-​distance trade acquired the autonomous status of free royal cities, subject to the court of the Master of the Treasury with burgers on the bench. Its jurisdiction came to be summarized in the written ius tavernicale.41 A survey of the laws of Croatia lists more than thirty urban statutes from Dalmatia, Istria, and the Kvarner region.42 The oldest ones were first compiled in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, mostly in Latin; they were revised several times, mainly under the influence of the recurrent periods of Venetian suzerainty over Dalmatia. They are quite systematic, dealing with ecclesiastical, administrative, criminal, and commercial matters. Their compilers were clearly schooled at the law faculties of Italy and formulated the statutes strongly based on the learned laws, incorporating local custom. Very little is known about the rules followed in conflict resolution and related matters on the village level or in other communities such as non-​privileged small towns. Besides the Croatian collections of customs, village laws survived from the Hungarian-​speaking Transylvanian Székely communities. They were written down in the sixteenth century or later, but are clearly based on much older customs. They regulate rules for the use of common forests, pastures, and waters and also matters of inheritance. Remarkably, the

Law and the Administration of Justice     121 statutes are meant to include commoners and nobles alike. In Czech lands, little has been studied about these judicial regulations, save high justice in small towns.43 The social and legal history of late medieval village communities in Poland can be reconstructed from the books (registers) of the village courts beginning from the fifteenth century. Record-​keeping in villages was influenced by urban models and perhaps also by the expansion of the so-​called “German law,” the privileges granted to settlers from the West.44

Books of Law Partly as replacements of statute law, partly as summaries of statutes and privileges, law books—​in fact private publications—​played an important role in jurisdiction in the region. The best known are the Czech law books, the first of which was already written in the vernacular at the turn of the thirteenth century. The Law Book of Peter of Rožmberk summarized the customary law of the land in 298 articles, including criminal cases and court procedure.45 The last law book, Czech land law, is the outstanding work of the lawyer Viktorin Kornelius from Všehrdy (ca. 1460–​1520): “Nine Books about the Law, Courts of Justice and Public Records of Bohemia” (O práviech, súdiech i dskách země české knihy devatery). The author, vice-​scribe of the Kingdom of Bohemia, attempted to present the law of the land parallel to the Vladislavian Constitution, mainly from the urban point of view. It is praised not only for its juridical value, but also as a fine example of Czech humanism. The first version of the work was completed in 1497 and the second in 1507, but it was not published until the nineteenth century.46 The Moravian counterpart was the Book of Tovačov (Kniha Tovačovská), 200 articles, written in Czech, dating back to 1482–​1490. The author was the nobleman Ctibor Tovačovský from Cimburk, who held the office of captain (Hauptmann) of the Margraviate of Moravia from 1469 to 1494. It is similar to the VZZ but treats mainly judicial procedure. Attempting a systematic codification of all valid law was discussed and decided many times in the diets in all the countries, but none came to fruition before the Early Modern era. The best known of these efforts were the project of the general codification of Polish law in 1532, the Hungarian Quadripartitum of 1552, and the Corpus Iuris Hungarici of 1687.47 In the Czech lands several revisions and expansions of the VZZ constituted the collection of valid law down to the seventeenth century.

Going to Court As elsewhere in medieval Europe, courts of justice were established in East Central Europe, on a vertical and horizontal basis, as it were. Each court was in charge of a different social group and a definite territory. Noblemen were to be judged only by royal courts, commoners by courts of lesser officers, burghers by urban judges, and peasants in seigneurial or village courts.

122    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak Royal and ducal courts grew out of the ruler personally passing judgments while travelling around the country. The formula in summonses to the king’s court “wherever with God’s help we may sojourn” remained in use in Hungary well into the late Middle Ages. In Hungary, the count palatine, the judex curiae (országbíró), and then the magister tavernicorum (master of the treasury, tárnokmester) went out of the court and became additional high judges, with the royal “court of personal presence” added in the early fifteenth century. All these courts had members from the royal retinue, barons, and prelates, but from the fifteenth century onward they were increasingly dominated by laymen trained in the courts, “practical lawyers,” called protonotarii.48 On the regional level, the first instance was the court of the county, presided over by the ispán (the count), assisted by noble magistrates; in Transylvania the voivode, and in Slavonia and Croatia, the ban. Three major courts with countrywide competence existed in the kingdom of Bohemia and two in the margraviate of Moravia. They were presided over by the judge of the country (iudex terrae) or the high judge (summus iudex curiae); at the end of the fourteenth century the Chamber court of justice (komorní soud) was founded, presided over by the high Hofmeister (magister curiae) of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The country court of justice for Moravia was presided over by the judge of the country. Additionally, the Court of the High Burgrave of Prague adjudicated lawsuits about sureties and debts secured by debentures; the Court of Boundaries decided cases concerning the boundaries of estates. A lesser court of the land, analogous to the Czech one, also existed in Moravia. Local administration of justice was administered in the so-​called cúdy (judicial district), then moved into the hands of castellans of the castle districts that replaced the old territory of the cúdas in the eleventh century.49 This arrangement survived in Moravia, but elsewhere was discontinued after the Hussite time at the latest. Then district captains took over this task; in Moravia this change only occurred in early modern times. The early medieval Polish dukes passed judgments in regular judicial proceedings at special assemblies (in colloquio) attended by the magnates and officials or through the judicial sessions at the ducal court (in curia) assisted by the judge of the court (judex curiae). Later, in the unified kingdom, the ducal courts were gradually transformed into land courts headed by special judges of the land. During the fifteenth century, land courts became judicial institutions of noble self-​government: the judges were elected at provincial diets. The royal captains and their castle courts were another key institution of justice. They were established first around 1300 in Greater Poland and, according to some, almost a century later in Lesser Poland, but that is debated.50 The Statute of Warta from 1423 codified the judicial power of the captains in both parts of the kingdom by promulgating the so-​called “captain’s four paragraphs:” violent assault on free roads, arson, violent raids on private houses, and rape (similar to the “five cases” of major acts of might in Hungary), more or less equalizing the legal authority of the captains in the two parts of the kingdom.51

Law and the Administration of Justice     123 The major courts had usually four sessions annually. In Bohemia, they met on Ember Days and Rogation Days (also called “dry days” because of the fast), in Hungary at the octaves of major feasts (Epiphany, St. George’s, St. James’s, and Michaelmas) and lasted 30 to 40 or more days, hence called octava. In the later Middle Ages urgent cases were heard at other times as well and the courts came to be ever more continuously in session. In Poland, the frequency of the sessions of land courts varied; initially they were held every two weeks or every month, later only four times during the year. The courts were assisted by different kinds of personnel. In early medieval Hungary, the pristaldus (probably a loan from the Slavic prisav [bailiff]) delivered the summonses by presenting the judge’s seal to the persons cited. In Bohemia-​Moravia, this task was assigned to chamberlains, and in Poland to woźny (the runner-​messenger). Later, a local nobleman (sometimes an aulicus [courtier] from the royal court), appointed as the “king’s bailiff ” (homo regius)—​or the bailiff of any other judge—​performed such tasks in Hungary, but also other semi-​legal ones, such as holding inquests (inquiries at the site of a case with neighbors and abutters giving sworn statements), beating the bounds (perambulation of boundaries), and assisting in the execution of sentences.52 They, in turn, were assisted by witnesses from a religious chapter or collegiate church called place of authentication, who then wrote up the results of the action and also kept them in their archives.53

Finding the Truth The main issue in the administration of justice was and remains the establishment of truth in a contested case, whether it be matters of property, inheritance, or violence. In the course of the Middle Ages, this task was first left to God, later ever more to human testimony and written records. Ordeals by hot iron and hot or cold water may have originated in pre-​Christian, pre-​ state times well before the clergy took over the administration calling on the Christian God to decide guilt or innocence. A thirteenth-​century Polish document refers to ordeals as anchored ab antiquo in iure Polonico (inherent to the Polish law from the old times), and they are described in the oldest law books of the country. Clearly, the efficacy of such procedures, performed in important ecclesiastical centers, depended on the belief of the subjects supported by the sanctification of the priests. The bishop of Cracow administered an ordeal by blessed bread and cheese; it was believed that the guilty person would not to be able to swallow them. The Statutes of Conrad contained detailed instructions for the ordeal by water, including a fine for a last minute refusal. Ordeals in church began to stop, when, in 1215, the IV Lateran Council prohibited the clergy was from taking part in them, but it took some time to eliminate them from judicial practice. In Hungary, according to the register, ordeals by hot iron at the episcopal see of Oradea survived up to 1235, although this does not mean that the practice ended immediately.54 In Bohemia, at the instigation of Bishop Ernst of Pardubice and Margrave (later king

124    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak and emperor) Charles, ordeals were abolished in 1355; around that time they were discontinued in Poland as well. Other forms of ordeal that needed no clerical support survived longer. One of them was judicial combat, fought by nobles with swords and by commoners with clubs. Duke Conrad of Bohemia ordered that only duels with foreigners should be fought with clubs. Remarkably, in the Czech lands women were also allowed to fight, but their opponents had to stand in a waist-​deep pit.55 It is recorded that judicial combat was often fought by hired fighters (pugili) in the name of their party. In 1323, the town of Szatmár promised to pay 3 marks silver if its professional fighter won. In Hungary, “imaginary combat” appears in the sources; for certain offenses punishments are foreseen as if the culprit had lost in a duel (succubitum duelli) that was never fought in reality. Not unrelated to ordeals, as their authenticity was also based on the belief of eternal damnation for the perjurer, were oaths of different kinds with appropriate ceremonial support. A judicial oath was sworn by one or both litigants supported by a number of oath-​helpers as defined by the judge depending on the value of the case and the status of the oath-​helpers. There were also special oaths. Oaths sworn on the soil (iuramentum super terram)56 or “oaths against the sun” had elaborate symbolic ceremonies.57 They were to be sworn at the piece of property while standing barefoot in a tomb dug on the boundary line. As long as ordeals of various forms were the main modes of proof, the intermediate judgments of the courts—​deciding about which party had to submit to them—​were in fact the decisive decisions, the final sentence being only the formalization of the result. The transition from accusatory to inquisitorial procedure—​to written records and sworn statements of witnesses—​was gradual and connected to the growth of pragmatic literacy. In Bohemia, the urban courts pioneered this transition.58 An early witness to this is the aforementioned Book of the Scribe John from Brno.59 One indication of this transformation was the appearance of punishments for “proffering false documents.” In Hungary, it is first mentioned in Art. 9 of the 1351 decretum of Louis I as one of the major felonies. In 1471, King Casimir Jagiellończyk stressed that the decision about true or false instruments belongs to the chancellery.

Records of Justice With the growth of literacy, new documentary practices were introduced in the administration of justice. In Poland, the first registers of the land courts were established in the fourteenth century.60 Copies of charters concerning land property or inheritance were recorded in the land court’s registers and granted what was called the right of eternity (prawo wiecznośći). Thus, they became endowed with timeless legal significance and could be consulted at any time in the court as legal proof. The oldest surviving register is that of the Cracow land court from 1374. In the fifteenth century the Metryka Koronna

Law and the Administration of Justice     125 (the Record of the Crown), a special register of the royal chancellery was established to record and to copy all important public and private documents.61 In Bohemia, legal transactions began to be put into writing in the Land Records (zemské desky) around 1260–​1270. Several series were set up and then augmented with additional ones for specific cases. Unfortunately, they were almost entirely lost in the great fire of Prague in 1541. Published fragments document that citations, land transactions, debts, and later court cases had been registered as well as decisions of the diets.62 No such central register survived from medieval Hungary. It is most likely that Libri Regales, as suggested by Sigismund, existed, but was lost when the royal archives perished in the flight from Buda after the defeat at Mohács by the Ottomans in 1526.

Notes * János M. Bak worked on his contributions to this handbook right up until his passing in 2020. Please see the handbook preface for an account of his formative impact on this volume and on Central European medieval studies as a whole. 1. For the history of law in Bohemia-​Moravia we received learned guidance with many thanks from Petr Kreuz (Prague). We are also grateful for the help from our colleagues Neven Budak (Zagreb), Katalin Gönczi (Magdeburg), and Ladislav Míča (Šumperk). Formulary: Decreta regni Hungariae: Gesetze und Verordnungen Ungarns 1301–​1457, edited by Franciscus Döry, Georgius Bónis, Vera Bácskai [=​DRH] (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1976), 24–​26. The formulary of Somogyvár was one of the “handbooks” that served as examples for charters, thus also for judgments, in a way resembling case law. 2. Corpus Iuris Civilis (=​ CIC), Institutiones, 1,1,3. 3. Martyn Rady, Customary Law in Hungary: Courts, Texts and the Tripartitum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Decreta regni medievalis Hungariae: The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, 5 vols., edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, Martyn Rady, et al. (Idyllwild, CA; Budapest: Schlacks; Dept. of Medieval. Studies Central European University, 1989–​2007) (=​ DRMH), vol. 5. 4. These are: Stephen Werbőczy, The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary &c./​Triparititum opus iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariae &c., edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, and Martyn Rady (Idyllwild, CA; Budapest: Schlacks; Department of Medieval Studies CEU, 2005). Characteristically, in the 259 tituli, there are only 15 references to statute law and only two paragraphs of a decretum are quoted verbatim; František Čáda, ed., Nejvyššího sudího zemského království českého Ondřeje z Dubé Práva zemská česká [The supreme judge of the kingdom of Bohemia Andreas of Dubá’s Bohemian lands rights] (Prague: Česká akademie věd a umění, 1930); and Vincenc Brandl, ed., Kniha Tovačovská, aneb Pana Ctibora z Cimburka a z Tovačova Paměť obyčejů, řádů a zvyklostí starodávních i řízení práva zemského v Markrabství moravském [The Book of Tovačov, or Lord Ctibor of Cimburk and Tovačov’s memory of ancient customs, orders and rules and about the land law procedure in the Margraviate of Moravia] (Brno: Šnaidr, 1868). 5. DRH, 397–​404, and Online Decreta regni medievalis Hungariae, Propositio 1415/​7 (https://​ dig​ital​comm​ons.usu.edu/​cgi/​view​cont​ent.cgi?arti​cle=​1003&cont​ext=​lib_​m​ono, accessed April 25, 2018).

126    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak 6. Péter Bónis, “Die Bestandteile und die Rechtsquellen des Privatrechts in Ungarn,” in Die Entwicklung der Verfassung und des Rechts in Ungarn, edited by Gábor Máthé (Budapest: Dialóg Campus, 2017), 271–​320. 7. János M. Bak, “Signs of Conversion in Central European Laws,” in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, edited by G. Armstrong and I. N. Wood (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 115–​124. 8. The texts are printed with English translations in DRMH, vol. 1 (1989), 1–​22. For concordances of editions and bibliography, see ibid., 154–​167 (https://​dig​ital​comm​ons. usu.edu/​cgi/​view​cont​ent.cgi?arti​cle=​1003&cont​ext=​lib_​m​ono, accessed April 25, 2018). See also Gábor Mikó, “Szent István törvényei és a pszeudo-​izidori hamisítványok” [The laws of St. Stephen and the Pseudo–​Isidorian forgeries], Magyar Könyvszemle 123, no. 2 (2007): 153–​168. 9. Karl-​Georg Schon, Unbekannte Texte aus der Werkstatt Pseudoisidors: Die Collectio Danieliana, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 38 (Hannover, 2006); and the website about Pseudoisidor (http://​www.pseud​oisi​dor.mgh.de/​html/​colle​ctio​_​ dan​ieli​ana.html, accessed January 2, 2019). 10. DRMH 21 (1999), 3–​4. 11. Deceretum Ladislai, vol. 2, 1–​2, DRMH 21, 12–​13. 12. DRMH 21, 24. 13. István Tringli, “The Liberty of the Holy Kings: Saint Stephen and the Holy Kings in the Hungarian Legal Heritage,” in Saint Stephen and His Country: A Newborn Kingdom in Central Europe; Hungary, edited by Attila Zsoldos (Budapest: Lucidus, 2001), 127–​182. 14. H. W. Dewey and A. M. Kleimola, eds. and trans., Zakon Sudnyj Ljudem (Court Law for the People) (Ann Arbor: Dept. of Slavic Languages, 1977); see also Z. R. Dittrich, Christianity in Greater Moravia (Groningen: Wolters, 1962), 208. 15. Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, edited and translated by János M. Bak, Pavlina Rychetrová, Petra Mutlova, and Martyn Rady (Budapest: CEU Press, 2019), 161–​165. 16. The decisions are known from, respectively, the Historia Salonitana Maior, edited by Nada Klaić (Belgrade: Naučno Delo, 1967), 99–​102; and from a papal confirmation edited in the Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, edited by Jakov Stipišić and Miljen Šamšalović (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1967), vol. 1, 94–​96. 17. The text is preserved in the papal archives, edited in the Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, vol. 1, 139–​141. 18. Thietmar, Chronicon, 8, 2, edited by W. Holzmann and W. Trimlich, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 9 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1957), 440. See also Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, edited by Robert Holtzmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica [MGH] Scriptores Rerum Germermanicarum n.s. 9 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1935, reprint Munich: MGH, 1980), 494–​495. 19. Edwin Volckmann, Das älteste geschriebene polnische Rechtsdenkmal (Elbing: Commissionsverlag der Léon Saunier’schen Buchhandlung in Elbing und Stettin, 1869) (http://​mdz-​nbn-​resolv​ing.de/​urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-​bsb1​0519​386-​1, accessed April 25, 2018); Najstarszy zwód prawa polskiego [The oldest record of Polish law], edited and translated by Józef Matuszewski (Łódz: Uniw. Łódz, 1995). 20. Damir Karbić and Marija Karbić, The Laws and Customs of Medieval Croatia and Slavonia: A Guide to the Extant Sources, edited by Martyn Rady (London: University

Law and the Administration of Justice     127 College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2013), esp. 55–​67 (http://​ www.acade​mia.edu/​2926​178/​The_​L aws_​and_​Customs_​of_​Medieval_​Croatia_​and_​ Slavonia_​A_​Guid​e_​to​_t​ he​_E ​ xt​ant_​Sour​ces, accessed March 15, 2018). Foreign language comments are available as the prefaces to the translations of the Vinodol and Poljica statutes, such as Jules Preux, “La Loi du Vinodol,” Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger 20, no. 5 (1896): 565–​612; no. 6, 712–​736; and Two Medieval Croatian Statutes, edited by Edo Pivčević (Bristol: British–​Croatian Review, 1978). 21. Its transcript from 1222 is found inGustav Friedrich, ed., Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris regni Bohemiae (Prague: Wiesner, 1904–​1907), no. 234, 2, 222–​225. 22. From the rich literature, see De bulla aurea Andreae II regis Hungariae MCCXXII, edited by Lajos Besenyei, Géza Érszegi, and Maurizio Pedrazza Gorlero (Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1999); and Joseph Deér, “Der Weg zur Goldenen Bulle Andreas’ II.,” Schweizer Beiträge zur allgemeinen Geschichte 10 (1952): 104–​138. 23. DRMH 21, 32–​35; Zoltán J. Kosztolnyik, “De facultate resistendi: Two Essential Characteristics of the Hungarian Golden Bull of 1222,” Studies in Medieval Culture 5 (1975): 97–​104. 24. Stanisław Roman and Przywileje Nieszawskie [The privileges of Nieszawa] (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1957). Józef Siemieński, “Od sejmików do sejmu 1454–​1505” [From the sejmiks to the sejm], in Studia historyczne ku czci Stanisława Kutrzeby, vol. 1 (Cracow: Nakładem Komitetu, 1938), 445–​460, discusses the development from local assemblies of nobles to the general assembly of the Polish estates. 25. Lisa Wolverton, Hastening towards Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 28–​31; on the Transylvanian “Saxons”: Harald Zimmermann, Siebenbürgen und seine Hospites Theutonici (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996). 26. Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslim, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 87–​92; the so-​called Second Cuman Law, dated to the same year, proved to be a modern forgery, see Nora Berend, “Forging the Cuman Law, Forging an Identity,” in Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-​Century Europe, edited by János M. Bak, Patrick Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 109–​128. 27. József Gerics, “Das frühe Ständewesen in Ungarn und sein europäischer Hintergrund,” in Études historiques hongroises 1985, edited by Domokos Kosáry et al. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985), 285–​303. 28. See for the Decretum maius of Sigismund, DRMH 2 (1990), 63–​76, and for that of Matthias Corvinus, see DRMH 3 (1996), 41–​70. The latter was printed first as Constituiones incliti regni Hungariae in Leipzig by Moritz Brandis in 1488. 29. Jaroslav Bílek, ed., Jus regale montanorum: Právo královské horníkuov (Kutná Hora: Kuttna, 2000); also, Guido Christian Pfeifer, Ius Regale Montanorum: Ein Beitrag zur spätmittelalterlichen Rezeptionsgeschichte des römischen Rechts in Mitteleuropa (Ebelsbach am Main: Aktiv, 2002). 30. For the latest research including a modern critical edition and German translation, see Bernd-​Ulrich Hergemöller, Maiestas Carolina: Der Kodifikationsentwurf Karls IV. für das Königreich Böhmen von 1355 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995). 31. Petr Kreuz and Ivan Martinovský, eds., Vladislavské zřízení zemské a navazující prameny (Svatováclavská smlouva a Zřízení o ručnicích). Edice [The Vladislaus Constitution and

128    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak Related sources (The St. Wenceslaus agreement and ordinance concerning rifles). Edition] (Prague: Scriptorium, 2007). 32. Jindřich Francek, 24. 10. 1517. Svatováclavská smlouva: Urození versus neurození [The Saint Wenceslas Agreement: High-​born versus not high-​born] (Prague: Havran, 2006). 33. Statuty Kazimierza Wielkiego [The Statutes of Casimir the Great], edited by Oswald Balzer (Poznań: Nakładem Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 1947); Stanisław Roman, Geneza statutów Kazimierza Wielkiego. Studium żródłoznawcze: De Casimiri Magni statutorum origine (Cracow: Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 1961). 34. See note 5. 35. Katalin Gönczi and Wieland Carls, eds., Sächsisch–​magdeburgisches Recht in Ungarn und Rumänien: Autonomie und Rechtstransfer im Donau-​und Karpatenraum (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013). 36. Liber vetustissimus Antiquae Civitatis Pragensis 1310–​1518, edited by Hana Pátková et al. (Prague: Prague City Archives & Scriptorium, 2011), Book 1.10, 10–​51. 37. Miroslav Flodr, ed. Právní kniha města Brna z poloviny 14. století, 3 vols. (Brno: City Archive, 1990). See also the review by Petr Kreuz in Zeitschrift der Savigny: Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung 129 (2012): 556–​558. 38. Karel Malý et al., eds., Práva městská Království českého [The urban laws of the Czech kingdom] (Prague: Karolinum, 2013), 51–​416. 39. Erik Fügedi, “Der Stadtplan von Stuhlweissenburg und die Anfänge des Bürgertums in Ungarn,” in Erik Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, Burghers in Medieval Hungary, edited by János. M. Bak (London: Variorum, 1986), ­chapter 10. 40. Karl Mollay, ed., Das Ofner Stadtrecht: Eine deutschsprachige Rechtssammlung des 15. Jahrhunderts aus Ungarn (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959); also, Martyn C. Rady, Medieval Buda: A Study of Municipal Government and Jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 41. Codex authenticus iuris tavernicalis &c., edited by Martinus Georgius Kovachich (Buda: Regia Universitas, 1803). 42. Karbić and Karbić, The Laws of Croatia. 43. See, e.g., Jaroslav Pánek, “Die Halsgerichtsbarkeit der böhmischen Städte und Märkte vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtforschung 96 (1988): 95–​131. 44. The records from the village of Krościenko Wyżne in the Sanok district of the Rus voievodship start in the year 1408. Tomasz Wiślicz, “Księgi sądowe wiejskie z XV wieku” [The books of the village courts from the fifteenth century], in Świat średniowiecza: Studia ofiarowane profesorowi Henrykowi Samsonowiczowi [The World of the Middle Ages], edited by Agnieszka Bartoszewicz, Grzegorz Myśliwski, Jerzy Pysiak, and Paweł Żmudzki (Warsaw: University, 2010), 162–​170. 45. Vincenc Brandl, ed., Kniha Rožmbersk [The law book of Rožmberk] (Prague: Jednota právnická, 1872). It was followed by the Latin Ordo iudicii terrae that also contained records of cases and judgments, and then, in 1412, by Ondřej of Duba’s Práva zemská česká. 46. Hermengild Jireček, M. Viktorina ze Všehrd O právích Země české knihy devatery [Nine books on the laws of the Bohemian Lands by Master Viktorin Kornel of Všehrd] (Prague: Všehrd, 1874) (https://​aleph.nkp.cz/​F/​MYRT8CX21VU82RL952QY18P​QUCC​ BT75​1RQY​GB6J​8LAY​TAAS​7RT–​29124?func =​ full–​set–​set&set​_​num​ber =​ 102​519&set_​ en​try =​ 000​040&for​mat =​ 999, accessed May 14, 2018).

Law and the Administration of Justice     129 47. Andor Csizmadia, “Previous Editions of the Laws of Hungary,” in DRMH 1, xvii–​xxxiii. 48. On these, György Bónis, “Men Learned in the Law in Medieval Hungary,” East Central Europe/​L’Europe de centre–​est 4, no. 2 (1977): 181–​191 (summary of a detailed monograph in Hungarian). 49. Otto Peterka, Das Burggrafentum in Böhmen: Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Prague: Calve, 1906). 50. Antoni Gąsiorowski, “Początki sądów grodzkich w średniowiecznej Polsce” [Origins of the castle courts in medieval Poland], Czasopiśmo Prawno–​Historyczne 26, no. 2 (1974): 57–​79. 51. Karol Koranyi, “W sprawie genezy czterech artykułów starościnskich” [Concerning the origin of the four captain’s paragraphs], Sprawozdania Towarzystwa Naukowego we Lwowie 9, no. 1 (1931): 19–​22. 52. On these, see Erik Fügedi, “Verba volant . . . : Oral Culture and Literacy among the Medieval Hungarian Nobility,” in Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, chap. 6. 53. Ferenc Eckhart, “Die glaubwürdigen Orte Ungarns im Mittelalter,” Mitteilungen des 1915): 395–​ Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung. Ergänzungsband 9 (1913–​ 555; Zsolt Hunyadi, “Administering the Law: Hungary’s Loca Credibilia,” in Custom and Law in Central Europe, edited by Martyn Rady (Cambridge: Centre for European Legal Studies, 2003), 25–​35; Martyn Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), 66–​73; Tamás Kőfalvi, “Places of Authenticaton (loca credibilia),” Chronica 2 (2002): 27–​38. 54. Regestrum Varadinense examinum ferri candentis ordine chronologico digestum, edited by János Karácsonyi and Sándor Borovsky (Nagyvárad: Capitulum Varadiense Lat. Rit., 1903) (https://​www.arca​num.hu/​hu/​onl​ine–​kia​dvan​yok/​Var​adi–​var​adi–​jegy​zoko​ nyv–​regest​rum–​vara​dine​nse–​1208–​1235–​2/​, accessed May 14, 2018). Cf. Imre Zajtay, “Le register de Varad: Un document judiciaire du XIIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire de droit 4, no. 32 (1954): 527–​562, and M. Lupescu Makó, “Between Sacred and Profane: The Trial by Hot Iron Ceremony Based on the ‘Regestrum Varadiense,’” Mediævalia Transilvanica 3 (1999): 5–​26. 55. On the status of women in Czech law—​which he believes was better than elsewhere—​John M. Klassen, Warring Maidens, Captive Wives and Hussite Queens (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1989). 56. Márta Belényesy, “Le serment sur la terre au moyen âge et ses traditions posterieures en Hongrie,” Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 4 (1955): 361–​394. 57. Władysław Semkowicz, “Przysięga na słońce: Studium porównawcze prawno–​etnologiczne” [The oath on the sun: A comparative legal and ethnological study], Księga pamiątkowa ku czci Bolesława Orzechowicza, vol. 2 (Lviv: Towarzyskwo Naukowe we Lwowie, 1916), 304–​376. 58. Purgatory oath was then applied only in rare cases of major crimes, see, e.g., Petr Kreuz, “On a Case of Sexual Abuse and Rape of a Child before a City Court,” in Between Lipany and White Mountain: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bohemian History in Modern Czech Scholarship, edited by James R. Palmitessa (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 197–​216. 59. In general, see Winfried Trusen, “Strafprozess und Rezeption: Zu den Entwicklungen im Spätmittelalter und den Grundlagen der Carolina,” in Strafrecht, Strafprozess und Rezeption, edited by Peter Landau and Fridrich Christian Schröder (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1984), 29–​118, pp. 59–​63. See also, Pánek, “Die Halsgerichtsbarkeit.”

130    János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak 60. Janusz Łosowski, “Akta sądów ziemskich” [Records of the land courts], in Dyplomatyka staropolska [Old Polish diplomatics], edited by Tomasz Jurek (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2015), 254–​266. 61. Irena Sułkowska–​Kurasiowa, Polska kancelaria królewska w latach 1447–​1506 [The Polish royal chancellery in the years 1447–​1506] (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1967). 62. Václav Letošník et al., Die böhmische Landtafel, Inventar, Register, Übersichten (Prague: Archiv des Ministeriums des Innern, 1944); and Josef Emler, ed., Reliquiae tabularum terrae regni Bohemiae anno MDXLI igne consumptarum &c., 2 vols. (Prague: Pospíšil, 1870–​1872).

Further Reading Bak, János M. “Non-​Verbal Acts in Legal Transactions in Medieval Hungary and Its Environs. In Medieval Legal Process: Physical, Spoken and Written Performance in the Middle Ages, edited by Marco Mostert and P. S. Barnwell, 211–​232. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Bak, János M. “Signs of Conversion in Central European Laws.” In Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, edited by G. Armstrong and I. N. Wood, 115–​124. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Frost, Robert. The Oxford History of Poland-​Lithuania, Vol. 1: The Making of the Polish-​ Lithuanian Union, 1385–​1569, 5–​17, 231–​308, 327–​353. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Górecki, Piotr. “Communities of Legal Memory in Medieval Poland, c.1200–​1240.” Journal of Medieval History 24 (1998): 127–​154. Koss, Rudolf. Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Gerichtsverfassung Böhmens und Mährens. Prague: Calve, 1919. Kuklík, Jan. Czech Law in Historical Contexts. Prague: Karolinum, 2015. Łysiak, Ludwik. Ius supremum Maydeburgense castri Cracoviensis 1356–​1794: Organization, Tätigkeit und Stellung des Krakauer Oberhofs in der Rechtsprechung Altpolens. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990. Máthé, Gábor, ed. Die Entwicklung der Verfassung und des Rechts in Ungarn. Budapest: Dialóg Campus, 2017. Rady, Martyn. Customary Law in Hungary: Courts, Texts and the Tripartitum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Chapter 6

Wars, Warfa re , a nd Mil itary Orga ni z at i on Attila Bárány

Warfare and Military Organization (895–​1241) In the tenth and eleventh centuries, newly forming polities in Central Europe had common features; they were larger, more stable, and longer lasting than previous entities. Rulers consolidated their positions by incorporating rival chieftains and their followers and adopted Christianity. Strong personages such as St. Stephen, St. Wenceslaus, and Mieszko I headed princely families and convinced (or forced) their subjects to accept a new order. Political unity was well served by the new religion, but still had to be protected. Military organization was based on earlier nomadic practices, with forces recruited and armed not much differently from tribal times, relying on such skills as the Hungarians’ refined equestrian expertise.

Hungarian Raids The Hungarians, described as similar to the Turks in their outward appearance, continued to take booty and slaves even after settling in the Carpathian basin in the 890s. Scholars must read the narrative sources critically and go beyond the “distorted vision” of the victims of their campaigns from the Atlantic to Constantinople. In practice, their numbers probably did not exceed the 6,000 they raised at Lechfeld (955).1 Although their contemporaries conveyed a sharp impression of their cruelty, this image may be due more to a representation of the alien “Other.” Until the battle of Arcadiopolis

132   Attila Bárány (970) almost every year saw lightning raids, conscious and well planned, with political motives. Allies mainly from Germany asked the Magyars “for help” to sack their rivals. Increasingly, they extorted tribute.2 Their raids seem to suggest that they were working to order, knowing the needs of the Muslim markets in the steppe and Pontic regions; they transported Frankish women to Sarkel, the Khazars’ Don crossroads, or other trade centers in the Balkans. They brought spare sets of arrows and many pack horses and carts to transport goods.3 On some two-​year ventures they even wintered in the West, campaigning in different directions. They sacked monasteries, but did not set everything to the torch; the relics they seized eventually ended up in Byzantine hands. To prevent punishing retaliatory campaigns, they destroyed crops and scattered cattle as rear-​guard actions.4 These warriors were resourceful and self-​sufficient, with speed, mobility, and maneuverability superior to their adversaries. They were “insuperable in their accustomed hardships of war,” facing extreme weather, and capable of covering twenty-​five to thirty miles a day. They had conscious planning, a manifold tactical repertoire, and refined reconnaissance skills.5 The Avar stirrup made it possible to shoot arrows from the saddle in all directions, even moving backward. A composite bow, capable of loosing twelve arrows per minute, was effective at 150 to 200 meters (165–​218 yds) and the sabre was used in close combat. As the Ottonians consolidated their power, they were victorious at Riade (933) and Lechfeld because they kept their legions out of the range of bows. Henry I’s (919–​936) troops rushed “upon [them] so that they will not have time to launch a second volley of arrows.”6 Otto I (936–​973) established an effective defense-​in-​depth that stymied them.7

Early Slavic Warfare: Ninth to Eleventh Century Sources describe the Slavic way of warfare as “to move secretly, hide in forests” as “cunningly” as “wolves.” The Slavs were good at infantry warfare; even archers were equipped with spears, axes, and clubs for hand-​to-​hand fighting.8 Cosmas of Prague reports that they prevailed in marshlands, where they moved back to lure the enemy in to shoot from the cover of the undergrowth. They “hurriedly moved through” forests by night to avoid direct confrontation, but laid traps and terrorized camps.9 Their tactical know-​how was preserved up to the fifteenth century. Władysław I Łokietek (“the Elbow-​High,” 1320–​1333) harassed the Teutons before a pitched battle. He pretended to be leaving the field but left “crack troops in woods,” whom the Knights pursued, whereupon they emerged from their hiding places.10 At Płowce (1331), a detachment was hidden in a forest. The Hungarians’ Patzinak auxiliaries also harried the Germans “all night fiercely, with poisoned arrows, noosed prisoners” by way of “laying snares.”11

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    133

Territorial Organization: Eleventh through Thirteenth Centuries In the newly formed states similar administrative systems were evolving. Royal control was assured through a territorially organized military structure based on a network of castles; power was entrusted to local officials (kasztelan, starosta, voi[e]‌voda). In Hungary, Stephen I (King 1000/​1001–​1038) organized castle districts headed by war leaders (ispán) commanding groups of freemen, who, being exempt from war taxation, were obliged to take service. The upper social layer, castle warriors who had heritable land from the king, did most of the military service. Twelfth and thirteenth century sources put the number of castle units, “banners” (vexilla) at seventy-​two. The ispán was the leader of a county (megye), where there might be further castle districts, the freemen of which made up a levy (agmen).12 The system was of autochthonous origin, derived from neither a former (supposed) Slavic foundation nor echoed a Frankish model—​as it had been maintained by earlier scholarship. The Hungarians began to build earthwork fortifications in the eleventh century. Earthwork and timber forts show uniformity in construction, with ditches and burned earth ramparts reinforced with stones (some surmounted by a palisade). They were distributed in a consistent pattern associated with the new ruling power,13 an arrangement that may have paralleled that in Slavic lands. The term ispán comes from the Slavic zhupan (chieftain), borrowed from the Eastern Franks or Ottonians. Megye (county) stems from the Slavic medja (border), a term the Hungarians adopted but came to use differently to designate an administrative district.14 The territorial arrangement in Bohemia and Poland originated from a tribal system formed of alliances among neighbors, from which larger units (zhupa) emerged with fortifications in the centers.15 In Poland, although some tribal strongholds were replaced with new military centers (Wlocławek, Grzybowo, Ostrów) and Bolesław I the Brave (992–​1025) created a system of ducal seats, the arrangement was not completely new.16 Military command in the old tribal territories continued to be in the hands of tribal leaders and military obligations were based on tribal commitments. Looser control led Bolesław III Wrymouth to create the Division of the Provinces in 1138.17 In Bohemia, the ruling Přemyslids supplanted the forts of most tribes with newly erected castles; few of them became in fact military bases of the dynasty, even though the central power attempted to develop a uniform administration on Frankish patterns (comites in castri). The princes in Moravia continued to maintain independent power.18

Armies The early military establishment was based on a general levy of all free men, called to arms in case of need. The Polish and Bohemian princes’ bodyguards in wartime were

134   Attila Bárány supported by local militias. In Bohemia, Spytihněv II (1055–​1061) “summoned 300 men from all cities, on pain of death.” In Poland, Leszek II “called upon all the knights,” but also summoned peasants against the assaults of the pagan Lithuanians.19 Bolesław I’s army had iron-​clad ranks (ferratae acies): knights with chain mail (loricatus miles) and foot-​soldiers (clipeati, “shield-​bearers”), reportedly numbering 3,900 and 13,000, respectively, although archaeological excavations of cemeteries seem to challenge these numbers.20 The tribal levy was soon limited to the defense of a territory under attack. For foreign campaigns, such as Bolesław III the Wrymouth’s (1107–​1138) expedition to Denmark, the army was paid.21 The Slavic retinue, druzhina/​drużyna was composed of free warriors of the tribal leader. According to the tenth-​century Sephardi Jewish Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʿqūb, the prince of the Poles had a retinue of 3,000, “wearing coats of mail,” to whom he gave horses and weapons.22 The retinues also consisted of Scandinavian auxiliaries, known from archaeological evidence.23 Mieszko I (960–​992) and Bolesław I maintained their dominant status over their rivals by means of arms.24 Princes tried to assure the loyalties of magnates by excessive donations, which led to internal strife and foreign—​German—​ interference. In 1041, the Holy Roman Empire supported Prince Casimir the Restorer in Poland.25 With the increase in donations, magnates organized their own retinues and the druzhina began to lose its importance; the ruler kept fewer household knights (acies curialis) and hired professionals. Only a third of Leszek II’s forces were household knights.26 After the twelfth century, no royal armies were mustered and ducal forces did not fight jointly.27 Polish princes sought to increase Western-​type cavalry, the spread of which was significant in Silesia. In Bohemia, the loyalty of the družina for the prince faded through succession crises; Moravia was a dynastic ducatus (an institution of duchy) with prerogatives; an upper stratum there developed into an aristocratic group and the ruler hired foreigners, paid with fiefs. Duke Břetislav II (1092–​1100) was only able to raise 2,000 knights in this way.28 Vladislav II employed mercenaries against Conrad II of Znojmo in 1143. Magnates also had their own military units. In the twelfth century, Duke Frederick garrisoned Prague castle with selected, “picked Germans.”29 A knightly class, milites secundi ordinis, was being formed which the ruler summoned only in defense of the realm.30 Byzantine writers recorded Hungarian armies by castle divisions, mostly of 300 to 400 men. In 1167, an army of “37 detachments” fought at Zemun.31 In the twelfth century the crown began to regulate the number and type of warriors the ispán leaders raised depending on the level of income, from freemen to warriors with or without armor.32 The royal vexillum (the courtly banner) was fundamental in the military structure. The influx of German knights played a role in St. Stephen’s victories against his rivals.33 Bohemian sources also differentiate legiones hospitum (units of newcomers, hospites, “guests”).34 Nevertheless, after the early eleventh century there is no evidence of further newcomers. It is believed that they completely altered warfare and that the elite soon adopted knightly fighting and equipped themselves with straight double-​edged swords. Archaeological evidence does not support the existence of Western armor (chain mail), not even from the twelfth century, apart from

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    135 a couple of straight swords, which are not yet sufficient evidence of men-​at-​arms. The spread of knightly warfare would have needed a firm, continual influence. Nomadic techniques long prevailed; eleventh-​and twelfth-​century armies mostly consisted of lightly armored archers with only a few Western-​type swords. An even smaller number might have had chain mail, although twelfth-​century sources mention loricati. Géza II supported Emperor Frederick at the siege of Milan (1158) with 500 light archers.35 Otto of Freising found the Hungarians had “hideous” arms, that is, were lightly armed, except for the hospites, who “imitated” chivalrous expertise. Those of the knightly order (de militum ordine) fought in knightly attire.36 Cinnamus describes the Hungarians as fully clad in iron. Andrew II (1205–​1235) put military service on a new footing by privileging a new group (servientes regis) to fight under the royal banner separate from county troops. In Bohemia, Otakar II (1253–​1278) established a well-​organized army of more than 25,000.37 At Kroissenbrunn (1260), his knights were “in full iron, armed to the teeth.”38 At Dürnkrut (1278), however, the Bohemians were thrown into disarray by the Hungarians’ “lightly armed” irregular auxiliaries, the Cumans firing ceaselessly from the flanks following nomadic traditions.39 Knightly warfare also developed: “they fought as if they had learnt the art of war in France, . . . in the Swabian way, and arm themselves with armor appropriately.”40

Formation and Tactics Hungarian warriors were under harsh discipline and firm command; they mainly aimed to disorganize the enemy array. They might have seemed like a solid mass, but as Leo the Wise’s Tactica describes, used a “scattered” formation.41 They sent out sentries and scouts in advance to also seek out protective terrain and streams. At Lechfeld, however, they let the Germans take positions at fords on river crossings and suffered casualties on their way back.42 Polish leaders kept well-​ordered formations, arranging forces in close array in three divisions under separate command. In 1187, in Halych, Casimir II’s wings fought independently.43 At the battle of Kulm (1126) the Bohemians ambushed the German reconnaissance, making it possible to encircle them. At Nakło (1109), one detachment of Poles led a simulated attack while another circled the rear and attacked from behind.44 Archers cooperated with men-​at-​arms (e.g., at Koronowo, 1410), withdrawing among them and emerging to shoot again and again. The Slavs, with expertise in water navigation, conducted assaults on boats, had river patrols, and built pontoon bridges.45 Auxiliary personnel were employed in the field and border patrol service. Hungarian vanguards were formed of Patzinak and Székely archers. They “forged ahead,” not engaging at close quarters, then moved to the flanks in reserve. The latter, settled as self-​ governing ethnic groups, “lived for the defense of the realm.”46 Hundreds of pagans waged war long after the Hungarians adopted Christianity. A twelfth-​century Muslim

136   Attila Bárány source mentions the Khwarazmians “with whom they launch raids into Byzantium,” and, who “practiced their” own, Muslim “religion.”47

Weaponry Written evidence marks the spread of knightly warfare in Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland, although to different extents. Béla I of Hungary (1060–​1063) fought a duel, “unseated” a knight “from his horse and pierced him with his sword.”48 Solomon (1063–​1074) and his troops had heavy armor, which “impeded” them so they “lagged behind”; those who did not wear breast plates made speedier progress. Polish dukes relied on “selected knights”; Bolesław III left most of his army behind and charged with 1,500 men-​at-​arms in 1109.49 The terminology, appearing even in charter narrationes, indicates that the elite wore knightly armor. Some “rushed forth and leapt” or “hurled upon” their enemies, and “shattered breastplates.” Knights were “more heavily armed and slower.”50 There were considerable regional differences, however. In Hungary the eleventh-​and twelfth-​century armies mostly consisted of lightly armored archers; often two types of armor were used: knights, “after fighting like warriors,” “changed” armor, and “fought like commoners,” “with arrows.”51 “Hybrid” horsemen with double-​edged swords and leather cuirasses emerged. The fact that loricati drowned in a stream, however, and the only ones to survive cast aside their chain mail, reflects the presence of heavier armor. Poland had substantial foot forces. Men-​at-​arms, including Bolesław III, “dismounted their horses, cast their lances aside” and stormed cities as infantry.52 We know of foot archers, infantrymen in mail hauberks with spears, shields, and swords and crossbowmen (e.g., at Legnica, 1241, and Malbork, 1410). Western warfare was gaining ground. In 1167, the Polish army was made up of knightly banners. At Mozgawa (1195) a ferocious combat was fought, with shock charges and unseated knights “spitted on lances.”53 After the unification of Poland (1320), Władysław I raised 4,000 to 5,000 men-​ at-​arms against the Teutonic Knights at Płowce. The mounted divisions pressed forward in tight array and broke the order’s formation.54 Bohemian military development was somewhat different. Imperial vassalage made the military organization strongly adapted to Western models.55 Czechs fought on the side of the emperor, e.g., at Lechfeld “a legion of 1,000 selected knights,” and supplied troops against Hungary and Poland.56 Knightly attire became widespread. Scutarii, shield-​bearers were well armored.57 Seen in the terminology, mail hauberks, heavy swords, and lances spread: Otto II, duke of Moravia, “pitilessly put down” his adversaries. Heavy cavalrymen were only able to charge when the rivers froze.58 Immigrant burghers also increased the military potential. The need for the manufacture of arms and armor saw the development of urban craft industries, which contributed to the emergence of well-​equipped mercenaries in the fifteenth century.59

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    137

Defense The Slavs’ refuges, made of logs and trenches located in natural impregnable positions, developed into forts protected by stakes, stone-​filled earth embankments constructed of timber covered in clay. They blocked fords, paths through forests, and passes and withdrew to uncleared scrubland.60 A thaw was their ally and flooding made waterways unusable. Ibn Yaʿqūb reports that the Poles build their “castles on lakes,” in “meadows abundant in water, [they] dig a trench, put earth above and strengthen walls with boards.” He saw the limestone castle of Prague, which Cosmas called a fortified urbs, denoting other places as civitates.61 The Polish castles of Poznań and Glagówek withstood several sieges. The borderlands (confinia terrae) were safeguarded by strongholds protected by “swamps and [fortified] works.”62 The Hungarians “set the border” with a system of indagines (border defenses) leaving a wide wasteland on both the inner and outer sides. The border consisted of impenetrable natural and artificial roadblocks that permitted access only through gates (portae).63 In 1030, Emperor Conrad II “could not penetrate the frontier well-​protected by forests.”64 The country was “in the usual way closed by stagnant water and defense obstacles” (machinae). It was impossible to enter because of “floods, dense forests and boggy marshes.”65 The Hungarian defenders made ships run aground with dams, closures, and blockages. Székesfehérvár was saved from the Mongols by the surrounding marshes.66 The indagines were patrolled by special frontier guards, speculatores, who protected the border for six weeks in 1096.67 In Bohemia patrols were stationed in border fortresses under marcher lords.68 Bolesław III strengthened the Pomeranian marches and fortified several cities (Wieleń, Nakło, Czarnków).69 Invasions were repelled by scorching the earth. The Hungarians “set fire to all corn and moved the inhabitants with all their animals” far away; skirmishers posed a threat and the invaders could not forage for supplies. In 1051, the Germans, not being able to forage their troops, were “in mortal distress in danger of perishing from starvation.”70 The Hungarians, relying on nomadic traditions, made preventive assaults in the fashion of centuries before. In 1091, Ladislas “rode out to meet the Cumans” before they could penetrate the borders.71 When Hungary faced Byzantine aggression, the indagines offered protection. Manuel Comnenus found “impenetrable and steep thickets.” The Hungarians exhausted the Byzantines by continual raids, did not come close enough to engage but “dispersed like clouds,” and deferred open-​field combat until their foes were “gripped by anguish [at the] thought of returning.”72 Employing the nomadic technique they were able to scatter cavalry in full armor. The Poles had masterful techniques in fortification warfare. At Głogów in 1109 they hurled stones, threw sharpened stakes, and launched incendiaries at the Germans. The Hungarians were skilled in sieges and applied “diverse engines” at Augsburg (955).73 At Belgrade (1071) they erected “wooden towers” and ballistae (catapults) were employed against Tatars. They “attacked fortifications” in Croatia in the 1090s.74

138   Attila Bárány

Aggression from the East: The Mongol Invasion (1241–​1242) In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Central Europe suffered large-​scale invasions of nomadic steppe warriors—​Patzinak, Oğuz, and Cuman—​who “caused great slaughter” from time to time.75 In 1099, the Cumans chased the Hungarians “for two days hither and yon as a falcon drives magpies.”76 In 1101, the Poles fought the Cumans, who were plundering beyond the Vistula. Castles were fortified on the eastern marches (e.g., Brześć).77 The Hungarians mostly repulsed the invaders, probably because they preserved much of the nomadic light cavalry tactics. Scouts (exploratores) and “castellans in charge of checkpoints” reported on enemy movements. In 1068, the army hastened before the Oğuz advance and awaited their return at Chiraleş.78 The Mongols invaded Hungary from four different directions in 1241. King Béla IV fortified the indagines, erected barricades “blocking [transit] with felled trees,” but the Tatars cleared the way with engineering troops.79 Although the king’s deployment and tactics have been debated, the mobilization was basically successful. The leadership had knowledge of the Mongols; it was not the king’s fault that their Cuman auxiliaries left the country after their chieftain was killed in a skirmish. A 20,000-​strong army gathered, not far inferior to the numerical strength of Batu Khan.80 The Hungarians chose terrain disadvantageous for the Mongols, a marshy floodplain at Muhi. First, the Mongol attack failed because the Hungarians, spending “the night awake and in arms, drove them back.” Batu was thinking of retreat; it was the first time in decades that the Mongols lost a battle. The Hungarians set up a camp fortified by wagons, as had been successful at Kalka in 1223, where they withstood assaults, yet it was fatal as they cut themselves off from any relief. The men-​at-​arms, “formed into a close formation,” charged out, making their foes bypass them. At some point the Tatars considered breaking off the fight and “left a door open” to lure the king to flee.81 They may not have wished to incur losses in drawn-​out combat. The sovereign’s escape thwarted the Mongols’ plans to consolidate their power in the country. The Hungarians suffered heavy casualties, but still protected the Danube, and it took Batu nine months to get across. More than a dozen stone-​built castles stood intact, and garrison forces fought eagerly at “places that remained unconquered.”82 Batu withdrew in 1242 for reasons that are debated. The khan failed to seize the kingdom at one blow, even though that may have been the first stage in their conquest strategy. They had been on campaign for years, since 1236. It is unlikely that Batu needed to hurry because of the death of the khagan-emperor; being of Ghengisid descent himself, the election would wait for him. Béla IV reorganized the military system based on recruiting heavy pancerati, in return, for example, for urban privileges, and called back the Cumans, who left the country at the eve of the Mongol invasion. He organized wardenships over the frontiers. Lords were donated estates where the royal prerogative of castle construction was not

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    139 enforced, but as a condition they were made responsible for settling new population and stone-​built fortresses were erected in strategic locations. Despite these measures, after the Mongol invasion the dissolution of the castle district system continued at a rapid pace, which led to the growth of oligarchic fortunes. In Poland, the Mongols overran Kuyavia, Lesser Poland, and Mazovia, and burned strongholds and cities (Cracow). A Polish army pursuing the Mongols after a false retreat was annihilated at Chmielnik. In April, at Legnica, the “flower” of Silesian knighthood was crushed. This showed the incompetence of heavy cavalry under inadequate leadership against light archers; knights were deployed in close order but could barely withstand volleys of arrows. They were to chase a Tatar wing while the Mongols’ reserve advanced on the flanks, but the disorganized body came under fire from all sides, and, “when the fighting became hand-​to-​hand” suffered tragic casualties.83 The Golden Horde remained a constant danger until the 1340s. In 1285–​1287 they attacked Hungary and Poland in a second invasion.84

Warfare and Military Organization (1242–​1526) This period is marked by the advance of the Ottomans, the Poles’ struggle against the Teutonic Order, the successes of the Hussites, and the victories of János Hunyadi. The reforms of the strategist Jan Žižka, the innovations of Hunyadi and his son, King Matthias Corvinus (1458–​1490), in composition, battle formation, and tactics brought a decisive change.

Slavic Lands In Poland, Władysław I required all landholders to present themselves for war with their retinues, thus being capable of raising 5,000 heavy men-​at-​arms. Casimir III the Great (1333–​1370) strictly enforced a reorganization of the levy. Cities were to raise troops; serfs were mustered in the case of a foreign threat. Łokietek “had more peasants than knights.” Louis I the Great (1342/​70–​1382), king of Hungary and Poland, fixed the rate of the land tax the tenants were obliged to pay, but nobles were to furnish service within the borders.85 Władysław II Jagiełło (1386–​1434) brought a huge force of Lithuanians. The summonses of 1454 and 1474 raised 20,000 men in Poland alone, and 50,000 soldiers were mustered in 1497.86 Nonetheless, the expeditio generalis was effective only for a limited time. The Jagiellonians laid heavy fines or confiscation of property on those reluctant to take up arms. Nobles expected to be paid for service on more than one campaign or outside the country. The crown contracted with nobles to recruit mercenaries, e.g., Bogusław of Szczecin raised 400 milites stipendiarii. In 1478, almost the whole army was

140   Attila Bárány made up of professionals, e.g., more than 30,000 at Wrocław (1474). In 1479, the crown attempted to maintain a permanent defense force (Obrona potoczna); some 2,500 light cavalry and infantry were garrisoned in border castles against Tatar and Turkish raids. To finance them, the crown had to raise war subsidies. New mercenaries were needed; captains were commissioned to recruit extra rotas (200 men comprised of units headed by “companions”). These troops with high standards in training and equipment were registered and eventually became a standing army. Paid forces won at Katlabuga Lake (1485) against the Ottomans.87 New menaces emerged. With the fall of the Mongol successor states and the weakening of the Teutonic Order, Muscovy sought to expand. In 1500, at Vedrosha, Tsar Ivan III destroyed the Lithuanians and his Tatar allies raided Poland. With their huge manpower the tsars launched ventures almost every year. With the disintegration of the Golden Horde, the Crimean khanate became an Ottoman dependent. Although Prince Stephen III the Great of Moldavia (1457–​1504) raised the banner of crusade, he was forced into vassalage and made to join the Turkish assaults against Poland. In 1497, the Ottoman-​supported Moldavians won at Koźmin Forest. The Polish could only get relief when Jan Tarnowski, the hetman in charge of all paid troops, defeated the Moldavians at Obertyn (1531). In 1526, the Obrona potoczna received permanent funding, an annual grant.88 Further westernization can be seen in weaponry: plate armor, even whole coats-​of-​ plate, came into use, even on crossbowmen. John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia (1310–​ 1346), had “archers and other appropriately armed troops,” that is, heavily armored infantry. Armies were made up of knightly banners, on average about 200 to 300 armati including crossbowmen. Charles, margrave of Moravia, had 200 “iron-​helmeted” galeati and 1,000 infantry.89 A banner was subdivided into lances, in Poland 50 to 120, each consisting of two to five. In Bohemia it consisted of a man-​at-​arms and two to four crossbowmen or pikemen. Polish magnate cavalry followed kindred loyalties, and lesser noblemen were grouped territorially (under voivodship banners).

The Teutonic Order and Lithuanians Polish princes made efforts to impose Christianity on Prussia; in 1226 the duke of Mazovia called on the Teutonic Order for help. The Knights’ expansion cut the Poles off from the Baltic and led to a century and a half of conflict. The victory at Płowce (1331), however, showed that Poland was able to put up an effective opposition to the militarized Ordensstaat. Poland also faced recurrent onslaughts of the emerging pagan Lithuanians from the mid-​thirteenth century. The danger became acute when they acted together with the Golden Horde. As the horde reached the limits of its expansion, the Lithuanians extended their rule to the Black Sea. The Lithuanians fought as “bandits” with “teasing tactics”; they moved “in silence so disguised that it deceives all.” The masters of war in the Baltic “wilderness” (Die Große Wildnis) “withdrew into woods” and marshes, “hiding in inaccessible depths.” They

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    141 appeared suddenly and spread out. “Putting their trust not in open fighting,” they relied on swift, diversionary small-​scale maneuvers to wear down the enemy. In defense, Casimir III erected strongholds with “walls of fired brick” along the frontier (at Bełz and Chełm).90 The Teutonic Order expanded in the 1400s. To protect itself, Poland needed to hire Lithuanians even before the union under the Jagiellonians (1386). At the battle of Grunwald (1410) the Teutons were defeated by Władysław II Jagiełło; the Order numbered 15,000 men-​at-​arms, while the Polish-​Lithuanians had 32,000 men-​at-​arms, crossbowmen, and Tatars. Jagiełło occupied terrain in “thickets and woods” to prevent a frontal charge and deployed reserves on the flanks.91 The Lithuanians applied a—​still debated—​false retreat which made the pursuing Teutons separate from the main body, then reappeared, drove the Germans back as the knights were pressed from two flanks with the rear disjointed. At least 8,000 were killed. In the Great War (1409–​1422) and the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–​1466) the Teutons were overwhelmed (e.g., at Gniew, 1463) and forced to cede territory.92

Hussites When Jan Hus was executed in 1415, the radical wing of the Taborites burst out in fierce resistance. Sigismund of Luxemburg’s (King of Bohemia 1420–​1437) series of crusades (1420–​1434) failed against the technology and tactics of the “peasants in arms,” even though they faced substantial cavalry forces. They were led by a self-​made—​former mercenary—​captain, Jan Žižka, at Vitkov Hill, Vyšehrad (1420), and Žatec (1421). Another commander, Prokop the Great, halted imperial ventures at Ústi nad Labem (1426), Tachov (1427), and Domažlice (1431). He moved to a preemptive pattern of invading neighboring territories—​in a series of campaigns, “graceful rides.”93 The king ultimately came to terms with the moderate wing of the Hussites, the Utraquists, who, allying with nobles, annihilated Prokop at Lipany (1434). The Hussites were innovators of military technology and applied sophisticated methods of defensive warfare. Žižka handled infantry, cavalry, and artillery as one tactical body. The battle wagon (Wagenburg) was their hallmark. Reduced to a tactical defensive, they drew their opponents into attacking their Wagenburgen, even at disadvantage. The wagon not only provided refuge but also was used in an offensive as a movable artillery base, to both block the enemy approach and disrupt their formation (e.g., Německý Brod, 1422). Their artillery emphasized the calculation of distance, missile concentration, and firing density. Towns put the know-​how of manufacturers at their service to supply small arms. Their greatest potential was in close-​combat infantry warfare, which employed nonconventional weapons and converted agricultural tools into polearms (flails, awl pikes, hatchets, and iron-​spiked clubs). Armed with long-​shafted bills with spikes and pruning hooks, they were effective against cavalry.94 Extra movable planking was fitted to the Wagenburgen. They carried supplies and ammunition, even infantry, to the part of the field where it seemed necessary and

142   Attila Bárány fought as mobile infantry. The crew had a clear division of functions: 15–​20 soldiers, 6 crossbowmen, 2 hand-​gunners, and the rest equipped with polearms. Each group had its own commander, and was then put into a group of ten, then files of 50 to 100. A captain had chief command over all the wagons, within the wagon circle, anchored by chains, a reserve of horsemen waited to sally forth. At Žatec and Kutná Hora (1421), Žižka forced a breach with his wagons, battering his way through by firearms. At Lipany, the Taborites’ wagons became disordered in their charge and did not withstand the cavalry attack.95 The Wagenburg had a massive influence on the “battle camp,” the Russian guliai-​ gorod, the Polish tabor, the Lithuanian laager, and the Ottoman tabur cengi.96 In 1454, at Chojnice, the Teutonic Order’s infantry-​protected linked wagons repulsed the cavalry. János Hunyadi’s wagons covered large distances, and at Ialomiţa (1442) he sent his wagons to the Ottomans’ rear.97 He mounted artillery on rolling carts dug in the spaces between, being the precursors of the trail. Žižka issued a progressive military code well ahead of its age that influenced modern military conduct. The “Statutes and Military Ordinance” enforced strict command and discipline. “No one shall ride in advance without the permission of his superior.” He insisted on orderly obedience, training, and methodical drill.98 There was an arrangement of tasks, units were “specially appointed” for reconnaissance or to secure quarters.

Hungary After the extinction of the Árpáds (1301) and the royal line of the Přemyslids in Bohemia (1306), the Angevins and the Luxemburgs inherited the thrones. In Hungary, the crown overruled anarchy with a military system based on temporary fiefs. The holders of honor dignities—​heading a province and royal castle—​were to set up banderia (army banners) of all the people of the district. In return for mobilization at any minute for an unlimited time they enjoyed the royal revenues that came with the province. These banderia had limited military value and were employed in the Balkans and Lithuania, but companies of high-​quality mercenaries were employed in theaters of war like Italy. Western campaigns were fought by paid semistanding forces, organized by royal dispatches, recruited by entrepreneur captains with a scrutinized budget.99 Louis I waged war almost continually from Bulgaria to Calabria. He had ambitions for aggrandizement, but he did not merely pursue glory and booty. He was much concerned with defense. Tatar incursions lasted until the 1340s, but a new threat emerged as “the Lithuanians brought in Tatar hordes.”100 As Louis succeeded to the Polish throne through a Piast-​Angevin treaty, he needed to stand against the Lithuanians and pushed the defensive border to the east. A previously unheard-​of menace arose. The Ottomans, organizing a robust militarized state grounded on zealous Islamic ideology, acquired a foothold in Europe at Gallipoli in 1354. Sultan Murad I (1362–​1389) started expansion into the Balkans and crushed a Serbian army at Kosovo Polje (1389). The occupied principalities were forced to pay

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    143 tribute and supply auxiliaries. Bayezid I (1389–​1402) attacked Hungary. Christendom was alarmed at having the Porte for an immediate neighbor. Sigismund of Luxemburg (King of Hungary and Croatia 1387–​1437) set about organizing a great crusade from the West but was destroyed at Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund was to hold the Westerners in reserve, but they rushed into the assault before the main body could be deployed and were thus overrun.101 The defeat was not due to the Ottomans’ numerical advantage. The Janissaries (from yeni çeri, “new soldier”)—​a standing infantry corps gathered through the devşirme (blood tribute) system where Christian boys were enslaved—​amounted to only 2,000, but the mounted household contingents (kapıkulu) and the fief holder cavalry, sipahi, played crucial roles. The Turks’ strength lay in the unity of command, cohesion, and the tactical coordination of heterogeneous elements.102 Hungary was exposed to Turkish expansion. The Ottoman state was different in revenues and manpower; there was no chance to halt them in an open-​field battle. Sigismund had to adopt a defensive policy in the respite provided by Bayezid’s defeat at Ankara (1402) by Timur Lenk. The ruler of Hungary launched a fortification-​ building program. Military frontier zones (metae et confinia) of standing garrisons were formed, protected by mobile field forces, based on a double fortification line, ranging in Matthias’s time from the Carpathians to the Adriatic. They protected important springboards as only “smaller troops could sneak in secret paths.”103 The defense system was established by the king’s administrator, Filippo Scolari, a governor of contiguous counties with rights over royal revenues.104 This backbone made it possible for János Hunyadi to launch attacks. In the 1420s to 1430s the Turks reorganized themselves and “the warriors of half the Balkans raided Hungary.”105 The advance was stopped by Hunyadi, a self-​made commander, who had gained experience in all theaters of war (Italian mercenary, Hussite, and Balkan warfare). This strategist applied new methods in tactics, formation, and leadership. He shifted the theater of war onto Ottoman territory and won a series of victories. In 1442, he annihilated the Turks in Wallachia, which shook the belief in the Ottomans’ invincibility. In 1443–​1444, setting out with a force of 25,000–​35,000 to campaign in winter, when most Ottoman armies were dissolved, he took control of strategic routes, penetrated into Turkish territory, and vanquished Ottoman forces in a series of clashes that were stopped only by severe weather. By 1444, preparations had been made for a great crusade, but the Christians were defeated by twice as many Turks at Varna. Hunyadi’s defeat at the second battle of Kosovo (1448) showed that even an army of 30,000 to 35,000 with firearms and artillery was not a match for the numerically superior Turks on open ground.106 With the intensification of the Ottoman threat, ordinary revenues were not enough, even supplemented by war subsidies. The honor-​holders were not able to resist the Turks on their incomes and their troops were not a match for the formidable new foe. Magnates’ private retinues were to be paid; one of the noble privileges, i.e., exemption from offensive campaigns outside the frontiers, was suspended. A quota system of recruitment was introduced based on tenant holdings.107 In fact, it was rarely used since it proved to be too cumbersome to resist a major attack. Sigismund relied on magnate

144   Attila Bárány retinues, compensated with crown revenues. Castellans were paid with revenues directly into their hands and armies were issued sums from tax returns. The bulk of Hunyadi’s forces were paid banners. Mehmed II continued to invade and took Constantinople in 1453. Although Hunyadi dealt him a severe blow at Belgrade (1456), the threat did not cease. His son, the realist Matthias, dropped the idea of fighting the Turks on their own territory. He chose not to become entangled in large-​scale campaigns but undertook smaller-​scale actions of limited range. The king found that he could only maintain the status quo with the Turks having control over the resources of Bohemia and Austria. He moved the frontier forward in Bosnia, where he “garrisoned strongholds strongly” (at Jajce, Šabac, and Srebrenik).108 Hungary did not face large Ottoman forces; a marauder army was crushed at Câmpul Pâinii (1479). Matthias established a modus vivendi with the Sublime Porte and agreed to peace in the 1480s, thus saving Hungary from devastation. The reorganized defensive system contributed much to peace before the fall of Belgrade (1521).109 Matthias Corvinus created a regularly paid Black Army of 6,000 to 8,000 professionals, heavy cavalry, and crossbowmen, drawn from Bohemia and Poland, bringing with them the knowledge of Hussite tactics. It was financed by extraordinary taxation; the king needed half of the revenues of Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia to maintain a force of 15,000 for a year. In an aggregate-​contract system, he made contracts with captains to serve for a set number of dates from a fixed date with numbers agreed on, against an advance payment of wages. It had a permanently paid core stationed in Silesia and Austria who were rewarded with booty and lived off the land.110 The valuable artillery was funded on a permanent footing. Matthias raised the most substantial force, of 28,000, in 1487. Depending on the target, the army was supplemented with light cavalry and infantrymen hired for shorter periods. The king never relied on mercenaries alone; paid Hungarian retinues were added. In addition, garrison forces—​“another” standing army, totaling 10,000—​were also paid. After the death of Matthias, the fiscal burden could not be borne, thus the mercenaries were dismissed.111 Under the Jagiellonian rulers, defense fell into decline for lack of finances. The greatest magnates were authorized to raise contingents of their own (domini banderiati) and collect state taxes.112 Garrisons were no longer able to defend the settlements that victualled the fortresses, several strongholds were lost, and the frontier could not be maintained. Chances were negligible against the much more numerous, militarily superior Ottomans.113 The Porte’s resources expanded dramatically between 1456 and 1526. The military organization was incapable of defending the whole frontier all at once and a broad strip of border area was devastated. At Mohács (1526), the heavy cavalry was halted by the highly disciplined, handgun-​ wielding Janissaries, backed by modern field artillery. The Hungarians were decimated. Louis II fell. The Hungarians were outnumbered even though they raised more than 20,000 men, but the kingdom did not collapse on the field. The mobilization was slow and undisciplined, resistance was not organized further south to delay the Turkish advance and they suffered from a lack of unity of command and poor judgment. It was the destruction of a medieval army by an early modern one.114

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    145

Leadership A new type of military leader of modest descent, a trained professional, came to the fore (like Žižka, Hunyadi, the captains of the Black Army). Such imaginative “self-​ made” commanders had charisma and a personal relationship with the rank-​and-​file. Hunyadi was close to “his own troops.” The Taborites had an almost religious obedience to Žižka, which affected discipline positively. The Hussite commanders had absolute authority and undisputed command. Žižka “summoned all capable of swinging a club”; Hunyadi swiftly mobilized townspeople and villagers. Leaders were inventive, understood modern warfare, showed initiative and resourcefulness. Dynamic leadership was a major innovation. Hunyadi galloped to and fro reinforcing the hard-​pressed when necessary.115 Vytautas of Lithuania appeared everywhere and moved rapidly around the field, replacing the exhausted men with new forces.116

Formation and Tactics Hunyadi coordinated different arms: heavy cavalry, horse archers, hussars, light and heavy infantry. The light horse, at the front of the wings, backed up by men-​at-​arms, were to isolate the sipahis from the Janissaries, whom they exhausted with recurrent onslaughts. Matthias did not risk his mercenaries engaging in open battle on the Ottoman front. Mounted forces were needed in Poland to outfight the troops of the Teutonic Knights. Against masses of light cavalry, Tatars, they used deep formations with the wings deepest to break through. Matthias’s forces were arrayed in a quadratic formation with a division of banners marching in columns. The infantry had an order of battle: shield-​bearers, crossbowmen, hand-​gunners, armored infantry, pikemen, and light infantry were to complement one another. They fought behind “shields set together in a circle,” as if from behind “a bastion wall.”117 The Hussites emphasized coherence: “all people should fall in proper formation,” “once assigned to a banner, no one shall mingle with another.” Žižka stipulated that they “march in order taking care to protect the van, the rear and the flanks.”118 Matthias’s forces were tightly disciplined by draconian measures.119 Hunyadi coordinated field and fortification forces and used garrison manpower in offensives. He launched campaigns from behind safe bases and integrated castles in active warfare. Casimir III “kept his forces cunningly in the castles awaiting the opportunity to attack.”120 Matthias aimed at capturing bridgeheads to halt the Ottomans long before the border. The Hussites assigned a role to their hill-​top encampments (e.g., Tabor) to provide territorial control in support of campaigns. They set up relocation camps and refuges to cover withdrawal. Hunyadi and the Hussites did not let their enemies wage war in their own style. They did not let their forces engage in large-​scale battles, but evaded major conflicts and retreated when necessary, biding their time. Hunyadi fought the Turks with their own

146   Attila Bárány weapons: short-​term, small-​scale Kleinkrieg raids. The raid to Serbia in 1441 lasted for three days; he had to return when his way was blocked.121 Hunyadi attacked immediately after a victory, profiting from the disorganization of the enemy forces. Army leaders had their men live off the land. The Hussites regularly aimed at taking booty; and the Jagiellonians plundered Prussia in the “hunger war” (1414).122 Scolari “strengthened through pillaging,”123 even though the goal was not self-​contained plunder but to secure food and cut supply lines. The Hussites blocked the flow of supplies on the Vltava.124 Matthias attacked the supply train of the Polish besieging Wrocław.125 Hunyadi selected his targets to break territorial control at key posts. He laid stress on gathering food all through his ventures.126 Preventive offensives were taken to open new fronts behind the enemy. The Hussites’ “rides” were meant to push military activities out of Bohemia. As a battle-​seeking strategist, Hunyadi forced battles far from the border: “the war should be transferred to the other side” of the Danube. He took the initiative and “desired to attack the enemy rather than be attacked.” Scolari forced “the Turks to leave his borders” and extend their mobilization radius by 40–​50 miles.127 Scolari and Hunyadi were masters of timing and activity range. They realized that because of the Ottomans’ mobilization patterns, i.e., their armies returned to winter quarters and were disbanded after ruz-​ı Kasım (October 26), their capacities were limited in time and no offensives would start before April. Thus, they attacked as “winter was coming.”128 Žižka attacked the crusaders at their winter quarters in 1424; Matthias attacked out of season twice (in 1463 and 1476). Leaders carefully selected the terrain and used it to their advantage. Hunyadi wished to occupy high ground that offered a view of the field and enemy positions. At Varna, however, he let the Turks squeeze him into a corner between swamps and the sea, thus cutting off retreat.129 At Vyšehrad, the Hussites took an advantageous position that commanded access to the castle and river banks.130 The Jagiellonians aimed at avoiding the frontal shock-​charge of the Teutonic Knights by deploying troops in densely forested terrain to disjoint the main body in skirmishes. At Koronowo, instead of advancing straight at the Order, the Poles made a detour and ambushed them from a steep hillside. The Hussites fought in forested and swampy terrain. Siege firearms had a limited effect. At Golubac (1428), Sigismund’s cannons failed; the rate of fire was poor and their range mediocre. Ottoman field artillery was developing rapidly; they used cannon in battle from the 1440s. At Kosovo (1448) the “cannons were fighting all night long.” Matthias was convinced of the effectiveness of siege engines, but he paid fire masters, gun founders, and arquebusiers.131

Cavalry and Infantry Light cavalry never disappeared from the Hungarian army; the mid-​fourteenth-​century Illuminated Chronicle depicts fighters equipped with the bow, sabre, and mace. Light cavalry gave armies a distinctive hybrid character and a tactical edge. The

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    147 Cumans—​assigned an adequate role beyond auxiliary status—​gave an impetus in tactical innovations. The coordination of light and heavy cavalry developed in Louis I’s ventures in the 1340 to 1350s. Hungarian lances consisted of a man-​at-​arms and two or three horse archers. Archers served right in close combat. The Cuman elite were equipped with twelve-​spike maces, a superb close-​quarter weapon.132 In the fifteenth century an amalgamated structure developed with the integration of close-​quarter hussars in Hungary and Poland. They first had long spears and asymmetrical shields (targe), later, the saber and chain mail. The light irregular fighter, originally denoting “marauder” in Serbian, found service on a temporary, then regular footing. They provided rapid reaction forces which backed up fortifications and launched raids against Turks and Tatars.133 They were suited to cross-​border Kleinkrieg to face Ottoman irregulars (akinçi).134 At border forts they gradually came to outnumber infantry.135 Several thousand hussars and lesser nobles served in magnate retinues.136 Hussar mercenaries appeared in sixteenth-​century Poland; Jagiellonian armies adopted further tactical elements from the Crimean Tatars. Although armored crossbowmen were still employed (e.g., at Świecino in 1462), they were replaced by lighter mounted archers. Banners took on a mixed character: men-​at-​arms fought side-​by-​side with hussars. The “Old Polish Array” was a mixed, maneuverable formation with horse archers on the flanks and infantry with firearms at the rear.137 Hussars brought flexibility in tactics. They marched in open order for ease of maneuvering but charged at full gallop speed in three to four ranks, with pikes to shock the enemy and minimize losses from firepower. Owing to Swiss-​German influences, light infantrymen equipped with pikes and halberds to drag knights off horses, and (h)arquebuses—​the forebears of the Landsknecht—​became increasingly frequent. Serving on a permanent footing in units, they moved in columns and fought in echelon formation. They took up offensive positions so as to come to close quarters with Janissaries. Armored crossbowmen and harquebusiers with standing shields (pavis[e]‌) opened actions and retreated behind the pikemen’s “solid wall.”138

Notes 1. Gyula Kristó, Hungarian History in the Ninth Century (Szeged: Szegedi Középkorász Műhely, 1996), 57–​70; András Róna-​Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), esp. 332–​ 339; István Zimonyi, Muslim Sources on the Magyars in the Second Half of the 9th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 102, 114. 2. László Veszprémy, “The Military History of Hungary from the First Contacts with Europe until the Battle of Mohács,” in Illustrated Military History of Hungary, edited by Róbert Hermann (Budapest: Zrínyi, 2012), 13–​62, 14–​17; Charles R. Bowlus, Franks, Moravians, and Magyars: The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788–​907 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 235–​267. They were “invited in”: Anonymous, Notary of King Béla, “The Deeds of the Hungarians/​Gesta Hungarorum,” in Anonymous and Master Roger, The Deeds of the Hungarians. Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars, edited, translated, and annotated by Martyn

148   Attila Bárány Rady and László Veszprémy, Central European Medieval Texts 5 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), 2–​131, cap. 56, pp. 120–​122; hired by Arnulf of Carinthia, see Antapodosis, in Liudprandi Opera: Die Werke Liudprands von Cremona, edited by Joseph Becker, MGH SS rer. Germ. (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum) (Hannover: Hahn, 1915), 1–​158, Lib. II. cap. 2, 3, p. 36; by dukes Conrad of Lorraine and Liudolf of Swabia against Otto I: Folcuini gesta abbatum Lobiensium a. 637–​980, edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 4 (Hannover: Hahn, 1846), 52–​74, Lib. 25, p. 66. Tribute: Nóra Berend, József Laszlovszky, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary,” in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200, edited by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 319–​368, 324. 3. Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon, edited by Friedrich Kurze, MGH SS rer. Germ. 50 (Hannover: Hahn, 1890), 1–​153, p. 132 (a. 889); Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach, Warfare in Medieval Europe, c.400–​c.1453 (London: Routledge, 2017), 184. 4. For the Abbey of St. Gall, see Ekkehardi IV. Casus S. Galli, Continuatio I, edited by Ildephons von Arx, MGH SS 2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1839), 77–​147, cap. 3, p. 104, cap. 5, p. 106; for Montecassino, see Leonis Marsicani et Petri diaconi chronica monasterii Casinensis, edited by Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS 17 (Hannover: Hahn, 1856), 551–​844, Lib. I. cap. 55, p. 619; for Herzfeld, see Ex Uffingi Werthinensis vita S. Idae, edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1829), 569–​576, I. cap. 10, p. 573. Preventive campaigns: Veszprémy, “The Military,” 16; Róna-​Tas, Hungarians and Europe, 341–​354. 5. Leo VI the Wise (886–​912), although copying from Maurice’s Strategikon, emphasized that certain elements characterized only the Hungarians, see The Taktika of Leo VI, text, translation, and commentary by George T. Dennis, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Dumbarton Oaks Texts 12 (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2014), XVIII. cap. 43, 46, 52, 55, 57, 62, 75. Some sources depict the Hungarians differently from the topoi of nomads, see Ekkehard, Casus S. Galli, cap. 5, p. 106; Gerhardi Vita S. Oudalrici episcopi Augustani, edited by Georg Waitz, MGH SS 4 (Hannover: Hahn, 1841), 384–​425, cap. 12, p. 401; Andrew Ayton, “Arms, Armour and Horses,” in Medieval Warfare: A History, edited by Maurice Keen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 186–​ 208, 187. 6. Liudprand, Antapodosis, Lib. II. cap. 31, p. 52; Widukindi monachi Corbeiensis Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum libri tres, edited by Georg Waitz, Karl Andreas Kehr, Paul Hirsch, and H. E. Lohmann, MGH SS rer. Germ. 60 (Hannover: Hahn, 1935), I. cap. 38, p. 57; David S. Bachrach, Warfare in Tenth-​Century Germany (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 147–​148. For the range of the bow, see Veszprémy, “The Military,” 15. 7. Bachrach, Warfare, 70–​102, 193–​226, 259–​261; Charles Bowlus, The Battle of Lechfeld and Its Aftermath, August 955: The End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), chaps. 3 and 5. 8. Annales Altahenses maiores, edited by E. L. B. von Oefele, MGH SS rer. Germ. 4 (Hannover: Hahn, 1890), 29; David Nicolle and Adam Hook, European Medieval Tactics, vol. 1, The Fall and Rise of Cavalry 450–​1260 (Oxford: Osprey, 2011), 37. 9. Cosmae Pragensis Chronica Boemorum, edited by Berthold Bretholz and Wilhelm Weinberger, MGH SS rer. Germ. n.s. 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923), III. cap. 25, p. 194; [Gallus Anonymous], Gesta principum Polonorum/​The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, translated and annotated by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts 4 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003), III. cap. 9–​10, pp. 238–​240.

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    149 10. The Annals of Jan Długosz/​Annales seu cronicae incliti regni Poloniae, English abridgment by Maurice Michael (Charlton: IM Publications, 1997), 276, 281. 11. The Illuminated Chronicle: Chronicle of the Deeds of the Hungarians from the Fourteenth-​ Century Illuminated Codex/​Chronica de gestis Hungarorum e codice picto saec. xiv., edited and translated by János M. Bak and László Veszprémy, Central European Medieval Texts 9 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018), cap. 90, p. 170. 12. Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary 895–​1526, edited by Andrew Ayton (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 72–​73; Berend, Laszlovszky, and Szakács, “Hungary,” 346; Attila Zsoldos, The Legacy of Saint Stephen (Budapest: Lucidus, 2004), 73, 115. 13. Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–​1437) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1986), 22; Mária Wolf, “Earthen Forts,” in Hungarian Archaeology at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by Zsolt Visy (Budapest: Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, 2003), 328–​331, 330. 14. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds., Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c.900–​c.1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 153. 15. Przemysław Urbańczyk, “Early State Formation in East Central Europe,” in East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Florin Curta (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 139–​151, 147; Márta Font, “Missions, Conversions, and Power Legitimization in East Central Europe at the Turn of the First Millennium,” in Curta, East Central, 283–​296, 292. 16. Márta Font, “Slavic Lands,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia and Military Technology, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) [=​Oxford Encyclopedia], vol. 3, 284; Przemysław Urbańczyk and Stanisław Rosik, “The Kingdom of Poland,” in Berend, Christianization, 263–​318; Przemysław Urbańczyk, “Slavic and Christian Identities during the Transition to Polish Statehood,” in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, edited by Ildar H. Garipzanov, Patrick J. Geary, and Przemyslaw Urbańczyk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 205–​222, 220. 17. Tadeusz Manteuffel, The Formation of the Polish State: The Period of Ducal Rule, 963–​1194 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982). 18. Cosmas, Chronica, I. cap. 13, p. 30; Petr Sommer, Josef Žemlička, and Dušan Třeštík, “Bohemia and Moravia,” in Berend, Christianization, 214–​262, 236; Lisa Wolverton, Hastening toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 186–​226; Martin Wihoda, Vladislaus Henry: The Formation of Moravian Identity, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 141–​180. 19. For Bohemia, see Cosmas, Chronica, II. 15, p. 105; Witold Sarnecki and David Nicolle, Medieval Polish Armies 966–​1500 (Oxford: Osprey, 2008), 3. For Poland, see Długosz, Annals, 225. 20. Gallus, Gesta, I. cap. 8, pp. 46–​48; Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 119. 21. Sarnecki and Nicolle, Medieval Polish, 11; For the Danish campaign, see Długosz, Annals, 97. 22. Dmitrii Mishin, “Ibrahim Ibn-​Ya’qub At-​Turtuhi’s Account of the Slavs from the Middle of the Tenth Century,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 2 (1994–​1995): 184–​199, 188; Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Fürstenhöfe aus dem 9. und 10. Jahrhundert, translated by Georg Jacob (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927), 14; David Kalhous,

150   Attila Bárány Anatomy of a Duchy: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures of Early Přemyslid Bohemia, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 11–​45. 23. Font, “Missions,” 285; Urbańczyk, “Slavic and Christian,” 220. 24. Urbańczyk, Early State, 148; Darius von Güttner-​Sporzynski, Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–​1230, Europa Sacra 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 29–​50. 25. Długosz, Annals, 97; Andrzej Pleszczyński, The Birth of a Stereotype: Polish Rulers and Their Country in German Writings c. 1000 A.D., East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 245. 26. Sarnecki and Nicolle, Medieval Polish, 3; Gallus, Gesta, I, cap. 8, p. 49; Długosz, Annals, 97; Polska technika wojskowa do 1500 roku [Polish military technique to 1500], edited by Andrzej Nadolski (Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa, 1975), 38–​39. For Leszek II, see Długosz, Annals, 225. 27. Separate contingents, e.g., acies Gneznensis. Przemysław Wiszewski, Domus Bolezlai: Values and Social Identity in Dynastic Traditions of Medieval Poland (c. 966–​1138), East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 338; Sarnecki and Nicolle, Medieval Polish, 12–​13. 28. Wolverton, Hastening toward Prague, 9–​12, 186–​227; Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 195; Cosmas, Chronica, II. cap. 48, p. 155. 29. Długosz, Annals, 109, 132, 134. 30. Sommer, Žemlička, and Třeštík, “Bohemia and Moravia,” 238; Tomáš Petráček, Power and Exploitation in the Czech Lands in the 10th–​12th centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 329, 337. 31. John Kinnamos, The Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, translated by C. M. Brand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 134; Attila Zsoldos, “The First Centuries of Hungarian Military Organization,” in A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, edited by Béla K. Király and László Veszprémy, East European Monographs 621 (Boulder, CO; New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 3–​25, 11. 32. The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary/​Decreta regni Medievalis Hungariae, 4 vols., edited by János M. Bak, György Bónis, James Ross Sweeney, Leslie S. Domonkos, Paul B. Harvey Jr., Péter Banyó, and Martyn Rady (Salt Lake City: Schlacks, 1989) [=​DRMH], vol. 1, 29; Márta Font, Koloman the Learned, King of Hungary (Szeged: Szegedi Középkorász Műhely, 2001), 41. 33. Berend, Laszlovszky, and Szakács, “Hungary,” 345. 34. Cosmas, Chronica, III. 42, p. 216. 35. Vincentii Pragensis Annales [Chronicon Boemorum], edited by Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS 17 (Hannover: Hahn, 1856), 658–​686, 667, 670. 36. [Otto of Freising], Ottonis et Rahewini Gesta Friderici I. imperatoris, edited by Georg Waitz, MGH SS 20 (Hannover: Hahn, 1912), I. cap. 32, p. 369; Archdeacon Thomas of Split/​ Thomae Archidiaconi Spalatensis, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum/​History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, Latin text by Olga Perić, edited, translated, and annotated by Damir Karbić, Mirjana Matijević Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney, Central European Medieval Texts 4 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006), cap. 37, p. 182. 37. Josef Žemlicka, “Přemysl Otakar II,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 139–​140; Dušan Třeštík and Josef Žemlicka, “The Czech State in the Era of Przemyslid Princes and Kings (from the Beginning of the 11th Century to 1306),” in A History of the Czech Lands, edited by Jaroslav Pánek, Oldřich Tůma, et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 87–​127, 113–​117.

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    151 38. Ottokars Österreichische Reimchronik, edited by Joseph Seemüller, MGH Deutsche Chroniken 5, no. 1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1890), vv. 7302–​7500, pp. 94–​99. 39. Ottokars Reimchronik, vv. 16113–​16115, 16130–​16134, pp. 213–​214; Martin Clauss, “Dürnkrut, Battle, of (1278),” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 1: 552–​ 554; Victor Spinei, “The Cuman Bishopric: Genesis and Evolution,” in The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans, edited by Florin Curta and Roman Kovalev, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 413–​456, 416–​417. 40. Ottokars Reimchronik, vv. 16260–​16265, 16270–​16273, pp. 215–​216. 41. Taktika, XVIII. cap. 55, 57. 42. Otto of Freising, Gesta, cap. 33, p. 369. For Lechfeld, see Vita S. Oudalrici, cap. 12, p. 402; Widukind, Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum, III. cap. 46, pp. 127–​128; Bowlus, The Battle of Lechfeld, chap. 6, Conclusion. 43. Gallus, Gesta, II. cap. 28, p. 168, III. cap. 22, p. 258; Długosz, Annals, 122, 135. 44. Julia Knödler, “Kulm, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 2: 477–​478, 477; Jan Szymczak, “Nakło, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 2: 43. 45. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 98. 46. Otto of Freising, Gesta, cap. 33, p. 369; Anonymus, Gesta, cap. 57, p. 124. 47. Abū Ḥāmid al-​Ġarnaṭī, al-​Mu‘rib ‘an ba‘ḍ ‘Ayā’ib al-​Maghrib [Eulogy on the countries of the West], edited by O. G. Bolshakov and A. L. Mongayt (Budapest: Gondolat, 1985), 58; Ivan Hrbek, “Ein arabischer Bericht über Ungarn,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 5, no. 3 (1955): 205–​230, 206, 214–​223. 48. Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 80, p. 150. 49. Gallus, Gesta, II. cap. 44, p. 200; Wiszewski, Domus Bolezlai, 331. 50. Simon of Kéza/​Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum/​The Deeds of the Hungarians, translated and edited by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts 1 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), cap. 74, p. 150. 51. Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 102, 118, 129, 135, pp. 195, 218, 241, 250. 52. Gallus, Gesta, I. cap. 25, II. cap. 22, 25, 34, pp. 92, 158, 162, 168, 180. 53. For Legnica, Malbork, and Mozgawa, see Długosz, Annals, 96, 125, 146, 154, 179, 400; Güttner-​Sporzynski, Poland, 161–​186. 54. Jan Szymczak, “Płowce, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 131; Długosz, Annals, 281–​282; Paul W. Knoll, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–​ 1370 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 57. 55. Márta Font, “The Emergence of East Central Europe and Approaches to Internal Differentiation,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (New York: Routledge, 2016), 24–​36, 27. 56. For Lechfeld, see Widukind, Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum, III. cap. 44, p. 125; Cosmas, Chronica, III. cap. 27, 195. 57. Robert Antonín, The Ideal Ruler in Medieval Bohemia (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 215–​216. 58. Illuminated Chronicle, 117, 119, 121, 140; Cosmas, Chronica, III. cap. 26, p. 194. 59. Třeštík and Žemlicka, “The Czech State,” 87–​112. 60. Gallus, Gesta, III. cap. 1, p. 228; III. cap. 4, p. 230. 61. Mishin, “Ibrahim Ibn-​Ya’qub,” 185; Arabische Berichte, 12; Cosmas, Chronica, I. cap. 9, 13, pp. 18–​19, 29. 62. Cosmas, Chronica, III. cap. 27, p. 195; Gallus, Gesta, II. cap. 33, p. 176; III. cap. 1, p. 220.

152   Attila Bárány 63. Anonymous, Gesta, cap. 57, p. 124; Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–​1437) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1986), 37. 64. Wiponis Opera: Gesta Chuonradi Imperatoris, edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 11 (Hannover: Hahn, 1854), 254–​275, 268; Simon of Kéza, Gesta, cap. 50, p. 119; Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 75, p. 140. 65. Annales Altahenses, 35; Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 76, p. 142. 66. Master Roger, “Epistola in miserabile carmen super destructione regni Hungarie per tartaros facta,” translated and annotated by János M. Bak and Martyn Rady, in Anonymous, The Deeds, 132–​228, cap. 40, p. 218. 67. Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken und die anonyme Kaiserchronik, edited by Franz-​ Josef Schmale and Irene Schmale-​Ott (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 147. 68. Cosmas, Chronica, III. cap. 22, p. 189. 69. Güttner-​Sporzynski, Poland, 77–​106. 70. Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 90, pp. 170–​172; Simon of Kéza, Gesta, cap. 57. pp. 126–​130. 71. Herimannus Augiensis, Chronicon de sex aetatibus mundi, edited by G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 5 (Hannover: Hahn, 1844), 67–​133, 124; Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 73, 137, pp. 136, 256. 72. Kinnamos, Deeds, 85–​87, 95–​96; Bachrach and Bachrach, Warfare, 185. 73. For Głogów see Gallus, Gesta, III. cap. 8, p. 236; Jan Szymczak, “Głogów, Siege of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 2: 211. For Augsburg, see Vita S. Oudalrici, edited by Georg Waitz, MGH SS IV (Hannover: Hahn, 1841), 384–​425, cap. 12, p. 401. 74. Archdeacon Thomas of Split, Historia, cap. 17, 38, pp. 92, 290; Roger, Epistle, cap. 40, p. 218. 75. Archdeacon Thomas of Split, Historia, cap. 17, p. 94; Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 145, p. 270; András Pálóczi Horváth, Pechenegs, Cumans, Iasians: Steppe Peoples in Medieval Hungary (Budapest: Corvina, 1989), 31ff; Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–​ 1250 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 251–​252, 281, 301–​318. 76. The Russian Primary Chronicle: The Laurentian Text, translated and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-​Wetzor (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1953), 196. 77. Gallus, Gesta, II. cap. 19, p. 154; Długosz, Annals, 134. 78. Simon of Kéza, Gesta, 57, p. 128; Illuminated Chronicle, cap. 102, p. 194. 79. Archdeacon Thomas of Split, Historia, cap. 36, pp. 256, 258. 80. László Veszprémy, “Muhi, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 32–​34; Fügedi, Castle, 42–​ 64; Bachrach and Bachrach, Warfare, 350. 81. Archdeacon Thomas of Split, Historia, cap. 36, p. 264; Roger, Epistle, cap. 28, pp. 180–​182. 82. Roger, Epistle, cap. 34, p. 200; cap. 40, p. 218. 83. Jan Szymczak, “Legnica,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 2: 500–​502; Karol Olejnik, “The Mongol Invasion of Poland in 1241 and the Battle of Legnica,” in Polish Battles and Campaigns in 13th–​ 19th Centuries, edited by Grzegorz Jasinski and Wojciech Wlodarkiewicz (Warsaw: Wojskowe Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej, 2016), 9–​16; Długosz, Annals, 179. 84. István Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-​Ottoman Balkans, 1195–​1365 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 69. 85. Długosz, Annals, 249; Davies, God’s, 67, 90. 86. Nicolle and Sarnecki, Medieval Polish, 14, 18; Tadeusz Grabarczyk, “Narrative (1300–​1500), Slavic Lands,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 287–​93, 292; “Chojnice, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 1: 397–​398; and “Cosmin Forest, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 1: 434.

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    153 87. Długosz, Annals, 293; Nicolle and Sarnecki, Medieval Polish, 18; Grabarczyk, “Narrative,” 292. 88. Liviu Pilat and Ovidiu Cristea, The Ottoman Threat and Crusading on the Eastern Border of Christendom during the 15th Century, East Central Europe and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 48 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017), 250; Tadeusz Grabarczyk, “Obrona Potoczna,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 74–​75. 89. Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita ab eo ipso conscripta et Hystoria nova de Sancto Wenceslao Martyre/​Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and His Legend of St Wenceslas, edited by Balázs Nagy and Frank Schaer, Central European Medieval Texts 2 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), cap. 14, 18, pp. 152, 166; Nicolle and Sarnecki, Medieval Polish, 34. 90. Nicolle and Hook, Tactics, 53; Długosz, Annals, 225, 229, 238, 246, 250, 274, 300, 317; Nicolle and Sarnecki, Medieval Polish, 4, 15. 91. S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-​Central Europe, 1295–​ 1345, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, ser.4 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 247–​248; Tadeusz Grabarczyk, “Grunwald, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 2: 224–​226; Długosz, Annals, 386. 92. Daniel Stone, The Polish–​Lithuanian State, 1386–​1795, A History of East Central Europe 4 (University of Washington Press, 2001), 3–​35. 93. František Šmahel, “The Hussite Wars in the Years 1420–​1434,” in Pánek et al., A History of the Czech Lands, 165–​174; Stephen Turnbull, The Hussite Wars, 1419–​36 (Oxford: Osprey, 2004), 13. 94. John Waldman, Hafted Weapons in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: The Evolution of European Staff Weapons between 1200 and 1650, History of Warfare 31 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 7–​8, 125, 145, 151, 191–​193, 199–​201. 95. Turnbull, Hussite, 35–​39; Długosz, Annals, 435; Jim Bradbury, The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare (London: Routledge, 2004), 169–​174; Pánek et al., A History of the Czech Lands, 154–​162. 96. Brian Davies, “Guliai-​gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th–​17th Century Muscovy,” in Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500–​1800, edited by Brian Davies (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 93–​108; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire: 1300–​1650: The Structure of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 269. 97. For Chojnice, see Tadeusz Grabarczyk, “Chojnice, Battle of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 1: 397–​398; For Ialomiţa, see Antonio Bonfini/​Antonius de Bonfinis, Rerum Ungaricarum decades, edited by I[osephus] Fógel, B[ela] Iványi, and L[adislaus] Juhász, Bibliotheca scriptorum medii recentisque aevorum (Leipzig: Teubner, 1936–​1941), IV, 5, 275–​280. Cf. rejected by John Jefferson, The Holy Wars of King Wladislas and Sultan Murad: The Ottoman–​Christian Conflict from 1438–​1444, History of Warfare 76 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 146–​148. 98. Thomas A. Fudge, The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia, 1418–​1437: Sources and Documents for the Hussite Crusades, Crusade Texts in Translation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 169; Turnbull, Hussite, 19; Frederick G. Heymann, John Zizka and the Hussite Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 492–​497. 99. Engel, Realm of St. Stephen, 184–​186; Martyn C. Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 132–​143. 100. Długosz, Annals, 302.

154   Attila Bárány 101. Pál Fodor, The Unbearable Weight of Empire: The Ottomans in Central Europe: A Failed Attempt at Universal Monarchy, 1390–​1566 (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Humanities, 2015), 28; János Thuróczy/​Johannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, 3 vols., edited by Erzsébet Galántai and Gyula Kristó (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1985), vol. 1, cap. 203, p. 214. 102. Pál Fodor, “Army, Ottoman (Eighth–​Eleventh/​Fourteenth–​Seventeenth Centuries),” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, edited by C. E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 33–​43. 103. Thuróczy, Chronica, cap. 233, p. 246. See Veszprémy, “The Military,” 54. 104. Géza Pálffy, “The Origins and Development of the Border Defence System against the Ottoman Empire in Hungary (Up to the Early Eighteenth Century),” in Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest, edited by Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 3–​69, 9. 105. Pál Fodor, “Introduction,” in Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth–​Early Eighteenth Centuries), edited by Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (Leiden: Brill, 2007), xi–​xx. 106. Jefferson, Holy Wars, 278–​ 286. For Kosovo, see Emanuel Constantin Antoche, “Hunyadi’s Campaign of 1448 and the Second Battle of Kosovo Polje (October 17–​ 20),” in Reconfiguring the Fifteenth-​ Century Crusade, edited by Norman Housley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 245–​284. 107. DRMH 2: 22. 108. János M. Bak, “Hungary and Crusading in the Fifteenth Century,” in Crusading in the Fifteenth Century, edited by Norman Housley (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 116–​127; András Kubinyi, Matthias Rex (Budapest: Balassi, 2008), 107–​112; Tamás Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman-​Hungarian Warfare, 1389–​ 1526 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 33, 38, 228–​229. For Bosnia, see Petrus Ransanus, Epithoma rerum Hungararum, edited by Péter Kulcsár (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1977), Index XXXVI, 172. 109. Ferenc Szakály, “Nándorfehérvár, 1521: The Beginning of the End of the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom,” in Hungarian–​Ottoman Military and Diplomatic Relations in the Age of Süleyman the Magnificent, edited by Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (Budapest: Loránd Eötvös University–​Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of History, 1994), 47–​76. 110. János M. Bak, “The Hungary of Matthias Corvinus: A State in ‘Central Europe’ on the Threshold of Modernity,” Bohemia 31 (1990): 339–​349, 346; Uwe Tresp, Söldner aus Böhmen im Dienst deutscher Fürsten: Kriegsgeschaft und Heeresorganisation im 15. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, Schöning, 2004), 69–​72; Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis, 31, 33. 111. Bonfini, Decades, IV, 8, 85–​105; Tamás Pálosfalvi, “King Matthias’ Army,” in Matthias Corvinus, the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court, 1458–​1490; Exhibition Catalogue, edited by Péter Farbaky et al. (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 295–​297, 295; Ayton, “Arms,” 207. 112. DRMH 4: 100–​104; Rady, Nobility, Land and Service, 146–​155. 113. Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis, 49; Martyn Rady, “Rethinking Jagiełło Hungary (1490–​1526),” Central Europe 3, no. 1 (2005): 3–​18, 7; Géza Pálffy, “The Habsburg Defence System in Hungary against the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century: A Catalyst of Military Development in Central Europe,” in Davies, Warfare in Eastern Europe, 35–​61, 36. 114. Ayton, “Arms,” 208; Géza Perjés, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohács 1526–​Buda 1541, East European Monographs 255 (Boulder, CO; New York: Columbia

Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization    155 University Press, 1989); János B. Szabó and Ferenc Tóth, Mohács (1526: Soliman le Magnifique prend pied en Europe Central (Paris: Économica, 2009). 115. Bonfini, Decades, III, 5, 45–​50, 60–​65; Thuróczy, Chronica, cap. 232, 235, pp. 244, 248; Pálosfalvi, “Matthias’ Army,” 295. 116. Stephen Turnbull, Tannenberg 1410: Disaster for the Teutonic Knights (Oxford: Osprey, 2003), 49, 61. 117. Bonfini, Decades, IV, 8, 85–​105; Pálosfalvi, “Matthias’ Army,” 295; János B. Szabó, “The Pavise, Infantry Shield of Matthias Corvinus’ Army,” in Farbaky et al., Matthias, 298–​ 299, 298. 118. Turnbull, Hussite, 19; Heymann, Zizka, 492–​497; Fudge, The Crusade, 169. 119. Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis, 32. 120. Długosz, Annals, 295. 121. Bonfini, Decades, III, 5, 45–​50; Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis, 96. 122. Miloslav Polívka, “Prokop the Bald,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 145–​146, 145; Grabarczyk, “Narrative,” 290. 123. [Anonymous], “La vita di messer Philippo Scolari,” Archivio Storico Italiano 4 (1843): 151–​ 162, 160. 124. Miloslav Polívka, “Vyšehrad, Siege of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 421–​422, 422. 125. Veszprémy, “Military,” 53. 126. Colin Imber, The Crusade of Varna, 1443–​45, Crusade Texts in Translation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 78. 127. Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis, 94; Thuróczy, Chronica, 233, p. 247; [Anonymous], “La vita,” 159. 128. [Anonymous], “La vita,” 161. 129. Imber, Varna, 185. 130. Miloslav Polívka, “Vyšehrad, Siege of,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 3: 421–​422, 422. 131. Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 16–​18; Maurice Keen, “The Changing Scene: Guns, Gunpowder and Permanent Armies,” in Keen, Medieval Warfare, 272–​291, 282–​283; For Golubac, see: László Veszprémy, “King Sigismund of Luxemburg at Golubac (Galambóc) 1428,” in Church Union and Crusading in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, edited by Christian Gastgeber, Ioan-​Aurel Pop, Oliver Jens Schmidt, and Alexandru Simon (Cluj: Center for Transylvanian Studies, 2009), 291–​308. 132. Vásáry, “Cumans,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 1: 521–​523. 133. János B. Szabó, “Hussars,” in Oxford Encyclopedia, 2: 306–​307, 306; Ayton, “Arms,” 196. 134. Gábor Ágoston, “Ottoman Warfare in Europe, 1453–​1826,” in European Warfare, 1453–​ 1815, edited by Jeremy Black (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 118–​144, 122. 135. Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis, 35, 37, 43. 136. The Hungarian Hussar, 13–​14. 137. For Świecino see Grabarczyk, “Narrative,” 291; Nicolle and Sarnecki, Medieval Polish, 19. 138. Szabó, “Pavise,” 298–​299.

Further Reading Berend, Nora. “The Expansion of Latin Europe.” In The Central Middle Ages, edited by Daniel Power, 178–​208. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

156   Attila Bárány Charvát, Petr. The Emergence of the Bohemian State. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Curta, Florin. Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300). 2 vols. Brill’s Companions to European History 19. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019. Dalewski, Zbigniew. Ritual and Politics: Writing the History of a Dynastic Conflict in Medieval Poland. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450, 5. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. Veszprémy, László. “The State and Military Affairs in East-​Central Europe, 1380–​c.1520s.” In European Warfare, 1350–​ 1750, edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim, 96–​ 109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Chapter 7

C o operati on a nd C onflict in Di pl omac y and War wit h i n a nd around Centra l E u rope Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski, László Veszprémy, Emir O. Filipović, and Christian Raffensperger

Cooperation and conflict are among the most distinctive themes in the history of premodern Central Europe, forms of sociopolitical and cultural interplay that shaped the developments of small-​and large-​scale polities between the decline of the Classical Roman Empire and the emergence of the nation state in modern times.* The various forms and extent of cooperation and conflict in Central Europe relate to a diversity of ethnicities, political identities, traditions, religions, and cultural differences which still have political consequences today. Yet while the region was densely populated and economically interconnected, emerging conflicts rooted in, at time, the troublesome organization of coexistence, were resolved through a vast range of means that extended from consensual diplomacy to articulated war. This complex feature of medieval history in Central Europe has long attracted scholarship with different perspectives and not rarely contrary conclusions. We examine the historiographic research traditions on Central European history concerning war and diplomacy, followed by an assessment of the strengths and limitations of these narratives and a condensed overview of the basic facts, along with a possible interpretation of the events. Finally, we sketch possible future scholarly perspectives on diplomacy and war within and around Central Europe.

158    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al.

Research Traditions A certain causa scribendi has always driven historiography, that is, an agenda that directs the narrative and arranges the interpretations of sources toward a certain message. In the most extreme case, writing history legitimated the ownership of territories because it seemed to provide rights from the past to confirm or dispute legal possession. Historians were literally nation-​builders.1 Viewed from this perspective, historiography, paraphrasing Carl von Clausewitz, can be considered war (the extension of politics by other means—​in historiography, by means of written narratives). These positions of historiography can be seen in the nineteenth century, when history underwent a process of professionalization and methodological refinement, yet were also strongly influenced by nationalism and other ideologies. Past perspectives were marred further by the vicious conflicts of the twentieth century. These experiences led to scholarship focusing mainly on the genesis and fragmentation of nations and states. Previous historians have conducted meticulous research on the presumed causes of conflict, such as ethnicity, dynastic politics, and ruler-​aristocracy relationships. Past scholars have also compiled detailed reconstructions of wars, armistices, and peace treaties. This research, however, was undertaken from particular perspectives, mostly separate from each other. Each national master narrative presents a justification, often contrary to others, for cooperation or aggression within the network of premodern states and communities being threatened by internal conflicts and external powers. In short, fragmentation of Central European narratives is not only due to linguistic barriers, but also to various political perspectives. To begin with the influential scholars dealing with the Balkans in the Middle Ages, one has to start with Stojan Novaković (d. 1915). While simultaneously a historian, diplomat, and politician, he explained Balkan history mostly through conflict with the Ottoman Empire. František Palacký (d. 1876), one of the most influential nineteenth-​century historians of the Bohemian Middle Ages, construed the nation mostly in opposition to its neighbor—​Germany. This conflict was the structural element of his thesis. Mykhailo Hrushevsky (d. 1934) wrote another example of nationalistic narrative, the ten-​volume History of Ukraine-​Rus’ (Історія України-​Руси) in which he argues for the Ukraine as the true heir of the Kievan Rus’ and questions the continuity between the Kievan Rus’ and the Grand Duchy of Moscow via the Vladimir-​Suzdal Principality. During Soviet times, when Ukraine was part of the USSR, it was unacceptable to refer to Hrushevsky’s work in the Ukrainian SSR. It only became possible in the 1980s to access the book and restore it to academic debates. In contrast, Joachim Lelewel (d. 1861) argued for a specific political institution, gminowładztwo (communal demoticism) as characteristic of Slavic communities, which seemingly influenced cooperation and conflict in the multiethnic Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth.2 Marxist and Communist philosophy left significant marks on the historiography of conflict alongside nationalist agendas, especially during the USSR’s influence on all of

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    159 the present-​day Central European countries. Unprecedented archeological excavations, heavily supported by the communist regimes, made numerous discoveries, but these were interpreted mostly within the Marxist framework of “material culture history.”3 Furthermore, the narratives on class conflicts or ecclesiastical and state power struggles in the Middle Ages were meant to exemplify the correctness of Marxist dialectics, sometimes—​paradoxically—​these Marxist interpretations were linked with nationalistic ideas.4 Narratives influenced by nationalism and Marxism, even though they provided many detailed studies, focused mainly on conflict rather than its resolution or cooperation. Central European interconnectivity has recently become a subject of interest.5 The resolution of conflicts through peace treaties and alliances has stimulated researchers to examine the concept of “international” diplomacy, even though the term is slightly anachronistic.6 Moreover, studies on medieval rituals have influenced recent historiography, proposing common frameworks for debating fragmented narratives and placing Central European events in the realm of medieval symbolic communication.7 Recent studies on remembering largely interconnected dynasties also add supranational perspectives to the debates on cooperation and conflict in medieval Central Europe.8 In consequence, these recent reassessments refrain from the fragmented approaches that formerly revolved around national conflicts. Instead, these works lean toward perceiving Central Europe as an interconnected part of European or even global history.

Condensed Overview of Basic Facts The Balkans (Emir O. Filipović) The geographical extent and the cultural-​historical conception of the region commonly referred to as the Balkans are still matters of controversy subject to both academic and popular debate. Defining the region is difficult because of its troubled history in the context of global geopolitics and the dominant political power centers after the end of the Middle Ages, particularly in the turbulent nineteenth century. Furthermore, the medieval history of the Balkans is a field that has been gravely abused in recent times as various groups have sought to employ it to further their political agenda and legitimize their hostility toward others. In a purely physical sense, though, the Balkans are roughly limited by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Ionian Sea to the southwest, the Aegean Sea to the south and southeast, and the Black Sea to the east and northeast, with the Danube River constituting a border on the north. Similarly to the current state of affairs, in the Middle Ages this area was also broken up into many various, sometimes complex and often unstable polities, ethnic, and linguistic communities that transformed, changed, appeared, and disappeared under the influence of external political factors, making it

160    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. challenging to produce a cohesive and all-​encompassing general overview of its medieval history. The diversity and plurality of the region were defined by the fact that throughout the Middle Ages the Balkans were never united under a single crown or ruled by only one state at any given time. All the great empires that controlled the area—​Byzantine, Venetian, Hungarian, Ottoman, and Habsburg—​ considered it their periphery or frontier, even though their jurisdictions were not precisely defined and remained diffuse, vague, elusive, or even weak. This meant that cooperation and conflict not only resulted from local or regional interests but were also dependent on geostrategic reasoning and decisions made in far distant centers. Furthermore, the region was located between and contested by the two traditional centers of West and East—​Rome and Constantinople—​and their intense competition contributed to the creation and development of significant contrasts in the religious, cultural, and political composition of the Balkans that have lasted at least from the mid-​twelfth century until the present day. The conflicts within the region were further shaped and reaffirmed by its geographical position, which made it susceptible to strong influences from the Mediterranean South as well as from Central Europe to the north. Despite the overwhelming ethnic, cultural, and political diversity, the region itself was united by an underlying collective Slavic linguistic “identity,” which facilitated marriage and political alliances among the seemingly heterogeneous political entities. In certain areas where the Slavic factor was lacking, particularly in parts of Hungary, Romania, and Greece, it was conveniently replaced by the unifying qualities of either Catholic or Orthodox Christianity. The critical phenomenon that determined the evolution of the Balkans was the arrival and settlement of various distinct ethnolinguistic Slavic groups on the erstwhile territory of the Roman Empire, occupying the area between the Adriatic and Danube, a process that lasted roughly from the sixth to the eighth century ad. The encounter of the non-​Christian Slavs with the Christianized local population did not suffice to sway them completely toward the Christian religion, making it necessary to launch intensified missionary activities by the “Slavic Apostles”—​brothers Constantine and Methodius—​who devised the first script for their language in the ninth century and began converting Slavs to Christianity. This process took enormous effort, however, and ended very late, eventually being completed only by the end of the eleventh century. With the gradual waning of Byzantine and Carolingian influence, Slavic communities began to consolidate and create their own political systems that eventually resulted in the establishment, emergence, and growth of the medieval states of Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and later, Bosnia. The region was also affected by the arrival and settlement of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, the subsequent rise of the kingdom of Hungary, and its clash with Byzantium in the twelfth century. The fall of Constantinople to the crusaders in 1204 and the Mongol attacks in the mid-​thirteenth century ultimately weakened the Hungarian and Byzantine political hold over the region. At the beginning and in the first half of the fourteenth century, the Balkans were dominated by three major power players—​Byzantium, Bulgaria, and Serbia. All three were Orthodox, and Bulgaria and Serbia were in competition for supremacy, both

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    161 modeling themselves on the imperial traditions of Byzantium. This created a kind of triangle of empires that still represents one of the most remarkable aspects of politics in the region. The fourteenth century was also characterized by additional structural shifts caused by the rising influence of Hungary on the north—​driven by the energetic kings of the Angevin dynasty—​and Venice to the south—​which was dominated by its interests in the coastal areas. Another discernible trait of this period was the rapid political and social development of communities and states in the Balkans due to the rise of communication, trade, and mining, particularly in Serbia and Bosnia. The late Middle Ages in the region, however, are usually viewed through the lens of the decline of Byzantium and the seemingly unstoppable ascent of the Ottoman Turks, which changed coalitions and competition. This process lasted for approximately a century and a half, from the initial conquests of Thrace in 1352 until direct Ottoman rule was stabilized in the areas south of the Danube River during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Even though the Ottomans’ expansion was gradual and resulted in the progressive absorption of certain territories during different stages of their advance, most modern national historiographies present the Ottoman conquest as an abrupt end of the medieval period and as the termination of the processes that characterized the Middle Ages. Therefore, each country or region has established its own distinct timeframe: i.e., Macedonia 1391, Bulgaria 1396, Serbia 1459, Greece 1460, Bosnia 1463, and so on. The conflicts and interactions resulting from the Ottoman advance have been a large area of research and discussion among historians of various disciplines, including specialists in Medieval, Crusade, Renaissance, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Mediterranean studies, giving rise to a renewed interest in the history of the late medieval Balkans.

Hungary (László Veszprémy) The Carpathian Basin was important in the history of Central Europe even before the Hungarians were the first single state to succeed in bringing the whole region under its control. From the perspective of cooperation and conflict, Hungarian rule after the first turmoil initiated an unrivaled era of consolidation and modernization that resulted in political stability for six centuries. The exercise of power over an area of some 320,000 square kilometers (c. 20,000 square miles), previously multicentered tribal territories, gave way to the establishment of a powerful autocratic dynasty. This process was symbolized by the foundation of new secular and ecclesiastical centers: Székesfehérvár, the royal necropolis, and Esztergom, the seat of the archbishop. By adopting Christianity, this area was integrated into the social and cultural community of the Christian kingdoms represented by the two Roman (German and Byzantine) emperors. This also made intermarriage with the other Christian royal families easier, a potent operational instrument in diplomacy. The most apparent characteristics of the change were the minting of silver coinage, the issue of the first Latin charters (documents), written law-​books, and adopting heavy cavalry armament and tactics, an innovation compared to traditional nomad warfare.

162    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. Despite the challenges to the throne in medieval Hungary, the kingdom was never seriously threatened by division; the chiefs of the administrative units along the borders (Transylvanian or Slavonian officials), mostly remained loyal vassals of the king. This centralized development, however, also had a restraining effect on establishing further centers of power and culture; no court life existed apart from the royal court. The royal court always initiated social change, like the great transformation of the thirteenth century. Even in 1382, 23 percent of the country’s territory was owned by the king; no earlier than 1490, it had been reduced to 4.5 percent. This signified a new way for the king to cooperate with the nobles of his kingdom. Cooperation and conflict emerged in yet another field. From the west, subsequent waves of German settlers were invited to the Carpathian Basin, along with those referred to as Latins, mainly Walloons. From the east, former nomads, the Pechenegs, and from the middle of the thirteenth century, the Cumans and Iasians arrived, all preserving their light cavalry tactics for centuries. A significant Muslim military diaspora was destroyed in 1241 by the Mongols, who at that time were maintaining contacts with distant Arab cultural centers. This ethnic and religious diversity did not alter the definitive ideological role of Latin Christianity. Even before 1301, the Hungarian kings titled themselves as the kings of the eight neighboring kingdoms and principalities. The kings built up a middle power status starting with the conquest of Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia by the beginning of the twelfth century. For different reasons, the integration of the neighboring provinces of Galicia (Halitsch), Serbia, Bosnia, and the Vidin region of Bulgaria, as well as Wallachia and Moldova (from the fourteenth century) remained temporary. They were brought under Hungarian political influence within the context of a pax Hungarica; nonetheless, this unification did not last. During the fifteenth century, the northern parts of Serbia and Bosnia were annexed as part of an anti-​Ottoman strategy. Apart from the Mongol invasion, Hungary was never seriously threatened with foreign subordination until the Ottoman pressure, which started in the middle of the fifteenth century. On the contrary, due to the Angevins of Naples, in the last decades of the reign of Charles Robert ((1301/1308–1342)), and under the reigns of Louis I the Great (1342–​1382) and Emperor Sigismund (1387–​1437), Hungary played a far more critical role in regional politics than ever before. Hungary retained the status of a second-​rank power, however, despite its enormous political growth; and Hungarian influence in the Balkans and the Mediterranean region remained limited. The most important result of the fight against the Ottomans was the construction of a dual defense line from Transylvania to the Adriatic Sea. All this fooled the contemporaries and posterity with a false illusion of a grand power position; only the prestige of rulers and their military or diplomatic genius—​if there was any—​gave the country far higher authority and influence than was justified by its economic potential. The era of King Matthias (1458–​1490) was perceived as extraordinary even by the following generations, a period when Hungary participated actively in European politics with an efficient army. Hungary occupied Moravian, Silesian, and Austrian provinces; conquered Vienna; and established one of the most spectacular Renaissance

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    163 court cultures north of the Alps. There is no doubt that, until 1526, the country leaned toward the Western European countries in many respects, even if the social structures were “loosely woven,” as Jenő Szűcs said.9 The long peaceful decades provided a unique opportunity for economic and cultural growth and the adoption of a usual “Western” lifestyle—​all these phenomena inspired the idea of a Golden Age of cooperation and relative peace. King Matthias’s centralized absolutist government practices were based on the increased impact of royal power, even though there was greater continuity of archaic elements from earlier governments than there was innovation in this system. The king mainly used the privileges granted by customary law that his weaker predecessors had lacked the strength to exploit. Drawing on the resources of an administration with expert and professional members was part of the definition of a modern Renaissance state, although few traces endured. The first steps were taken toward a permanent army, but the permanent and continuous existence of a military decision-​making body was missing during the whole medieval period. Military organization remained slow and unorganized, and the country was unable to defend the several hundred kilometers of the border against the Ottomans. The relative Hungarian military success against the Ottomans distracted other kingdoms and postponed an earlier, more substantial, military reaction, which, even then, could not have prevented the Ottoman advance. Hungarian diplomats realized the necessity for the Christian powers to collaborate. After the Varna campaign under the papal legate in 1444, however, a new joint action was only initiated in 1526, but it was mostly unsuccessful and had only limited remote support. Broader cooperation was prevented by French and Austrian conflicts, and the Hungarians were unable to obtain the necessary support, even though the Hungarian king had a broad network of social ties; he was a member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, held a Bohemian royal title, and his wife was the Habsburg princess. The royal army collapsed within two hours into the battle against the Ottomans at Mohacs, however, in the early afternoon of August 29, 1526. The army was annihilated, but not the general population. Although Hungary was unable to meet the challenges of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman advance faced a stratified society with distinctive strategies for survival.

Bohemia (Gerald Schwedler) The Czech lands became part of the cultural sphere of Latin Christianity in the tenth century. The Bohemian dukes from the Přemyslid dynasty used the title of king from the twelfth century onward and passed the office down within the dynasty. They also qualified as electors of the emperor, however, who brought Bohemia closer to western partners and integrated the dynasty and elites into German networks. The twelfth century was a period of Czech expansion in both territory and political role, particularly under the reign of King Přemysl Otakar II (1253–​1278). After attempting to secure peace

164    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. (the treaty of Vienna, 1277), he tried to consolidate his territorial acquisitions against Rudolph of Habsburg by military means but died in the battle at Marchfeld in 1278. This aggressive and cooperative diplomatic and political engagement led to claims to the thrones of Poland and Hungary. The period of Přemyslid reign ended abruptly in 1306, however, when Wenceslaus III was murdered without having a male heir. This brought about another period of considerable political, social, and cultural change. In 1310, Elizabeth, younger sister of Wenceslaus III, was married to John, son of Henry of Luxemburg, king of the Romans. This alliance ensured dynastic continuity and inaugurated the authority of Luxemburg in the Bohemian kingdom as well as full integration into the circle of French diplomatic exchange. Nevertheless, the reign of John of Luxemburg (1310–​1346) was laden with internal and external conflicts. The new ruler faced political demands by the local aristocrats, who wanted to eliminate the influence of a foreign power in the Czech state. Moreover, his position was quite complicated because he was supported by only some part of the Bohemian nobility and lived in disagreement with his powerful wife. Nevertheless, through his extensive diplomatic activities John succeeded in laying the foundations for the rise of his dynasty under the reign of his son, Charles IV of Luxemburg (1346–​1378). Charles became king of the Romans in 1346 and emperor in 1355. Furthermore, he succeeded in temporarily transferring the political and cultural center of the empire to Prague, where the university, the first institution of this kind north of the Alps and east of the Rhine, was founded in 1348. Charles led a new style of government, however, and had a completely different strategy of political conflict resolution. On the one hand, he encouraged a vast production of historiographic, didactic, and legal works, which earned him the posthumous attribute “father of the fatherland” (pater patriae). On the other hand, he was defamed as a chafferer and merchant by his contemporaries for his attitude and avoiding knightly conflicts in arms. The reign of his son, Wenceslaus IV (1378–​1419), was marked by severe political and social upheavals. He was confronted with the problem of the papal schism, which had broken out at the beginning of his reign, and as king of the Romans he was unable to manage the situation in the empire. In 1400, Wenceslaus was deposed by a majority of the German electorate princes, who found his government negligent and blamed it for becoming “too Czech.” Additionally, another line of conflict arose during his reign as the king of Bohemia: religion. Among the men who were trying to reform the Church, John Hus (1370–​1415) quickly emerged as the most influential. Inspired by the work of the English reformer John Wycliff, he came into conflict with the archbishop of Prague. His trial by the ecclesiastical institution became a matter of state. The king first supported Hus, but his excommunication in 1411 and his protests against the sale of indulgences isolated the Czech reformer from his royal benefactor. He was sentenced to death on July 6, 1415, at the Council of Constance. The news of John Hus’s execution provoked emotions among fairly broad segments of society in Bohemia and led to an entirely new form of conflict: religious/​ ethnic civil war in Bohemia. Its supporters, later known as “utraquists”—​because they

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    165 called for communion of both bread and wine for the laity (under both species [sub utraque specie])—​triggered a revolution in 1419. The bloody Hussite wars (1419–​1434) revealed the weakness of Bohemian royal power in the person of King Wenceslaus’s half-​brother, Sigismund of Luxemburg (1420–​1437), who tried to recover his legacy with the help of several crusader invasions of Bohemia. The conflicts ended between 1432 and 1434 with a compromise, the compactata, at the Council of Basel. These agreements ensured the legal status of both faiths in Bohemia, with every inhabitant of the country being able to choose between the Catholic religion and that of the Utraquists. It was in this atmosphere that the first “Hussite” king, George of Podébrady (1458–​ 1471), ascended the throne. He reflected intensely on conflict resolution when neither the emperor nor the pope could take a neutral position. A result was the first model for a league of nations, which was presented in the “Treaty on the Establishment of Peace throughout Christendom.” Faced with the intransigence of Pope Pius II, who had canceled the compactata in 1462, George engaged in intense diplomatic activity to change the image of the Bohemian kingdom as a heretical country. Moreover, King George ensured the peaceful development of the Czech countries by making agreements with the Polish-​Lithuanian Catholic Jagiellonian dynasty, which ruled during the following period (1471–​1526).

Poland (Paweł Figurski) The period of Polish medieval history dealt with here can best be described as a “quest for identification.” Contrary to what historiography used to claim, medieval Poland was in flux, its identity porous, and its fate on the map of Europe undetermined, as witnessed by a realignment from the West toward the East.10 The Piast ruling dynasty emerged abruptly with its realm in the middle of the tenth century as a broadly interconnected chiefdom. The first historical ruler, Mieszko (d. 992), enjoyed a friendship (amicitia) with the Roman emperor, Otto I; married a Bohemian princess, Doubravka; and received Latin-​rite baptism around 966. Before his death he issued a highly original donation of his realm to St. Peter in Rome granting many different territories to Pope John XV. Constant military conquest marked this formative period for the Piast realm (c. the 960s to the 1030s). Vast regions between the Vistula and the Oder rivers were conquered by the 990s. In the south, Mieszko was competing with the Bohemian Přemyslid dynasty, and in the north fighting against non-​Christian Polabian Slavs. The conquest was possible due to an efficient multicultural military organization. The slave trade with the two caliphates in Baghdad and Cordoba made it possible to gather silver and—​consequently—​warriors for military campaigns. Occasional interventions of his son, Bolesław the Brave (d. 1025), at the beginning of the eleventh century, reached Prague, Moravia, Kyiv, and Saxony. These military expeditions, however, were not always intended to exert stable control over the neighboring realms but resulted from

166    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. involvement in conflicts among various ruling families with whom the Piast dynasty was already interconnected. This constant military conquest caused the collapse of the realm in the 1030s, during the reign of Mieszko II (d. 1034). By the time of the realm’s implosion, the Polish dynasty had received the royal title. During the assembly/​council in Gniezno in 1000, Emperor Otto III (d. 1002) labeled Bolesław the cooperator of the Roman Empire (cooperator imperii). The Polish Church was granted an archbishopric in Gniezno. After the death of Otto’s successor, Henry II (d. 1024), with whom Bolesław conducted a long-​lasting war (final treaty in 1018), Bolesław and his son, Mieszko II, were crowned and anointed c. 1025. Mieszko II married a descendent of the Ottonian imperial family; other members of the dynasty had already joined the ruling families of Bohemia, Rus’, Saxony, and possibly Hungary and Sweden. As early as the High Middle Ages, these diplomatic and military events (c. 960s–​1030s) served as the origin myths of the Polish kingdom and became a point of reference during the later periods. The following two centuries were marked by passage from the failed attempts to maintain large-​scale interconnection (c. the 1040s to the 1180s) into full regionalization (c. the 1180s to the 1300s). For instance, Bolesław the Generous (d. c.1081) strove to follow in the footsteps of the first Piasts; he plundered Kyiv, then stole the treasures of the allied Rus’ ruler, Iziaslav Iaroslavich, which Pope Gregory VII (d. 1086) admonished Bolesław to return to the Rus’ monarch. Moreover, Bolesław reorganized the Church in the Polish province. His attempts to restore the first monarchy led to his coronation and the anointing although he was soon after exiled to Hungary (c. 1079) for reasons that are obscure. Bolesław was the last Polish king until the royal inauguration of Przemysł in 1295. In the course of the twelfth century the Piasts’ realm was divided among the members of the dynasty, and from around the 1180s onward these regional duchies became separate regional realms, maintaining individual relationships with their neighbors and each other. Some of these regional duchies leaned toward Bohemia or the Holy Roman Empire, and some territories were lost to direct Piast influence, i.e., Pomerania. Foreign and local writers, however, still used the term regnum Poloniae to denote the highly fragmented realm of the Piast dukes. This regnum was subordinated more strongly to the Holy Roman emperors than before (i.e., tribute was paid many times in the twelfth century), and occasionally to Přemyslid rulers. In 1300, the Přemyslid Wenceslaus II (d. 1305) was invited and crowned king of Poland. In the thirteenth century, however, a new vision emerged of direct subordination of the Piast regnum not to the Holy Roman Empire but to the papacy alone, which intensified the diplomatic ties with the papal curia (see ­chapter 19 in this volume, by Zielinska and Razum). Besides dynastic conflicts, there were many campaigns, sometimes labeled crusades, against the non-​Christians in the north: the Polabian Slavs until their defeat in the twelfth century, and the Prussians until the 1230s, when the Teutonic Order was brought in by Piast rulers and took over the initiative in this region. From the thirteenth century onward, the Lithuanians were the non-​Christians who raided throughout the Piast realms and were challenged by both diplomatic (marriages, involvement in the baptism of Mindaugas in 1251) and military means. Various Mongol invasions in the thirteenth

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    167 century, even though devastating to some extent, did not cause subjugation to the Mongols. On the contrary, the invasions brought an opportunity for large-​scale interconnected activity; one of the Polish Franciscans, Benedictus Polonus, joined and described the diplomatic mission to the great khan initiated by Pope Innocent IV, in the 1240s. The fourteenth century was marked by large-​scale interconnectivity, especially toward the East, which led to the transformation of a haphazard composite dynastic conglomerate (c. 1300) into a politically stable kingdom (c. 1385) with an idea that structured the realm—​the crown of the Polish Kingdom (corona regni Poloniae). One of the large-​ scale initiatives was Casimir the Great’s (d. 1370) arbitration between the conflicted Charles IV of Luxemburg and Louis I of Anjou, which concluded with the 1364 congress of monarchs in Cracow. Among the other participants at this meeting was Peter I de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, who promoted a crusade against the Turks. Intense regional diplomatic and military activities targeted all the neighbors. The goal behind them was the expansion of the Polish kingdom toward the East, which resulted in the subordination of some Rus’ lands (parts of Galicia-​Volhynia). The Polish kings enjoyed positive relationships with various Rus’ rulers and improved a relationship with the Lithuanians despite military rivalry over Rus’; e.g., Casimir the Great married Anna, a Lithuanian princess. Poland sought assistance from the papacy, despite close connections with Rus’ (regarded in the fourteenth century as schismatic); special protection for the Jews, persecuted elsewhere; and alliances with the non-​Christian Lithuanians. Using an argument similar to the later plea of antemurale Christianitatis (bulwark of Christendom), Polish diplomats tried to garner papal support against the Teutonic Order (many campaigns and trials from the 1310s, an eternal peace signed in 1343). The Piasts also sought papal approval for Władysław Łokietek’s royal coronation of 1320, against the claims of Luxemburg dynasty, who subsequently took over Bohemia and claimed the right to the Polish throne in the fourteenth century. The succession to the Polish throne during the reign of Casimir the Great (1333–​1370) was negotiated at various meetings (1339, 1355, 1364, 1369) with the Angevin dynasty, who secured the rulership of Hungary in 1308. Because of Charles I of Anjou’s marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of the Polish king, their son, Louis I (d. 1382), took over the government in Poland after Casimir’s death. This rested on previous agreements with Casimir and also on concessions Louis I granted the Polish nobility (especially at Kassa/​ Košice in 1374). His daughter, Hedwig (d. 1399), was crowned after Louis’s death. During the personal union with Hungary, the idea of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom (considering the realm as suprapersonal and separate from government of a single Piast ruler) was broadly introduced into Polish political culture, mostly because it was supported by the Polish nobility. The political elite were eager to control the benefits resulting from the conquest of Rus’ lands. This eastern expansion was the reason behind the personal unions with Hungary and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that marked a later period. In the fifteenth century, unions with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were signed in various treaties, from the Kreva act of 1385 until the final one in Lublin in 1569. Through these acts, the Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth, consisting of many political traditions, forms of Christianity, and various ethnicities, became a key player in

168    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. European politics. Jogaiła/​Władysław II Jagiełło (d. 1434), grand duke of Lithuania, having received baptism, married Hedwig and started the Christianization of the last non-​Christian realm in Northern Europe. He gave his name to the Jagiellonian dynasty, which was among the most powerful ruling families in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, intermarried with the Habsburg and many other royal dynasties, reaching the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, controlling Moldovia, and expanding the realm of the Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth to the north, east, and south. Some of the Europe-​wide scale of events included successful wars against the Teutonic Order (victory at Grunwald/​Žalgiris/​Tannenberg in 1410 and the 1454–​1466 war), a failed crusade against the Ottoman Empire (King Władysław III died on the battlefield near Varna in 1444), active diplomacy with the papacy and the Conciliarism movement (e.g., Paulus Vladimiri presented arguments in favor of the ius gentium (law of nations) at the Council of Constance in 1415). Developments in the fifteenth century paved the way for rival expansionism among the empires of the Jagiellonians, the Habsburgs, the Ottoman Turks, and the rulers of Moscow over the Central and Eastern Europe.

Kievan Rus’ and the East (Christian Raffensperger) The seven-​hundred-​year span from the beginning of the ninth through the early sixteenth century was complex and tumultuous, but two broad themes can be used to roughly structure this period. First, increasing interconnectivity developed between Rus’ and the rest of medieval Europe, followed by a period of increasing separation and otherness of Rus’. Rus’ itself was founded through interconnectivity. Scandinavian explorers (Vikings), merchants, and raiders, expanding down the eastern European river systems, founded trading posts and occupied villages along the major river routes, first the Volga and later Dnieper, in the eighth and ninth centuries. These Vikings eventually created small kingdoms for themselves, which were ultimately taken over by one family, known later as the Riurikids; their kingdom was known as Rus’. By the middle of the tenth century, a kingdom was based in Kyiv, with its axis along the Dnieper River, oriented firmly astride the east-​west trading routes as well to Hungary and Poland and further eastward into the steppe. These various routes had great importance to the early rulers of Rus’, and after Christianization in 988/​989, they intermarried with all of the significant families of Christian Europe. In the first century after Christianization there were marriages with the ruling families of Byzantium, Hungary, Poland, the German Empire, France, Anglo-​ Saxon England, and Sweden. These marriages tied Rus’ firmly into the web of medieval European family relations. It also pulled them into multiple conflicts, principally with Poland and Hungary, their closest neighbors to the west. Although later history tells a story of constant conflict between Russia and Poland, Rus’ was, in fact, often allied with the leader, or one of them, of Poland. This was true when Iaroslav the Wise of Rus’ assisted Casimir the Restorer in his restoration and was true again when Bolesław II of Poland assisted Iziaslav Iaroslavich of Rus’ in regaining his throne in Kyiv (twice).

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    169 The broad integration of Rus’ into Europe began to change, however, in the thirteenth century. This was due primarily to three factors; the fragmentation of Rus’, the arrival of the Mongols, and the Crusading ideal. From the end of the twelfth century, Rus’ was less and less united as a kingdom, despite its continuing unification under the ruling family of the Riurikids. This resulted in power centers in Novgorod in the north, Vladimir-​Suzdal in the northeast, and Galicia-​ Volhynia in the southwest. Vladimir-​Suzdal, which claimed the mantle of Rus’ for itself, was less interested in interaction with the broader medieval Europe, which was also farther away, beyond the neighboring Rus’ polities. Thus, their European interactions, whether conflict, marriage or trade, decreased immensely. Galicia-​Volhynia, in contrast, was embedded in the conflicts of Poland and Hungary. Their ruling families were intermarried and their conflicts were shared until Galicia-​Volhynia was eventually split between Poland and the newly emergent state of Lithuania, which eventually merged into one Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth. The arrival of the Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century dramatically reshaped medieval Europe. In 1240–​1241 the Mongols devastated much of southern Rus’ as well as Poland and Hungary. The Mongols incorporated only the cities of Rus’ into their empire, leaving Poland and Hungary outside their sphere of influence. This helped to create a division between the cities of Rus’ and the territories to their west with which they had been intimately connected for centuries, best expressed by the Hungarian ruler, Bela IV’s, statement that his kingdom was the “gateway to Europe.” Although the original goal of the Crusades was the Christian conquest of Jerusalem, over the twelfth century this quickly evolved into Latin Christian domination over all other religions, including other Christianities. This policy affected Rus’ most dramatically in the thirteenth century, beginning with the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and continuing through the actions of the papal legate, William of Sabina, in the 1220s. All of this culminated in crusades declared against Rus’ by Latin knights and crusading orders—​the most famous of which were the attacks of the Swedes and the Sword Brothers, both defeated by Alexander Nevsky on the Neva River and on Lake Peipus/​Chud, respectively (1240/​1242). These religiously motivated attacks finally convinced the Russians that their Christianity was not the Christianity of their neighbors and began to enhance their sense of religious identity. Over the course of the thirteenth century, these three factors, acting together, began to create a divide between the cities of Rus’, most notably in the northeast, and the rest of medieval Europe, with where they had married, traded, talked, and traveled for so long.

Future Perspectives The historiography on cooperation and conflict was formerly written mostly from a nationalist viewpoint and remains highly fragmented today, thus it is useful to pursue a

170    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. supranational perspective. Exploring interconnection and a more intense comparative approach are promising avenues of research. Publishing digitized sources, their modern critical editions, and translations as well as research offered in more available languages will pave the way for more interlinked historiography. But will this necessarily mean that the histories of Central Europe will become less nationalistic once written in English? At any rate, after all this necessary work it will be possible to compose narratives on cooperation and conflict not divided according to language research traditions, as this chapter had to do, but according to other perspectives and paradigms, i.e., networks, exchange of knowledge, local versus global means of symbolic communication, collective memory traditions, and other topics. It is also probable that comparative approaches already applied extensively in historiography will further elucidate Central European phenomena, leading to the abandonment of narratives predominantly focused on group formation and nation-​building.11 For the same purpose of challenging fragmented historiographies, it will be necessary to reject ideologically driven interpretations and move beyond the framework of former mythologies, i.e., the fetish-​like interest in the development and collapse of the “state” in Polish or Bohemian historiography. As for the Balkans, it would be beneficial to link the networks of nobles and royal families more closely, as well as to investigate the continuity and discontinuity caused by the Ottoman conquest. Contacts with the Ottoman Empire should also be re-​examined in Hungarian historiography. Even though contemporary Russian scholarship seems to isolate the history of Rus’ from the history of other regions, scholars should pursue their research on medieval Rus’ as part of Europe even further according to the newest tendencies toward writing global history. It seems that the current “global turn” in historiography will also reorient the scholarship on cooperation and conflict within and around Central Europe. Scholarship will deepen the areas of research already conducted, such as the influence of the caliphates in Baghdad and Cordoba on the emergence of the early medieval communities in this region;12 connecting the crusading realms in the Middle East with their ideology of war and conflict resolution; the impact of the Mongol invasions on the paradigm shifts in local and European wars and diplomacy; large-​scale reactions toward the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and other topics.13 It seems that medieval studies will contribute to the emerging Afro-​Eurasian studies and seek to link global processes with the phenomena observed in medieval Central Europe. In consequence, instead of being treated as peripheral and marginal, thus usually omitted from textbooks on medieval civilization, this area will emerge as one among many regions of specific development conditions and outcomes. This shift might also undermine the predominant narratives of Europeanization qua Westernization woven of postcolonial clichés. It might also redirect attention to resilient strategies in local communities without serving nationalist politics of identity. This new overarching narrative on diplomatic and military conflict and cooperation within and around Central Europe is still expected.

Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War    171

Notes * Gerald Schwedler and Paweł Figurski are the lead authors of this chapter. The specific contributions of László Veszprémy, Emir O. Filipović, and Christian Raffensperger have been noted in the section headings within the text. 1. Denis Deletant and Harry Hanak, eds., Historians as Nation-​Builders: Central and South-​ East Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988). 2. To mention but a few of the important nineteenth-​to early twentieth-​ century works: Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Історія України-​Руси [History of Ukraine-​ Rus’], 10 vols. (L’vìv-​Kiïv: z drukarnï Naukovogo Tovaristva ìmeni Ševčenka pìd zarâdom K. Bednarskogo, 1898–​1936); Stojan Novaković, Srbi i Turci XIV i XV veka [Serbs and Turks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries] (Belgrade: Čupićeva zadužbina, 1893); František Palacký, Dějiny národu českého v Čechách a v Moravě [The history of the Czech nation in Bohemia and Moravia], 5 vols. (Prague: J.G. Kalve, 1848–​1867); Joachim Lelewel, “Uwagi nad dziejami Polski i ludu jej” [Comments on the history of Poland and its people],” in his Polska: Dzieje i rzeczy jej rozpatrywane [Poland: History and themes related to it], vol. 3 (Poznań: J.K. Żupański, 1855), 299–​305; Jovan Radonić, Zapadna Evropa i balkanski narodi prema Turcima u prvoj polovini XV. veka [Western Europe and Balkan peoples in the first half of the fifteenth century] (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1905). 3. Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300) (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 27–​28. 4. Frank Hadler, “Drachen und Drachentöter. Das Problem der nationalgeschichtlichen Fixierung in den Historiographien Ostmitteleuropas nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Die Nation schreiben: Geschichtswissenschaft im internationalen Vergleich, edited by Christoph Conrad and Sebastian Conrad (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 137–​165. 5. A useful recent summary on interconnectivity with further references is available in Curta, Eastern Europe, esp. pp. 15–​27, 699–​7 19. 6. See more on this issue in: Jean-​Marie Moeglin and Stéphane Péquignot, Diplomatie et “relations internationales” au Moyen Age (IXe–​XVe siècle) (Paris: Presse Universitaires de France, 2017), 7–​12. 7. Gerald Schwedler, Herrschertreffen des Spätmittelalters (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2008); Zbigniew Dalewski, Ritual and Politics: Writing the History of a Dynastic Conflict in Medieval Poland (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Dušan Zupka, Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty (1000–​1301) (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 8. Natalia Nowakowska, ed., Remembering the Jagiellonians (London: Routledge, 2019). 9. Jenő Szűcs, “Historical Regions of Europe: The Three Historical Regions of Europe,” in European Legal Cultures, edited by Volkmar Gessner, Armin Höland, and Csaba Varga (Dartmouth: Aldershot, 1996), 14–​47. 10. The research on this chapter was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland as part of grant no. 2018/​28/​C/​HS3/​00464. For the recent works, some of which challenging traditional historiography, see the bibliography in Eduard Mühle, ed., Polen im Mittelalter: Ein Verzeichnis der seit 1990 auf Deutsch, Englisch und Französisch publizierten Arbeiten der polnischen Mediävistik (Kraków: Societas Vistulana, 2014). 11. Hans-​ Werner Goetz and Jörg Jarnut, eds., Mediävistik im 21. Jahrhundert: Stand und Perspektiven der internationalen und interdisziplinären Mittelalterforschung (Paderborn: Fink, 2003).

172    Gerald Schwedler, Paweł Figurski et al. 12. Dariusz Adamczyk, Silber und Macht: Fernhandel, Tribute und die piastische Herrschaftsbildung in nordosteuropäischer Perspektive (800–​1100) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2014). 13. Mikołaj Gładysz, The Forgotten Crusaders: Poland and the Crusader Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2012); John Jefferson, Holy Wars of King Wladislas and Sultan Murad (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Darius von Güttner-​Sporzyński, Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–​1230 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014).

Further Reading Ćirković, Sima. The Serbs. Oxford: Wiley–​Blackwell, 2004. Curta, Florin. Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300). Leiden: Brill, 2019. Engel, Pál. The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–​1526. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001. Fine, John V. A. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Frost, Robert. The Oxford History of Poland-​Lithuania, Volume 1: The Making of the Polish-​ Lithuanian Union, 1385–​1569. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Jaritz, Gerhard, and Katalin Szende, eds. Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus. London: Routledge, 2016. Martin, Janet. Medieval Russia, 980–​1584. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Raffensperger, Christian. Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World, 988–​1146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Pa rt I I

SOCIETY AND E C ON OM Y

Chapter 8

Changing El i t e s i n Medieval Cent ra l E u rope Cosmin Popa-​G orjanu

The emergence of the nobility in medieval Central Europe, part of monarchical or princely administrative social structures, was a mark of increasing sociocultural complexity. It consolidated a hereditary category of landowners (called nobles or boyars) who dominated the exercise of power either on their own demesnes or as subordinates of the monarchs. The nobility, with access to varying economic resources, mainly landed property, were organized in hierarchical ranks, from a wealthy top layer to a low stratum of impoverished nobles barely able to maintain their status. The development of this category of the population in the societies of Central Europe was a phenomenon that began before the turn of the first millennium and lasted well into the modern times.

Definitions of the Elite The term “elite,” a modern concept, is used to describe the members of social groups that exercise control and power in the society. It corresponds to the part of society that medievalists usually identify with terms like “gentry,” “nobility,” or “aristocracy.” The definitions of medieval elites vary, but they have a set of common features. For the early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham has proposed a set of six criteria for identifying the members of the aristocracy: distinguished origin, landed wealth, position within the official hierarchy, royal or imperial favor (Königsnähe), recognition by peers, and lifestyle.1 For Laurent Feller, the early medieval elites were “all those who enjoy a high social position, [which meant] possession of wealth, power and knowledge that is recognised by others.” This was a group of dirigeants (leaders) at royal or local levels.2 Piotr Górecki has defined the early Polish nobility comprehensively as the group distinguished by: exclusive access to political power, high office, and representative institutions; by sovereign authority over a dependent peasantry; by control of recruitment into (and

176   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu exclusion from) its own ranks by membership in large familial groups, or “clans,” within which noble status was reproduced, and among which nobles intermarried; and by the use of several ritual devices that expressed group membership, above all proper names of the “clans,” their visual counterparts the heraldic badges, and distinct cries whose meanings and functions have been debated, but which appear to have been used in battle or assembly.3

Dealing with the elites in medieval Bohemia, David Kalhous has stated that an elite must be defined in the context of the community within which it functions. He described it as a “relative social category defined by its status of power within community.”4 He uses network theory to explain the emergence of elites as the result of a variable distribution of power, proposing definitions based on political and social hierarchies. The aristocracy was the group at the top of the hierarchy that had a recognized and more or less exclusive right to power positions or offices.5 In his view, the most important criteria for the early Přemyslid elite were the origin and the direct relationship with the duke. These few examples of definitions reveal that in the process of the formation and evolution of elites some factors came to play a more important role than others. Differences among Central European societies resulted in the evolution of specific forms and characteristics. Keeping these differences in mind, it seems that the medieval elites, which consisted primarily of the members of nobility, were characterized by access to power positions within the royal administrative system, landed wealth (with huge differences among them from the aristocrats to poor nobles), pedigree (distinguished origins), recognition by peers, proximity to or favor of the monarch, and a distinct lifestyle. Other features, such as military service, were not exclusively characteristic of the elites. The early period is difficult to define within strict chronological limits. Central European societies underwent changes around the year 1000 after contacts with their western and southern neighbors and conversion to Christianity. In Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, the conversion of the populace was embraced and carried out as a political project of one tribal aristocratic chieftain with the purpose of asserting supremacy over other aristocratic groups. The aristocratic families that did not accept Christianity were suppressed. This was the scenario for Bohemia, where the aristocracy in the tenth century, consisting of dukes and their retinues, was eliminated and replaced by a new nobility established by the Přemyslids. Before this change, the sources indicate the existence of tribal aristocracies, that is, chieftains of tribes surrounded by their own retinues. František Graus estimated that these retinues evolved from primitively organized “princely guards” (Gefolge, družina) to a more advanced model called velko-​ družina or státni-​družina (Grossgefolge, Staatsgefolge) that controlled service settlements (Dienstsiedlungen).6 As is typical for scholarly debates, consensus does not seem to have been achieved yet regarding the size and the evolution of these retinues and their development into the subsequent elites. According to Jozef Žemlička, a new category of maiores natu (high born) arose in Bohemia after the eleventh century. This category consisted of servants and members of the retinue of the duke, who owed their preeminence primarily to their ties with the

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    177 dynasty. The duke’s servants obtained their support from their offices and services in the system of ducal castles, which included the right to exact dues and services from the castle’s population. This elite was also called a “nobility of service” due to its dependence on the services provided to the monarch. In contrast, another type of nobility consisted of landowners whose private wealth allowed them a certain degree of autonomy from the prince.7 In Poland, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the ruling categories consisted of the duke and the members of his family and a small circle of the most powerful lords, called meliores, nobiliores, or optimates in the sources. From the twelfth century onward, they were referred to as duces, principes terre, principes, and comites. They shared with the duke the revenues from services and dues owed by the population. Alexander Gieysztor regarded this group as de facto nobility that participated in the foundation of the state and received the benefits of exercising governmental offices. The sources of income of court dignitaries consisted of revenues from certain villages assigned to their offices, taxes on merchandise, and the right to organization fairs.8 Karol Modzelewski has also traced the sources of the social and political preeminence of the elites to their participation in running the state.9 A somewhat similar situation occurred in the case of the elites on the territory of medieval Hungary. While a relatively early group of nobiles is mentioned in the sources in the late eleventh century, both the notion of nobility and membership within it changed and it came to include increasing numbers of individuals who originated from different social categories (iobagiones castri, hospites, knezi).10 Between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century, nobility became a flexible category that came to include various categories and regional groups of people of various statuses. There are almost no detailed descriptions of the social structure of the society in the eleventh century in the newly founded realm of King Stephen I (1000–​1038): One must extract the information from the legislation passed during his rule. Article 7 of the first book of the Laws of King Stephen refers to those to whom the king granted the right to be masters of their own “goods, warriors, and servants.”11 The differences in wealth among the various categories were expressed in different amounts of fines that had to be paid for various offenses according to the standing of the wrongdoer. For example, the prescribed compensation for murdering one’s wife had three categories, differentiated according to the amount owed to the kindred of the wife: a count (comes) had to pay fifty steers, the knight of a rich man (miles alicuius vir ubertatis) ten steers, and a commoner (vulgaris) five steers.12 Thus, according to this gradation, there were three categories: counts, warriors, commoners. The notion of pedigree that existed in the first half of the eleventh century is implied in ­chapter 16, which refers to maiores natu and minores (those of higher and lower birth). For perjury, a member of the powerful category (valentes) would have his hand cut off or he could pay fifty steers. Article 21 alluded to the authority of persons of higher birth and dignity (maiores natu et dignitate), who could grant freedom to their servants. If a rich person (dives) presented someone else’s slave for manumission, the rich man had to pay a fine of fifty steers, while a poor man or one of low rank (pauper et tenuis) had to pay twelve steers. Article 23 forbade lords (seniores) from enticing warriors (milites)

178   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu of other lords to join their own retinues, which is known to have caused conflicts. The last provision, concerning the violation of homes, prescribed the compensation owed by each wrongdoer according to his station: The count (comes) who sent his warriors to kill someone and destroy his property was to pay 100 steers; a warrior invading the courtyard of another warrior owed ten steers; a commoner invading the hut of another commoner was to pay five steers. The vocabulary employed for various categories singled out the counts, a category whose fines were usually twenty times higher than those of the commoners and ten times higher than those of the warriors (milites). Other epithets, such as valentes (the powerful), maiores natu et dignitate (those higher by birth and office), and dives (the rich), indicate a social layer characterized by pedigree and wealth. Thus, the existence of a superior social elite that surpassed the rest of the society by virtue of possessing certain attributes is attested from the time of the rule of King Stephen I. In the Libellus de Institutione morum, in the fourth chapter, the members of the government are mentioned as principes, comites, and milites (princes, counts, and knights).13 The advice of King Stephen I to his son, Emeric, was that their loyalty, strength, quickness, courtesy, and trustiness (fidelitas, fortitudo, agilitas, comitas, confidentia) represented the fourth adornment of government. Emeric was advised to treat them with peace, humility, and decorum and to avoid all hatred, pride, and envy in his dealings with them. The warning was that if the king showed anger, pride, or envy to his comites and principes they would rebel against him and the power of the knights would lead to blunting of the royal dignities. This fragment of text illustrates how the clerical circle surrounding the monarch viewed the function of the members of the elite. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the ruling elite in Hungary consisted of the heirs of the tribal chieftains who had joined King Stephen I in his state-​building efforts and western immigrants who entered the service of the monarch. Examples are known of aristocrats who traced their roots to tribal elites and those who were descendants of immigrants. In the 1070s, the term nobiles was first mentioned in the sources to indicate a privileged group. They had the right to bring their cases to the royal court (or enjoyed immunity from local royal officials) and the right to judge their own dependents.14 The laws of the eleventh and twelfth centuries indicate categories of free, semifree, and unfree people (slaves). Clearly, the top layer of the free consisted of the nobiles. A few surviving land donation charters that were issued by royal dignitaries to ecclesiastical foundations in the eleventh and twelfth centuries suggest that nobiles were landowners who possessed several villages and hundreds of tenants. The term nobiles was applied only to the high dignitaries of the king such as, among others, the count palatine, royal judge, treasurer, the voivode of Transylvania, and similar positions. From the end of the twelfth century onward, the members of the royal council were called barones and with terms such as proceres (great men), potentes (powerful), prepotentes (very powerful), maiores (the greater ones), optimates (of the noblest), principes maiores (greater princes), and iobagiones (high dignitaries). The lower layer of this group was county counts (Hungarian ispánok, a term deriving from the Slavic župan, equivalent of “count”), that is, representatives of the monarch in the counties. The counts could supplement their income with a portion of the royal taxes and duties that they collected.

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    179 Traditionally, the counts owed the king two-​thirds of the taxes, judicial fees, and tolls collected in their counties and they were allowed to keep one third for themselves. The privileges and rights of the nobiles provided an attractive model for upwardly mobile freemen and, during the thirteenth century, the category of royal servants (servientes regis) acquired privileges equaling those of the nobles. The rights obtained by the servientes regis, recorded in the Golden Bull from 1222, exempted their landed properties from royal taxation, exempted their villages from providing hospitality (descensus) to the king and royal dignitaries, limited their military service to only the obligation to come to the defense of the country (the king could not force them to go to war outside the realm without pay), exempted them from incarceration before they were condemned by a judicial sentence, and forbade counts from judging servientes (servientes regis, royal servants), which only the king or the palatine could do. The last clause of the charter included the right of the servientes to contradict or oppose the king without incurring the guilt of treason (ius resistendi). Several sources indicate that from the mid-​thirteenth century a process of amalgamation of the royal servants with the nobles was underway; a royal decree from 1267, confirming the fundamental rights stated in the Golden Bull, used the terms servientes and nobiles as synonyms.

Social Terminology The social terminology applied to the elites in medieval sources includes a broad array of terms such as barones, boljar, burgravius, comes, dominus, dux, knez, župan, magnates, nobiles, nemes, optimates, pani, praefectus, princeps, proceres, rex, szlachta, velmožy, vladyka, voivoda (princeps militiae, dux exercitus), and others. Several Slavonic terms that originated in the Early Middle Ages, such as župan, knez, and boljar (boyar), remained in the social terminology applied to elites in Central Europe in late medieval times and the early modern period. While nobilis became a sort of standard legal term applied to privileged landowners in general in Latin charters, the vernacular languages kept and used earlier social terms. Thus, the category known as župans derived their name from župa, the Slavic term for a territorial unit of variable size. Župan evolved into the Hungarian term ispán, denoting a county count. But župan was also an honorific term applied in Slavonic charters to members of the princely council in Wallachia and Moldova and to founders of Orthodox churches in Transylvania in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries.15 In the Czech and Polish terminology, župan is considered the origin of the term pan (count). Knez is thought to have been the title of the chieftains of the Slavs in the Lower Danube area and the Balkans in the sixth and seventh centuries and was used across a broad area in Central and Eastern Europe until the modern period, although with significant changes in meaning. Among the northern and western Slavs, knez (kniaz) maintained its significance as a title applied to princes; in the southern areas of Central and Eastern Europe knez came to be applied to a leader of one or several villages.

180   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu In medieval Hungary, knezi were leaders of Romanian16 communities of villagers who are recorded as exerting their rights within their own knezates, areas where they had authority over the land and its inhabitants. In the fourteenth century, the Angevins imposed reforms requiring proof of one’s landownership rights with written charters (documents). That was the time when knezi of this kind were pressed to obtain royal charters recognizing their knezal landownership.17 Similarly, when the boyars of Red Ruthenia in southern Poland were integrated into Polish social and political structures they were forced to adapt to the new system and become nobles on an individual basis.18 A similar process happened in eastern Hungary, where Romanian knezi applied individually for grants of noble status and privileges. Within roughly 100 to 150 years, many of the leading knez families obtained charters of ennoblement and became nobles. While such families in Hungary abandoned the title knez in exchange for noble status, knez did not disappear as a social indicator but continued to be applied to leaders of villagers living on noble or church estates. In this case, they were leaders of peasant tenants and no longer held the status of nobility. A similar fading away of the term knez occurred around the same time in Wallachia and Moldova, where knezi tended to be recorded as former owners of landed properties that were donated by the princes to boyars, the term favored by the elite there. The use of knez in vernacular Romanian continued until the seventeenth century, but it was used as a verb (a se cnezi, to become a knez) to describe the action of a tenant peasant who paid a sum of money to his lord in order to redeem his freedom from servitude. Boljar is believed to have had Bulgar origins. It was attested as bojlas/​boljades in the hierarchy of the first Bulgarian state and became the standard term applied to the aristocracy of medieval Bulgaria, Wallachia, Moldova, Ruthenia, Lithuania, and Russia.19 It described a wealthy landowner and member of the princely or royal council. A specialized term, vlastel, applied from the thirteenth century onward to members of the princely council in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Wallachia. Its meaning derives from “power,” and it was typically associated with individuals conducting official duties on behalf of monarch. In Bulgaria, a new term, velmoža (“great men”), started to be applied to aristocrats from the late thirteenth century, and later it was preferred to boljar.20 The circle of velmoža consisted of vlasteli, reflecting the separation of the members of the administrative elite from other landowners. To some extent, the social terminology is misleading, particularly when the context of its use is not considered. Titles used by the elites tended to be coveted and suffered a process of loss of value as the number of those who received them increased, which created a need for new terms that would distinguish the upper layer of the elites. Other factors, such as integration within a different system and structure, also created conditions that contributed to the devaluation of the social terms applied to the elites. Some terms endured, as župan, knez, and boljar, which had been in use before the establishment of Christian monarchies in Central Europe and continued in use for several centuries, well into modern times. At the same time, some terms underwent a sort of depreciation. For example, in Hungary, in the first half of the thirteenth century, iobagio21 indicated a high royal dignitary, but in less than one hundred years it became the standard term applied to tenant peasants.22 In Poland, from the fifteenth century, the term nobilis tended to

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    181 be replaced by generosus and finally by magnificus.23 The application of these titles did not depend on holding certain offices. In contrast, in Hungary magnificus referred to a member of the royal council, while county comites were referred to by the epithet of egregius and nobles indicated as nobiles viri. There were also hybrid formulas, such as those applied to knezi in Transylvania, like nobilis kenezius. In Hungary in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, maiores referred to a category that developed in parallel with nobiles and appeared in the laws of King Ladislas (1077–​1095). The term nobiles applied to principes until the mid-​twelfth century and afterwards covered a broader category of persons. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the terms nobiles, iobagiones, principes, nobiliores, and potentes were used for people of higher rank, and from c. 1208 the term barones came into use. During the reign of King Andrew II (1205–​1235), the term baronatus maiores spread, and during the reign of the next king, Béla IV (1235–​1270), the term was employed more often.24 Barones was used exclusively for high royal officers, while nobiles came to designate the lower strata of the elite, who also added the designation de genere (of the kindred) to their names. Estimations of the semantic changes in the terminology remain vague to some extent. The lesser nobility in Hungary was equated with the veri nobiles regni (true nobles of the realm). The lower strata of the elite took the privileges of the aristocracy as a model in articulating their own demands for a specific status. This layer originated from the categories of servientes regis and iobagiones castri. These categories shared the right to bear arms with the aristocracy. The status of servientes as military servants under the jurisdiction of the county count and iobagiones castri as unfree possessors of weapons were similar, and the two groups were gradually merged in the nobility. It is not entirely clear how these two lower groups came to be equated with the former group of nobiles, but the chronology of their amalgamation is known. Iobagiones castri were the military elite of the early system of royal castles. Their military obligations might have qualified them for recognition as nobility, as in the case of servientes, but in their case, their unfree status seems to have precluded amalgamation with the nobility. That was possible only when individual iobagiones castri (with their families) were granted ennoblement charters (documents). The distinction between the privileged and the unprivileged hinged on the separation between free and conditional property. The terms nobiles and servientes indicated two different categories between 1222 and 1231, but the term servientes was replaced with nobiles in a charter from 1231. The charters issued from the 1240s to the 1250s indicate interchangeability between the terms nobiles and servientes (nobiles seu servientes regis in 1257).25 Finally, in 1267, King Béla IV issued a royal charter that confirmed the privileges of the nobility, indicating the synonymity of servientes and nobiles (“nobiles regni Ungarie universi qui servientes regales dicuntur”). This decree and those from 1291, 1298, and 1351, made the privileges of the lesser nobility uniform at the level of the aristocracy for exemptions from taxation, exceptions from jurisdiction, and limitations on military service. This unification ignored differences in wealth, social position, and political influence. Royal donations of land usually applied to groups of kinsmen and rarely to just an individual.26 Most charters of ennoblement were granted to small groups of individuals who were elevated into the group of servientes regis and exempted from their

182   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu former status as dependents within the castle system. The decrees from 1290 and 1298 were intended to solve some general problems of the realm and also included the nobles of Slavonia and Transylvania in their provisions. The formation of a collective nobility in Transylvania was signaled as early as 1288.27 The equation between servientes regis and nobiles was suggested by the very usage of this interchangeable terminology and might have been a result of the monarchs acquiescing to the aspirations of the servientes. At the same time, individuals of different status applied and were admitted, together with their kinsmen, into the group of royal servants/​nobles. This pool of applicants could include various categories, such as hospites, iobagiones castri, or simply freemen. In Bohemia, the Slavonic terms mentioned in the tenth and eleventh century, velmož for a great aristocrat and bojar or boljar for a nobleman, later disappeared. The only term to survive, vladyka, which had designated a prince, came to indicate a member of the lesser nobility in the fourteenth century. The general term for the nobility in Bohemia was šlechta, deriving from the German term Geschlecht (stirps, which was also used for the Polish szlachta.28 The evolution of terms for designating rulers in this region is well illustrated by the use the term comes (count from the ninth century onward). It has been suggested that in the ninth and tenth centuries comes was used to designate the rulers in Croatia, Pannonia, Moravia, and Bohemia in parallel with other terms such as dux, princeps, and rex. From the eleventh century, comes was applied to royal dignitaries in Croatia, Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland. In all these areas, comes was equivalent of the Slavic term župan, which became the Hungarian term ispán. In Poland, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, comes designated the heads of provinces and the territories of fortresses, but from the end of the twelfth century it was replaced by castellanus, the head of a castellania or castellatura. Comes came to be used seldom in comparison with castellanus. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this term was employed for both levels of administration (provincial and in castellanies). In Bohemia the title of castellanus was considered equal to that of comes, praefectus, and burgravius.29 The term knez in the Polish context (kniędz-​ksiądz-​książe) was similar to dominus (employed for members of clergy) and princeps. The knezi participating in the council of Duke Rastislav of Moravia (846–​870) were considered rulers of dependent principalities. It is estimated that knez in the hagiographic sources of the ninth century was used for state rulers. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Czech and Polish dukes were using the title knez, while the ducal dignitaries bore other Latin and Slavic titles (comes, pan, župan).

The Administrative Elites of the Early States During the late tenth century, there was a functional change in the duties of the elite from the družina (personal guards) of the princes to an incipient administrative structure

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    183 that included court offices and territorial officers, who received not only their horses and weapons but also dowries for their daughters. In Bohemia, a new elite emerged that consisted of the members of the duke’s retinue, who owed their political and social preeminence to their direct relationship with the dynasty. To support them, they were assigned offices and services within the ducal network of fortresses, which allowed them to retain some of the dues in kind and services from the population, revenues from tolls, and shares of war booty. The influence and power of the nobility resulted ultimately from the gradual acquisition of the territorial authority that this category came to exert as a result of the monarch withdrawing his authority from the exercise of jurisdiction and punishment of wrongdoers in the areas under noble rule. In the fourteenth century, the nobility acquired privileges of high justice over their dependents. This transfer of authority from the public to the private entrenched the nobility as a lasting presence in the societies of late medieval East-​Central Europe. An important factor in the evolution of the elites was the growth of the amount of landed resources amassed by the aristocracy. This process took place during the thirteenth century, and the result was a category of landowning members of the elite that did not depend so heavily on the ruler for their social and political positions. Later, the development of the administrative apparatus of the state opened new enrichment opportunities for royal/​ducal officials, who could keep for themselves a certain proportion of the prince’s revenues. Another process that led to the consolidation of this elite was the transfer of lands from the control of the prince to that of lay landowners. Territories inhabited by villagers who owed the prince various services or dues in kind came into the hands of lay landowners. The early sources have rather scarce information about the wealth of the elites, nevertheless, they describe individuals who owned villages, slaves, and revenues from various services. The growth of the nobility’s wealth is difficult to assess before the thirteenth century.

Stratification of the Elite Significant differences in wealth and political standing developed among the nobles, but despite this the nobility strove to maintain the idea of legal equality among the members of the nobility. The lesser nobility, called nobiles, was less affluent and less involved in managing the realm. The wealthiest and politically most successful families, however, whose members succeeded in entering the royal council, were called magnates and barones, and from the last decades of the fifteenth century, barones naturales. One of the criteria for ranking nobles was the size of their landed properties and the number of tenant plots they had. Scholars have assessed the situation of the szlachta in Poland and the Hungarian nobility in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Norman Davies ranked the members of the Polish noble estate in seven categories. At the lowest level was the petty nobility including the nobles living in towns and the rabble (hołota), who possessed no land and no serfs. Above them were ranked the

184   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu small-​holders and nobles “behind the wall” (szlachta zagrodowa, zaściankowa). The next rank, according to economic means, were the nobles who owned fragmented properties (szlachta cząstkowa), followed by well-​to-​do nobles (szlachta zamożna) who possessed both land and serfs. They were highest rank below the magnates (magnateria).30 For Hungary, Pál Engel used fiscal records from the fifteenth century to estimate the differences in wealth among the nobles. At the lowest rank were the poor nobles (nobiles unius sessionis), those who owned small plots and had no tenants whatsoever. Their number was estimated at about two-​thirds (12,000 to 13,000 families) of the total number of noble families. Above this category were approximately 7,000 families belonging to the lesser nobility, who possessed land and had fewer than twenty tenants. The well-​off nobles (bene possessionati) owned from twenty to a couple of hundred tenant plots; they were the social layer active at the level of county authorities and the pool for recruiting familiares (servants of noble origin) for the barons. The upper level was that of the barons whose estates could be counted in the dozens, with several thousand tenant plots. In the late fifteenth century, Engel estimated that thirty-​two aristocratic families possessed 27 percent of the territory of the realm, 10 percent was owned by about fifty illustrious families, and 30 percent by several hundred well-​off and lesser nobles.31 The processes of the extinction of some families and the rise of new families was continuous. Lack of male heirs led to extinction and redistribution of the landed properties by the king to his favorites. Impoverishment was a permanent threat to any noble family that followed the custom of partible inheritance, which diminished the quantity of land available to each surviving heir with each generation. In a couple of generations the heirs of a well-​off or even aristocratic family could descend to the level of lesser nobility as their portions of the family property became ever smaller. Henryk Łowmiański has asserted that there were two categories of knights in Poland, the włodyka (knight) and the petty nobles.32 The first category disappeared in the Middle Ages, while the second survived into modern times. The origin of these categories was in military settlements of knights established in areas on the northeastern borders of Poland in the twelfth century. Settlements of Romanian villages on the northern rim of the Carpathians, between the San and Prut rivers, starting from 1340 had a similar function. He rejected the theory that they were impoverished nobles. The difference between them and the nobility was that while the first used the labor of tenants, the petty nobles worked their lands themselves. A fourteenth-​century statute in Little Poland distinguished three categories of knights: knights of noble origin (militi vero famoso slachte), scartabelli (włodyka), and the knight of commoner origin (militi creato de sculteto vel kmethone). Wounding of such knights by a commoner could be indemnified at different prices; the first category was entitled to sixty marks, the second to thirty, and the last to fifteen marks. Łowmiański concluded that the włodyka ranked between knights of noble stock and knights who had originated as commoners.33 A similar differentiation existed in terms of price of the homagium between a nobleman and a magnate according to Werbőczi’s compendium of laws, the Tripartitum; a nobleman’s compensation was fifty marks, while that of a baron was one hundred.34

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    185

The Predominance of the Aristocracy The elites were divided not only in terms of wealth but also in terms of political influence and power. From at least the thirteenth century, the wealthiest members of the elites were distinguished from the lower nobility with specific epithets such as barones regni and magnates. They constituted the upper stratum of the elite, and their characteristic role was to be involved in political decisions as members of the royal council.35 The division between the aristocracy and the nobility was reflected in the spheres of political activity. While the aristocracy participated in political life at the highest level, at the royal court, the nobility dominated the counties.

The Role of the Lesser Nobility In Hungary, the lesser nobility was active and dominated the social and political life at the county level from the second half of the thirteenth century. Aristocrats represented the monarch and administered the counties, but the actual exercise of the functions of the count was assigned to a trusted familiaris bearing the title of vicecomes. The local nobility were represented by elected officials, noble magistrates (iudices nobilium) and sworn nobles (iurati nobiles), who participated in judgments, discharge of official duties, collection of taxes, judicial fees, and fines together with the vicecomes. Local nobility also played an important role in the juridical system through the procedure of inquiry (inquisitio), which could be pursued in several modes, and also allowed this category its say concerning criminal matters as well as decisions regarding the status of individuals or patrimonial issues.

Becoming a Noble Noble status was heritable, and all the descendants of a nobleman were considered nobles. In Hungary, noble daughters married to commoners were given land (as a filial quarter)36 in order to ensure that their heirs would be considered nobles as well. Those marrying noblemen tended to receive their dowries in movable goods. Marc Bloch defined two types of nobility. The first type, de facto nobility, corresponded to the old elite, which possessed the attributes of nobility and exercised power as a matter of fact and not based on charters of privileges indicating specific rights and attributes. De jure nobility was based on privileges granted by the ruler. The monarchy was slow to create and control instruments for social promotion, but at least from the thirteenth century the monarchy—​Hungary in this case—​became one of the most active factors in creating

186   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu nobles by donating land and the rights specific to royal servants/​nobles. The system of ennoblement consisted of rewarding services provided by an individual (usually together with his kinsmen) through donating a piece of land that the king was entitled to give away together with typical rights and exemptions from taxation and the jurisdiction of royal officials. A standard set of rights specific to the nobility slowly came to be recognized for those admitted into the ranks of the royal servants. In most cases, an individual was exempted from the obligations he had in his previous status (usually as warrior of a castle or some kind of conditionarius).37 The elites in Central and Eastern Europe emerged during complex processes of restructuring and reorganization of power by the Christian monarchs around the turn of the first millennium. The groups that seem to have earned preeminence were those active in the proximity of or on behalf of the monarchs, a position that provided status and a means of enrichment by taking a share of the prince’s revenues from taxes paid by the whole population. Everywhere, this upper layer of the elite, the aristocracy, was characterized both by extensive landed properties worked by tenants and participation in the exercise of power as members of the royal councils. This group, called either barones or magnates, was set apart from the majority of those claiming the privileges of nobility by their exceptional economic and political position. The middle and lower layers of the nobility were ranked according to their wealth from those possessing a few hundred tenant plots to those living on a single plot. The system of partible inheritance, dividing property holdings among the heirs in every generation, raised a permanent threat of impoverishment for affluent noble families. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, processes of extinction of old families due to lack of heirs or impoverishment were counterbalanced by continuous policies of replenishing the ranks with newcomers recruited for military purposes. The members of the elites were expected to provide military service, for which they were compensated by various exemptions from taxation and dues otherwise owed by the rest of the population. The power and lasting influence of the aristocracy and nobility, unified legally from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, rested on their dominant position within the society, buttressed by the superior rights of jurisdiction over their tenants, and the influence and monopoly of positions in the judicial and administrative sphere at the local level.

Notes 1. Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–​800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 154. 2. Laurent Feller, “Introduction: Crises et renouvellements des élites au haut Moyen Âge: Mutations ou ajustements des structures?,” in Les élites au haut Moyen Âge: Crises et renouvellements, edited by Françoise Bougard, Laurent Feller, and Régine Le Jan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 6. 3. Piotr Górecki, “Words, Concepts, and Phenomena: Knighthood, Lordship, and the Early Polish Nobility, c. 1100–​c.1350,” in Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations, edited by Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 115.

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    187 4. David Kalhous, Anatomy of a Duchy: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures of Early Přemyslid Bohemia (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 107. 5. Ibid., 108. 6. František Graus, “A propos de l’évolution de la noblesse en Bohème du IXe au XIIIe siècle,” in L’Europe aux IXe–​XIe siècles: Aux origins des états nationaux (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukove, 1968), 209–​210. 7. Jozef Žemlička, “Origins of Noble Landed Property in Přemyslide Bohemia,” in Nobilities in Central and Eastern Europe: Kinship, Property and Privilege, edited by János M. Bak (Budapest–​Krems: Hajnal István Alapítvány, Medium Aevum Quotidianum Gesellschaft, 1994), 8. 8. Gieysztor, Alexander, “En Pologne médiévale: Problèmes du régime politique et de l’organisation administrative du Xe au XIIIe siécle,” Annali de la Fondazione italiana per la storia amministrativa 1 (1962): 141–​143. 9. Karol Modzelewski, “The System of Ius Ducale and the Idea of Feudalism (Comments on the Earliest Class Society in Medieval Poland),” Quaestiones Medii Aevi 1 (1977): 74–​75, 77–​79. 10. These medieval Latin terms could be translated as “castle-​warriors,” “guests.” Knez does not have an English correspondent. The term was in use for more than a millennium, its meaning ranged from king or kinglet to prince, chief of a group of peasants, or mayor of a village. 11. Decreta regni medievalis Hungariae/​The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, Martyn Rady, et al. (Idyllwild, CA: Schlacks; Budapest: Dept. of Medieval. Studies, Central European University, 1999), 3: “facultatem dedimus dominandi suorum rerum, ita etiam res, milites, servos.” 12. Ibid., 5. 13. Libellus de institutione morum, in Scriptores rerum hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis arpadianae gestarum, vol. 2, edited by Emericus Szentpétery (Budapest: Typographiae Reg. Universitatis Litterarum Hungarie, 1938), 623–​624. 14. Attila Zsoldos, “Modificările conceptului de ‘nobilime’ pe parcursul secolului al XIII-​lea în regatul Ungariei” [The changes of the concept of “nobility” in the kingdom of Hungary during the thirteenth century], in Secolul al XIII-​lea pe meleagurile locuite de către români [The thirteenth century in the territories inhabited by Romanians], edited by Adrian Andrei Rusu (Cluj–​Napoca, Editura Mega: 2006), 87. 15. Elena Dana Prioteasa, Medieval Wall Paintings in Transylvanian Orthodox Churches: Iconographic Subjects in Historical Context (Cluj–​Napoca: Editura Academiei Romane–​ Editura Mega, 2016), 36–​37, 42–​44. 16. In medieval records they appeared under various designations, such as Valachi, Volachi, Olachi, Blaci, Blachi, Volohi, and others. The terms “Wallachia”/​“Wallachians” derived from this exonym came to designate the medieval principality and its inhabitants. But the same term applied to a broad Romance-​language-​speaking population that lived on the territory of Moldova, Wallachia, eastern Hungary, Transylvania, and the Balkans. The term used by the so-​called Vlachs for self-​designation comes from Romanus and was recorded either as român or aromân. I add this explanation in order to preclude irksome and sterile debates about the justification of using the term “Romanian” for medieval times. 17. Cosmin Popa-​Gorjanu, “From Kenezii to Nobiles Valachi: The Evolution of the Romanian Elite from the Banat in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 6 (2000): 109–​128.

188   Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu 18. Andrzej Janeczek, “New Authority, New Property, New Nobility: The Foundation of Noble Estates in Red Ruthenia during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 7 (2002): 88–​89. 19. Danielle Skakalski, “Noblesse lituanienne et noblesse volynienne au XVe siécle: Contribution a l’étude du vocabulaire social dans la grande-​principauté de Lituanie,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 23, no. 3 (1982): 283. 20. Kiril Petkov, “Boyars and Royal Officers: A Case Study on the Social Terminology of the Aristocracy of the Middle Bulgarian Period,” in Nobilities in Central and Eastern Europe: Kinship, Property and Privilege, edited by János M. Bak (Budapest–​Krems: Hajnal István Alapítvány, Medium Aevum Quotidianum Gesellschaft, 1994), 78–​81. 21. In the early centuries iobagiones were high dignitaries of the royal courts; in the thirteenth century, the term iobagiones castri referred to the military elite of the royal fortresses, usually translated as “castle warriors.” There is no English correspondent to this term, which survived until mid-​nineteenth century, but from the fourteenth century onward it designated tenant-​peasants or serfs. 22. Zsolt Hunyadi, “Maiores, optimates, nobiles: Semantic Questions in the Early History of the Hungarian Nobility,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 7 (1996): 208. 23. Antoni Gąsiorowski, “Faktoren der Schichtung des Adelsstandes im Mittelalterlichen Polen,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi 6 (1990): 100. 24. Hunyadi, “Maiores,” 206. 25. Ibid., 207–​208. 26. Erik Fügedi, “Some Characteristics of the Medieval Hungarian Noble Family,” Journal of Family History 7, no. 1 (1982): 27–​39. 27. Cosmin Popa-​Gorjanu, “The Nobility as Bearers of Regional Identity in Fourteenth-​ Century Transylvania,” Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Historica 16, no. 2 (2012): 46. 28. Graus, “A propos,” 208. 29. Ambroży Bogucki, “The Administrative Structure of Poland in the Eleventh and Twelfth Century,” Acta Poloniae Historica 72 (1995): 19, 27. 30. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland; The Origins to 1795, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 171. 31. Pál Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–​1526 (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001), 338–​344. 32. Henryk Łowmiański, “The Rank Nobility in Medieval Poland,” in The Polish Nobility in the Middle Ages. Anthologies, edited by Antoni Gąnsiorowski (Wrocław: Ossolińskich, 1984), 24, 31–​32. 33. Ibid., 39–​40. 34. János M. Bak, ed., Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae/​The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, All Complete Monographs (2019), vol. 4, 1555–​1556 (https://​dig​ital​ comm​ons.usu.edu/​lib_​m​ono/​4, accessed August 20, 2020). 35. Andrzej Wyczański, “The System of Power in Poland, 1370–​1648,” in East-​Central Europe in Transition: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, edited by Antoni Mączak, Henryk Samsonowicz, and Peter Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 140–​152. 36. According to the customary law, in Hungary daughters of a noblemen did not inherit paternal land in equal shares with their male siblings, but only one-​quarter (called quarta puellaris), which was usually compensated at a lower price and paid in mobile goods. However, noble daughters marrying nonnobles were given land so that their offspring

Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe    189 would not be nonnobles. Possessing land was one of the defining characteristics of a nobleman. 37. In Hungary, conditionarii were a semifree population obligated to provide specific services ranging from cultivation of land and vines, breeding hunting dogs, and producing certain goods.

Further Reading Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski. Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Curta, Florin. Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500–​1250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Davies, Norman. God’s Playground: A History of Poland; The Origins to 1795. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Engel, Pál. The Realm of Saint Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–​1526. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001. Rady, Martyn. Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary. London: Palgrave, 2000.

Chapter 9

L o cals and Imm i g ra nts i n Medieval Cent ra l E u rope Stefan Donecker

Although stubbornly persisting in the popular imagination, the cliché of a static medieval world that contrasts with a dynamic and spatially mobile modernity has been thoroughly refuted in academic scholarship.* People migrated all over medieval Europe and beyond, and goods, knowledge, ideas, beliefs, and practices traveled with them. Admittedly, the lower strata of medieval societies were often deprived of personal freedom, but a lack of freedom does not automatically correlate with a lack of mobility. As the frequent cases of coerced settlement and the slave trade show, the individuals who were the least free often happened to be among the most mobile. Spatial mobility should be considered the default state in medieval society, its prevalence always assumed unless there is a particularly convincing reason not to do so.1 In this respect, the territories of Central Europe were no exception. The concept of situational identities, the idea that individuals take on different roles in different social and cultural settings, seems not only applicable here, but essential.2 An overview of different forms of migration in Central Europe between 1000 and 1500 illuminates not only the people on the move but also the men and women who ­received and interacted with them—​in short, whole societies that were transformed by migration.3

Landesausbau: Its Instigators and Participants Historiographers of the Middle Ages have long emphasized one particular process of demographic change and social, economic, and cultural transformation that was characteristic for Central and Eastern Europe after the mid-​twelfth century. Innovations in

192   Stefan Donecker agricultural organization and technology brought by migrants were accompanied by the dissemination of legal norms that came to be known as “German law” (ius Teutonicum).4 The once-​common German catchword for this migration to the East, Ostsiedlung, is now considered obsolete due to its associations with modern colonialism. The far more precise term Landesausbau has replaced it; English translations such as “reclamation” or “development” of land fail to cover the full range of meaning.5 Related to the terms aedificatio terrae (edification of land) and melioratio terrae (improvement of land) in medieval sources, Landesausbau implies both a spatial expansion of (arable) land and a qualitative improvement of land use. German historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth century extolled the alleged Ostsiedlung as a civilizing feat of singular significance. According to this patriotic narrative, intrepid German pioneers domesticated a forbidding wilderness and transmitted the achievements of medieval civilization to the backward Slavs. Polish, Czech, and other East European historians retorted by denouncing the German colonization as quasi-​imperialism that interfered with the autochthonous development of the Slavic peoples.6 Both of these narratives disregard the fact that the transformation process that started in the twelfth century was essentially a “joint venture” between German-​speaking and Slavic-​speaking population groups. Settlers from Western Europe (predominantly German-​ speaking, although Romance speakers also played a role, particularly in Hungary) introduced technological and organizational innovations. The local Slavic-​and Hungarian-​ speaking populations implemented these changes, often at the instigation of local elites.7 At the beginning of the process, military confrontation was still dominant; around 1142 or 1143, Count Adolf II of Holstein sent messengers to Westphalia and the Low Countries, promising fertile acres and pastures to anyone willing to settle in Slavic territories along the Baltic Sea that he had captured several years previously.8 The so-​ called Wendish Crusade of 1147, largely unsuccessful, was essentially an offshoot of the Second Crusade initiated by the Saxon nobility, who preferred to fight the “pagans” on their own borders rather than venture into the Holy Land. Further campaigns against Slavic territories beyond the Elbe proved the military superiority of the Latin West. The gradual subjugation of the Abodrites in present-​day Mecklenburg in the 1140s and 1150s and their incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Danish conquest of Rügen in 1168 set the stage for further settlement and land cultivation in the Germania Slavica.9 In the years after 1170, the chronicler Helmold of Bosau was able to proclaim that “the entire land of the Slavs [ . . . ], once harrowed by ambushes and almost deserted, has, through the grace of God, become like a colony of Saxons, where towns and villages are being erected, and churches as well as the number of servants of Christ multiply.”10 After the initial, somewhat confrontational, stage along the Elbe in the twelfth century, the thrust of the Landesausbau movement reached Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia, Bohemia, and Poland in the thirteenth century and finally Prussia in the following century. Slavic rulers in these areas, aware of the relatively low population density and the somewhat unsatisfactory agricultural efficiency in their domains, sought

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    193 to emulate the transformation that had occurred along the Elbe. From the thirteenth century onward, these local dynasties took over the initiative for Landesausbau and sought to attract settlers from the west to their territories.11 Religious communities—​ Cistercian and Premonstratensian monasteries and the Teutonic Order—​contributed as well, either of their own accord or at the behest of a secular lord.12 The establishment of urban centers, awarded town privileges according to German law, complemented the rural Landesausbau. Ports along the southern Baltic littoral such as Lübeck (1143/​1159), Riga (1201), Stralsund (1234), and Königsberg (1255) developed into trade emporia that exported the agricultural and forest products of the hinterland.13 Although secular or clerical authorities took the initiative in establishing new settlements, applying the necessary measures was usually delegated to settlement entrepreneurs, so-​ called locatores. They recruited the colonists, partitioned the land among them, mediated potential conflicts, and acted as intermediaries among the settlers, the resident population, and the lord. They shared the economic risk of investing in a new settlement with their sponsor and could expect privileges and a favorable position—​such as sculteus (Schultheiss, village headman), innkeeper, or miller—​in return.14 Family groups of professionalized locatores were active in some areas, but most were involved in just one colonization venture and subsequently settled in the village they had established.15 Although the locatores are reasonably well documented in the sources, describing the new settlers themselves is far more difficult.16 The success of Landesausbau can be partially attributed to a population surplus in large parts of the Holy Roman Empire, where it had become increasingly difficult to provide adequate settlement areas and food resources for an ever-​growing population. In comparison, the lands of the Germania Slavica and further to the East, comparatively sparsely settled and partially depopulated by recent wars, appeared as an attractive destination.17 Little is known about the recruitment process apart from the fact that fiscal and legal privileges were used as inducements18 and even less about the settlers’ role in shaping a village.19 Researchers have estimated that no more than several thousand people moved eastward from Germany west of the Elbe in any one year.20 This suggests that approximately 200,000 individuals were involved in the first stage of Landesausbau before the end of the twelfth century and migration on a similar scale can be assumed for the thirteenth century.21 In addition, an uncertain number of the local population participated in resettlement, migrating only short distances.

The (Ir)Relevance of Ethnicity The “national” dimension of the processes of migration and settlement was utterly overrated in the older research. Landesausbau was not a “German” achievement. Slavic and Hungarian rulers took the initiative to establish new settlements in the same way as their German counterparts did and ethnicity mattered just as little among the settlers themselves. To local lords, the background, origin, and language of the people

194   Stefan Donecker who cultivated their lands was largely irrelevant.22 One of the first campaigns that resembled the Landesausbau of later centuries, clearing woodlands in the Franconian Forest and the Fichtel Mountains, sponsored by the counts of Schweinfurt from the tenth century, involved numerous Slavonic-​speaking pioneers toiling alongside their German-​speaking fellows.23 Somewhat ironically, the first recorded “German” settler (Theutonicus) in Transylvania was a certain Johannes Latinus, who owned a “Latin house” (villa Latinorum) and was most certainly an Italian speaker.24 In general, foreign arrivals were commonly subsumed under the name of immediate neighbors, regardless of their actual place of origin. Thus, Teutonici and Saxones, “Germans” and “Saxons,” became shorthand designations for all newcomers from the west, even if they originated from more distant areas such as Flanders.25 In a similar vein, the term Latini was used in Hungary and the Balkans to refer to Romance-​speakers that settled in Hungary, including Venetians, Lombards, and Walloons.26 In Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian sources, the terminology used to designate immigrants could emphasize either their status as newcomers, “colonists” (coloni) or “guests” (hospites), their occupation, such as “ploughmen” (aratores) or “vintners” (vinitores) or their Germanness (Teutonici).27 The last variant is certainly the most difficult to interpret, since “being German” could refer to the native land, the language and/​ or the legal status of a settler, possibly—​but not necessarily—​to all three. It was certainly not a straightforward ethnic label. Ius Teutonicum, “German law,” was, in fact, more than a set of legal regulations. It encompassed all of the principles that regulated immigration and land use in newly cultivated areas. This included immunities, privileges, and exemptions from the jurisdiction of the local nobility, as well as patterns and plans for founding villages. It amounted to “model or a general set of principles, which was then filled with actual content and adopted to local circumstances.”28 It could serve as a blueprint for expansion into so-​ called wastelands (deserta) and the measures necessary for their cultivation that could be applied by local lords as needed.29 Thus, German law was not restricted to German-​speaking settlers. Slavic villages could obtain the same privileges from their lord, sometimes upon payment of a certain remuneration.30 In 1248, Bishop Tomasz of Wrocław decreed, concerning the cultivation of certain woodlands in his domain, that “no Germans shall be settled in this forest, but . . . Poles, or others, shall be settled according to German law.”31 In the late fourteenth century, the cultivation of forested areas in Red Ruthenia by Polish and Ruthenian colonists was also governed by German law. For Vlach and Ruthenian pastoralists in the higher regions of the Carpathians, a specific Vlach law was developed from the German model that adapted the latter’s tenets to the requirements of the area. Ius valachium granted considerable autonomy to the respective communities, including jurisdiction by local leaders (knezi) and a right to migrate freely. By the Ottoman period, the term “Vlach” had largely lost any ethnic connotation and was a purely legal designation for people living under Vlach law.32

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    195

Migration Societies Although neither ethnonym nor legal status can serve as a clear indicator for a person’s origin, preferred language or ethnic affiliation, sources show that manifold migration processes resulted in a culturally diverse population throughout Central and Eastern Europe.33 Most research has been devoted to the Landesausbau movement, but similar migration regimes developed in Central and Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages, partly influenced by and modeled on the developments in the Germania Slavica, but partially independent. The emergence of enduring dynasties in the tenth century—​the Polish Piasts, the Bohemian Přemyslids, and the Hungarian Árpáds—​provided unprecedented political stability for the region,34 which facilitated immigration. In Bohemia, polylingual communities already existing before the Landesausbau changed the character of the territories further north. In late eleventh-​century Prague, the urban populace included German, Romance-​speaking, and Jewish residents. Vratislav II, duke and later the first king of Bohemia (r. 1085–​1092), and his grandson Soběslav II (1173–​1178), granted privileges to German-​speakers (and possibly also to other language groups), exempting them from many dues payable to the crown in an effort to attract migrants.35 Jews enjoyed ducal protection as well as legal autonomy in internal cases. The flourishing Jewish community, however, was shattered by pogroms in the wake of the First Crusade in 1096 and the subsequent confiscation of their property by Duke Břetislav II (1092–​ 1100). Their legal and social position remained precarious and uncertain until the first written privileges were issued by King Přemysl Otakar II in the 1250s, which secured their status. This laid the foundations for the development of Prague into a renowned center of Jewish life and Talmudic culture.36 Society in Piast, and later Jagiellonian, Poland may not have been as ethnically diverse as in Bohemia, but it nevertheless displayed considerable linguistic and cultural variety. In Greater Poland, the amount of deforested land rose continuously from 20 percent in the tenth century to 30 percent in the twelfth, and 40 percent in the thirteenth century.37 Long-​distance traders and locatores disseminated the patterns and procedures of Landesausbau; foreign “guests” were invited to settle and offered legal and financial benefits as incentives. The efforts of the Piast duke Henryk “the Bearded” of Silesia are an exemplary case; he recruited German townspeople and farmers on a grand scale and settled them in a planned system of new towns and villages, relying on both monasteries and professional locatores to implement his plans.38 German-​speaking settlers were greatly appreciated for their military expertise, including the building and maintenance of castles.39 Jewish communities existed throughout the Piast domains, but were especially significant in Silesia.40 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, tied to the Kingdom of Poland in a personal union from 1386, actively recruited immigrants from the Black Sea region, particularly specialists in military and economic matters. These included Jews,

196   Stefan Donecker Turkic-​speaking Karaites,41 and Muslim Tatars. The latter, settled in the vicinity of Vilnius and other major cities of the Grand Duchy, formed the northernmost traditional Islamic community in Europe.42 In addition, Armenian residents were numerous in the eastern and southeastern parts of Poland and Lithuania.43 The Hungarian Árpáds stand out as possibly the most ardent, and certainly most outspoken, sponsors of immigration among the early Central European rulers. Stephen I, the first king of Hungary in the early eleventh century, was known to hold foreign hospites in high regard and sought to attract specialists from other countries who could contribute their agricultural know-​how to increasing the productivity of his landholdings. This attitude was famously expressed in the early eleventh-​century Libellus de institutione morum ad Emericum ducem (A booklet to Duke Emeric on moral formation), a book compiled by an unknown scribe on behalf of the king to instruct his son on matters of rulership. The prince is advised to welcome foreigners to his realm because “guests adorn every realm, extol the court and overawe the pride of enemies. For a realm with a single language and uniform customs is feeble and fragile.”44 It is plausible that Stephen himself followed the example of his father, Grand Duke Géza, who, after concluding peace with the duke of Bavaria in 996, may have invited subjects of his former enemy to settle in Hungary.45 Compared to Bohemia and Poland, where the influx of settlers from the West was predominant, medieval Hungary saw a more complex migration pattern. Situated at the crossroads of Latin Christendom, Byzantine Christendom, and the sphere of steppe peoples, the country was open to immigration and influences from all directions.46 The tribal confederation that had conquered the Pannonian basin in the late ninth and early tenth century had been polyethnic in itself,47 consisting of Ugric-​as well as Turkic-​speakers who quickly incorporated the local Slavic and Avar population. Additional immigrant groups arrived in the following centuries: Pechenegs and later Cumans from the East, Latini—​mainly Walloons and Italians—​as well as Germans from the west, Slavs from the north, and Muslims and Armenians from the south, with Jews possibly present even before the conquest.48 Most of these groups had expertise in a particular area: Western Europeans, Muslims, and steppe nomads were all valued for their military prowess (albeit with widely differing tactical doctrines); Latini, Germans, Muslims, and Jews settled in towns as administrators, traders, and artisans. Slavic immigrants from Moravia, Bohemia, Poland, and the Rus’ undertook planned cultivation of uninhabited land similar to the Landesausbau further north, although Latin, German, and Muslim agriculturalists are also documented in the sources. Mining and viticulture were predominantly the domain of German-​speaking immigrants.49

Migrants and Locals An in-​depth investigation of the social contacts between local people and immigrants and the nature of their interaction (as well as possible conflicts resulting from these

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    197 encounters) remains a research desideratum.50 In the early stages of Landesausbau in the Germania Slavica, religious differences played a role because the Christian newcomers met a local population that adhered to traditional “pagan” beliefs. Practices of cohabitation varied widely; in some cases, previous settlers were forcibly dislodged from their land to allow newcomers to take their place.51 Such drastic measures, however, seem to have been the exception rather than the rule. In most cases, especially in the eastern reaches of the Landesausbau process, local people and migrants lived side by side, albeit often in separate, neighboring villages.52 These settlement patterns allowed both groups to exchange agricultural expertise and knowledge of local conditions, but to maintain their own cultural lifeways. Archaeological findings indicate that new techniques of house construction were introduced in the lands east of the Elbe in the early stages of Landesausbau.53 Crucial agricultural know-​how such as the three-​field system, the wheeled moldboard plow, improved ceramics, and water-​and windmills was disseminated throughout East-​ Central Europe at roughly the same time.54 These innovations triggered an “agrarian revolution”55 that profoundly reshaped the economic foundation of Central Europe. In the long run, the coexistence and intermarriage of Slavic-​and German-​speakers led to acculturation and assimilation.56 In Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Saxony, and Silesia, the German language became predominant, while in Poland and Hungary the local languages prevailed. Bohemia and Moravia remained essentially bilingual, albeit with a tendency for linguistic segregation at the local level.57 Some scholars have cited occasional outbursts of xenophobia as indications of ethnic hostility, and by extension as proof of prenational ethnic identity, but the isolated cases documented in the sources do not support such an interpretation. Ethnic violence was supposedly tied to power struggles within the elite, often directed against a specific faction within the nobility or the clergy and the immigrants they had sponsored. Alternatively, tensions could result from military events,58 but such rare events are not valid indicators of everyday interaction on a local level.

Migration from the East and Southeast The traditional emphasis on allegedly “German” migration eastward has somewhat overshadowed the other major axis of long-​distance migration—​running in exactly the opposite direction, from east to west—​that shaped Central Europe in the Middle Ages. Incursions of various groups of steppe peoples who pushed westward from present-​day Ukraine, a constant of Eurasian population movement from the beginnings of recorded history, continued unabatedly throughout most of the Middle Ages.59 The Hungarians (Magyars60) and the Bulgarians were unusual cases, since they successfully established stable monarchical states within Europe (although, in the case of the Bulgarians they were assimilated linguistically by the majority Slavic population in short order and left little

198   Stefan Donecker more than their name61). The loose seminomadic confederations of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries—​the Pechenegs, Oghuz, and Cumans—​were comparatively short-​lived.62 Their mobile lifestyle, however, influenced the neighboring realms, in particular Hungary, which employed some of them as military specialists. The Mongol invasions against the Rus’ in 1222 and 1223 and from 1236 to 1240, as well as their foray into Central Europe in 1241 and 1242,63 were the last and probably the most significant of the invasions from the Eurasian steppe belt (rivalled only by the Huns in the fourth and fifth century ad). Unlike the comparatively haphazard migrations, raids, and settlement attempts of preceding nomad groups, they clearly had the character of well-​organized military campaigns. Muslim settlers had been present in Hungary from the tenth century onward. Pest was a predominantly “Saracen” (Muslim) town until the 1230s, but by the fourteenth century these communities in Hungary had been assimilated and converted.64 The first Turkish migration to Eastern Europe on a larger scale occurred in 1264, when ‘Izz ad-​ Dīn Kaykāwus II, sultan of the Rûm Seljuks, fled to the Byzantine Empire after being defeated by the Mongols, accompanied by a sizable group of Turkoman refugees. They were settled on the Black Sea coast in the area that later became known as Dobrudja.65 In the early Ottoman period, Turkish migration intensified, partially voluntarily and partially in the framework of forced resettlement measures known as sürgün (from Turkish sürmek, “to displace”). Dervish communities established religious foundations known as zāwiya that served as shelters for recent immigrants and as spiritual and organizational centers of Islamic settlement,66 thereby fulfilling a role somewhat similar to that of monasteries in areas of Christian colonization. Romani groups migrated from Anatolia to the Balkans and Central Europe during the fourteenth century. Initially, local rulers adhered to the time-​honored pattern of dealing with immigrants; skilled specialists were always welcome, and the Roma, who became known as excellent craftsmen in the fields of gun-​and metal-​smithing, were no exception.67 Their reception was not always frictionless, however; during the Ottoman invasion that culminated in the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1396, Roma were seized by Serbian and Wallachian nobles and forcibly settled on their depopulated estates.68 According to Central European sources, Roma often posed as pilgrims, penitent apostates, or fugitives fleeing the Muslim advance. Although these claims were commonly discounted as deceitful ruses corresponding to the common stereotype of “roguish gypsies,” there is, in fact, no reason to disregard the possibility that Roma migrations were at least partially triggered by expulsion and religious pressure.69 Somewhat ironically, the vague association of “gypsies” with the Ottoman Empire gave rise to suspicion among Central Europeans, who accused them of being Muslim sympathizers and spies, and resulted in increasing hostility that was aggravated even further in the early modern period.70

Elite Mobility Critics have noted that the focus on planned settlement, land cultivation, and long-​range migration has neglected other forms of medieval mobility.71 One such

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    199 important phenomenon was the mobility of socially privileged individuals. A recent case study on Ivan Babonić,72 a prominent nobleman from Slavonia who ruled the country on behalf of the Hungarian king between 1316 and 1322, has demonstrated the importance of spatial mobility for the aristocracy of Central Europe.73 At the peak of his political influence, Ivan spent a considerable part of his life on the road, travelling for economic, military, political, and religious reasons. He personally supervised the acquisition and sale of estates in different parts of Slavonia, conducted military campaigns on behalf of the king, attended legal proceedings, met domestic and foreign dignitaries, and went on pilgrimages—​all of which resulted in a highly mobile lifestyle.74 The findings from the Babonić case study reinforce previous research on the spatial mobility of secular and religious elites in medieval Central Europe. In Hungary, as might be expected, the former steppe nomads did not adopt a sedentary lifestyle immediately. It is believed that the elite continued seasonal migrations resembling those of their ancestors throughout the tenth century.75 At roughly the same time, Piast Duke Mieszko I was described as moving about his domain with a retinue of 3,000 mounted followers,76 and similar patterns, albeit on a smaller scale, persisted in Poland into the following centuries.77 The entourage of officials and attendants (satellitae, “followers”) that accompanied bishops, noblemen, and other dignitaries could be viewed as a somewhat stable organizational structure that resembled a mobile court. In many cases, however, the common followers lacked the means for continuous travel. According to frequent complaints, satellitae were known to seize horses from local peasants simply because they would have been unable to follow their masters otherwise. In these cases, unconstrained mobility was directly linked to social status; the masters (potentes) could travel as they wish, but the satellitae had to compete and quarrel with peasants to retain their mobility. According to Piotr Górecki, acquiring or confiscating horses could enable an individual to advance his social status within the traveling group.78 Privileged travelers exerted a considerable strain on the local people, even if their retainers did refrain from theft. Peasants were obliged to provide transport services to noblemen passing through the area. The exact nature of these services is difficult to ascertain, since they were apparently commonly known they were generally not explained in the sources, but they included putting horses at the travelers’ disposal, and possibly also transporting baggage over considerable distances.79

Itinerant Occupations Mobility was an integral part of their occupation for different professions further down the social ladder.80 Traders, craftsmen, mercenaries, students, and mendicant monks as well as traveling artists, vagrants, and itinerant beggars spent a significant part of their lives on the move. In Hungary and the Balkans, transhumant pastoralism81 (the seasonal

200   Stefan Donecker movement of herders and their livestock among different pastures) was yet another example of everyday migration.82 Such common forms of mobility were often taken for granted by contemporaries and therefore are mentioned infrequently in the extant sources. The Lithuanians who allegedly exhibited a dragon at a fair in Leipzig in the 1480s83 were certainly not the only itinerant entertainers from East-​Central Europe who found their way to Germany. But their peculiar animal, whatever it might have been, apparently left a stronger impression on their audience than the efforts of their fellows and they found their way into the written record. In a similar vein, the exodus of roughly 1,000 German university teachers and students from Prague to Leipzig in 1409 and the expulsion of non-​Hussites from the University of Prague sixteen years later84 were particularly spectacular manifestations of the common phenomenon of academic mobility (the latter case somewhat foreshadows the problem of denominational exile in the early modern period).

Peasant Migration Spatial mobility was, at least in theory, severely restricted or even impossible for the lower layer of rural society. Being a serf meant being tied to a particular piece of land and forbidden to leave. A denial of spatial mobility was essentially the only common denominator of the bewildering variety of legal and social conditions commonly subsumed under the umbrella term “serfdom.”85 The image of a largely place-​bound rural society is supported by a scientific microstudy published in 2016. An isotope analysis of sixty-​ two skeletons from a graveyard in Gródek, at the present-​day Polish-​Belarusian border, buried between the eleventh and the thirteenth century, provided no indication that any of the examined individuals was of nonlocal origin.86 The settlement programs of Landesausbau, however, provided enterprising individuals with a comparatively easy way to obtain their freedom. Many peasant settlers in Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia were, in fact, fugitive serfs from Germany or Flanders who had left their native lands illegally and chosen the option of emancipation through long-​ distance migration. But locatores were also willing to accept fugitives within the same country, apparently without asking too many questions. In Poland, the number of fleeing serfs increased noticeably during the first half of the thirteenth century, at the same time as foreign immigration intensified. In a 1222 charter, Duke Konrad of Masovia explicitly rebuked the descendants of unfree migrants, warning them not to “assume the presumption of freedom because of the passage of time.”87 Preventing the flight of serfs proved difficult for the local lords, and rivalries within the nobility exacerbated the issue even further. In Hungary, a royal decree dated to 1351 explicitly addressed the issue of abductio, the forcible removal of tenant peasants from their lords’ lands. This practice was most likely not “abduction” in the strict sense of the word, rather, powerful lords forced the relocation of their rivals’ serfs to their own lands, usually with the serfs’ consent.88 In a similar vein, the supplemented version of Dušan’s

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    201 Code (1354), the most important body of laws in medieval Serbia, threatened both the fugitives themselves and any possible instigators, profiteers, or sympathizers. Anyone who received a fugitive was to be considered a traitor, which meant that he forfeited his whole property.89 The introduction of German law—​a legal system that could also apply, as noted above, to non-​German-​speakers—​to newly settled areas influenced the legal position of the entire peasantry, even those who had not participated in the colonization. In Hungary and Bohemia, many peasants eventually received privileges similar to those of German law, including the freedom to migrate. In the frequent power struggles between the crown and the nobility, peasant migration (or the threat thereof) could be used by the royal court to keep the nobility in line because it threatened their economic well-​being.90 Accordingly, the nobility reacted with a variety of countermeasures to restrict rural mobility, ranging from changes in legislation to measures to keep the peasantry indebted and economically dependent (see ­chapter 11 in this volume, by Sárosi). Violence against prospective migrants was also widespread.91 Town authorities, however, tended to encourage rural-​to-​urban migration, since towns depended on a steady influx of new residents to keep their populations stable.92 Documentation is sparse in the sources, however, since most rural migrants were part of the lower stratum of urban society (see ­chapter 12 in this volume, by Szende and Schmieder); not holding the status of burghers, they were not listed in the town registers.93 Language shifts can serve an indication for rural–​urban migration. For example, the Walloon town of Alba Civitas (Székesfehérvár) came to be dominated by Hungarian-​speaking newcomers from the countryside during the fifteenth century.94 Likewise, towns on the Adriatic coast of Croatia became multilingual due to the influx of local Slavic-​speakers, with daily informal communication increasingly conducted in Slavic dialects and Latin and Italian only retaining their dominant position in administration and trade. Direct migration from villages into major cities was comparatively rare. A typical migration pattern was moving to a smaller rural town as an intermediary stage; Hungarian case studies have shown that migrants from the countryside first moved to a market town (oppidum) in the vicinity. Once they had been socially and economically established there, they (or their descendants) migrated over a longer distance and settled in a larger city (civitas). Visits to town markets and fairs established interpersonal connections between rural families and townspeople and thereby provided a foundation for a possible future migration.95

Forced Resettlement Spontaneous migration of population groups threatened by warfare was a common phenomenon throughout premodern times, and the Middle Ages were no exception. Numerous instances of planned resettlement in the context of medieval warfare can

202   Stefan Donecker be found in the source record. Archaeological research indicates that the Polish Piasts resorted to the enforced relocation of rural communities to their main land holdings in Greater Poland during the early tenth century, the formative decades of their dynasty. In 1039, the Piasts’ own stronghold of Giecz was captured by the Přemyslid Duke Břetislav of Bohemia, who forcibly resettled the garrison and the local peasantry and assigned them a tract of forest for reclamation in his own domain, where they could live according to their own traditions.96 Coerced resettlement was even more common in the Balkans. In the tenth century, Byzantine Emperor John Tzimiskes (969–​976) ordered that Armenian-​speaking communities accused of the Paulician heresy be moved from the empire’s frontier areas in Asia minor to Philippopolis (present-​day Plovdiv in Bulgaria), which was under threat from the Kievan Rus’, at that time. Bulgarians, Pechenegs, and other ethnic groups from the Balkans were subject to similar policies of population transfer.97 The Ottoman Empire employed a corresponding system of enforced resettlement (sürgün). By deporting parts of the population that were deemed unreliable and settling loyal subjects instead, the empire sought to facilitate control over recently conquered territories. Even more importantly, sürgün was employed to resettle agriculturalists in areas that had been devastated by war or to arable land that was in general need of cultivation.98 With the advance of Ottoman power in the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, this system, possibly modeled on the Byzantine example, reached Central Europe. The extent and general effectiveness of sürgün has, however, been the subject of scholarly debate.99

The Slave Trade Slavery stands out as a particularly repressive migration regime that deprived the individuals subjected to it of all but the most limited agency. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Central European slave trade remained a lucrative business.100 This is evidenced by the terminology in Byzantine Greek and medieval Arabic, both of which tie their designations for slaves—​sklavos or saqāliba—​to ethnonyms referring predominantly to the Slavic populations of Central and Eastern Europe.101 Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʿqūb, a Jewish-​Arab traveler who visited Europe in the 960s, reports a flourishing slave market in Prague, located just beneath the main stronghold of the Přemyslid rulers.102 An analysis of ninth-​century toll regulations shows that young girls were traded from the Moravian stronghold at Mikulčice; the high toll fees demanded from the traders indicate that such a venture was indeed profitable. Many slaves were exported to Byzantium and the Caliphate, with Venice serving as a major trade hub. The development of proto-​towns along the long-​distance trade routes from Poland and Bohemia depended in part on the slave caravans.103 Christianization and the Church’s opposition to trading coreligionists contributed to a stricter regulation of the Central European slave trade and its gradual decline after

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    203 the year 1000.104 In a more limited scope, however, the practice persisted. An overview of tolls collected by the Polish duchy of Opole—​compiled, somewhat ironically, by a churchman, Bishop Wawrzyniec of Wrocław—​indicates that slaves of both sexes were still trafficked along a north–​south trade route between the Baltic region and Moravia in 1226.105 In the cities of the eastern Adriatic, the slave trade continued well into the fifteenth century. Split was the first city to ban the export of slaves in 1375; Dubrovnik, the major hub of the Adriatic slave trade, followed in 1416, and Kotor was the last significant city to outlaw the practice in 1439. Still, individuals from the hinterland continued to be sold with the tacit approval of secular and religious authorities. Only the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in the latter half of the fifteenth century deprived the Dalmatian cities of their main source of manpower in the hinterland and put an end to the Adriatic slave trade.106

Situational Identity? After this outline of different migration systems in medieval central Europe, does it make any sense to distinguish between the local population and the (im)migrants, the sedentary and the mobile? A former German serf who has participated in Landesausbau now lives among Slavic-​speaking peasants. They, in turn, are soon to ­receive German law that will enable them (or their children) to move to the nearest city. There, they will become part of a growing number of Slavic-​speaking residents who will, over the following generations, ensure that German loses its status as the city’s dominant language. And the local Slavic lord who grants his subjects ius Teutonicus, has spent most of his adult life on the road as well. Who exactly should be considered a migrant? In medieval central Europe, different forms of spatial mobility were linked in a network of practices where one and the same person could be seen as a local or as a migrant, at different times in his or her life, or even at the same point in time if perceived in different contexts. In a society thoroughly permeated by migratory systems, distinctions become blurred and the alleged dualism of the local and the migrant proves impossible to maintain.

Notes * Work on this paper was conducted in the framework of the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Innovation Fund Research, Science and Society (project IF_​2017_​21 “Migration as an Artefact of Scholarly Thought: An Inquiry into Pre‐Modern and Early Modern Precursors of Migration Theory”). I would like to express my gratitude to Nada Zečević, Daniel Ziemann, Roland Steinacher, and Clemens Gantner for their support, advice, and patience with my tardiness!

204   Stefan Donecker 1. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder, “Introduction: Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea,” in Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea, edited by Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder, International Medieval Research 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), xiii–​xiv. 2. Jan E. Stets and Richard T. Serpe, “Identity Theory,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by John DeLamater and Amanda Ward (New York: Springer, 2009), 31–​60. 3. The term “migration” is used here in accordance with the typology suggested by Dirk Hoerder et al., “Terminologies and Concepts of Migration Research,” in The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the 17th Century to the Present, edited by Klaus J. Bade et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), xxix, which is not restricted to long-​distance one-​way population movements, but also includes local, seasonal, and circular forms of spatial mobility. 4. See Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-​Central European Perspective,” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 360–​379. 5. Christian Lübke, “Eastern Europe: Medieval Era Colonizations and Reclamation of Land,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), 1291; Martin Rady, “The German Settlement in Central and Eastern Europe during the High Middle Ages,” in The German Lands and Eastern Europe: Essays on the History of Their Social, Cultural and Political Relations, edited by Roger Barlett and Karen Schönwälder (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 14. 6. See the summary of German-​and Polish-​language historiography in Jörg Hackmann, “From Germania Slavica to Slavia Germanica?,” Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana 22 (2017): esp. 122–​129. Cf. also Jan M. Piskorski, ed., Historiographical Approaches to Medieval Colonization of East Central Europe: A Comparative Analysis against the Background of Other European Inter-​Ethnic Colonization Processes in the Middle Ages, East European Monographs 611 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 2002), which includes surveys of Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, and Russian historiography. 7. Sebastian Brather, “Hochmittelalterliche Siedlungsentwicklung und ethnische Identitäten—​ Slawen und Deutsche östlich der Elbe in archäologischer und siedlungsgeographischer Perspektive,” in Die bäuerliche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters in Nordostdeutschland: Untersuchungen zum Landesausbau des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts im ländlichen Raum, edited by Felix Biermann and Günter Mangelsdorf, Greifswalder Mitteilungen 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 29. The cooperation between locals and migrants poses a major problem for yet another line of interpretation (cf. Rady, “Settlement,” 15–​16): historians have suggested perceiving Landesausbau as part of a medieval “Europeanization” like the Spanish reconquista and the Norman conquest of England and southern Italy. This model tends to focus on conflict, however, and to disregard peaceful cooperation with the local population (who, in the case of Central and Eastern Europe, often adopted “European” traits of their own accord). Thus, it seems hardly compatible with the reality of Landesausbau. 8. Oliver Auge, “Baltic Sea Colonizations, Medieval Era,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), 661; Jan M. Piskorski, “Slawen und Deutsche in Pommern im Mittelalter,” in Grenzräume und Grenzüberschreitungen im Vergleich: Der Osten und der Westen des mittelalterlichen Lateineuropa, edited by Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Europa im Mittelalter 7 (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 2007), 75.

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    205 9. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1291–​1294. The term denotes the territories east of the Elbe which had been inhabited by Slavic-​speaking tribes before the colonization period and were subsequently Germanized in a linguistic sense. 10. Helmoldi presbyteri Bozoviensis, Chronica Slavorum II, 110. Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 32, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler (Hanover: Hahn, 1937), 218: Omnis enim Slavorum regio [ . . . ], olim insidiis horrida et pene deserta, nunc dante Deo tota redacta est veluti in unam Saxonum coloniam, et instruuntur illic civitates et oppida, et multiplicantur ecclesiae et numerus ministrorum Christi. Cf. Piskorski, “Slawen und Deutsche,” 75–​76. The first records of German-​speaking settlers in Hungary also date to the latter half of the twelfth century. See Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 363. 11. Piskorski, “Slawen und Deutsche,” 76–​77. 12. The Teutonic Order was a special case. Given the military expertise they had developed in the Holy Land, the knights were well suited to protect colonization efforts in perilous regions on the fringes of Latin Christianity. However, the order tended to disregard royal authority in the areas that had been entrusted to them, striving for independence under direct papal control. For this reason, the Hungarian kings expelled the order from the Burzenland region of Transylvania in the 1220s. In 1230, the Polish duke Konrad of Masovia assigned the Teutonic Knights to the crusade against the pagan Prussians. There, the order achieved its aim of full political control over the area and established the most successful of the medieval crusader states, which survived until the Protestant reformation in the sixteenth century. See Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1296. 13. Auge, “Baltic Sea,” 662–​664. 14. See Piotr Górecki, Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland 1100–​ 1250 (New York: Holmes & Meier 1992), 212–​219, for case studies that illustrate the status and the activities of two locatores in Poland during the 1220s. 15. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1294; Rady, “Settlement,” 32–​33; Górecki, Economy, 227. In the Transylvanian borderlands, individuals known as knezi, a vaguely defined Vlach term that could refer to almost any member of the rural elite, played a role similar to the locatores further to the north as coordinators of new settlement projects. See Jean W. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–​1500, History of East Central Europe 3 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992), 64. 16. Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 362. 17. Auge, “Baltic Sea,” 660. The crusade movement might have played a role as well, since it allowed participants to become familiar with the lands of Eastern Europe. See Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 363. 18. The legal framework of Erbpacht (emphyteusis), which granted the settlers a heritable right of land-​use on condition of a fixed tax and allowed them to sell their land and move elsewhere, has been identified as a main recruiting incentive during the initial stage in the twelfth-​century Germania Slavica. See Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1294. 19. Górecki, Economy, 227. 20. Walter Schlesinger, “Zur Problematik der Erforschung der deutschen Ostsiedlung,” in Die deutsche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters als Problem der europäischen Geschichte: Reichenau-​ Vorträge 1970–​1972, edited by Walter Schlesinger, Vorträge und Forschungen 18 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1975), 23–​24; Rady, “Settlement,” 11. 21. Walter Kuhn, Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur mittelalterlichen Ostsiedlung, Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart 16 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1973), 228; Lübke,

206   Stefan Donecker “Eastern Europe,” 1294, and Schlesinger, “Ostsiedlung,” 23–​24, among others, subscribe to these numbers. 22. Günter Mangelsdorf, “Desiderata der Forschung zur bäuerlichen Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters in Nordostdeutschland aus archäologischer Sicht,” in Die bäuerliche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters in Nordostdeutschland: Untersuchungen zum Landesausbau des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts im ländlichen Raum, edited by Felix Biermann and Günter Mangelsdorf, Greifswalder Mitteilungen 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 11. 23. Matthias Hardt, “Die Veränderung der Kulturlandschaft in der hochmittelalterlichen Germania Slavica–​offene Fragen beim derzeitigen Forschungsstand,” in Die bäuerliche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters in Nordostdeutschland: Untersuchungen zum Landesausbau des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts im ländlichen Raum, edited by Felix Biermann and Günter Mangelsdorf, Greifswalder Mitteilungen 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 21–​22; Rudolf Endres, “Die Rolle der Grafen von Schweinfurt in der Besiedlung Nordostbayerns,” Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 32 (1972): esp. 30–​37. 24. Rady, “Settlement,” 14, 42. 25. Andreas Rüther, “Stadtrecht, Rechtszug, Rechtsbuch: Gerichtsbarkeit im östlichen Mitteleuropa seit dem 12. Jahrhundert,” in Grenzräume und Grenzüberschreitungen im Vergleich. Der Osten und der Westen des mittelalterlichen Lateineuropa, edited by Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Europa im Mittelalter 7 (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 2007), 128. 26. Nora Berend, “Immigrants and Locals in Medieval Hungary: 11th–​13th centuries,” in Grenzräume und Grenzüberschreitungen im Vergleich: Der Osten und der Westen des mittelalterlichen Lateineuropa, edited by Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Europa im Mittelalter 7 (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 2007), 206. After the schism of 1204, it took on additional religious/​political connotations as a shorthand for Catholic Christians vis-​à-​vis their Orthodox (“Greek”) counterparts. 27. Górecki, Economy, 16; Lübke, “Conclusio,” 347; Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 369–​371. See Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 362, on the implication of the term hospes. It can also be found in sources unrelated to the large-​scale settlement processes. Górecki, Economy, 128, has defined hospites as “a specialized category of peasants who traveled in order to carry out their agricultural function on behalf of the ruler or some other lord.” 28. Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 378. 29. Górecki, Economy, 193, 228–​229, 262. Cf. also Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 373–​377. 30. Eduard Mühle, “The Real and Perceived Influence of Minority Groups in Poland in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 400; Rüther, “Stadtrecht,” 129; Hardy, “Migration,” esp. 381–​ 382; Rady, “Settlement,” 36; Górecki, Economy, 275. 31. Górecki, Economy, 278. 32. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1296; Rady, “Settlement,” 37; Sedlar, East Central Europe, 317–​318. 33. Lübke, “Conclusio,” 343. 34. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages. Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c. 900–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 90–​109; Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​ 1300), Brill’s Companions to European History 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 341–​408. 35. Matthias Hardt, “Migrants in High Medieval Bohemia,” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 380–​381. 36. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 259–​260.

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    207 Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 293–​294. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1295–​1296. Górecki, Economy, 197, 200, 208. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 260–​261. Karaite Judaism is a branch of Judaism that rejects the Rabbinic tradition and the Talmud and accepts only the Torah itself as the foundation of their beliefs. 42. Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-​Verbickienė, “The Tatars,” in The Peoples of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, edited by Grigorijus Potašenko (Vilnius: Aidai, 2002); Jan Tyskiewicz, “Tataren (Mongolen) in der Rus’, in Litauen und in Polen im Mittelalter,” in Kontinuitäten und Brüche: Lebensformen–​Alteingesessene–​Zuwanderer von 500 bis 1500, edited by Karl Kaser et al., Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 12 (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2010), 341. In neighboring Prussia, ruled by the Teutonic Order, a small resident population of Muslim Tatars (estimated at between 50 and 250 individuals) is documented in the source record from the early fifteenth century. See Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, “The Muslim People of Desht-​i Qipchaq in Fifteenth-​Century Prussia,” in Fear and Loathing in the North: Jews and Muslims in Medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, edited by Cordelia Hess and Jonathan Adams (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 144–​160. 43. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 127. 44. “Libellus de institutione morum ad Emericum ducem,” ed. Ioseph Balogh, in Scriptores rerum hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum, vol. 2, edited by Emericus Szentpétery (Budapest: Academia Litterarum Hungarica, 1938), 625. Cf. Jószef Laszlovzsky and András Kubinyi, “Völker und Kulturen im mittelalterlichen Ungarn,” in Kontinuitäten und Brüche: Lebensformen–​Alteingesessene–​Zuwanderer von 500 bis 1500, edited by Karl Kaser et al., Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 12 (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2010), 315; Curta, Eastern Europe, 370–​371; Rüther, “Stadtrecht,” 128; Lübke, “Conclusio,” 343. 45. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1293. 46. Berend, “Immigrants,” 205. 47. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 81–​82. 48. Curta, Eastern Europe, 378–​379; Laszlovszky and Kubinyi, “Völker,” 315–​321, Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 364; Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1300, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought IV 50 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 49. András Kubinyi and József Laszlovszky, “Demographic Issues in Late Medieval Hungary: Population, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activity,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, edited by József Laszlovszky et al., East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 60–​63; Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 364–​369; Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 232–​233, 252–​257; Berend, “Immigrants, ” 205–​ 207; Berend, At the Gate, 112–​129, 133–​134, 140–​147; Sedlar, East Central Europe, 127–​128. 50. Cf. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1291. 51. Mangelsdorf, “Desiderata,“ 10. 52. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1294–​1295; Rady, “Settlement,” 11. 53. Mangelsdorf, “Desiderata,” 11. 54. Cf. Brather, “Siedlungsentwicklung,” 29; Górecki, Economy, 288. 55. Rüther, “Stadtrecht,” 129. 56. Rady, “Settlement,” 13; Winfried Schich, “Slawen und Deutsche im Gebiet der Germania Slavica,“ in Kontinuitäten und Brüche: Lebensformen–​Alteingesessene–​Zuwanderer von 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

208   Stefan Donecker 500 bis 1500, edited by Karl Kaser et al., Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 12 (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2010), 326. 57. Brather, “Siedlungsentwicklung,“ 37; Hardt, “Migrants.“ 58. Cf. Berend, “Immigrants,” 213–​214; Mühle, “Influence,“ 400–​403. 59. Walter Pohl, “Ein Jahrtausend der Wanderungen, 500–​ 1500,” in Kontinuitäten und Brüche: Lebensformen–​Alteingesessene–​Zuwanderer von 500 bis 1500, edited by Karl Kaser et al., Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 12 (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2010), 85, 101–​117. 60. For the relationship between the two ethnonyms, see Curta, Eastern Europe, 251; György Györffy, “Die Landnahme der Ungarn aus historischer Sicht,” in Ausgewählte Probleme europäischer Landnahmen des Früh-​und Hochmittelalters: Methodische Grundlagendiskussion im Grenzbereich zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte, Teil II, edited by Michael Müller-​Wille and Reinhard Schneider, Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte, Vorträge und Forschungen 41 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1994), 67–​68. Concerning the settling of the Hungarians and the establishment of their realm, cf. the classical study by György Györffy, “Landnahme, Ansiedlung und Streifzüge der Ungarn,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31 (1985): 231–​270. 61. The Bulgarian ethnonym was even of more of a catch-​all term than other supposedly ethnic designations of the same period. Between the sixth and the eighth century it was applied to various communities from the Urals to southern Italy. See Pohl, “Jahrtausend,” 104–​105, 116. 62. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 11. Cf. Victor Spinei, The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-​thirteenth Century (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 6) (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Curta, Eastern Europe, 152–​178. 63. Curta, Eastern Europe, 699–​7 10. 64. Berend, At the Gate, 237–​244; Sedlar, East Central Europe, 128. 65. Rustam Shukurov, The Byzantine Turks 1204–​1461, The Medieval Mediterranean 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 99–​125; Şevket Küçükhüseyin, “Turks in the Occident, Medieval Era,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), 3016–​3017. 66. Küçükhüseyin, “Turks,” 3018–​3019. 67. David M. Crowe, “The International and Historical Dimensions of Romani Migration in Central and Eastern Europe,” Nationalities Papers 31 (2003): 82. 68. Adrian Marsh and Norma Montesino, “Roma Migrations,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), 2612. 69. Marsh and Montesino, “Roma migrations,” 2610–​2613. 70. Crowe, “Dimensions,” 82. 71. Cf., with regard to the Carpathian region, Ulrike Lunow, “Kulturelle Vielfalt–​Migration–​ Zentrum und Peripherie: Neue Zugänge zur Geschichte der Deutschen in der Slowakei,” Bohemia 55 (2015): 383. 72. Hrvoje Kekez, “The Travels of Ivan Babonić: The Mobility of Slavonian Noblemen in the Fourteenth Century,” in Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea, edited by Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder, International Medieval Research 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 143–​162. 73. The mobility of the political elite intensified during periods of political strife. For example, the Ottoman advance in the Balkans caused the migration of local noblemen

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    209 to Hungary, Venice, and Naples. Likewise, the area of Dobrzyń was heavily affected by continuous struggles between Poland-​Lithuania and the Teutonic Order, which drove supporters of both parties into alternating exile, depending on the fortunes of war. Cf. Sobiesław Szybkowski, “Victims of Political Choice: Noble Refugees from Dobrzyń Land, 1391–​1405 and Later,” East Central Europe 47 (2020): 89–​106. But as the Babonić case study demonstrates, spatial mobility was also an important factor of everyday life for the elites of medieval Europe. 74. Kekez, “Travels,” 157–​158. 75. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 107. This has been disputed by Curta, Eastern Europe, 262, who has stated, “the economy of the first generations of Magyars in Hungary was anything but nomadic.” 76. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 119. 77. Górecki, Economy, 123, 132–​133. 78. Górecki, Economy, 133. 79. Górecki, Economy, 134–​136. 80. Magdolna Szilágyi, “Mobility, Roads and Bridges in Medieval Hungary,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, edited by József Laszlovszky et al., East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 64–​78, 65–​66. Cf. Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 65–​75. 81. Researchers distinguish between vertical pastoralism (or transhumant pastoralism in the narrow sense), in which herds are moved up and down mountains to exploit seasonally available food resources, and horizontal (lateral) pastoralism, which involves movement between differentiated pastures at the same altitude. In the area covered here, the former practice is found in the Alps, the Dinarics, and the Balkans, whereas the latter was typical for land use in the Hungarian plain. Cf. Elizabeth R. Arnold and Haskel J. Greenfield, The Origins of Transhumant Pastoralism in Temperate Southeastern Europe: A Zooarchaeological Perspective from the Central Balkans, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1538 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2006), 8, with references to additional literature. 82. Transhumant pastoralists in the Balkans were often subsumed under the umbrella term “Vlach,” a quasi-​ethnic designation that doubled as an indicator of their social and legal standing (see note 34). In Transylvania, Vlach shepherds retained their personal freedom until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their traditionally mobile lifestyle proved a valuable asset in thwarting the efforts of the local nobility to coerce them into serfdom. See Sedlar, East Central Europe, 93. 83. Ernst Schubert, Fahrendes Volk im Mittelalter (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 1995), 110. 84. Daniela Rando, “Traders and Exiles, Medieval Era,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), 2953. 85. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 92. There were exceptions, however, in Poland, the so-​called naroczniki, although clearly defined as serfs, could migrate of their own accord with a legal framework similar to that stipulated by German Law. See Górecki, Economy, 290. 86. Aleksandra Lisowska-​Gaczorek et al., “An Analysis of the Origin of an Early Medieval Group of Individuals from Gródek Based on the Analysis of Stable Oxygen Isotopes,” Homo: Journal of Comparative Human Biology 67 (2016): 325. 87. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 94–​95; Górecki, Economy, 104, 167–​169.

210   Stefan Donecker 88. András Kubinyi, “Horizontale Mobilität im spätmittelalterlichen Königreich Ungarn,” in Migration in der Feudalgesellschaft, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Albert Müller, Studien zur historischen Sozialwissenschaft 8 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1988), 116. 89. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 95. 90. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 101. 91. Sedlar, East Central Europe, 103–​104. 92. Cf. Rainer Christoph Schwinges, “Neubürger und Bürgerbücher im Reich des späten Mittelalters: Eine Einführung über die Quellen,” in Neubürger im späten Mittelalter: Migration und Austausch in der Städtelandschaft des Alten Reiches (1250–​ 1550), edited by Rainer Christoph Schwinges, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 30 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002), esp. 49–​50. 93. Regina Schäfer, “Rural–​Urban Migrations, Medieval Era,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), 2661. For case studies on migrants who became part of the urban elite in late medieval Prague, see Martin Musílek, “Migration in der Prager Altstadt im 14. Jahrhundert.: Neubürgerliste (1324–​1393) und Gerichtsbuch (1351–​1367) als Quellen für die wirtschaftliche und soziale Entwicklung der Stadt,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 127 (2019): 173–​188. 94. Schäfer, “Rural–​Urban Migrations,” 2664; Kubinyi, “Mobilität,” 122–​123; Gyula Siklósi, “Die ethnischen Verhältnisse im mittelalterlichen Székesfehérvár bis zum Ende der Türkenherrschaft,“ Archaeologia historica 19 (1994): 338–​339, 341. 95. István Petrovics, “The Medieval Market Town and Its Economy,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, edited by József Laszlovszky et al., East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 359; Schäfer, “Rural–​Urban migrations,” 2662–​2664; Kubinyi, “Mobilität,” 119–​126. 96. Lübke, “Eastern Europe,” 1292–​1293. 97. Peter Charanis, “The Transfer of Population as a Policy in the Byzantine Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 3 (1961): 146, 149–​150; Sedlar, East Central Europe, 11. 98. Küçükhüseyin, “Turks,” 3018. 99. Cf. Nikolay Antov, “The Ottoman State and Semi-​Nomadic Groups Along the Ottoman Danubian Serhad (Frontier Zone) in the Late 15th and the First Half of the 16th Centuries: Challenges and Policies,” Hungarian Studies 27 (2013): 231–​232. 100. See Youval Rotman, “Migration and Enslavement: A Medieval Model,” in Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone: Aspects of Mobility between Africa, Asia and Europe, 300–​1500 C.E., edited by Johannes Preiser-​Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt, and Yannis Stouraitis, Studies in Global Social History 39 (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 101. Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 66; Rotman, “Migration and Enslavement,” 398; Marek Jankowiak, “What Does the Slave Trade in the Saqaliba Tell Us about Early Islamic Slavery?,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 49 (2017): 169–​172. 102. Jankowiak, “Slave Trade,” 169–​170; Matthias Hardt, “Slavs, Medieval Migration,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (St. Albans: Wiley-​ Blackwell, 2013), vol. 5, 2775. 103. Hardt, “Slavs,” 2774; Rotman, “Migration and Enslavement,” 395–​396. 104. Rotman, “Migration and Enslavement,” 401–​402; Hardt, “Slavs,” 2774–​2775; Berend, At the Gate, 110–​112.

Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe    211 105. Górecki, Economy, 58–​59. 106. Neven Budak, “Slavery in Late Medieval Dalmatia/​ Croatia: Labour, Legal Status, Integration,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge 112 (2000): 745–​760.

Further Reading Górecki, Piotr. Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland 1100–​1250. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992. Hardt, Matthias. “Migrants in High Medieval Bohemia.” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 380–​388. Kubinyi, András, and József Laszlovszky. “Demographic Issues in Late Medieval Hungary: Population, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activity.” In The Economy of Medieval Hungary: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450, edited by József Laszlovszky et al., 48–​63. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Mühle, Eduard. “The Real and Perceived Influence of Minority Groups in Poland in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 389–​404. Piskorski, Jan M., ed. Historiographical Approaches to Medieval Colonization of East Central Europe: A Comparative Analysis against the Background of Other European Inter-​Ethnic Colonization Processes in the Middle Ages. East European Monographs 611. Boulder: East European Monographs, 2002. Rady, Martin. “The German Settlement in Central and Eastern Europe during the High Middle Ages.” In The German Lands and Eastern Europe: Essays on the History of their Social, Cultural and Political Relations, edited by Roger Barlett and Karen Schönwälder, 11–​47. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. Szende, Katalin. “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-​Central European Perspective.” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 360–​379.

Chapter 10

Ge nder and Fa mi ly i n Medieval Centra l E u rope Michaela Antonín Malaníková, Witold Brzeziński, and Marija Mogorović Crljenko

Dealing with Women, Gender, and Family: “Topics, Sources, Debates” Central Europe (in this chapter the kingdoms of Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, and the area of the eastern Adriatic), geographically and culturally diverse, allows for only a limited degree of generalization. The features of the historic social system that were defined in the 1960s as the European marriage pattern (EMP)—​adored and criticized as it has been ever since—​were late marriage, a large number of single people in society, a predominance of nuclear-​family households, and associated social practices. It was based (mainly) on northwestern European sources, but can also be seen in many medieval urban localities in Central Europe. It turns out that a more fundamental influence on marital relations and family organization than geography (the east–​ west and north–​south paradigm) can be attributed to more complex socioeconomic factors such as urbanization.1 In the second half of the twentieth century similar political developments, particularly (more or less intense) affiliations with the Socialist Bloc on the level of political and social life influenced academic approaches to history and historiography in Central Europe. The second wave of feminism in the 1960s and the subsequent paradigmatic shift from women´s history to gender history that started in the late 1980s had only a limited impact on history-​writing in this part of Europe. State socialist policy, which ostensibly promoted the equal representation of men and women on the labor market and in society in general, was rather hesitant about seeing women as agents in history. The consequences of this attitude can be seen to this day. Despite some differences among

214    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. individual countries, women’s history and gender history are still generally located on the edge of medieval studies. In some countries, especially Poland and Czech Republic, there were traditionally two main directions of historical research where women were inherently present: first, as part of the history of daily life, family, childcare, and what has been labeled the private sphere,2 and second, as heroines in biographies of “great” female figures such as queens and female saints.3 Political turbulence in the 1990s changed the situation profoundly in the whole region on all levels of social life. As in the socialist period, the impulses that gender history brought into the discourse, namely, the analytical potential of gender as a category for the study of the past, a growing interest in the study of masculinity and alternative identities, and the problematization of the collective identity of women, have only been implemented slowly in historiography. On the one hand, interest in women of the past has increased the prospects for research and helped to develop new perspectives, on the other hand, gender history remains limited and the traditional approaches of cultural history and the history of everyday life still prevail. One research area traditionally represented strongly in the whole region has been the legal status of women in society (especially within marriage) under different legal jurisdictions (land law/​ius terrae, canon law, municipal law) and across various social milieus. In Croatia, for instance, the status of wife and the property relations between spouses have been systematically investigated since the 1970s by the legal historian Lujo Margetić. He based his research primarily on analyses of preserved medieval statutes (Municipal Codes), i.e., legal arrangements enacted by the communes of east Adriatic coastal towns.4 In later years, especially after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1990, research on women and the family in Croatia has been enriched by the work of both other Croatian and foreign historians.5 Norms and practices of canon law from the perspective of women’s and gender history have also been discussed in Poland. The Acts of the Episcopal Consistory (Acta officii consistorialis), the Acts of the Chapter (Acta capitulorum), synodal statutes (Statuta synodalia episcoporum), and so on have recently attracted increased attention together with the agendas of the bishops’ courts, where various transgressions against church morals and conjugal commitments were discussed.6 Nevertheless, it could be only through misleading to analyze marital coexistence, family relationships, or parental love through the testimony of sources that depict problematic situations. A more balanced image of marital arrangements based on respect and mutual love can be provided by analyses of medieval testaments, correspondence, and other types of documents, for instance, Miracula.7 Systematic comparisons of medieval legal of medieval legal practice and norms that tended that tended to be formally in force for a long period of time are still needed across the region. Case studies of this kind point to considerable disparity between norms and social practice in terms of the contemporary perception of gender roles and relations for all social strata. Reality tends to be more colorful and flexible. Certain moments when the legal norm and social practice did not match also naturally reflect the situational use of legal customs, suggesting shifts in contemporary perceptions. According to some

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    215 municipal laws, the legal capacity of urban women was restricted; in order to bring a case to court or to enter a contract they needed a male representative. Research shows, however, that in practice townswomen (mostly widows but also those married and single) disposed of their property, made contracts, and brought their cases to various kinds of courts.8 The emphasis on a comparative approach across Central Europe is relevant because it holds the potential to reveal more general legal patterns and mechanisms. In municipal laws, for example, the influence of Roman law and urban norms of imperial origin were heavily influential throughout the whole geographical area. In some countries, there are certain topics or segments of research where the women’s and gender history approach have developed to a greater extent. A typical example of this is the Czech Reformation within the medieval history of the Czech lands,9 where interest has always focused on the question of women’s active public involvement in the Hussite movement (from 1419 to approximately 1434) together with their physical engagement in warfare during the first phase of the conflict, reflected primarily in the narrative sources.10 The other stream of questioning is connected to the changes that the Reformation, followed by protracted conflict, brought to marital and familial ties.11 In Poland, in contrast, the focus of research since the 1950s has been rather general, systematically investigating the status of women and their position within and outside marriage against the background of the history of the family, especially concerning the nobility. Legal issues around the economic foundations of the family, women’s rights to inherit real estate, and their right to dispose of their own assets have been discussed the most.12 To a lesser degree, these issues have also been taken up in relation to burgher and peasant families.13 In recent years, research on medieval Polish families has also covered demographic aspects such as the age at first marriage, its duration, fertility, and the frequency of widowhood and remarriage, mostly with respect to the nobility,14 but taking into account the lower social strata to some extent.15 Various late medieval statutes applying to both the peasantry and nobility affected inheritance and marital property: the Statues of Casimir the Great (c. mid-​fourteenth century), the Statute of Warta (1423), other statues issued by later Polish rulers, and legislation enacted by the parliament (sejm) after the end of the fifteenth century.16 The main sources for studying marriage and the family in late medieval Poland, however, are court records documenting the activity of the “noble” courts (acta castrensia et terrestria) and the records of municipal and village courts (acta scabinalia) that are preserved for some regions. For the urban stratum of society, information comes from burghers’ testaments and the regulations of German law in its two versions, the Saxon-​Magdeburg law and the Chełmno (Culm) law, that operated in the Polish lands.17 As in other countries of the region and beyond, matters relating to personal marital law (such as the validity of a marriage or annulment, impediments to marriage, and so on) were regulated by canon law as adopted by local church synods. In Hungary, currently, an interdisciplinary research project entitled “Integrating Families: Children and the Stepfamily in the Kingdom of Hungary (Sixteenth–​ Nineteenth Centuries)” studies the history of the premodern family in Hungary and Europe from the perspective of stepfamily relations, which were very common in

216    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. premodern times. Hopefully, this innovative and complex approach to the networks of family relations and patterns will find followers elsewhere.18 The investigation of medieval women, gender, and family makes it quite clear that research throughout the whole region has favored the social experience of groups and individuals over discursive and performative aspects of gender identity. A number of valuable insights into the ways men and women coexisted in the family and society in general have been gathered, but there is still little knowledge of how their identities were molded, in what ways their experience depended on the sociocultural context, and how gender operated in relations of power, i.e., the premises of gender history, as defined earlier by Joan Wallach Scott.19 Limited attention has so far been devoted to literary and iconographic sources that could shed more light on perceptions rather than manifestations. Also, the potential of gender history has not been deeply explored in relation to masculinity and its transformations nor to gender-​subversive behaviors or alternative forms of gender/​ sexual identities in medieval society.

Women, Men, and Married Life A unifying model of marriage across all strata of medieval society, promoted by the Christian church, was a monogamous union analogously reflecting the relationship between Christ and his Church. As such it was sacred and the possibilities for separation were limited. Although the basic parameters of marriage were defined identically across the whole of medieval Europe, models of marital coexistence differed significantly depending mainly on social class and local customs. Among the major factors that had an impact on the dynamics of the relationship between a wife and a husband, as well as between a married couple and the family, are the rights of the wife to administer and to dispose of her own and the community property during the marriage, especially after the death of her husband, as well as the composition of the dowry (dos) and dower (dotalicium/​donatio propter nuptias/​contradote). It is also necessary to understand the influence of collateral (male) lines and legal opportunities for their intervention in order to see the importance attributed to the nuclear family in relation to wider family ties in the medieval society. In many regions, the process of urbanization resulted in an increase in the legal status of the nuclear family generally, which strengthened not only the legal and social position of wives but also the inheritance rights of children of both sexes. Medieval Istria presents an interesting example of variability in marriage patterns with diverse implications. Here, three marriage models were used simultaneously: the Istrian, the Venetian, and the Slavic. For the medieval period there are no sources that could offer statistical data on the number and type of marriages contracted, but data for the early modern period show that marriages (especially urban) were most frequently contracted according to the Istrian pattern, followed by the Slavic pattern, which prevailed in the rural central part of the peninsula and among Slavic citizens;

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    217 only a small number of marriages (mostly in the higher social strata) were contracted in consonance with the Venetian marriage pattern.20 There were a number of differences among these three models on various levels, but here we concentrate on the forms of joint property management between spouses and the management of family assets. The Istrian model, also called “marriage like brother and sister” (ut frater et soror), was prescribed by all Istrian statutes unless the spouses agreed on another marriage pattern and made a document to confirm that. This marriage model was primarily characterized by the fact that spouses jointly managed their property; neither of them was allowed to sell property without the consent of the other. For instance, to sell something, not only did the wife need her husband’s consent, but the husband also needed his wife’s consent, even for property he got from his parents. After the death of one of the spouses all the assets (whether brought into or acquired during the marriage) were united, and the living spouse got half and the other half was given to the heirs, most often children. When contracting marriage, the amount of money and/​or other goods that the spouses would bring into the marriage and manage jointly was agreed.21 The popularity of this model was related to the local economic situation—​medieval Istria was a poor region and women’s work was indispensable; hence, the local legislators recognized a woman’s right to administer family property. In contrast to the Istrian marriage pattern, in the Venetian marriage model a wife owned only her dowry and dower. If her husband died, his male relatives could evict a widow from the house, usually after one year and a day, but they had to repay her dowry and dower. If the husband had formally declared her as the “lady and mistress of the house” (donna et domina), however, she could stay in the house and live from her husband’s property as long as she lived honestly and as a widow.22 In the Slavic marriage pattern the goods acquired during the marriage were held in common, but not those brought into the marriage. A woman could only get movable property as a dowry from her parents. Immovable property was inherited in the male line. A woman could also own immovables, but only if she had bought them or acquired them in some other way, for example, as a gift.23 With respect to marriage models across the social strata, basic distinctions are made among the nobility, the peasantry, and the urban population. In the countries of Central Europe, the gentry was governed by local land laws (ius terrae).24 In Poland, for instance, the wife and husband did not inherit from one another. Here, the assets brought to marriage by the wife remained her own property and after her death were inherited by her children or her relatives if there was no progeny. It was legally possible, however, for one of the spouses to donate one third of her/​his property to the other spouse (as a donation inter vivos). Inheritance rules were based on partibility—​both daughters and sons were legally entitled to inherit landed property. In Hungary and Slavonia, in contrast, if there was a male heir in the family a daughter did not have the right to a quarter of the landed property (guaranteed to her otherwise as the so-​called maiden or filial quarter (quarta filialis), first mentioned in the Golden Bull by Andrew II in 1222) but only of movable property. If there was no son (and in other specific cases), however, a daughter could get a quarter of the landed property calculated from all of landed property (inherited, purchased, and acquired from the

218    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. king).25 If there was no male heir in a noble family, a female heiress in medieval Hungary could, in specific cases and by the special grace of the king (and explicitly against the traditional Hungarian customary law), receive recognition of hereditary rights otherwise pertaining only to sons, thus becoming a de facto “male heir” (a so-​called prefectio in filium in heredem masculinum).26 In Czech lands and Moravia, from the perspective of land laws, the dowry among the nobility also consisted of movables or (later) money; the amount of dowry depended entirely on the will of the father or brother(s), but all sisters were entitled to receive the same amount.27 In Poland, also, noble daughters inherited landed property in practice only if they had no brothers or they died childless. Otherwise, the daughter was given a dowry in cash.28 Upon receiving it, she was obliged to resign from any claims to inheritance from her natal family (a kind of exclusio propter dotem). This particular mechanism, which excluded daughters from inheritance by giving them a dowry when they entered into marriage, was primarily applied among the nobility in Poland. If a wife was an heiress of landed estates, she could manage them independently of her husband. If the dowry she brought to the marriage was in cash, however, her husband had control of it and had the use of it although he did not own it. The wife’s dowry in cash, along with the dower she received from her husband, was secured against his real estate. The dower usually amounted to the value of the dowry. The husband’s lands that secured the dowry and dower were so-​called dower lands; they were also to provide maintenance for the wife when she was widowed. Therefore, although it was the husband who owned and managed the dower lands during marriage, he could not dispose of them without his wife’s consent. The wife only came into possession of them when she was widowed; she could in no way dispose of them but only had a right of usufruct.29 When she decided to remarry, she was expected to leave those lands to her late husband’s successors, i.e., his offspring or other relatives, providing that they paid her for them. Otherwise, she could possess and make use of her dower lands, sometimes even for her lifetime, as long as she had not received money for them.30 Municipal rights in East-​Central Europe were quite diverse. Generally, they were based on two main sources, common law and German town laws, a result of the colonization process and urbanization. Magdeburg rights influenced the northeastern part of the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Silesia, northern Bohemia, and Moravia and certain towns in Upper Hungary. Most of the remaining areas were influenced by south-​ German legal customs (see ­chapter 12, this volume, by Szende and Schmieder).31 As urban life developed, the principles of Roman law were also incorporated into some local urban norms.32 Property relations between spouses were organized according to two main principles (which had heterogeneous implications), community property, for instance; the Law of Chełmno (Culm) was valid in Masovia and the Order of the Teutonic Knights’ state in Poland. Community property where no separate real estate holdings were allowed in a marriage is also attested for towns in medieval Hungary, namely, Buda, Koloszvár (today Cluj), for territory inhabited by Saxons in Transylvania and in Szepesség (Zips).33 In contrast, all across East-​Central Europe a separatist property regime was in use in the towns influenced by the Magdeburg Law. In the first type of arrangement, according to

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    219 the Law of Chełmno, a husband managed the community property with his wife, who had only nominal influence on his decisions. After the husband’s death, a wife was to receive one half of the conjugal community property and the rest devolved to other heirs—​children or relatives of the deceased. The husband or wife could also give their marriage partner the right to life-​long use of the whole family property after the death of either of them.34 In medieval Brno (Moravia), the husband was also nominally the master of all the family property; if he died without a testament it was common to divide the family property into one-​third for the wife and two-​thirds for the children. An analysis of the last wills from there, however, has shown that in practice widows often received more, and frequently the whole property if there were no children.35 Otherwise, a husband’s guardianship of his wife was an exception in the context of Brno law, because in other cases (young girls, widows) it is not directly attested.36 With the other model, the wife’s and husband’s property was separate in terms of ownership, but the property of a wife was incorporated into her husband’s, and he managed all of it. Neither the husband nor the wife could alienate or pawn any part of his or her assets without the consent of the other party.37 A dowry was the basis of a woman’s property in case she was widowed, thus, for instance, most Dalmatian statutes stipulated provisions to protect it. A dowry was the wife’s property, but it was handed over to the husband to manage. Although dowries were legally protected, husbands sometimes abused their right to dispose of them.38 In Polish towns under the Magdeburg law, the husband and wife did not inherit from each other. When either of them died, the marital property was to be separated into two distinct parts. The widow was only entitled to the part of her husband’s property that was assigned to her as a dower. The rest of his wealth devolved to his successors, children first, and then other relatives (parents or siblings and their successors). The widow could continue to live in the family house and make use of the property until she received her dower or remarried.39 In Slavonian towns, in contrast, where the separatist model applied, if one of the spouses died and there were children, the living one kept the property unshared. If the living spouse contracted a new marriage, the property was divided so that a widower got two-​thirds of the property, a widow got one-​third, and the remainder (in either case) went to the children.40 These examples show the main legal frameworks across various localities, but there was great flexibility in local practice. Many individual measures could be engaged through various types of agreements or in testaments. In Hungarian towns, a distinction was made between the spouses’ ancestral and acquired property—​the latter could be freely bequeathed by the person who had acquired it—​but they both had to give their consent for disposal of community property that the couple had acquired while laboring together. Stricter inheritance rules applied to ancestral property.41 In addition to the growing importance of the nuclear family (at the expense of collateral family lines) in the urban environment, spousal economic cooperation within the marriage was often emphasized in urban sources. This consequently affected—​as one of

220    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. the crucial factors—​a shift from a patriarchal model of the urban family toward more partner arrangements. Active female participation in a family business, often carried out within a household, was crucial to maintaining economic prosperity.42 This was especially true for the lower urban strata. The situation in medieval Dubrovnik (Ragusa) is symptomatic. Women belonging to higher social strata were legally the most bound in doing business, whereas women of the lower strata who contributed to earning family profit could dispose of property more freely. In Dalmatian cities, marriage contracts in which spouses united their property and disposed of it jointly were generally registered among the lowest strata.43

Singleness and Widowhood: A Period of Opportunities and Challenges Married life was a common choice for all strata of medieval society,44 but it was not the only option. Many people remained single for a long time or even all of their adult lives. Sometimes, under the pressure of external circumstances, this decision resulted from a personal option. Life outside marriage could be related to religious vocation, typically entry into a religious order or community (e.g., the Beghards and Beguines). It could also be economically conditioned, however, as in the case of service professions or the apprenticeship period in crafts. It could also originate from other personal or social reasons, such as a widow’s opportunity to benefit from significantly greater legal and economic independence. Although widowhood was a condition shared by men and women alike, being a widow or widower did not mean the same thing. For a man entering marriage, being widowed and later remarrying, although undoubtedly profoundly influencing the course of his individual life, did not in any way affect his legal status. For a woman, the loss of her husband meant entering a wholly new social and legal scheme. In that sense one can say that widowhood was gendered. The most well-​known stories are of aristocratic and royal widows from the highest social classes. Thanks to their political power and wealth, they left a significant imprint in the contemporary sources and thus have long been popular objects of historical research. The opportunity to rule depended on the stage in a noblewoman’s life cycle—​it was mostly only upon her husband’s death that she could fully make use of abilities she had developed while married. It is worth noting, however, that she had to have had opportunities to learn, experience, and act earlier in her life to develop the necessary skills. A widow’s powers can be seen from two main perspectives. The first is her ability to rule over herself and her property. Under Polish land law, regardless of her marital status, a noblewoman was in general legally able to take a case to court on her own as well as to make legal contracts and dispose of her property in her own name.45 From the

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    221 mid-​fifteenth century on, married women were expected to be accompanied to court by male relatives and probably to have their consent. It is not quite clear what the purpose of this practice was. A possible explanation is that it was meant to protect a wife’s property from potential abuses by her husband. This measure was not required for widows.46 As for their economic resources, noble widows came into possession of their late husband’s lands that secured their dowry and dower. As a dowager (domina dotalicialis), a woman managed them and derived profits just as her husband once had.47 When she decided to remarry, unlike her first marriage, she could (at least formally) choose her second husband of her own accord (iuxta suam voluntatem).48 The main reason for remarriage was the early death of a spouse; this was especially the case for noblewomen, who were usually married off in their teens.49 Those who lost their second husband rarely married again.50 Entering into a new marriage meant the loss of economic and personal-​legal benefits; if, for example, a Hungarian noble widow decided to enter into a new marriage, she lost the right to use the property of her former husband and was left with only a maiden quarter and a dower.51 István Werböczy, the compiler of the oldest Hungarian law code (Tripartitum, 1500–​1514),52 considered a dower to be a reward for the loss of female virginity, for her fulfillment of marital obligations, marital fidelity, for giving the birth to children, and for her care of the household. Primarily it was to secure a woman if she were widowed. According to Werböczy, a woman should receive only half of the dower in a second marriage, in the third only a quarter, and in the fourth an eighth. The widow lost her entitlement to the dower only if the Holy See convicted her of adultery or if she committed an incestuous marriage.53 The other perspective is that of a noble widow’s custody over her minor children upon their father’s and her husband’s death. Contrary to a father’s situation, a mother was not a natural and obligatory guardian for her underage children. She became their tutrix only when she was appointed to this role, often by her husband. She could perform her custody duties on her own or share them with other male tutores, usually only until she remarried. Frequently, however, a male relative had custody of minors, which involved both care for the children and also—​importantly—​administration of their property (cura bonorum) until they came of age (this was the case for the Polish, Hungarian, and Moravian nobility).54 Sometimes widowed mothers had to fight for their children’s rights in complex circumstances. One well-​documented case is the life story of Elisabeth of Luxemburg, Hungarian, Holy Roman and Czech queen. Her husband, Albert of Habsburg, died in 1439 while she was pregnant. Elisabeth was firmly convinced that she would give birth to a boy. When Ladislaus was born, the royal widow and mother (besides Ladislaus she had two older daughters) was ready to do anything to secure him Czech and Hungarian thrones, including having the Holy Crown of Hungary stolen for him so that a valid coronation could take place one year later.55 For the Central as well as Southeast European (Istria and Dalmatia) urban population, the life stage of widowhood provided women with the highest degree of independence compared to unmarried girls and married women, whose legal status was restricted variously by their fathers, husbands, or other male relatives. The legal freedom

222    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. of widows, however, was counterbalanced by a greater degree of legal responsibility. Urban widows could—​in general—​dispose freely of their own property, bequeath it without restrictions, and act as guardians of their minor children.56 Widows are explicitly labeled in urban sources, which makes them visibly distinct and thereby reveals their specific legal status. Legal status was a critical factor, but the economic situation of widows that resulted from inheritance patterns and employment opportunities, also related to the size and economic potential of individual towns, played an equally important role in the living conditions of widows and their households.57 For this reason, the analysis of tax records from different European towns yields diverse results about the economic situation of widows.58 In populous and wealthy cities, widows were among the richest taxpayers; in contrast, almost three-​quarters of the widows of craftsmen in the smaller town of late medieval Sopron (Ödenburg) paid less than the average amount of taxes.59 In Polish towns, also, Kazimierz, for example, widows mostly paid the lowest taxes.60 In contrast, an analysis of late medieval tax records from Czech and Moravian towns (Prague, Brno, and Jihlava—​the last two comparable to Sopron in population size) show that the economic situation of most widows was more favorable and stable compared to the rest of the female urban population.61 This was probably due to local bequest practices, i.e., the amount of landed property held by widows.62 In some urban localities, municipal law, testamentary practices, and economic conditions helped create a dangerous precedent for female independence in patriarchal medieval society. In addition, because widows were women who had gone through the institution of marriage and whose sexuality was thus activated, they could be potentially problematic for their contemporaries even at older ages. This statement is confirmed, among other things, by disputes over honor, which were often initiated by widows who could not—​in order to secure their place in society—​afford any defilement of their moral integrity. Another difference between social perceptions of female and male widowhood was the attempt to regulate legally the sobriety and chastity of a widowed person, but only widows and not widowers.63 Central European medieval towns, like Western European urban centers, had a relatively low birth rate. In Old Warsaw there was an average of two children per family in the first half of the fifteenth century;64 the data are analogous for other Polish, Czech, and Hungarian cities.65 Similarly, the age at urban marriage was relatively higher here (24 to 30 years for men and 19 to 25 years for women).66 Not all the urban localities in East-​Central Europe confirm the late ages of both spouses at the first marriage, for instance, a detailed analysis for late medieval Kassa (present-​day Košice), then in Upper Hungary now Slovakia, suggests a rather greater gap between the spouses.67 The data for most towns seem to correspond to the characteristics of the so-​called European marriage pattern as once defined by J. Hajnal in his classic study, namely, the high average age at (first) marriage and the large number of people who never married.68 As a result of this demographic situation, it was necessary to ensure a sufficient supply of newcomers from near as well as more distant (rural) surroundings to maintain the size of the population. Urban migration affected single people of both sexes, especially the

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    223 young, who usually found employment in wage, service, or craft industries. Places of origin or former residence are mentioned far more often for men than for women in medieval Hungarian towns.69 Although these single people were numerous and ubiquitous in urban society, they rarely appear in the sources, often only as a part of an unspecified group of laboratores, familia, or servi who were economically dependent on their employers and lived as part of the household. Often only the testaments of well-​ off burghers name some of these people to receive legacies for their faithful service. Domestic service can be perceived, especially in the case of women, as typical for the premarriage life phase, a time when newcomers were building their social networks. It also constituted a secondary income strategy for poor craftsmen’s wives and widows, however, who improved their domestic budget in this way and thereby strengthened client ties with wealthier urban strata. Although their contribution was indispensable for the urban economy due to the family-​bound organization of work, the profitable work of craftsmen’s and merchants’ wives outside as well as within the family remained hidden from the eyes of historians for a long time. To a much greater extent than men, women’s capacity for work was affected by the stage in their life cycle and was spatially more limited to their place of residence. Moreover, in every phase of life, profitable work opportunities for women were vulnerable; in periods of social or economic crisis female job opportunities were the first to be restricted.70 This can be seen as a consequence of the generally negative contemporary attitude toward female economic agency, especially on the part of guild organizations. For example, for the entire second half of the fourteenth century, an analysis of Moravian urban tax sources shows that a considerable percentage of economically active (probably unmarried) women, 9 to 19 percent of all taxpayers, are listed in the tax sources of Brno provenance, of which only a few were widows. During the fifteenth century, the situation changed significantly; the women paying taxes were almost exclusively widows. By the first third of the sixteenth century, the overall proportion of female taxpayers had steadily declined to 3 percent. It is probable that this decline in the number of economically active unmarried women can be attributed to pressure by local guild structures.71 Besides domestic service professions and their extensions (such as laundry, inn-​ keeping, spinning, baking, and nursing), urban women can also be traced in certain specialized crafts and many trades, mostly in retail businesses. Late medieval sources from the prosperous city of Cracow are particularly rich in testimonies of female engagement in the urban economy. Here, they kept stalls of various sizes and sold products varying from small goods such as gloves through cloth to exclusive imported products such as spices. Female vendors and peddlers sold fruit, food, and small animals in the markets. As for crafts, women were particularly active in the textile industries and they are also attested in artistic professions such as painting and woodcarving. In some cities in Central Europe, wealthy woman, often widows, also participated actively as investors in credit and the real estate market.72 Prostitution was one of the professions specifically for single females, mentioned relatively frequently but not in detail, throughout Central and Southeastern Europe. It is

224    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. clear that prostitutes were a marginalized but common part of (most frequently) urban society. Compared to other groups of women, they sometimes enjoyed less legal protection, but still had some against acts of violence.73 Prostitution was not accepted morally, but it was tolerated, although the benevolence of urban authorities varied from town to town. For instance, certain Istrian statutes, like those of Rovinj and Pula, prescribed punishments for keeping prostitutes in a house and demanded their banishment from the city, whereas others, like the Trieste statute, indicated places where prostitutes were permitted to live.74 In Dubrovnik, there were designated houses where prostitutes could dwell and offer their services.75 A similar strategy was also applied in other East-​Central European towns, where prostitution became a regulated and taxed activity within the city walls that brought in regular contributions to the town coffers.76 Attitudes toward prostitution were not only based on local customs, but also related to the contemporary social climate and religious regime, for example, prostitution was severely punished in Hussite Prague.77 At the opposite end of the spectrum, given the attitudes of contemporary society, some men and women remained single and preserved their chastity by surrendering to the service of God. They could belong to traditional religious orders or to semimonastic groups such as Brethren of the Common Life, recluses, tertiaries, beguines, or others.78 These communities were typical of urban settlements and often affiliated with one of the mendicant orders. People of both sexes could join these communities, lay or monastic, at different life stages (unmarried, widowed, and so on). This way of life, besides the religious dimension, also offered people recognition and necessary social protection. Some of the members were motivated to embrace a religious life purely for devotional reasons, some were forced by their families, some (especially women) saw this option as an escape from unwanted marriage. At the end of the fifteenth century, pseudo-​monastic communities came under suspicion for heresy and were systematically suppressed.79

Final Observations on Women, Gender, and Family in Central Europe in the Context of European Historiography Central Europe is diverse in all the features that have been used as indicators for the definition of the EMP (European marriage pattern), and, for the medieval period, social (and legal) status appear to have been more important than geography. Mechanisms like inheritance practices and strategies, property management in marriage, the interference of collateral family lines) functioned analogously across the vast territory of Central Europe but differed noticeably between townspeople and the nobility. Urban families were characterized by an emphasis on the survival of the family unit that originated from marriage, which was also simultaneously the basic unit of economic production, but in noble families the nucleus seems to have been less important.

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    225 The implications arising from these two basic attitudes are complex. In the urban milieu, although family function was marked by patriarchy, property tended to be distributed among children rather in an egalitarian way, regardless of gender. Noble families, however, generally preferred male lines in inheritance proceedings and parental authority was less of a determining factor. In Central European urban families, collateral lines seem to have exercised less influence over inheritance decisions. An aristocratic clan, on the other hand, played a greater role in their minds than a small unit consisting of parents and children.80 All these observations raise the necessity to consider family structures and the factors that affected them in a more complex way and more broadly than in just geographical (and moreover binary) contexts. Family and gender history affect the historical understanding of the medieval world in a fundamental way. They allow us to look at the very pillars of medieval society in all social strata whether for the dynamics of gender identities and their perception in history or the structure and constellations within the families. Central European historiography has been rather reluctant to explore the potential of gender as a category of analysis; so far it has favored the social practices over discursive and performative aspects of gender identities. New methodological impulses, a fresh view of well-​known sources and an emphasis on interdisciplinarity (archaeology, art history, literary history, and digital humanities) offer potential for future research in this area.

Notes 1. The coordination of writing this chapter by Michaela Antonín Malaníková was supported by the project Individuals—​Families—​Urban Society: Social Structure of Late Medieval Moravian Towns of the Czech Science Foundation (project number 19-​19104S). Marija Mogorović Crljenko thanks Irena Benyovsky Latin and Marija Karbić (Croatian Institute of History), Ivan Jurković and Robert Kurelić (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula), and Zrinka Nikolić Jakus (University of Zagreb) for their help and suggestions. The authors thank Judit Majorossy (University of Vienna) and Katalin Szende (Central European University), for their valuable comments on the text of the chapter.   See also Silvia Sovič, “European Family History: Moving beyond Stereotypes of ‘East’ and ‘West,’” Cultural and Social History 5, no. 2 (2015): 141–​163; Tracy Dennison and Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Does the European Marriage Pattern Explain Economic Growth?” Journal of Economic History 74, no. 3 (2014): 651–​693. 2. For an overview of publications on Polish women and the family, see Anna Pobóg-​Lenartowicz and Olga M. Przybyłowicz, “Refleksje nad badaniami na temat kobiet w średniowiecznej Polsceˮ [Reflections on research on women in medieval Poland], in Dzieje kobiet w Polsce: Dyskusja wokół przyszłej syntezy [The history of women in Poland: Discussion around a future synthesis], edited by Krzysztof Makowski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, 2014), 29–​52; on aristocratic families in Poland, see Alicja Szymczakowa, “Stan badań nad rodziną szlachecką późnego średniowieczaˮ [The state of research on the noble family in late Middle Ages], in Genealogia: Stan i perspektywy badań nad społeczeństwem Polski średniowiecznej na tle porównawczym [Genealogy: The state and prospects of research on the society of medieval

226    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. Poland on a comparative background], edited by Jan Wroniszewski (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2003), 75–​94; for the urban milieu, see Piotr Łozowski, “Stan badań nad kobietami w miastach późnośredniowiecznych na ziemiach polskichˮ [The state of research on townswomen in late medieval Polish lands], Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 37, no. 1 (2015): 71–​91. For Czech historiography, see Božena Kopičková, “Ženská otázka v českém středověku: Současný stav bádání a možné směry jeho dalšího vývoje,ˮ [The question of women in the Czech Middle Ages: Current state of research and possible directions for further development], Československý časopis historický 37 (1989): 561–​574, 682–​695; Michaela Hrubá, Zvonění na sv. Alžbětu: Obraz norem a sociální praxe v životních strategiích měšťanek na prahu raného novověku [Ringing bells on the Day of St. Elizabeth: Reflection of norms and social practices in life strategies of female burghers at the beginning of Early Modern Times] (Prague: Argo, 2011), 14–​26, 37–​46. This also applies to the area of today’s Croatia. See note 5. 3. For the Polish historiography on women from the highest social strata there are several relevant studies; see Bożena Czwojdrak, Zofia Holszańska: Studium o dworze i roli królowej w późnośredniowiecznej Polsce [Sofia of Halshany: A study on the court and role of the queen in late medieval Poland] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2012); Jerzy Wyrozumski, Królowa Jadwiga: Między epoką piastowską a jagiellońską [Queen Jadwiga: Between the Piast and Jagiellonian eras] (Craców: Universitas, 2006); Jan Dąbrowski, Elżbieta Łokietkówna 1305–​1380 [Elizabeth of Poland], 2nd ed. (Craców: Universitas, 2007); Stanisław A. Sroka, Elżbieta Łokietkówna [Elizabeth Lokietek], (Bydgoszcz: Homini, 2000). See also Tomasz Rembek, “Rola polityczna królowej Elżbiety Rakuszanki (1454–​1505)” [The political role of Queen Elizabeth of Austria], in Kobiety i władza w czasach dawnych [Women and power in the old days], edited by Bożena Czwojdrak and Agata A. Kluczek (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2015): 281–​287; Andrzej Marzec, “Domina terrae Sandecensis: Rola polityczna królowej Jadwigi Łokietkowej w kontekście jej związków z dostojnikami małopolskimi (1305–​1339)” [The political role of Queen Jadwiga of Kalisz in the context of her relations with the dignitaries of Lesser Poland], Kwartalnik Historyczny 103, no. 1 (1996): 3–​23. In Czechoslovak historiography the genre of queens’ biographies has long been popular, e.g., from Karel Stloukal, ed., Královny, kněžny a velké ženy české [Queens, princesses, and great Czech women] (Prague: Josef R. Vilímek, 1941), to Božena Kopičková, Česká královna Žofie: Ve znamení kalicha a kříže [The Czech queen Sophia: In the sign of the chalice and the cross] (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2018). See also monographs and studies by the Slovak historian Daniela Dvořáková dedicated to the Czech and Hungarian queens of the fifteenth century: “Žofia Bavorská a Žigmund Luxemburský: K bratislavskému pobytu českej kráľovnejˮ [Sofia of Bavaria and Sigismund of Luxembourg: On the stay of the queen in Bratislava], Studia Mediaevalia Bohemica 1 (2010): 75–​114; Daniela Dvořáková, Čierna kráľovná: Barbora Celjská (1392–​1451); Životný príbeh uhorskej, rímsko-​nemeckej a českej kráľovnej [The Black Queen Barbara of Cilli: The life story of the Hungarian, Holy Roman, and Czech queen] (Budmerice: Vadavaťeľstvo Raka a Historický ústav Slovenské Akadémie Vied, 2013); Daniela Dvořáková, “Alžběta Luxemburská, Žigmundova dcéra v rokoch 1438–​ 1442ˮ [Elizabeth of Luxembourg, Sigismund’s daughter in the years 1438–​1442], Historie–​ Otázky–​Problémy 3, no. 2 (2011): 143–​159. Among the Czech saints of the Přemyslid period, figures of two women from the royal family, St. Ludmila and St. Agnes, come to the fore; see also Naďa Profantová, Kněžna Ludmila, Vládkyně a světice, zakladatelka dynastie [Princess Ludmila, ruler and saint, founder of the dynasty] (Prague: Epocha, 1996); Helena Soukupová, Svatá Anežka česká: Život a legenda [Saint Agnes of Bohemia: Life and legend] (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2015). For the area of Hungary, the East Adriatic, and North Croatia, see

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    227 Ana Munk, “Kraljica i njezina škrinja–​lik ugarske kraljice Elizabete, rođene Kotromanić (oko 1340–​1387) u historiografiji i na škrinji svetog Šimuna u Zadru [The Queen and her Coffret: The image of the Hungarian Queen Elizabeth, née Kotromanić, c. 1340–​1387], in Žene u Hrvatskoj: Ženska i kulturna povijest [Women in Croatia: Female and cultural history], edited by Andrea Feldman (Zagreb: Institut “Vlado Gotovac,ˮ Ženska infoteka, 2004): 77–​104; János M. Bak, “Queens as Scapegoats in Medieval Hungary,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference held at King’s College London, April 1995, edited by A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997); Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Gábor Klaniczay, “On the Stigmatization of Saint Margaret of Hungary,” in Medieval Christianity in Practice, edited by Miri Rubin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 274–​284; Christopher Mielke, “The Many Faces of Piroska-​Eirene in the Visual and Material Culture,” in Piroska and the Pantokrator, edited by Marianne Sághy and Robert Ousterhout (Budapest: Central European University Press 2019): 153–​174; Christopher Mielke, “From Her Head to Her Toes: Gender-​Bending Regalia in the Tomb of Constance of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Sicily,” Royal Studies Journal 5, no. 2 (2018): 49–​62; Enrica Guerra, ed., Il carteggio tra Beatrice d’Aragona e gli Estensi, 1476–​ 1508 (Rome: Aracne 2010). On female saints in the Eastern Adriatic and North Croatia, see Hagiologija: Kultovi u kontekstu [Hagiology: Cults in context], edited by Ana Marinković and Trpimir Vedriš (Zagreb: Leykam international, 2008); Ana Kovačević, “Žena, majka, svetica: Elizabeta Ugarska u latinskim i hrvatskoglagoljskim izvorima,” [Woman, mother, saint: Elizabeth of Hungary in Latin and Croatian-​glagolithic sources], Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog Fakulteta u Zagrebu 47, no. 1 (2015): 309–​335; Translatio corporis Beatae Euphemiae/​Prijenos tijela Blažene Eufemije [Translation of the body of St. Euphemia], edited by Josip Barbarić, Mate Križman, and Aldo Kliman (Pula: Zavičajna naklada Žakan Juri, Sveučilišna knjižnica, 2000). 4. Among his works, see Lujo Margetić, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovno obiteljsko i nasljedno pravo [Croatian medieval family and inheritance law] (Zagreb: Narodne novine, 1996). On the legal situation in medieval Croatia and Slavonia, see also Damir Karbić and Marija Karbić, The Laws and Customs of Medieval Croatia and Slavonia: A Guide to the Extant Sources, edited by Martin Rady (London: UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies 2013). 5. For the period of socialist historiography, see Dušanka Dinić-​Knežević, Položaj žena u Dubrovniku u XIII i XIV veku [The status of women in Dubrovnik in the thirteenth and fourteenth century], vol. 2 (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, Odelenje istorijskih nauka, 1974). Although the book analyzes the position of women in marriage, society, and the economy, Dubrovnik is not viewed as part of the Adriatic and Mediterranean cultural circle to which it belonged but compared only with the situation in medieval Serbia and Bosnia. For the special features of medieval Dubrovnik, see Zdenka Janeković Römer, Rod i grad: Dubrovačka obitelj od 13. do 15. stoljeća [Kin and city: The family in Dubrovnik from the thirteenth to fifteenth century] (Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku, Zavod za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta u Zagrebu, 1994); Zdenka Janeković, Maruša ili suđenje ljubavi [Maruša; or A trial of love] (Zagreb: Algoritam, 2007). This topic was studied for Dalmatia, primarily Zadar, by Zrinka Nikolić Jakus, see Rođaci i bližnji: Dalmatinsko gradsko plemstvo u ranom srednjem vijeku [Relatives and neighbors: Dalmatian urban noblility in the early middle ages] (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2003). For the Istrian family and marriage, see Marija Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet istarskih žena [The unknown world of Istrian women] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2006); Marija

228    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. Mogorović Crljenko, Druga strana braka [The other side of marriage] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2012). For the position of women in the family and society in medieval Slavonia, see Marija Karbić, “Nije, naime, njezina duša drugačija nego kod muškaraca: Položaj žene u gradskim naseljima međurječja Save i Drave u razvijenom i kasnom srednjem vijeku” [It is not, namely, that her soul is different than a man’s: The status of women in urban settlements in the area between the Sava and Drava in the development in the late Middle Ages], in Žene u Hrvatskoj: Ženska i kulturna povijest, edited by Andrea Feldman (Zagreb: Institut “Vlado Gotovac” Ženska infoteka, 2004), 57–​76. For Dubrovnik, see Gordan Ravančić, “Prilog poznavanju prostitucije u Dubrovniku u kasnom srednjem vijeku” [A contribution to the study of prostitution in late medieval Dubrovnik], Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta u Zagrebu 31 (1998): 123–​130. 6. Martha A. Brożyna, “Not Just a Family Affair: Domestic Violence and the Ecclesiastical Courts in Late Medieval Poland,” in Love, Marriage, and Family Ties in the Later Middle Ages, edited by Isabel Davis, Miriam Müller, and Sarah Ree Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 299–​ 309; Adam Krawiec, Seksualność w średniowiecznej Polsce [Sexuality in medieval Poland] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2000); Magdalena Biniaś-​Szkopek, Małżonkowie przed sądem biskupiego oficjała poznańskiego w pierwszej ćwierci XV wieku [The spouses before the bishop’s court of the Poznań official in the first quarter of the fifteenth century] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza, 2018). In Czech historiography marriage disputes have been touched on by several researchers; see John Martin Klassen, “Marriage and Family in Medieval Bohemia,ˮ East European Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1985): 257–​274. For medieval Croatia, see Zrinka Janeković Römer, Maruša ili suđenje, and Mogorović Crljenko, Druga strana, 129–​240. 7. Testaments from the perspective of gender history for medieval Hungary have been analyzed by Katalin Szende, “Families in Testaments: Some Aspects of Demography and Inheritance Customs in a Late Medieval Hungarian Town,ˮ Medium Aevum Quotidianum 35 (Krems, 1996)/​Otium 3, no. 1–​2 (Zagreb, 1995): 107–​124; Katalin Szende, “From Mother to Daughter, from Father to Son? Intergenerational Patterns of Bequeathing Movables in Late Medieval Bratislava,ˮ Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 7 (2001): 209–​232; Judit Majorossy, “Gender Differences in Pious Considerations in Late Medieval Urban Wills: A Case-​Study of Pressburg (Bratislava),ˮ CAS–​Človek a Spoločnosť, internetový časopis 9, no. 4 (2006) (http://​clovek​aspo​locn​ost.sk/​jqu​ery/​pdf.php?gui=​USYJDW​GMC2​QWZ7​ W69I​MTK1​SMC, accessed December 20, 2021). As for other relevant studies, see also Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet, 52–​58; Zdenka Janeković Römer, “Pro anima mea et predecessorum meorum: Death and the Family in Fifteenth-​Century Dubrovnik,” Otium 3, no. 1–​2 (1995): 25–​34; Zoran Ladić, Last Will: Passport to Heaven (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2012). Testaments as sources for research on gender relations and family structures are also popular in Poland and the Czech Republic, see Jakub Wysmułek, Testamenty mieszczan krakowskich (XIV–​XV wiek) [Testaments of Krakow burghers (fourteenth–​ fifteenth century)] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 2015); Thomas Krzenck, “Prager und Pilsener Frauentestamente in der Hussitenzeit im Vergleich,ˮ Mediaevalia historica Bohemica 4 (1995): 265–​278; Michaela Antonín Malaníková, “‘Mein tachter sol man zu pett und zu tisch aufseczen als eines reichen mannes tachter’: Childhood and adolescence in Moravian towns in the Late Middle Ages from the perspective of gender,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 68 (2014): 47–​65. On Miracula, see also Karolina Morawska, “Did True Love Exist in Medieval Poland? A Study of Love in Medieval Poland as Portrayed in the Miracula,” International Journal of Arts and Sciences 8 (2015): 519–​529.

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    229 8. See, for instance, Agnieszka Bartoszewicz, “Kobieta w mieście polskim późnego średniowieczaˮ [A woman in a late medieval Polish town], in Gospodarka, Społeczeństwo, Kultura w dziejach nowożytnych [Economy, society, culture in modern history], edited by Andrzej Karpiński, Edward Opaliński, and Tomasz Wiślicz (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2010), 171–​172. 9. This current of research began as early as 1915, when Anna Císařová-​Kolářová’s book, Ženy v hnutí husitském [Women in the Hussite movement] (Prague: Sokolice, 1915), was published. 10. For a detailed overview of publications on the women and family in the period of the Hussite wars up to 1999, see Božena Kopičková, “Žena a rodina v husitství (Současný stav bádání)ˮ [Woman and family in Hussitism (The current state of research)], Husitský Tábor 12 (1999): 37–​48. See also John M. Klassen, “Women and Religious Reform in Late Medieval Bohemia,ˮ Renaissance and Reformation 5, no. 4 (1981): 203–​221; John M. Klassen, Warring Maidens, Captive Wives and Hussite Queens: Women and Men at War and at Peace in Fifteenth Century Bohemia (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1999); Pavlína Rychterová, “Frauen und Krieg in Chroniken über die Hussitenkriege,ˮ in Geist, Gesellschaft, Kirche im 13.–​16. Jahrhundert, edited by František Šmahel (Prague: Filosofia, 1999), 127–​143. 11. Pavel Spunar, “Žena, manželství a rodina v počátcích české reformaceˮ [Woman, marriage, and family at the beginning of the Czech Reformation], in Příspěvky k dějinám křesťanství [Contributions to the history of Christianity], edited by Alena Frolíková and Jan Janda (Prague: Ústav pro klasická studia ČSAV, 1991), 161–​189. 12. Bogdan Lesiński, Stanowisko kobiety w polskim prawie ziemskim do połowy XV wieku [The status of women in Polish land law until the mid-​fifteenth century] (Wrocław: Zakład Imienia Ossolińskch, 1956); Maria Koczerska, Rodzina szlachecka w późnym średniowieczu [A noble family in the late Middle Ages] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1975); Witold Brzeziński, “Sola ut vidua, cum patruis et avunculis vel fratribus proximioribus, ut maritata: Uwagi o praktyce asystencji męskich krewnych przy czynnościach prawnych szlachcianek w drugiej połowie XV wieku w Wielkopolsceˮ [Notes on the practice of assisting male relatives in the legal activities of noblewomen in the second half of the fifteenth century in Greater Poland], Roczniki Historyczne 131 (2015): 129–​145. 13. Marek Sędek, “Czy uprawnienia majątkowe kobiet w Starej Warszawie odpowiadały zasadom prawa chełmińskiego” [Did the property rights of women in Old Warsaw correspond to the rules of Chełmno law?], Warszawa Średniowieczna 1 (1972): 135–​147; Urszula Sowina, “Wdowy i sieroty w świetle prawa w miastach Korony w późnym średniowieczu i we wczesnej nowożytnościˮ [Widows and orphans through the prism of law in the towns of the Polish Crown in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times], in Od narodzin do wieku dojrzałego: Dzieci i młodzież w Polsce part I: Od średniowiecza do wieku XVIII [From birthday to old age: Children and youth in Poland, part 1: From the Middle Ages to to the eighteenth century], edited by Maria Dąbrowska and Andrzej Klonder (Warsaw: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2002), 15–​28; regarding peasant families, see Małgorzata Kołacz-​Chmiel, Mulier honesta et laboriosa: Kobieta w rodzinie chłopskiej późnośredniowiecznej Małopolski [A woman in a peasant family of late medieval Lesser Poland] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-​Skłodowskiej, 2018). 14. Witold Brzeziński, “Wdowieństwo i powtórne zamążpójście kobiet wśród możniejszej szlachty polskiej późnego średniowieczaˮ [Widowhood and remarriage of women among the more powerful Polish nobility of the late Middle Ages], Roczniki Historyczne 75 (2009): 105–​122; Piotr Guzowski, “Demographic Represenation of the Late Medieval

230    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. Noble Family in the Light of the Latest Genealogical Research,” in Studies on Family and Household in Preindustrial Poland, edited by Piotr Guzowski and Cezary Kuklo (Białystok: Institute for Research of European Cultural Heritage, 2015), 39–​56; Piotr Guzowski, “W jakim wieku szlachcice zawierali pierwsze związki małżeńskie w późnym średniowieczu?” [At what age did nobles marry for the first time in the late Middle Ages?], in Ecclesia Regnum Fontes: Studia z dziejów średniowiecza [Studies in the history of the Middle Ages], edited by Roman Michałowski et al. (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2015), 574–​583. Lately these topics have also been investigated by Croatian historians; see Nenad Vekarić, Irena Benyovsky, Tatjana Buklijaš, Maurizio Levak, Nikša Lučić, and Jakša Primorac, Vrijeme ženidbe i ritam poroda: Dubrovnik i njegova okolica od 17. do 19. stoljeća [Marriage patterns and the family reproduction process: Dubrovnik and vicinity from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century] (Zagreb–​Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku, 2000). 15. Piotr Guzowski, “Demographic Conditions of the Functioning of Peasant Families at the Turn of the Middle Ages,” Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych 73 (2013): 9–​28; Piotr Łozowki, “Demography of the Burgher Family in Old Warsaw in the First half of the Fifteenth Century,” in Studies on Family and Household in Preindustrial Poland, edited by Piotr Guzowski and Cezary Kuklo (Białystok: Institute for Research of European Cultural Heritage, 2015), 57–​74. 16. Polskie Statuty Ziemskie w redakcji najstarszych druków (Syntagmata) [Polish Land Statutes in the edition of the oldest prints], edited by Ludwik Łysiak and Stanisław Roman (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, 1958); Volumina constitutionum, Vol. 1, Part 1: 1493–​1526, edited by Stanisław Grodziski, Irena Dwornicka, and Wacław Uruszczak (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1996). 17. The municipal laws operating in Polish towns in the premodern period were derived from German legal traditions. The most important was the law of Saxony and Magdeburg, valid for the most of Polish towns, based on two sets of rules: the so-​called Magdeburg Weichbild and Sachsenspiegel (Speculum Saxonum). Another law, the law of Chełmno (Culm), was a variant of Magdeburg law developed and modified in Chełmno. With regard to inheritance and marital property, this law followed rules derived from Flemish law. It operated in most towns in Masovia and in the Teutonic Knight’s state; see Studia Culmensia Historico-​ Juridica czyli Księga pamiątkowa 750-​lecia prawa chełmińskiego [Culmensia historical-​ juridical studies: The memorial book of the 750th anniversary of Chelmno law], vols. 1–​2, edited by Zbigniew Zdrójkowski (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 1988–​1990); Maciej Mikuła, Prawo miejskie magdeburskie (Ius municipale Magdeburgense) w Polsce XIV–​pocz. XVI w. Studium z ewolucji i adaptacji prawa [Magdeburg municipal law in Poland, fourteenth to early sixteenth century: A study of the evolution and adaptation of law] (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2018); Inge Bily, Wieland Carls, and Katalin Gönczi, Sächsisch-​magdeburgisches Recht in Polen: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Rechts und seiner Sprache (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010). 18. For detailed information on the project and associated publications, visit: http://​famil​ies. hu/​en/​ (accessed on August 28, 2020). 19. Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,ˮ American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–​1075. 20. Miroslav Bertoša, “Valle d’Istria durante la dominazione veneziana,ˮ Atti del Centro di ricerche storiche–​Rovigno 3 (1972), 132–​137, 200–​206; Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet, 15–​17.

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    231 21. Margetić, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovno, 93–​99; Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet, 17–​25; Marija Mogorović Crljenko, “The Position of Women on the East Adriatic Coast,ˮ in East Meets West: A Gendered View of Legal Tradition, edited by Grethe Jacobsen and Heide Wunder (Kiel: Solivagus–​Verlag, 2015), 149–​151. Some Istrian statutes gave the possibility of giving up the community property or the Istrian marriage pattern, stating that in such a situation the living spouse takes half the goods and half the debts. This measure was probably prescribed to protect women whose husbands incurred huge debts. Such a possibility was mentioned in the statutes of Novigrad, Izola, Piran, Milje, and Koper; see Margetić, “Brak na istarski način,ˮ 297–​298. 22. The Venetian marriage pattern was introduced with Venetian domination on the Istrian coast (in the second half of the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century); all of the Istrian coastal towns acknowledged Venetian rule). The Venetian type of marriage was rare, however; in most cases one of the spouses was from Venice or connected to Venice in some way, see Bertoša, Istra, 704; Marija Mogorović Crljenko, “Women, Marriage, and Family in Istrian Communes in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,ˮ in Across the Religious Divide, edited by Jutta Gisela Sperling and Shona Kelly Wray (New York: Routledge, 2010), 139–​140. Literature is extensive on women, marriage, and gender generally in the Venetian context; for example, Jason D. Hardgrave, “Parishes and Patriarchy: Gender and Boundaries in Late Medieval Venice,” Viator 41, no, 1 (2010): 251–​ 275; Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, eds., I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli XV–​XVIII) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006) (see especially Francesca Cavazzana Romanelli and Cecilia Cristellon); Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, eds., Coniugi nemici: La separazione in Italia dal XII al XVIII secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000) (see especially Stanley Chojnacki, Joanne Ferraro, Angelo Rigo); Sperling and Wray, Across the Religious Divide (see especially: Linda Guzetti, Anna Bellavitis); Anna Bellavitis, Nadia Maria Filippini, and Tiziana Plebani, eds., Spazzi, poteri, diritti delle donne a Venezia in età moderna (Verona: QuiEdit, 2012); Ermanno Orlando, Sposarsi nel medioevo: Percorsi coniugali tra Venezia, mare e continente (Rome: Viella, 2010). See also Daniela Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); Daniela Lombardi, Storia di matrimonio: Dal medioevo a oggi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008). 23. Margetić, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovno, 95–​97; Mogorović Crljenko, The Position of Women, 150–​151. 24. Property relations between peasant spouses in Poland followed the same rules as the nobility; they were governed by the principles of a separate property regime and subject to Polish land law. Research findings on peasant marriages and family, at least with respect to Lesser Poland, generally confirm that these rules were followed in practice, see Kołacz-​ Chmiel, Mulier honesta, 94–​98, 105–​112, 216–​226. 25. As to this issue, see Margetić, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovno, 303. 26. See Martyn Rady, “The Filial Quarter and Female Inheritance in Medieval Hungarian Law,ˮ in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways: Festschrift in Honour of János M. Bak, edited by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 422–​431; see also Martyn Rady, Customary Law in Hungary: Courts, Texts and the Tripartitum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 90–​93. 27. Anděla Kozáková, Právní postavení ženy v českém právu zemském [The legal status of women in Czech land law] (Prague: Bursík a Kohout, 1926), 21–​22. 28. This rule applied strictly to paternal landed estates. When the mother also possessed landed estates her daughters could inherit them along with their brothers, and this

232    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. happened in many cases. It was also possible in practice, however, that the daughters were given only money instead of the land, as was the case with paternal landed estates; see Witold Brzeziński, Życie szlachcianki w późnośredniowiecznej Wielkopolsce: Magnificae et generosae. Zagadnienia demograficzne i majątkowe [The life of a noblewoman in late medieval Greater Poland: Demographic and property issues] (Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2020). 29. The same holds true for the Czech and Moravian land law, Kozáková, Právní postavení, 30–​32. 30. It was also legally possible for the surviving spouse to keep and use the other’s property for her or his lifetime through the special life estate agreement (advitalitas), but the nobility began to use this procedure more frequently only toward the end of the Middle Ages. Lesiński, Stanowisko kobiety, 29–​69, 90–​99, 110–​119. 31. On the immigration of German settlers to East Central Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth century and on the adaptation of ius Theutonicum in this territory, see also Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German settlers and legal frameworks for immigration to Hungary in an East-​Central European perspective,ˮ Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 360–​379. 32. Brno is an example of a town where the medieval law showed strong influences from Roman law, see Miroslav Boháček, Římské právní prvky v právní knize brněnského písaře Jana [Roman legal elements in the legal book of the Brno scribe Jan] (Prague: Jan Kapras, 1924). 33. György Granasztói, “The Hungarian Burgeois Family in the Late Middle Ages,ˮ Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 30, no. 3–​4 (1984): 289–​290. 34. Urszula Sowina, “Women’s Economic Activity in Polish Towns at the Turn of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times,ˮ in Trabajar en la ciudad medieval europea, edited by Jesús Ánge Solórzano Telechea and Arnaldo Sousa Mělo (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2018), 473. 35. On the status of wife in medieval Brno, see Michaela Antonín Malaníková, “Poručnictví, nebo partnerství? Status manželky a majetkové poměry manželů ve středověkém Brněˮ [Guardianship or partnership? The status of wife and property relations of spouses in medieval Brno], Theatrum historiae 22 (2018): 33–​49. 36. Gertrud Schubart Fikentscher, Das Eherecht in Brünner Schöffenbuch (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1935), 90–​92. 37. In some towns governed by Magdeburg law, such as in Žilina (Upper Hungary, present-​day Slovakia), the husband was free to dispose of the woman’s personal (real estate) property to the extent that he could promise it to someone else as a deposit or for a compensation, see Michal Bada, “Žena v systéme Žilinského magdeburského právaˮ [A woman in the system of Žilina Magdeburg law], in Žena a právo: Právne a spoločenské postavenie žien v minulosti [Woman and the law: The legal and social status of women in the past], edited by Tünde Lengyelová (Bratislava: Academic Electronic Press, 2004), 31. 38. Ruining or alienating a dowry was forbidden, and the husband was not allowed to use it as insurance for his debts. During the marriage, the dowry property had to remain unaltered and if the husband alienated something he had to compensate for it after his wife’s death. If the wife or her relatives thought that the husband was jeopardizing the dowry property, they could request that the dowry be insured. If the husband went bankrupt, the dowry was the first to be removed as property which did not undergo distraint, see also Janeković Römer, Rod i grad, 83–​87; Margetić, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovno obiteljsko i nasljedno pravo, 170–​184.

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    233 39. Sowina, Women´s Economic Activity, 473–​474. If a house was a hereditary property of the family of one of the spouses, the same applied in Hungarian towns—​after the death of the marriage partner, the other one (a man as well as woman) might use it (or a well-​defined part of the house) only until his/​her remarriage, see Katalin Szende, “The Other Half of the Town: Women in Private, Professional and Public Life in Two Towns of Late Medieval Western Hungary,” East Central Europe/​L´Europe du Centre Est: Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 20–​23 (1993–​1996) (1998): 180. 40. Margetić, Hrvatsko srednjovjekovno, 317–​320; Karbić, Nije, naime, njezina duša, 59–​68. 41. See Katalin Szende and Finn-​Einar Eliassen, “The Urban Transmission: Family Cycles and Inheritance Customs in Medieval Hungarian and Early Modern Norwegian Towns,ˮ in Sakta vi gå genom stan: City Strolls; Studies in Urban History in Honor of Lars Nilsson, edited by Mats Bergluns (Stockholm: Stockholmia förlag, 2005), 137–​138. 42. For the economic activity of urban women in medieval Central Europe, see, recently, Sowina, Women´s Economic Activity, 471–​486; Piotr Łozowski, “Aktywność gospodarcza kobiet w Starej i Nowej Warszawie w 1. poł. XV wiekuˮ [The economic activity of women in Old and New Warsaw in the first half of the fifteenth century], Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne 13 (2017): 168–​185. Michaela Antonín Malaníková, “Female Engagement in Medieval Urban Economy: Late-​Medieval Moravia in a Comparative Perspective,ˮ in A Forgotten Region: East Central Europe in the “Global Middle Ages,” edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge 2016), 185–​201. 43. Janeković Römer, Rod i grad, 91–​93; Mogorović Crljenko, The Position of Women, 155–​158. Slavonic towns were similar in this respect; Karbić, Nije, naime, njezina duša, 59–​68. 44. Although marriage as such in urban and rural environments often originated on an informal and secular basis—​for the Czech lands, see John M. Klassen, “Marriage and Family in Medieval Bohemia,ˮ East European Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1985): 257–​274. 45. Lesiński, Stanowisko kobiety. 46. Brzeziński, Sola, ut vidua, 129–​145. 47. Lesiński, Stanowisko kobiety, 110–​120. 48. Koczerska, Rodzina szlachecka, 36, 160. 49. See Alicja Szymczakowa, “Gentry Marriage in the Late Middle Ages: Love or Strategy,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 9 (2004): 68–​69. Noblemen were more likely to enter into marriage in their twenties, with those coming from the upper stratum of the nobility (Hochadel) relatively often postponing this until they were thirty or so years old; see Guzowski, “W jakim wieku,” 574–​583. 50. Brzeziński, “Wdowieństwo,” 106–​107. 51. Ján Lukačka, “Podoby ženy v neskorostredovekej spoločnosti (na prikladě štyroch šľachtičien z územia Nitranskej župy)ˮ [Images of a woman in late medieval society (on the example of four noblewomen from the territory of Nitra County)], in Lengyelová, Žena a právo, 46. 52. The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary: A Work in Three Parts, the “Tripartitum”/​Tripartitum opus iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariæ, edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, and Martyn Rady; with an introductory study by László Péter (Idyllwild, CA; Budapest, Schlacks; CEU Press, 2005). 53. On Hungarian customary law in detail, see Rady, Customary Law in Hungary; see also Daniela Dvořáková, “Manželstvo uhorskej šľachtyˮ [Marriage of the Hungarian nobility], in Manželství v pozdním středověku: Rituály a obyčeje) [Marriage in the late Middle Ages: Rituals and customs], edited by Martin Nodl and Paweł Kras (Prague: Filosofia, 2014), 217.

234    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. 54. See Bogdan Lesiński, “Ustanowienie opieki “zapisanej” (tutela inscripta) w dawnym prawie ziemskim,ˮ in Ustrój i prawo przeszłości dalszej i bliższej dedykowane Prof. Stanisławowi Grodziskiemu w pięćdziesiątą rocznicę pracy naukowej [The system and law of the distant and more immediate past dedicated to Prof. Stanislaw Grodzisk on the fiftieth anniversary of his work], edited by Jerzy Malec and Wacław Uruszczak (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2001). For nobility in medieval Hungary, see Dvořáková, Život ženy—​šľachtičnej v Uhorsku, 17; for female guardianship among Czech and Moravian nobility, see Kozáková, Právní postavení, 6–​11. 55. Stormy events in the years 1439 to 1440 in the Hungarian kingdom after Albrecht’s unexpected death are descibed in detail in the memoirs of Helene Kottaner, Elisabeth’s lady-​in-​ waiting and confidant, who was an eyewitness and an active figure in the events described. For an English translation of this interesting source, see Maya Bijvoet Williamson, ed., The Memoirs of Helene Kottaner (1439–​1440) (Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1998). 56. This was prescribed, for example, by all Istrian and most Dalmatian statutes and by Hungarian and Slavonic law. A mother-​widow would usually become her children’s tutor; she would manage their property and make decisions linked to them. Some codes, however, prescribed that more important questions, like children’s weddings or the alienation of certain goods, needed not only the mother’s, but also male relatives’ consent, usually two of them, or even the mayor’s. As in the case of nobility, urban mothers-​widows would lose the tutelage of their children if they remarried; for this situation on the Adriatic Coast, see Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet, 29–​33, 82–​84; Janeković Römer, Rod i grad, 119–​ 122. On the relationship of municipal law to widows in the Czech lands, see, for instance, Miroslav Flodr, Brněnské městské právo. Zakladatelské období (–​1359) [Brno city law: The founding period (–​1359)] (Brno: Matice moravská, 2001), 276, 278, 379; for the situation in Polish towns, see Sowina, “Wdowy i sieroty,” 15–​28. 57. In Slavonic towns, widows became taxpayers if they continued the occupation of their former husbands, see M. Karbić, “Nije, naime, njezina duša,” 59–​68. 58. Also, as aptly formulated by Katalin Szende, “widows as a social group were characterized by a much more significant polarization than urban society as a whole,” see Katalin Szende, “Craftsmen’s Widows in Late Medieval Sopron,” in Women in Towns: The Social Position of European Urban Women in a Historical Context, edited by Marjatta Hietala and Lars Nilsson (Stockholm; Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1999), 20. 59. See Szende, Craftsmen’s Widows, 14–​15. 60. Bartoszewicz, Kobieta w mieście polskim późnego średniowiecza, 174. The difficult economic situation of widows in medieval Warsaw is discussed by P. Łozowski, Aktywność gospodarcza kobiet w Starej i Nowej Warszawie, 179–​180. 61. Antonín Malaníková, Female Engagement in Medieval Urban Economy, Table 11.2190. 62. In the Prague tax register from 1429 widows are registered as the owners of houses in 70 percent of cases (97 cases out of 139); see Hana Pátková, “Ženy ve středověkých berních rejstřícíchˮ [Women in medieval tax records], Documenta Pragensia 13 (1996): 49. Regarding the issue of urban widows’ ownership of immovable property in medieval Poland, see also Sowina, Women’s Economic Activity in Polish Towns, 474–​475. 63. The Polish statute of Opatowiec (1474), for instance, decreed: quod vidua non in alia veste, nisi in nigra vel subnigra, debeat ambulare, cingulos argenteos vel aureos nec crinalia portare, clenodia omnia, cujusqunque sint conditionis, sive pepla nobilia, tenetur a se amovere, alias si excesserit, et per aliquem amicum mariti defuncti approbata fuerit, bonis omnibus mariti

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    235 sui privari debet. See Ius Polonicum, edited by Jan W. Bandkie (Warsaw: Societas Regiae Philomothicae Varsaviensis, 1831), 314. 64. Data on the number of children in burgher families are not absolute; they are derived only from the number of children living at the moment of the registration/​making of a testament, and also they are only relevant for better-​off social groups; see Łozowki, Demography of the Burgher Family, 58, 62–​68. 65. On the demography in the region as such, see also Erik Fügedi, “The Demographic Landscape of East-​Central-​Europe,” in East-​Central-​Europe in Transition 1300–​1700, edited by Antoni Mączak, Henryk Samsonowitz, and Peter Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 47–​58. For Hungarian urban localities, see György Granasztói, The Hungarian Burgeois Family, 280–​284; on the urban demography in the Hanse region, see also Henryk Samsonowicz, “Zagadnienia demografii historicznej regionu Hanzy w XIV–​ XV wieku” [Historical demography of the Hanseatic League in the fourteenth-​fifteenth centuries], Zapiski Historyczne 28, no. 4 (1963): 523–​555; for the size of an urban Czech household, see John Klassen, “Household Composition in Medieval Bohemia,” Journal of Medieval History 16 (1990): 55–​75. Klassen was the first to point out that Czech (urban) household composition resembles remarkably that in regions further west. 66. Cezary Kuklo, Demografia Rzeczypospolitej przedrozbiorowej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DIG, 2009), 279. For the Eastern Adriatic there are no data for the medieval period, but for the Early Modern Period the results of an analysis confirm the same tendency, see Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati, 47–​52. 67. See Granasztói, “The Hungarian Burgeois Family,ˮ 257–​320. 68. See John Hajnal, “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective,” in Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography, edited by D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (London; Chicago: Edward Arnolt; Aldine Publishing Company, 1965), 101. 69. Szende, The Other Half of the Town, 178. 70. See Szende, The Other Half of the Town, 185, quoting the example of the linen-​weaving and -​bleaching crafts in the medieval town of Bártfa (today Bardejov in Slovakia). 71. For details, see Antonín Malaníková, Female Engagement in Medieval Urban Economy, 185–​201. 72. For a range of female professions in late medieval East Central European towns, see, among others, Sowina, Women’s Economic Activity in Polish Towns, 477–​480; Szende, The Other Half of the Town, 182–​184. A similar situation was on the eastern Adriatic coast. See: Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet, 100–111. 73. Almost all the Istrian statutes imposed sanctions for raping a woman, differentiating among a girl, a married woman, and a widow. Some of them also mention the rape of a nun or a prostitute. The prescribed punishment for raping a woman was regularly the death penalty. The offender could avoid the death penalty, however, if the raped woman was a virgin or a widow, by marrying her if she and her family agreed to the marriage. Only a few statutes prescribed sanctions for raping a prostitute or a woman with a bad reputation. In these cases, lesser punishments were prescribed, usually fines, see Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati svijet, 133–​146. The Ilok statute, valid in Slavonia for all cases of girls, married women, widows, and prostitutes, required the death penalty preceded by torture, see the Iločki statut, knj. III, gl. 18, 19, 20, 22. In medieval Brno, the principle of protecting prostitutes from rape was applied even in the oldest privilege, from 1243, and was mentioned in legal sources throughout the whole medieval period, see Flodr, Brněnské městské právo, 316–​317.

236    Michaela Antonín Malaníková et al. 74. Mogorović Crljenko, Nepoznati, 127–​131. 75. Goran Ravančić, “Prostitution in Late Medieval Dubrovnik: Legislation, Practice and Prosecution,” in Same Bodies, Different Women: “Other” Women in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, edited by Christopher Mielke and Andrea-​Bianka Znorovszky (Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2019), 97–​114. 76. A unique source of its kind has been preserved in Brno for the second half of the fourteenth century, namely, the so-​called Statute of Prostitutes from 1353. The text states that in the earliest times the meretrices lived outside the city walls, but at the time the statute was issued they had already relocated to the inner city, where they lived in four houses near the Jewish quarter, see also Miroslav Flodr, “Brněnské nevěstky v nejstarších dějinách města” [Brno prostitutes in the oldest history of the town], Sborník prací filosofické fakulty brněnské univerzity 41 (1994): 7–​14. In medieval Bratislava (Pressburg/​Poszony, today in Slovakia), prostitution was also practiced under the patronage of the city council, while the supervision of the brothel was entrusted to the local executioner; see Vladimír Segeš, “Žena ako subjekt a objekt kriminality v stredovekej Bratislave,” [Woman as a subject and object of crime in medieval Bratislava], in Lengyelová, Žena a právo, 63–​64. In addition to brothels established by urban authorities, various forms of unofficial or occasional prostitution have always flourished; for the situation in Poland, see Krawiec, Seksualność, 214–​223. 77. Successful attempts to eradicate prostitution by turning prostitutes onto a path of repentance are documented in Prague in connection with the efforts of the reform preacher Jan Milíč of Kroměříž in the 1370s. See also Žena v českých zemích od středověku do 20. století [A woman in the Czech lands from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century], edited by Milena Lenderová, Božena Kopičková, Jana Burešová, and Eduard Maur (Prague: Nakladateltsví Lidové noviny, 2009), 607–​611. 78. For beguine communities in East Central Europe, see Danuta Lapis and Bohdan Lapis, “Beginki v Polsce w XII–​XV wiekuˮ [Beguines in Poland in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries], Kwartalnik Historyczny 78, no. 3 (1972): 534–​539. Most recently for medieval Poland, Silesia, and Moravia, see Magdalena Ogórek, Beginki i waldensi na Śląsku i Morawach do końca XIV wieku [Beguines and Waldensians in Silesia and Moravia until the end of the fourteenth century] (Racibórz: Wydawnictwo i Agencja Informacyjna WAW Grzegorz Wawoczny, 2012); for medieval Hungary, see Daniela Dvořáková, “Kláštory a domy begín v stredovekom Uhorsku,ˮ [Monasteries and houses of Beguines in medieval Hungary], in Sanctimoniales: Zakony żeńskie w Polsce i Europie Środkowej (do przełomu XVIII i XIX wieku) [Female orders in Poland and Central Europe (until the turn of the eighteenth century)], edited by Dariusz Karczewski, Andrzej Radzimiński, and Zbigniew Zyglewski (Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2010), 162–​ 170; for the situation in the Czech lands, see Michaela Antonín Malaníková, “Bohemian and Moravian Beguine Communities in the Middle Ages,ˮ Historica (Czech and Slovak Journal of the Humanities) 2 (2016): 43–​52. For the East Adriatic, see Benyovsky Latin, “Female Piety and Gendered Spaces,” 213–​245. 79. On female piety in the region in general, see Halina Manikowska, Les couvents féminins dans les villes médiévales de L’Europe du Centre-​Est, in La femme dans la société médiévale et moderne (Actes du colloque de Nieborów 6–​8 juin 2002) (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2005), 113–​140. More recently, Benyovsky Latin, “Female Piety and Gendered Spaces,” 213–​245. 80. See also Granasztói, The Hungarian Burgeois Family, 293–​294.

Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe    237

Further Reading Davis, Isabel, Miriam Müller, and Sarah Ree Jones, eds. Love, Marriage, and Family Ties in the Later Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Earenfight, Theresa, ed. Queenship in Medieval Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Hietala, Marjatta, and Lars Nilsson, eds. Women in Towns: The Social Position of European Urban Women in a Historical Context. Stockholm–​Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1999. Jacobsen, Grethe, and Heide Wunder, eds. East Meets West: A Gendered View of Legal Tradition. Kiel: Solivagus Verlag, 2015. Klaniczay, Gábor, ed. Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Klassen, John M., ed. Warring Maidens, Captive Wives, and Hussite Queens: Women and Men at War and at Peace in Fifteenth Century Bohemia. Boulder, CO: Eastern European Monographs, 1999. Mielke, Christopher, and Andrea-​Bianka Znorovszky, eds. Same Bodies, Different Women: “Other” Women in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2019. Sperling, Jutta Gisela, and Shona Kelly Wray, eds. Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property and Law in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300–​1800). New York: Routledge, 2010.

Chapter 11

Rur a l L and M a nag e me nt in Medieval C e nt ra l Eu rope Edit Sárosi

Recent decades have brought profound changes in the scholarly understanding and interpretation of Central European medieval rural landscapes. The history and archaeology of medieval rural communities and their settlements has been at the forefront of research in the region for about a hundred years, and countless local studies and reviews are available on rural landscapes.1 The earliest studies tackling medieval settlement systems and land use in Central Europe were published by economic historians, historical geographers, and ethnographers in the nineteenth century; in most regions archaeological research on medieval rural settlement systems began in the early twentieth century, becoming more systematic from the 1950s.2 Before the 1970s, the main directions for investigations were shaped by the modern nation-​states, often influenced by the ethnocentrisms of modern politics, for instance, The topic of “Slavic antiquities” or the impact of German Ostsiedlung on the societies further east generated heated debates (see chapter 9 by Donecker, this volume).3 The scientific dispute was centered around the priority of settlements and the imported or local development of agricultural tools and technologies such as the heavy plough or the two-​and three-​field systems, but the ethnocentric attitude also became a central argument to modern territorial claims and national identity in the twentieth century. Since the 1960s and 1970s, all these theories and issues have been re-​evaluated, resulting in a more balanced and complex overview, which emphasizes both the contribution of German settlement to local societies and the role of local actors in the process.4 In the post–​World War II period, Marxist paradigms shifted research toward the history of the working class. Archival research based on written sources, field surveys of deserted medieval rural sites, archaeological excavations of rural settlements, including the study of methods and technologies connected to medieval land management were the most important research directions.5 In this period, both Western European and

240   Edit Sárosi Central European scholarship stressed the “otherness” of the territory east of the Elbe River and tended to identify indigenously developed local models to explicate the development of the rural economy, such as the emergence of so-​called service settlements, or second serfdom. Another specific aspect of Central European medieval rural studies is the availability and composition of documentary and other non-​written evidence. Only a small number of written sources have survived from before the twelfth century in the region in general, which do not reveal much about rural life or land management. For later periods, Poland and the Moravian-​Bohemian regions have much more documentary evidence than Hungary, where both the royal and local ecclesiastical archives have been lost. This means that even for the high medieval period there are few reliable quantifiable data to use as economic indicators for management and production,6 and medieval or early modern maps and images depicting the rural countryside are rare.7 Furthermore, until the late 1980s using historical maps or taking aerial photos was a challenge for scholars working in the Soviet bloc, but as the military archives8 opened, this archival material could be freely explored and published.9 Cartographic sources of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show that a major part of the Central European countryside preserved premodern settlement patterns, road structures, and ancient field structures, but with the introduction of heavy machinery in agricultural production, from the turn of the nineteenth century, and especially after World War II, during the Communist era, this overall picture changed considerably, when much farmland was collectivized and former individual fields, pastures, and meadows were integrated into huge parcels of plowland, which erased the boundaries of earlier allotments.10 Thus, physical traces of deserted medieval settlements and field systems have usually been identified recently.11 The general disappearance of traditional agrarian landscapes in Central Europe and the sporadic survival of premodern features and patterns is quite different from Great Britain, for instance, where elements of the medieval landscape are well preserved and in many cases the landscape is an appropriate source for reconstructing complex farming systems. From the early twentieth century, medieval settlement archaeology also played a role in research on rural economic systems. In many cases these pioneering archaeological surveys were aimed at exploring not land-​management systems but relevant archaeological finds, such as agricultural tools and zoological or botanical remains. Morphological characteristics of excavated sites, including dispersed or nucleated settlement layouts or the presence of special features such as ditch systems, also facilitated understanding land management. The targeted study of rural field systems began in the 1970s in the Czech, Moravian, and Hungarian territories, relying on geodetic-​topographical surveys and environmental sampling, inspired by the German genetische Siedlugsforschung model and approaches to landscape archaeology developed in England to study deserted rural settlements.12 Until recently, research methodologies in Poland were less influenced by foreign models.13 To counter the fragmented nature of the sources, multidisciplinary approaches and methodologies developed and started to be generally used after the fall of Communism,

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    241 based on the use of historical, cartographic, including different approaches of field-​and landscape archaeology, combined with natural scientific methods. Methods may be applied as part of primary investigations, but also used to re-​evaluate former finds. For instance, dendrochronology (tree-​ring analysis) has been used to construct a revised dating sequence for the emergence of settlements around stronghold centers in Poland between the eighth and tenth centuries.14 Interpretative frameworks for agricultural history expanded; the effects of climatic changes, the ecological imprints of human activities, and the dynamics of biocultural agencies became important research topics in the region. Based on these new research perspectives several ground-​breaking interregional assessments and regional reviews have emerged from the 1990s.15 In the past decades a number of regional/​national research programs have contributed to the regional-​scale interpretation of rural history in Central Europe. One of the earliest and most significant milestones was the Polish initiative in 1949 on the approaching 1000th anniversary of the beginning of the Polish state, when the so-​called Millennium project was launched. Up to the mid-​1960s this resulted in numerous historical reviews and systematic archaeological research on dozens of early medieval sites.16 Furthermore, after World War II various other archaeological-​topographical projects started in Central Europe that incorporated surveying deserted medieval rural settlements and their hinterlands, for instance, the “Archaeological Topography of Poland, “The Historical Atlas of Poland: Detailed Maps of the Sixteenth Century, the “Archaeological Topography of Hungary,” and the archaeological-​topographical investigations of deserted medieval villages in Czechoslovakia.17 In addition to these long-​term archaeological projects, more recent interdisciplinary research initiatives have been undertaken, such as “Archaeology from Above: Analysis and Presentation of Remote Sensing of Moravia and Silesia,” “Rural Settlements in Bohemia in the ‘Age of Transition’ (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries),” “The Ecology of Crusading” project, the “Studies on Settlement Archaeology and Environmental History in Southern Transdanubia (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries),” and “Medieval Hungarian Economic History in the Light of Archaeology and Material Culture.”18 International collaborations and conferences have contributed to making the results of Central European scholarship available and comprehensible to Western audiences. The Permanent European Conference on the Study of Rural Landscape was one of the earliest pan-​European platforms for landscape researchers, organizing meetings and publications about various aspects of European rural landscapes since 1957.19 Another significant workshop for the exchange of knowledge and the development of comparable methodologies in medieval and postmedieval settlements and rural studies is the Ruralia Association, a forum for European rural landscape and settlement studies. Ruralia strengthens collaboration through conferences and publications on current research questions in European rural studies.20 Improved communication through modern scientific platforms and advances in the methodology of rural studies have contributed to re-​evaluating previous views about medieval rural landscapes in Central Europe. Rather than emphasizing “otherness” or “backwardness,” contemporary assessments focus on both specific and general regional

242   Edit Sárosi phenomena, which are now understood as diverse characteristics that helped in the formation of Europe.21

Early Medieval Agricultural Economies, Seventh to Tenth Century One of the most important changes in the early medieval settlements of Central Europe began with the advance of Slavic settlers from the late 600s through the 700s ad. This corresponds in part with one of the last phases of major migration processes from the eastern steppe region, which resulted in the emergence of the Avar Khaganate in the Carpathian Basin. These processes are mainly attested by scarce archaeological sources; documentary evidence is limited.22 Before the tenth century, Slavic settlements, in Bohemia and Moravia occupied fertile land, usually not higher than 400 meters above sea level. The gradual internal expansion of Slavic populations and settlements is especially striking in southern and western Bohemia.23 Similarly, in Greater Poland, settlements formed clusters of open settlements which were separated from each other by vast empty zones that may have been forested. In the catchment basin of the Oder River the earliest traces of Slavic immigration are dated roughly around ad 700; archaeological evidence shows further intensification of the settlement network during the eighth century, with lakeside and promontory locations typical settlement sites. This choice was probably due to a need for protection. These locations offered good natural conditions for the defense of local communities, and in fact many of these sites were later fortified.24 The emergence of such enclosed and fortified sites or strongholds opened a new chapter in the history of the settlement and economy of Slavic communities. Recent studies based on a critical re-​evaluation of archaeological material and dendrochronological dating show that strongholds appeared in the region after 700 ad.25 Interestingly, not all settlement clusters include a stronghold and not all strongholds can be associated with other settlements. The political or economic function of these enclosed sites is not yet fully understood; archaeological evidence shows egalitarian living standards in both open and enclosed settlements. Apart from slight differences in consumption patterns, not much evidence has been found for social stratification. Some interpretations of these sites posit tribute collecting, thus making accumulation and redistribution their main functions, but there is no agreement on models that represent strongholds as tribal centers.26 Arable farming played an important role in the economy of the early Slavs; still, there are no direct data on land ownership and land management practices. the character of agrarian production can only be described to a limited extent, using archaeological and paleo-​environmental data. Ards and iron-​shod ploughs (ralo or radło) were in use, and a relatively large number of sickles has been found. These tools are congruent with

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    243 seeing early Slavic arable fields as small roughly rectangular pieces of land, similar to the so-​called Celtic field typical in other parts of Europe after the Iron Age. Land management was probably based on the regular alternation of ploughed and fallow fields, and thus can be hypothesized as an extensive fallow system. It is assumed that with a steady growth of settlements and populations there was a need for increased production, which would have shortened the length of the fallow periods. By the ninth century, the system probably included more intensively rotated furlongs probably cultivated with asymmetric heavy ploughs. Opinions vary on whether or to what extent slash-​and-​burn agriculture was widespread in this period. Recent studies emphasize that wood, a primary source of energy and building material, must have been too valuable to waste by intentional burning to clear new land. Most possibly purposeful fires were started to remove unwanted vegetation as a first phase of clearing activity, followed by a second phase of ploughing. Added to manuring, this practice27 would have contributed to fertilization of not yet colonized pioneer lands and renewed fallows. Archaeobotanical results attest that a variety of standard crops were sown in the period: mostly rye, wheat, and millet accompanied by oats and barley. A recent comparison of regional pollen samples shows possible differences in the scales and chronology of agricultural production in the early Slav settlement zone. According to these results, the earliest intensive production zone of cereals was in Greater Poland (also known as Wielkopolska, in the west-​central part of present-​day Poland), where the expansion of arable land and farming began in the first decades of the sixth century and continued to the tenth century. At the same time, in Lesser Poland (Małopolska, the southwestern part of present-​day Poland) and Bohemia28 this type of agricultural development seems to have started much later, in the ninth and tenth centuries. Animal husbandry remained on the level of domestic production; seen in archaeozoological assemblages, cattle, sheep, and goats were the dominant species pigs and horses were also present, still, it is hard to estimate the number of animals kept by individual settlements.29 In the Carpathian Basin, the early medieval settlement pattern was remarkably different, as the ethnic and cultural background of the inhabitants changed often between the end of Roman rule in Pannonia and the arrival of the Hungarian tribes at the end of the ninth century. The influx of various nomadic or seminomadic peoples coming from the east was continuous (Huns, Sarmatians, Alans, Avars, and Bulgars), as well as their attempts to subject the local population. Various waves of German tribes (Gepids, Lombards, and other smaller groups) contributed to the mixed ethnic character of the area and the survival of local Romanized people can also be presumed around the arrivals of the Avars in the mid-​sixth century. This ethnic mixture was influenced by various groups coming from the steppes in the east and by the gradual infiltration of Slavic populations during different periods of the Avar Khaganate. Because of the frequent shifts of conquerors and authorities it is challenging to define the settlement areas of various ethnicities in any given period. Even less information is available about land management practices and agricultural production, although archaeological finds give some indications, especially agricultural tools and botanical remains. Such finds reveal

244   Edit Sárosi that the high standards of intensive Roman agriculture in Transdanubia (west of the Danube River), vanished in the second half of the early medieval period, giving way to modest production and less intensive cultivation. Slavic populations practicing agriculture came to the region in several waves from the late sixth century, when the major part of the Carpathian Basin was ruled by the Avars. The Slavs settled, but the political entity of the Avars’ rulership, the khaganate, dominated their relationship politically. Avar rule was economically reliant on Slavic agricultural production. The expansion of Slav settlement, providing a complex background infrastructure for the Avars that included food, commodities, labor, and special services, was thus strategically important.30 The general interpretation of the economic production system of the Avar period, however, is unclear. The Carpathian Basin offered a different ecological setting than the Eurasian steppes. Palynological data seem to indicate that the Avars occupied lands that had already been cultivated for centuries and that pioneer or climatic steppes mainly disappeared and were gradually substituted by “cultural steppes” from the Bronze Age onward in the region, and pollen data from the Avar period reflect the extensive presence of herbaceous plants and weeds and a further decline in arboreal vegetation.31 Although pastoralism must have been the main basis of the Avar economy in their original homelands on the Eurasian steppes, only limited information is available on the details of their stock breeding in the Carpathian Basin. Archaeological finds from a large number of burials indicate that the Avar population was relatively self-​sufficient and produced essential supplies for everyday life. Tribal or another type of community control over the pastures and associated resources had a decisive role in the economic system of the nomad Avars in the first period of their presence in the Carpathian Basin. Individuals might have owned animals, but there may have been collective use and access to grassland. Livestock included the strategically important huge herds of horses used during military campaigns. Cattle and sheep were raised for food, but animal hides, wool, and bone were among the most important raw materials to produce everyday articles. With the appearance of the earliest permanent Avar settlements, from the first decade of the seventh century, a clear shift can be seen in the lifestyle of the Avar population. Recent scholarship interprets this process as the beginning of a slow and peaceful transformation toward a more sedentary peasant lifestyle, attested by the appearance of quern stones and a relatively large number of pig bones in the find material compared to horse and cattle remains. The outcome of this transformation was that most of the late Avar population lived in permanent villages, hamlets or dispersed farmsteads, with semisubterranean houses and numerous large storage pits for grain.32 The exact chronology of the settlements from the late Avar period is unclear mainly because no reliable typological and chronological sequence of archaeological finds (particularly pottery) has been established. In many cases, it is hard to define whether the similarities or differences in material culture reflect chronological differences or can simply be ascribed to different lifestyles, cultural contacts, and interactions between various Slav, Avar, and Bulgarian communities.33 Agricultural tools are known primarily as

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    245 grave-​goods from burials in Avar contexts, mainly iron sickles or spades, but remains of wooden and light ploughs with iron shares have also been recorded. Botanical finds indicate the production of millet, barley, wheat, and peas.34 Investigation of a pollen deposit from a well at a late Avar settlement excavated at Hódmezővásárhely-​ Kopáncs provides further information about agricultural practices.35 Here cerealia-​ type pollens made up about three percent of the total pollen spectrum, which suggests that small and scattered arable fields were located in the neighborhood of the village. The samples are dominated by wheat, although barley and spelt were also present. Farming is further testified by ruderal (“weedy”) plants, especially species associated with arable fields, such as common wild oat and green foxtail, which are typical plants in areas between arable fields and shrubbery, while wild buckwheat and goosefoot are characteristic “contaminations” in winter crops. Since most weeds require soils abounding in nitrogen, it is assumed that arable lands were fertilized, probably by allowing animals to graze on fallow fields.

Consolidating Agricultural Structures from the Tenth to Twelfth Century The emergence of autonomous Christian polities in tenth-​century Central Europe was associated with the establishment of territorialized dynastic powers, which fundamentally affected the socioeconomic organization, ownership, settlement networks, and land management systems.36 The problem of power is of interest in this period, understanding how the central ducal/​royal lordship controlled and interacted with rural populations and economic production. This is especially important in Polish historiography, because much historical research identifies a strong ducal power (ius ducale) as the phenomenon behind all the basic variables affecting social and economic structures between the tenth and the twelfth centuries.37 The clearest common representation of these centralized powers in tenth-​to twelfth-​ century Central Europe has been identified with the institution of so-​called service settlements (Kietzesiedlungen/​Dienstsiedlungen), which Polish and Czech medievalists originally interpreted as a specifically Slavic phenomenon and later as a Central European adaptation of a Carolingian model. These settlements were described as “subordinate” or “subservient” villages, located as determined by royal, ducal, or seigneurial command, and paying their dues by performing special tasks commanded by the ruler, working as hunters, smiths, millers, vine-​dressers, bakers, cooks, and so on. Based on accumulated place-​name evidence, this “service” interpretation of settlements with the names of products or different types of agrarian or industrial occupations, as well as further conclusions connected to more general social and economic structures, was later criticized for applying a retrogressive methodology, debating whether the bulk of

246   Edit Sárosi place-​name evidence in documentary sources after 1100 is relevant for reconstructing models for the earlier period between the ninth and eleventh century.38 In fact, there is no contemporary proof that royal or ducal orders determined the location of service settlements or that they did not engage in “common” farming in addition to their assigned tasks. Archaeological investigations have not identified noticeable differences between the material culture of ordinary rural settlements and service settlements. In some cases, in Hungary for instance, archaeological excavations have confirmed the presence of a special production (like blacksmithing) in rural settlements.39 Further attempts at identifying social status based on burial remains, as well as studies of consumption patterns grounded in archaeozoological and archaeobotanical data, might yield insight.40 At the same time, modern scholarship widely accepts part of the argument, especially the hypothesis about a massive territorial reorganization and expansion in the developing Central European realms. In Poland, archaeology has produced a significant body of evidence that outlines the main elements of the transformations in the tenth to the twelfth centuries. From an archaeological perspective, the most apparent sign of changes is the realignment of power centers as most former strongholds were destroyed or abandoned and new focal sites emerged at the same time. This also meant that many open agricultural sites were deserted and new clusters of villages emerged around the new power centers. This is interpreted as a result of massive and forced population movements organized by the ruler.41 In Czech lands, the emergence of a dense network of rural settlements also paralleled the significant forced resettlement of people. Here, the duke organized the internal colonization of land centrally; monasteries and landed elites were only included later, from the late twelfth century onward.42 The people being relocated included the native Slavic population, who were organized in tens, foreign peoples captured during military campaigns, and slaves. Recent assessments of tenth-​ through twelfth-​century socioeconomic structures in Bohemia point out that ducal authority had a definite role in the organization of rural settlements. The system was based on ducal manorial estates (curia), which remained an efficient economic and organizational principle up to the thirteenth century.43 Generally, all the sources reveal steady growth in the number of settlements in the whole region between the tenth and the twelfth century. Due to diverse geographical circumstances (major plains areas with fertile soil, mountain regions with dense forest cover, floodplains and marshland), various settlement morphologies evolved in different regions—​open settlements and enclosed sites, dispersed or nucleated patterns. Generally, a zone of arable fields and pastures was located in the vicinity of settlements. Similarly to other parts of the continent, Central European landscapes underwent profound expansion in the medieval period. At a macro level, this can be seen through the general increase in land used for farming: huge, formerly unsettled, and uncultivated areas such as floodplains and forests were colonized and exploited. This long-​ term process often referred to as “cerealization of land,” has been the subject of much historical research. Extensive fallow systems developed: fields were divided into two parts, one was ploughed for some years in a row while the other was allowed to rest.

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    247 Studies on field systems have argued that later this practice evolved into a more intensive two-​field rotation system.44 In the Polish territories, most of the rural population lived in small settlements composed of five to seven farms (sors, źreb), which were all independent units with several small arable fields dispersed around them. Neighboring farms were grouped into small hamlets called campi that served collective economic needs. Several adjacent campi were grouped into a vicinia or opole. Such a system, in some scholars’ opinions, was rooted in the pre-​state period. With the emergence of considerable private landholdings from the twelfth century onward, the system of the opole communities gradually broke up into individual villages that were attached to specific holdings.45 In Bohemia, a special transitional zone called campus evolved between the zone of cultivated fields and meadows or forests, which can be identified as fallow land used for purposes such as pastures or firewood collection.46 It is also suggested that new types of ploughs emerged, equipped with an iron mold board and iron coulter, which facilitated breaking up heavier soils and resulted in better yields. A major development was the intensive reliance on draft animals for both work and as a source of manure. Archaeozoological remains show that animal husbandry (raising cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, goats, and poultry) developed following trends observed in other parts of Europe. In Poland, from the tenth century, the increasing number of pig bones and the disappearance of butchered horse remains from the archaeological material indicate considerable changes in consumption patterns. This is often connected to conversion to Christianity because the Church regarded killing horses for their meat as a sign of paganism and prohibited it.47 The most far-​reaching change in the settlement of the Carpathian Basin was the immigration of Hungarian tribes in the late ninth century, who conquered large parts of the Carpathian Basin and set up a solid network of villages in a relatively short period of time. In contrast with the former stereotypic depictions of ancient Hungarians as nomads, recent research describes these tribes as seminomadic people who had taken up cultivation besides herding long before moving into what would later be their homeland.48 The Hungarians successfully integrated and slowly assimilated the Avar and Slavic populations into their socioeconomic systems and power structure. The most important question related to this period is similar to that for the Avars: How did the population of a mobile pastoralist society adapt to a sedentary lifestyle? Partly, they had to adapt their eastern patterns of herding to local circumstances, since lowland river valley areas were inaccessible for much of the year due to flooding. In addition, long-​distance movements with herds were unnecessary, since the estimated annual rainfall in the region provided abundant spring pasture and after the spring floods receded floodplain meadows provided sufficient grazing throughout the summer.49 Before the thirteenth century, the king was the greatest landowner in Hungary, but from that time onward there were considerable private noble and ecclesiastical possessions. Lay possessions, referred to as predium, were directly controlled by the lord, and cultivated by the labor service of serfs and dependent population using the owner’50 The lands of the lords were often scattered; a landlord could possess lands in different parts

248   Edit Sárosi of the realm and many owners could share the ownership of one village. This scattered character of estates was particularly typical of the possessions of major Benedictine abbeys and collegiate churches, as is clearly described in their foundation and donation charters and the registers of their possessions. The earliest examples of these documents date from the eleventh century, but more detailed accounts show a similar system even as late as the first decades of the thirteenth century. One of the characteristic features of these monastic-​ecclesiastic estates was the presence of service people and settlements that provided particular products like agricultural goods, fish, honey, or industrial products for the monastery. According to the earliest written accounts, there was abundant uncultivated land on the boundaries of settlements, thus the value of a property was not determined by size, but by the available resources and the number of people bound to cultivate the land.51 The settlement network was mainly small villages or hamlets, which according to archaeological traces did not stay fixed in one specific location for a long time. This regular shifting of sites does not relate to any form of nomadism, as earlier studies interpreted, but followed the pattern of an extensive one-​field tillage system, where fields, called terra fimata, were ploughed for some years in a row until production declined, then used as pasture and manured by herd animals. The symmetrical and slightly asymmetric plough types known from the period suggest that fields were small rectangular parcels.52 Enclosed fields or cultivated areas (surrounded by ditches) have also been discovered in excavations of village settlements from this period. Houses and other farm buildings belonging to a household were interspersed with enclosed fields in the territory of the village. Archaeological evidence shows that crops were various cereals, mostly wheat, millet, rye, and barley.53 The ditch systems of these settlements probably separated various agricultural production areas and helped control the movement of livestock. Livestock breeding played a decisive role in the economic system between the tenth and twelfth century, seen in early legislation that a “cattle equivalent” was the generally accepted unit of barter. It is inferred that the largest herds were kept on fields outside the villages, whereas more valuable draft oxen, saddle horses, and dairy animals lived in open pens next to the habitation area; so far, no archaeological traces of stables have been identified. In rural archaeozoological data sets, cattle remains tend to be the most frequent; the frequencies of horses, sheep, pig, caprines, and dogs vary from site to site, and domestic fowl and wild animals are even less frequent.54 Both nucleated and dispersed arrangements of settlements were present in this complex economic system. In a nucleated village, houses and households were situated in or around a core area of the settlement; dispersed forms were characterized by scattered buildings and fields without a clearly defined nucleus. More regular nucleated arrangements only appeared from the twelfth century onward; their emergence was related to the presence of a village church that served as the nucleus of the village. Flood plains along the rivers were likely used as pastures and for gathering fodder. These wetlands were extensively transformed as artificial channels were built to regulate water levels, and lakes were dammed to provide fresh water for fishing and irrigation.55

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    249

The Long Thirteenth Century: Transformation and Expansion of Agricultural Landscapes The general frameworks of rural settlement and agricultural landscapes changed continuously from the late twelfth century to the mid-​fourteenth century. This long and complex realignment can be interpreted as the opening of a major new chapter in regional history, resulting in the most important social and economic developments before the Industrial Revolution. One of the most significant processes in the period was a major expansion of cultivated lands, which was closely connected with the deutsche Ostsiedlung, German settlement east of the Elbe (see ­chapter 9, by Donecker and Fischer, this volume). Large numbers of settlers moved from Western Europe from the twelfth century onward, including Flemish, Dutch, and Frisian people besides Germans and other populations from the Romance-​language-​speaking areas (Latini). In the agricultural context, immigrants coming from the western parts of Europe, besides enhancing urban development, mainly contributed to the “improvement of lands” (melioratio terrae), colonizing difficult landscapes such as wetlands or woodlands. The advance and gradual settlement process of the newcomers followed common principles. This process has been thoroughly examined in all regions, most recently by Nora Berend (see also ­chapter 9 by Donecker, this volume), and will not be discussed in detail here.56 The move of new settlers was organized by so-​called locators (sculteti or locatores), who mediated a contract between the local authorities and settlers and were responsible for measuring the land and building the new settlement. The newcomers’ social position, rights, and annual dues were determined according to “German law” (ius Teutonicum). According to this, they were usually exempt from the traditional charges levied on the local population; this later became the basis for other villages and especially towns.57 The emergence of these new settlements radically transformed the rural landscape of Bohemia and Poland. The final decline of the ducal manorial estates (curia) in the Czech territories and the vicinia system in Poland came in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, in parallel with the gradual emergence of villages chartered under Teutonic law.58 New assessments underline the role of interaction, acceptance, and adaptation of innovation, crossing ethnic divides. Besides immigration and settlement of German and other populations, such as Jews, Muslims, or Cumans, internal migration and the potentials of local populations resulted in a general expansion in the thirteenth century.59 These processes generated both cooperation and conflicts between local residents and newcomers, among others, and also resulted in the spread and adaptation of innovative agricultural techniques60 For example, German settlers in various parts of the whole region brought more advanced forms of ploughs combined with knowledge of complex field systems. Special branches of agriculture also developed, like new types of viticulture by the Latini in different parts of Hungary and large-​scale extensive cattle breeding in the central parts of the Great Hungarian Plain populated by the Cumans.61

250   Edit Sárosi The Mongol Invasion in 1241–​1242 was another key episode in the thirteenth century that had far-​reaching consequences on the development of the region. This well-​organized major military invasion damaged parts of Lesser Poland, Silesia, and Hungary, whereas Bohemia and Moravia were less affected. Even though the exact scale of the destruction caused by the Mongols is debated, it is apparent from historical and archaeological evidence that the devastation caused by the military campaign and the subsequent famines led to the destruction and depopulation of some regions such as the Great Hungarian Plain.62 Thus, the consequences were in many respects comparable to the effects of the Black Death that struck Western Europe a century later. Even though the losses caused by the Mongols were significant, it is assumed that both Polish and Hungarian lands recovered and proceeded relatively quickly, which historical research interprets as convincing proof of local demographic and economic potential. Accordingly, the Mongol Invasion is seen as a major catalyst that accelerated and intensified various interrelated social and economic processes, resulting in a complex division of labor and the emergence of a money economy, which enabled further developments in the thirteenth century.63 Other processes accelerated by the Mongol Invasion, such as building stone castles and significant urban development, also affected the rural countryside, particularly in the context of the ownership of landed estates, market-​oriented agricultural production, and urban settlements and their hinterlands.64 Among the most important political and social factors in the thirteenth century was the growing role of the nobility, which was associated with the expansion of lay and ecclesiastical landownership. The gradual increase of privately owned lands from the twelfth century led to a gradual realignment in rural social and economic structures.65 One feature in this process was the emergence of a new type of manorial system, often with fortified manors and manorial farms, which resulted in the development of special management practices on private estates by the fourteenth century.66 This happened in parallel with the stabilization of new administrative–​organizational frameworks seen in the consolidation of the parish system and the building of numerous local churches. The reorganization of central administrations, namely, the development of castellan districts in Poland from the twelfth century onward and the emergence of the “noble county” in Hungary were milestones in this process.67 Besides ethnic and cultural differences, the status of people living and working in rural areas in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was quite different. In Hungary during the thirteenth century the main social development was the emergence of a legally coherent nobility and free peasant tenants (iobagiones). The role of new settlers of foreign origin was significant because the so-​called hospes rights were regarded as a relatively free status that could be achieved by the emerging new social group of free tenant peasants. In Bohemia, members of the lower nobility (heredes), some free tenants, and dependent serfs all lived in villages. Their social status differed fundamentally from that of the immigrant settlers, who were exempt from most services to the duke or local lord and whose dues to the landowners were negotiated in individual contracts, however, they were partly recognized as heredes and partly as a dependent peasant population. In

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    251 Poland, the situation was somewhat similar; various categories of unfree people lived in villages, whose different legal statuses gradually faded when villages were reorganized as chartered villages following the model of German settler villages.68 The development of these political, economic, and social frameworks profoundly changed settlement and land use patterns. From the eleventh or twelfth century, monastic orders, especially Benedictine and Cistercian communities, played a fundamental role in spreading modern agricultural techniques in rural landscapes. The manorial or grange systems of monasteries were innovative forms of estate management. From the early thirteenth century a more market-​oriented production system came into use, with the people living on monastic estates paying fees to the monastery in kind, which also contributed to structural changes on monastic domains. Immigrant settlers also enhanced innovation, as they brought into the region not only a potential workforce but also an “agricultural package” with modern practices and tools, which resulted in a growing effectiveness of agricultural production, the production of surpluses, and linked the market and trade with monetary circulation, which led to the further exploration of available lands. The spread of the asymmetric heavy plough with a moldboard and coulter were the most important technological improvements in the thirteenth century, which spread in all three countries with the arrival of Western immigrants, together with two-​or three-​field crop rotation. Water mills were built wherever the hydrographical and geographical conditions made it possible, often combined with fishpond systems along major streams and small rivers. The locus molendini was one of the most valuable properties, even without the necessity of the mill ever being built.69 Water-​powered mills first appear in documentary sources, typically in connection with ecclesiastical lands, in the eleventh–​twelfth century. A recent study, however, notes that the connection between the spread of water-​mills and, for example, the Benedictine houses in Central Europe, is far less evident than historians usually suggest.70 The general use of water mills in the region is recorded from the thirteenth century. Probably one of the earliest organized water-​milling industries developed in the Teutonic Order in Prussia, in parallel with the intensive transformation of large wetland areas. The recently recovered hydrological structure in the Kulmerland (Wiewióra) included a planned, artificially built, network of channels and lakes, a system that also fed moats. In addition, as early as 1233, not only did the order have almost full control over the foundation of settlements, but also acquired the right to build water mills under the so-​called Kulm Law (the Law of Chełmno), a version of German law (ius Teutonicum).71 Data on windmills are generally lacking in the region, except for the Prussian territories, where they were introduced in the fourteenth century.72 The most visible sign of the transforming rural landscapes was the appearance of functionally separate areas of production within the boundaries of settlements. This included a zone of houses with the plots, yards, and often gardens connected to each household. In addition to meadows, pastures, and woodlands, which remained mainly in communal use, the most important zone of production was the area of arable fields, which was divided into furlongs and strips according to the number of tenants. The

252   Edit Sárosi management system can be identified as an open field system, where operative subparts as outfields were strictly separated from the infield, the habitation area. Each villager was allotted a plot where the house was located adjoining a smaller inner arable field, and a yard for farm animals, crop storage, and storing tools. Both archaeological and documentary sources show that a nucleated arrangement was the typical rural village form, characterized by plans with plots organized around streets.73 A realignment in the general settlement pattern resulted from both the development and the abandonment of rural sites. Recent opinions hold that in the second half of the thirteenth century there was a major wave of settlement desertion across Central Europe. The disappearance or abandonment of sites had multiple interconnected causes, mainly long-​term social and economic reorganization of rural structures. The new field system was not compatible with the former extensive type of farming and dispersed or shifting models of settlement. The short-​term consequences of the Mongol Invasion also have to be taken into account, as there is a growing amount of in situ archaeological evidence about both the damage and the relatively quick reorganization and revitalization of ruined areas.74 In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, ecological problems arose, especially flooding and rising groundwater levels—​an early indication of the Little Ice Age (1303–​1860) in both south Moravia and Hungary—​that further influenced both habitation patterns and land management. Environmental and archaeological data suggest that exposure to floods and the rise in groundwater levels especially influenced the transformation of the settlement system.75

Late Medieval Settlement and Land Use: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century Most studies dealing with Central Europe present the late medieval period as a time of dynamic development.76 A basic precondition for economic growth was a steady increase in population. The great plagues of the fourteenth century affected the Central European region less than Western Europe, and the losses from fifteenth-​century wars were complemented by both natural reproduction and immigration.77 By the fourteenth century, Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland had reached Western European standards of farming techniques. Huge formerly unsettled and uncultivated areas such as floodplains and woodlands were assarted (cleared) in order to extend settlement zones and farmland. Relevant written sources on peasant settlements and archaeological research on late medieval deserted villages reveal several common features in the layout of rural settlements. Most Central European peasants lived in nucleated open villages, which included inner house lots (tofts/​Lehen/​lán/​telek) organized along streets and outfield plots with different economic uses; the inner allotments comprised the house, kitchen garden, corrals or stables for draft animals, pigsties, and chicken coops, which were

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    253 typically located on the house lot. Sometimes an intensively cultivated arable field directly adjoined this area. Throughout the region the basic subvariants of this settlement form have been collected and types defined, such as “row villages” (Reihendorf/​ Hufendorf), “street villages” (Strassendorf), and “forest villages” (Waldhufendorf), the last being a widespread model for pioneer foundations in areas of forest clearing.78 At a regional level, the network of rural settlements remained relatively stable during the late medieval period, although occasional desertion of villages occurred for economic reasons such as the limited viability of new foundations or epidemics.79 Warfare was another reason for village abandonment. In the Czech lands, the Hussite and post-​Hussite Wars (1419–​1485) have traditionally been regarded as the peak period of settlement desertion. The advance of the Ottoman armies, reaching the Hungarian Kingdom in the late fourteenth century, led to more waves of settlement desertion, first in the southern, then in the central parts of the country in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The large-​scale realignment of medieval settlement patterns and the desertion of late medieval settlements can be dated to the period of the Fifteen Years’ War (1591/​1593–​1606) in Hungary, and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–​1648) in the Czech lands.80 Cereal production increased in Central Europe from the fourteenth century, when the economic links intensified between central and western parts of Europe. Wheat was among the most important commodities exported to Western European markets, as well as Polish grain, Polish and Hungarian oxen, and Hungarian wine. In Poland, this agricultural boom contributed significantly to transforming the social and legal frameworks of agricultural production. As agrarian prices increased from the late fifteenth century, local landowners entered grain markets with products from their manors. By the sixteenth century, they extended manorial farmlands through the enclosure of arable peasant fields and increased peasants’ taxes and labor obligations, which reduced the competition of the commodities produced by peasants and monopolized the grain trade.81 Recent assessments demonstrate that the manorial economy also developed in Bohemia and Hungary, although an overarching system of “second serfdom” did not develop. In Bohemia, communal self-​administration among peasants and mutual cooperation between peasants and the manor were identified as the main drivers behind the successful operation of large estates.82 In Hungary, peasants’ labor obligations increased, but due to the specific situation caused by the Ottoman advance, until the eighteenth century the growth of seigneurial allodia (demesne manors) was slow.83 The general expansion in agriculture raised the living standards of both the peasantry and landowners. Above-​ground multiroom houses replaced semisubterranean huts for peasants, and nobles invested in private representative residences.84 Comparisons of the material culture of rural peasant and noble households reveal remarkable differences in terms of their consumption patterns and living conditions. The presence of higher-​ quality building techniques (elaborate architectural details with carved stone or brickwork, glass windows, high-​quality stoves with decorated stove-​tiles), imported tableware (German stoneware, glass, etc.) and different eating habits (defined through

254   Edit Sárosi archaeozoological finds) demonstrate that the landowner families enjoyed a better quality of life than the peasants.85 In the late medieval period, the open-​field system dominated land management in the region.86 Arable fields were divided into two or three parts, where each farmer held furlongs (strips). If there were two fields, a winter crop and spring crop alternated; in a three-​field system a winter crop, spring crop, and fallow alternated temporally and spatially, reducing the risks of crop failure and allowing the soil to rest during the fallow year. This regulated field system required the cooperation of the inhabitants, as all farmers had to consider and respect the fixed areas occupied by the arable fields and agree to the rotation order. At the same time, the appearance of the two-​and three-​field rotation systems did not mean the disappearance of other techniques, such as the regulated fallow system. Moreover, abundant evidence in the documentary sources indicates that the rotation system was not introduced in every region. This may have been due to local ecological resources or specialized land management systems such as the large-​scale animal husbandry in the Great Hungarian Plain.87 In other cases, rotation systems were actually used in conjunction with the fallow system, even within the borders of a single settlement. The arable infields which had become fixed parts of the peasant plot were likely to be managed in a more intensive rotation system, whereas the fallow system remained the main framework of production for the outfields, which were periodically redistributed among the community members. Archaeological finds indicate that the most modern asymmetrical ploughs were used in these areas, thus the choice of field system or tool was not necessarily a sign of development or backwardness; it depended on local conditions.88 Not only have the late medieval ploughed furlongs been identified in documentary sources but also, in some lucky cases, medieval ridge and furrow and terrace-​like fields have been documented in present-​day landscapes near deserted late medieval villages.89 One further consequence of the expansion of regulated arable farming were artificially created and maintained grasslands (meadows and pastures) in rural landscapes. Hay meadows became the main source of the winter fodder for an increasing number of stabled animals. The hay was cut with long, two-​handed scythes that probably spread into the region in the fourteenth century.90 Meadows, pastures, woodlands, and water resources remained in the communal use of a village community. Commons played a significant role in the peasant economy, as they were exempt from taxes. In Poland, two special types of commons appear in the written sources: wągrody refers to a fenced common pasture and nawsie refers to land used jointly by villagers, especially in the case of German settlements; in a stricter sense, it can be identified with the village green.91 Animal husbandry played an especially decisive role in the agricultural systems of the central lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin and the eastern parts of the Polish lands, namely, Ukraine, Podolia, Red Ruthenia, and Volhynia, which had immense capacities for breeding large numbers of animals, typically, cattle, sheep, and horses. From the second half of the fourteenth century, export-​oriented large-​scale breeding and marketing of Hungarian, Podolian, and Wallachian cattle was a direct response to a growing demand for meat in southern German and northern Italian cities. The most intensive

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    255 period of Hungarian livestock export can be dated between the fifteenth and mid-​ seventeenth century, when tens of thousands of beasts were sold abroad.92 In Hungary, a special extensive form of stock breeding was practiced, mostly on deserted village lands referred to as predium (Hungarian puszta). As seasons and vegetation changed, large herds (average flocks of 200 to 300 animals) moved between permanent pastures and temporary fallow grasslands called summer meadows (Hungarian nyaraló). In the winter, stockmen gathered the herds in temporary enclosures in fixed winter fields (Hungarian telelő) where hay was stored, but no stables were used.93 Another intensive breeding method developed in late medieval Prussia, where the Teutonic Order raised thousands of horses, mainly battle horses referred to as Sweik (Schweike). These animals were typically larger than local Prussian breeds and were kept in large impressive stable buildings, some of which may have housed a thousand horses.94 Documentary sources reveal that vineyards had been an integral part of the Central European countryside since the eleventh century, but wine production for foreign trade only assumed great importance in the Late Middle Ages. Monastic viticulture contributed considerably to the expansion of wine production; settlers from Romance-​ language-​speaking areas of Southern or Western Europe also brought modern viticulture skills. In the late medieval period, favorable natural conditions led to high-​quality Hungarian wine becoming one of the country’s significant export commodities, a large part of which was produced in rural wine regions such as Srijem, Transdanubia, and the Hegyalja region (which includes the Tokaj area, whose excellent reputation only began later), in addition to the large-​scale wine production of towns such as Buda, Sopron, and Bratislava.95 In rural Hungary, vineyards cultivated by individual households lay outside the peasant plot system; these free-​status fields became new bases of commodity production as private enterprises. Thus, along with the rise of local rural market centers, they were important in the emergence of an agricultural surplus, the commodity economy, and trade.96 Other typical and notable rural land management practices were connected to water resources, mainly fishing and the construction of water-​powered mills. Fishing and the herring trade developed along the coast of the Baltic Sea.97 Late medieval narrative sources also highlight that freshwaters were rich in fish.98 Despite the frequent note of fishing in documents, relatively few data refer to professional fishermen; therefore, it seems that fishing tended to be a supplementary occupation for most of the rural population. Various methods were used; it is hard to estimate the exact volume of the fish caught in particular regions or periods. Based on local environmental circumstances, different fishing methods evolved in rivers, streams, and ponds. One common approach was to set up fish traps in rivers. That is how the freshwater sturgeon was caught, the largest and most expensive fish of late medieval Hungary.99 Additionally, there are innumerable documentary sources about fishponds, some of which were natural lakes or ponds reshaped from natural lakes; and from the fourteenth and fifteenth century onward there are references to building of ponds for fish.100 Oxbow lakes were special fisheries in Hungary, part of the complex and extensive management system of floodplains along major rivers via a canal system (fokrendszer) combined with arable

256   Edit Sárosi fields, meadows, pastures, and orchards situated in flood-​prone zones. Fish ponds were created through the permanent or temporary damming of sections of the river channel and meander system, often resulting in chains of lakes connected via canals that could be used to regulate drainage or control floodwaters.101 Recently, a large pond system with similar drainage and control functions has been documented in the Třeboň Basin in Bohemia. This four-​hundred-​year-​old water-​system is mentioned in documents as early as the sixteenth century; it played a fundamental role in controlling floods through coordinating drainage through a system of lakes.102 Woodlands were also vital in medieval landscapes throughout Central Europe. Applying interdisciplinary approaches to the history of woodlands and their management is a relatively recent but dynamically developing field of research. Although there are estimates of woodland cover and the extent of clearance in the medieval period, the latest reviews emphasize the complex management of medieval woodlands and their role as major reserves of energy as well as raw materials.103 Woods were among the most valued parts of the medieval countryside, as is attested by legal sources which, for instance, differentiated five categories of woodlands in early sixteenth-​century Hungary based on their natural habitat, use, and the income they could potentially generate.104 Central European woodlands were valued for timber, a special export commodity from the Polish territories and modern-​day Slovenia. Based on medieval sources, ethnographic references, and some surviving practices, coppicing and pollarding were among the everyday routines of tree management. Swine herding and hunting were accepted forms of using woodland natural resources.105 The landscapes of Central Europe changed substantially in the period between the eighth and the sixteenth centuries. As most of the region was not part of the ancient Romanized world, features that influenced its development cannot be related to processes or models documented in Romanized parts of the continent. The Czech and Polish lands, with Slavic legacies, had similar developmental features in the earlier phases of the Middle Ages. The early development of the Carpathian Basin followed another pattern; before the tenth century, eastern, seminomadic pastoralist traditions influenced land-​management practices, which slowly adapted to local environmental circumstances and transformed into a sedentary lifestyle. The ninth to tenth centuries saw the first decisive period in the transformation of agricultural economies in Central Europe, together with the formation of Christian polities. After significant demographic growth and major expansion of agricultural production in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, rural landscapes and agricultural technologies were considerably transformed during the thirteenth century. One significant element in this process was the massive transfer and flexible adaptation of organizational frameworks and agricultural techniques arriving with settlers from Western Europe. The spread of the asymmetric heavy plough with a moldboard and coulter were the most important technological improvements in the thirteenth century together with two-​or three-​field crop rotation. This long and complex realignment was influenced by social and political circumstances and other factors such as climatic change. Late medieval land management emerged from using the

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    257 potential of local natural resources and developed further from the coexistence of local populations and newcomers. Written sources on peasant settlements and systematic archaeological research have revealed several common features among late medieval rural settlements in Central Europe. A village layout typically included an outfield, where most agricultural activities were carried out, and the infields, where peasant plots were arranged along street(s). Houses were above-​ground, multiroom buildings. Besides a notable increase in the number of settlements, several waves of desertion have been detected in the region because of economic unsustainability or wars such as the Mongol Invasion, the Hussite Wars, and the advance of the Ottoman Empire. Three-​field rotation and the use of the asymmetric heavy plough spread generally. At the same time, in some areas, special forms of land management developed, such as extensive large-​scale cattle breeding in the Great Hungarian plain region and the use of intensive hydrological systems by the Teutonic Order in the Prussian wetlands. The increase in agricultural production not only contributed to a higher standard of living for the peasant population but also supplied food and other agrarian products to a growing segment of the population not engaged in food production. From the fourteenth century, large numbers of urban settlements with significant populations employed in crafts, industrial production, and trade enjoyed the benefits of the agrarian hinterland. Important mining settlements across the whole geographical region produced significant amounts of gold, silver, copper, iron, and also salt. All the settlements and social groups engaged in these activities relied on the agrarian production of the rural countryside. A significant noble society in these countries, as well as a growing number of monastic communities (particularly the mendicant orders) also relied on the agrarian production of the countryside, although indirectly. By the end of the fourteenth century, the rural economy of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland had the same standards of land management as practiced in western parts of Europe. Chronological differences in the adaptation of special economic patterns, agricultural technologies and institutions do not indicate either the backwardness or the belatedness of land management. Lacking adequate documentary sources, the various data-​sets generated by multidisciplinary approach plays an immense role in modeling local and regional development and in understanding the interrelated adaptation techniques of Central European rural communities. The development of medieval rural landscapes in Central Europe was based on interaction, acceptance, and adaptation of innovation, which means that it can be regarded as an integral part of the wider medieval European agricultural milieu.

Notes 1. For a basic assessment and bibliography, see Nora Berend, Przemysłav Urbańczyk, and Przemysłav Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c.900–​c.1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Nora Berend, ed., The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), József Laszlovszky et al., eds., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

258   Edit Sárosi 2. József Laszlovszky, “Field Systems in Medieval Hungary,” in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways . . . : Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, edited by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 432–​444; Ladislav Čapek and Lukáš Holata, “General Overview of Medieval Settlement Research in the Czech Republic: Emergence and Development of the Field, Main Issues and Adoption of Landscape Context,” Revista Arkeogazte Aldizkaria 7 (2017): 267–​320; Andrzej Buko, “Medieval Archaeology in Poland: The Beginnings and the Development Stages,” Post-​ Classical Archaeologies 2 (2012): 361–​378. 3. For the latest review, see Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, The Expansion of Central Europe, xxvii–​xxxvi. 4. Laszlovszky, “Field Systems”; Čapek and Holata, “General Overview”; Buko, “Medieval Archaeology in Poland.” 5. Laszlovszky, “Field Systems,” 432–​433. 6. József Laszlovszky et al., “Introduction: Hungarian Medieval Economic History: Sources, Research and Methodology,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 1–​ 38; Zsolt Hunyadi, “ . . . scripta manent: Archival and Manuscript Resources in Hungary,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 1997–​1998 (1999): 231–​240. 7. József Laszlovszky et al., “Introduction”; Hunyadi, “ . . . scripta manent.” 8. 9. Laszlovszky, ”Introduction”; Čapek and Holata, “General Overview,” 267–​320. 10. In the nineteenth century the Austro-​Hungarian Empire created a series of detailed military maps showing landscape details, available at several locations (like https://​map​ire.eu/​, accessed June 20, 2020). 11. Martin Gojda, “Early Medieval Settlement Study in Bohemia: Traditions and Perspectives,” Památky archaeologické 83 (1992): 174–​180; Čapek and Holata, “General Overview,” 267–​ 320; Laszlovszky et al., “Introduction”; Laszlovszky, “Field Systems.” 12. Laszlovszky, “Field Systems,” 439–​440; Čapek and Holata, “General Overview,” 284–​287. 13. Laszlovszky, “Field Systems,” 439–​440; Čapek and Holata, “General Overview,” 284–​287; Herbert Jahnkuhn, “Methoden und Probleme siedlungsarchäologischer Forschung,” Archaeologica Geographica 4 (1955): 73–​84; Herbert Jahnkuhn, Einführung in die Siedlugsarchäologie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977); Buko, “Medieval Archaeology in Poland,” 1–​28; Henryk Rutkowski, “Work on the Historical Atlas of the Sixteenth-​Century Poland,” Polish Cartographical Review 50 (2018): 223–​231. 14. Andrzej Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland: Discoveries—​Hypotheses—​ Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 224. 15. Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland; Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary; Jan Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands in Medieval Transformation (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 16. Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland, 12–​19. 17. Paul Barford, Wojciech Brzezinski, and Zbigniew Kobylinski, “The Past, Present and Future of the Polish Archaeological Record Project,” in The Future of Surface Artefacts Survey in Europe, edited by Paul Barford, Wojciech Brzezinski, and Zbigniew Kobylinski (Sheffield: Sheffield Academics, 2000), 73–​91; Rutkowski, “Work on the Historical Atlas of the Sixteenth-​Century Poland” (http://​dli​bra.umcs.lub​lin.pl/​publ​icat​ion/​1074, accessed July 20, 2020; http://​rcin.org.pl/​ihpan/​publ​icat​ion/​6733, accessed July 20, 2020); Elek Benkő, Mária Bondár, and Ágnes Kolláth, eds., Magyaarország régészeti topográfiája: Múlt, jelen, jövő/​Archaeological Topography of Hungary: Past, Present, Future (Budapest: Magyar

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    259 Tudományos Akadémia BTK Régészeti Intézet, 2017); Čapek and Holata, “General Overview,” 285–​286. 18. Martin Gojda and Martin Trefný, Archeologie Krajiny pod řípem: Archaeology in the Landscape around the hill of Říp (Plzeň: University of West Bohemia, 2011); Martin Gojda, “Testing the Potential of Airborne LIDAR Scanning in Archaeological Landscapes of Bohemia: Strategy, Achievements and Cost-​effectiveness,” in A Sense of the Past: Studies in Current Archaeological Applications of Remote Sensing and Non-​Invasive Prospection Methods, edited by Hans Kamermans, Martin Gojda, and Axel G. Posluschny (Oxford: Archeopress, 2014), 83–​ 91; Tomaš Klír, “Agrarsysteme des vorindustrielles Dorfes: Zur Interpretation mittelalterlichen Orstwüstungen im Niederungs-​und Mittelgebirgsmillieu,” in Stadt-​Land-​Burg: Festschrift für Sabine Felgenhauer-​Schmidt zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Claudia Theune et al. (Rahden: Marie Leierdorf Verlag, 2013), 139–​ 157; Tomaš Klír, “Zur Problematik der sogenannten Endphase der Hochmitteltalterlichen Kolonisation in Böhmen: Die Wüstung Kří bei Sádska (Mittelböhmen),” Praehistorica 31 (2014): 373–​403; Aleks Pluskowski, A. Boas, and C. M. Gerrard, “The Ecology of Crusading: Investigating the Impact of Holy War and Colonisation at the Frontiers of Medieval Europe,” Medieval Archaeology 55 (2011): 195–​225. Further details about the project: http://​www.eco​logy​ofcr​usad​ing.com (accessed June 20, 2020); Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary. 19. For more information, see the web page of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape (http://​www.pec​srl.org/​index.html, accessed June 21, 2020). 20. See the homepage (http://​rural​ia2.ff.cuni.cz/​, accessed June 21, 2020). 21. Paul M. Barford, The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2001). 22. Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–​822 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 117–​162, 146–​155. 23. Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands, 174–​175. 24. Armin Volkmann, “Climate Change, Environment and Migration: A GIS-​Based Study of Roman Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages in the River Oder Region,” Postclassical Archaeologies 5 (2015): 69–​94. 25. Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland, 75–​106. 26. Barford, “Silent Centuries.” 27. Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands, 182. 28. Adam Izdebski et al., “On the Use of Palynological Data in Economic History: New Methods and an Application to Agricultural Output in Central Europe, 0–​2000 AD,” Explorations in Economic History 59 (2010): 17–​39. 29. Daniel Makowiecki, “Diachronic Changes in the Size of Domestic Mammals in Medieval and Post-​Medieval Poland,” Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museum Wien, Serie A 120 (2018): 335–​354. 30. Pohl, The Avars, 142–​143; Tivadar Vida, “Conflict and Coexistence: The Local Population of the Carpathian Basin under Avar Rule (Sixth–​Seventh Century),” in The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans; East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 450–​1450, edited by Florin Curta (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 13–​41. 31. Pál Sümegi et al., “First Radiocarbon-​Dated Paleoecological Data from the Freshwater Carbonates of the Danube Tisza Interfluve,” Open Geosciences 7 (2015): 40–​52, Edit Sárosi, Deserting Villages, Emerging Market Towns: Settlement Dynamics and Land Management in the Great Hungarian Plain, 1300–​1700 (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2016), 35–​39.

260   Edit Sárosi 32. Pohl, The Avars, 348–​349; Rozália Bajkai, “On the Agrarian Technology of the Avar Period in Hungary: Grinding Stones and Quern-​Stones from Hajdúnánás-​Mácsi-​dűlő,” in Ruralia X: Agrarian Technology in the Medieval Landscape, edited by Jan Klápśte (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 407–​427. 33. Szabina Merva, “ . . . circa Danubium . . . a késő avar kortól a kora Árpád-​korig. 8–​11. századi települések a Kisalföld középső részén és a Dunakanyarban” [ . . . circa Danubium. . . .: From the Late Avar Age until the Early Árpád Age. 8th–​11th-​century settlements in the region of the central part of the Little Hungarian Plain and the Danube Bend], PhD dissertation, Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2018. 34. Ferenc Gyulai, Archaeobotany in Hungary: Seed, Fruit, Food and Beverage Remains in the Carpathian Basin from the Neolithic to the Late Medieval Period (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2010). 35. Árpád Kenéz et al., “A késő avar kor növény hasznosítási es tájgazdálkodási potenciáljának értékelése egy del-​alföldi telepen végzett mikro-​es makro-​archaeobotanikai vizsgalat tükrében/​Assessment of potential plant exploitation and land use of the Late Avar period in the light of micro-​and macroarchaeobotanical analyses of an archaeological site in South-​eastern Hungary,” in Környezet–​Ember–​Kultúra. A természettudományok és a régészet párbeszéde [Environment–​man–​culture: A dialogue between applied sciences and archeology], edited by Attila Kreiter, Ákos Pető, and Beáta Tugya (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum Nemzeti Örrökségvédelmi Központ, 2012), 181–​194. 36. Berend, Christianization. 37. Karol Modzelewski, “The System of the Ius Ducale and the Idea of Feudalism” [Comments on the earliest class society in medieval Poland], Questiones Medii Aevii 1 (1977): 71–​99; Stanisłav Szczur, Historia Polski: Średniowiecze (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2002), 152–​167; Górecki, “Medieval Peasants,” 261. 38. Góreczki, “Medieval Peasants,” 259–​262. 39. József Laszlovszky et al., “The ‘Glass Church’ in the Pilis Mountains: The Long and Complex History of an Árpád Period Village Church,” Hungarian Archaeology (Winter 2014) (http://​files.archae​olin​gua.hu/​2014T/​Upl​oad/​cikk_​Mera​i_​E.pdf, accessed July 25, 2020). 40. Florin Curta, “The Archaeology of Early Medieval Service Settlements,” in Central Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages: A Cultural History; Essays in Honour of Paul W. Knoll, edited by Piotr Górecki and Nancy van Deusen (London: Tauris, 2009), 30–​41; Góreczki, Medieval Peasants, 263–​271; Tomáš Petráček, Power and Exploitation in the Czech Lands in the 10th–​ 12th Centuries: A Central European Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Martyn Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Cameron Sutt, Slavery in Árpád-​Era Hungary in a Comparative Context (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 41. Andrzej Buko, “Unknown Revolution: Archaeology and the Beginnings of the Polish State,” in Curta, East Central and Eastern Europe, 162–​178. 42. K. Chárvátová, “Pluh a sekera: Hospodařstvi a osídlovaci procesy na panstvích českých klášterú ve 13. stoleti” [The plow and the axe: Economy and the earliest settlement developments Bohemian monastic domains of the thirteenth century], Muzejni a vlastivědna praceČasopis Společnosti přatel starožitnosti 36, no. 106 (1998): 65–​78; J. Zemlička, “K charakteristice středověke kolonizace v Čechach” [The features of medieval colonisation among the Czechs], Československy časopis historicky 26 (1978): 58–​81. 43. Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands, 178–​179. 44. Márta Belényesy, “Der Ackerbau und seine Produkte in Ungarn in XIV. Jahrhundert,” Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarium Hungaricae 6 (1958): 265–​321; Zdeněk Smetánka,

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    261 “Campus iuxta Suadow et iuxta Colasoy et iuxta Hrivnatecz (K otázce obdělávání polí v raném středověku)” [On the issues of field cultivation in the Early Middle Ages], Studia Mediaevalia Pragensia 2 (1991): 105–​115. 45. Richard Hoffmann, Land, Liberties and Lordship in a Medieval Countryside: Agrarian Structures and Change in the Duchy of Wrocław (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 37; Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 268–​270; Aleksander Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War and Colonization (London: Routledge, 2013), 313–​315. 46. Smetánka, “Campus iuxta Suadow et iuxta Colasoy et iuxta Hrivnatecz,” 105–​115. 47. Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 314; Makowiecki, “Diachronic Changes,” 335–​354. 48. Péter Langó, “Archaeological Research on the Conquering Hungarians: A Review,” in Research on the Prehistory of the Hungarians: A Review, edited by Balázs Mende (Budapest: Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Aacademy of Sciences: 2005), 175–​340. 49. Laszlovszky, “Agriculture in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 93–​94, 113–​149. 50. István Szabó, “The Praedium: Studies on the Economic History and the History of Settlement of Early Hungary,” Agrártörténeti Szemle 5 (1963): 1–​24. 51. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 296–​300. 52. Laszlovszky, “Agriculture in Medieval Hungary.” 53. Gyulai, Archaeobotany in Hungary. 54. László Bartosiewitz et al., “Animal Exploitation in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 113–​149. 55. Károly Takács, “Medieval Hydraulic Systems in Hungary: Written Sources, Archaeology and Interpretation,” in People and Nature in Historical Perspective, edited by József Laszlovszky and Péter Szabó (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003), 289–​312; László Ferenczi, “Water Management in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 238–​252. 56. Cf. Nora Berend, The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages (London; New York: Routledge, 2012). 57. Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-​Central European Perspective,” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 1–​20. 58. Karol Modzelewski, “L’organisation de l’opole (vicinia) dans la Pologne des Piasts,” Acta Poloniae Historica 57 (1988): 43–​76; Tomáš Petráček, Fenomén darovaných lidí v českých zemí ch 11.–​12. století: K poznání hospodářských a sociálních dějin českých zemí doby knížecí [The phenomenon of donated people in the Czech lands in the eleventh–​twelfth centuries: On the knowledge of economic and social history of the Czech lands at the time of dukes] (Prague: Univerzita Karlova v Praze Filozofická fakulta, 2003). 59. Jan Klăpśtě, “Studies of Structural Change in Medieval Settlement in Bohemia,” Antiquity 65 (1991): 396–​405; Klápśte, The Czech Lands, 216; Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 60. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom; Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 448–​455; Benedykt Zientara, “Melioratio terrae: The Thirteenth Century Breakthrough in Polish History,” in A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1684, edited by Jan

262   Edit Sárosi Federowitz, Maria Bogucka, and Henryk Samsonowicz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Adrienne Körmendy, Melioratio terrae: Vergleichende Untersuchungen über die Siedlungsbewegung im östlichen Mitteleuropa im 13.–​14. Jh. (Poznan: Wydawn. Poznańskiego Tow. Przyjaciół Nauk, 1995); Halina Manikowska, “Melioratio terrae and System Transformations on Lands to the East of the Odra during the Thirteenth Century and the Late Middle Ages,” in Poteri economici e poteri politici, secc. XIII–​XVIII: Atti della trentesima settimana di studi, 27 aprile–​1 maggio 1998, edited by Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier; Prato: Istituto internazionale di storia economica F. Datini, 1999), 303–​323; Nora Berend, “Cuman Integration in Hungary,” in Nomads in the Sedentary World, edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov and André Wink (Abindgon: Routledge, 2001), 103–​127. 61. Kyra Lyublyanovics, New Home, New Herds: Cuman Integration and Animal Husbandry in Medieval Hungary from an Archaeozoological Perspective (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2017). 62. József Laszlovszky et al., “Contextualizing the Mongol Invasion of Hungary in 1241–​ 42: Short-​and Long-​Term Perspectives,” Hungarian Historical Review 7 (2018): 419–​450; Szabolcs Rosta, and György V. Székely, eds., Carmen Miserabile: A tatárjárás magyarországi emlékei:Tanulmányok Pálóczi Horváth András 70. születésnapja tiszteletére [Hungarian memories on Tatar incursion: Studies in honor of András Pálóczi Horváth’s 70th birthday] (Kecskemét: Kecskeméti Katona József Múzeum, 2014). 63. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom; József Laszlovszky, Stephen Pow, László Ferenczi, and Beatrix Romhányi, “Contextualizing the Mongol Invasion,” Hungarian Historical Review 7, no. 3 (2018): 419–​450; András Kubinyi and József Lalovszky, “Demographic Issues in Late Medieval Hungary: Population, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activity,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 48–​63. 64. Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary, 1000–​1437 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986). 65. Martyn Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (New York: Palgrave, 2000). 66. Jerzy Topolski, The Manorial Economy in Early-​Modern East-​Central Europe: Origins, Development and Consequences (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994) 67. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 207–​208, 270, 423. For further details, see Hoffmann, Land, Liberties and Lordship; Rady, Nobility, Land and Service. 68. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 464. 69. Christoph Mielzarek and Christian Zschieschang, eds., Usus Aquarum: Interdisziplinare Studien zur Nutzung und Bedeutung von Gewässern im Mittelalter, (Böhlau: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018); András Vadas, “Terminológiai és tartalmi kérdések a középkori malomhelyek körül/​Questions of the Terminology and Meaning of the Term locus molendini in the Middle Ages,” Történelmi Szemle 4 (1995): 619–​648. 70. András Vadas, “Technologies on the Road between West and East: The Spread of Water Mills and the Christianization of East Central Europe,” in The Medieval Networks of East Central Europe: Commerce, Contacts, Communication, edited by Balázs Nagy, Felicitas Schmieder, and András Vadas (London: Routledge, 2019), 123–​138. 71. Rafał Kubicki, “Młynarstwo w pa´nstwie zakonu krzy˙zackiego w Prusach w XIII–​XV wieku (do 1454r.)” [The milling industry in the state of the Teutonic Order in Prussia in the thirteenth–​fifteenth century (to the year 1454)] (Gdánsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego 2012); Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 323–​327. 72. Rafał Kubicki, ”Windmills in the State of Teutonic Order in Prussia, 14th–​First Half of the 15th Centuries,” in Origines et mutationes: Transfer–​ Exchange–​ Power, edited by

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    263 Aleksandra Girsztowt, Piotr Kitowski, and Andrzej Gierszewski (Cracow: Widawnictwo–​ Filop Lohner, 2017), 37–​50. 73. Hoffmann, Land, Liberties and Lordship, 39; Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland, 348; Laszlovszky, “Agriculture in Medieval Hungary,” Kryztof Fokt, “Archaeological Remarks on High and Late Medieval Rural Landscapes in Silesia and Upper Lusatia,” in Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe: Interactions between Environmental Settings and Cultural Transformations, edited by Sunhild Kleingärtner, Timothy P. Newfield, Sébastien Rossignol, and Donat Wehner (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013), 226–​244. 74. Sárosi, Deserting Villages; Szabolcs Rosta, “Új eredmények a kunok Duna-​Tisza-​közi szállás területeinek kutatásában” [New results in the survey of the settlement area of the Cumans in the Danube-​Tisza interfluve region], in Kun-​Kép: A magyarországi kunok hagyatéka; Tanulmányok Horváth Ferenc 60. születésnapja tiszteletére, edited by Szabolcs Rosta (Kiskunfélegyháza: Kiskun Múzeum, 2009), 175–​216. 75. Zdeněk Měřínský, “Die ‘villa deserta’ als Problem der märischen Mediävistik (Archäologie und Gesichte),” Archaeologia Historica (2008): 9–​26; Zsolt Pinke at al., “Zonal Assessment of Environmental Driven Settlement Abandonment in the Medieval Trans-​ Tisza Region, Central Europe,” Quaternary Science Reviews (February 1, 2017), 98–​113; József Laszlovszky, “ ‘Per tot discrimina rerum’: Zur Interpretation von Umweltveranderungen im mittelalterlichen Ungarn,” in Umweltbewaltigung. (Die historische Perspektive), edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Verena Winiwarter (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, date), 37–​55; Andrea Kiss, Floods and Long-​Term Water Level Changes in Medieval Hungary (Vienna: Springer, 2019), Sárosi, Deserting Villages, 65–​80. 76. Antoni Mączak, Henryk Samsonowicz, and Peter Burke, East-​Central Europe in Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 77. Erik Fügedi, “The Demographic Landscape of East-​ Central Europe,” in Mączak, Samsonowicz, and Burke, East-​Central Europe in Transition, 47–​58; Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 250–​251; András Kubinyi and József Laszlovszky, “Demographic Issues in Late Medieval Hungary: Population, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activity,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 48–​63. 78. Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands, 236–​324, Tomaš Klír, ”Zur Problematik der sogenannten Endphase”; Tomaš Klír, “Rural Settlements in Bohemia in the ‘Age of Transition’ (14th–​16th Century): Research Concept and Preliminary Report,” Medieval Settlement Research 25 (2010): 52–​61; András Pálóczi-​Horváth, “Variations morphologiques des villages désertés en Hongrie et la société rurale du moyen âge,” in Ruralia II: Conference Ruralia II–​Spa, 1st–​ 7th September 1997, edited by Jan Klápště et al. (Prague: Institute of Archaeology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic 1998), 192–​204; Fokt, “Archaeological Remarks.” 79. Klír,“Agrarsysteme des vorindustrielles Dorfes”; Laszlovszky, “ ‘Per tot discrimina rerum’ ”; Kubinyi and Laszlovszky, “Demographic Issues.” 80. Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands 274–​305; Sárosi, Deserting Villages, 80–​95; Čapek and Holata, “General Overview,” 267–​320. 81. Topolski, The Manorial Economy; Marian Dygo, “Zur Genese der sog. ‘zweiten Leibeigenschaft’ in Polen (15.–​16. Jahrhundert),” in Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion, edited by Paul Freedman and Monique Bourin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 401–​418; Piotr Guzowski, “The Role of Enforced Labour in the Economic Development of Church and Royal Estates in 15th and 16th-​Century Poland,” Questiones Medii Aevii Novae 18 (2013): 215–​234; Imre Holl, “Mittelalterlichen

264   Edit Sárosi Dorfgrundnisse in Ungarn,” Antaeus 14 (1985): 243–​249; Csilla Zatykó, “Reconstruction of the Settlement Structure of the Medieval Nagyszakácsi (Somogy County),” Antaeus 27 (2004): 367–​431. 82. Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Communities and the ‘Second Serfdom’ in Early Modern Bohemia,” Past and Present 187 (2005): 69–​120. 83. János M. Bak, “Servitude in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary (A Sketchy Outline),” in Freedman and Bourin, Forms of Servitude, 387–​400. 84. András Pálóczi-​Horváth, “Structures architectural et économique des manses du village médiéval Szentkirály, Hongrie,” in Rural Settlement: Medieval Europe 1992; A Conference on Medieval Archaeology in Europe 21st–​24th September 1992 at the University of York, edited by Alan Aberg and Harold Mytum (York: Medieval Europe, 1992), 43–​49; András Pálóczi-​ Horváth, “Development of the Late-​Medieval House in Hungary,” in The Rural House from the Migration Period to the Oldest Still-​Standing Buildings: Ruralia IV, 8.–​13. September 2001, Bad Bederkesa, Lower Saxony, Germany, edited by Jan Klápštĕ (Prague: Institute of Archaeology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2002), 308–​319. 85. Klapšte, The Czech Lands, 274–​305; István Feld, “Import Objects as Sources of the Economic History of Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 455–​472; Bartosiewitz et al., “Animal Exploitation in Medieval Hungary.” 86. Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 315; Klapšte, The Czech Lands, 311–​ 312; Laszlovszky, “Agriculture in Medieval Hungary,” 81–​112. 87. Sárosi, Deserting Villages, 235–​248. 88. Belényesy, “Der Ackerbau und seine Produkte in Ungarn in XIV. Jahrhundert”; Márta Belényesy, “Angaben über die Verbreitung der Zwei-​und Dreifelserwirtschaft im mittelalterlicher Ungarn,” Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarium Hungaricae 5 (1956):183–​188; Márta Belényesy, “La culture temporaire et ses variantes en Hongrie au XVe siècle,” Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 16 (1967):1–​34; Sárosi, Deserting Villages, 221–​235. 89. Klír, “Agrarsysteme des vorindustrielles Dorfes,” 107. 90. Klăpśtě, The Czech Lands, 314–​315. 91. Piotr Guzowski, “The Commons in Late Medieval Poland: An Unattended Historical Phenomenon,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte des ländlichen Raumes 12 (2015): 68–​77. 92. Edit Sárosi, “Hungarian Grey Cattle on the European Market between the 15th and the 17th Century,” in Ruralia 8: Processing, Distribution of Food; Food in the Medieval Rural Environment, edited by Jan Klàpštè and Peter Sommr (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 391–​ 398; Andrea Fara, “Production of and Trade in Food between the Kingdom of Hungary and Europe in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries): The Role of Markets in Crises and Famines,” Hungarian Historical Review 6 (2017): 138–​179. 93. Lyublyanovics, New Home, New Herds; László Ferenczi and Péter Csippán, “Fifty Shades of Grey? The Impact of the Hungarian Cattle Trade on Cattle Breeding in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 29 (2020): 1–​17. 94. Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 319–​320. 95. Istvan M. Kiss, “Agricultural and Livestock Production: Wine and Oxen. The Case of Hungary,” in East-​Central Europe in Transition, 84–​96, Laszlovszky, “Agriculture in Medieval Hungary,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 85–​86.

Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe    265 96. László Makkai, “Economic Landscapes: Historical Hungary from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century,” in Mączak, Samsonowicz, and Burke, East-​Central Europe in Transition, 36–​46; Laszlovszky, Agriculture in Medieval Hungary, 102–​109. 97. Daniel Makowieczki, “Some Remarks on Medieval Fishing in Poland,” in Animals and Man in the Past: Essays in Honour of Dr. A. T. Clason Emeritus Professor of Archaeozoology, edited by H. Buitenuis and W. Prummel (Groningen: Rijksuniveriteit, 2001), 236–​240. 98. Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 327–​331. 99. László Bartosiewicz, “Sturgeon Fishing in the Middle and Lower Danube Region,” in The Iron Gates in Prehistory, edited by Clive Bonsall, Vasile Boroneanț, and Ivana Radovanović (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2018), 39–​54. 100. Ivo Přikryl, “Historicky vyvoj našeho rybnikařstvi a rybničnich ekosystemů” [Historical fishponds and fishpond ecosystems], Veronica 1 (2004): 7–​10; László Ferenczi, “Water Management in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 238–​252. 101. Csilla Zatykó, “Aspects of Fishing in Medieval Hungary,” Ruralia 8 (2011): 399–​408. 102. Richard Lhotský, “The Role of Historical Fishpond Systems during Recent Flood Events,” Journal of Water and Land Development 14 (2010): 49–​65. 103. Péter Szabó, “The End of Common Uses and Traditional Management in a Central European Wood,” in Cultural Severance and the Environment: The Ending of Traditional and Customary Practice on Commons and Landscapes Managed in Common, edited by Ian D. Rotherham (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 205–​213; Péter Szabó, “Medieval Trees and Modern Ecology: How to Handle Written Sources,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 46 (2002): 7–​25; Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 303–​311. 104. Péter Szabó, “The Extent and Management of Woodland in Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 219–​237; Péter Szabó, “ ‘There Is Hope for a Tree’: Pollarding in Hungary,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 44 (2001): 41–​60. 105. Péter Szabó, “Traditional Woodland Management in Central Europe,” In History and Sustainability: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the European Society for Environmental History (Florence: CNR and Universitá di Firenze, 2005), 125–​130.

Further Reading Górecki, Piotr. Economy, Society and Lordship in Medieval Poland, 1150–​1250. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992. Laszlovszky, József, et al., eds. The Economy of Medieval Hungary. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Nekuda, Vladimir. “Das hoch-​und spätmittelalterliche Dorf im Ostmitteleluropa im Licht der archäologischen Forschung.” Acta Historica 30 (2005): 263–​313. Sárosi, Edit. Deserting Villages—​Emerging Market Towns: Settlement Dynamics and Land Management in the Great Hungarian Plain. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2016. Modern East-​ Central Europe: Origins, Topolski, Jerzy. The Manorial Economy in Early-​ Development and Consequences. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994.

Chapter 12

Cities and Towns i n Medieval Centra l E u rope Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder

Urban Landscapes of Central Europe on the Research Agenda For modern Europe, cities and towns are the longest-​lasting legacy of the Middle Ages, on both the level of individual sites and the entire urban landscape: the backbone of the network of cities where the majority of Europe’s population lives was created in the Middle Ages. This is even an element of European identity on a global scale: Europe is the continent where the definitive period of urbanization was the Middle Ages, in contrast to other continents where the foundations were laid down in earlier or later periods. More explanation is needed to find internal lines of division and to establish regions within Europe that have explanatory value in understanding the driving forces behind urbanization, particularly since this crucial phenomenon took place all over Europe and beyond, albeit at different times. It is exactly this need for contextualization that guides us to go beyond the narrowest definition of Central Europe as the kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland (within their often-​changing medieval borders), and to also consider the eastern part of the Holy Roman Empire to the west and the western areas of Slavia Orthodoxa to the east. This allows us to follow the emergence of settlement patterns, the movement of population groups, and the transformation of ideas about places with central functions. Research on urban development in this broadly defined region has a controversial historiography. Discussion of the adaptation of certain models of urban administration and law, especially in the context of the movement of Germans eastward (the Ostsiedlung or “Eastern Colonization”) was overpoliticized by the national historiographies of the nineteenth and twentieth century from both the “senders” and the “receivers” points

268    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder of view.1 In the eyes of historians influenced by rising nationalism, some people were better suited for creating towns; they present urbanization as an imported phenomenon in East-​Central Europe. Individuals or groups participating in medieval population movements were considered representatives of “nations” who carried out conscious actions in the interest of their respective “states.” Generations of historians aimed, explicitly or implicitly, to construct a historical or natural right to “their forefathers’ ” land as a result of the deeds of their nation in the past. The interpretation of these processes also depends on the sources used for the inquiries; the narrative sources preferred by most nineteenth-​century historians offered scarce and often biased information, concentrating on conflicts among the elites; the inclusion of documentary evidence, particularly materials from city archives, opened a broader and more differentiated image of clearing new fields for cultivation, developing urban administration and communal life, and following orders from the sovereign. The results of archaeological excavations and research on standing buildings offer new insights into all periods of urban life, including those that preceded literacy and the granting of charters. This often tilted the balance, especially in the post–​World War II period, in favor of indigenous initiatives.2 The topographical analysis of town plans based on archaeological research combined with the careful retro-​projection of cartographic evidence allows us to follow settlement processes as both green-​field developments and as transformations of existing structures.3 The integrated use of all available evidence is the best way to avoid one-​ sided interpretations. Despite the variety of perspectives, urban history, especially in the eastern part of Central Europe, has major lacunae. To be sure, local research has produced detailed studies and multivolume monographs on individual cities and there are a few synthetic works on urban development. These, however, are often published in the local vernaculars, follow modern political borders, and are embedded in national historical discourses.4 This chapter breaks these boundaries and offers a chronological and conceptual overview of urbanization in Central Europe from the ninth to the late fifteenth century. Besides similar or comparable developments, we are aware that although from a distance Central Europe may seem a relatively coherent region, there are decisive differences between its constituent polities or subregions.

Towns before Towns: Early Urban Centers from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century Urban historians have long defined the presence or absence of Roman heritage as decisive for the development of cities (civitates) and towns. The region under scrutiny calls for a more distinct approach, as it shows a gradation of influences from Roman

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    269 times. The western and southern regions of Central Europe as far as the Danube, plus Transylvania and the Balkans as its border zone, were part of the Roman Empire and several legionary camps, civitates, and municipia survived either as settlements, such as Augsburg (Augusta Vindelicorum) or Regensburg (Castra Regina) or as ruins, such as Vienna (Vindobona), Szombathely (Savaria), and Sopron (Scarbantia). On the west, the Rhine, a similar kind of Roman border river, may be proposed as the western border of Central Europe. Although the continuity of urban settlements cannot usually be traced in the “younger” regions further east and north, they remained in contact with the “older” parts of Europe.5 In cases when functional continuity can be seen, two main factors played a decisive role: the strategic choice of location, typically along stable and environmentally bound transport routes, and the presence of ecclesiastical institutions such as episcopal sees and pilgrimage sites. The bishoprics of both Regensburg and Augsburg were (re)founded in the eighth century, along with the (arch)bishoprics of Salzburg and Passau, which had a profound influence on Central Europe by conducting missionary activity and being engaged in eastbound trade. Together with the archbishoprics on former Roman territory (Cologne and Mainz), the bishoprics in the western part of Central Europe were involved in establishing a church hierarchy in the newly Christianized lands. Besides the four sees just noted, the establishment of Hamburg-​Bremen in 831/​870 and Magdeburg in 968 (to mention only the new archbishoprics) were further steps in the mission toward newly Christianized lands. Location and ecclesiastical centrality were complemented by seats of secular power, like the dukes of Bavaria in Regensburg or the dukes of Thuringia in Würzburg, and the bishops themselves became mighty territorial overlords. These centers usually attracted further monasteries or collegiate chapters, and a cluster of other settlements of merchants, craftsmen, and peasants that were crucial for their provisioning. Their structure was usually multifocal or “cellular,” with smaller self-​contained units living according to their own social and legal customs. Fortifications, if any, surrounded the residences of the powerful and only later encircled the settlements of the commoners. In the case of Augsburg, for instance, it was defense against Hungarian attacks that motivated the building of the first town wall around the central core. The main constitutive elements of the early centers of the eighth to tenth centuries outside the area of Roman influence, and initially that of the Christian Church as well, were practically the same, but appeared in a different order. Strategic location was usually the starting point; the protagonists of power: Germanic, Slavic, and Hungarian tribal chieftains, dukes, and later kings seized and fortified hilltops, islands or river-​crossings that let them control the land and communications. Life and subsistence in these centers were not “urban” in the later sense of the word, but they fulfilled crucial functions for organizing administration, defense, and commodity exchange. Some ducal seats, such as Würzburg or Brandenburg, developed into early urban centers straight away, others were deserted but an early town developed in their immediate vicinity, like Dortmund, Marburg, and Wismar replacing Syburg, Amöneburg, and Mecklenburg, respectively. In other cases, such as Meissen or Nuremberg, neither archaeological nor written

270    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder evidence attest whether a Christian sovereign took over the former rulers’ stronghold or built his residence on a new site. In the western part of Central Europe (the eastern part of the later Holy Roman Empire), a ducal residence was more likely to develop into a city if a bishopric was established there, like in Meissen or Brandenburg. A common trait of Central Europe, however, was the relatively late influx of a Christian mission (whether initiated from Rome or from the Byzantine sphere). In the west, it arrived mostly together with the expansion of the Carolingian Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries. In the missionary regions, the bishops’ need for security led to the building of several new well-​protected castles (sometimes sited on the old ones), such as Hamburg and Paderborn, with different types of secular rule connected to them. The stronghold Hammaburg on the lower Elbe, in the land between the Germanic Saxons and the Slavic Obodrites, was used around 800 by a newly appointed missionary archbishop. Paderborn was built in the second half of the eighth century as a royal stronghold (palatium, Königspfalz) in the land of the rebellious Saxons, where a bishopric was soon established. This arrangement best served the intentions of Charlemagne, who combined mission and conquest. Magdeburg is a good example of a former pre-​Christian stronghold in a central eco­nomic position promoted by ecclesiastical means and developed into an important town. It later took on prime practical and symbolic significance for large parts of Central Europe. In 805/​6, in the Capitulare of Diedenhofen, Charlemagne restricted trade across the long border with the Slavs to no more than ten posts, among them the Saxon Magadoburg, the “big castle” that guarded the passage over the Elbe River. In 937, King Otto the Great established a monastery with the rights of market, mint, and toll, promoted the establishment of an archbishopric in 968, and his son, Otto II granted the merchants of the place privileges all over the Empire in 975; Jewish merchants (a sign of healthy trade) are mentioned as early as 965.6 Although royal promotion was and remained important for urbanization, the specific structural development of the later German regions discussed here as part of urban Central Europe made ducal, comital, and episcopal overlordship and promotion at least as crucial. The ecclesiastic and secular princes of the realm and later the empire acted quite independently, not at all as ministers of the crown, and were, at times and in certain ways, comparable to kings in East-​Central Europe. This laid the groundwork not only for the development of ducal and episcopal urban centers, but also for the Königsstädte, later Reichsstädte, large and self-​reliant centers that recognized the king or emperor as their lord but in many cases rarely or never saw this lord. He could not interfere and not protect, he could privilege but not actually defend. Unlike the bishops and many of the secular lords, the kings or emperors did not develop genuine royal or imperial residences there. Further east, the development from stronghold to town depended mainly on the initiative of the proponents of secular power. Such strongholds, from where the countryside and its resources were administered, included Znojmo, Mikulčice, and Staré Brno in Moravia; Levy Hradec, Prague with Vyšehrady, Litomeřice, and Starý Plzenec in Bohemia; Wrocław in Silesia; Gniezno and Poznań in Greater Poland; Cracow and

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    271

Figure 12.1. Image of Magdeburg from the Schedel-​ chronicle. Open Access from the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, Munich, Germany: Hartmann Schedel, Liber Chronicarum cum figuris et ymaginibus ab initio mundi, Nuremberg 1493 179v–​180r. Available from: https://​ daten.digit​ale-​sam​mlun​gen.de/​~db/​ausga​ben/​zweise​iten​ansi​cht.html?id=​00034​024&seite=​ 432&image=​bsb000​3402​4_​00​432.jpg&fip=​193.174.98.30.

Sandomierz in Lesser Poland; and Visegrád, Esztergom, and Veszprém in Hungary; the list can be continued eastward with Sanok, Halych, and even Kyiv—​just to mention the best-​known examples. By the end of the eleventh century, although the custom of itinerant kingship still continued, Prague clearly stood out as the prime city of Bohemia; Cracow took over the leading secular position from Gniezno, although political fragmentation impaired its lead; and in Hungary, a territory termed medium regni (the center of the realm) emerged to dominance, with Esztergom, (Székes)fehérvár, and Óbuda as the three main cities fulfilling different secular, ecclesiastic, and commercial central functions. Of the seats of the Rus’ principalities, Halych, the westernmost, was the closest in layout and capacity. In these strongholds, the fortified area was quite large, five to fifteen hectares. The structure was defined by a system of timber-​and-​earth walls, 20 meters wide and 5 to 10 meters high, which increased their defensive potential. The complexes included an inner fort that encompassed the residence of the prince or a member or representative of the princely family and several extensions for his retinue. Excavations have yielded rich settlement layers, houses, hearths, and stables that testify to the concentrated settlement

272    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder of the civilian population and military personnel. On some such sites, e.g., Gniezno, remains of pre-​Christian cultic activities have also been identified.7 With the addition of Christian cathedrals, churches, chapels, and later also provostries or monasteries, these centers could be transformed into seigneurial, episcopal, or eventually royal, seats and cities. The seigneurial residence was often rebuilt in stone, separated from the other parts of the settlement by a palisade or ditch, which enhanced not only the rulers’ security, but also their authority.

Figure 12.2.  Ground plan of Gniezno. In Andrzej Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 230, Figure 93: Developmental phases of the fortified settlement at Lech’s Hill in Gniezno (after T. Sawicki; digital processing by M. Trzeciecki).

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    273 Whereas in the examples discussed earlier, the foundation of bishoprics contributed to urbanization in an already Christianized empire, in the realms of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, Christianization proceeded along with the formation of the realms around 1000. This was not a mere chronological coincidence, but a causal relationship; in the cases of these three polities and their constituent parts, state foundation was an inseparable precondition for the establishment of bishoprics and the later development of a spatially comprehensive parochial network. The impact of these processes on the assertion of seigneurial power and early urban centers, however, varied from realm to realm. Bohemia and Moravia had one bishopric each, Prague and Olomouc, respectively, corresponding to the two main political units, but no archbishopric; in Poland, Gniezno was elevated to the rank of archbishopric in 1000; in Hungary, Esztergom became an archbishopric in the same year, but soon a second archdiocese was set up at Kalocsa. The choice of these locations followed different principles. In Poland and Silesia, the bishops’ seats and cathedrals (Wrocław, Cracow, Kruszwica [moved to Włocławek by 1148], Płock, and Poznań) were erected on major rivers beside already existing strongholds of various territorial dukes of the Piast dynasty. This arrangement eventually supported the fragmentation of the land into several coexistent duchies. In Hungary, in contrast, besides Esztergom and Kalocsa, the sites of other early sees, namely, Cenad, Eger, Győr, Pécs, Vác, Veszprém, Alba Iulia, and later Bač, Oradea, and Zagreb, were selected by the Árpádian kings of the eleventh century (first and foremost Saint Stephen and Saint Ladislas) to support the country’s centralization. This is probably why Szombathely (antique Savaria), the alleged birthplace of St. Martin of Tours in the western border zone of Hungary, despite this claim to fame, did not become a medieval bishop’s seat.8 The structure of the episcopal sees shows characteristic variety: On German territories often the opposition of castle and cathedral can also be traced in the layout of the town (such as Würzburg or Lübeck); further east, the bishop’s castle and the cathedral were often separated from the rest of the settlement, being the only walled part and located in a peripheral position. Examples include Pécs, Vác, Eger, Veszprém, Płock, and Włocławek, where the episcopal complex was on an elevation as well as Poznań and Wrocław, where the cathedral was built on an island. On the lower level of local administration, county seats or smaller strongholds termed osrodki kasztelanskie (Kastellaneiburgen) in Silesia and Poland, hradište (Verwaltungsburgen) in Bohemia, and ispánsági várak (Gespanschaftsburgen) in Hungary, served as outposts of princely, and later royal, power and military control.9 Their ground plans followed the same principle in the case of the ducal seats; extensions of the strongholds functioned as suburbia and this complex was surrounded by an agglomeration of smaller settlements, sometimes with churches of their own. The population of these settlements specialized in handicraft production (particularly metal processing, attested by archaeological remains) or provisioned the stronghold with foodstuffs. There were typically one or more marketplaces in the suburbia or among the settlements of the agglomeration. Thus, these early centers also functioned as places of commodity production and exchange.10 Towns like Lübeck and Rostock developed in the vicinity of some

274    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder of the old emporia on the Baltic Sea like Haithabu and others.11 In land-​locked Central Europe, regular weekly markets were the most typical trading venues and some of the settlements were even named after the weekly market day. For example, in places called Środa in Poland and Szerdahely in Hungary, weekly markets were held on Wednesdays. The earliest such markets must have been established by common practice; later however, granting market rights was reserved to the sovereign. From later German lands in Ottonian times we have privileges that grant “Markt, Zoll und Münze” (market, customs, coinage) to settlements, a combination that seems to have been a decisive nucleus for urban development. Further east, these three activities did not form a set package since minting was reserved to the ruler and market rights and customs were granted separately. Besides these three main types of central places—​the princely/​royal, episcopal, and county seats—​a fourth type included similar elements of trade, craft production, and lay/​ecclesiastical establishments, not in a unified structure but within a range of a few kilometers. The lay/​ecclesiastical components of these smaller centers were also on a smaller scale: a provostry or monastery instead of a bishopric or a private fortification instead of a county seat. These small agglomerations may be considered “territorially segregated centers.” Few of them, however—​mainly those that were situated along important commercial routes—​developed into real towns in the later Middle Ages.12

The Urban Boom of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Up to the twelfth or thirteenth century, with broad chronological variation, the network of “old centers” met the needs of their respective societies.13 The fundamental social and economic transformations of the High Middle Ages, however, brought new ideas and, consequently, new measures and arrangements concerning urban development. Besides internal changes, external factors also contributed as catalysts to restructuring the urban network. The Mongol invasion of 1241/​1242 and its later repercussions, hitting Hungary, Little Poland, Silesia, and Moravia alike, reinforced the already apparent fact that the old strongholds could no longer be the basis of urbanization, but that new types of fortified settlements would be needed, with populations capable of maintaining the defenses and actively fending off any attack. To achieve these changes, the sovereigns issued numerous charters of privilege designed to confirm existing development and promote new sites.14 Some of the liberties granted in these charters were similar to elements of personal freedom and communal autonomy the communities of burghers (universitas civium) obtained from the late eleventh century onward in the larger German towns and episcopal cities on the left bank of the Rhine. Due to the burghers’ increased autonomy, in some of the “free cities” the bishops lost most of their political power.

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    275 In a second step, local lords sponsored new foundations with charters that promised personal and communal freedom to those who decided to settle in the new town. The earliest and best-​known such charter was issued for Freiburg im Breisgau in 1120, which among other things, envisions a grid plan similar to the ground plan of Lübeck, which was established near a Slavic trading place in the second half of the twelfth century. Most importantly, new settlers were entitled to elect their priest and judge and organize their community independently.15 Membership in these communities (Bürgerrecht) entailed rights and obligations, which were usually connected to the possession of real estate in the given town. Lübeck, developed as part of the Danish Baltic Sea empire around 1200, bloomed as a bishopric and imperial city, grew to be the “head of the Hanse,” and thus became the mother town of one of the most influential urban laws in the northeastern part of Central Europe (Lübisches Recht). An even more important strand of filiations of urban law (Stadtrechtsfamilie) developed out of the Magdeburg court whose legal advice (Schöffensprüche) became relevant for vast parts of Central Europe—​see more on this later. According to this system, the appointed or co-​opted jurors (schöffen) of the recipient town had the option to consult the court of the mother town (Oberhof) in legal matters.16 The thirteenth century was also the period when the legal conditions of urban status came to the fore further east. Before this time, urbanization was regulated through legislation only to the extent that new settlers’ status had to be defined. Immigrants and representatives of various social, ethnic, or religious groups were already present at the early seats of secular or ecclesiastic overlords. The loose structure of early centers made newcomers’ integration relatively easy; they were able to settle in a group of their own without upsetting any existing arrangements or having to contend with a strong demand for adaptation to a common administrative body. Most immigrants were speakers of Romance and Germanic languages: Italians, Walloons, Flemish, and Germans. Flemish settlers in particular appeared in newly developed German settlements close to existing cities and towns such as the bishop’s seat of Hildesheim (Dammstadt, 1196) and the ducal seat of Braunschweig (Hagen, after 1160), often with the conditions of their settlement clearly laid out.17 From the mid-​twelfth century, Romance-​speaking immigrants often settled in special streets or suburbs named vicus Latinorum or Walengasse in the vicinity of the important royal seats of Regensburg, Esztergom, Székesfehérvár, and Wrocław or other bishops’ sees.18 The most populous group of settlers were the Germans, who the sources mostly refer to as Theutonici or Saxones with the two names used interchangeably, not clearly distinguishing a location of origin. This is not the place to address the unanswerable question of who a migrant was in contrast to the indigenous population. Archaeological evidence does not carry reliable ethnic, let alone linguistic, markers. Once the written sources start to shed some light around 800, however, it transpires that large parts of present-​day Eastern Germany and Eastern Austria were inhabited by Slavic-​speaking peoples. These regions were mostly “germanized” over the centuries due to political developments. Through spontaneous immigration and targeted recruitment with settling charters, in

276    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the number of German-​speakers greatly increased further east. In Prague, the Germans settled in separate privileged communities on the right bank of the Vltava from the end of the eleventh century; the first great wave of German immigration that established the 800-​year presence of Saxons in Transylvania arrived in the mid-​twelfth century and received their collective royal charter, the Andreanum, in 1224.19 From the first decades of the thirteenth century onward, rulers in the eastern part of this region issued an increasing number of charters that regulated the recruitment

Figure 12.3.  The agglomeration of Prague, c. 1200. In Jerzy Piekalski, Praga, Wrocław i Kraków Przestrzeń publiczna i prywatna w czasach średniowiecznego przełomu (Wrocław: Wydawnitcwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2014), Ryc. 2, p. 24. A.

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    277 of new populations and established new settlements. Some of the liberties granted to the settlers may have originated in their homeland, but most of them developed in their new places of residence, where new needs for expansion or protection arose. In the Western Slavic areas and Ruthenia, the main mechanism for creating this new legal setup was termed locatio, under the guidance of a scultetus (Schultheiss, hereditary judge) in villages and advocatus (Vogt) in towns. In this way new towns were founded or existing ones, even episcopal seats, were upgraded to fully fledged cities.20 The earliest explicit reference in East-​Central Europe to the establishment of urban settlements under these conditions relates to Złotoryja (Goldberg, 1211) in Silesia and Bruntál (Freudenthal, 1213) in Moravia. As the toponyms and the texts of the charters indicate, both were mining towns that needed to attract a skilled workforce. The duke of Silesia, Henry the Bearded, simply requested a copy of the liberties of the citizens of Magdeburg accorded to them by Archbishop Wichmann in 1188 and added a corroborating clause for Złotoryja. The next time he granted a charter iure Theutonico in a charter to a Silesian town, Lwówek Śląski (Löwenberg, 1217), he followed the same model, commissioning two advocati, Thomas and Hartlieb, to establish a town in the border forest between Silesia and Moravia. These pioneering charters were followed in quick succession by new foundations. In Silesia alone, before the end of the thirteenth century, almost 400 places received settling charters, several of which (Wrocław, Środa Śląska, and Głubczyce, as well as Lwówek Śląski and Złotoryja, noted earlier) later became eponymous points of reference for legal filiations.21 The issuing of settlement charters rapidly spread eastward and with this spread the formulations became more professional, even standardized. In 1257, Bolesław the Chaste chartered Cracow and the dukes Przemysław and Bolesław chartered Poznań, setting precedents for Greater and Lesser Poland, respectively.22 Referring to ius Theutonicum was a new legal model, but not a uniform one, and “German” was understood as a legal status rather than an ethnic affiliation. As it spread eastward, the meaning of this term underwent substantial changes, just like the settling process itself. One might assume that reference to the city of Magdeburg would imply a new settlement of urban character, but this was not necessarily the case. Although Silesia and Moravia could maintain direct contact with Magdeburg, in the eastern part of Poland and in Ruthenia, ius Theutonicum Magdeburgense was not a specifically urban model. Rural privileges also transferred villages “from Polish and Ruthenian right into German right, which is the right of Magdeburg” in order to avoid the restrictions of previous local customary laws. The mention of Magdeburg—​whose urban law had not yet been systematically written down anyway—​became immaterial, as it was “a symbol of a new order, a model for re-​organizing settlements and also for re-​establishing lordship.”23 Hungary followed a different path; here the activity of sculteti was confined to small rural settlements in peripheral lands along the northern border of the kingdom. Otherwise, the main means of founding or privileging towns was a royal charter granted directly to the community or later to the settlement. The term hospites (guests), originally applied to external or internal migrants, became a generic term for the privileged

278    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder

Figure 12.4. Ground plan of the refounded center of Cracow. In Atlas historyczny miast polskich, Vol. 1: Kraków, edited by Zdzisław Noga (Cracow, 2007), Map 4.4 (designed and drawn by Bogusław Krasnowolski).

legal position of settlers’ communities and consequently any autonomous communities, irrespective of their origin. This included the right of free movement and of electing their own judge, council, and priest. These liberties marked the difference compared to settlements located iure Theutonico. The free election of the villicus (reeve), a crucial element of Hungarian municipal liberties, was not compatible with the hereditary rights of an advocatus over the place that he settled. A specific trait of Hungarian urbanization, in contrast to the Slavic-​speaking territories of East-​Central Europe, was that wherever references to or comparisons with the privileges or liberties of other cities as legal models were made, they referred to places within the country borders. Apart from the two main models, (Székes)fehérvár and Buda, charters of privilege often used towns in the close neighborhood as points of reference rather than foreign cities.24 The absence of references to the city of Magdeburg and Magdeburg law in Hungarian urban charters of privilege is particularly conspicuous. According to the first chapter of the Ofner Stadtrecht, the law book of Buda (the German name of Buda was Ofen), the legislation “complies in some parts and pieces with Magdeburg law” (“mit helet in etlichen dingen oder stugken Maidpurgerischen rechten”). Hardly any articles were copied directly or verbatim, however, although elements of South German legal usage do appear in Hungarian urban judiciary practice.

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    279

Figure 12.5a.  Aerial photo of the center of Košice. Available from Google Earth: https://​earth. goo​gle.com/​web/​@48.72186​924,21.2561​596,213.419192​98a,2041.279174​15d,35y,360h,0t,0r.

Figure 12.5b.  Ground plan, first military survey of Košice.

Magdeburg was mentioned rather as a point of reference that imbued the articles of local customary law with widely recognized authority.25 The settling process is not only traceable in legal documents; it left its mark on the ground plans of the newly founded settlements as well.26 Many of these were primarily rural and were gradually urbanized when the commercial importance of the region increased during the thirteenth, and especially the fourteenth, century. New villages

280    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder and towns on land cleared by settlers often have a distinctive ground plan that reflects their origin. Plots were measured out on both sides of a road that served as the main thoroughfare of the settlement, and the land that belonged to each plot was added at the back, immediately behind the site of the residence. The main street served as a marketplace, which often took on a broader, spindle-​like shape to better accommodate this function, as in Košice (Kassa, Kaschau), the main commercial center of northeastern Hungary, or Prešov (Eperjes), its northern neighbor.27 The marketplaces became the centers of villages and eventually of emerging towns, where the parish church, the town hall and other public buildings were placed. This spatial arrangement facilitated the settlers’ participation in and control of trading activity. If a settlement proved successful and attracted further colonists, the street system became more complex, with new streets opened up parallel to the original main street. The initially undetermined settlement character, which over time might remain rural or develop into a town, was a common feature of all the main areas targeted for settlement in Central Europe. If many people were expected to settle within a short period of time, however, because an urban foundation or extension was envisaged, a grid plan (a more rigorous version of what is described earlier for Freiburg or Lübeck) was seen as the ideal solution. New settlers were attracted by the “equal opportunities” embodied in the newly laid out, identically sized burgage plots and the clearly defined rights and obligations based on their ownership. From the thirteenth to fifteenth century, hundreds of larger and smaller settlements with this street pattern were established in Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, and the Polish lands. In Hungary, the almost total absence of the regular grid plan, which was otherwise typical of planned towns created as green-​field development or remodeling early urban centers, can most probably be explained by differences in the legal framework of the settlement process.28 The construction of town walls often accompanied the founding of new towns, especially in disorderly areas and near frontiers. How immigrants belonging to a different ethnic group and speaking a language different from that of the majority population settled varied from town to town.29

Urban Development in the “Golden Age of Central Europe,” Thirteenth to Fifteenth Century The legal and spatial processes discussed previously resulted in new towns that still define the urban network of Central Europe. At the same time, one also needs to consider the transformation of the “old centers,” the royal and princely seats, episcopal sees, and administrative strongholds. How did they fit into the emerging system of “new towns”?

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    281 More recently founded towns, as discussed earlier, were regularly given the laws of older ones whose centrality was strengthened by these filiations. In the west, the Königsstädte (royal cities) developed into Reichsstädte (imperial cities) under the nominal lordship of a mostly distant ruler—​a privileged status some former bishops’ cities also received and used (Hamburg, Lübeck). Although the late medieval German-​Roman kings did not develop a residence, they also were count palatine, duke of Austria, or king of Bohemia and developed residences in their central cities such as Heidelberg, Vienna, and Prague, respectively. Some of the largest and wealthiest towns in the imperial parts of Central Europe, however, remained under ducal or episcopal lordship. For example, Braunschweig, town of the dukes of Saxony, and Erfurt, town of the archbishops of Mainz, with about 20,000 inhabitants each (placing them among the biggest towns in Central Europe) were outnumbered in the eastern parts of the Empire only by towns like Nürnberg, Lübeck, Vienna, and Prague (with populations between 20,000 and 40,000). Especially in these larger towns, regardless of who their lord was and whether this lord was distant or had to be kept at arm’s length by the town, the universitas civium (entirety of burghers) developed extensive autonomy, which peaked around 1400, when many of them formed unions and even fought the princes of the Empire (and lost). They collected their own taxes; made their own laws for as many of the legally privileged inhabitants as possible (clergy, nobility, Jews); built their own walls, bridges, and public buildings; hired their own soldiers; punished wrongdoers; and developed an administration that served as an important pattern for the development of territorial governance. Depending on the specific situation in each town, some of the burghers and the formal and informal social groups they formed participated in the towns’ self-​government as well as in their economic, legal, and military affairs. Prague retained its central position for the kingdom of Bohemia, not least because of its importance for commerce. The city, however, remained a conglomerate of three autonomous communities complemented by a fourth, the New Town founded by Charles IV (a situation that also occurred further west, e.g., in Braunschweig, with five parts, or Hildesheim, where four separate towns were unified as late as 1583).30 Cracow’s leading role was strengthened when, after the first locatio in the 1220s, the town replanned with a regular layout was chartered by Bolesław the Chaste in 1257, by the unification of the Polish kingdom in 1320, and also by the foundation of neighboring Kazimierz by King Casimir III in 1335. Wrocław, as the capital of the duchy of Silesia, also increased its eco­ nomic potential by establishing a new regularly planned settlement on the left bank of the Odera.31 Conversely, Esztergom was given up as the royal seat of Hungary when King Emeric granted away the royal palace to the archbishops in 1198 and a major part of the royal town was taken over by the cathedral chapter in the 1250s. Esztergom’s archaic, widely dispersed structure hindered its further development. Székesfehérvár, the kings’ coronation and burial site, proved to be more durable. Buda, the new capital, was the winner in the thirteenth-​century restructuring in Hungary. The town was established in the late 1240s by royal order on a well-​defensible hilltop overlooking the Danube ferry site

282    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder and functioned as an agglomeration together with the earlier towns of Pest and Óbuda.32 Its development continued in the fourteenth century, although the Hungarian Angevins used Visegrád as their seat and as the site of an important royal summit in 1335.33 Prague, Cracow, and Buda likewise attracted German settlers, especially from Regensburg and later from Nuremberg. Italians from Venice and later from Florence and Genoa first appeared in Prague, then in Buda, and in the fifteenth century also in Wrocław and Cracow. All three cities housed influential Jewish communities as well, with Prague becoming the main refuge for the Jews of the huge community at Regensburg when they were expelled in 1519 (like the Jews of most other urban communities in the Empire and Hungary in the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries). With their royal palaces, town halls, and other public buildings, these three Central European capitals developed on a par with those in Western Europe, although their population figures were somewhat lower: Prague had approximately 40,000 residents, Cracow had 25,000, and Buda with its agglomeration had about 20,000 inhabitants. In Ruthenia, Lviv took over the leading position from Halych and remained the center of this province, as well as of four religious denominations (Orthodox, Latin and Armenian Christians, and Jews) after its incorporation into the Kingdom of Poland. With the personal union between Poland and Lithuania, Vilnius also joined the rank of princely and bishopric seats of Central Europe. The old bishops’ seats followed diverse trajectories in the main polities in the same way as in the earlier period. In Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland, each episcopal see was granted one or more settling charters (Lokationsurkunde), which increased their population and strengthened their economic potential, although some of them, Gniezno, for instance, lost their significance. Due to the newly founded and regularly planned new parts of settlements, the bishops’ quarters were marginalized, particularly if they were situated on an island (as at Poznań and Wrocław) or on a hilltop (as at Olomouc and Płock). Prague was elevated to an archbishopric in 1348. In Hungary, however, only Győr and Nitra were granted royal charters; later the king withdrew from both and Zagreb, the principal city of Slavonia, remained the only place where the bishop’s see and the canon’s residences (Kaptol) lay side by side with the royal town (Gradec), in constant animosity. Reorganizing the army based on troops led by the nobility and governing by centralized offices, together with the outdated structures of the earthwork fortifications led to the old Kastellaneiburgen and county castles losing their function as military and administrative centers. If they were located on commercially favorable sites, new towns were founded beside the old strongholds, e.g., at Bytom, Głogow, and Legnica in Silesia. In Hungary, royal charters were granted to such county centers in economically viable locations such as Sopron, Vasvár, and Bratislava/​Pressburg. The fourteenth century was a time of intensified trade both within Central Europe and with further destinations. The monarchs granted a significant number of trading privileges: immunities from customs and other duties and the right to hold annual fairs in towns along the main trade routes. Consequently, the fairs in Frankfurt boomed, positioned as it was on the western stretch of probably the most important Central

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    283

Figure 12.6.  The urban network of Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages (designed and drawn by András Vadas).

European trading route via Erfurt, Wrocław, Cracow, and Lviv to the Black Sea. When the Reichsstadt Frankfurt suffered from long absences of the kings, its position was inherited by Leipzig, a town of the dukes of Saxony, who were keen to develop their seat. Support by monarchs further east led, among other impacts, to the increased importance of a new land route for Levantine trade from the Balkans across the passes of the southern Carpathians at Braşov or Sibiu to Transylvania, then further through Cluj, Oradea, and Košice across the Carpathians to Cracow and beyond.34 These new developments

284    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder strengthened the need for more structured local governance and administrative literacy. The use of municipal books, vernacular languages, the building (or lack) of town halls, guildhalls, and market halls remained uneven and did not follow a standard pattern.35 The strongest links of legal, social, and technological transfer can be seen among the mining towns of Central Europe. By the mid-​fourteenth century, civitas montana was a distinct category of town from the legal, administrative, and economic viewpoints alike.36 The need for a skilled workforce triggered a massive influx of settlers and this need provided the settlers with favorable conditions. After the initial importance of the silver mines around Goslar and the Upper Harz mountains, besides the continuous output in the Erzgebirge (Freiberg, Annaberg), from the thirteenth century onward the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary took on prime importance for provisioning Europe with silver and copper, and later also with gold. In the mines of these countries, the German miners’ expertise was indispensable. Indeed, they were in demand all over Europe, from Devon and Cornwall to the Moravian and Silesian mining centers of Jihlava, Opava, Złoty Stok, and the richest of all, Kutná Hora in Bohemia; and later also in Serbia and Bosnia. In the case of mining, exceptionally, even the kings of Hungary accepted the transfer of foreign legal codes. The German miners arrived through Bohemia and Moravia, which is clearly indicated by the influence of the Jihlava and Kutná Hora liberties and mining laws on the mining regulations of Rodna, Banská Štiavnica, and Kremnica, to name just the earliest and most significant mining towns. In salt mining, which had earlier traditions in Transylvania, the knowledge transfer passed between Hungary and Poland, although in Bochnia and Wieliczka the social standing of salt miners was also defined by the settling process. In the late Middle Ages, there was also an increase in the number of small secondary nodes of distribution, many of which were on the lands of aristocratic landowning families and, less frequently, on monastic property. Many of these towns were small and functionally not very different from the sometimes rather vast nucleated settlements (Dörfer).37 The noble landowners were strongly involved in promoting the towns on their lands, in the same way as the kings on their land. As a result, by the end of the fifteenth century, most Central European towns—​albeit small ones—​were on the lands of the nobility. The small towns had a specific name in each language of the region: mestečko, miasteczko, Marktflecken, targ, mezőváros, and oppidum in Latin (in some regions “Markt” added to a place name implied a specific legal position half-​way between a town and a village). The names listed above may reflect their size, their market function or their open, unwalled character. In most of Europe, they were a transitional type between town and village.38 In Central Europe, however, where there were few truly large cities, and even those with a population above 5,000 were few and far between, small towns were typically the only urban settlements in great expanses of land. Therefore, they had to undertake some of the commercial and administrative functions of otherwise middle-​ sized regional towns. Besides their role in retail trade, they were often centers of

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    285 specialized, market-​oriented agrarian production, such as animal breeding or wine production.39

Towns in Central Europe between Expansion, Innovation, and “Verspätung” (Belatedness) In the Middle Ages, the lands of Central Europe experienced two decisive transformations: first, the foundation of monarchies and Christianization between the eighth and the eleventh centuries, and second, social and economic changes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These were also the strongest catalysts for the development of “old centers” and “new towns,” respectively. The early centuries of urbanization were dominated by the Church and princely or royal initiatives; old centers were above all hubs of administrative (secular and ecclesiastic) and military power; their economic functions followed from these roles. Over the thirteenth century, this urban network underwent fundamental changes, to a great extent due to the arrival of new settlers, so that new towns developed into centers of regional and long-​distance trade and production. Defining Central Europe broadly, we can follow the emergence of these patterns with their varieties between East and West and identify features of unity as well as diversity in Central Europe and its constituent polities, observing trends of convergence and divergence in their development. We frequently encounter chronological differences, for instance in the establishment of the first bishoprics or the building of town walls and town halls and the development of municipal administration. These may be interpreted as signs of belatedness or even backwardness, but have to be seen in the context of regional development. We may therefore notice features that developed in response to locally emerging needs. One of them was ius Theutonicum, a framework applied to many different new settlements. It did not mean the adaptation of a generic “German” legal code, but was a flexible concept created to accommodate the immunities and obligations of newcomers but, understandably, did not appear in the core territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Likewise, the frequent use of the grid plan—​also known in other contexts from Imperial Rome to the New World—​was a locally promoted feature in Central Europe. Many types of internal divides can be seen within Central Europe. Some of them are explained by geopolitical factors. For example, lines of communication and inter­ connectedness or separation were determined by the direction of rivers, with most major rivers, such as the Weser, the Elbe, the Oder, the Vltava, and the Vistula flowing from south to north, whereas the Danube flowed from west to east. Cohesion or fragmentation is explained by the different potentials of the closed basins (Bohemian,

286    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder Moravian, Carpathian) compared to the vast open lands of Northern Germany and Poland. Internal differences were often of an administrative or legal nature, for instance, concerning the relationship between episcopal sees and royal power, the methods of recruiting settlers and establishing new settlements, the participation or absence of monasteries in founding new towns, the meaning of legal filiations with or without specific courts of appeal, and the use or rejection of foreign models in the privileges granted to towns. The extent to which mobility and migration contributed to urbanization also varied from one polity to the other. Besides the common traits in the emergence and structuring of the “old centers” in the German-​speaking parts of Central Europe and further east, there were also significant differences concerning the relationship between the sovereigns and the cities and towns in their realms. In the west especially, the larger towns became autonomous political entities able to outplay princes and rulers, at least in economic terms. Conversely, in the kingdoms of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, the sovereign’s strong control over towns was the rule. The kings promoted urban autonomy to the extent that it fitted their ideas of governance and strictly controlled the towns’ resources, particularly the mining towns. This attitude of ownership was copied by the nobility concerning their own towns. There were other differences as well that we could not discuss in this short chapter; for instance, the formation of town alliances and the representation of towns in the diet, which was very limited except for Bohemia. The strong participation of merchant and craft guilds in municipal administration, so typical in German lands, did not spread further east either. Moving eastwards, there was a small number and uneven spread of major or even middling cities. Cities and towns were generally smaller in size and burghers’ houses had fewer storeys. Finally, one also needs to note that the towns of Central Europe were models for the regions further east and south: Ruthenia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bosnia. The emergence of regularly planned areas in the princely streets of Suceava and Târgoviște, the appearance of foreign merchants and miners in Srebrenica, Kamenica, and Olovo, building town walls and granting fixed legal conditions based on princely statutes were features showing that these regions adopted, and in their turn, further modified the concepts and patterns of urbanization developed in Central Europe.40

Notes 1. Walter Schlesinger, ed., Die deutsche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters als Problem der Europäischen Geschichte (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1975); Jan Piskorski, ed., Historiographical Approaches on the Medieval Colonization of East Central Europe (Boulder: Columbia University Press 2002); Nora Berend, ed., The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 2. Hansjürgen Brachmann, ed., Burg–​ Burgstadt–​ Stadt: Zur Genese mittelalterlicher nichtagrarischer Zentren in Ostmitteleuropa (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995).

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    287 3. Anngret Simms, “The Challenge of Comparative Urban History for the European Historic Towns Atlas Project,” in Political Functions of Urban Spaces and Town Types through the Ages: Making Use of the Historic Towns Atlases in Europe, edited by Roman Czaja, Zdzisław Noga, Ferdinand Opll, and Martin Scheutz (Cracow: TNT and Böhlau, 2019), 303–​322; Ferdinand Opll, ed., Stadtgründung und Stadtwerdung: Beiträge von Archäologie und Stadtgeschichtsforschung (Linz: Österreichsicher Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 2011). 4. František Hoffmann, České mesto ve stredoveku: Život a dedictví [The Bohemian town in the Middle Ages: Life and heritage] (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1992); Henryk Samsonowicz, Szkice o mieście średniowiecznym [A sketch of medieval towns] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Drugie, 2014); Towns in Medieval Hungary, edited by László Gerevich (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1990); Lexikon stredovekých miest na Slovensku [Lexicon of medieval towns in Slovakia], edited by Ján Lukačk and Martin Štefánik (Bratislava: Slovenská Akadémia Vied, 2010). The series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450, edited by Florin Curta and Dušan Zupka (Leiden: Brill) does great service by making new research available in English. 5. Peter Moraw, “Über Entwicklungsunterschiede und Entwicklungsausgleich im deutschen und europäischen Mittelalter. Ein Versuch” (1987), reprinted in Über König und Reich: Aufsätze zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte des späten Mittelalters, hg. aus Anlaß des 60. Geburtstags von Peter Moraw am 31. August 1995, edited by Peter Moraw and Rainer Christoph Schwinges (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1995), 293–​320; Felicitas Schmieder, Die mittelalterliche Stadt, 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2015). 6. Magdeburg 1200: Mittelalterliche Metropole–​preußische Festung–​Landeshauptstadt: Die Geschichte der Stadt von 805–​2005, edited by Matthias Puhle (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2005). 7. Andrzej Buko, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland. Discoveries—​ Hypotheses—​ Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Ivana Boháčová and Lumír Poláček, eds., Burg–​ Vorburg–​ Suburbium: Zur Problematik der Nebenareale frühmittelalterlicher Zentren (Brno: Archäologisches Institut der Akademie der Wissenschaften der Tschechischen Republik [AV ČR], 2008); Jiři Machaček, The Rise of Medieval Towns and States in East Central Europe Early Medieval Centres as Social and Economic Systems (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 8. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Town and Cathedral in Medieval Hungary,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 12 (2006): 207–​220; “Savaria Sancti Martini” was a regular notation on medieval mappae mundi. 9. Lokalne osrodki wladzy panstwowej w XI–​XII wieku w Europie Srodkowo-​Wschodniej [Local state power centers in the eleventh and twelfth century in Central and Eastern Europe], edited by Sławomir Możdzioch (Wrocław: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii, 1993); Katalin Szende, “Von der Gespanschaftsburg zur Stadt: Warum, wie–​oder warum nicht? Ein möglicher Weg der Stadtentwicklung im mittelalterlichen Ungarn,” in Opll, Stadtgründung und Stadtwerdung, 375–​405. 10. Lumír Poláček, ed., Das wirtschaftliche Hinterland der frühmittelalterlichen Zentren (Brno: Archäologisches Institut AV ČR, 2008). 11. Martina Karle, Sebastian Messal, and Steffen Wolters, “Early Medieval Emporia and Their Ports in the South-​Western Baltic Sea,” Siedlungs-​und Küstenforschung im südlichen Nordseegebiet 38 (2015): 239–​255. 12. Beatrix F. Romhányi, “Changes of the Spatial Organisation of the Carpathian Basin (5th–​ 14th Century),” Zeitschrift für Arachäologie des Mittelalters 45 (2017): 1–​31.

288    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder 13. This subchapter is mainly based on Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-​Central European Perspective,” Journal of Medieval History 45, no. 3 (2019): 360–​379, references to primary sources are available there. 14. Michel Pauly and Alexander Lee, eds., Urban Liberties and Civic Participation from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Trier: Porta Alba, 2015). 15. On the process of planning in German-​speaking territories, see Martina Stercken, “Town Planning in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, Symbolic Meaning and Pragmatic Process,” in Lords and Towns in Medieval Europe; The European Historic Towns Atlas Project, edited by Howard B. Clarke and Anngrett Simms (London: Routledge, 2019), 189–​ 212; Matthias Untermann, “The Foundation and Formation of Towns from the Viewpoint of the Archaeology of the Middle Ages,” in Clarke and Simms, Lords and Towns in Medieval Europe, 447–​466; Michaela Jansen, “Gegründet & geplant: Hochmittelalterliche Stadtgründungen–​die vielseitigen Facetten eines Begriffpaares,” in Die mittelalterliche Stadt erforschen–​Archäologie und Geschichte im Dialog, edited by Armand Baeriswyl et al. (Basel: Schweizerischer Burgenverein, 2009), 89–​98. 16. Heiner Lück, Matthias Puhle, and Andreas Ranft, eds., Grundlagen für ein neues Europa: Das Magdeburger und Lübecker Recht in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau 2009). 17. Thomas Küntzel, “Die Dammstadt von Hildesheim: Ideal und Realität einer hochmittelalterlichen Stadtgründung,” Concilium Medii Aevi 10 (2007): 1–​32; Wolfgang Meibeyer, Henning Steinführer, and Daniel Stracke, eds., Braunschweig, Deutscher Historischer Städteatlas 4 (Münster: Ardey–​Verlag, 2013). 18. György Székely, “Wallons et italiens en Europe Centrale aux XIe–​XVIe siècles,” Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae: Sectio Historica 6 (1964): 3–​7 1. 19. Harald Zimmermann, Siebenbürgen und seine Hospites Theutonici: Vorträge und Forschungen zur Südostdeutschen Geschichte; Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Konrad Gündisch (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996). 20. Eduard Mühle, ed., Rechtsstadtgründungen im Mittelalterlichen Polen, Städteforschung A/​ 81 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011). 21. Josef Joachim Menzel, Die schlesieschen Lokationsurkunden des 13. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: Holzner, 1977), 225. 22. Sławomir Gawlas, “Die Lokationswende in der Geschichte mitteleuropäischer Städte,” in Mühle, Rechtsstadtgründungen, 77–​105. 23. Olha Kozubska-​Andrusiv, “Urban Development and German Law in Galician Rus’ during the Thirteenth–​Fifteenth Centuries,” PhD dissertation, Central European University, Budapest, 2007, 190, 192, n. 775; 205–​206, 223. 24. Katalin Szende, “Power and Identity: Royal Privileges to the Towns of Medieval Hungary in the Thirteenth Century,” in Pauly and Lee, Urban Liberties and Civic Participation, 56–​59. 25. Karl Mollay, ed., Das Ofner Stadtrecht: Eine deutschsprachige Rechtssammlung des 15. Jahrhunderts aus Ungarn (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1959), 58 (Cap. 1); Katalin Gönczi, Ungarisches Stadtrecht aus europäischer Sicht, Die Stadtrechtsentwicklung im spätmittelalterlichen Ungarn am Beispiel Ofens (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997). 26. Jerzy Piekalski, Von Köln nach Krakau, Der topographische Wandel früher Städte (Bonn: Habelt, 2001).

Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe    289 27. Katalin Szende, “Towns along the Way, Changing Patterns of Long-​Distance Trade and the Urban Network of Medieval Hungary,” in Towns and Communication, Vol. 2: Communication between Towns, edited by Hubert Houben and Kristjan Toomaspoeg (Lecce: Mario Congedo, 2011), 161–​225. 28. Bogusław Krasnowolski, “Muster urbanistischer Anlagen von Lokationsstädten in Kleinpolen: Forschungsstand, Methoden und Versuch einer Synthese,” in Mühle, Rechtsstadtgründungen, 275–​322; Katalin Szende, “Town Foundation in East Central Europe and the New World in a Comparative Perspective,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 157–​184. 29. See several studies in Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende, eds., Segregation, Integration, Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 30. Jan Klápšte, The Archaeology of Prague and the Medieval Czech Lands, 1100–​ 1600 (Sheffield: Equinox, 2016). 31. Breslau und Krakau im Hoch-​und Spätmittelalter: Stadtgestalt–​Wohnraum–​Lebensstil, edited by Eduard Mühle, Städteforschung A/​87 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2014); Jerzy Piekalski, Prague, Wrocław and Kraków: Public and Private Space at the Time of the Medieval Transition (Wrocław: University of Wrocław, 2014). 32. Balázs Nagy, Martyn Rady, Katalin Szende, and András Vadas, eds., Medieval Buda in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 33. József Laszlovszky, Gergely Buzás, and Orsolya Mészáros, eds., The Medieval Royal Town at Visegrád: Royal Centre, Urban Settlement, Churches (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2014). 34. Zsigmond Pál Pach, “Hungary and the Levantine Trade in the Fourteenth–​Seventeenth Centuries,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 60, no. 1 (2007): 9–​31. 35. Agnieszka Bartoszewicz, Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017); Katalin Szende, Trust, Authority, and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). 36. Karl-​Heinrich Kaufhold and Wilfried Reininghaus, eds., Stadt und Bergbau, Städteforschung A/​64 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004); Boglárka Weisz, “Mining Town Privileges in Angevin Hungary, Hungarian Historical Review 2 (2013): 288–​312. 37. Gabriel Zeilinger, Verhandelte Stadt: Herrschaft und Gemeinde in der frühen Urbanisierung des Oberelsass vom 12. bis 14. Jahrhundert (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2018). 38. András Kubinyi, “Városhálózat a késő középkori Kárpát-​medencében” [The urban network of the Carpathian Basin in the late Middle Ages], Történelmi Szemle 46 (2004): 1–​30; Jacek Wiesiolowski, “Le réseau urbain en Grande-​Pologne aux XIIIe–​XVI siècles: L’espace et la société,” Acta Poloniae historica 43 (1981): 5–​29. 39. Herbert Knittler, eds., Minderstädte, Kümmerformen, gefreite Dörfer: Stufen zur Urbanität und das Märkteproblem (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 2006); Edit Sárosi, Deserting Villages, Emerging Market Towns: Settlement Dynamics and Land Management in the Great Hungarian Plain, 1300–​ 1700 (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2016). 40. Laurenţiu Radvan, At Europe’s Borders: Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 296, 536; Katalin Szende, “Buda and the Urban Development of East Central Europe,” in Nagy et al., Medieval Buda in Context, 526–​553.

290    Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder

Further Reading Bartoszewicz, Agnieszka. Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Clarke, Howard B., and Anngret Simms, eds. Lords and Towns in Medieval Europe: The European Historic Towns Atlas Project. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Gerevich, László, ed. Towns in Medieval Hungary. Budapest: Akadémiai, 1990. Isenmann, Eberhard. Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter 1150–​1550: Stadtgestalt, Recht, Verfassung, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft. 2nd ed. Cologne: Böhlau, 2012. Keene, Derek, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende, eds. Segregation, Integration, Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Klápšte, Jan. The Archaeology of Prague and the Medieval Czech Lands, 1100–​1600. Sheffield: Equinox, 2016.

Chapter 13

Mining, Financ e s , a nd C om merce in Me di eva l Central E u rope Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy

Mining, finances, and commerce were three important economic spheres in the medieval polities of Central Europe. Despite differences in the natural and geographic conditions, political settings, and external contacts, there were many similarities in their economic development.

Mining The medieval kingdom of Hungary encompassed the Carpathian Basin from its foundation at the turn of the tenth century until it fell to the Ottoman Empire at the battle of Mohács in 1526. Thus, any historical overview should reflect the development of the whole basin, which is now part of a number of independent countries besides Hungary: Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria.1 The geographical diversity of the Carpathian Basin, which includes both extended mountainous zones and lowland territories, allowed a variety of economic activities. A wealth of natural resources offered a good basis for agricultural and industrial production. Mining activity exploited the mineral wealth of the hilly areas of the Carpathian Mountains from the early period.2 Mining is known in the Carpathian Basin from as early as the Roman period, which is shown by evidence of gold mining in the province of Dacia and gold panning in the main rivers in that region. Iron ore production and salt extraction were also carried out from the early period. The Magyar tribes already had some knowledge of metallurgy and metalwork when they arrived and they found existing mines in the territory where they settled when they arrived in the Carpathian Basin.3

292    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy There are few written references to metal production in the early Árpádian period (1000–​1301), but archaeological finds, ethnographic analogies, and place-​name data confirm the presence of metal and salt production in that era. Farming tools made of iron, e.g., plowshares, and iron weapons show the use of products of local metallurgy. Bloomeries and other smelting facilities confirm the locations where metallurgy was practiced.4 The earliest phase of precious metal extraction was characterized by mining, panning, and collecting gold or silver ore close to the surface. Besides precious metals, other metals were mined in different regions of the country. Iron ore typically came from mining pits close to the surface. Vasvár in western Hungary, for example, supplied the iron for the iron workshop of the Benedictine abbey of Pannonhalma and the Pécsvárad region produced iron for the domestic market.5 Mining, especially the exploitation of precious metals, required specialized technology and production skills, which were brought to Hungary by miners from Austria and Germany who settled in Transylvania and Northern Hungary. At the time of the Mongol attacks the silver-​mining town of Rodna in Transylvania (Romania) was already known as a rich town of German settlers.6 After the Mongol invasions of 1241‒1242, a new wave of immigration brought many settlers to the country, among them experts in mining technology from German and Bohemian territories, who established new mining settlements in Northern Hungary (now Slovakia) and Transylvania (now in Romania). This process ran parallel with the expansion of precious metal production in the same regions.7 A new settlement type, the mining town, emerged as a consequence of these changes. Mining towns typically enjoyed special legal privileges; most of them remained under the jurisdiction of local landlords for a long time although a few of them eventually attained the status of free royal towns.8 The most significant mining towns, like Banská Bystrica and Banská Štiavnica on the Hron River, the Spiš region (now Slovakia), and Transylvania. Charles I (1308–​1342) introduced new legal regulations for income derived from mining precious metals. In contrast to the earlier practice, the royal chamber did not confiscate gold or silver mines, but left them with their owners and allowed the lord of that territory to take a fixed share of the income from the mining, thus offering them part of the profit and encouraging them to open new mines.9 Charles I also initiated a royal monopoly in precious metals; meaning that all mine owners were required to offer extracted gold and silver to the royal chamber (treasury). As a consequence of these new measures, Hungary developed a dominant position in gold production in Europe in this period. There is direct evidence of close contacts between Hungary and the Bohemian mining regions. In 1328, when Charles I donated privileges to Kremnica (now in Slovakia), the document stated that the citizens of Kremnica should live according to the same liberties as Kutná Hora, the mining center in Bohemia.10 The expanding production was soon set back by growing technical and technological difficulties of mining in general in Central Europe.11 Managing mine water and extracting it from the mines was the most serious challenge. When a gallery was completely mined out, miners went on to excavate deeper layers, where the technical problems might be even more serious. These complications led to a growing demand

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    293 for financial investment in mining. This might have been recouped from the return of the mining itself, but the royal monopoly on the traffic in precious metals was a significant barrier.12 The royal chamber offered only a below-​market price for precious metals, thus restricting the capacity of this sector to generate profit and return it as new investments. These circumstances caused great fluctuations in precious metal production, especially from the early fifteenth century onward. The amount of ore production is debated, but according to some hypotheses it might have been as much as 3,000 kilograms (6,600 pounds) annually.13 At the end of the fifteenth century, the joint company of Thurzós and Fuggers made new investments in mining, especially for copper.14 Beside the gold production of West Africa, the gold coming from the mines of Hungary had a key significance on the European precious metal market before the discovery of the Americas.15 In assessing the significance of mining in medieval Hungary, the production in nearby areas should also be taken into account. Both Bosnia and Serbia produced significant amounts of silver and copper. In the mines at Novo Brdo (in Kosovo) and Srebrenica (in Bosnia) the technological expertise was mainly provided by Saxon miners, but the capital investment came mainly from Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which took the mining products to market around the Adriatic and Mediterranean. This diversion to exterior markets reduced the impact on the medieval economy of the Carpathian Basin.16 Besides precious metals, other mining products were also important, like copper, which was transported to both Venice and the Italian market, even as far as Flanders, along the rivers of Poland.17 Among the nonmetallic mining products, salt was a basic commodity; there was a stable demand for it throughout Hungarian territory from the earliest periods onward, but only some regions of the country could produce enough salt to meet the demand. Salt was a basic commodity since besides its use for daily consumption it was also used for food preservation and in animal husbandry. Salt production in medieval Hungary was concentrated in several distinct regions. Most of the production came from Transylvania, where salt mining went back to the period before the Hungarian conquest, and Maramureş (Romania), where salt extraction started in the thirteenth century. The income from salt constituted a significant part of the royal revenue; in the period of King Béla III (1172–​1196) of the Árpád dynasty it made up 6.6 percent of the total royal income. The internal transport of salt was one of the most complex logistical tasks during the Árpádian period, when the salt resources were under royal control and administered by royal officials. Some of the salt chambers (Pressburg, Sopron, Vasvár) were in the border regions of the country, which demonstrates that the salt trade also played a role in foreign commerce.18 The so-​called Oath of Bereg of 1233, a privilege jointly confirmed by King Andrew II and the papal legate, Jacopo Pecorari, regulated ecclesiastical institutions engaged in the storage and sale of salt, but in the following period the church lost this position.19 The mining, transport, and trade in salt became a royal monopoly formally in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Salt chamber counts, appointed by the ruler, were responsible for organizing and controlling the salt trade. The demand for salt in Hungary was basically satisfied by local production; the import of foreign salt was very restricted.20

294    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy The exploitation of mining resources, including precious metals, iron, nonferrous metals, and salt, dominated Hungary’s economy throughout the whole medieval period. This constituted a significant part of the royal income and was also a driving force in the economic development of several large regions of the country. The Czech lands and the southern Polish regions abounded in huge resources of various minerals, many of which were discovered and exploited in the Middle Ages. It is known that iron ore was mined and smelted in the Czech lands as early as the period ad 500 to 900.21 Iron production also started quite early in Poland (from about ad 700), but its proliferation and the consequent spread of metal tools was slow.22 The lands of the Czech Kingdom, to which Silesia was annexed between 1327 and 1331, constituted one of the main mining areas in Europe. Mainly silver was mined here, but also gold, copper, tin, iron, and mercury.23 As early as the eleventh century both gold and silver were extracted by surface excavation and washing gold sand.24 In the Polish lands, silver mining is confirmed in primary sources in the second quarter of the twelfth century and gold (in Silesia by the archaic sand-​washing method) no later than the fourth quarter of the same century.25 Although Saxon miners started mining silver in Střibro (1188), the breakthrough in the production of this metal in the Czech kingdom did not occur until the mid-​ thirteenth century.26 It was then that the exploitation of the rich silver deposits in Jihlava and Německý Brod began, which produced five to ten tons of silver per year. The peak of the development of silver mining in the Czech kingdom started after c. 1275,27 when even larger silver deposits were discovered in Kutná Hora. According to Jan Kořan, twenty tons of silver were produced per year from 1290 to 1350 and production dropped to 10 tons per year between 1351 and 1420.28 A technological innovation, the water wheel (used to drain water out of mining shafts), supported this exploitation from the end of the thirteenth century.29 Czech silver production accounted for 30 to 40 percent of all European production. Until the mid-​fourteenth century, this was one of the main centers of silver production. In addition, from the thirteenth century in Poland, silver mines operated in Silesia at Opava, Benešov, and many individual villages, including the Cistercian monastery in Lubiąż (1265).30 Gold mining in the kingdom of Bohemia was carried out in twenty-​five towns, most importantly Jílové near Prague and Kašperské Hory in the Bohemian forest.31 In the fourteenth century, the annual gold production here amounted to 100 to 200 kilograms (220–​440 pounds) per year and accounted for about 6 percent of European production. In Poland, the first gold mines were established at the beginning of the thirteenth century in Lower Silesia (at Złotoryja in 1211 and Lwówek in 1217) as well as in Opava, and Benešov (1288).32 New gold mines were established in the fourteenth century, but production seems to have been much lower than in Bohemia. In Poland, there were large deposits of lead, which, although of lower value, was widely used. There were often admixtures of silver in lead ores. The main centers of lead mining in the Middle Ages were Bytom and Olkusz in Lesser Poland (the latter from the mid-​thirteenth century). Lead production in the Polish mining towns was among the highest in all of Europe in the late Middle Ages and reached approximately 120 to 300 tons per year.33

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    295 In the thirteenth century, according to the work by Marian Małowist and Henryk Samsonowicz, an economic macrozone emerged that included the Czech lands, southern Poland–​Silesia, Lesser Poland, and the Kingdom of Hungary (excluding the Balkans). Mining, the dominant economic activity there, had international significance.34 Starting from the second half of the thirteenth century, however, symptoms of a crisis appeared due to digging deeper and the problems of managing groundwater and exhausting the deposits, as had happened in the Kingdom of Hungary.35 During the fourteenth century, crisis phenomena began to spread (especially in Polish lands, e.g., in Bytom). In the Czech kingdom, a serious crisis on a much greater scale occurred during the Hussite wars (1419–​1436), when silver and gold mining ceased for some time.36 In the same century, the crisis in the Czech monarchy was resolved. The end of the Hussite wars and the active economic policy of King George of Poděbrady saw both domestic and foreign demands for Czech silver increase.37 Technological progress was important here. Mines began to be drained either by water adits, or by the aforementioned wheels propelled by water or horse power. Entrepreneurs from Nürnberg leased silver mines and developed mining in the Czech kingdom; as a result, silver production reached 4.5 tons per year. In Silesia, where the rich patricians of Wrocław and Prague began to invest, gold mining was re-​established on a larger scale (Złoty Stok, Zlaté Hory).38 Polish lands were rich in salt resources, which did not exist in the Czech lands. As early as the early Middle Ages (from the sixth century) salt had been extracted from salt springs in Kołobrzeg by the Baltic Sea.39 A breakthrough in salt mining occurred in 1251, when large deposits of rock salt were discovered in Bochnia near Cracow and then in nearby Wieliczka (c. 1290).40 These mines supplied approximately six thousand tons per year. From the very start, the problem of their property arose.41 Generally, they became state enterprises that were leased, mainly to Italian entrepreneurs, for about eighteen thousand Polish marks annually.

Finances The first coinage in the kingdom of Hungary dates to the rule of King Stephen I. Minting was based on silver mining in Northern Hungary, especially the region of Banská Štiavnica, but the first written evidence for mining there only dates from 1228.42 The economic reforms of Charles I together with the rapid expansion of precious metal production laid a solid basis for the introduction of the first gold currency in Hungary in 1325. Until that time the coinage of Hungary was based on silver, but Charles I introduced the minting of golden florins (=​3.56 g).43 It is difficult to reconstruct the structure of the royal revenues in the early Árpádian period of medieval Hungary. It is clear, however, that it came from different sources, incomes from royal domains, taxation in money, supply of products in kind (mainly agricultural), and services.

296    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy The earliest statement on treasury income comes from the period of Béla III, when a list of revenue sources was compiled on the occasion of planning a royal marriage.44 This account served to demonstrate the wealth of the country and the great amount of direct royal income, although it was certainly based on a major overestimation. According to this list, the royal revenues amounted to 166,000 marks, clearly an overstatement, but the structure of the income is somewhat more realistic. About 36 percent of the income came from coinage, 10 percent from the salt trade, and 54 percent from various other resources, including customs, tolls, market income, gifts, and the special taxation of Slavonia and the Saxons of Transylvania.45 There was permanent royal coinage in Hungary from the period of St. Stephen, when the minting of silver coins started. From the early twelfth century, regular devaluation of coins and the obligatory renewal and exchange of older coins (called lucrum camerae, the “chamber’s profit”) also contributed significantly to increasing royal income.46 Royal finances, which developed from the thirteenth century onward, were handled and administered by regional chambers directed by “chamber counts, the local heads of the financial administration.47 Abandoning the revenue from obligatory coin renewal, Charles I introduced new direct taxation of peasant holdings, called “the chamber’s profit” after an earlier name for royal income. During the reign of Louis I (1342–​1382), the royal finances and activity of the chambers were directed by German citizens, and, from 1349, by Italian financiers like the Saraceno brothers from Padua.48 The long reign of King Sigismund (1387–​1437) saw a major change in the royal finances. Before Sigismund, most of the rulers of Hungary could rely on a stable and solid royal income thanks to the kingdom’s significant precious metal production. Sigismund, however, suffered from a permanent lack of sufficient financial resources and therefore used other types of income, like loans and the pledging of royal resources. This image was closely connected to his profile both during his reign and in the later historiography about him. The size of the royal demesne declined significantly due to the king’s large-​ scale new donations to local landlords; royal finances came to depend more heavily on the revenues coming from royal towns. As a consequence of an unbalanced budget, Hungarian silver currency was debased almost permanently during Sigismund’s reign.49 Financial matters were supervised by Italian and South German financiers. The most influential figure in the financial administration was Filippo Scolari of Florence, who was responsible for the royal salt income from 1401 until he died in 1426. Scolari held a strategic position because about a third of the royal revenues came from the salt traffic in the Sigismund period.50 Besides the income connected to salt, direct taxation of the peasantry contributed significantly to the royal budget. The individual amounts to be paid were not very high, but since all peasant households paid this tax it represented an important source of income. Among the customs duties, the so-​called thirtieth (tricesima) stood out. This was initially a duty to be paid on domestic trade, but from the period of King Charles I it became a source of crown revenue from foreign trade. According to its name, it was originally set at 3.33 percent of the value of the goods, but, from the mid-​fifteenth century, the rate was increased to one-​twentieth (5 percent) of the value of commercial goods.51

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    297 The royal treasury in the Sigismund period had a high income, but the expenditures of the central royal administration were also high because of the increasing Ottoman threat at the southern borders of Hungary, wars against the Hussites in Bohemia, and the king’s ambitious building projects like the construction of the Buda and Pressburg (Bratislava) castles. His international diplomatic aspirations, and later the costs connected to his imperial position, also increased expenditures significantly, but did not contribute to his income in the same proportion. Besides the ordinary revenues of the royal treasury, Sigismund used all possible means to increase his income by also collecting occasional revenue. This included extraordinary taxation, special dues claimed from royal towns, and the pledging of royal domains. He even pledged thirteen towns in the Spiš region to Poland to cover the costs of his war against Venice in 1412. This territory remained under the jurisdiction of Poland until 1772.52 Sigismund made serious attempts to standardize the monetary systems of the country. To achieve this, in the decree of 1405, he ordered the use of the exchange rate of Buda for the whole realm. Thus, from that time on, 100 pennies were calculated as 1 florin.53 As in the Sigismund period, Matthias Corvinus’s (1458–​1490) administration also needed to increase the income of the royal treasury. For that, he appointed as treasurer John Ernuszt of Vienna, who introduced a consolidated structure for the royal revenues. He increased the proportion of extraordinary taxation in the royal income and also ordered its regular collection.54 Surviving statements that summarize the royal revenues were compiled by envoys of Italian states from the mid-​fifteenth century and the period of Matthias. Besides the taxes paid by peasant households, the income from salt, minting, foreign customs, and direct taxation of the royal towns were the most significant sources of income.55 The last decades of the medieval Hungarian kingdom before its fall at the battle of Mohács (in 1526) were characterized by relative prosperity and expanding economic performance. Foreign trade became an essential element of the Hungarian economy and royal income connected to it increased considerably. In the earlier Middle Ages barter dominated exchange and it continued to be popular at the local level even later.56 Then, for a long time, nonmetallic money circulated in the Polish and Czech lands,57 most often furs, less often lumps of salt or amber. In Moravia, iron rods were used, as well as fragments of silver ornaments, bars, and nuggets cast in silver. For the second half of the tenth century, the report by Ibrāhīm Ibn Ya’qūb, a Jewish diplomat from Spain, confirms the use of little pieces of linen in Prague, which the ruler imposed as fiduciary money with a strictly defined value.58 In early tenth-​century Poland, the popularity of furs as a nonmetallic measure of value and means of payment has been confirmed. In the Czech kingdom, nonmonetary currency was still used sporadically in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (red cloth, wax, horses, and pepper in the retail trade).59 The development of long-​distance trade in the ninth and eleventh centuries allowed for the circulation of foreign coins in the Polish and Czech lands.60 In the period until the second half of the tenth century, there was an influx of silver Arab dirhems, minted in various cities of the Islamic world, which flowed into the South Baltic rim (Pomerania)

298    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy via the routes from Kievan Rus’. The next wave of coins, from the ninth up to the second half of the eleventh century, came from Germany. These were deniers issued in Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Rhineland, and Friesland. From the rule of Bolesław II (967/​972–​999) the kingdom of Bohemia began to mint its own silver coinage not exclusively for prestige, but also for economic reasons.61 In Poland, the first money on an economic scale began to be issued only during the reign of Bolesław the Generous (1058–​1079), and in the area of West Pomerania from c. 1175.62 In Polish and Czech lands, the history of medieval money has been divided into the denier period (up to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) and the groat period (after the fourteenth century, in Poland from the 1360s). In the earlier period, the monetary policy of the rulers, called renovatio monetae (the renewal of the coinage) led to a deterioration in the quality of coins.63 It consisted of forced, frequent change in money (two or three times a year), replacing it with coins with a smaller silver content (in the end by bracteates). Finally, the Czech and Polish monarchs decided to replace renovatio with a stable tax (Schlagsatz, Münzgeld, obrzaz). In the thirteenth century in Poland and Bohemia a series of monetary reforms took place which served to ease the crisis, but most of them proved ineffective, for a variety of reasons.64 Florentines carried out a key and successful reform in the Czech kingdom around 1300 on the initiative of Wenceslas II (1278–​1305).65 As a result, the silver Prague groat was issued (=​c. 3.7 g). The minting system was also reorganized: 17 mints were closed and only the central mint in Kutná Hora continued to function. The value of the Prague groat fell in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (the first time in 1340).66 Nevertheless, it continued to be the main silver coin in Central Europe until the end of the Middle Ages. Casimir the Great (1333–​1370) also undertook reform in Poland in the 1360s.67 Due to a rapid devaluation of the new currency followed by the death of the reformer-​king, however, the value of the Polish (“Cracow”) groat fell. The Czech gold florin was minted starting from 1325 onward.68 Although it played a role in the international monetary circuit, issue ceased in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The fifteenth century was a time of monetary troubles in both the kingdom of Bohemia and Poland: debasement of previously introduced coins, counterfeiting them, and unsuccessful monetary reforms (like that by Matthias Corvinus in Silesia c. 1470). Despite these problems, the Prague groat remained the most important silver coin in Central Europe. The treasury of the Polish and Czech states until into thirteenth century was based on five pillars:69 (1) exploitation of their own demesne; (2) collecting levies and different types of charges; (3) economic activity by the monarchy, including monopolies in the mining industry; (4) spoils of war (including prisoners—​a free labor force like the peasant population); (5) work carried out by subjects for the periodic repair of castles, moats, roads, and bridges, was forced and thus free. The revenue of the ruler’s treasury (the same as the state treasury) was received in the form of rents in kind (see point 2); in the first centuries, tribute in cattle and honey prevailed, but with the development of agriculture the scope of material tributes for the benefit of the monarch’s treasury changed to products like grain. The revenue of the ruler’s treasury also came from the

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    299 fees collected at the increasingly numerous weekly markets as well as from the growing system of toll and custom stations, most of which were situated inside the country, to increase the ruler’s income. The tolls and customs required at the borders of the Czech kingdom (and also between the Bohemian and Moravian regions), however, were higher than those within the country. An important item in the state budget was the revenue from fines for murder, which aimed to replace blood feuds, and other crimes, No later than in the first half of the twelfth century, rulers began to grant land, together with people, for the benefit of ecclesiastical institutions and the magnates (later also to the nobility, including lower-​ranking knights).70 As a result of the economic immunity of these lands (their products now belonged to the grantees), the territorial basis of the monarch’s treasury shrank, and, revenues with it. At the same time, the progress of Polish and German colonization (from the twelfth century) led to the economic development of the royal domains (not to mention Church and private property). Villages and towns were obliged to pay an annual rent in money (or partly in kind) to the ruler (to the owner on ecclesiastical and private estates). To a certain extent, this compensated for the losses resulting from the earlier granting away of land, which exempted it from rents. Rulers continued to lease their estates even lacking money or in order to achieve political goals. The idea of general and extraordinary taxes appeared in Bohemia and later in Poland, an issue that has evoked controversy among the historians of both countries. In terms of the kingdom of Bohemia, some historians have put forward the view that the berna was originally an extraordinary tax that started to be levied on the royal demesne (especially from royal cities and cloisters) from the reign of Wenceslas II.71 Intended to be imposed according to the needs of a monarch, during the fourteenth century the berna tax in various amounts, was imposed more and more often. From the 1370s, it became a regular annual tax of fixed size. Recently, Libor Jan has contradicted this idea.72 According to him, at the end of the thirteenth century both a regular berna and an extraordinary berna were collected. The former was levied on the landed property of knights, monasteries, bishops, and some economic institutions (mills and taverns). The latter tax was imposed irregularly on monasteries and towns to fund coronations and to cover the costs of wars. There is also controversy about the general tax (poradlne), which was collected every year in the kingdom of Poland. In the historiographical tradition, it is thought to have come from the time of political fragmentation (1138 to 1305) and collected throughout the fourteenth century. In the current historiography, J. S. Matuszewski’s view seems to prevail, that until 1374 the economic base of the rulers of the Piast dynasty was their demesne and taxes were imposed irregularly on the areas beyond it.73 Taxes were levied in situations that required additional financial support. It was not until 1374 that Louis the Great of the Angevin dynasty, the ruler of the Kingdom of Hungary and the new king of Poland, introduced a new tax system (also called poradlne) covering all the estates of the nobility and the Catholic Church. In terms of the royal revenues, it is traditionally accepted that around 1370 the total revenue was equal to c. eighty-​five thousand marks, and that it must have decreased for many reasons during the following century.74 At the

300    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy beginning of the sixteenth century revenue was about sixty thousand marks, that is to say, much lower than during Casimir the Great’s rule.

Commerce Medieval Hungary had special characteristics from the point of view of commercial contacts. Surrounded by mountainous regions, it was able to satisfy most of its internal needs from local resources based on appropriate geographical, climatic, and other conditions. The Carpathian Basin could produce the necessary amount of foodstuffs for the daily provision of the population and also supply mineral wealth. Besides this, mining products and some agricultural commodities were attractive objects of foreign trade with neighboring regions and Hungary was a good market for imported industrial products. Except for the zones of the high mountains of the Carpathians, the geographic conditions allowed commercial traffic to cross the borders of the country. The waterways of the main rivers, especially the Danube, and mountain passes offered convenient commercial routes for foreign trade.75 There are few references to the commercial activity of the Hungarians in the tenth century. When the diplomat Ibrāhīm Ibn Ya‛qūb reported the presence of Turkish merchants in Prague around 965, he presumably refers to Hungarian traders, and, for the year 969, the Rus’ Primary Chronicle notes that silver and horses arrived from Hungary in Pereyaslavec in the Danube delta.76 Despite the sporadic mentions of foreign trade contacts, Hungary’s economy in that period was undoubtedly on a basic subsistence level without significant internal or external trade. The emergence of domestic trade was closely connected with the beginning of the marketing of surplus agricultural products and the rise of early urban centers. These towns served as market centers, especially for products that were not available in the whole country, such as fish and wine. Salt was present in the early trade transactions among the nonagricultural products.77 The legislation of King Ladislas I (1077–​1095) prohibited the sale of horses abroad and the law book of King Coloman (1095–​1116) refers notably to a prohibition on selling slaves from Hungary abroad. These regulations demonstrate that slaves and horses were among the early exported goods. In addition, other agricultural products like live animals also found a market abroad and Hungary’s precious metal production attracted the attention of foreign merchants.78 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the main trade routes from Hungary followed the Danube west through the South German territories toward Kyiv on the east and Constantinople on the southeast. Direct trade contact between Hungary and Constantinople is shown by Benjamin of Tudela’s reference mentioning Hungarians among merchants arriving in Constantinople between 1165 and 1173.79 Archaeological finds also show that most of the imported objects in that period were of Byzantine or Balkan origin.80 Regensburg, on the Danube, was already reasonably active in the

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    301 eastern trade in this period, and the Danube offered Regensburg merchants an easy route to Hungary.81 Among the proto-​urban settlements of Hungary, Esztergom, the royal residence, was one of the most important centers and also the seat of an archbishopric. Owing to its location on the banks of the Danube and at the crossroads of major domestic and foreign trade routes, Esztergom also had a special position in commercial activity. The royal court and the archbishopric themselves generated some demand for commercial goods and the presence of the royal mint supplied cash for trade transactions.82 The early structure of domestic trade is not clear, but adding other kinds of evidence, e.g., archaeological finds and comparative analyses of coin hoards, helps shed light on this issue. Among the imported goods, luxury products particularly played an important role in the early trade. The fall of Constantinople in 1204 and the Mongols’ conquest of Kyiv in 1240 brought a dramatic shift in the commercial network of Hungary. With the loss of these centers in the long-​distance foreign trade, Western contacts took a leading position.83 Recovery after the Mongol invasions transformed the structure of the country’s economy and trade in many ways. Buda began to develop slowly as an economic center from the mid-​thirteenth century and became the most important urban center of the country. The permanent royal residence for most of the fourteenth century, however, was in Visegrád, which did not develop into a major commercial hub because of its unfavorable geographical location. Buda, together with its twin city, Pest, on the opposite side of the Danube, became the economic heart of the country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.84 In the later Middle Ages, Hungary’s main foreign commercial routes ran toward the west to Vienna, Regensburg, and Nürnberg, toward the northwest to Prague and Wrocław, to the north toward Cracow, and eventually toward Northern Italy, especially Venice. The locations of foreign trade routes determined the development of towns along the route that were active in commerce. Pressburg (Bratislava), close to the border of Austria, emerged as one of the main commercial centers. Sopron, in western Hungary, also had well-​established commercial contacts, especially with Wiener Neustadt and the nearby regions of Austria. Trnava, close to the northwestern border of Hungary, was the transit point for the trade toward Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. Although the mountainous region of the Carpathians formed a natural barrier to commercial traffic to Poland, wherever the trade goods reached the Vistula River in southern Poland they had a way to the central territory of the country. From Hungary most of the traffic went through Košice and further to the north, through the Spiš region and Bardejov. In the southeastern border region of Hungary, Brașov, and Sibiu emerged as trading centers. These two towns served the transit trade toward Wallachia and further toward the Black Sea region and the Genoese trading emporia there. The trade routes toward the Dalmatian towns ran west through Zagreb and to the southwest toward Venice; a route passing through Ptuj (Slovenia) was a link to the region of Carniola and Hungary’s main link with Northern Italy.85

302    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy The expansion of precious metal production in the fourteenth century made it possible to import foreign industrial goods to a growing extent, particularly textile products. Besides luxury textiles, cheaper products also arrived that were affordable for large groups of consumers. High-​and middle-​quality cloth was transported to Hungary from the Rhineland, Flanders, and the French territories, and fustian came from Germany.86 Agricultural products played a key role among the goods exported from Hungary besides some copper, precious metals, and salt. Trade in live animals, particularly cattle, was directed toward the markets of Venice in Northern Italy, Nürnberg in Southern Germany, and Wrocław in Silesia. From the fourteenth century onward the trade in live animals became even more significant. A special commercial network developed in the organization of the cattle trade, which involved specialized herdsmen who drove large herds long distances to markets.87 Besides cattle, Hungarian horses also caught the attention of foreign merchants. Bertrandon de la Brocquière, a Burgundian traveler and diplomat who journeyed through Hungary in 1433, was surprised by the excellent quality and the great number of horses at the fairs of Szeged and Buda.88 A unique and also controversial customs’ register survives that shows the structure of the late medieval foreign trade of Hungary. The thirtieth customs (explained earlier) were an important source of royal income collected on both imported and exported commercial goods. From 1440 onward, the town of Pressburg had the right to collect this revenue on one of the main commercial routes leading to Vienna and farther west. The account book of the customs’ registers for the outgoing and incoming traffic survives from only one year, the period from April 1457, to April 1458.89 The Pressburg customs’ office was a busy point of trade with intense export and import traffic; thus, the account books for 1457–​1458 year recorded 4,849 transactions, which allows some statistical observations. The custom registers for this period recorded a greatly unbalanced foreign trade; 84 percent of the transactions represented incoming traffic, and only 16 percent were outgoing trade. The total value of imports made up 90 percent of the traffic, and exports only accounted for 10 percent. Not only the balance but also the structure of the trade is strikingly uneven. The customs’ registers show the strong dominance of industrial products, mainly different types of textiles, in the imports. According to the register, cloth arrived in Hungary from Lombardy, England, the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Southern Germany, Bohemia, and Moravia; furthermore, linen products and metalware were also among the imported goods. In contrast, exports included almost exclusively agricultural and primary products, mainly live animals and other agricultural products (cattle, sheep, horses, and wine). Ever since Ferenc Kováts published the Pressburg customs’ registers in 1902 there has been a long-​standing historical debate on the interpretation of this source.90 Considering how rare the survival of complete customs’ registers in Hungary is, for a long time this account influenced the historical concept of the late medieval economy in Hungary. The variety of interpretations shows that this single customs’ register cannot be extended to interpret the trade of late medieval Hungary in general. Comparing the evidence from later registers shows that only a small part of the traffic went through the Pressburg customs’ office. For a complete reconstruction of the trade

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    303 balance the records of other customs posts, like Buda and Székesfehérvár, should also be taken into account. Some of the foreign commercial goods that entered Hungary at the western border were re-​exported in other directions, thus some of the commodities that arrived in the country were transit wares. Some clarifications have also modified the estimate of the size of the cattle trade, which was beyond doubt the most important sector of the export trade.91 Although the exact interpretation of the 1457‒1458 Pressburg customs’ registers is still under discussion, the main structure of Hungary’s late medieval foreign trade is well reconstructed in many details. Imports were dominated by cloth and other textile products, some metalware, and spices, whereas exports comprised live animals and mining products, including precious metals and copper. In that period Hungary was already well integrated into the international commercial network and even had a leading position in some sectors of it, especially because of the country’s extraordinarily high production of precious metals. The territories of the Western Slavs were connected by trade ties to the Frankish monarchy (after its break-​up in 843 mainly with Bavaria and Saxony), as well as with Scandinavia, Kievan Rus’, and the Mediterranean region.92 At that time, Jews and merchants from Scandinavia (including the Rus’ Normans) played a large part in long-​ distance trade.93 On the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, autochthonous magnates, who had their own fleets,94 achieved the main commercial role and the Pomeranian urban centers gained in importance as Truso (situated at the mouth of the Vistula, significant until the turn of eleventh century),95 and Wolin (prosperous until the end of the eleventh century), later replaced, respectively, by Gdańsk, Szczecin, and Kołobrzeg. In the Central European interior Prague was the main trade center and the most populous city until the Hussite wars.96 As early as the tenth century it played an important role on the great route stretching from Kyiv through Cracow to Regensburg (Bavaria).97 Later, other Czech centers achieved considerable commercial importance: Brno, Plzeň, and Olomouc. In the fourteenth century, merchants and entrepreneurs from Regensburg and Nürnberg migrated in.98 From at least the thirteenth century, Wrocław, the main city of Silesia, gained in commercial significance beside Cracow, which continued to develop and reached a peak of significance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.99 In connection with the establishment of the state of the Teutonic Order in northern Poland, Toruń (1233) and Elbląg in Warmia (Ermland, 1237) were established.100 Both centers became active participants in long-​distance trade and, simultaneously member cities of the Hanseatic League (similar to Szczecin, Kołobrzeg, and then Gdańsk, Cracow, and Wrocław), which dominated the Baltic and east–​west trade.101 In 1340, Lviv in Galician Rus’, an import trade center, was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland.102 Despite all the changes in the following centuries both east–​west and north–​south trade routes crossed Polish and Bohemian territories and continued to be of great importance in the long-​distance trade of both countries.103 The Czech and Polish lands have always been transit countries and markets generating demand and, as a consequence, imported a large number of goods from other countries. To judge by the Carolingian capitulary (a legislative act) of 805, which includes a

304    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy ban on exporting high quality swords and armor eastward, they must have been sold to Slavs even before the rise of Bohemian and Polish states. Later, items such as beads made of semiprecious stones also reached the Baltic cities from the Islamic world.104 The goods delivered by the Scandinavians, however, were more important—​iron and metal products, whetstones, and przęśliki (spindle weights). Silk and other luxury goods were already being imported in the tenth century. Their import (from Venice and Genoa) lasted until the Hussite wars.105 Silk was still imported to the Czech kingdom, but also suede, brocade, scarlet, and baldachins (produced in Baghdad) as well as spices and luxury wood.106 Luxurious oriental fabrics and spices were also imported to Poland.107 The main product, imported to both the Czech and Polish lands, was high-​quality cloth produced in the cities of Flanders (among others: Ypres, Poperinghen, Ghent, Tournai, Kortrijk) and in Brabant (among others: Brussels, Leuven, Mechelen, Tirlemont, Vilvoorde, and Huy).108 Cloth was imported to both Bohemia and Poland from German centers of the woolen industry (Cologne, Mainz, Freiberg, Magdeburg, Grimma, and Görlitz).109 In the late Middle Ages, cloth began to appear in Poland from England and the Netherlands, and sporadically from Spain and Florence.110 Wine imports were important. Besides Rhine wines, Hungarian, Austrian, Greek, French, Italian, Moldovan wines, and Greek Malvasia were also in high demand.111 Throughout the Middle Ages, the Czech lands imported salt (from Saxony, and Austria, and the Kingdom of Hungary).112 In the Polish lands, despite having its own salt springs and rock salt deposits, salt was imported from outside Central Europe.113 Until the mid-​thirteenth century salt was imported from Galician Rus’. Later, salt came from Halle and Lüneburg and from the fifteenth century, French salt from Baie de Bourgneuf was brought to Gdańsk and exported inland. Despite a rich assortment of imports, from High Middle Ages Western Slavic tribes and then states started to export and re-​export many wares. The Pomeranian lands offered merchants from Scandinavia and Saxony amber and goods of forestry (mead, wood, and fur) as well as salt.114 Wares of Arab origin were also re-​exported. Throughout the Middle Ages marine fish, mainly herring, were transported inland (also to Bohemia).115 Among the main export goods from the Polish and Czech lands were slaves, who were even sent to Muslim-​controlled Spain or Venice.116 As early as the tenth century tin was sent from Prague and furs from Kievan Rus’ (from Veliky Novgorod?) were re-​exported by Normans and Eastern Slavs.117 Furs were re-​exported from the Czech and Polish lands throughout the Middle Ages. Starting from the thirteenth century, Wrocław and Prague became centers of fur processing and shipment (to Germany and Italy).118 From the eleventh century, silver, wax, and horses as well as leather goods, ceramics, and jewelry were exported from the Czech principality.119 The thirteenth and the first half of the next century was a breakthrough period in the history of trade in Czech and Polish lands. Many foreign contacts were established at that time and then developed in later centuries. The territorial scope of trade extended between Scandinavia (the kingdom of Denmark including Scania), England, Flanders, the western borders of the Holy Roman Empire, Tuscany (Florence), Northern Italy (Venice), the kingdom of

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    305 Hungary, the Crimean Peninsula (Caffa), and Rus’ (Kyiv, Veliky Novgorod), although the intensity of these contacts varied. In fifteenth century, the territorial range of the contacts became broader in the West (France, Portugal).120 When precious metal deposits were discovered in the Czech and Polish lands, minerals became exports. In the thirteenth century, the Czech lands and southern Poland (Silesia) came into contact with the city-​states of Italy (Venice, Florence).121 Silver was imported wholesale from the Czech lands until the Hussite wars.122 No later than in the second half of the thirteenth century the Czech and Polish lands were strongly linked with Flanders and its main emporium—​Bruges.123 A note dating from between 1270 and 1300 describes an assortment of items also imported from Central Europe.124 While goods from the Czech kingdom were of indigenous origin (gold, silver, tin, wax), the note about Poland contains not only products acquired in Silesia (gold and silver in plates) but also re-​exported wares: furs and copper (mined in present-​day Slovakia). Cracow played a major role in the copper trade throughout the Middle Ages.125 From the thirteenth century, as a consequence of the dynamic development of the Czech cloth industry (in Broumov, Jihlava, Jindřichův Hradec, Olomouc, Plzeň, Tabor) and Silesia (Strzegom, Wrocław), cheap cloth became an important commodity exported to Reich (Holy Roman Empire), the kingdom of Hungary, Lithuania, Ruthenia, Veliky Novgorod, the Balkans, and even to Venice.126 In the late Middle Ages, red dye (czerwiec) was sent from Poland to Nürnberg, Flanders, and Venice to satisfy the needs of the Western European textile industry.127 In the fourteenth century, the range of exports from the Czech lands increased. The export of grain began from the kingdom of Bohemia to Austria and Venice.128 Fish, hops, meat, flax, and metals (lead, copper, tin) were transported to Germany via the Elbe River.129 The Hussite wars were detrimental to the long-​distance trade of the Czech kingdom; the extent of losses has been controversial among historians.130 Wholesale trade took on a cross-​border character. The Nürnberg businessmen left Prague and moved to Wrocław. At the same time, the Hungarian and German king, Sigismund of Luxemburg, banned his subjects (including those from the Czech kingdom) from trading with Venice, which must have been reflected in the scale of turnover (1412–​1433).131 The economy of Bohemia and Moravia did not begin to recover until the mid-​fifteenth century. The export of silver, handicraft products, and fish was resumed (the fishpond economy developed dynamically in Czech lands from the second half of the fourteenth century).132 Meanwhile, in the Polish lands, the fifteenth century was a time of trade development without major perturbations. The export of forestry goods (wood, pitch, potash, ash, wooden staves) started as early as the fourteenth century and reached as far as Portugal a century later.133 From the first half of the fifteenth century Mazovia began to export grain.134 The defeat of the Teutonic Knights’ state and the recovery of the Lower Vistula regions (Chełmno Land, Eastern Pomerania) in 1466 made it possible to intensify the Vistula trade and export grain (mostly rye) via Gdańsk to Germany and to the Netherlands also from southern Poland.135 ***

306    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy Mining and the extraction of mineral wealth had particular importance in the countries of medieval Central Europe, especially precious metal production in the Czech lands and Hungary and salt and lead production in Poland. Mining particularly faced technological challenges and was also a field for introducing technological innovations. Mining production required significant monetary investments, thus there are some examples of large-​scale financial investors. Royal finances also derived an essential part of their income from activities connected to mining and salt production. Local coinage in Central European countries originated in the late tenth and early eleventh century. The initial phase of minting was characterized by silver deniers; groats were introduced from the late thirteenth century. In both the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary gold coinage started comparatively early, around 1325. The Bohemian groat and Hungarian florin became the most important coins in late medieval Central Europe. Monetary reforms and the consolidation of the financial administration in all countries of Central Europe were essential for the increase of royal income needed by the ruling dynasties. Central Europe participated in international trade from as early as the ninth century, although in the early period trade was limited to luxury items and slaves. From the second half of the thirteenth century these countries became increasingly integrated into long distance commercial networks. Textile products, primarily cloth, dominated the imported goods. The countries of Central Europe also contributed their own products to the trade. Most of the exported merchandise was primary production, but products of secondary sector played a large part in international exchange (silver, gold, and cheap cloth). Czech silver and Hungarian gold gained a dominant position in the European precious metal market. The influence of mining, finances, and commerce had a decisive role in the formation of Central Europe in the Middle Ages. All these activities contributed to the integration of this region into the late medieval patterns of European economy.

Notes 1. In general, on the medieval history of Hungary, see Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary: 895–​1526 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001). 2. Zoltán Batizi, “Mining in Medieval Hungary,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, edited by József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Péter Szabó, and András Vadas, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 166–​181. 3. Batizi, “Mining,” 166. 4. Gusztáv Heckenast, “Eisenverhüttung in Ungarn im 9.–​14. Jahrhundert,” in La formation et le développement des metiers au Moyen Âge (5e–​14e siècles), edited by László Gerevich and Ágnes Salamon (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1977), 85–​94; Gusztáv Heckenast, Die Produktionsverhältnisse des Eisenwesens im mittelalterlichen Ungarn (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1980). 5. Gusztáv Heckenast, “A kora-​árpádkori magyar vaskohászat szervezete” [The structure of the iron metallurgy in Hungary in the early Árpádian period], Történelmi Szemle 9 (1966): 135–​161.

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    307 6. Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-​Central European Perspective,” Journal of Medieval History 45, no. 3 (2019): 360–​379, 368. 7. Szende, “Iure Theutonico?,” 367–​369. 8. Boglárka Weisz, “Mining Town Privileges in Angevin Hungary,” Hungarian Historical Review 2 (2013): 288–​312, Boglárka Weisz, “A bányaváros, mint önálló várostípus a 14. században” [The mining town as an independent city type in the fourteenth century], Bányászattörténeti Közlemények 19 (2015): 31–​57. 9. Boglárka Weisz, “Az urbura” [The urbura], Bányászattörténeti Közlemények 19, no. 2 (2015): 3–​23. 10. Bálint Hóman, A magyar királyság pénzügyei és gazdaságpolitikája Károly Róbert korában [Monetary issues and economic policy of the Hungarian kingdom during the reign of Charles I] (Budapest: Budavári Tudományos Társaság, 1921), 257; Oszkár Paulinyi, “Eigentum und Gesellschaft in den niederungarischen Bergstädten. Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der deutschen Kolonisationsstadt in Ungarn,” in Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropas 1450–​1650, edited by Ingomar Bog (Cologne: Böhlau, 1971), 542 n. 45. 11. Oszkár Paulinyi, “A bányaművelés formái a középkorban” [Forms of mining activity in the Middle Ages], Bányászattörténeti közlemények 8 (2013): 3–​11. 12. Oszkár Paulinyi, “Magyarország aranytermelése a XV. század végén és a XVI. század derekán,” [Gold production of Hungary at the end of fifteenth century and in the mid-​ sixteenth century], A gr. Klebelsberg Kúnó Történetkutató Intézet Évkönyve 6 (1936): 32–​ 142, 36. 13. On the debate on the precious metal production of Hungary, see Oszkár Paulinyi, “Nemesfémtermelésünk és országos gazdaságunk általános alakulása a bontakozó és a kifejlett feudalizmus korszakában (1000–​1526) (Gazdag föld–​szegény ország)” [Hungarian precious metal production and the formation of the country’s economic conditions in the period of early and high feudalism, 1000–​1526: Rich land–​poor country], Századok 106 (1972): 561–​608. 14. András Kubinyi, “Budai kereskedők udvari szállításai a Jagelló-​korban” [Court supply of Buda merchants in the Jagiellonian period], Budapest Régiségei 19 (1959): 99–​119; Martin Štefánik, “The Exporting of Copper from Eastern Slovakia to Western Europe in the First Third of the 14th Century,” Historický Časopis 66 (2018): 785–​814. 15. Oszkár Paulinyi, “The Crown Monopoly of the Refining Metallurgy of Precious Metals and the Technology of the Cameral Refineries in Hungary and Transylvania in the Period of Advanced and Late Feudalism 1325–​1700,” in Precious Metals in the Age of Expansion, edited by H. Kellenbenz (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta, 1981), 27–​39. 16. Desanka Kovačević, “Dans la Serbie et la Bosnie médiévales: Les mines d’or et d’argent,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 15 (1960): 248–​258; Sima Ćirković, “The Production of Gold, Silver, and Copper in the Central Parts of the Balkans from the 13th to the 16th Century,” in Precious Metals in the Age of Expansion, edited by H. Kellenbenz (Stuttgart: Klett-​ Cotta, 1981), 41–​69; John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 283–​284; Ian Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages, Vol. 3: Continuing Afro-​European Supremacy, 1250–​1450 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005), 1016–​ 1025; Mihailo Popović, “Wirtschaft und Finanzen in den byzantinischen Balkanprovinzen (Verkehrswege, Anbauprodukte, Metalle, Handel, Handwerk, Geld),” in Handbuch zur

308    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy Geschichte Südosteuropas, Vol. 1: Herrschaft und Politik in Südosteuropa von der römischen Antike bis 1300, Part 2 (Oldenburg: de Gruyter, 2019), 673–​698. 17. Franz Irsigler, “Hansischer Kupferhandel im 15. und in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 97 (1979): 15–​35. 18. Beatrix F. Romhányi, “Salt Mining and Trade in Hungary before the Mongol Invasion,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 182–​204; István Draskóczy, “Salt Mining and Trade in Hungary from the Mid-​Thirteenth Century until the End of the Middle Ages,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 205–​218; István Draskóczy, “Bergstädte und Salzbergbau im spätmittelalterlichen Ungarn,” in Miasta górnicze i górnictwo w Europie Środkowej: Pamięć–​dziedzictwo–​tożsamość [The mining towns and mining in Central Europe: Memory–​tradition–​identity], edited by Antoni Barciak (Katowice: Studio Noa, 2019), 152–​164. 19. See excerpts of the text in Romhányi, “Salt Mining,” 200–​204, and discussion, 191–​200. 20. Oszkár Paulinyi, “A sóregále kialakulása Magyarországon,” [The formation of salt regale in Hungary], Századok 58 (1924): 627–​647; András Kubinyi, “Königliches Salzmonopol und die Städte des Königreichs Ungarn im Mittelalter,” in Stadt und Salz, edited by Wilhelm Rausch, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Städte Mitteleuropas 10 (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 1988), 233–​246; Beatrix F. Romhányi, “A beregi egyezmény és a magyarországi sókereskedelem az Árpád-​korban” [The oath of Bereg and the salt trade of Hungary in the Árpádian period], in Magyar Gazdaságtörténeti Évkönyv, edited by György Kövér, Ágnes Pogány, and Boglárka Weisz (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia [MTA] Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont–​ Hajnal István Alapítvány, 2016): 265–​301. 21. John Nef, “Mining and and Metallurgy in Medieval Civilisation,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Medieval Europe, vol. 2, edited by Michael M. Postan and Edward Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 696. 22. Maria Dembińska and Zofia Podwińska, eds., Kultura materialna Polski w zarysie [A history of material culture in Poland], vol. 1 (Warsaw: Ossolineum, 1978), 119–​121. 23. Danuta Molenda, “Powstawanie miast górniczych w Europie Środkowej w XIII–​XVIII w.” [The rise of mining towns in Central Europe, thirteenth to eighteenth centuries], in Czas, przestrzeń, praca w dawnych miastach: Studia ofiarowane Henrykowi Samsonowiczowi w sześćdziesiątą rocznicę urodzin, edited by Andrzej Wyrobisz and Michał Tymowski (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukove, 1991), 165, 170. 24. Josef Janàček, “L’argent tchèque et la Méditerranèe (XIVe et XVe siècles),” in Histoire 1650: Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand économique du monde méditerranéen 1450–​ Braudel, vol. 1 (Toulouse: privately published, 1973), 245. 25. Karol Maleczyński, “Aus der Geschichte des schlesischen Bergbaus in der Epoche des Feudalismus,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte Schlesiens, edited by Ewa Maleczyńska (Berlin: Rütten & Loenig, 1958), 239, 241; Benedykt Zientara, Henryk Brodaty i jego czasy [Henry the Bearded and his times] (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1975), 115–​116. 26. Jörg Hoensch, Geschichte Böhmens: Von der slavischen Landnahme bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997), 95; Janáček, “L’argent,” 245–​246. 27. Roman Zaoral, “Mining, Trading and Minting in Late Medieval Bohemia,” in From Ore to Money: Mining, Trading, Minting; Proceedings of the Tallinn (2018) Conference, edited by Georges Depeyrot and Ivan Leimus (Wetteren: Moneta, 2018), 87.

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    309 28. Jan Kořan, Dèjìny dolováni v rudním okrsku kutnohorském [The history of mining in the district of Kutnà Hora] (Prague: Vĕdecko–​technické Nakladelstvi, 1950), 86. 29. Luboš Nový, ed., Dejiny techniky v Ceskoslovensku do konce 18. stoleti [A history of technics in Czecho–​Slovakia until the end of the eighteenth century] (Prague: Academia, 1974), 223. 30. Maleczyński “Aus der Geschichte,” 240–​241. 31. Roman Zaoral, “The Florins of Bohemia and Luxembourg of John the Blind,” in Il tesoro di Montella (Avellino): Ducati e fiorini d’oro italiani e stranieri occultati nella meta del Trecento, edited by Lucia Travaini and Matteo Broggini (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2016), 66. 32. Maleczyński, “Aus der Geschichte,” 239–​240, 249. 33. Danuta Molenda, Polski ołów na rynkach Europy Środkowej w XIII–​XVII wieku [Polish lead in the Central European markets in the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk 2001), 14. 34. Marian Małowist, Wschód a Zachód Europy w XIII–​XVI wieku: Konfrontacja struktur społeczno–​gospodarczych [Eastern and Western Europe in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries: A comparison of socioeconomic structures] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973), 25, 139; Henryk Samsonowicz and Antoni Mączak, “Feudalism and Capitalism: A Balance of Changes in East-​Central Europe,” in East-​Central Europe in Transition: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, edited by Antoni Mączak, Henryk Samsonowicz, and Peter Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 7; Henryk Samsonowicz, “L’économie de l’Europe du Centre-​Est du Haut Moyen Âge au XVIe siècle,” in Histoire de l’Europe du Centre-​Est, edited by Jerzy Kłoczowski (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 629, 635–​637. 35. Nef, “Mining,” 723; Maleczyński “Aus der Geschichte,” 251, 265. 36. Josef Janàček, “Der böhmische Aussenhandel in der Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Historica 4 (1962): 45. 37. Janàček, “Der böhmische Aussenhandel,” 50–​55; Kořan, Dèjìny, 85, 86. 38. Karl Peter, “Die Goldbergwerke bei Zuckmantel und Freiwaldau,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens 19 (1885): 46; Maleczyński, “Aus der Geschichte,” 254. 39. Lech Leciejewicz, “Kołobrzeg w okresie wczesnofeudalnym (do roku 1255) [Kołobrzeg in the early feudal period (until 1255)], in Dzieje Kołobrzegu (X–​XX wiek), edited by Henryk Lesiński (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1965), 6. 40. Jerzy Wyrozumski, Państwowa gospodarka solna w Polsce do schyłku XIV wieku [The royal salt economy in Poland until the end of the fourteenth century] (Cracow: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukove, 1968), 37, 70. 41. Wyrozumski, Państwowa, 92–​113. 42. György Györffy, Az Árpád-​kori Magyarország történeti földrajza [Historical geography of Hungary in the Árpádian age], 4 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1963–​1998), vol. 3, 243–​247. 43. István Draskóczy, “Der ungarische Goldgulden und seine Bedeutung im ungarischen Ausenhandel des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Der Tiroler Bergau und die Depression der europaischen Montanwirtschaft im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, edited by R. Tasser and E. Westermann (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2004), 61–​ 77; Márton Gyöngyössy, Mediaeval Hungarian Gold Florins (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Bank, 2005); Márton Gyöngyössy, Florenus Hungaricalis: Aranypénzverés a középkori Magyarországon [Florenus Hungaricalis: Coinage of golden florins in medieval Hungary] (Budapest: Martin Opitz, 2008). 44. For the Latin text, see: Gyula Forster, ed., III. Béla magyar király emlékezete [The memory of King Béla III of Hungary] (Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor, 1900), 139–​140; Gábor Barta, and János Barta, “Royal Finance in Medieval Hungary: The Revenues of King Béla III,” in

310    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy Crises, Revolutions and Self-​Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History 1130–​1830, edited by M. Ormrod, M. Bonney, and R. Bonney (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1999) 22–​37. 45. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 61–​65. 46. Csaba Tóth, “Minting, Financial Administration and Coin Circulation in Hungary in the Árpádian and Angevin Periods (1000–​1387),” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 279–​294. 47. Márton Gyöngyössy, “Coinage and Financial Administration in Late Medieval Hungary (1387–​1526),” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 295–​306. 48. Elemér Mályusz, “Az izmaelita pénzverőjegyek kérdéséhez” [On the problem of Ismaelite mint marks], Budapest régiségei: A Budapesti Történeti Múzeum Évkönyve 18 (1958): 301–​ 309; Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 186. 49. János Incze, “The Pledge Policy of King Sigismund of Luxembourg in Hungary (1387–​ 1437),” in Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages, edited by Roman Zaoral (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), 87–​109. 50. Katalin Prajda, “The Florentine Scolari Family at the Court of Sigismund of Luxemburg in Buda,” Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010): 513–​533; Andrea Fara, “Italian Merchants in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (XIIIth–​ XVth centuries),” in Italy and Europe’s Eastern Border (1204–​1669), edited by Iulian Mihai Damian, Ioan-​Aurel Pop, Mihailo Popović, and Alexandru Simon (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), 119–​133. 51. Sándor Domanovszky, A harmincadvám eredete [The origin of the thirtieth customs] (Budapest: Akadémia, 1916); Zsigmond Pál Pach, A harmincadvám eredete [The origin of the thirtieth customs] (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1990). 52. János Bak, “Monarchie im Wellental: Materielle Grundlagen des ungarischen Königtums im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert,” in Das spätmittelalterliche Königtum im europäischen Vergleich, edited by R. Schneider (Vorträge und Forschungen 32) (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), 347–​384; Elemér Mályusz, Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn, 1387–​1437 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1990); Pál Engel, “A magyar királyság jövedelmei Zsigmond korában” [Revenues of the Hungarian kingdom in the time of Sigismund], in A tudomány szolgálatában: Emlékkönyv Benda Kálmán 80. születésnapjára, edited by Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia [MTA] Történettudományi Intézete, 1993), 27–​31. 53. Pál Engel, “A 14. századi magyar pénztörténet néhány kérdése” [Some problems of fourteenth-​century Hungarian monetary history], Századok 124 (1990): 25–​93, 91. 54. András Kubinyi, Matthias Rex (Budapest, Balassi, 2008), 76. 55. István Draskóczy, “Egy olasz követjelentés tanúsága Mátyás bevételeiről” [An ambassador’s report from Italy on the incomes of King Matthias], Acta Universitatis Szegediensis: Sectio politico-​juridica 75, no. 1 (2013): 173–​184. 56. Dembińska and Zofia Podwińska, Kultura, 255. 57. Dembińska and Zofia Podwińska, Kultura, 255–​256; see passing references in Jacek Adamczyk, Płacidła w Europie Środkowej i Wschodniej w średniowieczu [Nonmetallic money in Central and East Europe in the Middle Ages] (Warsaw: Neriton, 2004). 58. On this traveler, see Ahmad Nazmi, Commercial Relations between Arabs and Slavs (Warsaw: Dialog, 1998), 40; on linen money, see Ibrāhīm Ibn Ya‛qūb, Relatio Ibrahim ibn Jakub de Itinere Slavico, quae traditur apud Al-​Bekri, edited, introduction, and translated by Tadeusz Kowalski, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s., vol. 1 (Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1946), 49.

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    311 59. Ferdinand Friedensburg, Schlesiens Münzgeschichte im Mittelalter, part 2, Codex diplomaticus Silesiae 13 (Breslau: Josef Max & Company, 1888), 68; Georg Juritsch, Handel und Handelsrecht in Böhmen bis zur husitischen Revolution: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte der österreichischen Länder (Leipzig: Deuticke, 1907), 4. 60. Michał Gumowski, “Moneta na Śląsku do końca XIV w.” [Coinage in Silesia until the end of the 14th c.], in Historja Śląska od najdawniejszych czasów do roku 1400, vol. 3, edited by Władysław Semkowicz (Cracow: PAU, 1936), 554, 568, 576; Ryszard Kiersnowski, “Monety na ziemiach słowiańskich” [Coinage in the Slavic territories], in Słownik starożytności słowiańskich, vol. 3, edited by Władysław Kowalenko, Gerard Labuda, and Zdzisław Stieber (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1967), 281–​283; Dariusz Adamczyk, Srebro i władza: Trybuty i handel dalekosiężny a kształtowanie się państwa piastowskiego i państw sąsiednich w latach 800–​1100 [Silver and power: Impositions and long-​distance trade and the making of the Piast state and the neighboring states in 800–​1100] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2018), 80–​98, 140–​141, 190–​225, 293. 61. Kiersnowski, “Monety,” 283–​284. 62. Sławomir Gawlas, “Komercjalizacja jako mechanizm europeizacji peryferii na przykładzie Polski” [Commercialization as a mechanism of the peripheries’ Europeanization: The case of Poland] in Ziemie polskie wobec Zachodu: Studia nad rozwojem średniowiecznej Europy [The Polish lands and the West: Studies on the development of medieval Europe], edited by Sławomir Gawlas (Warsaw: DiG, 2006), 84; Ryszard Kiersnowski, “Mennice i mincerze na Pomorzu Zachodnim” [The mints and mint masters in the Western Pomerania], Materiały Zachodnio–​Pomorskie 6 (1960): 316. 63. Gumowski, “Moneta,” especially 604 (on Poland, Bohemia, and Germany), 584, 594, 604–​605; Stanisław Trawkowski, “Obieg a renowacja monety w Polsce na przełomie XII i XIII wieku” [Circulation and the renewal of the coinage in Poland at the turn of 13th c.], in Nummus et historia: Pieniądz Europy średniowiecznej [Coin and history: Coinage in medieval Europe], edited by Stefan K. Kuczyński et al. (Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Archeologiczne/​ Komisja Numizmatyczna, 1985), 111–​ 18; Hoensch, Geschichte, 179–​ 180; Borys Paszkiewicz, “Mennictwo śląskie wobec ‘Rewolucji handlowej’ XIII wieku” [The Silesian minting system and the “commercial revolution” in 13th c.], in Kultura średniowiecznego Śląska i Czech: “Rewolucja” XIII wieku [Culture of medieval Silesia and Bohemia: “The revolution” in the thirteenth century], edited by Krzysztof Wachowski (Wrocław: Uniwersytet Wrocławski, 1998), 39; Zaoral, “Mining,” 85. 64. Gumowski, “Moneta,” 604; Paszkiewicz, “Mennictwo,” 36; Zaoral, “Mining,” 84. 65. Karel Castelin, Česká drobná mince doby předhusitské a husitské (1300–​1471) [The Czech small coin before and in times of the Hussite revolution] (Prague: Československé Akademie Vĕd 1953), 12–​33; Jan Čechura, České zemé w letech 1310–​1378: Lucemburkové na českém trůne [The Czech lands in 1310–​1378: The Luxemburg dynasty on the Czech throne], vol. 1 (Prague: Nakladelstvo Libri, 1999), 117–​120. 66. Janàček, “L’argent,” 253. 67. Ryszard Kiersnowski, “Grosze Kazimierza Wielkiego” [The groats of Casimir the Great], Wiadomości Numizmatyczne 17 (1973): 193–​221. 68. František Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen Böhmen zu Deutschland und Österreich im 14. und zu Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Historica 2 (1960): 99, 109; Zaoral, “The Florins,” 65–​67. 69. Karol Buczek, “Skarbowość” [State’s treasury], in Słownik starożytności słowiańskich [The dictionary of Slavic antiquities], vol. 5, edited by Gerard Labuda and Zdzisław Stieber

312    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1975), 198–​210. See also Karol Modzelewski, “The System of the Ius Ducale and the Idea of Feudalism (Comments on the Earliest Class Society in Medieval Poland),” Quaestiones Medii Aevi 1 (1977): 71–​100. 70. On the socioeconomic and legal transformation of the Czech and Polish countryside and towns, see Maria Bogucka and Henryk Samsonowicz, Dzieje miast i mieszczaństwa w Polsce przedrozbiorowej [A history of towns and townspeople in prepartitioned Poland] (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1986), 45–​ 88; Jan Klápšte, “Studies of Structural Change in Medieval Settlement in Bohemia,” Antiquity 65 (1991): 396–​405; Molenda, “Powstawanie,” 165–​ 166; Piotr Górecki, Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland (1100–​ 1250) (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992), 123–​ 192; Adrienne Körmendy, Melioratio terrae: Vergleichende Untersuchungen über die Siedlungsbewegung im östlichen Mitteleuropa im 13.–​ 14. Jahrhundert (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 1995), 74–​129; Sławomir Gawlas, O kształt zjednoczonego królestwa: Niemieckie władztwo terytorialne a geneza spolecznoustrojowej odrębności Polski [For the United Kingdom: The German territorial power and the origins of Poland’s sociopolitical distinctiveness] (Warsaw: DiG, 1996); Hoensch, “Geschichte,” 100–​101; Gawlas, “Komercjalizacja,” 94–​116. 71. Čechura, České, 113. 72. Libor Jan, Václav II. a struktury panovnické moci [Venzeslaus II and the structures of power] (Brno: Matice Moravská, 2006), 53, 55, 56. 73. Jacek S. Matuszewski, Przywileje i polityka podatkowa Ludwika Węgierskiego w Polsce [The privileges and fiscal policy by Louis the Great in Poland] (Łódź: Uniwersytet Łódzki, 1983), 101–​102. 74. Władysław Pałucki, Skarbowość, in Encyklopedia historii gospodarczej Polski, vol. 2, edited by Antoni Mączak (Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1981), 269–​270. 75. On the landscape of medieval Hungary see: Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, xiii–​xv. About the trade in medieval Hungary, see Balázs Nagy, “Transcontinental Trade from East-​ Central Europe to Western Europe (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries),” in “ . . . The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways . . .”: Festschrift in Honor of Janos M. Bak, edited by Balazs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 347–​356; Boglárka Weisz, “Domestic Trade in the Árpádian Age,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 419–​431; András Kubinyi, “Professional Merchants and the Institutions of Trade: Domestic Trade in Late Medieval Hungary,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 432–​454; Balázs Nagy, “Foreign Trade of Medieval Hungary,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, vol. 49, edited by József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Péter Szabó, and András Vadas (Series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450) (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018), 473–​490. 76. Ibn Ya‛qūb, Relatio Ibrahim ibn Jakub, 161–​172; Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-​Wetzor, eds. The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. (Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953), 86. 77. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 54–​56. 78. Katalin Szende, “Towns along the Way: Changing Patterns of Long-​Distance Trade and the Urban Network of Medieval Hungary,” in Towns and Communication, Vol. 2: Communication between Towns; Proceedings of the Meetings of the International Commission for the History of Towns (ICHT), edited by H. Houben and K. Toomaspoeg (Lecce: Congedo, 2011), 167.

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    313 79. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, edited by Marcus Nathan Adler (London: Frowde, 1907), 12; Szende, “Towns along the Way,” 170. 80. Szende, “Towns along the Way,” 164. 81. Nagy, “Foreign Trade,” 478. 82. Szende, “Towns along the Way,” 171–​178; Balázs Nagy, “The Towns of Medieval Hungary in the Reports of Contemporary Travellers,” in Segregation-​Integration-​Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin Szende (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 169–​178, here 171–​172; György Székely, “Wallons et italiens en Europe Centrale aux XIe–​XVIe siècles,” Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae. Sectio Historica 6 (1964): 3–​71; Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1301 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); András Kubinyi and József Laszlovszky, “Demographic Issues in Late Medieval Hungary: Population, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activity,” in Laszlovszky et al., The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 48–​63. 83. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 64. 84. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 256. 85. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 257–​258; Szende, “Towns along the Way,” 200–​221. 86. György Székely, “Niederländische und englische Tucharten im Mitteleuropa des 13–​17. Jahrhunderts,” Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös nominatae. Sectio historica 8 (1966): 11–​42; György Székely, “Deutsche Tuchnamen im mittelalterlichen Ungarn,” Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös nominatae. Sectio Linguistica 6 (1975): 43–​76; Kubinyi, “Professional Merchants,” 427. 87. Ian Blanchard, “The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400–​1600,” Economic History Review n.s. 39 (1986): 427–​460; Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 249. 88. Nagy, “The Towns of Medieval Hungary,” 177–​178. 89. Ferenc Kováts, Nyugatmagyarország áruforgalma a XV. században a pozsonyi harminczadkönyv alapján [The circulation of commercial goods in western Hungary in the fifteenth century on the basis of the Pressburg thirtieth customs register] (Budapest: Politzer, 1902). 90. Kováts, Nyugatmagyarország áruforgalma; on the historiography, see Balázs Nagy, “The Study of Medieval Foreign Trade of Hungary: A Historiographic Overview,” in Cities-​ Coins-​Commerce: Essays Presented to Ian Blanchard on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, edited by Philipp Robinson Rössner (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2012), 65–​75. 91. Balázs Nagy, “Problem of Financial Balance in the Foreign Trade of Late Medieval Hungary,” Transylvanian Review 18, no. 3 (2009): 13–​20; Balázs Nagy, “Old Interpretations and New Approaches: The 1457–​1458 Thirtieth Customs Registers of Bratislava,” in Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages, edited by Roman Zaoral (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), 192–​201. 92. Henryk Łowmiański, Podstawy gospodarcze formowania się państw słowiańskich [The economic foundations of the Slavic states’ making] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1953), 220–​222, 223–​225. 93. Bogucka and Samsonowicz, Dzieje, 157; Adamczyk, Srebro, 242. 94. Zientara et al., Dzieje, 74–​75. 95. Marek F. Jagodziński, “The Settlement of Truso,” in Wulfstan’s Voyage: The Baltic Sea Region in the Early Viking Age as Seen from Shipboard, edited by Anton Englert and Athena Trakadas (Roskilde: The Viking Ship Museum, 2009), 187, 193; Marek F. Jagodziński, Truso: Between Weonodland and Witland (Elbląg: Muzeum Archeologiczno–​Historyczne, 2010), 115.

314    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy 96. Jaroslav Mezník, “Der ökonomische Charakter Prags im 14 Jahrhundert,” Historica 17 (1969): 56–​61; Jan Vlk, ed., Dějiny Prahy, vol. 1 (Paseka; Prague; Litomyšl: Pasek, 1997), 125. 97. Łowmiański, Podstawy, 220–​221; Vlk, Dějiny Prahy, 44; Nazmi, Commercial, 117–​118, 144, 172–​173. 98. Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 88–​89, 95–​99; see also Hans Schenk, Nürnberg und Prag: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Handelsbeziehungen im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1969), and František Dvořak, “Císar Karel IV. a pražský zahraniční obchod. 2 čast” [The emperor Charles IV and the Prague’s foreign trade, Part 2], Pražský sbornik historický 35 (2007): 17–​22. 99. Nazmi, Commercial, 177; Jerzy Wyrozumski, Dzieje Krakowa [A history of Cracow], vol. 1 (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1992), 371–​396. See also Stanisław Kutrzeba, Handel Krakowa w wiekach średnich na tle stosunków handlowych Polski [Cracow’s trade in the Middle Ages against a background of Poland’s trade relations] (Cracow: n.p., 1902), and Grzegorz Myśliwski, Wrocław w przestrzeni gospodarczej Europy (XIII–​XV wiek) Centrum czy peryferie? [Wrocław in the economic space of Europe (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries): Core or periphery?] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2009), passim. 100. Państwo zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach: Władza i społeczeństwo [The Teutonic Order’s state in Prussia: Power and society], edited by Marian Biskup and Roman Czaja (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo PWN, 2008), 179, 182. 101. Philippe Dollinger, Die Hanse (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 2012), 160–​163; Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Kraków a Hanza w wiekach średnich,” in Jerzy Wyrozumski, Cracovia mediaevalis [Medieval Cracow] (Cracow: Avalon, 2010), 365–​377. 102. See also Łucja Charewiczowa, Handel średniowiecznego Lwowa [Trade of Lviv in the Middle Ages] (Lviv: Ossolineum, 1925). 103. Juritsch, Handel, 6, 72; Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 65, 94; Henryk Samsonowicz, “Przemiany osi drożnych w Polsce późnego średniowiecza” [The reorientation of the main trade routes in Poland in the late Middle Ages], Przegląd Historyczny 64, no. 4 (1973): 697–​7 16. 104. Ewelina Siemianowska, “Strefa bałtycka we wczesnym średniowieczu (VIII–​XI w.),” [The Baltic zone in the earlier Middle Ages], in Bałtyk w edukacji historycznej [Baltic see in the historical education], edited by Danuta Konieczka–​Śliwińska, Małgorzata Machałek, and Stanisław Roszak (Szczecin: Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne, 2014), 5. 105. Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 107; Roman Zaoral, “Silver and Glass in Medieval Trade and Cultural Exchange between Venice and the Bohemian Kingdom,” Czech Historical Review 109 (2011): 250–​255. 106. Juritsch, Handel, 10; František Dvořak, “Císar Karel IV. a pražský zahraniční obchod. 1 čast” [The emperor Charles IV. and the Prague’s foreign trade, Part 1], Pražský sbornik historický 34 (2006): 17. 107. Marian Małowist, Kaffa–​kolonia genueńska na Krymie i problem wschodni w latach 1453–​1475 [Caffa–​The Genoese colonial city on Crimea and the East’s issue in 1453–​1475] (Warsaw: Towarzystwo Miłośników Historii, 1947), 65; Mihail Lesnikov, “L’vovskoe kupečestvo i ego torgovye svjazi v XIV veke” [The merchant milieu of Lviv and its trade links in the fourteenth century], in Problemy ekonomičeskogo i političeskovo razvitija stran Evropy [The issues of the social and political development of the European countries], edited by Viktor. F. Semenov (Moscow: Moskovskij Gosudarstvennyj Pedagogičeskij Institut, 1964), 40; Grzegorz Myśliwski, “Venice and Wrocław in the Later Middle Ages,”

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    315 in Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages: A Cultural History, edited by Piotr Górecki and Nancy van Deusen (London: Tauris, 2009), 103, 106–​108. 108. Kutrzeba, Handel, 26–​27; František Graus, Český obchod se suknem ve 14. a počatkem 15. stoleti [The Czech trade in cloth in the fourteenth and at the outset of the fifteenth century] (Prague: Melnatrich, 1950), 13, 36, 93, 95–​99; Mateusz Goliński, “Wrocław od połowy XIII do początków XVI wieku” [Wrocław between the mid-​thirteenth and the outset of the sixteenth century], in Historia Wrocławia: Od pradziejów do końca czasów habsburskich [A history of Wrocław: From prehistory until the Habsburg period] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2001), 150; Dvořak, “Císar. 1 čast,” 25. 109. Kutrzeba, Handel, 98; Graus, Český, 23, 71, 104–​ 105; Mateusz Goliński, Podstawy gospodarcze mieszczaństwa wrocławskiego w XIII wieku [The economic foundations of the Wrocław’s burghers in the thirteenth century] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwerystetu Wrocławskiego, 1991), 43; Dvořak, “Císar. 1 čast,” 25. 110. Kutrzeba,Handel,26;LeonKoczy,HandelPoznaniadopołowywiekuXVI(Poznań:Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 1930), 288–​289; Lesnikov, “L’vovskoe,” 52; Dvořak, “Císar. 1 čast,” 11, 26; Myśliwski, Wrocław, 426. 111. Kutrzeba, Handel, 27, 65; Charewiczowa, Handel, 17, 43, 71; Dvořak, “Císar. 1 čast,” 44–​ 45, 47. 112. Konrad Wutke, “Die Versorgung Schlesiens mit Salz während des Mittelalters,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens 27 (1893): 269; Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 102; Wyrozumski, Państwowa, 36. 113. Wutke, “Die Versorgung,” 247, 258; Koczy, Handel, 306; Anna Choroškevič, Torgovlja Velikogo Novgoroda s Pribaltikoj i Zapadnoj Evropoj v XIV–​XV vekach [Novgorod the Great’s trade with Baltic countries and Western Europe in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries] (Moscow: Akademia Nauk SSSR, 1963), 242–​243; Wyrozumski, Państwowa, 115. 114. Siemianowska, “Strefa,” 5. 115. Kutrzeba, Handel, 86; Dvořak, “Císar. 1 čast,” 52. 116. I. Bieżuńska-​Małowist and Marian Małowist, Niewolnictwo (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987), 267–​277. 117. Vlk, Dějiny Prahy, 44. 118. Franz Bastian, Oberdeutsche Kaufleute in den älteren Tiroler Raitbüchern (1288–​1370): Rechnungen und Rechnungsauszüge samt Einleitungen und Kaufmannsregister (Munich: Kommision für Bayerische Geschichte, 1931), 5; Dvořak, Císar. 1 čast,” 50. 119. Hoensch, Geschichte, 57. 120. Henryk Samsonowicz, “Handel zagraniczny Gdańska w drugiej połowie XV wieku” [The Gdańsk’ foreign trade in the second half of the fifteenth century], Przegląd Historyczny 47 (1956): 288, 290–​291. 121. Bastian, “Oberdeutsche,” 5; Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungeng,” 93; Janàček, “L’argent,” 246. 122. Zaoral, “Silver,” 238–​241; Zaoral, “Mining,” 84. 123. Marian Małowist, “Le développement des rapports économiques entre la Flandre, la Pologne et les pays limitrophes du XIIIe au XIVe siècle,” Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 10, no. 4 (1931): 1020–​1021; Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 1960, 83–​84. 124. Hansisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 3, edited by Konstantin Höhlbaum (Halle: Verlag der Buchh. des Waisenhauses, 1882–​1886), 419 n. 1. 125. Kutrzeba, Handel, 124; Wyrozumski, “Kraków,” 365. 126. Graus, Český, 108–​109; Helena Březinová, Textilní výroba v českých zemích ve 13.—​15. století: Poznání textilní produkce na základĕ archeologických nălezŭ [Cloth production

316    Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy in the Czech lands in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries: The research on cloth production based on archeological findings] (Prague: Ústav pro Pravěk a Ranou Dobu Dějinnou, 2007), 62–​63, 127–​128, 134. On Silesian production, see Irena Turnau, Historia europejskiego włókiennictwa odzieżowego od XIII do XVIII w. [A history of European textile industry between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries] (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1987), 94; on trade in cloth, see Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 91; Danuta Poppe, “ ‘Pannus polonicalis’: Z dziejów sukiennictwa polskiego w średniowieczu” [“The Polish cloth”: From the history of the Polish cloth producion in the Middle Ages], Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej 36, no. 3–​4 (1988), 618–​619; Myśliwski, Wrocław, 279, 409. 127. Marie Scholz–​Babisch, “Oberdeutscher Handel mit dem deutschen und polnischen Osten nach Geschäftsbriefen von 1444,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Geschichte un Alterthum Schlesiens 64 (1930): 63; Jan Ptaśnik, Kultura włoska wieków średnich w Polsce [The Italian medieval culture in Poland] (Warsaw: PWN, 1958), 133–​134. 128. Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen,” 103. On the Czech export of grain to Venice, see Privilegia civitatum pragensium, edited by Jaromír Čelakovský (Prague: Grégra, 1886), no. 83, year 1363, 131–​132. 129. Juritsch, Handel, 14. 130. Hoensch, Geschichte, 151; the first to put forward such a view was the Czech historian Zikmund Winter (see Janàček, “Der böhmische,” 43). See also Juritsch, Handel, 114–​116; Janàček, “Der böhmische,” 44–​47; Małowist, Wschód, 158; Erik Fügedi, “The Demographic Landscape of East-​Central Europe,” in Mączak, Samsonowicz, and Burke, East-​Central Europe, 51. 131. Herbert Klein, “Kaiser Sigismunds Handelssperre gegen Venedig und die Salzburger Alpenstraße,” in Aus Verfassungs-​und Landesgeschichte: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Theodor Mayer dargebracht von seinen Freunden und Schülern, vol. 2, edited by Herbert Büttner (Konstanz: Thornbecke, 1955), 317–​328; Martin Štefaník, Obchodná vojna kráľa Žigmunda proti Benátkam; stredoveký boj o trhy medzi uhorsko-​nemeckým kráľom a Republikou svätého Marka [Trade war by the king Sigismund against Venice: Medieval struggle for markets between the Hungarian–​German king and Saint Mark Republic] (Bratislava: Slovenská Akademia Vied, 2004), 38–​72. 132. Janàček, “Der böhmische,” 48–​51, 53–​58; Schenk, Nürnberg, 97–​99, 114–​145. 133. Benedykt Zientara, Antoni Mączak, Ireneusz Ihnatowicz, and Zbigniew Landau, Dzieje gospodarcze Polski do roku 1939 [An economic history of Poland until 1939] (Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1979), 130. 134. Historia Gdańska [A history of Gdańsk], vol. 1, edited by Edmund Cieślak (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1985), 508–​509. 135. Zientara et al., Dzieje, 211.

Further Reading Engel, Pál. The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary: 895–​1526. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001. Laszlovszky, József, Balázs Nagy, Péter Szabó, and András Vadas, eds. The Economy of Medieval Hungary. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–​1450. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe    317 Mączak, Antoni, Henryk Samsonowicz, and Peter Burke, eds. East-​ Central Europe in Transition: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Nagy, Balazs, Martyn Rady, Katalin Szende, and Andras Vadas, eds., Medieval Buda in Context. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Nagy, Balázs, Felicitas Schmieder, and András Vadas, eds. The Medieval Networks in East Central Europe: Commerce, Contacts, Communication. London: Routledge, 2018. Nazmi, Ahmad. Commercial Relations between Arabs and Slavs, 9th–​11th Centuries. Warsaw: Akademickie Dialog, 1998. Weisz, Boglárka. Markets and Staples in the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom. Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, 2020. Zaoral, Roman. “Mining, Trading and Minting in Late Medieval Bohemia.” In From Ore to Money, Mining, Trading, Minting, Proceedings of the Tallin (2018) Conference, edited by G. Depeyrot and I. Leimus. Collection Moneta 202. Wetteren: Moneta, 2018, 79–​98.

Pa rt I I I

C U LT U R E A N D R E L IG ION

Chapter 14

Cultural L a nd s c a pe s Education and Literature Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová

Much of our knowledge about the Middle Ages is derived from medieval written sources, be it documents, historical writings, scholarly treatises, or literary texts. Cultural life (and our knowledge about it) is closely dependent on the education, the introduction of writing, and the creation of cultural institutions within a region. Some trends in the intellectual and literary history of Central Europe are common to several states and polities, but other developments are unique to smaller subregions.

The Early Period In the ninth and tenth centuries, when literacy and literature developed (or re-​ emerged, in the lands that had been parts of the Roman Empire) in Central Europe, the authors and textual models that were used to compose new texts came to the newly Christianized areas from existing centers of learning. Cyril and Methodius’s activity in translating the Bible into a Slavic language (including inventing an alphabet) was instrumental in constructing the Christian identity of the Slavic-​speaking population living in East-​Central Europe.1 The missions of Bavarian and Northern Italian monks and prelates created a network of Christian churches and bishoprics in the Hungarian kingdom in the early eleventh century.2 This process is exemplified in the case of Arnold of St. Emmeram, who visited the church of Esztergom around 1030. According to his account, his abbot sent him there from his monastery in Regensburg and he stayed for six weeks, during which—​Arnold writes: I have composed some antiphones together with responsories to the memory of our patron saint, rather by devoting my soul to the praise of the saint than by relying on my own talent. The above-​mentioned bishop [Archbishop Anastasius] had the

322    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová monks and clerics of the diocese learn them, and celebrate the feast day of the saint publicly in the cathedral.3

Thus, this foreign guest created the cultural foundations for venerating a saint; using his repertoire of known models he successfully established a local tradition. These newly composed texts, written in Latin, came to serve as the foundation of new literary modes and institutions.4 In this region, writing in the vernacular was usually preceded by writing in the learned, authoritative language (Latin or Old Church Slavonic) rather than by writing in another vernacular. This hierarchical relationship between the models and local vernacular texts would explain why Latin models were seen as more valuable in the Middle Ages and were therefore better preserved in manuscripts: Many of the earliest vernacular texts survive only as inserts in Latin codices or fragments. In the early history of literary cultures in East-​Central Europe, cultural models come almost exclusively from the learned languages and not vernaculars—​a peculiarity that stands in marked contrast to the early history of medieval Romance and Germanic literatures. The primary role of Latin in literary activities might lead one to rethink the traditional accounts of national literary histories, which often use Western European models such as chivalric poetry or courtly love, which have limited validity in the context of East-​Central Europe.5 Due to the multilingual character of the region,6 Latin remained a lingua franca of administration and communication much longer (up until the mid-​nineteenth century in Croatia and Hungary) than in other parts of Europe.7

Cultural Institutions The output of the major cultural institutions (monasteries, cathedral schools, libraries, universities) and the literary output in both Latin and local vernaculars created and defined the first five centuries of literary culture in this region. Different regions adopted different alphabets in the early stages of the development of literary tradition: The creation of a Catholic Church hierarchy (bishoprics, archbishoprics) in these lands was followed by the establishment of schools and scriptoria, where Latin and—​in Bohemia and Croatia—​Slavonic literacy was taught from the eleventh century onward.8 The first Benedictine monasteries, like Břevnov (993) and Sázava (1032) in Bohemia, St. Martin’s Abbey (996, now Pannonhalma) in Hungary, and Tyniec near Cracow in Poland (1040) laid the foundations of a long cultural tradition of writing. Despite the fragmentary transmission of early manuscripts from the eleventh century, both the documents themselves and book catalogs show that scribes and their masters were intent on procuring and producing liturgical manuscripts in the earliest period.9 For part of the eleventh century, Slavonic rites were maintained at Sázava monastery (until “their books were completely destroyed and dispersed and are not read anymore anywhere”10), but by 1100, the presence of the Latin liturgy was secure everywhere. Scribes

Cultural Landscapes   323 were hired to fill the perceived lacks in written materials. Liturgical manuscripts were produced locally as early as the end of the eleventh century, as can be seen, for example, in the case of the foundation of the diocese of Zagreb in 1094. At least three liturgical books (a sacramentary, a benedictionale, and an agenda pontificalis) were imported from Hungary,11 one of them surely produced at the chapterhouse of the bishopric of Győr.12 The catalog of the Benedictine St. Martin’s Abbey in Hungary, surviving in the 1093 inventory of the monastery, describes around eighty manuscripts. Mainly they were liturgical, biblical, and patristic, although not exclusively (Cicero’s orations, Lucan’s Pharsalia, and Sedulius Scottus’s poems). Lavish illuminated manuscripts were usually ordered or imported from abroad in this early period; the magnificent Tyniec Sacramentary (c. 1060–​1070) was probably prepared near Cologne,13 the Evangelistary of Płock in Regensburg,14 and the St. Vitus Apocalypse and Evangelium Zábrdovicense (c. 1060–​1070)15 in Bohemia were imported from the Freising area.16 In exceptional cases, such as the Codex Vyssegradensis,17 an illuminated book of pericopes written around 1085 for the first Czech royal coronation, it can be reasonably well argued that the manuscript was commissioned locally and might have been produced in the Czech lands. Besides diocesan cathedrals, cathedral schools were created following the Western European model, which also used books for pedagogical and liturgical purposes.18 A fragmentary but telling reminder of this process is a letter from Fulbert of Chartres, a prominent professor at the Chartres cathedral school and bishop of the city, in which he addressed Bishop Bonipert of Pécs around 1020–​1023. Fulbert writes that he learned from one of his servants that the bishop in Hungary was lacking a volume of Priscian in the library (widely used in grammatical education) so he was sending him a copy.19 The first institution of higher education beyond the monastic and diocesan schools was the university in Prague; it was the first of its kind not only in Central Europe but also in the entire Holy Roman Empire. Its founder, the French-​educated King Charles of Bohemia (later Emperor Charles IV), asked Pope Clement VI of Avignon to support the institution with a university bull in 1347, and he himself issued a founding charter in 1348. His main idea was to keep the inhabitants of the kingdom who wished to pursue higher studies inside the country and “avoid begging the help of foreigners” (per aliena mendicare suffragia). The university received all the liberties and privileges given to the universities of Paris and Bologna, but, with a strong emphasis on theology, it was primarily modeled on the Paris institution, and many of the first professors arrived from there. Subsequently, it included all four faculties (arts, medicine, law, and theology) and received substantial support not only from Emperor Charles IV but also from the archbishop of Prague, Ernest of Pardubice.20 Until the mid-​fifteenth century, “no other university town east of Paris and north of the Alps could compare with Prague in the number and furnishings of university facilities.”21 Relatively strong financial and scholarly independence and the substantial influence of Wycliffite scholars and texts at the end of the fourteenth century eventually led to the expulsion of the German professors in 1409, and Prague became a stronghold of the Hussite revolution after the death of Hus (1415).22 Consequently, it was marginalized among Austrian, German, Hungarian,

324    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová and Polish students, who instead took up their studies at the neighboring universities of Cracow, Erfurt, Leipzig, and Vienna. Similarly, the university in Cracow was a royal foundation by Casimir the Great in 1364. Following a first unsuccessful period, it was refounded by King Władysław II Jagiełło in 1400 and became the most important international center of learning for the eastern part of Central Europe in the fifteenth century.23 It was often praised for its advances in the field of science (astronomy, astrology, and magic), which laid the foundations for the discoveries of Copernicus.24 In Hungary, Bishop William of Pécs founded a university in 1367, confirmed by a papal bull of Urbanus V (inspired by the foundation charter of the university of Vienna), but it must have been short-​lived, as only the names of a few professors and students survive and no disputations or registers. Despite repeated efforts, such as the foundation of the university of Óbuda (universitas Budensis, 1389 to c. 1403) and the academy of Bratislava by Archbishop Johannes de Zredna (the Academia Istropolitana in 1467, modeled on Bologna), none had a lasting impact on the intellectual life in Hungary.25

Literary Output in Latin Latin remained the primary mode of literary activity in the entire region throughout the period. The Classical tradition was an inherent part of education and continuously referred to in various genres such as in the Admonitions (c. 1027) of King St. Stephen of Hungary, in which he warned his descendants to be kind to foreigners as they might be the ones to safeguard the freedom of the kingdom, just as the sons of Aeneas (“Eneades”) did for Rome.26 When Cosmas of Prague (d. 1125), the first chronicler of the Czech lands, referred to someone as “another Sinon,” he clearly supposed that the reader had a deep acquaintance with Virgil’s Aeneid and the history of Troy.27 Several legendary stories of the Hungarians’ land-​taking were derived from the story of the Trojan conquest of Latium (as described in the Aeneid and by Dares Phrygius) in the Deeds of the Hungarians by the Anonymous Notary (c. 1200), who also compiled a—​now lost—​ Trojan history himself (in unum volumen proprio stilo compilaveram).28 In his Chronica Polonorum (1190–​1208), Vincentius Kadłubek transposed the contemporary political conflicts between Poland and the empire to ancient times and described them as the battles of the Sarmatians against Alexander the Great and Caesar.29 The Deliberation (Deliberatio) of St. Gerard of Csanád (c. 997–​1046) was probably the earliest extensive philosophical and literary work written in the region. Gerard was a Venetian, who—​at least according to a fourteenth-​century legend—​started off as a pilgrim to the Holy Land, but a Benedictine abbot persuaded him to come to Hungary in order to help Christianize the land instead.30 Supposedly, he edited his works while traveling around the country in a cart, and they do not seem to have enjoyed wide circulation outside of Hungary. Both the meditations on the canticle of the three youths thrown into the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 3:57–​65) and the epilogue to his sermons

Cultural Landscapes   325 are known from only single manuscripts.31 Nevertheless, the Deliberation is a unique and unusual piece of writing;32 it does not provide a literal or allegorical commentary on the biblical text, but rather offers a prolific meditation on each of the lines of this cosmological hymn (which modern Biblical critics consider an apocryphal interpolation). The exceptional literary qualities of the Biblical text were recognized as early as the ninth century, when Dhuoda wrote to her warrior son, “whether it is a time of prosperity or adversity for you, always recite The Hymn of the Three Children. No mortal can grasp the power of this hymn in which all creatures are called upon to praise the Creator.”33 Gerard of Csanád was similarly amazed by the poetic and semantic richness of the text, which prompted him to diverge from the literal meaning and build occasional distinctions derived from biblical parallels and encyclopedic sources such as the Etymologies of Isidor of Seville. The text also seems to have been appropriate for preaching and for teaching purposes. Gerard put a great deal of emphasis on including scholarly material in his explanations and often referred to the rules of hermeneutics. An important source of his bold and often arbitrary analogies is Pseudo-​Dionysius the Areopagite, a Greek Neo-​ Platonist (fifth century). Gerard regarded allegory as a more valuable tool of explanation than simple literal interpretation. When he interpreted the vision of the angel in the sun (Rev. 19:17), he remarked: “if we refer this sentence to the Sun we see in the world, and we think that the angel is standing there, we will ruin what the text wants to say, because it is not at all that way.” According to Gerard, the Sun is the interpretation of the divine word in preaching and hermeneutics and this sunlight shone upon the angel, that is, the Church, or going one step further, the patristic fathers. The allegorical interpretation of a text is compared to the rhetorical flight at the beginning of the Gospel of John, to the flight of birds, and to the rapture of St. Paul to heaven. To Gerard, the meditative joy of interpretation is perhaps the most important benefit of reading the Scriptures and the allegorization of his thoughts was his main guiding principle. There are otherwise only a few remnants of locally compiled homiletics until the end of the thirteenth century in the entire region (an exception is the twelfth-​century Homiliary of Opatovice in Bohemia) and a substantial number of charters (legal documents), formularies, and, dictamina (rhetoric model letters) survive, especially in the Czech lands.34 Among them the most noteworthy is the Epistolary of Queen Kunhuta, perhaps the work of Master Bohuslav, which includes love letters to her absent husband, King Přemysl Otokar II, inspired by Ovidʼs Heroides.35 The earliest rhetorical text originating in the entire region, the Epistolare dictamen, is the work of Henricus de Isernia (Jindřich z Isernie, a notary at the office of Prague, d. after 1301).36 The fourteenth century above all saw an unprecedented literary boom in Central Europe. Prominently, Emperor Charles IV consciously built an image of a “golden age” in his careful choices of chroniclers (Beneš Krabice of Weitmile, Přibík Pulkava of Radenín, and Giovanni di Marignolli),37 but also through his own writings, including Moralitates, a legend about St. Wenceslas (Crescente religione Christiana), and, especially, his own autobiography—​the Vita Caroli—​otherwise a rare genre during the Middle Ages.38 And he succeeded; there was great nostalgia for his times as soon as they were over. Hagiography also flourished during this time; there are legends of,

326    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová e.g., St. Agnes, and also legend-​like biographies of important personalities, e.g., Milicius of Cremsir (Milíč z Kroměříže),39 Ernest (Arnošt) of Pardubice, the first archbishop of Prague (d. 1364), and John of Jenštejn, the third archbishop of Prague, a politician and artist (d. 1400). Since Charles IV was well educated, he was in contact with many personalities of his time (including Petrarch and Cola di Rienzo40) and made Prague the center of the empire; it has often been argued that his time should be considered the period of proto-​humanism in the Czech lands. While there are some personalities and relevant works, however, it seems that true humanism only bloomed in the Czech lands toward the end of the fifteenth century.41 This period saw new spirituality, too, with new spiritual guidebooks (e.g., Malogranatum) and other texts focused on interiorizing faith (those written by Matthew of Janov were particularly popular).42 Due to the spread of literacy, more and more texts became influential beyond their immediate environments. Often, they reached a broader audience and circulated due to the agency of church orders; the sermons of Peregrinus of Opole (c. 1260–​1330), a Dominican of Raciborz and Wrocław, became immensely popular throughout late medieval Europe and survive in more than 300 manuscripts.43 The Malogranatum (1335?–​ 1382?),44 an ascetic text describing the road of a monk to perfection and the vision of God in the form of a dialogue between a son (filius) and a father (pater) was written near Prague by the abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Zbraslav (Aula Regia), but soon became an international bestseller through the Cistercian and Benedictine networks and was translated into German and Dutch. School literature could easily cross frontiers, as useful handbooks were well received everywhere; a good case in point is the Antigameratus (Against Foolishness, from the Old Polish word gamrat: an impertinent foolish person), a satirical poem written by Frowinus, a canon of Cracow between 1320 and 1330. In its 429 leonine hexameters the poem presents a satire of the entire society, including moral advice to a king, a bishop, a knight, a servant, and a peasant.45 At the same time it is a set of versus differentiales, where each line draws attention to homonyms with different meanings, thus, the satirical was coupled with a pedagogical purpose. Consequently, it became a popular school text (surviving in fifty-​seven copies) that was used often in combination with its models (the Disticha Catonis and the Facetus) and several grammatical commentaries were composed to accompany it. Similarly, the works of the theologian Matthew of Cracow, who studied and taught at the university of Prague and soon achieved a stellar career in Heidelberg and Italy, were also widely known across the continent.46 In some exceptional cases, the circulation of certain Latin works in Central Europe surpassed their popularity in other parts of Western Christianity; seemingly they had particular importance for the local readership for religious or political reasons. The works of John Wycliffe were copied in Bohemia in much larger quantities than any­ where else because of the Hussite movement. Similarly, the commentaries of Jean Versor on Aristotle’s works, imported from Paris to Prague by Václav of Vrbno, were quickly copied in Bohemia in 1460s.47 Most notably, the De tribus punctis christianae religionis, a short work by Thomas de Hibernia (generally known for being the author of Manipulus florum) was attached by Ernest of Pardubice to his synodal statutes in

Cultural Landscapes   327 1349 and, as a result, survives in more than 180 manuscripts in Europe, two-​thirds of which were copied in Bohemia. The remaining two parts of this trilogy, which were not attached to the synodal statutes, survive in only eight and four manuscripts, respectively.

Vernacular Literature? “Vernacularization” has been at the center of investigation in recent decades not only in Europe, but also in other global cultures, such as China and India. Basing his argument on the history of Sanskrit and the Indian vernacular languages, Sheldon Pollock has demonstrated that vernacularization—​that is, the spread of the use of a vernacular language alongside a “cosmopolitan” or “learned” language—​typically took place in two steps. First, literate people start to use the vernacular in everyday situations in order to preserve the memory of a particular event (e.g., in an inscription or a legal contract). This part of the process might be called “literalization,”48 In the second step, called “literarization,” writers start to use the vernacular language to imitate the “superposed cultural formation[s]‌” of the cosmopolitan language to write poetry or prose and to compose historical accounts or imaginative texts.49 The tasks for which vernacular writing is employed in this second phase were defined by cosmopolitan culture rather than occasional local interests. Pollock draws a detailed parallel between the development of Latin and Sanskrit and posits the years 1000 and 1500 as the two major turning points in the process of vernacularization.50 Due to the meager literary use of the local vernaculars in writing in Central Europe (Hungarian, Croatian, Polish, Slovak, with the important exception of Czech), the appearance of printing in the vernacular played a pivotal role in the process of vernacularization here. Thus, it is questionable whether the process of “literarization” extended beyond the realm of Latin until the second half of the fifteenth century in Poland or Hungary. The earliest vernacular literary texts usually survive in only a single copy and there is little evidence about their circulation and the possible existence of vernacular scribal practices. They are often translations or paraphrases of Latin prose texts (prayers, sermons) or poems (hymns, ecclesiastic chants), and they are transmitted in a Latin context; typically, an entire manuscript might be filled with Latin texts and the vernacular inserts occupy only one or a few pages. This is the codicological context of the “Funeral Sermon and Prayer” in the “Pray” codex, c. 1200 (named after George Pray, an eighteenth-​century scholar), and the “Old Hungarian Lament of Mary” (c. 1300) in the Leuven codex.51 The marginal position of these texts compared to Latin is also shown by the fact that they survive as notes on book covers (as in the case of the two earliest manuscripts of the Polish Bogurodzica hymn to the Virgin Mary from 1407 and 1408).52 In certain cases, the Latin codices once physically covered and hid these fragments, as vernacular texts were often relegated to book bindings. The Polish Holy Cross Sermons (c. 1300, fragments of six sermons on St. Catherine, St. Michael, St. Nicholas, the Three

328    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová Magi, Christmas, and Candlemas)53 were found in the binding of a biblical manuscript and the Hungarian Königsberg Fragments,54 fragmentary translations from a Marian treatise by Vincent de Beauvais, were recovered from the binding of the manuscript from which the translator was actually working. Recently, Lenka Jiroušková has successfully described the multilingual environment in Prague between 1348 and 1418, showing the complex interrelations between Czech, German, and Latin, and stressing the peculiarities of the writings in the region.55 An early example showing the coexistence of the “cosmopolitan” and the “vernacular” languages of the region is the so-​called Four Language Sigh, which shows the close relationship of the regional vernaculars.56 Its curious name derives from the fact that the anonymous scribe who copied the manuscript (originating from the library of Augustinian canons of Karlov in Prague) inserted a note on the back of the front folio describing his toil as a writer of manuscripts in a mixture of the languages he knew—​ German, Hungarian, Czech or Slovak, and Latin: Ach ysten nebyeski quam zer megdolgontat engemet Ze daz ich iaceo zwazan mynd edz agricola. Amen. Oh, God (Hungarian) heavenly (Czech) how (Latin) much (German)/​many times (Hungarian) labors (Hungarian) me (Hungarian) That (Czech) that (German) I (German) lie (Latin) tied up (Czech) as a (Hungarian) peasant (Latin).

The scribe highlighted the importance of this vital addition to the codex by jotting it down in neatly written rubricated letters. His identity is unknown, but it is significant from a literary point of view that in this manuscript he copied the Old Czech version of the Gesta Romanorum. This note shows that scribes were able to write in multiple languages, such as Latin and German, and they might also have been able to do so in the local vernaculars.57 The oral use of these vernaculars was always coupled with the presence of Latin in written contexts and in liturgical and church practice.58 Perhaps no other source shows the continuous parallel use of these languages better than the fragment of a collection of popular devotional songs, written on paper, and probably from an urban center of the Spiš region in the northern part of the kingdom of Hungary (present-​day Slovakia).59 The songs themselves are written in Latin, rubricated and neatly notated; the third surviving folio of the manuscript is annotated on the upper margins with an Easter chant (“Christ ist erstanden”) in Polish, Czech, German, and Hungarian. In fact, the Augustinian canon in Prague, Konrad Waldhauser, advised the multilingual chanting of this very same song in the 1360s as a means of fulfilling the message of the liturgical text read during Holy Week: “omnis lingua confiteatur quia Dominus Ihesus Christus est in Gloria patria.” (Phil. 2:11: “so that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father”). According to the preaching of Waldhauser, this song should be sung by the lay audience in both Czech and German, the two most important vernacular languages of fourteenth-​century Prague (“theutunice et bohemice

Cultural Landscapes   329 cantate”—​“you should sing in Czech and German”) while the Latin variant was sung by the clergy (“sicut nos cantamus latine”—​“as we sing in Latin”). Later, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Waldhauser’s vernacular program became part of the Hussite agenda. The Hussite character of this fragment can be demonstrated by the fact that it includes a famous hymn on the Eucharist, the Jesus Christus nostra salus, which was attributed to John Hus during the Protestant Reform and translated by Martin Luther as Jesus Christus unser Heiland.60 The Hussite practice of vernacular translation had an impact not only on the evolution of Czech literary language, but also on liturgical chants and Bible translations in Hungary and Poland.61 The parallel use of vernacular languages reflects the late medieval linguistic realities of the region where a text was written. While the Spiš region itself (on the northern border of Hungary, also called Upper Hungary) used Czech as a written language, most cities were founded by German-​speaking Saxon settlers in the thirteenth century. Since it belonged to the Hungarian kingdom, some town-​dwellers must have spoken Hungarian. A complication was that King Sigismund of Hungary pawned thirteen cities of Spiš to the Polish kingdom in 1414, and, lying on the northern border of the Hungarian kingdom, Polish influence must have been considerable. Of course, not all speakers of every vernacular (and Latin) could mutually understand every other language present, but as all the language users were exposed daily to a multilingual environment, they must have had a functional understanding of certain phrases and expressions. The transition to a literary culture where the vernacular had substantial significance was uneasy. The Decree of Kutná Hora in 1409, by which foreign masters were forced to leave the university of Prague,62 as well as the burning of John Wycliffeʼs works at the university in 1410, the death of Jan Hus (the most prolific writer of late medieval Bohemia) in 1415, and the death of Wenceslas IV in 1419 all marked the beginning of a new era in Bohemia, when literary culture was substantially transformed in a historically violent period. In the first phase a great number of manuscripts were destroyed during the Hussite wars. Most of the writing from this time concerns religious controversy (treatises, polemics, invectives, propagandistic leaflets, sermons, and letters), and virtually every genre was influenced by the religious split.63 It was also the time of an unprecedented vernacular boom. Although Latin was usually associated with the Catholic side, and the Czech language with the Hussites and their success among common people and women, Latin remained the primary language of learned communication on both sides. Most of the polemic was conducted in Latin,64 even linguistic analysis of the vernacular; the celebrated treatise Orthographia Bohemica, promoting a change in Czech orthography from digraphic into diacritic (traditionally but probably falsely ascribed to Jan Hus) was written in Latin.65 Latin was used for most of the chronicles (e.g., Laurentius of Březováʼs Chronicon covering 1414–​1421), reports (e.g., Petr of Mladoňoviceʼs report on the death of Hus, Relatio de magistri Joannis Hus causa in Constantiensi concilio acta), private correspondence (letters of Jan Hus, or, e.g., personal letters by Perchta of Rosenberg describing her unhappy marriage), the only medieval encyclopedia written by a Czech author (the Liber viginti arcium by Paulerinus, i.e.,

330    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová Pavel Žídek), as well as numerous parodies and also a great number of invectives and topical songs.66 Literary practices seem to have had a regional character;67 no literary work is known that translated from one East-​Central European vernacular to another (or to a Western vernacular). Latin often played a mediating role among different cultures; a good case in point is the early fourteenth-​century Latin poem about a lawyer called Albert from Cracow. In the De quodam advocato Alberto, the author depicts a satirical image of a German jurist in the form of a confession-​like prosopopoeia (a rhetorical device in which a writer speaks as another person). The protagonist of the poem gives a detailed and honest account of his fate in the first person singular; settling in Poland he sparked a rebellion in his new country and had to escape to Bohemia, where he died because God wanted to punish him for being a villain. Albert confesses (seemingly after his death) that it was the German national character itself which prompted him to cause so much trouble: “Nature itself made me do it, /​what is the main care of Germans /​that wherever they go /​they always want to be the leaders /​and not to obey anyone.”68 Albert admits that although they might seem humble at first, they then marry their daughters to the aristocracy while also marrying the daughters of the aristocrats. In a mixed-​language community such as that of early fourteenth-​century Cracow, Latin might still have functioned as the primary vehicle of satirical messages between the Polish and German communities and it might also have been used to inform Czech readers about the typical deceptions of the Germans at the end of the poem (sic Bohemi sunt delusi—“​so are the Czechs deluded”). Among the vernacular literary languages, only Czech seems to have reached a similar status to Western European vernaculars. Two fragments of a unique Passion play, Mastičkář (The Ointment Seller/​Apothecary, the oldest preserved dramatic text in a Slavic language) use Czech, German, and Latin.69 While Czech is the dominant language of the play, German is interspersed, especially for mockery and vulgarisms. Latin is reserved for the three Marys. Their language sets them apart from the crude market scene. Although this linguistic choice might have caused misunderstanding among the audience, it must have seemed preferable to mark the Marys in this way as honorable. Several observations can be drawn in conclusion. In the early period, substantial variability in the choice of languages and script eventually resolved itself into patterns similar to those in Western Europe. First and foremost, it seems clear that by the end of the Middle Ages the educational infrastructure in East-​Central Europe had become similar to Western European models, although its complexity tended to be lower and the density lesser. Higher education was present in Bohemia and Poland at least, and by the fourteenth century this region produced literary works that raised the interest of medieval readers outside the region. The use of Czech as a literary language was prominent in the regional comparison, not only because of the sheer number of works written and the wide variety of genres and subjects for which it was used, but also because of the early use of printing to disseminate these texts. The general picture reveals surprising insights. It seems that there was relatively little relationship among the medieval Western European

Cultural Landscapes   331 vernaculars and the emerging literary languages of East Central Europe (except for Czech, where the influence of medieval German literary texts is eminent). Latin had a significant impact in the region; and its primary role in literary activities might lead one to rethink the traditional accounts of national literary histories.70

Notes 1. Julia Verkholantsev, The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome: The History of the Legend and Its Legacy, or, How the Translator of the Vulgate Became an Apostle of the Slavs (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014); Ivan Duichev, ed., Kiril and Methodius: Founders of Slavonic Writing: A Collection of Sources and Critical Studies, translated by Spass Nikolov (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1985). 2. Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 30–​31; Nora Berend, József Laszlovszky, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary,” in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–​1200, edited by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 325–​331. 3. Our translation. Előd Nemerkényi, Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary Eleventh Century (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004), 27. 4. Italian scholarship differentiates between the horizontal and vertical process of translation: Vertical translation describes the transmission of the learned auctoritas of the Latin text into the vernacular, whereas horizontal translation covers the diffusion of texts between dialectal variants and closely related languages (e.g., from French into Venetian), the creation of paraphrases, summaries, abbreviated versions, and so forth, for a local linguistic reality. Using this terminology, one can say that horizontal translation models were not widely present in the region until the late Middle Ages. On the concept of “horizontal” and “vertical” translation (“volgarizzamento”), see Gianfranco Folena, Volgarizzare e tradurre? (Turin: Einaudi, 1991), 13; Cesare Segre, “I volgarizzamenti,” in Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, Vol. 1: Il Medioevo latino, Vol. 3: La ricezione del testo, edited by Guglielmo Cavallo, Claudio Leonardi, and Enrico Menestò (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1995), 271–​298; Alison Cornish, Vernacular Translation in Dante’s Italy: Illiterate Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 5. For a critical approach to national literary histories in the region, see Pavlína Rychterová, “Genealogies of Czech Literary History,” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 1 (2015) (https://​doi.org/​10.13130/​int​erfa​ces-​4920, accessed August 10, 2020). 6. See János M. Bak, “A Kingdom of Many Languages: Linguistic Pluralism in Medieval Hungary,” in Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Communication and Miscommunication in the Premodern World, edited by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 165–​176. 7. Latin at the Crossroads of Identity, edited by Gábor Almási and Lav Šubarić (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 8. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 392–​394. Glagolitic writing was mostly limited to Bulgaria, Croatia, and Bohemia; see Mateo Žagar, Introduction to Glagolitic Paleography (Heidelberg: Winter, 2020). The medieval fragments of Old Hungarian (Székely) runiform script are mostly of

332    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová occasional or commemorative character. Cf. András Róna-​Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Budapest: Central European Press, 1999), 437–​443. 9. On medieval book catalogs and the history of libraries in Central Europe, see Ivan Hlaváček, Středověké soupisy knih a knihoven v českých zemích: Příspěvek ke kulturním dějinám českým [Medieval inventories of books and libraries in the Czech lands: Contribution to the Czech cultural history], Acta Universitatis Carolinae 11 (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1966); Edward Potkowski, Książka rękopiśmienna w kulturze Polski średniowiecznej (Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1984); Edit Madas, “Les bibliothèques des chapitres de Veszprém, de Presbourg et de Zagreb d’après leurs inventaires,” in Formation intellectuelle et culture du clergé dans les territoires Angevins: (Milieu du XIIIE–​fin du XVE siècle), edited by Marie-​Madelaine de Cevins and J. M. Matz (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005), 221–​230; Krzysztof Ożóg, “Book Collections in Medieval Cracow: Outline of the State of Research,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 15 (2010): 121–​146; Jerzy Kaliszuk, “Mendicant Books and Libraries on Southeast Lands of the Polish Kingdom in the 15TH and Early 16TH Century,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 15 (2010): 147–​171; István Monok, Les bibliothèques et la lecture dans le Bassin des Carpates (Paris: Champion, 2011). 10. Monachi Sazawiensis continuatio Cosmae, in Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, vol. 2, edited by Joseph Emler (Prague: Museum Království Českého, 1874), 238–​269, here 250. 11. Zagreb, Metropolitan Library, MR 89, 126, 165. See Balázs Horváth and Miklós István Földváry, “Beyond the Gradual: An Analysis of the Recited Layers of Mass Propers and the Impact of Regensburg on the Early Hungarian Liturgy,” Studia Musicologica 56 (2015): 161–​172. 12. Zoran Hudovsky, “Benedictionale MR 89 of Zagreb,” Studia musicologica 9 (1967): 55–​ 75. For an edition of MR 165, see Pontificale Chartvirgi, saeculi XI exeuntis de Hungaria (Strigoniense) (Zagrabiae, Knižnica Metropolitana MR 165), edited by Miklós Földváry (Budapest: Argumentum, 2013). 13. Shelfmark: Warsaw, National Library, Rps BOZ cim. 8. 14. Shelfmark: Cracow, Muzeum Książąt Czartoryskich w Krakowie, ms. 1207. 15. Shelfmarks: Prague, Metropolitan Chapter, ms. cim. 3; Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna, M II 74. 16. Berend, Urbańczyk, and Wiszewski, Central Europe, 395. 17. Shelfmark: Prague, National Library, XIV. A. 13. 18. There is no accessible English language survey on this subject. See Krzysztof Stopka, Szkoły katedralne metropolii gnieźnieńskiej w średniowieczu na tle europejski [Cathedral schools of the Gniezno metropolis in the Middle Ages on the European soil] (Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1994). 19. Nemerkényi, Latin Classics, 2004. 20. Michal Svatoš, “The Studium Generale 1347/​8–​1419,” in A History of Charles University, 1348–​1802, vol. 1, edited by Ivana Čornejová and Michal Svatoš, translated by Anna Bryson (Prague: Karolinum, 2001), 22–​93; František Šmahel, Charles University in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 213–​315; Mlada Holá, Studentské koleje pražské univerzity v pozdním středověku a raném novověku/​Prague University Student Colleges in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: The History-​Administration-​Official Documents (until 1622) (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 2017); Zdeňka Hledíková, Arnošt z Pardubic: Arcibiskup, zakladatel, rádce [Ernest from Pardubice: Archbishop, founder, mentor] (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2008). The intellectual life of the early period remains difficult to reconstruct, see Martin Dekarli, “Henry Totting of Oyta and the Prague Nominalist

Cultural Landscapes   333 Schola Communis between 1366 and 1409: A Preliminary Draft,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae–​Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 55 (2015): 53–​70. In general, see Paul W. Knoll, “Nationes and Other Bonding Groups at Late Medieval Central European Universities,” in Mobs: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry, edited by Nancy van Deusen and Leonard Michael Koff (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 95–​115. On Cracow, see also Paul W. Knoll, “A Pearl of Powerful Learning”: The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2016) and the studies in What Is New in the New Universities? Learning in Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages (1340–​1500), edited by Elżbieta Jung (Warsaw: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii PAN, 2018). 21. Šmahel, Charles University, 215. 22. Anne Hudson, “Oxford to Prague: The Writings of John Wyclif and His English Followers in Bohemia,” Slavonic and East European Review 75 (1997): 642–​657; Chris Schabel, Monica Brinzei, and Mihai Maga, “A Golden Age of Theology at Prague: Prague Sentences Commentaries, ca. 1375–​1385, with a Redating of the Arrival of Wycliffism in Bohemia,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae–​Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 55 (2015): 19–​39. Ota Pavlíček, “Wyclif ’s Early Reception in Bohemia,” in Europe after Wyclif, edited by J. Patrick Hornbeck and Michael van Dussen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 89–​114. František Šmahel, “The Kuttenberg Decree and the Withdrawal of the German Students from Prague in 1409: A Discussion,” History of Universities 4 (1984): 153–​166. See also Michael Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Pavel Soukup, Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2019). 23. Knoll, “A Pearl of Powerful Learning.” 24. Benedek Láng, Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008); Owen Gingerich and James MacLachlan, Nicolaus Copernicus: Making the Earth a Planet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 14–​33, and the volumes in the series Studia Copernicana. 25. Asztrik Gabriel, The Medieval Universities of Pécs and Pozsony (Notre Dame, IN: Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame: 1969); Universitas Budensis 1395–​1995: International Conference for the History of Universities on the Occasion of the 600th Anniversary of the Foundation of the University of Buda, edited by László Szögi (Budapest: n.p., 1997); Paul J. Shore, “Academia Istropolitana: Problems of Documentation and Modern Historicism,” Wiener Beiträge zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 23 (1999): 133–​147. 26. See the respective chapters in Zara M. Torlone, Dana LaCourse Munteanu, and Dorota Dutsch, eds., A Handbook on Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe (Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2017). 27. Lisa Wolverton, Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 115–​116; Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs, edited by János M. Bak and Pavlína Rychterová, translated by Petra Mutlová and Martyn Rady (Budapest: CEU Press, 2019). 28. Anonymus and Master Roger, The Deeds of the Hungarians: Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars, edited by János M. Bak, Martyn Rady, and László Veszprémy, Central European Texts (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), xvii–​xxxviii. 29. Vincentius Kadłubek, Chronica Polonorum, edited by Marianus Plezia (Cracow: Secesja, 1994).

334    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová 30. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 126–​127. 31. In the manuscripts Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 6211, and Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, St. Peter perg. 23, respectively. 32. Gerard of Csanád, Deliberatio Gerardi Moresanae ecclesiae episcopi Supra hymnum trium puerorum, edited by Béla Karácsonyi and László Szegfű (Szeged: Scriptum, 1999), which supersedes Gerardus, Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum, edited by Gabriel Silagi, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio mediaeualis 49 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979). On the sermons, see Felix Heinzer, “Neues zu Gerhard von Csanád: Die Schlußschrift einer Homiliensammlung,” Südost-​Forschungen 41 (1982): 1–​7. 33. Dhuoda, Handbook for Her Warrior Son: Liber Manualis, edited by Marcelle Thiébaux (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 237. 34. Jana Nechutová, Die lateinische Literatur des Mittelalters in Böhmen, translated by Hildegard Boková and Václav Bok (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007), 118, in general, see 128–​136. Nevertheless, sermon collections were widespread, e.g., the twelfth-​century Zdík homiliary in Bohemia or the mostly Dominican sermons in the thirteenth-​century “Leuven manuscript” in Hungary, for which see András Vizkelety, Die Rezeption der europäischen Sermonesliteratur im Löwener Kodex (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2004). 35. Francesca Battista, “Queen Kunhuta’s Epistles to Her Husband,” in Medieval Letters: Between Fiction and Document, edited by Christian Høgel and E. Bartoli (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 265–​276. 36. Brigitte Schaller, “Der Traktat des Heinrich von Isernia De coloribus rethoricis,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 49 (1993): 113–​153. 37. Marie Bláhová, “Die Hofgeschichtsschreibung am böhmischen Herrscherhof im Mittelalter,” in Die Hofgeschichtsschreibung im mittelalterlichen Europa, edited by Rudolf Schieffer and Jarosław Wenta (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2006), 51–​72; Irene Malfatto, “John of Marignolli and the Historiographical Project of Charles IV,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae–​Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 55 (2015): 131–​140. Other chroniclers of this period include Francis of Prague (František Pražský) and Neplach. For a general introduction, see also Joachim Heinzle and L. Peter Johnson, eds., Literatur im Umkreis des Prager Hofs der Luxemburger: Schweinfurter Kolloquium (1992) (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1994), and Alfred Thomas, Anne’s Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–​1420 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). 38. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, edited by Socii Bollandiani (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1900–​1901), vol. 2, 1275 (n. 8842); and Charles IV, Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV; and, His Legend of St. Wenceslas, edited by Balázs Nagy and Frank Schaer (Budapest: CEU Press), 2001. 39. Peter C. A Morée, ”The Dating of the Postils of Milicius de Chremsir,” Listy filologické 121 (1998): 64–​83; Peter C. A. Morée, Preaching in Fourteenth-​Century Bohemia: The Life and Ideas of Milicius de Chremsir (†1374) and His Significance in the Historiography of Bohemia (Slavkov: EMAN, 1999); David C. Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond: Milíč of Kroměříž and the Topography of Prostitution in Fourteenth-​ Century Prague,” Speculum 79 (2004): 407–​442; Pavel Soukup, “‘Ne verbum Dei in nobis suffocetur . . . ’: Kommunikationstechniken von Predigern des frühen Hussitismus,” Bohemia 48 (2008): 54–​82.

Cultural Landscapes   335 40. Charles Calvert Bayley, “Petrarch, Charles IV, and the ‘Renovatio Imperii,’” Speculum 17 (1942): 323–​341; Amedeo Molnár, “Cola di Rienzo, Petrarca e le origini della riforma hussita,” Protestantesimo 19 (1964): 214–​223. 41. Especially Johannes Noviforensis (Johann von Neumarkt/​Jan ze Středy). See Ugo Dotti, “Petrarch in Bohemia: Culture and Civil Life in the Correspondence between Petrarch and Johann von Neumarkt,” in Petrarch and His Readers in the Renaissance, edited by Karl A. E. Enenkel and Jan Papy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 73–​87; Ricarda Bauschke, “Johann von Neumarkt: ‘Hieronymus-​Briefe’; Probleme von Epochengrenzen und Epochenschwellen am Beispiel des Prager Frühhumanismus,” in Humanismus in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, edited by Nicola McLelland, Hans-​Jochen Schiewer, and Stefanie Schmitt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 257–​272. 42. Jana Nechutová, “Matěj of Janov and His Work Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti: The Significance of Volume VI and Its Relation to the Previously Published Volumes,” Bohemian Reform and Religious Practice 2 (1998): 15–​24; Martin Dekarli, “Regula generalis, principalis, prima veritas: The Philosophical and Theological Principle of Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti of Matěj of Janov,” Bohemian Reform and Religious Practice 8 (2008): 30–​41; Vilém Herold, “The Spiritual Background of the Czech Reformation: Precursors of Jan Hus,” in A Companion to Jan Hus, edited by František Šmahel and Ota Pavliček (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 81–​89. 43. Peregrinus de Opole, Sermones de tempore et de sanctis, edited by Richardus Tatarzyński (Warsaw: Institutum Thomisticum, 1997). On popular catechetic texts, see also Krzysztof Bracha, “Commentaries on the Decalogue in the Late Middle Ages: Between Method and Catechesis, Poland in the European Context, The State of Research and Perspectives,” in Glossae-​scholia-​commentarii: Studies on Commenting Texts in Antiquity and Middle Ages, edited by Mieczyław Mejor, Katarzyna Jazdzewska, and Anna Zajchowska (Bern: Peter Lang, 2014), 177–​194. 44. Manfred Gerwing, Malogranatum oder der dreifache Weg zur Vollkommenheit: Ein Beitrag zur Spiritualität des Spätmittelalters (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1986); Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Lateinische Dialoge 1200–​1400: Literaturhistorische Studie und Repertorium (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 559–​564. 45. Edwin Habel, “Der Antigameratus des Frowinus von Krakau,” in Studien zur lateinischen Dichtung des Mittelalters: Ehrengabe für Karl Strecker, edited by Walter Stach and Hans Walther (Dresden: Baensch, 1931), 60–​77; and Thomas Haye, “Frowin von Krakau und die spätmittelalterliche Ständesatire,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 70 (2012): 163–​182. A new critical edition is being prepared by Mieczysław Mejor. 46. Matthias Nuding, Matthäus von Krakau: Theologe, Politiker, Kirchenreformer in Krakau, Prag und Heidelberg zur Zeit des Großen Abendländischen Schismas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). 47. Lucie Doležalová, “Personal Multiple-​ Text Manuscripts in Late Medieval Central Europe: The ‘Library’ of Crux of Telč (1434–​1504),” in The Emergence of Multiple-​Text Manuscripts, edited by Alessandro Bausi, Michael Friedrich, and Marilena Maniaci (Berlin: De Gruyter: 2019), 158. 48. On pragmatic literacy, see Katalin Szende, “Buda, Pest, Óbuda–​and Visegrád,” in Europe, 1348–​1418: A Literary History, edited by David Wallace, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), vol. 2, 533–​550; Anna Adamska, “Intersections: Medieval East Central Europe from the Perspective of Literacy and Communication,” in Medieval East Central Europe in

336    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová Comparative Perspective, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 225–​ 238; Agnieszka Bartoszewicz, Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017); Katalin Szende, Trust, Authority, and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). 49. Sheldon Pollock, “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History,” Public Culture 13 (2000), 591–​625 and Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 50. Pollock, The Language of the Gods, 259–​281. 51. Edit Madas and Emmanuel Poulle, “L ’organisation des cahiers du Codex Pray,” Scriptorium 57 (2003): 238–​252; Edit Madas, “La naissance du hongrois écrit,” in The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe, edited by Marco Mostert and Anna Adamska (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 311–​319; Edit Madas, “The Late-​Medieval Book Culture in Hungary,” in A Star in the Raven’s Shadow: János Vitéz and the Beginning of Humanism in Hungary: Exhibition Catalogue, edited by Ferenc Földesi (Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, 2008), 9–​23; Edit Madas, “Les ordres mendiants en Hongrie et la littérature médiévale en langue vérnaculaire (XIIIE–​XVE siècle),” in Entre stabilité et itinérance: Livre et culture des ordres mendiants, edited by Nicole Bériou, Martin Morard, and Donatella Nebbiai (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 367–​374. For English translations, see Old Hungarian Literary Reader: 11th–​18th Centuries, edited by Tibor Klaniczay (Budapest: Corvina, 1985). 52. Cracow, Jagellonian Library, ms. 1619 and 408. For English translations, see Medieval Literature in Poland. 53. Warsaw, National Library, ms. 8001. 54. Toruń, University Library, Rps 25/​III. 55. Lenka Jiroušková, “Prague,” in Europe: A Literary History (1348–​1418), edited by David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), vol. 2, 617–​651. On Bohemia in general, see Winfried Baumann, Die Literatur des Mittelalters in Böhmen: Deutsch-​lateinisch-​ tschechische Literatur vom 10. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1978). 56. Prague, National Library, XVII. F. 28. 57. Of course, Latin and German had different functions and German had a limited impact on the medieval vernacular literary culture in Hungary and Poland, unlike in Bohemia. See Jan K. Hon, “Late Medieval German Verse Romances and Their Czech Adaptations: Research Perspectives,” in Slovo a smysl/​Word and Sense 22 (2014): 13–​37; Jan K. Hon, Übersetzung und Poetik: Der deutsche Prosaroman im Spiegel tschechischer Übersetzungen der Frühen Neuzeit (Heidelberg: Winter, 2016). 58. On multilingualism and the relationship of the vernacular to Latin, see Jerzy Kaliszuk, “Latin Script and the Vernacular Text in the Middle Ages: The Case of Poland in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Teaching Writing, Learning to Write, edited by Peter R. Robinson (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 2010), 111–​128; Lucie Doležalová, “Multilingualism and Late Medieval Manuscript Culture,” in The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches, edited by Michael van Deusen and Michael Johnston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 160–​180; Gábor Kiss Farkas, “Reading Nuns at the Insula Leporum: Traces of Bilingualism in a Late Medieval Dominican Nunnery,” in Pursuing a New Order, edited by Pavlina Rychterová (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), vol. 1, 169–​192. 59. Budapest, National Library, Cod. Lat. 534, 3r. 60. Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 154–​157.

Cultural Landscapes   337 61. Cf. Paweł Kras, “The Vernacular Eulogy of John Wyclif by Master Andrzej of Dobczyn: Textual Transmission of Dissident Ideas in Fifteenth Century Poland,” in Pursuing a New Order, Vol. 2: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation, edited by Pavlína Rychterová (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 157–​172. On Hussite literary production in Latin, see also Lucie Doležalová, “Usquoque tu, Domine, obdormis gravi sopore? A Topical Song from Medieval Bohemia: Fragment Prague, Library of the National Museum 1 K 618,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 53 (2018): 443–​460. 62. Martin Nodl, Das Kuttenberger Dekret von 1409: Von der Eintracht zum Konflikt der Prager Universitätsnationen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2017). 63. See Pavel Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, vol. 1 (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1985) and vol. 2 (Warsaw: IHN PAN, 1995). 64. A curious exception is the polemic between Hilarius of Litoměřice and Václav Koranda the Younger—​while Hilarius writes in Latin, Koranda replies to him in Czech, with several linguistic misunderstandings that Hilarius then uses to mock his opponent; see also Jindřich Marek, Václav Koranda mladší: Utrakvistický administrátor a literát [Wenceslas Koranda the Younger: An Utraquist administrator and writer] (Prague: Lidové noviny, 2017). 65. Orthographia bohemica, edited by Kateřina Voleková (Prague: Akropolis, 2019). 66. See, for example, Doležalová, “Usquoque tu, Domine. 67. See Soukup, Jan Hus. 68. “Ad hoc traxit me natura /​Quae est Almanorum cura /​Ut quocunque veniunt, /​Semper volunt primi esse, /​Et nulli prorsus subesse.” Henryk Kowalewicz, “Piesń o wójcie krakowskiem Albercie,” Pamiętnik Literacki 56 (1965): 125–​138. For details, see Teresa Michałowska, Literatura polskiego średniowiecza (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 2011), 649–​650. 69. Jarmila F. Veltrusky, A Sacred Farce from Medieval Bohemia: Mastičkář (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985). On theater in medieval Poland, see Piotr Bering, “New Trends on Medieval Theatre in Poland,” European Medieval Drama 11 (2007): 97–​105. 70. For a critical approach to national literary histories in the region, see Pavlína Rychterová, “Genealogies of Czech Literary History,” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 1 (2015) (https://​doi.org/​10.13130/​int​erfa​ces-​4920, accessed August 10, 2020).

Further Reading Chrestomatia staropolska: Teksty do roku 1543 [Old Polish anthology: Texts until 1543]. Edited by Wieslaw Wydra and Wojciech Ryszard Rzepka. Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1995. Doležalová, Lucie, Gábor Kiss Farkas, and Rafał Wójcik. The Art of Memory in East Central Europe. Edited by Gábor Kiss Farkas. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016. Holl, Béla, and Kinga Körmendy, eds. Repertorium hymnologicum medii aevi Hungariae: Initia hymnorum, officiorum rhythmicorum, sequentiarum, tractuum, troporum, versuum alleluiaticorum cantionumque. Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (OSZK), 2012. 18th Centuries. Budapest: Klaniczay, Tibor, ed. Old Hungarian Literary Reader: 11th–​ Corvina, 1985. Medieval Literature of Poland: An Anthology. Translated by Michael J. Mikoś. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. Michałowska, Teresa. Średniowiecze. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1995.

338    Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová Polen im Mittelalter–​Poland in the Middle Ages–​La Pologne au Moyen Age: A Bibliography of Polish Medieval Scholarship in German, English and French since 1990. Edited by Eduard Mühle and Anna Laskowska. Cracow: Towarzystwo Naukowe, 2014. Schamschula, Walter. An Anthology of Czech Literature, 1st Period: From the Beginnings till 1410. West Slavic Contributions 2. Peter Lang: Frankfurt, 1991. Sermones de sancto Ladislao rege Hungariae. Edited by Edit Madas. Debrecen: Debreceni Egyetem, 2004. Spunar, Pavel. Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans. Vol. 1. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1985. Spunar, Pavel. Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans. Vol. 2. Warsaw: Instytut Historii Nauki PAN, 1995. Verkholantsev, Julia. Ruthenica Bohemica: Ruthenian translations from Czech in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland. Vienna: Lit, 2008.

Chapter 15

A H istory of S o c ia l C om municat i on i n East-​Centra l E u rope Words, Scripts, and Beyond Anna Adamska

The history of social communication is a quickly expanding metadiscipline in contemporary medieval studies. Inspired by the “revolution of electronic media” in the second half of the twentieth century, it considers the exchange of information between individuals and societies through space and time, with “information” being understood in the broadest sense of the term. It concerns both statements (concerning knowledge, ideas, or beliefs) and instructions (purposes, values, and norms).1 Scholarly attention has long been focused on the written and oral modes of communication. At present, the social history of communication considers all possible written, oral, and nonverbal forms of communication, as it has become ever clearer that the gradual dissemination of the written word in all domains of human activity did not at all mean the elimination of other tools of communication.2 This wide-​ranging field of study draws on the achievements of many disciplines and trespasses their traditional boundaries.3 The starting-​point for investigation is the study of “acts of communication,” which includes identifying the “sender” and the “receiver” of a message as well as analyzing the message’s contents and transmission.4 The success of any act of communication and the efficiency of its whole system depends on the ability of all the parties involved to use the tools that serve to encode and decode the message. The appraisal of this ability is important. This is a relatively new part of the investigation, as discussions of the possibility of failed communication have only started recently.5 Scholarly discussion of the preconditions for participation in written culture has led to renewed investigation of the concept of literacy. The traditional view of medieval society as consisting of a very small group of literate clergymen among vast numbers of illiterates is giving way to a much more nuanced approach. Today, scholars assume that even literates were

340   Anna Adamska able to navigate in only some registers of literacy, while the lack of practical skills did not exclude individuals from participating in written culture in many intermediary ways. When studying the efficacy of script as an instrument of communication, we are dealing with people who, irrespective of the presence or absence of their technical literacy skills, could participate in written culture in various registers of literacy and on different levels.6 The idea of “literacy”—​in the sense not only of an ability to encode and decode written messages, but also in the sense of understanding how a tool of communication works and what purposes it can serve7—​is also being introduced into the discussion of the other instruments of communication. For instance, the opinion, spreading in contemporary scholarship, that medieval images possessed their own “language” and “grammar” and were “read” resulted in the concept of “visual literacy.”8 Defined most often as the ability to decipher and interpret nonalphabetic signs and depictions, visual literacy leads beyond the usual analysis of the content of visual messages and the intentions of their senders. Instead, one starts to ask questions about how much of the information encoded in these messages really reached the recipients and how well prepared they were to decode them. Serious consideration of this question demands abandoning the old conviction that pictura est laicorum scriptura (“Pictures are writing for lay [illiterate] people”) and considering that “reading” signs, depictions, and objects required some preparation, and that—​similarly to the handling of written texts—​the “readers’ ” competence might vary considerably.9 Likewise, one may assume various levels of competence in decoding messages carried in other than visual channels: through sound, gestures, smells, or taste. Thus, the question of whether a message, encoded in one way or another, arrived conforming to the intentions of the sender has to become an inescapable component of an investigation. It would be accompanied by an equally important question concerning the cultural determination of sensual, especially visual, perception. Did medieval people perceive signs, colors, and depictions in the same way as we do? The preliminary results of ongoing discussions suggest that the conceptualization of visual messages can differ from one culture to another.10 For historians of social communication this conclusion is a clear warning against incautious overinterpretation of their sources.

The Instrumentarium of Social Communication in East Central Europe Until now, the questionnaire of the history of social communication has been applied only partially to medieval East-​Central Europe (understood as the kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland in their historical boundaries). Scholars have concentrated on the gradual passage from orality to literacy and on the development of written culture.11 The aim of this article is to indicate some possibilities of placing script—​the

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     341 instrument of communication usually treated as “modern” and “rational”—​into a broader context of practices involving all audible, visual, olfactory, sapid, and tactile forms, engaging all human senses. This chapter, however, makes no pretense of providing anything more than a step toward the future comprehensive study of modes of social communication in the region. The application of the extended research questionnaire needs to be balanced by an awareness of the methodological and conceptual difficulties, starting with the fact that many forms of oral, nonverbal, and visual communication can be investigated only through the intermediary of written texts. Such texts often remain not only subject to scholarly discussion concerning their authorship, dating, and trustworthiness, but they may also offer a discourse about the phenomena rather than an accurate description because of their use of narrative strategies and commonplaces. When applying a regional perspective, one also notes the unequal preservation of both written and nonwritten material sources in the three East Central European kingdoms. Moreover, capitalizing on the achievements of the disciplines dealing with the various types of these sources also needs to take into account their uneven development in the countries that presently make up what was once medieval East-​Central Europe. The considerable progress of research elsewhere in Europe concerning practices and strategies of communication offers opportunities for instructive comparison.12 This is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Most of the techniques and modes of communication were not “invented” in medieval times. The Christianization of the Western Slavs and Hungarians at the end of the first millennium, reinforced in the thirteenth century, resulted in the introduction of writing,13 first for religious and later for secular purposes. For several centuries this created a structural diglossia between Latin, the language of written communication, and local spoken vernaculars.14 At the same time, the Christian religion gave a new dimension to all the forms and instruments of communication used in pre-​Christian times: a spoken word, a gesture, a pictorial sign, or a flavor might work as a renewed message in new religious (and secular) contexts.

Word and Sound The lasting importance of orality in East-​Central Europe can be seen clearly in the communication strategies of the Roman Church and the State, paradoxically also the main agents of literacy in the region. In the Christian liturgy, the written word of the Gospel became an element in a multimedia spectacle engaging all the human senses, while the living word of the preacher remained the basic tool of pastoral care for the whole medieval period. Special value was also attached to the word of the ruler, who acted as the anointed “vicar of Christ” on earth and the source of law. The practice of government known as the perambulation of the country (rex ambulans) presupposed that the monarch could not only be seen in public by everyone but could also be heard when proclaiming his will during assemblies and court sessions.15 The extension of

342   Anna Adamska the ruler’s solemn word to his representatives and messengers (praecones, camerarii, officiales, ministeriales), attested for all three kingdoms,16 clearly reflects its public character. One expected the ruler to control his tongue and condemned immoderate speech by him.17 Attention is paid less often to the importance of the private dimension of the monarch’s word. Although his accessibility to all subjects was highly praised, the possibility of direct conversation with the ruler was treated as a (fragile) social privilege that could be lost.18 The spoken word played a crucial role in customary law, where the tension between orality and the new technology of writing is most visible. Even in the context of a legal system so closely connected with literacy as the so-​called ius Theutonicum, the spoken word put into the form of a public declaration, agreement, testimony, or oath, took on religious and moral dimensions. Legal commitments presupposed the credibility of the parties involved (“a man a man, a word a word”), but God himself or his saints remained the guarantee of truthfulness in testimony and oath.19 Legal orality was strongly marked by putting speech into a framework of formulaic (often petrified) expressions and by reinforcing words spoken aloud with gestures and the use of meaningful objects. The transfer of land ownership might include, besides an oral declaration, for instance, the drinking of water or wine or passing a clod of earth from hand to hand.20 Taking an oath usually included touching something with one’s hand—​a crucifix or reliquary containing the relics of saints.21 All these elements together created a sort of theatrum, working as a memory prop not only for the parties involved, but also for direct and indirect witnesses.22 The function of the spoken word as an instrument of artistic expression is also generally recognized, even if only small traces remain of what must have been an extensive body of oral poetry, songs, and stories. Quite rich evidence testifies to the continuity of indigenous oral Slavic and Hungarian literary culture as well as to the transmission of literary works by public recitation from the twelfth century onward.23 The variety of orality, however, embraced much more than literary expression and solemn speech supported by the authority of religion or the power of law. In the everyday transmission of information the spoken word played the primordial role, often in the form of rumor and gossip disseminated by unofficial channels (networks of merchants, pilgrims, students, and so-​called Lose Leute (“loose people,” vagabonds and wandering clergymen). Rumor and gossip might concern the verifiable danger of approaching enemies or reflect a general feeling of being under threat from “strangers,” be they Jews, lepers, or Germans.24 In individual communities, rumor and gossip could easily turn into mocking, insult, and slander, sometimes damaging reputations (by calling someone a witch, for instance). In the fifteenth century, rich evidence of this phenomenon can be found in the documentation produced by ecclesiastical and municipal tribunals, as well as by the courts for the nobility. Besides offering valuable material for social history, they also provide insight into the sociolinguistic mechanisms of creating insults25 as well as their moral and religious context as “sins of the tongue.”26 In the earlier Middle Ages, mocking and insult appear especially as part of political and military ritual, before battles, for instance; they were meant to weaken the morale of the

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     343 enemy.27 Offensive speech could become part of rituals, which might also include opprobrious gestures and behavior. Communication through the spoken word was part of a much larger spectrum of communicating by sound (“soundscape”; paysage sonore28). Many types of sounds produced by the human voice—​articulated and unarticulated exclamations, singing, loud crying, and lamenting—​clearly had an emotional character and often reinforced collective experiences, for instance, when mourning the death of the monarch.29 A considerable part of the soundscape was shaped by various “instruments,” not only musical ones.30 Scholars agree that church bells had important communicative functions, especially in the countryside. Their sound provided an elementary measurement of time; indicated the presence of the sacrum, calamities, and joyful moments alike; notified of important Church rituals; and had protective functions, such as averting lightning strikes during storms.31 In the constricted space of late medieval towns, saturated with the sound of bells during public festivities, for instance, church bells might also cause auditory overload, difficult to endure on such occasions even for the main actors.32 Another understudied element of the sonic landscape were sounds perceived as frightening. Sounds often announced transgression of the natural world and the appearance of evil. In contrast, the absence of sound, “dead” silence, could be perceived as reinforcing general horror, caused by war, for instance, and signal a threat.33 Apart from the positive associations of monastic silence, the lack of any sound usually seems to have spelled misfortune, for instance, as a clear sign of bereavement.34

Gesture The evidence of the textual and iconographic sources of East-​Central European origin shows that the spoken word was often accompanied by gestures, which could even substitute effectively for speech.35 Gesture is a natural mark of human expression; the essence of gesture makes it a bridge between auditory and visual communication. The study of gestures in political, religious, and legal contexts allows some general observations on the nature of this instrument of communication. What is striking is, in the first place, their fluency and multiplicity of meanings. The engagement of the whole human body, for instance in shaking hands, removing headgear, nodding, kneeling, or bowing down before a lord (proskynesis) was widely used in religious rituals and devotional practices and also in the rituals developed by feudal society. The religious and secular (political) significances of these gestures reinforced each other. Fluency in attributing meanings to gestures can also be detected in popular culture. In the magical practices of peasants, gestures perceived as Christian were applied to activities judged by the theologians as “pagan” and “superstitious.”36 The value of gestures as an instrument of communication was determined by their conventional character, petrified by intense social control, and by the fact that they often expressed staged emotions. This certainly facilitated “reading” them,37 but modern

344   Anna Adamska scholars tend to be ambivalent, keen to find psychological truths beyond conventional behavior. Undoubtedly, the corpus of meaningful gestures that can be established by analyzing sources was strongly determined socially. Coarse gestures and behavior were attributed to simple people, not only in daily life, but also in their devotional practices. The efficacy of gestures as a tool of communication may have been limited by their geographical variability; gestures of “strangers” might be difficult to understand or be completely misunderstood.38 Such gestures would be noticed at least as something that differed from the local norm.39

Touch, Taste, and Smell Gestures that were part of religious, legal, or political rituals were often accompanied by touch, sometimes with meaningful objects or substances. They were widely used in both the religious and secular spheres; for instance, anointing with blessed oil was part of the last rites as well as the consecration of a bishop or a coronation of a king. The kiss, applied to various parts of the human body, was a meaningful component of religious and political rituals.40 The essence of the combination of gestures with touch for purposes of communication can be seen in the ritual of oath-​taking. Here, as was said above, touching a meaningful object in a prescribed way was as important as pronouncing the formula. In such a situation, the human body became an instrument of communication in a most physical, intimate way, showing clear analogies with various ways of being in contact with the sacred (sacrum) (especially relics), for instance, for the purposes of healing.41 The reinforcement of gesture is only one aspect of the much larger role that touch played in the system of communication. Its “silent power,” resulting from the connection with the personal character of the human body, influenced individual and collective behavior. Evidence of practices of communicating by touch is as interesting as the evidence of the refusal to touch people or objects. This often resulted from religious prescriptions which organized and articulated deeply-​rooted prejudices and disgust. Formal prohibitions or at least the informal avoidance of physical contact with “others” (be they Jews, pagans, lepers or people exercising so-​called unclean occupations, such as executioners) were the most profound and painful form of the organization of society by exclusion in East-​Central Europe as elsewhere.42 A similar mechanism of going beyond the most private physical boundaries of individuals can be detected in the use of taste and smell as tools of social communication, as their perception has a place inside the human body. They could communicate the highest spiritual values; a sweet fragrance43 signaled the holiness of people whose bodies escaped repulsive decomposition,44 while the Body of Christ was the ultimate food and his Blood the ultimate potion. In the Slavic world, the concept of an “edible” God fitted well into pre-​Christian practices of communicating with the afterlife through food, feeding the souls of the deceased that returned to earth during some periods of the year.45

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     345 From a symbolic perspective, smell and taste could also work as instruments of social exclusion.46 But taste and smell could also carry information about the materiality of life. Thanks to archaeology and the study of material culture, we are capable of sketching an “olfactory map” of Central European towns, determined by the hygienic infrastructure and the topography of crafts in which one tried to move the smelliest businesses (such as the production of parchment and leather) to the peripheries of the settlement.47 A growing scholarly interest in the role of conviviality and communicating through food48 allows some general remarks on this phenomenon. The main functions of conviviality, rooted in the indigenous cultures of Slavs and Hungarians—​exercising power, suspending violence, confirming the social order, and showing status—​can be seen in all social strata throughout the medieval period and early modern times. What was communicated in this way more than anything else was social status. An abundance of (sophisticated) foods and beverages and beautiful fragrances were the privilege of elites. The rejection of this privilege, for religious reasons (for instance, by pious wives and daughters of the rulers in the thirteenth century), might cause anger because it disturbed the efficacy of this form of communication.49 As mentioned earlier, drinking was an important element of legal rituals, which were usually followed by festive meals that often included entire communities. Food and drink could also work as a tool of time measurement, as certain types of food or abstinence from them were associated with liturgical and popular feasts and with the many periods of fasting.50

Signs and (Visual) Images The economy of using the most valuable Christian food—​the Body of Christ in Holy Communion—​leads to consideration of the second-​most-​used group of tools, those which belonged to the realm of visual communication. Everywhere in medieval Europe, “for most people, the Host was a familiar object of sight, but a much rarer object of touch and taste.”51 The overwhelming desire of medieval people to see, which can be detected in all spheres of social life,52 was at the same time the cause and the result of the development of the wide variety of visual signs and depictions (understood in the broadest possible sense of the term53) that could carry information: the organization of space, architecture, images, colors, clothes, and many kinds of signa (signs of boundaries of spaces, insignia of power, mnemotechnic signs, coats of arms, banners, and so on). They are usually investigated in the isolation of individual disciplines, but even a limited attempt at a transdisciplinary approach reveals both the internal logic and the essential features of this system. This shows the fluidity and multiplication of meanings between the sacred and secular spheres, also visible among various kinds of sacrum. The sign of the cross, the most explicit Christian symbol, rightly defined as omnipresent in the late medieval

346   Anna Adamska iconosphere, was widely used in the everyday magical practices originating in non-​ Christian rituals for the protection of crops and fertility.54 An even more interesting mark of visual communication in East-​Central Europe is the, sometimes extraordinary, accumulation of information carried by various means at the same time. This can be illustrated by the example of clothes. Literally every element of a garment (and also of hairdressing) contained information making it possible to identify the person wearing it: gender, age, social position, marital status, affiliation with a religious or ethnic community, profession, and emotional state (for instance, by clothes of mourning). This information was encoded not only by the cut of clothes, but also by their color, the kind of materials used, ornamentation, depictions put on the textiles (such as coats of arms), and also by accessories.55 Every single one of these elements could be loaded with symbolic value. The absence of some parts of garments (most often of shoes and headgear), as well as the complete nakedness, would be a message, for instance, about the wearer’s attitude toward the world. This assemblage was used not only to identify an individual (the taxonomic function), but also to create communities and, even more, to exclude “others.”56 Clothing can be seen as the perfect expression of an “emblematic society.”57 The essential precondition for the efficacy of this tool of communication resulted from alertness about possible transgressions as far as gender and social position were concerned, as expressed by men wearing women’s clothes, lay people wearing ecclesiastical garments, or town dwellers wearing rich garments appropriate for the well-​born nobility. This vigilance was expressed in all kinds of regulations and prescriptions issued in the later Middle Ages by ecclesiastical and secular authorities.58

The Written Word in the Multimedia System of Social Communication The short (and selective) overview above leads to the question of how the written word fitted into this multifaceted system of social communication. It is important not to put writing in radical opposition to oral and nonverbal communication; visual communication, for instance, combines crucial elements of these nonwritten forms by turning the sounds of the spoken word into a negotiated system of graphical signs. The ongoing investigation of the development of literacy in East-​Central Europe allows the conclusion that, despite some chronological delays, the implementation of writing in the region had a dynamic similar to that in many other parts of Europe. Generally speaking, during the first two centuries after the initial Christianization, it played several important roles, above all in the domain of sacred literacy and in reinforcing the memorial practices of social elites.59 From the thirteenth century onward, one can see both an apparent democratization and individualization in making, using, and keeping records (paired with their linguistic diversification) in the ever-​widening spectrum of pragmatic literacy, especially in urban environments.60 Thus, the chronology of the gradual “reception of

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     347 charters” (as it was called in traditional diplomatics61) in the various law systems used in the region indicated the progressive growth of the conviction that a piece of parchment or paper could have the same value in shaping or recollecting legal reality as the word of a living witness.62 The speed of this essential mental shift, however, which required operating with new conceptual categories (“abstract” signs of letters instead of spoken words; a piece of parchment instead of “real” money, and so on), did not reach all social strata equally and can only be measured in centuries. Growing trust in the written word was accompanied by an ever-​wider awareness of the limitations of the written word, especially of the fact that charters could be forgeries and narrative texts might contain false information.63 Rich and multifaceted evidence shows that one of the main ways of integrating the written word into the existing system of social communication was by introducing it as an additional tool to strengthen the meaning of visual images. From the eleventh century onward, inscriptions in East-​Central Europe were applied to all kinds of materials (stone, wood, metal, textiles). They usually reinforced and deepened a visual message, but that message could also function well without inscriptions, at least on a basic level of understanding.64 It is more difficult to evaluate the custom, spreading from the fourteenth century onward, of putting long written texts on display, accompanied by an image (or not). Displaying the texts of the Ten Commandments and basic prayers on large wooden boards is attested for many parochial churches, even in the countryside. Papal charters of indulgence were displayed in the same way.65 The popularity of this practice does not, however, resolve an essential dilemma: Was it a result of growing familiarity with the written word and the spread of basic literacy skills or was it rather the long-​term cause? The study of royal coins and seals, the main tools by which the monarchs communicated their kingship to their subjects,66 also provides interesting materials for investigating the relationship between image and script. Coins and seals transmit the intended message both by images (often complex ones in the late medieval period) and by inscriptions around the images meant to identify the issuer and inform readers about his attributes. The organization of space on these artifacts (the central position of the image together with the rather poor legibility of the epigraphic message) and the generally applied conventionality of iconographic models do not suggest whether the image or the written message was primarily expected to be understood. One may assume that only some of the intended recipients were technically able to decipher the written message,67 and—​to be honest—​really cared about it. Yet well into modern times, many recipients of monarchic charters paid substantial amounts of money for desirable large seals (preferably gold) to be attached to the charters they ordered. The seal’s size and material were much more efficacious in communicating kingship than the inscription.68 The interaction between written and oral modes of communication is relatively easy to determine because the boundary between them was extremely soft69 and in general practice, messages passed between them in either direction throughout the medieval period. The practice of reading aloud shaped a vast area of “aurality,”70 embracing not only the Bible, devotional texts, and works belonging to the domain of so-​called

348   Anna Adamska literature71 but also documents, legal statutes, and all sorts of administrative records.72 Aurality went far beyond minimizing the consequences of a lack of basic literacy skills among a considerable number of the audience. Any text approached by ear was easier to understand; at the same time, its oral rendering gave room for performance. The word “performance” is often used to describe the acts of promulgating laws, publicizing information, or explaining the essence of the “grand occasions of State and Church.”73 These rituals, marked by the overlap of the sacred and profane spheres, provided the favorite materia scribendi of medieval chroniclers, and, in consequence, an attractive topic for modern-​day historians.74 They also give clear evidence of the extensive use of all possible instruments of communication simultaneously. This array of tools was meant not only to transmit certain messages, but also to shape collective emotions, for instance, by the spectacular destruction of artifacts. Such gestures as smashing of the candles in the ritual of ecclesiastical excommunication or breaking the staffs of banners captured from a defeated enemy elicited strong emotional responses from spectators, in these examples horror and pride, respectively.75 Similarly, collective feelings of joy and festivity were created by coronations, royal weddings and baptisms, episcopal inaugurations, and festive entries. In specially arranged surroundings, full of colors and heraldic badges, the principal actors, wearing special garments laden with symbolic meaning, performed meaningful gestures and spoke meaningful words. All this was usually accompanied by music and the ringing of bells and followed by an abundance of shared food. It seems that in the multimedia context of such occasions the written word did not play the primary role before the thirteenth century at the earliest.76 Throughout the medieval period, it might on occasion even cease to fulfill its basic function as a carrier of information, as in many rituals involving written texts (the handing over of a book during a ceremony, the displaying of a charter, and so on), the materiality of script itself became much more important than the actual content of the book or document. This can be illustrated by the way manuscripts and archives were treated as war trophies which could be transferred, redistributed, or even destroyed.77 The same can also be seen in widely spread magical practices. Carrying amulets containing words from the Gospel or other powerful words did not require reading them at all, as their very presence reinforced the power of the object on which they had been written.78 In closing, even a brief—​and necessarily incomplete—​survey of the instruments of social communication in medieval East Central Europe illustrates how large the variety of tools was beyond the usually investigated realm of words and scripts. In future research, awareness and recognition of the importance of this variety is essential for a more balanced assessment of the role of the written word. At the beginning of this article, the issue of the efficacy of the complex system of medieval communication was raised, emphasizing the importance of the skills of receivers in “reading” the content of all sorts of messages. It has been pointed out that these abilities might vary from one social group to another and from one person to another. Scholars may establish the contents of messages and the intentions of their senders relatively easily, but how much of the message actually came through to the recipients is a different matter altogether.

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     349 It is nevertheless worth mentioning another factor that could influence any act of communication. This might be called “the horizon of expectations” of the receivers, who could miss a part of the message, misunderstand it, or even decide not to open themselves to it whenever the message transgressed what they were used to in one way or another. An excellent example of such a disruption of communication is the well-​known account by the thirteenth-​century Dalmatian historian, Thomas of Split, of attending a sermon by St. Francis of Assisi, in Bologna on August 15, 1222. In Thomas’s opinion, Francis’s whole appearance contradicted everything that at the time might be expected from a preacher: He was uneducated, he did not behave as preachers usually did, he was not physically attractive, and he was wearing shabby clothes. Thomas’s concluding remark that “the veneration and devotion that people had for him were so great that men and women would rush in throngs to him, struggling to touch the hem of his garments or snatch a piece of his rags,”79 expresses the total astonishment of someone whose horizon of expectation had been completely trespassed upon. At the same time, the example shows how even a well-​educated professional of legal literacy could be deeply sensitive to all signals from nonverbal and visual communication.

Notes 1. For a detailed analysis of the concept of “medieval communication,” see Marco Mostert, “Introduction,” in A Bibliography of Works on Medieval Communication, edited by Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 2. This publication provides a comprehensive overview of the state of research on the subject up to 2012. Recent developments are quite well mirrored by the subsequent volumes of the series Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Brepols). The length of the present chapter does not permit extensive bibliographical references. 2. The persistence of oral and visual communication well into modern times is acknowledged even for England, which probably had the highest rates of literacy in Europe (see also Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–​1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 33. See also István G. Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture in Early Modern Central Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 2000), ­chapters 2–​4. 3. Mostert, A Bibliography. 4. Perhaps the most peculiar mark of communication in the medieval period was that, in the collective imaginary, its framework easily crossed the frontier with the supernatural and included communication with God, saints, devils, and the souls of the deceased in the exchange of information with living people (see Mostert, A Bibliography, 6). As everywhere in Western Christendom, in East Central Europe people from rulers and bishops to peasants, from all strata of society, experienced communication with supernatural beings. See, e.g., Chronica Ecclesiae Pragenis Benessi Krabice de Weitmile, edited by Josef Emler, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum 4 (Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1884), 502; Chronica Poloniae Maioris/​Kronika Wielkopolska, edited by Brygida Kürbis, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s, 8 (Warsaw: Monumenta Poloniae Historica, 1970) [ChPM], 89, 94–​95; Canonici Wissegradensis Continuatio Cosmae, edited by Josef Emler, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum 2, no. 1 (Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1874) [=​Canonicus Wissegradensis], 225–​226.

350   Anna Adamska 5. See especially John H. Arnold, “Belief and the Senses for the Laity,” in Les cinq sens au Moyen Âge, edited by Eric Palazzo (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2016), 623–​645. 6. On levels and registers of literacy, see Marco Mostert, “Forgery and Trust,” in Strategies of Writing: Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages, edited by Irene van Renswoude, Petra Schulte, and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 40. The refinement of the criteria of analysis also becomes apparent in the discussion of the “knowledge” of languages (especially Latin) in the medieval period. One is ever more inclined to assess each of the four linguistic competencies—​reading, writing, speaking, and understanding—​ separately. This distinction is most present in medieval sources: e.g., Emperor Charles IV Luxemburg explained his proficiency in Czech because this language was as suitable as any other “to write, read, speak and understand” (ad scribendum, legendum, loquendum et intelligendum); Vita Caroli IV, edited by Josef Emler, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum 3 (Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1882), 8, 348). 7. Mostert, “Introduction,” 9. 8. Mostert, A Bibliography, 118–​126 (“language,” “grammar”);William W. Diebold, “Verbal, Visual and Cultural Literacy in Medieval Art: Word and Image in the Psalter of Charles the Bald,” Word and Image 8 (1992): 89–​99 (“visual literacy”). 9. For the main points in the ongoing discussion, see Laurence G. Duggan, “Reflections on ‘Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?” in Reading Images and Texts as Forms of Communication, edited by Mariëlle Hagemann and Marco Mostert (Turnhout, Brepols, 2005), 109–​119; Herbert Kessler, “ ‘Aliter enim videtur pictura, aliter videntur litterae’: Reading Medieval Pictures,” in Scrivere e leggere nell’lto Medioevo, vol. 2 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’lto Medioevo, 2012), 701–​726. 10. Anna Wierzbicka, “The Meaning of Color Terms and the Universals of Seeing,” Semantics: Primes and Universals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 287–​334. 11. See Anna Adamska, “Intersections: Medieval East Central Europe from the Perspective of the Study of Literacy and Communication,” in Medieval East Central Europe in Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Land in Focus, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 225–​239. 12. On the possibilities of a comparative approach, see Adamska, “Intersections.” 13. The far-​reaching consequences of choices about alphabets which split the Slavic cultural entity until our times cannot be discussed here in detail. See Adamska, “Intersections,” 228. 14. Diglossia means simultaneous use of two languages (or variants of the same language), possessing specialized functions. The so-​called high register, marked by stable grammar and spelling and enjoying high prestige, serves as the written language. The low register is used for the purposes of oral communication in daily life and is less prestigious. See the seminal article by C. A. Ferguson, “Diglossia,” Word 15 (1959): 325–​340. 15. See also Piotr Węcowski, “Polskie itineraria średniowieczne i nowożytne: Przegląd badań i propozycje badawcze” [Polish medieval and early modern itineraries: A survey of research and new propositions of investigation], Studia Źródłoznawcze 37 (2000): 13–​48; Janós M. Bak and Pavel V. Lukin, “Consensus and Assemblies in Early Medieval Central and Eastern Europe,” in Political Assemblies in the Earlier Middle Ages, edited by Paul S. Barnwell and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 95–​113. 16. See, for example, Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag, edited by Bertold Bretholz, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, n.s. 2 (Berlin: Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, 1923), vol. 1, 34, 62; vol. 3, 2–​83; Simon Kézai, Gesta Hungarorum, edited by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 28–​29; Chronici Hungarici compositio

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     351 saeculi XIV, edited by Alexander Domanovszky, Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum 2 (Budapest: Academia Litteraria Hungarica atque Societas Historica Hungarica, 1937), 359; Tomasz Jurek, “Pismo w życiu społecznym Polski późnego średniowiecza” [The written word in the social life of late medieval Poland], in Historia społeczna późnego średniowiecza: Nowe badania [Social history of the late Middle Ages: New research], edited by Sławomir Gawlas (Warsaw: DiG, 2011), 207. From the thirteenth century onward this communication system of the State was reinforced by town criers in the quickly growing urban network; see Agnieszka Bartoszewicz, Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 302–​307. 17. See the account on John of Luxemburg, playing dice, and “proferrens verba inhonesta,” Chronicon Francisci Pragensis/​Kronika Františka Pražského, edited by Jana Zachová, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, n.s. 1 (1997): vol. 2, 4, 93–​94. 18. Liber Fundationis Claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichow, edited by Józef Matuszewski (Poznań: Muzeum Archidiecezjalne, 1991), 143; Magistri Rogerii Epistola in Miserabile Carmen super destructione regni Hungarie per Tartaros facta, edited by Martin Rady, János M. Bak, and László Veszprémy (Budapest, CEU Press, 2010), 144–​147. 19. Evidence concerning the supernatural “guarantees” of oath-​taking in most parts of late medieval Europe, including Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, was collected by Michalina Duda and Sławomir Jóźwiak, Ze świata średniowiecznej symboliki: Gest i forma przysięgi w średniowiecznej Europie [From the world of medieval symbols: Gestures and forms of oath making in medieval Europe] (Cracow: Universitas, 2014). 20. See also Józef Matuszewski, “Aqua abrenuntiationis: Studium z średniowiecznego prawa prywatnego” [Aqua abrenuntiationis: A study of medieval private law], Czasopismo Prawno-​Historyczne 4 (1952): 164–​ 237; Martin Rady, “Literacy, Performance and Memory: The Áldomás (Trankopfer) in Medieval and Early Modern Hungary and Transylvania,” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “G.Bariţiu,” Series Historica, Supplement 1 (2015): 370. 21. “Zo sal her legin czwene vinger der rechter hant, den by dem dumen unde mittelsten vinger, uffe des cruczes vuse. Wo her andirs dy vinger leget, zo wirt im bruch. Dy wort zal her vorsprechin unde den daz crucze ruren.” Najstarszy zwód prawa polskiego [The oldest collection of the Polish law], edited by Józef Matuszewski (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1959), 162–​163. 22. On the performative aspect of urban legal procedures, see also Bartoszewicz, Urban Literacy, ­chapter 4. 23. See also Galli Anonymi Gesta principum Polonorum, edited by János M. Bak (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003), II, Epistola, 70–​71; Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, edited by Martin Rady, János M. Bak, and László Veszprémy (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), prologue, 4–​5, and c­ hapter 42, 90–​91, 100–​101; Chronica Benessi IV, 5378. In the opinion of late medieval Polish theologians, some vernacular ceremonial songs might have contained references to Old-​Slavic pagan cults (discussed in Stanisław Bylina, Kultura ludowa Polski i Słowiańszczyzny średniowiecznej [Folk culture of medieval Poland and Slavic lands] [Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1999], 59). 24. See also Thomae archidiaconi Spalatensis Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, edited by Damir Karbić, Olga Perić, and James Ross Sweeney (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006), 254–​255; Magistri Rogerii Epistola, 156–​157; Joannis Dlugossi Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae, liber decimus, liber undecimus, liber duodecimus (Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985), lib. X–​XI, 142–​143; Chronicon Francisci, II, 2,

352   Anna Adamska 89; II, 8, 100. Chronica Benessi, II, 474, 477. For more about conspiracies of “strangers,” see Anna Adamska, “Latin and Three Vernaculars in East Central Europe from the Point of View of the History of Social Communication,” in Spoken and Written Language: Relations between Latin and the Vernacular Languages in the Earlier Middle Ages, edited by Mary Garrison, Arpad Orbán, and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols 2013), 336–​340. 25. E.g., during the fifteenth century many terms connected to the Hussite movement in Bohemia changed into common insults in Poland. See Stanisław Bylina, “Wizerunek heretyka w Polsce późnośredniowiecznej” [The picture of a heretic in late medieval Poland], Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 30 (1985): 19. 26. Cf. Silvana Vecchio and Carla Casagrande, Les péchés de la langue (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2007). 27. See also Anonymi Bele regis notariis, 38–​47 and 84–​55; Galli Anonymi Gesta, 52–​53, 88–​89; Thomae archidiaconis Spalatensis Historia, 116–​117. 28. On the application of these terms, see Ari Y. Kelman, “Rethinking the Soundscape: A Critical Genealogy of a Key Term in Sound Studies,” Senses and Society 5, no. 2 (2010): 212–​ 234; Nira Pancer, “Le silencement du monde: Paysages sonores au haut Moyen Âge et nouvelle culture aurale,” Annales: Histoire Sciences Sociales 72, no. 3 (2017): 659–​699. 29. A remarkable example of affirmative exclamations was the shout “Krlessu” (a mispronunciation of “Kyrie eleison”) by the lay audience during liturgical and political gatherings (e.g., after the election of the ruler) in early medieval Bohemia. See Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas, I, 42, 78; II, 4, 88. On auditory expressions of mourning see, e.g., Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas, III, 13, 174; ChPM, 118, 109; Petri Zittaviensis Chronica Aulae Regiae, edited by Josef Emler, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum 4 (Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1884), 80, 98–​100; Joannis de Czarnkow Chronicon Polonorum, edited by Jan Szlachtowski, Monumenta Poloniae Historica 2 (Lviv: Nakłada Akademii Umiejetności, 1872), 4, 636. 30. On the development of musical culture in East-​Central Europe see ­chapter 23 in this volume. 31. See Stanisław Bylina, Chrystianizacja wsi polskiej u schyłku średniowiecza [Christianization of the Polish countryside at the end of the Middle Ages] (Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2002), 126, 154. 32. See on the aversion of the Bohemian king, Wenceslas I, to the sound of church bells, Chronicon Francisci, I, 1, 5. 33. E.g., Joannis de Czarnkow, “Chronicon Polonorum,” in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. 2, edited by Jan Szlachtowski (Lwów: Nakł. Akademii Umiejętności, 1872), 56, 712–​7 13. A suitable source for the study of the sonic imaginary of traumatized war victims is Master Roger’s autobiographical account of the Mongol attack on Hungary (Magistri Rogerii Epistola, 190–​191; 22–​23, 284–​285). 34. E.g., Galli Anonymi Gesta, 70–​7 1. On the functions of silence, see also Alexandre Vincent, “Une histoire de silences,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 72, no. 3 (2017): 633–​658. 35. E.g., Magistri Rogerii Epistola, 222–​223. 36. Bylina, Kultura, 103. 37. See Adam S. Labuda, “Czytanie Drzwi Gnieźnieńskich: Przekaz i język obrazu” [Reading of the Door of Gniezno: The message and language of the image], in Tropami Świętego Wojciecha [In the footsteps of St. Wojciech], edited by Zofia Kurnatowska (Poznań: Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 1999), 245.

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     353 38. Another interesting subject is the legibility of threatening gestures in political communication. See Galli Anonymi Gesta, 88–​91. Chronicon Francisci, I, 9, 26; Anonymi Bele regis notariis, 46–​47; Joannis Dlugossi Annales, XI–​XII, 102–​103. 39. See the remark that John of Capistrano, an Italian preacher active in Central Europe in the 1450s, was preaching manibus et pedibus more ytalico—​gesticulating a great deal (after Thomas Krzenck, “John of Capistrano as a Tireless Preacher in Leipzig,” in The Grand Tour of John of Capistrano in Central and Eastern Europe (1451–​1456): Transfer of Ideas and Strategies of Communication in the Late Middle Ages, edited by Paweł Kras and James D. Mixson (Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk-​Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2018), 119. 40. E.g., Galli Anonymi Gesta I, 88–​89. Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas, III, 9, 169. Joannis Dlugossi Annales, lib. XI–​XII, 168. Chronica Oliviensis, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. 6, edited by Wojciech Kętrzyński (Lviv: Nakłada Akademii Umiejetności, 1893), 333. 41. Among many examples from the hagiography of the region, see the extraordinary account of the healing performed in Prague in 1338 using the head of St. Wenceslas pressed against the head of a paralyzed man (Chronicon Francisci, III, 12, 168). 42. Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​ c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hanna Zaremska, “Jews and Their Attitude towards Christians in Medieval Poland, Acta Poloniae Historica 101 (2010): 125–​161. 43. See the analysis of this multidimensional concept in Marry Carruthers, “Sweetness,” Speculum 81 (2006): 999–​1013. 44. E.g., Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas, II, 4, 88. ChPM 154, 123; Canonicus Wissehradensis, 226. For more examples, see Anna Adamska, “Zapach dobra i odór zła: Z zagadnień wyobraźni religijnej w średniowieczu” [The smell of the good and the stench of the evil: A problem of the medieval religious imaginary], Zeszyty Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego 39, no. 3–​4 (1996): 31–​46. 45. Bylina, Kultura, 15–​27. 46. On the disgusting odor of onions and garlic as a sign of Jews in Polish late medieval religious literature, see Rafał Wójcik, “Anti-​Jewish Motifs in the Poetry of Blessed Władysław of Gielniów c. 1440–​1505),” in Identity and Alterity in Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, vol. 1, edited by Ana Marinković and Tripmir Vedriš (Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2010), 235–​244. 47. See also Robert Krzywdziński, “Ścieki i latryny średniowiecznego oraz nowożytnego Gdańska w świetle źródeł archeologicznych” [Sewage and latrines in the medieval and early modern Gdańsk in the light of archeological sources], Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej 53, no. 3–​4 (2005): 279–​291; Weronika Konkol, “Brud i smród w świetle polskich, średniowiecznych źródeł hagiograficznych: Próba rozpoznania tematu” [Filth and stench in the light of medieval Polish hagiographical sources: An attempt of approach to the subject], Studia Historica Gedanensia 1 (2010): 19–​34. On stench as a result of calamities, see Magistri Rogerii Epistola, 200–​201, 206–​207; Chronicon Francisci, I, 4, 16. 48. See the literature in Anna Adamska, “Founding a Monastery over Dinner: The Case of Henryków in Silesia (c. 1222–​1228),” in Medieval Legal Process: Physical, Spoken and Written Performance in the Middle Ages, edited by Marco Mostert and Paul Barnwell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 223, and also Magdalena Beranová, Jídlo a pití v pravěku a ve středověku [Food and drink in the prehistory and the Middle Ages] (Prague: Akademie věd České republiky, 2008).

354   Anna Adamska 49. Gabor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. 195–​279. 50. See a detailed overview by Izabela Skierska, Sabbatha sanctifices: Dzień święty w średniowiecznej Polsce” [Sabbatha sanctifices: A Holy Day in medieval Poland] (Warsaw, Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2008), 173–​187. 51. Arnold, “Belief,” 640. 52. See, for instance, the statement of a Bohemian chronicler that heaven communicates with people by signa (Canonicus Wissehradensis, 213). Also indicative is the enthusiastic reaction to the decision of Charles IV Luxemburg to show his collection of relics to the people, which received the remarkable comment by a chronicler: “quod nullus crederet, nisi qui oculis suis videret” [no one would believe it, unless he had seen it with his own eyes] (Chronicon Francisci, III, 29, 211). 53. The issue of the unbalanced accessibility of images in the narrow sense—​manuscripts, miniatures, wall paintings, and the like—​rightly mentioned by scholars today (Arnold, “Belief,” 628; Marie Bláhová, “Obrazové dějiny v českých zemích ve středověku” [Pictorial history in medieval Bohemian lands], in Imago narrat: Obraz jako komunikat w społeczeństwach europejskich [Imago narrat: Image as a message in the European societies], edited by Stanisław Rosik and Przemysław Wiszewski (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002), 219–​230), reflects only one of the many aspects of visual communication. In fact, everything that might be seen could become a signum, a representation of something else. 54. Arnold, “Belief,” 630–​631; Bylina, Kultura, 180. 55. The same strategy of multiple layers of information, provided in the same ways, can be detected in the visual organization of banners and flags thanks to rich iconographical and textual evidence, from Hungary and Poland especially. See also Jan Ptak, Chorągiew w komunikacji społecznej w Polsce piastowskiej i jagiellońskiej [The banner in the system of social communication in Piast and Jagiellonian Poland] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2002); Laszló Veszpremy, “A középkori zászlóhasználat kezdetei Magyarországon, Kézai Simon olvasatában” [The beginnings of the use of flags in medieval Hungary, according to Simon Kézai], Lovagvilág Magyarországon: Lovagok, keresztesek, hadmérnökök a középkori Magyarországon [The chivalrous world in Hungary: Knights, crusaders, and military engineers in medieval Hungary] (Budapest: A Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum Könyvtára, 2008), 146–​154. 56. See also Nora Berend, “Medieval Patterns of Social Exclusion and Integration: The Regulation of Non-​ Christian Clothing in the Thirteenth-​ Century Hungary,” Revue Mabillon 69 (1997): 155–​176. 57. For more on the development of this concept and the communicative function of clothes, see Anna Adamska, “Czy Pan wie, kto ja jestem?”: Kilka uwag o mechanizmach percepcji wzrokowej i skuteczności kodów westymentarnych w późnośredniowiecznej Europie” [“Do you know who I am?”: Some remarks on the mechanisms of visual perception and the efficacy of the vestimentary codes in late medieval Europe], in Habitus facit hominem: Społeczne funkcje ubioru w średniowieczu i w epoce nowożytnej [Habitus facit hominem: Social functions of clothes in the Middle Ages and Early Modern times], edited by Ewa Wółkiewicz, Monika Saczyńska, and Marcin R. Pauk (Warsaw, Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2016), 19. 58. See, for example, Gabor Klaniczay, “Disciplining Society through Dress: John of Capistrano, the ‘Bonfire of Vanities’ and Sumptuary Law,” in The Grand Tour, 101 ff.

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     355 On disturbing the communication through clothes, see Annales Boemorum Vincentii Pragensis, edited by Josef Emler, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum 2 (Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1875), 414; Simon, 134–​136. 59. For chroniclers, providing the first accounts of local dynasties only written history was valuable. See also Galli Anonymi Gesta, III, Epistola, 210–​213; Anonymi Bele regis notariis, 4–​5, 90–​91; Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas, I, 14, 32. 60. This process was stimulated in great measure by the necessity of adapting to standards and practices of written communication imposed from outside, first of all by the ever-​ growing bureaucratic machine of the Roman Church. In this respect, the role of contacts with the Holy See and the papal fiscal bureaucracy cannot be overestimated. See, e.g., Roman Zaoral, “The Management of Papal Collections and Long-​Distance Trade in the Thirteenth-​Century Czech Lands,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Moyen Âge 127 (2015): 335–​345. 61. On the problem of trust in writing as the main precondition of the growth of pragmatic literacy, see Strategies of Writing: Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages, edited by P. Schulte, Marco Mostert, and Irene van Renswoude (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). 62. See Szende, Trust, Authority, and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 115, 197, 244, 318. 63. E.g., Marie Bláhová, “Vera ac falsa discernere in the Přemyslid Czech lands (until 1306),” in Arcana tabularii: Tanulmányok Solymosi László tiszteletére [Studies in honor of László Solymosi], edited by Attila Bárány et al. (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 2014), vol. 1, 21–​30. 64. Among many examples, see P. Lővei, “Epigraphy and Tomb Sculpture,” in The Art of Medieval Hungary, edited by Xavier Barral i Altet et al. (Rome: Viella, 2018), 253–​267; Labuda, “Czytanie Drzwi,” 239. 65. See Bylina, Chrystianizacja wsi, 64–​65. 66. See Zenon Piech, Monety, pieczecie i herby w systemie symboli władzy Jagiellonów [Coins, seals, and coats of arms in the system of symbols of power of the Jagiellonian dynasty] (Warsaw: DiG, 2003); Tomáš Krejčík and Robert Psík, “Písmo a pečeť: Texty na pečetích jako dobové doklady kultury” [Script and seal: Texts on seals as evidence of the culture of the period], in Kultura psaní v dějinách [Written culture in history], vol. 1, edited by Ladislav Nekvapil (Pardubice, Univerzita Pardubice, 2016), 93–​107; Az Árpád-​házi királyok pecsétjei/​Royal Seals of the Árpád Dynasty, edited by Imre Takács (Budapest: Magyar Országos Levéltár, 2012). 67. As far as seals are concerned, this capacity can be attributed primarily to the professionals of the written word employed in the chanceries of Church and State. For them, the coherence of information encoded in image and text was the main indicator of the authenticity of charters. Extensive evidence of the procedures applied can be found, for example, in Lites ac res gestae inter Polonos Ordinemque Cruciferorum. Spory i sprawy pomiędzy Polakami a Zakonem Krzyżackim: Akta postepowania przed wysłannikiem papieskim Antonim Zeno z Mediolanu w latach 1422–​1423 [Disputes and cases between the Poles and the Teutonic Knights: The records of proceedings before the judge Antonio Zeno of Milan in the years 1422–​1423], edited by Sławomir Jóźwiak et al. (Toruń, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2015), 155–​233. 68. See splendid examples in Tóth, Literacy, ­chapters 3 and 4. 69. Both modes of communication were challenged by the issue of multilingualism. In the context of orality it is vividly discussed by scholars dealing with pastoral care, especially

356   Anna Adamska with preaching. See, for example, Edit Madas, “Les ordres mendiants en Hongrie et la littérature médiévale en langue vérnaculaire (XIIIe–​XVe siècle),” in Entre stabilité et itinérance: Livre et culture des ordres mendiants, edited by D. Nebbiai-​Dalla Guarda, N. Bériou, and M. Morard (Turnhout : Brepols, 2014), 367–​374; Pavel Soukup, “Die Predigt als Mittel religiöser Erneuerung: Böhmen um 1400,” in Böhmen und das Deutsche Reich: Ideen-​und Kulturtransfer im Vergleich (13.–​ 16. Jahrhundert), edited by Eva Schlotheuber and Hubertus Seibert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 235–​264. 70. Leidulf Melve, “Literacy–​Aurality–​Orality: A Survey of Recent Research into the Orality/​ Literacy Complex of the Latin Middle Ages (600–​1500),” Symbolae Osloenses 78, no. 1 (2003): 153. 71. To the chagrin of some scholars, the boundaries of medieval “literature” (in the modern sense of texts having entertainment as the main purpose) cannot be easily determined. This entertainment function could also have been fulfilled by hagiography and even by the Old Testament. 72. Annales de rebus gestis Wenceslai I. regis, edited by J. Emler, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum 2 (Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1874): 304–​305; Chronica Benessi II, 486. On reading charters aloud, see Anna Adamska, “Studying Preambles Today: A Paradigm Shift in Diplomatic?” in Urkundenformeln im Kontext: Formen der Schriftkultur im Ostmitteleuropa des Mittelalters (13.–​14. Jahrhundert), edited by Sébastien Rossignol and Anna Adamska (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016), 42. 73. See the elaborate analysis by Marco Mostert, “Introduction,” in Mostert and Barnwell, Medieval Legal Process, 3–​10. 74. Among numerous descriptions of public rituals, see Thomae archidiaconis Spalatensis Historia, 96–​97; Chronici Hungarici Compositio Saeculi XIV, 500–​503. Chronicon Francisci, I, 3, 13; I, 12, 34; I, 16, 42. From the wide scholarly literature, see Imagines potestatis: Rytuały, symbole i konteksty fabularne władzy zwierzchniej [Imagines potestatis: Rituals, symbols and narrative contexts of supreme power], edited by Jacek Banaszkiewicz (Warsaw: IH PAN, 1992); Martin Wihoda, ed., Stát, státnost a rituály přemyslovského věku [State, statehood, and rituals in the Premyslid period] (Brno: Matice moravská, 2006); Dušan Zupka, Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (450–​1450) (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 75. E.g., ChPM 116, 106; Joannis de Czarnkow, Chronicon Polonorum 12, 648; Joannis Dlugossi Annales, lib. XI–​XII, 119, 168. 76. See Adamska, “Founding a Monastery,” 222–​223. 77. E.g., Joannis Dlugossi Annales, lib. XI, 150–​151, 156. 78. See, for example, Marija-​Ana Dürrigl and Stella Fatović-​Ferenčić, “Marginalia miscellanea medica in Croatian Glagolitic Monuments: A Model for Interdisciplinary Investigation,” Viator 30 (1999): 386; František Šmahel, “Stärker als der Glaube: Magie, Aberglaube und Zauber in der Epoche des Hussitismus,” Bohemia 32, no. 2 (1991): 322. 79. Thomae archidiaconis Spalatensis Historia, 178–​179.

Further Reading Adamska, Anna, and Marco Mostert, eds. The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004.

A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe     357 Bylina, Stanisław. Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages: Christianity and Traditional Culture in Central and Eastern Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019. Geremek, Bronisław. On the Middle Ages, Part 2: Social Margins and Exclusion. Edited by Hanna Zaremska. Warsaw: IH PAN, 2017. https://​ihpan.edu.pl/​wyda​wnic​two/​wyda​wnic​ twa-​ih-​pan-​on-​line/​ (accessed June 17, 2020). Mostert, Marco, and Anna Adamska, eds. Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns. Medieval Urban Literacy 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014.

Chapter 16

Art and Arch i t e c t u re i n M edieva l E ast Central Eu rope Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

The Early Middle Ages (Béla Zsolt Szakács) East Central Europe has been often discussed as a historical region, but its common narrative as an art historical region has not yet been established. In fact, the region is simply missing from the map of European art in studies of the Romanesque period.1 This may have resulted, at least in part, from the fragmentary nature of the evidence, language barriers, and political differences, but recently a number of projects have attempted to harmonize research efforts across the area, especially for the Carolingian period.2 Parallel to the enlargement of the European Union, a large-​scale exhibition series commemorated the history and culture of Central Europe around 1000, including the artistic achievements,3 and another comparative historic project addressing Christianization and state formation in Central Europe and Scandinavia also included art and archaeology.4 Some decades earlier, Anežka Merhautová assembled an overview of the Romanesque architecture of (at that time) the adjacent socialist countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia), but discussed the countries separately.5 Competitive narratives have been developed by each country for the later Middle Ages. Czech research is often centered on Charles IV and the glory of Prague,6 the Hungarians emphasize the significance of Matthias Corvinus7 and more recently Emperor Sigismund,8 and Polish scholars focus on the Jagiellonian dynasty centered in Poland.9 The most significant effort toward a comprehensive approach is a multivolume handbook of which the first part (on art in East-​ Central Europe between 400 and 1000) has recently been published; further volumes

360    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić are being prepared.10 Nevertheless, research is still fragmented and often hindered by linguistic barriers.

Prehistory: The Classical Heritage and the Migration Period The vast territory between the Adriatic and the Baltic Seas only emerged as a historic region during the Middle Ages. Until the Late Antique period, it was divided sharply into two regions, the southern region that belonged to the Roman Empire and the northern region that did not. The Classical heritage of former Roman provinces, however, was preserved unevenly. Dacia, centered on the Carpathians (including a section of the Black Sea coast and the mouth of the Danube River), was ruled by the Romans for less than two centuries and abandoned by ad 275. Pannonia, comprising the Pannonian or Carpathian Basin, crossed by the Danube, was mainly a plains’ area. It played an important role in the Roman Empire, but by the early fifth century had lost most of its Romanized inhabitants. Dalmatia lay on the eastern coast of the Adriatic and extended up into the Dinaric Mountains; signs of continuity with the Roman period are quite apparent (in Split the Roman imperial palace was reused as a fortified city) and in some cases the structure of Roman towns (like Zadar) was preserved.11 In contrast, in Pannonia the significant cities of Aquincum (Budapest), Sopianae (Pécs), and Savaria (Szombathely) perished and only some of the architectural structures were later reused; medieval Pécs, for instance, developed on the site of an Early Christian cemetery and not the Roman town itself. Not even the Roman place names survived in Pannonia and Dacia.12 Newcomers to the region, the Huns and different Germanic tribes, were little influenced by the Roman heritage. The Huns developed specific features of material culture, typical copper kettles of Inner Asian origin and rich jewelry in a polychromatic style (a combination of gold and red almandine stones like garnets), but there are no indications that they adopted any significant elements of the Roman heritage. The polychromatic style had Mediterranean connections, although its origins are debated.13 The rule of the Huns was short-​lived, ending in 454, which opened the way for more stable Germanic kingdoms in the Carpathian Basin. The treasures of the Gepid dynasty (e.g., the Szilágysomlyó Treasure and the royal tombs of Apahida) may be interpreted as showing signs of Romanization and knowledge of Christianity.14 Nevertheless, it seems to have been limited to the elite and, compared to the situation in the Western provinces of the former Roman Empire, the absence of architectural activity is striking.15 The Gepid kingdom collapsed in 567, and their rivals, the Longobards, left Pannonia the next year and established a kingdom in Italy, where their artistic activity absorbed and incorporated the Roman heritage. The Avars, originally from the steppes, ruled the Carpathian Basin and adjacent areas for more than two centuries. Their artistic heritage is known mainly from

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    361 archaeological excavations and consists of jewelry, weapons, and metal vessels. The most spectacular find of the period, the Nagyszentmiklós Treasure, has been interpreted in different ways. According to Csanád Bálint, it is related more to Byzantium than anything else16 and also indicates a knowledge of Christianity. Other finds show the import or imitation of Byzantine necklaces and earrings.17 This style influenced the Slavic people who, in collaboration with the Avars, slowly moved into the entire region of East Central Europe. The Avar Empire also included other people, such as the Romanized population of the Keszthely culture18 and Germanic tribes that adapted Merovingian and North Italian material culture.19 By the eighth century, new features appeared in the material culture of the Avars, changes in material (bronze instead of precious metals) and design (floral decoration and griffons).20 At the same time, it seems to have lost active connections with the neighboring empires, which then started to attack. The Avar Khaganate (which did not follow Western models of state-​formation and was reluctant to adopt Christianization) collapsed by the early ninth century, opening the way for new Slavic realms.

Carolingian States and the Early Hungarians During the ninth century a series of states emerged in the area between Byzantium and the Carolingian Empire, showing signs of a new political and cultural region for the first time, investing in permanent ways of displaying status and power such as stone-​built public architecture (durable in the archaeological record). Which part of former Pannonia (today Transdanubia in Western Hungary) fell under Carolingian rule is debated.21 The center of the dukedom of Priwina was Mosaburg (today Zalavár), where considerable remains of a town have been discovered, including fortifications and ecclesiastical buildings.22 The most significant excavation results are connected to a large three-​aisled church that had an ambulatory with radiating chapels on the east and a multistory western part with a round turret. The church was decorated with stone-​carvings with interlacing motifs and silver-​stained figural glass windows (see Figure 16.1).23 It has been suggested that the archbishop of Salzburg sent the remains of Saint Hadrianus to this church.24 Another church, excavated at Zalavár-​Récéskút, was a three-​aisled basilica with a flat east end on the exterior and three semicircular apses on the interior.25 Artifacts recovered around these churches include jewelry in a Byzantine-​Oriental style (Byzantine forms influenced by Avar styles), pottery with glagolitic (the earliest form of Slavic script) inscriptions, and a lead bull (seal) of Georgios, archbishop of Bulgaria (see ­chapter 14, this volume, by Kiss and Doležalová).26 Thus, Mosaburg, even while integrating into the Carolingian Empire, kept cultural and artistic connections with the Byzantine world. Recent excavations have identified further

362    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.1.  Figural stained glass fragments from Mosaburg/​Zalavár, middle of the ninth century. Budapest, Hungarian National Museum. All Hungarian National Museum photos in this chapter by Szende László: [email protected].

architectural activity in other contemporaneous centers of Transdanubia, including Pécs, Visegrád, and Zselicszentjakab.27 North of the Danube, the Moravian Duchy emerged, with centers at Staré Město-​ Uherské Hradiště and Mikulčice. Besides missionaries from the Frankish Church, the monks Cyril and Methodius arrived from Byzantium and introduced a liturgy in the Slavic language and created its first script—​glagolitic. Artistic connections are usually interpreted along these same lines.28 One of the key monuments, excavated in Uherské Hradiště-​Sady, was a three-​aisled cruciform church that was extended to the west in the second half of the ninth century. Although this extension is often interpreted as a narthex and thus a sign of Byzantine missionary influence,29 the western apse clearly points to Carolingian connections (see Figure 16.2).

(a)

(b)

Figure 16.2.  Uherské Hradiště-​Sady, ground plan and reconstruction of the building phases after Luděk Galuška, Uherské Hradiště-​Sady, křesťanské centrum Říše Velkomoravské. Moravské ze mské muzeum, Nadace Litera, Brno 1996.

364    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić Beside this, and another church in Mikulčice, there are many smaller churches of diverse architectural types (centrally planned and longitudinal, with towers at the west or the east, with or without buttresses). The diversity of such buildings has been connected to the different origins of the missionaries (Germany, Italy, and Byzantium) who were active in Moravia. The density of these small churches has been associated with the processional liturgy originating from Rome, which the Moravians turned to under pressure from the Carolingians and the Byzantines.30 Some of these churches were decorated with murals and carved stones and the tombs around them were rich in bronze objects and gold jewelry in the Byzantine-​Oriental style with Christian motifs.31 A number of standing churches in Slovakia have recently been connected to the Moravian period, although their dating is often controversial.32 In Croatia a third region that emerged in the same period, the architectural heritage is enormously rich in standing churches.33 Local types include six-​lobed churches that may echo the Late Antique baptistery of Zadar, three-​conch and cross-​shaped churches, and different single-​space and three-​aisled churches with towers at the west end or placed centrally above the nave. Their walls are articulated by lesenes (narrow, low-​relief supports attached to a wall) and their interiors are often vaulted. The most significant examples, such as St. Donat in Zadar and the Holy Savior near Cetina, have been connected to Carolingian models. These churches were equipped with richly decorated liturgical furniture (choir screens, altar baldachins) often accompanied with inscriptions (see Figure 16.3).34 Carolingian influences have also been detected in sacred and secular goldsmith work.35

Figure 16.3.  Gornji Koljani (or other Croatian site), choir screen. Split, Archaeological Museum.

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    365 With the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin at the end of the ninth century the situation changed dramatically. In a few years, the Hungarians conquered Transdanubia, the Moravian Duchy collapsed, and for decades the Hungarians raided Western Europe and Byzantium. The silver and gold brought back from these raids served as the basis of new and splendid artistic production that became characteristic for tenth-​century Hungarians.36 All the evidence comes from archaeological excavations.37 It seems that the artistic culture of the Hungarians, like that of other nomadic people, concentrated on their clothes, weapons, jewelry, and ornaments. Pieces of carved bone that were parts of saddles show that the decorative elements known from goldsmith-​work were used in other genres, although, no textiles38 or woodcarvings have survived to verify this further. The meaning and the origin of the rich palmette decoration of the metalwork has long been debated. Archaeologists tend to interpret the palmette as a symbol of the World Tree, seen as an element of shamanistic beliefs among the early Hungarians, whereas art historians tend to regard them as merely ornamental.39 Some elements resemble Sassanid and Sogdian goldsmith-​work;40 other elements connect them to Islamic,41 Carolingian, and Byzantine influences (see Figure 16.4).42 Surprisingly, this artistic culture is known only sporadically east of the Carpathian Basin, where the Hungarians came from, although recent excavations have identified

Figure 16.4.  Tiszabeszéd, sabretache from a Hungarian conquest period tomb. Budapest, Hungarian National Museum.

366    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić some elements of it in the Ukrainian steppes.43 It seems that this style developed in the contacts between the Hungarians and neighboring cultures.

State Formation and Christianization around 1000 Starting in the tenth century and culminating around 1000, three Christian states emerged in the region. This process, together with its artistic consequences, has been compared to developments in Scandinavia.44 One aspect of this state formation was the symbolic expression of power through royal insignia, a complete set of which is represented on the Hungarian Coronation Mantle (once a chasuble commissioned by Stephen I in 1031), consisting of a crown, an orb, and a lance (see Figure 16.5).45 The lance was also represented on silver denarii issued by Stephen I.46 This type of representation originated in the Holy Lance, which was part of the imperial treasure of the Holy Roman Empire. Otto III supposedly gave a copy to Bolesław I the Brave in Gniezno in 1000; such a copy is still kept in Cracow’s cathedral treasury.47 The lance was also used in Bohemia, where the dukes were represented with it on manuscripts, frescos, coins, and seals.48 The lance later disappeared from the Hungarian regalia, but it continued to be used in Bohemia as a symbol of ducal authority.49 In contrast, the earliest royal crown of the region has been preserved in Hungary. It consists of a Byzantine female crown (c. 1070s) with an added upper part with enamels partly copying Byzantine pieces; therefore, it is dated to the time of Coloman the Learned (1095–​1116) or later (Béla III, 1172–​1196).50 It was accompanied by a scepter consisting of a Fatimid crystal pommel and a short handle decorated with filigree work. Based on its form, it has been dated to the time of Stephen I;51 nevertheless, later dating has also been suggested.52 As the new states organized their territorial power a special castle system developed. In Hungary, a series of earthwork fortifications with wooden and/​or stone constructions were erected in the centers of the counties.53 According to recent research, the castle organization of Hungary was comparable to that of Poland and Bohemia, although the castles themselves were built differently (in Poland and Bohemia following local models, in Hungary showing a relationship with the Eastern Slavic regions).54 A particular and often-​discussed element of the Polish strongholds is a palace with a centrally planned chapel annexed to it (see Figure 16.6).55 Centrally planned churches have been regarded as typical of the region’s architecture.56 Their origin is often explained with Moravian forerunners; however, the situation was undoubtedly more complex and influences from Italy, Byzantium, and other territories should also be taken into consideration. Moreover, rotundas played important roles in certain cases (e.g., St. Vitus I in Prague and Gniezno, where a rotunda was discovered in the cathedral), but they rarely stood alone and were often built close to

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    367

Figure 16.5. Saint Stephen represented on the chasuble of Székesfehérvár in 1031, later Coronation Mantle. Budapest, Hungarian National Museum.

longitudinal churches (e.g., Budeč, Giecz). In Prague, besides the St. Vitus rotunda, the St. George church was also significant; its building history is often debated, but the western part seems to follow German models.57 German architectural traditions may have played an important role in shaping many of the cathedrals in the region (Kalocsa and its similarities to Cologne, St. Pantaleon II). Some of them were basilicas built with a western apse, typical in the Holy Roman Empire; this is the case for St. Vitus II in Prague and the early cathedrals of Cracow and Vác. Occasionally, other ecclesiastical institutions also used this type (St. Peter and Paul in Vyšehrad, Tum pod Łęczycą, Pannonhalma, Szermonostor).58 In other cases, Saxon prototypes have been suggested (the Poznan cathedral, St. Gereon or Mary of Egypt in Cracow).59 The South

368    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.6.  Giecz, ground plan of the castle with palace and churches after Maxim Mordovin, A várszervezet kialakulása a középkori Magyarországon, Csehországban és Lengyelországban a 10-​12. században, Studia ad Archaeologiam Pazmaniensia 5 (Budapest: Archaeolingua), 2016.

German-​type crypt was imitated in Tihany, evaluated as a sign of the possible influence of monastic reform.60 Besides longitudinal types, complex forms of centrally planned churches are also known from the period. Recent excavations have revealed the first form of the St. Laurence church in Vyšehrad. It is quite similar to that of Feldebrő in Hungary, which, in turn, may be related to Italy, although Byzantine connections have also been suggested.61 A closely related example, the Benedictine abbey of Szekszárd, also shows Italian connections (e.g., Paderna).62

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    369 Italian influences seem to be dominant in the first typical style of stone carving in Hungary, which uses palmette friezes and acanthus spinosa capitals.63 Polish scholarship also compared the stone carvings there to Italian prototypes, although this idea was re-​ evaluated and Hungarian connections emphasized.64 The early carvings in Cracow (like the architecture) have often been related to Prague, which is interpreted differently.65 Other ornaments of the church might also have been splendid, but few early books and little liturgical goldwork have survived (see Figure 16.7).

Figure 16.7.  St. Wenzeslas in Gumpold’s Legend, Bohemia, before 1006 (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Guelf 11, 2, Augusteus 4, fol 18v). Available from: https://​comm​ons.wikime​dia. org/​wiki/​File:Emma​_​and​_​Wen​cesl​aus-​Gum​pold​_​man​uscr​ipt.jpg.

370    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

The Flourishing of Romanesque Art The mature phase of Romanesque architecture is connected to the rebuilding of a number of early church foundations. Around 1100, many Hungarian cathedrals were renewed following a church type (often called a Benedictine or Lombard type) without a transept and ending in three semicircular apses (Pécs, Eger, Győr); in other cases, the aisles terminated in flat ends (Gyulafehérvár) or eastern towers (Esztergom).66 A similar pattern was also followed in Olomouc. Besides all the similarities, differences can be also detected in the arrangement and number of towers and crypts. Monasteries often used this building type in Hungary (Garamszentbenedek, Somogyvár, Dombó, and elsewhere) and Poland (Tyniec, Wrocław-​Ołbin).67 Western towers were often added to these churches. In some cases the choir was elongated, such as for the Augustinian canons in Czerwińsk and the Premonstratensiens in Litomyšl and perhaps Milevsko, all with western towers. The Lombard-​church type is also known at the parish level, e.g., in Tismice. Another tradition is a special emphasis on the eastern part of the building, with side-​ apses (Mogilno and Lubiń in Poland), perhaps paired with eastern towers (Sázava and Ostrov u Davle in Bohemia). Eastern towers were erected next to the aisles in the female convents of Prague, St. George, and Teplice. A special arrangement with eastern towers and/​or oratories on the first floor is known from Hungary (Boldva, Ákos, Harina). These churches have tall nonvaulted interiors, which seem to be typical for Eastern Hungary. Real transepts are rare in Hungary (Gyulafehérvár II and early Cistercian abbeys), more frequent in Bohemia (Kladruby, Strahov, Doksany), and usual in Poland (Opatów, Kruszwica, Strzelno).68 Many of these churches were richly decorated with stone carvings. Starting from the early twelfth century, figural representations are also known, often connected stylistically to Italy.69 In Poland, portal tympana with representations of the founders are frequent (see Figure 16.8). The capitals of the abbey of Wrocław-​Ołbin have been compared to those used in the Hirsau reform monasteries.70 The acanthus ornaments typical of many churches of the period (e.g., Óbuda, Somogyvár, Esztergom, Székesfehérvár, Olomouc) can be related to the so-​called Twelfth-​Century Renaissance.71 Exceptionally, mosaics were also used for decoration, as written sources and some surviving pieces demonstrate in Székesfehérvár; large surfaces of floor mosaic have been discovered at Bizere monastery (see Figure 16.9).72 The walls were covered with wall paintings although probably not throughout; only a small amount of original material has survived.73 The Gothic style appeared surprisingly early in the region, at the court of King Béla III of Hungary (1172–​1196), but Late Romanesque style played a leading role in the first half of the thirteenth century. This is partly connected to the radical social and economic changes of the thirteenth century. In Hungary, large parts of the royal estates were privatized and the resulting new aristocracy founded numerous monasteries.

Figure 16.8.  Wrocław, Our Lady’s at Piasek, tympanum representing the foundation. Photo by Béla Zsolt Szakács.

Figure 16.9.  The Benedictine monastery of Bizere, floor mosaics. Photo by Attila Mudrak: [email protected].

372    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić These so-​called kindred (extended family) monasteries74 usually followed the traditional architectural types (three-​aisled basilicas with three apses and western complexes combining the towers with galleries and chapels).75 Late Romanesque styles also absorbed elements of contemporary Gothic architecture, thus the vaulting, support system, and stone carvings have Gothic features. Nevertheless, in volume and decoration the Romanesque effect is overwhelming. In the region of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary, a special architectural dialect of Late Romanesque was dominant in the early thirteenth century, with geometrical Norman decorative elements and rich ornamental motifs.76 The main representatives of this style include Lébény, Ják, Zsámbék, and Gyulafehérvár in Hungary and Třebič and Tišnov in Moravia (see Figure 16.10). The impact of the reform orders (Cistercians and Premonstratensians) was significant, but Gothic solutions were still preferred in their monasteries. As a result of the new colonization of previously almost uninhabited regions of East Central Europe, a huge number of village churches were built. They often follow the Romanesque traditions in volume and details; many of them consist of a semicircular apse, a nave, and a western tower. In certain regions and periods, the chancel is often rectangular in shape, thus it can be vaulted with a tunnel vault or a ribbed cross vault. Romanesque elements were still in use as late as the early fourteenth century, although technical and stylistic modernity is often limited to the chancel area in these same churches.77

Figure 16.10.  Třebič, Benedictine Abbey seen from southeast. Photo by Béla Zsolt Szakács.

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    373

The Late Middle Ages (Zoë Opačić) The later Middle Ages saw new political and cultural shifts in Central Europe which intensified artistic production and left a lasting pan-​European legacy. None of the major events in the period between the middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fifteenth century affected all parts of the region in the same way, but repercussions reverberated across the shared dynastic, ecclesiastical, artistic, and mercantile networks.78 Geopolitical circumstances are discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume (see introduction), however, it is impossible keep them separate entirely from the art and architecture that emerged in this period. The rise of new dynasties and their courts, the arrival of new monastic orders, the formation of new capitals, bishoprics, and universities, and the territorial expansion of Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia are inextricably linked with novel forms of patronage, genres of art, visual strategies, technical achievements, and stylistic developments. This cross-​cultural, historically sensitive approach is readily embraced in scholarly writing and even the obvious setbacks are no longer seen as being merely disruptive and destructive to the creative forces in the region.

The Beginnings of Gothic Style The arrival of the Mongols in Europe between 1236 and 1242 and the ensuing devastation decimated large swathes of Poland, Bohemia, and especially Hungary. The sustained campaign of destruction was followed by renewal of the demolished fortresses, churches, even entire cities.79 Alongside thriving medieval royal seats, these resurrected cities developed new concepts of town building with a more advanced system of fortifications, a regular street grid with a sizable market place (Wrocław, Cracow), a handsome town hall, and stone houses, sometimes with vaulted ground floors (still visible in Prague’s Old Town) used for commerce and civic display.80 Parish churches and new monastic houses incorporated into the urban fabric or in the countryside included elements of an ambitious architectural style known as Gothic, which originated in France in the mid-​twelfth century. Following the trend already seen in Western Europe, this new architectural system was deployed gradually and in a range of structures both secular and ecclesiastical. In Bohemia, the last members of the Přemyslid dynasty undertook extensive building activity that served to some extent as a model for the Luxemburg dynasty in the fourteenth century. The Cistercians, such as those in Osek (begun in 1207; see Figure 16.11) and Velehrad (begun in 1205), demonstrated knowledge of rib vault construction and a wide range of ideas connecting them less with the Cistercian heartland of Burgundy and more with proto-​Gothic structures in Franconia, Saxony, Thuringia, and the Danubian region of

374    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.11.  Osek, Cistercian Abbey, Chapter House. Photo © Vlado Bohdan. Institute of Art History CAS.

Austria (Heiligenkreutz, Zwettl, Lillienfeld). Cistercian foundations in Lesser Poland also introduced rib vaults into stone and brick churches constructed from about 1200 (Sulejów, Wąchock, Koprzywnica, and Mogiła) that became part of a burgeoning Gothic landscape.81 In Hungary, similar developments took place at the Pilis and Zirc abbeys founded by Bela III and completed in early thirteenth century. The Cistercians, however, cannot be seen as the sole “missionaries of Gothic” in Central Europe; similar experiments in vaulted designs are to be found in a wide range of churches, such as the Benedictine Kladruby (Southern Bohemia, consecrated 1233) and Pannonhalma (Hungary, consecrated 1224), the Premonstratensian Teplá (Bohemia, consecrated 1232), and the small bishop’s chapel of St. Bartholomew in Kyje outside Prague (1226–​1236).82 The political nexus between the monastic houses and ruling families continued to play an important role because the institutions they supported and where they chose to be buried could afford to demonstrate high levels of artistic ambition and the opportunity to innovate, not simply to assimilate, the latest architectural forms. This is clearly the case in Austria under the Babenberg dynasty. In Bohemia, Osek blossomed under the magnate Slávek Hrabischnitz. The Rosenbergs were famously the patrons of Vyšší Brod (consecrated 1257) and built it partly as their privileged final resting

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    375 place. The reign of the last Přemyslids—​Ottakar II and Wenceslaus II in particular—​ coincided with this new wave of Cistercian architecture in Bohemia (Zlatá Kourna, Sedlec, Vyšší Brod, Zderaz) with a strong tendency toward monumentality expressed, however, through simpler and often “reduced” tectonic forms such as polygonal piers, responds without capitals, and “scooped out” moldings. Not all Cistercian architecture stood in opposition to the dominant canon of the highly articulated cathedral Gothic: Sedlec (constructed from 1304 under Wenceslaus II’s advisor, Abbot Heidenreich) eschewed the near-​ubiquitous flat-​ended choir of many Cistercian houses in favor of an elaborate chevet that may have been directly inspired by the abbey church of St. Denis near Paris, the royal burial church of the French kings and an influential progenitor of Gothic style.83 Away from the ambitious seigneurial projects and closer to the expanding urban communities, mendicant orders emerging from Italy quickly found a foothold in Central Europe. As with the Cistercians, and despite Franciscan and Dominican regulations, a pure, identifiable “mendicant style” of architecture is absent. Their churches, however, whether situated within or on the edges of cities, presented opportunities for creative cross-​fertilization. The choir of St. Francis’s church and the adjacent church of the Holy Savior in Prague’s joint Clarissan and Franciscan foundation in the Old Town (known as the Agnes Convent after the foundress and daughter of Přemysl Otakar I, Agnes Přemyslovna) were the harbingers of the Gothic style in Prague and a linchpin between the earlier Cistercian Bohemian architecture and a new influx of French Gothic elements.84 The same status can be accorded to the earliest surviving synagogue in Central Europe, the so-​called Old-​New Synagogue in Prague’s Old Town (1254–​1262; see Figure 16.12), where the rib vaults, corbels, and especially the portal tympanum, decorated with carved vine tendrils and grapes symbolizing the Twelve Tribes of Israel, show similarities with contemporary buildings such as Zlatá Kourna and Vyšší Brod.85 The somewhat later synagogue in Sopron displays similar architectural and decorative tendencies. In contrast, distinctive approaches are apparent even among mendicant communities in the same town. The Franciscan church in Jihlava (founded 1240) is a basilica with an unusual transept that links it indirectly with the Dominican churches in Wroclaw and Banská Śtiavnica.86 The Dominican church of Jihlava (consecrated 1262), however, has a long polygonal choir similar to that of the Franciscans in Prague and also to that of the Dominicans in Uherský Brod and Vienna, and a hall nave such as at Retz in Austria as well as in Jihlava’s own parish church (consecrated 1272).87 The speed of mendicant settlement outpaced many other religious institutions; by the end of the thirteenth century at least sixteen new mendicant foundations had been constructed in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) alone.88 By the fourteenth century, Dominicans and Franciscans, as well as Carthusians and Augustinian hermits, were a ubiquitous presence across the towns of Central Europe and along the Dalmatian coast (Poreč, Krk, Šibenik, Trogir, and Dubrovnik) and their monasteries and churches became important parts of the religious fabric of those communities.

376    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.12.  Prague, Old-​New Synagogue, portal with decorated tympanum. Institute of Art History CAS.

All these religious structures—​Benedictine, Cistercian, and mendicant alike—​have been ravaged by time and their liturgical layout, furnishings, and decoration have all but disappeared. Their illuminated manuscripts, however, give important insights into their visual culture. The Lectionary of Arnold of Meissen, produced in the female Cistercian house of Marienstern in Upper Lusatia (part of medieval Crown Lands of Bohemia), shows a rare representation of the martyred English Archbishop Thomas Becket (1280–​1290; Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, Osek 76). Stylistically,

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    377 however, this and many other contemporary manuscripts (such as the Wolfenbüttel Sketchbook, Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-​August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 61.2 Aug. 8°, fols. 75–​ 94)89 show a variety of Italian and Byzantine influences and others which were adapted from adjacent regions to the northwest.90

Female Patrons Among the surviving illuminated manuscripts, the Passional of Abbess Cunegunde (Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, Ms XIV A17) is an outstanding example produced between 1312 and 1320 for the abbess of St. George’s in Prague Castle.91 As the first-​ born daughter of Otakar II, Cunegunde had access to high-​quality illuminators whose creative iconographical responses to the text by Canon Beneš make the Passional visually distinctive. Beneš is represented (fol. 1v) kneeling before the oversized abbess under her canopied seat immediately behind the Dominican Kolda of Koldice, the author of the manuscript’s mystical treatises (see Figure 16.13). The manuscript provides unique insight into the deeply affective piety of a high-​ born and well-​educated woman who is also known for promoting the cult of St. Ludmila at St. George’s. Cunegunda was one of many sophisticated female patrons in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Otakar I’s wife, Constance of Hungary, founded the Cistercian convent of Porta Coeli in Tišnov (Moravia, 1232–​1234) and, as Cunegunde did in her manuscript almost a century later, included herself prominently in the sculpted program of its cathedral-​like portal.92 Hedwig of Silesia, the wife of Henry I the Bearded, duke of Silesia, founded the Cistercian convent at Trzebnica, north of Wrocław, where she vigorously promoted the cult of her niece, Elizabeth of Hungary. Following Hedwig’s canonization in 1267 she was translated into a shrine in a new polygonal glazed chapel in the convent’s church, a momentous event that took place in the presence of Otakar II, Silesian princes, and nobility as well as an “uncountable mass of people.”93 As a princess of the House of Piast and the wife of Wenceslaus II (1303 to 1305) and Rudolf Habsburg (1306 to 1307), in her person Elizabeth Richenza united three powerful ruling dynasties in the region.94 Her liaison with Henry of Lipá led her to Moravia, where her foundation of Aula Sancte Marie in Staré Brno displayed close knowledge of a range of buildings from Regensburg Cathedral to Wrocław’s Holy Cross, Boleslav II’s burial chapel in Lubiąż, and St. Elizabeth’s in Marburg. The Marburg foundation of St. Elizabeth of Hungary may seem a particularly fitting model for her namesake’s Brno church, but the use of brick dressed with stone and the tall “long choir” speak in particular of links with Wrocław and Silesia, territories more familiar to Richenza than Marburg. The nine surviving illuminated manuscripts donated to the convent are part of a generous endowment and reflect not only their Cistercian provenance, but also Elizabeth’s Polish and Bohemian background, apparent in the

378    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.13.  Passional of Abbess Cunegunde (Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS XIV A17), Fol 1v. Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky.

choice of saints represented and entries in the necrology.95 The following centuries brought a new generation of formidable (and sometimes related) female patrons, such as Elizabeth Piast, Elizabeth Kotromanić, Jadwiga Jagiełło, Sophia of Bavaria, and Barbara of Celje, whose legacy, patchily preserved, nevertheless, shows them to have been on a par in art and statecraft with their respective royal husbands: Charles I Anjou, Louis I of Hungary (Charles’ son), Władysław Jagiełło, Wenceslaus II, and Matthias Corvinus.96

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    379

Princes of the Church Central-​European prelates, whose ecclesiastical office was fully compatible with influential political roles at the court or on the international diplomatic stage, were another important source of elite patronage. They were often widely traveled and highly erudite, probably none more so than Jan Středa, bishop of Naumburg, bishop of Litomyšl, bishop of Olomouc, and chancellor of Bohemia under Charles IV. He is widely considered to have been an influence on Charles IV’s religious program in the fourteenth century. The first archbishop of Prague, Arnošt of Pardubice, also shaped and shared Charles IV’s outlook and was part of a successful effort to elevate Prague to an archbishopric and replace its eleventh-​century basilica with a new Gothic choir. Bishops Muskata and Nanker of Cracow were responsible for two very different visions of how the new Cracow cathedral (begun c. 1300) should look, the former favoring a French-​style chevet, the latter a flat-​ended choir probably inspired by Cistercian architecture.97 Even before the flourishing of the Luxemburg and Piast courts, prelates established sophisticated seats with palaces, churches, and high-​quality art only rivaled by that of the royalty. Their commissions sometimes anticipated projects and ideas of the capital courts. Often, as in the case of Jan Volek, bishop of Olomouc and illegitimate son of King Wenceslaus II Přemyslid, they were members of the royal family with access to the same artistic circles and concepts. Volek’s gilded Reliquary of the Man of Sorrows (1347–​1349, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery), which contains a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, acted as a devotional bridge between the Eucharistic piety found in the Passional of Abbess Cunegunde and that of Charles IV, whose imperial coats of arms are included on the base alongside those of Volek’s bishopric in Moravia.98 A different kind of bridge, one across dynastic faultiness, was provided by Peter of Aspelt. As archbishop of Mainz, he arranged the marriage between John of Luxemburg and Elizabeth Přemyslovna, a union that brought the Luxemburg dynasty to the Bohemian throne, and acted as the young king’s counselor. He was rewarded generously in Bohemian money and valuable reliquaries and his tenure also saw the commissioning of a mason, Henry of Bohemia, to work on the Church of Our Lady in Mainz, one of the most advanced Rayonnant window-​tracery projects of the day.99 The last bishop of Prague, Jan of Drażice, spent eleven years at the papal court in Avignon and employed French masons in his seat at Roudnice some years before Matthias of Arras arrived to be the first master mason of Prague Cathedral.100 The most impressive concentration of episcopal power is to be found in Esztergom, the birthplace of St. Stephen, linked with the very origins of Christianity and statehood in Hungary. Following the Mongol devastation and the removal of the royal seat to Visegrád and then Buda, Esztergom blossomed and became one of the main centers of Hungary in the High Middle Ages. Although much of its medieval fabric was swept away in the Ottoman period, the complex on a hill above the Danube once comprised at least four churches and chapels (St. Adalbert’s, St. Stephen’s, St. Vitus’s, and King

380    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić Béla III’s). The chapel King Béla III built is thought to have been one of the earliest of Gothic style in Hungary.101 The chapter library and treasury still preserve a number of high-​quality objects and books, including King Matthias Corvinus’s famous fifteenth-​ century Calvary made by Parisian and Milanese goldsmiths, a stunning confection studded with gems and pearls (Esztergom, Cathedral Treasury, 1402 and the last third of the fifteenth century).102 A number of powerful Hungarian bishops in the later Middle Ages, such as János Hédervári at Győr, rose through the ranks thanks to favorable political circumstances and close ties with the ruling dynasty and cultivated a taste for costly self-​commemorative architectural projects, often emulating the archbishops in Esztergom.103 Hédervári’s Holy Trinity Chapel at Győr used fashionable and structurally complex triradial vaults and looked to a number of prestigious buildings in Bohemia, Silesia, and Austria for the most up-​to-​date chapel design.

Royal Residences, Castles, and Fortifications In the thirteenth century, Hungary stood out in the region as a kingdom without a single established royal and ecclesiastical center. After a succession of royal seats in Esztergom, Óbuda, and Timişoara, Hungarian kings settled in Visegrád (see Figure 16.14), another hilltop residence above the Danube, upstream from Buda. Wrapped around the complex stratigraphy of the steep site, the castle consists of an upper and lower ward, each independently fortified. An additional curtain wall and a palace were added in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and Visegrád remained a royal residence and the treasury for the royal insignia despite Buda becoming the main administrative seat.104 The castles of the last Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia moved from modular designs toward spatial regularity and integration. Situated above the confluence of the Vltava and Otava rivers, Zvíkov Castle has an inner bailey flanked on three sides by a two-​storey vaulted gallery that looks onto the courtyard through a series of identical proto-​bar tracery windows. The gallery links the great hall in the eastern wing and the Chapel of St. Wenceslaus in the south wing. The heavily arcaded chapel, with a flat east end, continues the dominant theme of the external gallery and is similar to courtly chapels like those at Klosterneuburg, Esztergom, Písek, and Raciborz.105 Bezděz castle built, like Visegrád, on a precipitous site, is a variation on the same theme, with a polygonal, vaulted chapel visually unified through elegantly curving forms of bar tracery on the windows and blind arches on the dado to a mesmerizing effect (which can be fully appreciated from the upper gallery). In contrast to these elevated fortifications, Gozzoburg in Krems was a municipal house that was adapted by its owner, Gozzo, a judge and Otakar II’s representative, adding an arcaded porch with pointed arches and ribvaults, a large hall decorated with painted coats of arms, and the chapels of St. John and St. Katherine. The

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    381

Figure 16.14.  Visegrád, Royal Palace. Photo by Béla Zsolt Szakács.

layout of the palace, including a loggia, speaks more of Italian than Central European traditions, but the real revelation of the complex is the paintings preserved in one of the thirteenth-​century rooms in the tower. Dated stylistically to the 1270s, the subject matter of these remarkable survivals has puzzled researchers, with suggestions ranging from an unusual story of Barlaam and Josaphat to the advance of the Antichrist. The fragmentary nature of the frescoes means that they may never be identified, but their exceptional quality and the crowded scenes thronging with well-​dressed, crowned, and armed figures, speak of a highly cultivated setting and offer a glimpse of what might have been lost elsewhere (see Figure 16.15).106 In the Baltic region of present-​day Poland, ruled with an iron fist by the Teutonic Knights, castle building reached unprecedented levels of complexity and modernization as befitted one of the most prestigious—​and international—​regional forces. With Malbork (Marienburg) as its main seat, the knights built new towns, fortresses, and churches in their realm, pushing the possibilities of brick to its structural and decorative limits (see Figure 16.16). The castle, with a sequence of hierarchically organized administrative, religious, and ceremonial spaces, redefined the notion of a fortified residence as something splendid, to be admired and feared rather than conquered. The knights’ penchant for decorative triradial and star-​shaped vaults, possibly influenced by English tierceron vaults, opened their potential to a new generation of masons and patrons. These geometrically complex designs, erected over rooms of differing shapes and sizes, are a defining feature of each, conceived independently from the upright walls.107

Figure 16.15.  Krems, Gozzoburg, wall paintings. Photo by Zoë Opačić.

Figure 16.16.  Malbork/​Marienburg Castle, the Large Refectory. Photo by Zoë Opačić.

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    383

Royal Courts The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw an exponential growth of cities, a process begun in the previous century after the Mongol invasion. The foundation and building of towns, spurred on by Otakar II, the Silesian dukes, the Teutonic Knights, and Árpád kings, assumed new proportions with the establishment of Cracow, Prague, Buda, and Vienna as major political, economic, religious, and cultural centers of medieval Europe. In each case, the arrival of a new ambitious and cosmopolitan ruling house (Luxemburg, Angevin, Habsburg, Piast, and later, Jagiellonian) initiated large-​scale building projects extended beyond individual court buildings to include large-​scale urban enterprises. Often, as in the case of Cracow, Prague, and Vienna, they followed the same conceptual logic despite topographical differences.108 The influence of international courts and the imprint of such distinguished royal patrons as Louis IX of France and Henry III of England can be discerned in many Central European courts, especially that of Charles IV, who was educated in Paris.109 The Romanesque cathedrals of Prague and Cracow were replaced by ambitious Gothic buildings, which, in the case of Prague, were planned and erected under the workshop of two foreign master masons—​Matthew of Arras and Peter Parler. Parler’s ability to be both innovative and retrospective in his designs and to meet his patron’s idiosyncratic vision while showcasing his own knowledge of most up-​to-​date Rayonnant and South German architectural forms, makes him one of the most influential architects of the late Middle Ages.110 The architectural landscape of much of fourteenth-​and fifteenth-​century Central Europe would be hard to imagine without the defining influence of “the Parlers,” whose ideas were transmitted through drawings and direct involvement with masons’ lodges (Vienna, Zagreb). These new archiepiscopal seats were also the centers of royal cults and ceremony. Both Cracow and Prague cathedrals were coronation and burial churches with a number of newly commissioned effigy tombs in stone, alabaster, and marble. In Prague, members of the extinct Přemyslid dynasty occupied the radiating chapels of the side aisles, their retrospective effigies stared upward toward the triforium occupied by commemorative busts of the Luxemburg dynasty and its court.111 The Hungarian mottled red marble tombs of the Piasts and Jagiellonians in Cracow cathedral not only attracted some of the greatest sculptors of the day, such as Veit Stoss, but also created a distinctive chromatic aesthetic copied in effigies which gradually filled the additional side chapels.112 The eclecticism of these projects led to a hitherto unseen level of experimentation with artistic materials and forms. In some instances, these novel forms remained unique. The monumental Last Judgment mosaic on the south porch of Prague Cathedral was the most prominent tribute to Charles IV’s fascination with Romano-​Byzantine heritage (see Figure 16.17). Other innovations, such as the single, tracery-​clad tower of Prague Cathedral’s transept, became a distinguishing feature of many great late medieval church projects, most notably St. Stephen’s in Vienna.113

384    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.17. Prague Cathedral, south transept, Last Judgment mosaic. Photo © Zdeněk Matyásko. Institute of Art History CAS.

Prague resembled other royal towns in the region such as Buda and Cracow in having separate royal and municipal districts. Buda, the site of the royal castle, together with Óbuda, Pest, and Margaret Island formed an urban conglomerate, with the Danube island being a site of the veneration of Margaret of Hungary.114 This binary urban development was extended with the addition of new districts—​Kazimierz (Cracow) and New Town (Prague)—​which doubled their size.115 The new royal towns were planned on a regular grid and had large market squares, independent town halls, parish churches, and carefully selected monastic orders such as the Slav Benedictines, Augustinian Friars, and Florentine Servites. Ambrosians, and Paulines were new additions to the already crowded religious landscape of these cities. The sense of urban decorum was enhanced by ceremonies, including royal coronations and funerals, Easter Passion plays, and Corpus Christi processions. In these sizable new districts, rituals and architecture elided to create meaningful urban spaces with processional routes and strategically placed monuments that symbolically linked important sites across the city. Thus, in Cracow the venerable national shrine of St. Stanislas in Skałka was connected with the royal district on Cracow’s Wawel hill via a ceremonial route which traversed Kazimierz and part of the Old Town. The ancient royal seat of Vyšehrad on Prague’s southern tip was the key station of the Bohemian coronation and royal funeral itinerary. During such momentous events the New Town’s Vyšehradska street became the via sacra between Vyšehrad and Prague Castle, linking many religious and civic institutions of the Old

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    385 and New Towns and ambitious new urban statements such as the colossal expanse of Charles Square. The new stone bridge in Prague (begun in 1347), with its sculpted Old Town Bridge Tower (also partly completed by Peter Parler) provided a vital crossing over the Vltava River and a link between the royal and municipal districts. Its role as a gateway is implied by its large single-​arch vaulted passage, but its novelty lies in its architectural forms such as the earliest net vault and its varied sculptural and painted decoration, which created a complex semantic system across its tiered elevation with an emphasis on sacred, hereditary, and territorial sources of royal power.116 Public displays of relics such as the imperial insignia and passion relics in Prague and those in the cathedral treasury in Vienna expanded the devotional landscape across and beyond the city and its impact could be seen on all forms of art and architecture, much of it now lost.117 The most outstanding tribute to the power of relics is situated in Karlstein Castle, a royal foundation of Charles IV built between 1348 and 1365 as a Schatzkammer (treasure chamber) for the imperial insignia and the passion relics held by the Holy Roman emperors. The culmination of its painted eschatological program, which originally evolved across its three towers of ascending height, is to be found in the bejeweled interior of the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Crowned by a gilded vault studded with star-​shaped mirrors, a phalanx of saints with expressive eyes and luminous faces is painted against the decorative gilded background of their framed panels. Over a hundred such painted figures gaze intently at visitors as they approach the treasure chest placed in a niche above the main altar and ponder the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice depicted on the panels immediately above it (see Figure 16.18).118 The painted program of the Holy Cross Chapel, attributed to Master Theodoric and his workshop, marks an important moment in Bohemian painting, which became increasingly international in the course of the fourteenth century. A particular blend of Italian and Byzantine influences, sometimes enriched with French motifs, found, for example, on the Vyšší Brod panels (Prague, Národní Galerie, c. 1350), The Madonna of Most (Most, Capuchin Monastery, mid-​fourteenth century), the Karlsruhe Diptych (Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, c. 1350), the Kaufmann Crucifixion (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, c. 1340), and the monumental Kłodzko Madonna (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Berlin, c. 1350), evolved during the Luxemburg era into something distinctively Bohemian. The expressive and monumental quality of this work can be seen not only in Karlstein but also in the Votive Panel of Archbishop Jan Očko (Prague, Národní galerie) and the extensive typological program at the Emmaus Monastery in Prague’s New Town, all dating from between 1360 and 1380. The concluding decades of Luxemburg rule in Bohemia coincided with a pictorial quest for deeper and more personal spiritual meaning somewhat removed from the ostentatious richness of the Charles IV imperial era.119 The focus on affective religious themes was articulated through highly finished and luminous compositions, most notably those of the Třeboň Master, populated by ethereal and disproportionately elongated holy figures which are barely contained by their architectural and natural setting (see Figure 16.19).120 Another uniquely Bohemian development, the courtly image of a youthful Madonna and Child (for example, Zbraslav, Strahov, and Rome Madonnas, all from around the middle of the

386    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić

Figure 16.18.  Karlštejn Castle, Holy Cross Chapel, altar wall. Photo © Prokop Paul. Institute of Art History CAS.

fourteenth century, Prague, Národní galerie), reflected the prevailing focus on Marian worship, assiduously promoted by Charles IV and the highly educated prelates at his court. The sculpted versions of a heavily draped “beautiful Madonna” balancing the Christ child became one of the most notable Bohemian artistic exports with examples found across Europe (including Wrocław, Toruń, and Marburg).121 Shrines and national cults remained a significant focus of elite and popular devotion and were bolstered by new hagiographies and elaborate settings. The Luxemburgs introduced new cults in their realm such as that of St. Sigismund, but above all fostered national patron saints.122 The pantheon of Bohemian saints—​Procopius, Ludmila, Adalbert,

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    387

Figure 16.19.  Třeboň Master, Altarpiece Panel, the Resurrection. Prague, Národní galerie.

and Wenceslaus—​were given new shrines and reliquaries. They were promoted and commemorated on a number of public monuments, including the Old Town Bridge Tower, the mosaic on the South Porch of Prague Cathedral, and the staircase murals in Karlstein Castle. The exotic and self-​consciously retrospective square chapel of Wenceslaus, built as a devotional cornerstone of the new cathedral in Prague, was decorated with polished semiprecious stones, another Bohemian invention also seen at Karlstein. These jasper, amethyst, chalcedony, carnelian, and chrysoprase stones edged with gold revetments act as lustrous and polychromatic settings for wall paintings showing the scenes of the Passion

388    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić of Christ and unite it visually with the Wenceslaus shrine.123 As well as being Eucharistic in nature, the Passion murals, attributed to Master Osvald, imply a mystical kinship between Wenceslaus’s hagiography and martyrdom and that of Christ. In common with other Central European national shrines, Wenceslaus’s chapel and shrine were also a political space, where the relics and reliquary bust of the saint acted as guardians of the state and its holy instruments, including the Bohemian crown. The notion of sacred kingship played an important role in the siting of the altar and the relics of St. Stanislas in Cracow cathedral. St. Stephen of Hungary’s relics, especially his mummified hand found a temporary resting place in the royal necropolis in Székesfehérvár. Várad played an important role as the home of St. Ladislas. The Hungarian queen, Elizabeth Kotromanić, was involved in commissioning a costly silver shrine of St. Simeon in Zadar. This is an unusual but by no means singular example of the high quality of goldsmiths’ work, as many surviving reliquaries from Bohemia (the Bohemian Reliquary Cross, the Head of St. Ludmila, and the Arm Reliquary of St. George, all part of Prague Cathedral Treasury), Austria (the Thorn and True Cross Monstrances, the Klosterneuburg Stiftsmuseum), and Hungary (the Bust of St. Ladislas, Győr cathedral treasury) amply demonstrate.124 Bohemian goldsmiths, although not exclusively Czech, earned a great reputation for their exquisite creations. In 1378, Charles IV acquired from Paris the miter of St. Eligius, the patron saint of goldsmiths, and presented it to their Prague guild, which encased the relic in a miter-​shaped reliquary (now in Prague, Narodní Muzeum).125 Alongside goldsmiths, embroiderers were also important in the court patronage of the Luxemburgs, as can be seen in a number of documented references (twenty-​one in all in Prague between 1362 and 1440). Time and a substantial fire in Prague Castle in 1541 destroyed many of the liturgical vestments, altar, and shrine covers, banners, and hangings mentioned in the inventories. Significant fragments uncovered during the excavation of the royal crypt in Prague Cathedral reveal the richness and variety of male and female funerary attire. They included rare Central Asian imports of silk lampas used in Charles IV’s ceremonial robes. The attire of the buried queens, boasting patterns of sailing boats, Chinese dragons, and dogs, were of Italian manufacture but also Central Asian. Many were prepared during the king’s and queen’s lifetimes.126 The opulence of the courts, the taste for costly and exotic objects and their currency as collectables and diplomatic gifts, is evident from the records and an array of surviving items. They include ivory oliphants (hunter’s horns made from elephant ivory), a fourth-​ century agate chalice, objects of rock crystal made in Venice or Paris, a bone and wood casket of Embriachi manufacture, a Chinese vase (all in Prague Cathedral Treasury) as a small sample of greater riches mentioned in contemporary sources. Often these objects were repurposed as vessels or relic containers, even when their distinctly secular decoration appears to be at odds with the sacred objects they contained. The aesthetic appeal, costliness, and rarity of materials, craft, and distant provenance were seen to enhance their value and add a special aura to their given function. The reigns of Wenceslaus IV in Bohemia and Mattias Corvinus in Hungary ushered in a golden age of manuscript production and illumination in Central Europe. Wenceslaus’s famous manuscripts, including the Wenceslaus Bible (Vienna, Österreichische

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    389 Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2759-​2764), the Golden Bull (especially the Vienna copy, ÖNB, Cod. 338), and the three-​part German epic, Willehalm (Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 2670), were produced during a time of growing religious strife, which ultimately led to the destruction and dispersal of the king’s precious library. Only seven items survive (the majority in Vienna). The multivolume Bible offered the most modern German translation, from around 1390, in deliberate contravention of the prohibition on disseminating vernacular Bibles issued by Wenceslaus IV’s father, Emperor Charles IV, in 1369. The three astronomical-​astrological manuscripts are testimony of Prague’s status as a center of the natural sciences around 1400 and coincided with the construction of Prague’s famous astronomical clock in 1409 by Wenceslaus IV’s astrologer and physician, Iohannes Šindel, in collaboration with Nicholas of Kadaň.127 The extensive pictorial programs and rich marginal decoration of Wenceslaus IV’s manuscripts reveal them to be exquisite objects made not only for reading but also for sheer aesthetic pleasure. Amid the stylized vegetal decoration a number of the king’s emblems populate the decorative margins: the kingfisher and the torque, wild men, scantily dressed bath maidens, two monograms, and an old Czech motto that still remains undecoded.128 A similar fondness for the polysemantic world of visual symbols beyond mere heraldry, personal to the king and linked with courtly and chivalric orders is apparent in the visual language of Wenceslaus IV’s half-​brother, Sigismund. These complex symbols implied exclusivity and proximity to the royal person through membership in a confraternity, in Sigismund’s case, the Order of the Dragon, established in 1408. The allegorical meaning of emblems could shift depending on context, however, and understanding them was part of an “intellectual game” accessible only to a very few.129 During Sigismund’s reign Buda became firmly established as the principal seat of the Hungarian monarchy. This was reflected in an extensive building campaign at the palace in Buda Castle, including a chapel (now destroyed) modeled on Nuremberg’s Frauenkirche and dedicated to St. Sigismund. Probably one of the most exceptional aspects of Sigismund’s remodeling of Buda was a cycle of sculpted stone figures (discovered in 1974, currently held in Budapesti Történeti Múzeum) that show an exceptionally high level of execution and a wide range of influence from France (Paris and Burgundy), Vienna, and Brabant. The impact of the international style developed by the Buda sculptors was disseminated to other regions of the realm and can be found in such examples as the effigy tomb of Tvrtko II of Bosnia (originally in Bobovac).130 The perceptible influence of Italian art and artists on Luxemburg domains intensified during Sigismund’s reign and attracted the artists Pisanello (Antonio di Puccio Pisano), Filarete (Antonio di Pietro Averlino), and Masolino (Masolino da Panicale) into his orbit. Pisanello’s exquisite ink drawing (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Départment des Arts Graphiques) of Sigismund in profile—​one of many contemporary depictions of the king—​could be seen as the culmination of a long line of individualized royal portraits in all media, a trend set in motion by Charles IV in the previous century. The links between Buda and Florence forged under Sigismund flourished during the reign of Mattias Corvinus. Buda became a gateway for an influx of Renaissance ideas, humanist writing, and art into Central Europe. Books intended for the extensive

390    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić Corvinus library were commissioned directly from Florence.131 The library also included astronomical manuscripts appropriated from the bibliophile Wenceslaus IV by replacing the Luxemburg with the Corvinian coats of arms (Vienna, ÖNB Cod. 2271 and Madrid Res 28). Corvinus’s tastes were undoubtedly influenced and shared by the Hungarian nobility, many of them Italian-​educated, as well as his spouses. His second wife, Beatrice of Aragon, seems to have been responsible for introducing Italian food, fashion, and etiquette at the Buda court and possibly for refurbishing the palace.132 It was at this time that Matthias incorporated red marble columns (possibly part of a loggia) and several fountains, one decorated with a statue of Athena, mentioned in contemporary descriptions. Only a few decades after Buda, Prague Castle also experienced a renewal in its fortunes under a new occupant—​King Władysław Jagiełło (1471–​1516). A distant successor to Peter Parler, Benedict Ried, was employed as royal architect in the final decade of the fifteenth century, remodeling sections of the palace, above all the great hall and the so-​called rider steps leading to it. Ried, who also worked on the nave of St. Barbara’s in Kutná Hora and at St. Nicholas’s in Louny, found much inspiration in Parler’s work in the cathedral (and possibly in the palace itself). With his collaborators, Ried created a unique blend of late Gothic curvilinear ribvaults capable of spanning vast interiors and Renaissance door and window embrasures.133 This architecture of breathtaking ingenuity and intense visual appeal propelled late Gothic style into the sixteenth century and made Central Europe one of its last creative heartlands.

Regional Identity and Civic Aspirations In parallel with the cosmopolitanism, largesse, and sophistication of the main Central European courts, many regions and cities of Central Europe developed their own artistic identities, forged through their political, mercantile, and familial networks. On the Dalmatian littoral, Dubrovnik (or Ragusa), “the pearl of the Adriatic,” gradually carved out and subsequently fiercely maintained its independence from its expansive neighbors and formidable regional powers: Byzantium, Hungary, Serbia, and from the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Empire. One dominant regional power, the Venetian Republic, the ruler of Dubrovnik until 1358, remained a rival as well as a role model for a successful maritime republic whose identity is defined by its relationship with the sea. Dubrovnik defended itself by means of labyrinthine diplomacy and a powerful two-​ kilometer-​long circuit of fortifications begun in the year of the fall of Constantinople (1453) and continued well into the sixteenth century. The earlier part (including the iconic landward Minčeta Tower) was designed by the Florentine architect Michelozzo Michelozzi and completed by Juraj Dalmatinac. Dubrovnik also prided itself on its

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    391 forward-​looking laws and pioneering civic projects—​an early almshouse, an orphanage, a lazaret (quarantine hospital), and an advanced water supply system constructed by Onofrio della Cava in 1438. Many of Dubrovnik’s medieval structures were destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 1667, but its layout along the spine of the Stradun (or Placa) street, which stretches between the Pile Gate and the Harbor, and some of its civic monuments still survive. That includes the 31-​meter-​high tower with a bell built as a climax to the Stradun and the entrance into the port in 1444. Alongside such conventional expressions of civic pride, an unusual import from the north stands in the main square facing the church of St. Blasius, the local patron and saintly protector, Orlando’s column (see Figure 16.20).

Figure 16.20.  Dubrovnik, Orlando’s Column. Wikimedia Commons.

392    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić One version of the many colossal statues of the mythical figure Roland (Orlando in Italian) ostensibly built in homage to Sigismund of Luxemburg (by Bonino da Milano in 1419), it is a perpetual symbol of Ragusan hard-​won independence and the higher values of freedom.134 The debt to local Dalmatian and Italian workshops runs like a seam through Dubrovnik’s art and architecture and is evident both in its Romanesque and Gothic religious institutions (the destroyed cathedral, the Franciscan and Dominican churches) and the perceptibly Renaissance detailing of the Rector’s and the Sponza palaces (designed by Onofrio della Cava and Paskoje Miličević, respectively).135 Far to the north, dominating a maritime realm on Central Europe’s Baltic coast, the city of Gdansk (Danzig) built its reputation in the fourteenth century as one of the key members of the Hanseatic league, a well-​connected network of German merchant cities that spanned the Baltic region from Russia to Hamburg.136 The aspirations of Gdansk’s prosperous and enterprising inhabitants reached an apogee in the fifteenth century with a veritable building boom, during which a number of its churches were given radical makeovers. The dramatic change of scale in the city’s topography is best conveyed by the cathedral of St. Mary, whose fourteenth-​century basilica was gradually replaced between c. 1400 and 1501 by the gargantuan hall church that still stands today. The interior of the church combines spatial monumentality with extreme “economy of form,”137 and its austerity is only countered by the richness of the vaulting, which included a novel form of faceted vaulting known as diamond vaults. These ribless prismatic vaults, placed at a height of 27 meters, contribute to the compulsive rhythm of geometric variations and repetition across St. Mary’s vaulted nave, choir, and side chapels (see Figure 16.21). Heinrich Hetzel, responsible for the vaults of St. Mary’s, swiftly became one of the most influential architects in Gdańsk, and his vaults in the cathedral were copied in churches across the town. St. Mary’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Bridget’s, and other contemporary Gdańsk churches were part of experimentation in brick architecture and especially vault design going back over a century. In a region rich in vaulting techniques and familiar with brick, diamond vaults became just one of the many options that architects could choose to add to their repertoire with minimal structural and technical adjustments.138 This continuing fascination with the possibilities of Backstein Gothic was not reserved only for the Hanseatic and Teutonic territories in the north. Since the early fourteenth century, Silesia, the prosperous and heavily colonized southwest corner of the old kingdom of Poland, had been an area of prolific building activity, forging a distinctive and monumental style of architecture by the 1350s. In the mid-​fourteenth century the Cistercian and mendicant-​influenced architecture of St. Elizabeth’s in Wrocław, Sts. Peter and Paul in Legnica, and the Holy Cross in Wrocław developed into the dramatic language of a second generation of buildings, for example, at St. Mary Magdalene’s, St. Mary on the Sands, and St. Dorothy’s (all in Wrocław). This family of brick basilicas and hall churches, whose soaring monumentality was only underlined by their sparsity of architectural detail, was complemented in Wroclaw by the richly gabled town hall, which, in the manner of Cracow’s market hall (Sukiennice), entirely dominates the large arena of the city’s main square, emphasizing its status as the center of urban governance.

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    393

Figure 16.21.  Gdańsk, St. Mary’s Church, diamond vaults rising over side aisles. Photo by Zoë Opačić.

The sparsity of architectural detail on Polish brick churches did not mean devotional or aesthetic poverty. Centuries of destruction and losses emptied Central European churches of their furnishings, wall paintings, and altarpieces. Those that survive, such as Veit Stoss’s famous Dormition of the Virgin altarpiece at St. Mary’s in Cracow or the less-​well known panel paintings, carved altarpieces, and sacrament houses that can still be found—​often in situ—​in the interiors of the churches in the Spiš (Slovakia, once Northern or Upper Hungary), such as Bardejov, Kežmarok, Levoča, and Spišká Kapitula, hint at an exceptional richness and visual density of religious life.139 As well as directing devotional life and framing the performance of the sacraments, these costly objects were a source of local pride and substantial expense. Patrician aspiration and

394    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić the prestige of the local church could be measured by the ability to commission an exceptional artist or group of artists—​the Nuremburg sculptor Veit Stoss, Master Paul of Levoča, Thomas of Kolozsvár, Master MS or Nicholas Gerhaert van Leyden.140 The extraordinary altarpiece of St. Elizabeth in the church of St. Elizabeth in Košice (1474–​1477) remains one of the most extensive ensembles of late-​medieval panel paintings, on a par in quality with contemporary Flemish masterpieces (see Figure 16.22).141 Like many towns in Hungary during the reigns of Sigismund of Luxemburg and Matthias Corvinus, Košice benefited from royal largesse, including partial exemption from taxes and the gift of a consignment of salt, the proceeds from which were to be used for the construction of St. Elizabeth’s. The municipal benevolence of the Hungarian kings of the fifteenth century may have been motivated by self-​interest, but it resulted in an economic boom across Upper Hungary and fueled local patronage in Košice, Pressburg (Pozsony, now Bratislava), Levoča, and Bardejov. The churches of St. Elizabeth in Košice and St. Martin in Bratislava are built on the scale and with sophistication of cathedrals and are pivotal in their urban settings. Churches such as St. Elizabeth’s demonstrate how fashionable, inventive, and versatile Parlerian, Austrian, and South German late Gothic forms were disseminated beyond their original metropolitan lodges.142 St. Elizabeth’s not only embraced those forms, but took them in a new direction. Its stacked, richly layered portals, hanging tracery, bent-​rib star vaults, and playful spiral staircases provided a new stock of architectural forms—​and masons who knew how to build them—​for the next generation of Central European church architecture as far afield as Transylvania’s Sigişoara, Cluj, and Braşov.143

New Religious Trends: The Road to Reformation In 1402, the year burghers of Košice received papal indulgences for their relic of the Holy Blood that started off the campaigns of rebuilding St. Elizabeth’s, Jan Hus, rector of Prague University and supporter of John Wycliff, became the preacher at the Bethlehem chapel in Prague. Hus was certainly not the first firebrand preacher in Central Europe to argue against the doctrinal and worldly failings of the Catholic Church—​including the market in indulgences the burghers of Košice were promoting—​but his death for the cause of his ideas unleashed a religious and civil war that consumed Bohemia and the wider region for most of the fifteenth century. The immediate impact was the halting of many large-​scale projects, including construction of Prague Cathedral and the New Town, although the production of art and books continued. What followed was destruction and iconoclasm. Images were “liberated” from churches, objects were taken for their material value, and in some cases entire buildings were leveled (for example, Ostrov u Davle, one of the oldest Bohemian monasteries). On a theological level, at the root of this violent rejection of religious institutions and their art, stood the centuries-​old debate

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    395

Figure 16.22.  Košice, St Elizabeth’s Cathedral, the Altarpiece of St Elizabeth. Photo © Alexander Jiroušek.

396    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić about the legitimacy of religious imagery. At the heart of the debate were not didactic images—​lives of Christ and the saints or biblical narratives—​but devotional images, including the almost ubiquitous Virgin and Child so beloved in painted and sculpted form. In the 1380s, Matěj of Janov argued that devotional images were nothing more than pieces of wood manipulated by human hands, which cannot embody or even represent Christ. For many reformist theologians the Eucharist alone was the path to salvation; everything else was unnecessary church clutter which detracted the attention of the ignorant laity from the Body and Blood of Christ. Propagated from pulpits, on Prague streets, and especially by and among university students, these radical ideas found a receptive audience. Foreshadowing modern methods of mass campaigning, their tools were printed pamphlets and memorable visual and verbal messages, often deploying humor, irony, and rhetorical devices. New debates produced new art using powerful and effective visual language; in the Jena Codex (after 1500) the Catholic church is a grotesque hybrid monster and its prelates greedy caricatures of their office who sell their souls for profit. In a number of Hussite manuscripts (such as the Martinic Bible 1430–​1434, Prague, Knihovna Akademie věd ČR, 1 TB 3), Hus, in his white martyr’s gown and heretic’s cone hat, is shown making his final stand at the stake or disputing at the Council of Constance.144 His portraits could also be found in Prague soon after his demise, establishing a visual hagiography akin to that of Early Christian martyrs. This newly minted tradition stretched well into the Jagiellonian period. The need for visual anchors, even those unmistakably man-​made, produced reformed religious art such as the startlingly unpolichromed Týn Church Virgin and Child carved for the main altar of the Utraquists headquarters on Prague’s Old Town Square. The Cirkvice panel (St. Lawrence’s, Cirkvice near Kutná Hora, 1380/​1390 and 1470s) displays another approach: repainting an older winged panel with a more acceptable Utraquist iconography of the Virgin mourning over a child-​sized, awkwardly angled, body of the dead and broken Christ.145 The initial Hussite military successes led to resistance and entrenchment among their immediate neighbors. Beside military efforts, doctrinal battles were fought from the pulpit and through sharpened visual propaganda. In Cracow, the cardinal bishop, Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1423–​55), with the support of the Franciscans, was turning his city into a bastion of orthodox Catholicism. At this time a large cycle of Cracow bishops and the Passion scenes were painted on the cloister walls of their monastery, which became one of the new stations in the extended procession of Corpus Christi. The main theological principle behind the Franciscan murals was a comprehensive rebuttal of the Utraquist heresy, especially its stance on lay communion, as can be seen in the axial juxtaposition of the image of the priest elevating the host and Christ in the winepress.146 At the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, in Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia, the Observant Franciscans worked hard to extinguish any lingering Hussite heresy. Under the leadership of the energetic itinerant preacher John Capistran and supported by Bohemian Catholic aristocrats they erected new monasteries such as those at Kadaň and Bechyně, which were decorated with a succession of the highly complex diamond vaults now spun over wide church interiors, smaller, irregular chambers, and cloisters. They had well-​ endowed libraries and

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    397 wall paintings (Olomouc, Plzeň, Kadaň, Bechyně) as well as richly carved tombs (Horažd’ovice, Bechyně, Kadaň). The tombs introduced new commemorative forms including the transi tomb (Jan Hasištejnský of Lobkovice d. 1517), inspired by the rich seam of memento mori literature, including the story of the “Three Living and The Three Dead” dating back to the thirteenth century, which acted as perpetual reminders of the transient nature of life.147 At the beginning of the sixteenth century reminders of imminent danger were not hard to find. For the first time since the thirteenth century, Central Europe faced a new existential crisis, which numerous final military stands over the course of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had proved unable to halt. “The Siege of Belgrade,” an extraordinary recently uncovered underdrawing in the choir of the Franciscan Observant Church in Moravian Oloumouc, commemorates a rare moment of victory (see Figure 16.23).148 The military triumph is John Hunyadi’s 1456 battle of Belgrade against the forces of Mehmet II, a victory commemorated in Hungary to this day. But central to its success is the spiritual force of Capistran’s preaching, with an image of the Man of Sorrows held aloft amid the imaginary fortifications of Belgrade filled with

Figure 16.23.  Olomouc, the Franciscan Church (now the Church of Immaculate Conception of Virgin Mary), choir mural of the Defense of Belgrade. Photo © František Krejčí. Institute of Art History CAS.

398    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić Hunyadi’s men in armor. As in other battles and numerous losses against the superior Ottoman forces, this historical event is recast from a military victory to a galvanizing moment of spiritual triumph: a hoped-​for resurrection through Christ-​like suffering.

Notes 1. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Place of East Central Europe on the Map of Romanesque Architecture,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 205–​224; a promising exception is the recent book by Eric Fernie, Romanesque Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). 2. See the exhibition series on Carolingian art in 1999; Christoph Stiegemann and Matthias Wemhoff, eds., 799—​Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit: Karl der Grosse und Papst Leo III. in Paderborn (Mainz: Philip von Zabern, 1999); for Croatia, see Carlo Bertelli, ed., Bizantini, Croati, Carolingi (Milan: Skira, 2001). A more recent research project is Francia Media: Cradles of European Culture project, 2010–​2015, including Czechia, Slovakia, and Croatia; see http://​www.cradle​sec.eu/​cec_​4/​defa​ult.aspx (accessed July 31, 2020). 3. Alfried Wieczorek and Hans-​Martin Hinz, eds., Europas Mitte um 1000 (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2000). 4. Organized by Nora Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 5. Anežka Merhautová, Romanische Kunst in Polen, der Tschechoslowakei, Ungarn, Rumaniän, Jugoslawien (Vienna: Schroll, 1974). 6. E.g., Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt, eds., Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347–​1437 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2005); Jiří Fajt and Markus Hörsch, eds., Kaiser Karl IV 1316–​2016 (Prague: National Gallery, 2016). 7. Most importantly the oeuvre of Jolán Balogh and that of Gottfried Stangler, Matthias Corvinus und die Renaissance in Ungarn (Vienna: Niederösterreichischen Landesmuseums, 1982); for a recent reevaluation, see Árpád Mikó, “A Renaissance Dream: Arts in the Court of King Matthias,” in The Art of Medieval Hungary, edited by Xavier Barral i Altet, Pál Lővei, Vinni Lucherini, and Imre Takács, Bibliotheca Academiae Hungariae–​Roma, Studia 7 (Rome: Viella, 2018). 8. Imre Takács, ed. Sigismundus rex et imperator: Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismund von Luxemburg, 1387–​1437 (Mainz: Phillipp von Zabern, 2006). 9. Europa Jagellonica: Art and Culture in Central Europe under the Jagiellonian Dynasty (Prague: Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region, 2012). The Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Memory and Identity in Central Europe was a major five-​year research project (2013–​2018) funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant and based at the History Faculty, University of Oxford (www. Jagiellonians.com, accessed on July 31, 2020). 10. Christian Lübke and Matthias Hardt, eds., Handbuch zur Geschicte der Kunst in Ostmitteleuropa 1. 400–​1000: Vom spätantiken Erdbe zu den Anfängen der Romanik (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2017).

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    399 11. Tomislav Marasović, “Pre-​Romanesque Architecture in Croatia,” in Croatia in the Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey, edited by Ivan Supičić, Croatia and Europe 1 (London; Zagreb: Philip Wilson; AGM, 1999), 445–​469. 12. Endre Tóth, “Das Christentum in Pannonien bis zum 7. Jahrhundert nach den archäologischen Zeugnissen,” in Das Christentum im bairischen Raum: Von den Anfängen bis ins 11. Jahrhundert, edited by Egon Boshof and Hartmut Wolff (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994), 241–​272; Endre Tóth, Tivadar Vida, and Imre Takács, eds., Saint Martin and Pannonia: Christianity on the Frontiers of the Roman World (Pannonhalma-​Szombathely: Abbey Museum-​Museum Savariense, 2016). 13. Musée d’archéologie nationale/​Städtisches Reiss-​Museum, L’or des princes barbares: Du Caucase à la Gaule, Ve siècle après J. C. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000). 14. Wilfried Seipel, ed. Barbarenschmuck und Römergold: Der Schatz von Szilágysomlyó (Milan: Skira, 1999). 15. At least, no Gepid church or palace has been identified yet; maybe because they have not been researched yet. 16. Csanád Bálint, Der Schatz von Nagyszentmiklós: Archäologische Studien zur frühmittelalterlichen Metallgefäßkunst des Orients, Byzanz’ und der Steppe (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2010). 17. Éva Garam, Funde byzantinischer Herkunft in der Awarenzeit vom Ende des 6. bis zum Ende des 7. Jahrhunderts, Monumenta Avarorum Archaeologica 5 (Budapest, Hungarian National Museum, 2001). 18. Orsolya Heinrich-​ Tamáska, ed., Keszthely-​ Fenékpuszta im Kontext spätantiker Kontinuitätsforschung zwischen Noricum und Moesia, Castellum Pannonicum Pelsonense 2 (Budapest/​ Leipzig/​ Keszthely/​ Rahden: Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Humanities Center for the History and Culture of East Central Europe, and V. Balaton Museum, 2011). 19. Éva Garam, Das awarzeitliche Gräbefelder in Zamárdi-​ Rétiföldek, vol. 3 (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2018). 20. G. C. Menis, István Bóna, and Éva Garam, Gli Avari: Un popolo d’Europa (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane, 1995). 21. Béla Miklós Szőke, “Pannonien in der Karolingerzeit,” in Frühmittelalterarchäologie in der Steiermark, Schild von Steier 4 (Graz: Universalmuseum Joanneum, 2008), 41–​56; Béla Miklós Szőke, The Carolingian Age in the Carpathian Basin: Permanent Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2014. 22. Béla Miklós Szőke, “Mosaburg-​Zalavár und Pannonien in der Karolingerzeit,” Antaeus 31–​ 32 (2010): 9–​52. 23. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Ambulatory of Zalavár,” Hortus Artium Mediaevalium 15 (2009): 161–​170; Béla Miklós Szőke, K. H. Wedepohl, and A. Kronz, “Silver-​Stained Windows at Carolingian Zalavár, Mosaburg (Southwestern Hungary),” Journal of Glass Studies 46 (2004): 85–​104; Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Silver-​Stained Glass in Changing Light: The Carolingian Window-​Fragments of Zalavár,” Hortus Artium Mediaevalium 26 (2020): 579–​587. 24. Béla Miklós Szőke, “Eine Kirchenfamilie von Mosapurc/​Zalavár (Ungarn),” in Kirchenarchäologie heute, Fragestellungen–​Methoden–​Ergebnisse, edited by N. Krohn (Freiburg: Allemannisches Institut, 2010), 561–​585. 25. Maxim Mordovin, “The Building History of Zalavár-​ Récéskút Church,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 12 (2006): 9–​32. 26. Béla Miklós Szőke, “Kulturelle Beziehungen zwischen Mosaburg/​ Zalavár und dem Mittelmeerraum,” in Rome, Constantinople and Newly-​Converted Europe: Archaeological

400    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić and Historical Evidence, edited by Maciej Salamon, Marcin Wołoszyn, Alexander Musin, and Perica Špehar (Cracow; Leipzig; Rzeszów: Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas; Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN; Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego 2012), vol. 1, 125–​142. 27. Zsolt Tóth, Jelentés a pécsi székesegyház nyugati oldala előtt, a Cella Trichora I.-​től északra végzett megelőző (hitelesítő) régészeti feltárásról (2013.10.30.–​2013.12.11.) és a Cella Trichora I. védőépületének bontása során végzett régészeti felügyeletről (2014.01.08.–​ 2014.03.19.) [Report on the preliminary archaeological research conducted in front of the west facade of the cathedral of Pécs (30.10.2013–​11.12.2013) and the archaeological control during the demolition of the protective building of Cella Trichora I (08.01.2014–​19.03.2014)], Archaeologia: Altum Castrum Online, 2015 (http://​arch​eolo​gia.hu/​cont​ent/​arch​eolo​gia/​330/​ toth-​trich​ora.pdf); Gergely Buzás, Katalin Boruzs, Szabina Merva, and Katalin Tolnai, “The Issue of Continuity in the Early Middle Ages in Light of the Most Recent Archaeological Research on the Late Imperial Period Fort in Visegrád,” Hungarian Archaeology (Spring 2014) (http://​www.hunga​rian​arch​aeol​ogy.hu/​?page​_​id=​41&cat=​52, accessed July 31, 2020); István Molnár, “Újabb kutatás a kaposszentjakabi apátság tempomának területén” [New investigations in the abbey church of Kaposszentjakab], Archaeologiai Értesítő 140 (2015): 177–​194. 28. Lumír Poláček and Jana Maříková-​ Kubková, eds., Frühmittelalterliche Kirchen als archäologische und historische Quelle (Brno: Archeologický Ústav, 2010); Pavel Kouřil, ed., Great Moravia and the Beginnings of Christianity (Brno: Institute of Archaeology, 2014). 29. Luděk Galuška, “Uherské Hradiště-Sady, Kirchenkomplex,” in Lübke and Hardt, Handbuch zur Geschicte der Kunst, 468–​469. 30. Bibiana Pomfyová, “Die Interpretationsmöglichtkeiten der Sakraltopographie in Mikulčice,” in Poláček and Maříková-​Kubková, Frühmittelalterliche Kirchen, 87–​100. 31. Luděk Galuška, Hledání původu: Od avarských bronzů ke zlatu Velké Moravy/​Search for the Origin: From Avar Bronze Items to Great Moravian Gold (Brno: Moravské zemské muzeum, 2013). 32. Alexander T. Ruttkay, “The Origins of Christianity and Early Mediaeval Sacred Architecture in Slovakia: New Discoveries and Connections,” in The Cyril and Methodius Mission and Europe, edited by Pavel Kouřil (Brno: Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014), 120–​137; Stredoveký kostol I: Historické a funkčné premeny architektúry [Medieval Church I: Historical and functional changes of architecture], edited by Bibiana Pomfyová (Bratislava: Ústav dejín umenia SAV, 2015), 41–​155. 33. Tomislav Marasović, Dalmatia praeromanica [Early romantic architecture in Dalmatia], 4 vols. (Split: Književni krug, 2008–​2013); Vladimir P. Goss, Predromanička arhitektura u Hrvatsko/​Pre-​Romanesque Architecture in Croatia (Zagreb: Art Studio Azinović, 2006). 34. Vedrana Delonga, The Latin Epigraphic Monuments of Early Mediaeval Croatia (Split: Museum of Croatian Archeological Monuments, 1996). 35. Bizantini, croati, carolingi: Alba e tramonto di regni e imperi, edited by Carlo Bertelli and G. P. Brogiolo (Milan: Skira, 2001). 36. István Fodor, ed., The Ancient Hungarians (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 1996). 37. Péter Langó, “Archaeological Research on the Conquering Hungarians: A Review,” in Research on the Prehistory of the Hungarians: A Review; Papers Presented at the Meetings of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, edited by Balázs Gusztáv Mende and Vaj Szeverény (Budapest: Akaprint, 2005), 175–​340.

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    401 38. Ádám Bollók, M. T. Knotik, Péter Langó, K. E. Nagy, and Attila Türk, “Textile Remnants in the Archaeological Heritage of the Carpathian Basin from the 10th–​11th Centuries,” Acta Archaeologica 60 (2009): 147–​221. 39. Ernő Marosi, “A honfoglalás a művészetben” [The Hungarian conquest period in art], Magyar Tudomány 103 (1996): 1026–​1034. 40. István Fodor, “Art and Religion,” in his Ancient Hungarians, 31–​36. 41. Károly Mesterházy, “A honfoglaló magyarok művészete és az abbaszida-​iraki művészet” [The art of the conquering Hungarians and the art of the Iraqui Abbasids], Századok 132 (1998): 129–​159. 42. Ádám Bollók, Ornamentika a 10. századi Kárpát-​medencében: Formatörténeti tanulmányok a magyar honfoglalás kori díszítőművészethez [Ornamentics in the Carpathian Basin in the tenth century: Studies on the formal development of decorative arts of the conqueror Hungarians] (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóntézet Régészeti Intézet, 2015). 43. Olekszij Komar, A korai magyarság vándorlásának történeti és régészeti emlékei [Historical and archaeological sources for the migration of the early Hungarians] (Budapest: Martin Opitz Kiadó, Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem Régészettudományi Intezet, 2018) (also in Russian). 44. Berend, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy. 45. István Bardoly, ed., The Coronation Mantle of the Hungarian Kings (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2005). 46. Az Árpád-​kori magyar pénzek katalógusa/​Catalogue of Árpádian Coinage, vol. 1, edited by Csaba Tóth, József Géza Kiss, and András Fekete (Opitz: Budapest, 2018), 63. 47. Wieczorek and Hinz, Europas Mitte, vol. 2, 907–​911. 48. Wieczorek and Hinz, Europas Mitte, vol. 2, 904–​906. 49. Ernő Marosi, “Művészettörténeti megjegyzések Szent István lándzsa-​attribútumához” [Art historical remarks on the lance as an attribute of Saint Stephen], A Hadtörténeti Múzeum Értesítője 4 (2001): 27–​32. 50. Éva Kovács and Zsuzsa Lovag, The Hungarian Crown and Other Regalia (Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1980); Endre Tóth, A magyar Szent Korona és a koronázási jelvények [The Hungarian Holy Crown and the coronation regalia] (Budapest: Országgyűlés Hivatala, 2018); Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Remarks on the Filigree of the Holy Crown of Hungary,” Acta Historiae Artium 43 (2002): 52–​61. 51. Tóth, Endre, “Das ungarische Krönungszepter,” Folia Archaeologica 48 (2000): 111–​153. 52. Kovács and Lovag, The Hungarian Crown, 94; Péter T. Nagy, “‘Islamic’ Artefacts in Hungary from the Reign of Béla III (1172–​1196),” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 22 (2016): 49–​61. 53. István Bóna, Az Árpádok korai várai [The castles of the Arpadian period] (Debrecen: Ethnica, 1998). 54. Mordovin, Maxim, A várszervezet kióalakulása a középkori Magyarországon, Csehországban és Lengyelországban a 10–​12. században [The emergence of the castle organization in medieval Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland in the tenth to twelfth centuries] (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2016). 55. Zofia Kurnatowska, “Herrschaftszentren: Die Anfänge der Residenzenbildung,” in Lübke and Hardt, Handbuch zur Geschicte der Kunst, 214–​221; Teresa Rodzińska-​Chorąży, “Some Remarks on the Design of Two Residential Complexes in Poland from the End of the 10th Century,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 24 (2018): 271–​281.

402    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić 56. Anežka Merhautová, Einfache mitteleuropäische Rundkirchen (ihr Ursprung, Zweck und ihre Bedeutung) (Prague: Akademia Nakladatelství Československé Akademie Vĕd, 1970); Judyta Nawrot, Kościoły centralne na terenie Czech i Moraw [Centrally planned churches in Bohemia and Moravia] (Rzeszów: Mitel 2013); András Szilágyi, A Kárpát-​ medence Árpád-​kori rotundái és centrális templomai [Árpád Age rotundas and other centrally planned churches of the Carpathian Basin] (Budapest: Semmelweis Kiadó, 2008); Bibiana Pomfyová, “Kostoly s centralnou dipozíciou” [Centrally planned churches], in Stredoveký kostol: Historické a funkčné premeny architektúry [Medieval church: Historical and functional transformations of architecture], vol. 1, edited by Bibiana Pomfyová (Bratislava: Art Forum, 2015), 157–​180. 57. Ivan Borkovský, Svatojiřská bazilika a klášter na Pražském hradě [The church and monastery of Saint George in the castle of Prague] (Prague: Academia, 1975); Merhautová Anežka, and Karel Stejskal, St.-​Georgs-​Stift auf der Prager Burg (Prague: Obelisk, 1991); Jan Frolík, “Die Prager Burg bis zum 12. Jahrhundert im Licht der Archäologie,” Berichte und Beiträge des Geisteswissenschaftlichen Zentrums Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas an der Universität Leipzig 5 (2003): 65–​85; Petr Sommer, “Die St. Veits-​Kirche und das Frauenstift St. Georg auf der Prager Burg zu Beginn des böhmischen Staates und Christentums,” in Der Magdeburger Dom im europäischen Kontext, edited by Wolfgang Schenkluhn and Andreas Waschbüsch (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2012), 85–​94. 58. Aneta Bukowska, “Some Remarks on the Basilica in Central Europe around the Year 1000,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 24 (2018): 282–​291; Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Architecture in Hungary in the Early Eleventh Century,” in Architektura w początkach państw Europy Środkowej/​Architecture in the Early Period of the States of Central Europe, edited by Tomasz Janiak and Dariusz Stryniak (Gniezno: Muzeum Początków Państwa Polskiego, 2018), 199–​222. 59. Aneta Bukowska, Najstarsza katedra w Poznaniu: Problem formy i jej genezy w kontekscie architektury około 1000 [The earliest cathedral in Poznań: The problem of form and its genesis in the context of architecture around 1000] (Cracow: Towarzystwo Naukowe Societas Vistulana, 2013). 60. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Leo IX, Hungary, and the Early Reform Architecture,” in La Reliquia del Sanque di Cristo: Mantova, l’Italia e l’Europa al tempo di Leone IX, edited by Glauco Maria Cantarella and Arturo Calzona (Mantua: Scripta, 2012), 561–​572. 61. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Hungary, Byzantium, Italy: Architectural Connections in the 11th Century,” in Romanesque and the Mediterranean, edited by Rosa Maria Bacile and John McNeill (London: British Archaeological Association, 2015), 193–​204; Miklós Takács, Byzantinische oder byzantinisierende Raumgestaltungen kirchlicher Architektur im frühárpádenzeitlichen Ungarn (Mainz: Römisch-​Germanisches Zentralmuseum, 2018). 62. Sándor Tóth, “Szekszárd,” in Paradisum plantavit, edited by Imre Takács (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalmi Bencés Főapátság, 2001), 678–​679. 63. Miklós Takács, “Ornamentale Beziehungen zwischen der Steinmetzkunst von Ungarn und Dalmatien im XI. Jahrhundert,” Hortus Artium Mediaevalium 3 (1997): 165–​178. 64. Rafał Quirini-​Popławski, Rzeźba przedromańska i romańska w Polsce wobec sztuki włoskiej [Pre-​Romanesque and Romanesque sculpture in Poland in comparison with Italian art] (Cracow: Jagellonian University, 2006). 65. Rafał Quirini-​Popławski, “The Oldest Fragments of Sculptural Decoration from Wawel Hill,” in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cracow and Lesser Poland, edited by Agnieszka Roznowska-​Sadraei and Tomasz Wecławowicz (Leeds: British Archaeological

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    403 Association Conference Transactions, 2014), 1–​16, Marta Graczyńska, “The Cathedrals—​ The Problem of Place and Space: Origins and Reasons of Their Existence in Central Polonica: Young Scholars on Europe (Hungary, Bohemia and Poland),” in Hungaro-​ Medieval Polish–​Hungarian Relations, edited by Dániel Bagi, Gábor Barabás, and Zsolt Máté (Pécs: Történészcéh Egyesület, 2016), 33–​48. 66. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Town and Cathedral in Medieval Hungary,” Hortus Artium Mediaevalium 12 (2006): 207–​220. 67. Ernő Marosi, “Die Baukunst der Benediktiner im Ungarn der Árpádenzeit,” Acta Historiae Artium 35 (1996): 15–​29; Sándor Tóth, “Benedictine Churches in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in Takács, Paradisum plantavit, 637–​650; Jiří Kuthan, Benediktinské kláštery střední Evropy a jejich architektura [Benedictine monasteries in Central Europe and their architecture] (Prague: Charles University, 2014). 68. For Hungary, see Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Romanesque Architecture: Abbeys and Cathedrals,” in Barral i Altet et al., The Art of Medieval Hungary, 133–​144; for Poland, see Zygmunt Świechowski, Architektura romańska w Polsce [Romanesque architecture in Poland] (Warsawa: DiG, 2000), and Mittelalterliche Architektur in Polen, edited by Christofer Herrmann and Dethard von Winterfeld (Petersberg: Imhof, 2015); for Bohemia, see Anežka Merhautová and Dušan Třeštík, Románské umění v Čechách a na Moravě [Romanesque art in Bohemia and Moravia] (Prague: Odeon, 1983), and Klára Benešovská, Architecture of the Romanesque (Prague: Prague Castle Administration, 200). 69. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Italian Connection: Theories on the Origin of Hungarian Romanesque Art,” in Medioevo: Arte e storia, edited by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan: Electa, 2008), 648–​655. 70. Zygmunt Świechowski, Romanesque Art in Poland (Warsaw: Arkady, 1983). 71. For Esztergom and related carvings, see Az Esztergomi Vármúzeum kőtárának katalógusa [Catalog of the medieval lapidary of the Castle Museum of Esztergom], edited by Gergely Buzás and Gergely Tolnai (Esztergom: Esztergomi Vármúzeum, 2004). Important carvings are also discussed in the exhibition catalogs of Pannonia Regia and Paradisum Plantavit. 72. Adrian Andrei Rusu and Ileana Burnichioiu, eds., Mănăstirea Bizere [Bizere Monastery], vol. 1 (Cluj–​Napoca: MEGA, 2011). 73. Melinda Tóth, Árpád-​kori falfestészet [The wall paintings of Hungary in the Árpád Age] (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1974); Melinda Tóth, “Falfestészet az Árpád-​korban. Kutatási helyzetkép” [The wall paintings of Hungary in the Árpád Age: A research review], Ars Hungarica 23 (1995): 137–​153; Vlasta Dvořáková, Josef Krása, and Karel Stejskal, Středověká nástěnná malba na Slovensku [Medieval wall paintings in Slovakia] (Prague; Bratislava: Odeon; Tatran, 1978); Jiří Mašín, Románská nástěnná malba v Čechách a na Moravě [Romanesque wall paintings in Bohemia and Moravia] (Prague: Odeon, 1954). 74. Dezső Dercsényi, “Zur siebenhundertjährigen Feier der Kirche von Ják,” Acta 202; Péter Levente Szőcs, “The Abbey Church of Historiae Artium 4 (1957): 173–​ Ákos: An Architectural and Functional Analysis of a ‘Kindred Monastery’ Church,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 9 (2003): 155–​180. 75. For the western galleries and chapels, see Václav Mencl, “Panské tribuny v naší románské architektuře” [Patrons’ tribunes in our Romanesque architecture], Umění 13 (1965): 29–​ 62; Andrzej Tomaszewski, Romańskie kościoły z emporami zachodnimi: Polski, Czech i Węgier [Romanesque churches with western tribunes: Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary]

404    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1974); Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Zur Typologie der Westemporen,” in Mitteleuropa: Kunst, Regionen, Beziehungen, edited by Stefan Oriško (Bratislava: Stimul, 1993), 4–​13. 76. Ernő Marosi, Die Anfänge der Gotik in Ungarn: Esztergom in der Kunst des 12.–​13. Jahrhunderts (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1984); Sándor Tóth, “A gyulafehérvári fejedelmi kapu jelentősége” [The significance of the Gate of the Princes of Gyulafehérvár], Építés-​ Építészettudomány 15 (1983): 391–​428; A jáki apostolszobrok: Die Apostelfiguren von Ják, edited by Edit Szentesi and Péter Ujvári (Budapest: Balassi, 1999). 77. Béla Zsolt Szakács, “On the Borderlines of Romanesque Architecture: Village Churches of Szatmár County in the 13th–​14th Centuries,” Acta Historiae Artium 52 (2011): 209–​234. 78. Balázs Nagy, Felicitas Schmieder, and András Vadas, eds., The Medieval Networks in East Central Europe: Commerce, Contacts, Communication (London: Routledge, 2019). 79. Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–​1410 (London: Taylor and Francis 2018). 80. For stone in Prague, see Zdeněk Dragoun, “Romanesque Prague and New Archaeological Discoveries,” in Prague and Bohemia: Medieval Art, Architecture and Cultural Exchange in Central Europe, vol. 3, edited by Zoe Opačić, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions (London: The British Archaeological Association, 2009), 34–​47. 81. Alexandra Gajewski, “Identity on the Edge: The Architecture of the Cisterican Abbeys in Lesser Poland,” in Roznowska-​Sadraei and Wecławowicz, Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cracow, 143–​164. ̌ 82. Jiří Kuthan, Ceská architektura v době posledních Přemyslovců: Města, hrady, klásť ery, kostely [Bohemian architecture of the last Přemyslids: Towns, castles, monasteries, churches] (Vimperk: TINA), 12–​40; Dějiny českého výtvarného umění [History of Bohemian Art], 1, no. 1 (1994): 146–​149; Eric Fernie, “The Church of St. Barthlomew at Kyje,” in Opačić, Prague and Bohemia, 22–​33; Kateřina Charvátová, Dejiny cisterckeho Radu v Cechach 1142–​1420: 2. Kláštery založené ve 13. a 14. století [History of the Cistercian Order in Bohemia 1142–​1420: 2. Monasteries founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries] (Prague: Karolinum, 2002); 1996: Pannonhalma 1000 éve [Mons Sacer, 996–​ Imre Takács, ed., Mons Sacer, 996–​ 1996: Pannonhalma 1000 years] (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalmi Főapatság, 1996). 83. Klára Benešovská, “Zpusob setkání baroka s gotikou: Klášterní kostel v Sedlci po roce 1700 a po roce 1300” [A meeting of Baroque with Gothic. Monastic Church in Sedlec at 1700 and at 1300], in 900 let cisterciáckého rádu: Sborník z konference konané 28.–​29. 9. 1998 v Břevnovském klášteře v Praze [900 years of the Cistercian Order: Collected works of conference held 28.–​29. 9. 1998 at Břevnov monastery in Prague] (Prague: Unicornis publisher, 2000), 229–​244. 84. Helena Soukupová, Anežský klášter v Praze [The Agnes monastery in Prague] (Prague: Vyšehrad: publisher, 2011), for a broader Central European context, see Ernő Marosi, “Mitteleuropäische Herrscherhäuser des 13. Jahrhunderts und die Kunst,” in Künstlerischer Austausch: Acts of the 28th International Congress for Art History, Berlin, 15.–​ 20. July 1992, vol 2, edited by Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), 15–​30. 85. Umělecké památky Prahy 1.–​Staré Město, Josefov [Artistic monuments of Prague I: Old Town, Josefov], edited by Pavel Vlček (Prague: Academia, 2000), 552–​554. 86. D. Prix, “The Mendicant Orders in Towns,” in Art in the Czech Lands 800–​2000, edited by Taťána Petrasová and Rostislav Švácha (Prague: Artefactum, 2018), 129. 87. Dějiny českého výtvarného umění 1, no. 1 (1984): 153. 88. Bibliana Pomfyová, “Počiatky gotickej architektúry” [The beginnings of Gothic architecture], in Gotika: Dejiny slovenského výtvarného umenia [Gothic: History of Slovakian Arts]

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    405 52, edited by Dušan Buran and Jana Sapaková (Bratislava: Slovenská národná galéria, 2003), 39–​59. For Hungary see, Koldulórendi építészet a középkori Magyarországon [Mendicant architecture in medieval Hungary], edited by Andrea Haris (Budapest: Országos Műemlékvédelmi Hivatal, 1994); Ildikó Kutnyánszky, “A koldulórendek és építészetük az Árpád-​kori Magyarországon” [The mendicant orders and their architecture in Hungary in the Árpád Age], in Tanulmányok Tóth Sándor 60. születésnapjára, edited by Tibor Rostás and Anna Simon (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar Hallgatói Önkormányzat, 2000), 83–​ 127; Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Early Mendicant Architecture in Medieval Hungary,” Cescontento: Debates 6 (2014): 23–​34. 89. Ludovico V. Geymonat, “Drawing, Memory and Imagination in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch,” in Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture in the Mediterranean, ca. 1000–​1500, edited by Heather E. Grossman and Alicia Walker (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 220–​285. 90. Zuzana Všetečková, “Some Remarks on the Osek Lectionary (NK Praha Osek 76)/​Několik poznámek k Oseckému lekcionáři,” Umění 43 (1995): 219–​223; Zeit und Ewigkeit. 128 Tage in St. Marienstern, edited by Judith Oexle, Markus Bauer, and Marius Winzeler (Halle an der Saale: Verlag Janos Stekovics, 1998), 193–​194 n. 2.134. 91. Klára Benešovská, “Abbess Cunegonde and St. George’s Convent,” in A Royal Marriage: Elisabeth Přemyslid and John of Luxembourg 1310, edited by Klára Benešovská (Prague: Muzeum hlavního mĕsta Prahy, 2011), 480–​485. 92. Klára Benešovská, “Porta Coeli,” in Petrasová and Švácha, Art in the Czech Lands 800–​ 2000, 112–​113. 93. Paul Crossley, “The Architecture of Queenship: Royal Saints, Female Dynasties and the Spread of Gothic Architecture in Central Europe,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference held at King’s College London, April 1995, edited by Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer 1997), 263–​300. 94. Kateřina Charvatová, “Eliška Rejčka a její partner Jindřich z Lipé” [Eliška Rejčka and her partner Jindřich z Lipé], in Lucemburkové: Česká koruna uprostřed Evropy [The Luxemburgs: Czech crown in middle Europe], edited by František Šmahel and Lenka Bobková (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny–​NLN, 2012), 187–198. 95. Klára Benešovská, “Aula Sanctae Mariae, abbaye cistercienne féminine de fondation royale: Brno, République Tchèque,” in Citeaux et les femmes, edited by Bernadette Barrière and Marie-​Elisabeth Henneau (Paris: Éditions Créaphis, 2001): 55–​7 1. 96. Marina Vidas, “Elizabeth of Bosnia, Queen of Hungary, and the Tomb-​Shrine of St. Simeon in Zadar: Power and Relics in Fourteenth Century Dalmatia,” Studies in Iconography 29 (2008): 136–​175; Amalie Fössel, “Barbara von Cilli: Ihre frühen Jahre als Gemahlin Sigismunds und ungarische Königin,” in Sigismund von Luxemburg: Ein Kaiser in Europa (Tagungsband des internationalen historischen und kunsthistorischen 2 Kongresses in Luxemburg, 8.–​10. Juni 2005), edited by Michel Pauly (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2006), 95–​112; Milena Bartlová, “Was Queen Sophia of Bavaria an Art Patron?” in Prag und die großen Kulturzentren Europas in der Zeit der Luxemburger (1310–​1437), edited by Markéta Jarošova (Prague: Charles University, 2008), 623–​634; Dragoš Gh. Nastasoiu, “Patterns of Devotion and Traces of Art: The Pilgrimage of Queen Elizabeth Piast to Marburg, Cologne, and Aachen in 1357,” Umění 64 (2016): 29–​43 and Dragoš Gh. Nastasoiu, “Patterns of Devotion and Traces of Art: The Diplomatic Journey of Queen Elizabeth Piast to Italy in 1343–​1344,” Convivium 2 (2015): 98–​111.

406    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić 97. Tomasz Wȩcławowicz, “The Bohemian King, the Polish Bishop, and Their Church: Wenceslas II’s Cathedral in Krakow (1295–​1305),” in The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture, edited by Alexandra Gajewski and Zoe Opačić (Turnhout: Brill, 2007), 177–​218. 98. Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 10–​141, no. 10. 99. Klára Benešovska, “Peter Aspelt as the Patron in Prague and his Archiepiscopate,” in Benešovská, A Royal Marriage, 410–​415. 100. Václav Mencl, “Biskup Jan IV. z Dražic v dějinách české architektury” [Bishop Jan IV Dražić in the history of Czech architecture], Umění 13 (1940–​1941): 101–​122. 101. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c. 900–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 209; Ernő Marosi, Die Anfänge der Gotik in Ungarn: Esztergom in der Kunst des 12.–​13. Jahrhunderts (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1984); Imre Takács, A francia gótika recepciója Magyarországon II. András korában [The reception of French Gothic in Hungary in the time of King Andrew II] (Budapest: Balassi, 2018). 102. For the Corvinian library see, Péter Farbaky et al., eds., Matthias Corvinus, the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court 1458–​1490 (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 486–501; Éva Kovács, The Calvary of King Matthias Corvinus in the Treasury of Esztergom Cathedral (Budapest: Corvina, 1983); Éva Kovács, “Le reliquaire de l’ordre du Saint-​Esprit: La “dot” d’Anne de Bretagne,” Revue du Louvre et des Musées du France 4 (1981): 246–​251. 103. Veronika Csikós, “The Bishop and His Chapel: The Hédervári Chapel in Győr and the Episcopal Chapels of Central Europe around 1400,” Hungarian Historical Review 2 (2013): 363–​386. 104. The Medieval Royal Town at Visegrád: Royal Centre, Urban Settlement, Churches, edited by Gergely Buzas, Joszef Laszlovszky, and Orsolya Meszaros (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2014). 105. Dalibor Prix, “Courtly Chapels,” 124–​125; Dobroslavá Menclová, České hrady [Bohemian Castles] (Prague: Odeon, 1972), vol. 1, 213–​224. 106. Gertrud Blaschitz, “‘Barlaam und Josaphat’ als Vorlage für Wandmalereien in der Gozzoburg von Krems,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 57 (2008): 28–​48; Christian Nicolaus Opitz, “Die Wandmalereien im Turmzimmer der Kremser Gozzoburg: Ein herrschaftliches Bildprogramm des späten 13. Jahrhunderts,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 62 (2008): 588–​602; Paul Mitchell, “The Gozzoburg in Krems and the Hofburg in Vienna: Their Relevance to the Study of the Social Space in Medieval Architecture,” in The Castle as Social Space, edited by Katarina Predovnik (Ljubljana: Ljubljana University Press, 2014), 25–​36. 107. Steffani Becker-​Hounslow and Paul Crossley, “England and the Baltic: New Thoughts on Old Problems,” in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale (Proceedings of the 1996 Harlaxton Symposium), edited by John Mitchell and Matthew Moran (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), 113–​128; Tomasz Torbus, Die Konventsburgen im Deutschordensland Preußen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998); Christopher Hermann, Der Hochmeisterpalast auf der Marienburg (Petersberg: Imhof, 2019). 108. Paul Crossley and Zoë Opačić, “Prague as a New Capital,” ’ in Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347–​1437, 59–​74; Katalin Szende, “Budapest and Kraków in the Middle Ages,” in On Common Path, edited by Judit Benda, Virág Kiss, Grazyna

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    407 Lichonczak–​ Nurek, and Károly Magyar (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2016), 31–​37. 109. František Šmahel, The Parisian Summit, 1377–​78: Emperor Charles IV and King Charles V of France (Prague: Karolinum, 2014); Zoë Opačić, “Architecture and Religious Experience in 14th-​Century Prague,” in Fajt and Langer Kunst als Herrschaftsinstrument, 136–​149. 110. Marc C. Schurr, Die Baukunst Peter Parlers: Der Prager Veitsdom, das Heiligkreuzmünster in Schwäbisch-​Gmünd und die Bartholomäuskirche in Kolin im Spannungsfeld von Kunst und Geschichte (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003); Klára Benešovská and Ivo Hlobil, Peter Parler and St Vitus’s Cathedral: 1356–​1399 (Prague: Prague Castle Administration, 1999). 111. Paul Crossley, “Bohemia sacra: Liturgy and History in Prague Cathedral,” in Pierre, lumière, couleur: Études d’histoire de l’art du Moyen Âge en l’honneur d’Anne Prache, edited by Fabienne Joubert and Dany Sandron (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-​ Sorbonne, 1999), 341–​365. 112. Agnieszka Rożnowska-​Sadraei, “Art, Death and Legitimacy: The Commission and Artistic Provenance of the Tomb of Kazimir the Great in Cracow Cathedral,” Artifex doctus 1 (2007): 363–​373; Wokół Wita Stwosza, Materialy z miedzynarodowej konferencji naukowej w Muzeum Narodowym w krakowie 19–​22 maja 2005 [Materials of international conference of science in the National Museum of Cracow], (edited by Adam Organisty and Dobrosława Horzela (Cracow: Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, 2006). 113. Klára Benešovská, “The Legacy of the Last Phase of the Prague Cathedral Workshop: One More Look at the ‘Weicher Stil,’ ” in Fajt and Langer, Kunst als Herrschaftsinstrument, 157–​172. 114. András Végh, “Buda-​Pest 1300–​Buda-​Pest 1400: Two Topographical Snapshots,” in Medieval Buda in Context, edited by Balázs Nagy, Martin Rady, Katalin Szende, and András Vadas (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 169–​203; Gábor Klaniczay, “Sacred Sites in Medieval Buda,” in Nagy et al., Medieval Buda in Context, 229–​254. 115. Zoë Opačić, “Architecture and Ceremony in Cracow and Prague, 1335–​1455,” in Roznowska-​Sadraei and Wecławowicz, Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cracow, 95–​117. 116. Jana Gajdošová, “Imperial Memory and the Charles Bridge: Establishing Royal Ceremony for Future Kings,” Ostblick 3 (2012) (Zeitschriftenartikel DOI: 10.18452/​7533); Jana Gajdošová, ‘Vaulting Small Spaces: The Innovative Design of Prague’s Bridge Tower Vault, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 169 (2016): 39–58. 117. Zoë Opačić, “Vienna’s Heiltumstuhl: The Sacred Topography of Stephansplatz and Its Context,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 62 (2014): 81–​108; Karel Otavský, “Drei wischtige Reliquienschätze im Luxemburgischen Prag und die Anfänge der Prager Heiltumswisungen,” in Fajt and Langer, Kunst als Herrschaftsinstrument. 300–​308. 118. Magister Theodoricus, Court Painter to Emperor Charles IV: The Pictorial Decoration of the Shrines at Karlštejn Castle, edited by Jiří Fajt (Prague: National Gallery, 1998); František Fišer, Karlštejn: vzájemné vztahy tří karlštejnských kaplí [Karlstejn: relations between three Karlstejn chapels] (Kostelní Vydří: Karmelitánské nakladatelství, 1996); Court Chapels of the High and Late Middle Ages and Their Artistic Decoration, edited by Jiří Fajt (Prague: National Gallery, 2003). 119. Antonín Matějček, Česká malba gotická: Deskové malířství 1350–​1450 [Bohemian Gothic painting: Panel painting 1350–​1450] (Prague: Melantrich, 1950); J. Royt, Středověké malířství v Čechách [Medieval painting in Bohemia] (Prague: Karolinum, 2002); Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 132–​133 n. 1, 156 n. 27; Kateřina Kubínová,

408    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić Emauzský cyklus: Ikonografie středověkých nástěnných maleb v ambitu kláštera Na Slovanech [Emauzsky cycle: Iconography of medieval murals in the cloister of the monastery of Na Slovanech] (Prague: Artifactum, 2012). 120. Jan Royt, The Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece (Prague: Karolinum, 2012). 121. Robert Suckale and Jiří Fajt, “The Circle of Charles IV,” in Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 35–​45. U. Söding, “Das Bild, welches von Prag kam: zur Verbreitung der Schönen Madonnen und Vesperbilder,” in Kaiser Karl IV: Die böhmischen Länder und Europa/​Emperor Charles IV: Lands of the Bohemian Crown and Europe, edited by Jiři Kuthan (Prague: Nakladatelství lidové noviny–​NLN, 2017), 194–​218. 122. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 123. Barbara Drake Boehm, “Called to Create: Luxury Artists at Work in Prague,” in Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 80; Hans H. Hahnloser and Susanne Brugger-​ Koch, Corpus der Hartsteinschliffe des 12.–​15. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1985), 28–​29. 124. Boehm and Fajt, Prague: the Crown of Bohemia, 137–​138 n. 7, 160 n. 31; Milena Bartlová and Dušan Buran, “Comparing the Incomparable: Wenceslas IV and Sigismund, Their Queens and Their Images,” in Fajt and Langer, Kunst als Herschaftsinstrument, 368–​376; Franz Kirschweger, “ ‘Und zogen in disen krieg und irrsal zu Behem gen Wienn’: Das Goldschmiedehandwerk in Wien unter Albrecht V. (II.) und seine Beziehung zum ostmitteleuropäischen Raum,” in Fajt and Langer, Kunst als Herschaftsinstrument, 460–​471. 125. Boehm, “Called to Create,” 75–​81. On the continuity of goldsmiths’ tradition between the Přemyslid and Luxemburg eras, see Marius Winzeler, “Prager Goldschmiedkunst: Tradition under Überlieferung von den Přemysliden zu den Luxemburgern,” in Fajt and Langer, Kunst als Herschaftsinstrument, 445–​459. 126. Milena Bravermanová, “Pražský hrad jako pohřebiště lucemburské dynastie/​Prague Castle as the Burial Site of the Luxembourg Dynasty,” in Koruna království/​The Crown of the Kingdom: Katedrála sv. Víta a Karel IV/​Charles IV and the Cathedral of St. Vitus, Prague, edited by Milena Bravermanová and Petr Chotěbor (Prague: Správa Pražského hradu, 2016), 80–​115. 127. Josef Krása, Rukopisy Václava IV [The Manuscripts of Wenceslas IV] (Prague: Odeon, 1971); Maria Theisen and Ulrike Jenni, Mitteleuropäische Schulen IV (ca. 1380–​1400) Hofwerkstätten König Wenzels IV. und deren Umkreis (Vienna: Institut fur Mittelalterforschung der Ősterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014); Die Wenzelsbibel, Vollständige Faksimile-​Ausgabe und Dokumentation, 9 vols. (Graz: ADEVA, 1981–​1991) and “Phiolologischer Kommentar zur Wenzelsbibel,” in Die Wenzelsbibel, Vollständige Faksimile-​Ausgabe der Codices Vindobonenses 2759–​2964 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek Wien, Kommentar, edited by Hedvig Heger, Gerhard Schmidt, Ivan Hlaváček, and Franz Unterkircher (Graz: Akademische Druck-​und Verlagsanstalt, 1998), 51–​123; Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt, “Wenceslas IV,” in Fajt and Boehm, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 91–​103. 128. Maria Theisen, “The Emblem of the Torque and Its Use in the Willehalm Manuscript of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 171 (2018): 131–​153.

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    409 129. Milada Studničková, “Drehknoten und Drachen: die Orden Wenzels IV. und Sigismunds von Luxemburg und die Polysemantik ihrer Zeichen,” in Fajt and Langer, Kunst als Herschaftsintsrument, 377–​387. 130. Sándor Tóth, “Die Gebäude des budaer königspalastes zur Zeit Sigismunds von Luxemburg,” in Sigismund Rex et Imperator: Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismunds von Luxembourg, edited by Imre Takács (Augsburg: Philipp von Zabern, 2006), 200–​218; Ernő Marosi, “Sigismund the Last Luxembourg,” in Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 121–​129; Szilárd Papp, “Made for the King: Sigismund of Luxemburg’s Statues in Buda and Their Place in Art History,” in Nagy et al., Medieval Buda in Context, 387–​451. 131. Valery Rees, “Buda as a Center of Renaissance and Humanism,” in Nagy et al., Medieval Buda in Context, 472–​493. 132. Árpád Mikó, “Beatrice d’Aragona e il primo rinascimento in Ungheria,” in Italy and Hungary: Humanism and Art in the Early Renaissance; Proceedings of an International Conference Held at the Villa I Tatti, Florence, June 6–​8, 2007, edited by Péter Robert Farbaky and Louis A. Waldman (Florence and Milan: Villa I Tatti, 2011), 409–​425; Péter Farbaky ,,Florence and/or Rome? The Origins of Early Renaissance Architecture in Hungary,” in Italy & Hungary: 345–367. 133. Pavel Kalina, Benedikt Ried a počátky zaalpské renesance [Benedict Ried and the beginnings of the Renaissance north of the Alps] (Prague: Academia, 2009); Václav Mencl, “Architektura,” in Pozdně gotické uměnív Čechách 1471–​1526 [Late Gothic Art in Bohemia 1471–​1526] (Prague: Odeon, 1978); Thomas Bauer, Jörg Lauterbach, and Norbert Nußbaum, “Benedikt Rieds Schlingrippengewölbe auf der Prager Burg,” In Situ 7 (2015): 59–​76; Klára Benešovská, “Podobnost čistě náhodná? K italským komponentám v díle Benedikta Rieda” [Similarity purely coincidental? Italian components in Benedict Ried’s work], in Pictura verba cupit: Sborník příspěvků pro Lubomíra Konečného; Essays for Lubomír Konečný, edited by Beket Bukovinská and Lubomir Slavíček (Prague: Artefactum, 2006), 391–​401. 134. Katalin Szende, “Between Hatred and Affection: Towns and Sigismund in Hungary and in the Empire,” in Sigismund von Luxemburg: Ein Kaiser in Europa, edited by Michel Pauly and François Reinert (Mainz: P. Von Zabern, 2006), 199–​210; Ilija Mitić, “Orlandov stup u Dubrovniku [Orlando’s column in Dubrovnik],” Anali Historijskog instituta JAZU u Dubrovniku 10, no. 11 (1966): 233–​254. 135. Robin Harris, Dubrovnik, a History (London: Saqi Books, 2003), 287–​308. 136. Beata Możejko, “Late Medieval Gdansk as a Bridge between Regions: Western European, Hanseatic, and East Central European Contacts,” in Nagy, Schmieder, and Vadas, Medieval Networks in East Central Europe, 227–​235. 137. Helene Christine Kaplan, “The Danzig Churches: A Study in Late Gothic Vault Development,” Unpublished doctoral thesis, State University of New York at Binghampton, 1974, 50. 138. Zoë Opačić, Diamond Vaults: Innovation and Geometry in Medieval Architecture (London: Architectural Association, 2005); Milada Rada and Oldrich Rada, Das Buch von den Zellengewölben (Prague: Jalna-​Verlag, 2001). 139. János Végh, “Spišske maliarstvo poslednej tretiny 15. storočia” [The painting in Spiš in the last quarter of the fifteenth century], in Buran and Sapaková, Gotika, 382–​379. 140. Each of these exceptional artists has amassed reams of scholarly writing, for references to further bibliography see these recent publications: Majster Pavol z Levoče a jeho doba [Master Pavol of Levoča and his epoch], edited by Maria Novotná (Levoča: Spišské múzeum v Levoči, 2018); Zsombor Jékely, “Painting at the Court of Emperor Sigismund: The Nuremberg Connections of the Painter Thomas de Coloswar,”

410    Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić Acta historiae artium Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 58 (2017): 57–​ 83; Britta Dümpelmann, “Presence as Display: Carved Altarpieces on the Threshold to Eternity, ” in Temporality and Mediality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, edited by Christian Kiening and Martina Stercken (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 75–​113. 141. Robert Suckale, “Mal’by retabula hlavného oltára v Dóme sv. Alžbety v Košiciach” [Paintings of the main altar at St Elizabeth’s Cathedral in Košice], in Buran and Sapaková, Gotika, 364–​373. 142. Tim Juckes, The Parish and Pilgrimage Church of St Elizabeth in Košice Town, Court, and Architecture in Late Medieval Hungary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). 143. Ernő Marosi, “Architektúra prvej polovice 15. storočia na Spiši a východnom Slovensku: Dóm sv. Alžbety v Košiciach [Architecture of the first half of the fifteenth century in Spiš and eastern Slovakia: The Cathedral of St. Elisabeth in Košice,” in Buran and Sapaková, Gotika, 206–​223. 144. Fajt and Boehm, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 296, n. 135; Jan Royt, “Ikonografie Mistra Jana Husa v 15. až 18. Století” [Iconography of Master Jan Hus from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century], in Jan Hus na přelomu tisíciletí [Jan Hus at the turn of the millennium], edited by Miloš Drda, František J. Holeček, and Zdeněk Vybíral (Ústí nad Labem: Albis international, 2001), 405–​451. 145. Milena Bartlová, “Umění mezi zbraněmi” [Art among weapons], in Šmahel and Bobková, Lucemburkové, 544–​551; Kateřina Horníčková and Michal Šroněk, From Hus to Luther: Visual Culture of the Bohemian Reformation (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). 146. Agnieszka Rożnowska-​Sadraei, “Some Thoughts on the Role of St. Stanislas in the Anti-​Utraquist Policies of Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1423–​1455) as Visualised in the Episcopal Genealogy in the Cloister of the Franciscan Monastery, Cracow,” in Studia z dziejów kościoła Franciszkanów w Krakowie [The history of the Franciscan church in Cracow], edited by Zdzisław Kliś (Cracow 2006), 165–​187; Marek Walczak, “Działalność fundacyjna biskupa krakowskiego kardynała Zbigniewa Oleśnickiego” [Endowing activities of Cracow Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki], Folia Historiae Artium 28 (1992): 57–​73; Opačić, “Architecture and Ceremony in Cracow and Prague, 1335–​1455,” 95–​117. 147. Ján Chlíbec, “Some Remarks on the Aristocratic Patronage of Franciscan Observants in Jagiellonian Bohemia,” in Opačić, Prague and Bohemia, 215–​228. Capistran himself was buried and venerated at the Franciscan Friary at Ilok (Slavonia), which became a highly important pilgrimage center in southern Hungary. See Diana Vukičević-​Samaržija, “A középkori Újlak és műemlékei” [Medieval Újlak and its monuments], in A középkori Dél-​ Alföld és Szer [Medieval Dél-​Alföld and Szer], edited by Tibor Kollár (Szeged: Csongrad m. Lev, 2000); Diana Vukičević-​Samaržija, Sakralna gotička arhitektura u Slavoniji [Ecclesiastical Gothic architecture in Slavonia] (Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 1986), 105–​108; Stanko Andrić, Čudesa sv. Ivana Kapistrana: Povijesna i tekstualna analiza [The Miracles of St. John Capistrano: Historical and textual analysis] (Slavonski Brod: HIP, Podružnica za povijest Slavonije, Srijema i Baranje, 1999). 148. Jan Chlíbec, “Obraz jako téma ideového sporu mezi františkány-​observanty a utrakvisty” [Image as a subject of ideological conflict between the Franciscan Observants and Utraquists], in Imago, Imagines: Výtvarné dílo a proměny jeho funkcí v českých zemích od 10. do první třetiny 16. století [Imago, imagines: A work of art and the the change of its function in the Czech lands from the tenth to the sixteenth century], edited by Kateřina Kubínová and Klára Benešovská (Prague: Acadenia 2019), 552–​573; Tomás Černušák and Miloslav Pojsl, Olomouc: Klášter dominikánů a kostel Neposkvrněného početí Panny

Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe    411 Marie (Velehrad: Historická společnost Starý Velehrad, 2005). Since the nineteenth century the monastery is the seat of the Dominican order in the Czech lands.

Further Reading Barral i Altet, Xavier, Pál Lővei, Vinni Lucherini, and Imre Takács, eds. The Art of Medieval Hungary. Rome: Viella, 2018. Benešovská, Klára. Architecture of the Romanesque. Prague: Castle Administration, 2001. Boehm, Barbara Drake, and Jiři Fajt, eds. Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347–​1437. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. Buran, Dušan, ed. Dejiny slovenského výtvarného umenia [ . . . ] Gotika. Bratislava: Slovenská národná galéria, 2003. Croatia: Aspects of Art, Architecture and Cultural Heritage. London: Lincoln, 2009. Crossley, Paul. Gothic Architecture in the Reign of Kasimir the Great: Church Architecture in Lesser Poland, 1320–​1380. Cracow: Panstwowe zbiory sztuki na wawelu, biblioteka Wawelska, 1985. Herrmann, Christofer, and Dethard von Winterfeld, eds. Mittelalterliche Architektur in Polen. Petersberg: Imhof, 2015. Lübke, Christian, and Matthias Hardt, eds. Handbuch zur Geschichte der Kunst in Ostmitteleuropa 1. 400–​1000: Vom spätantiken Erdbe zu den Anfängen der Romanik. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2017. Petrasová, Tatiana, and Rostislav Švácha, eds. Art in the Czech Lands 800–​2000. Prague: Institute of Art History at the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2018. Popp, Dietmar, and Robert Suckale, eds. Die Jagiellonen: Kunst und Kultur einer europäischen Dynastie an der Wende zur Neuzeit. Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2002. Supičić, Ivan, ed. Croatia in the Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey. Croatia and Europe 1. London; Zagreb: Philip Wilson; AGM, 1999.

Chapter 17

C ontexts of L at e M edieval Dai ly L i fe Gerhard Jaritz

Medieval daily life can be analyzed only by reference to concepts, structures, and contexts that are detached from individual events or objects but at the same time are based on them. Any source information has to be seen as a link among the categories “human being,” object, situation (in which the human–​object relation takes place), and their characteristics. This is true for the analysis of texts as well as images and archaeological remains. From the thirteenth century onward, Central Europe was intensively influenced from the west, by more than just the chivalrous ideals and models of the elites.1 This can also be seen in elements of the daily life and material culture of other groups in society and led to a kind of “normalization” of European dress and food culture, which remained socially determined but decreased with regard to “national” and regional differences, although the latter remained to some extent and showed no sign of general disappearance.2 All societies adopt and reject foreign elements, with the members of each society constantly assessing their own daily life and material culture, particularly such public elements as outer appearance, feasts, architecture, and language. Medieval Central Europe was no exception. In the so-​called Seifried Helbling, a group of satiric-​didactic poems in dialogue form, a master and servant make critical remarks about their own time (the end of the thirteenth century). The Austrian author compares Hungarians and Austrians, stating that Hungary is large and one knows that a Hungarian does not move one step away from his Hungarian customs. In contrast, Austria is small but rather diverse; one cannot recognize a true Austrian. The servant tells about a man he saw who wore his hair in the Hungarian manner but his behavior was Bavarian.3 The Bohemians wear clothes following Bohemian customs, Saxons and Poles wear dress to be recognized as such; Bavarians and Rhineland Franks keep the customs of their country.4 Austrians, however, have short hair like the Saxons and say “tobroytra” (good morning), “kurvysyne! (son of a bitch) ho! ho! ho!”, and “vitej pan, poppomûz!” (welcome, master,

414   Gerhard Jaritz with God’s help!) like the Bohemians. They break horses like people from Meissen, are gluttonous like the Bavarians, think they are as dashing as the Styrians, retell fatuous stories adopted from the Carinthians, dance in the Windish manner to the bagpipe like people from Carniola, carry leather bags like the Italians, and follow Swabian customs at tournaments.5 The phenomenon of using words from other languages can be found as early as the mid-​thirteenth-​century in the so-​called Meier Helmbrecht by Wernher dem Gartenaere, an important piece of didactic/​satiric epic poetry that originated in the Bavarian-​ Austrian border region.6 It tells the story of a peasant’s son who leaves home to become a knight and becomes a robber-​knight. Coming back on a visit to his family, he intends to show his change of social status by being multilingual in greeting them. He greets his father in French with deu sal (“Dieu vous salue”), his sister in Latin with gratia vester, his mother in Czech with dobra ytra, and the servants with vil liebe soete kindekîn (dearest sweet children). His family are disturbed and state that he is no longer the son of his parents, but a Bohemian, or French, or a cleric, or even from Saxony or Brabant.7 Such critical and satirical statements in medieval literature can be compared with other self-​assessments of Central European peoples. A significant example is the description by Albrecht von Bonstetten, a Swiss humanist and deacon from Maria Einsiedeln. In his Superioris Germaniae Confoederationis descriptio from 1479, the oldest geographic description of the Old Swiss Confederacy, he offers a positive image of the Swiss and their life: They are good Christians, loyal, hard-​working, pay respect to strangers, and so on. Their women are beautiful, entertaining, honest, love their children, and educate them well. He uses similar words of praise for the inhabitants of the different regions of Switzerland.8 The aspect of “new,” which, so to speak, interrupted normal quotidianness, played a specific role in medieval discourse, discussions, and descriptions of daily life. Novelties seem to have been a regularly occurring feature of daily life. On the one hand, they were welcomed and celebrated, on the other hand, they were criticized and condemned as imperiling the existing order. A fifteenth-​century Nuremberg sumptuary law states that much pride and new foreign customs had arisen that were not regulated by previous laws. Therefore, the town council orders that, from now on, neither men nor women should wear or use any novelties in clothing or jewels or other kinds of outer wear.9 The more manifestations of something new occurred in the public spheres of daily life and material culture, the more they were openly mentioned or discussed. By the turn of the fourteenth century, for instance, the last wills of Viennese burghers sometimes mention clothes “of the new color” to be bequeathed.10 The color itself is not mentioned; everyone clearly knew what it was. Criticism of novelties was similar to the critique of foreign elements noted previously and often connected with it. These criticisms appear in satiric/​didactic poetry like, for instance, the poems of the Austrian author Heinrich Teichner, written between 1350 and 1370. He emphasizes how people compete with regard to their clothing. If somebody wears a short garment, the other wants to have an even shorter one. If someone starts to

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    415 wear a long garment, another intends to have a longer one. Everyone wants to outplay the other: Here too little, there too much. No one stays in the middle.11 Similar statements can be traced in fourteenth-​and fifteenth-​century chronicles. The Lower Austrian, so-​called, Kleine Klosterneuburger Chronik, mentions for 1410 that then, and already some years before, noblemen, followed by burghers and craftsmen, had started to button their clothes up the back, and some women had also adopted this fashion.12 Comparable criticism had already been stated in the first half of the fourteenth century, when a Styrian chronicler, the so-​called Anonymus Leobiensis, laments inventions and novelties in dress in Austria, Styria, and other territories after the death of King Albrecht I (d. 1308) and describes them in detail.13 Among other things, he states that some people wore such tight garments that they could not put them on and take them off without help. Some had started to wear hoods like peasants, Jews, or shepherds and no longer wore headgear by which one could recognize the difference between Christians and Jews. Some had started to use a variety of silk fabrics, contrary to the old customs of knights. Men cut their hair either very little or made a part like Jews or Hungarians. Some wore such short coats that they hardly covered the buttocks. An even more detailed critical evaluation of the novitates morum is offered by the Bohemian Königsaal Chronicle of Peter of Zittau and, following him, the chronicle of Francis of Prague.14 For the 1320s, they state that almost all people, in particular, those in Bohemia and the surrounding regions, show explicit curiosity about novelties and curious innovations (nova curiositas et curiosa novitas) in clothing as well as behavior. Everyone who invented a new fashion felt happy. Deformity in dress represented a deformed mind; some wore long beards like the barbarians as well as short and tight garments. In the towns, some wore long, pointed, and colorful caps; despicable peasants working in the fields wore wide oblong hoods; and so on. The authors connected this development with the political situation after the end of the Přemyslid dynasty and the situation under the subsequent Luxemburgs. Thus, the developments and change in clothing were seen as general symptoms of far-​reaching political and cultural processes of upheaval.15 These sources have been evaluated as “evidence for the existence of a wave of cultural change in fourteenth-​century Central Europe, which led, among other things, to a more liberal approach with regard to attire.”16 In the analysis of these and other similar literary evaluations of the public sphere, one also still has to be aware of the stereotypes used in such sources. They can be seen as the “literary reality” of daily life but not necessarily as the actual reality of life. In contrast to the positive statements of Albrecht von Bonstetten from more than twenty years earlier, for the year 1503, the Bernese chronicler, Valerius Anshelm, laments that many new customs had reached Switzerland, in towns as well as in villages, and weakened or destroyed the Swiss bravery, respectability, temperance, discipline, and shame. He adds a long detailed list of all the changes in male and female clothing.17 Objects in the context of daily life and behavior created and maintained identity, but some other sources also show that they could threaten it. There is, for instance, the story of John Butzbach, a wandering student from Miltenberg in Lower Franconia who left home in 1488 and went to Bohemia. When he returned six years later no one recognized

416   Gerhard Jaritz him. In his 1506 autobiography, Butzbach, who became prior of the Benedictine house of Maria Laach from 1507, writes, “I came home, no longer a German as I had left but as a Bohemian, a barbarian, so to speak, a pagan, from my way of dressing, my customs and with long, blond hair which I had started to grow there. . . . Nobody knew me any longer . . . [they] shied away from such changes.”18 Here, the textual representation of the attire of Czechs compared to proper German attire is presented as barbarous versus civilized and pagan versus Christian. Characterizing Bohemian as pagan is also found in other, nonnegative, contexts for the post-​Hussite Czech lands.19 In spite of numerous “normalizations” of dress in Europe in the late Middle Ages, some attire still remained specific in certain areas. Particularly for Hungary, foreign travelers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remarked on the oriental traits of items of clothing, regardless of the differences in material or social status between the upper class and villagers.20 This, however, should not lead to the generalization that Hungarians wore actual oriental dress. The famous Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle from around 1360 shows Hungarians in explicitly orientalized clothing that, in past research, was evaluated as an authentic representation of Hungarian costume at the time of King Louis the Great (1342–​1382). Modern analysis, however, recognizes that these images should be seen as a kind of constructed idealizing self-​representation of a people that derived their origin from the nomadic Scythians and saw themselves as equivalent to the Trojans.21 Therefore, one may assume some orientalized elements but not a generally orientalized costume. The costume historian Stella Mary Newton discovered that “the most striking head-​ dress worn by women” in the mid-​fourteenth century was not to be found in Italy or France, but in Central Europe, that is, Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria, but also in the Netherlands, England, and Denmark.22 It consisted of a number of layers of fine linen veiling; the edge of each of them woven in such a way to produce a narrow ruffle or frill, the frills overlying each other. The number of fabric layers played an important role in the value of veils and therefore also became subject to sumptuary laws. The Viennese sumptuary law from about 1450, for instance, prohibited more than twelve layers of cloth.23 Some visual sources also show this method of creating layers to construct more prestigious veils by using more cloth (see Figure 17.1). Bohemian influence on German female headdress is mentioned in the so-​called Limburg Chronicle for the year 1389. In the context with a number of critical remarks on male and female dress of this time, the author also mentions Behemse kogeln (Bohemian hoods) as a head covering worn by women that looked like the halo of a saint.24 Pointed shoes were an object of daily life and material culture that show connections between Central and Western Europe; they played a particular role in heated discussions by a variety of authors and in normative regulations. They became popular in Central and Western Europe in the second half of the fourteenth century and then again in the second half of the fifteenth century. In England, the arrival of this fashion was connected to the marriage of King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in 1382.

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    417

Figure 17.1.  Veil with five layers of cloth. Friedrich Pacher, Visitation (detail: Saint Elisabeth), panel painting, end fifteenth century. Innsbruck, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (Photo: Institut für Realienkunde, University of Salzburg).

A monk of Evesham noted in 1394 that these vices, in English called crackows or pykes (cracowys or pykys), had come to England from Bohemia.25 This reference, however, was not correct, because as early as 1362 the Eulogium Historiarum by a monk from Malmesbury mentions pointed shoes called crakowes that fit better as claws of the devil than as ornaments for humans.26 The connection to the Polish city of Cracow cannot be clearly explained, but is strengthened by the shoes’ designation as poulaines in French and also in English, taken over from French. Moreover, the Cracow canon, Frowin, mentions pointed shoes as early as c. 1340 in his didactic-​satiric poem Antigameratus. He told young men not to wear pointed shoes (calces rostra) unless they were of high social status (ni sis baro).27 Irrespective of the actual way in which pointed shoes became Polish in Western Europe, for instance, by merchants trading with Poland or by Polish noblemen coming to England, the influence of Central Europe on aspects of Western European clothing culture has to be acknowledged. The Prague canon, Beneš Krabice

418   Gerhard Jaritz of Veitmile, also mentions them for 1367 (calceos rostratos et cum longissimisnasibus deferebant) in a general critical description of the Czech fashion craze in his chronicle of the Prague church.28 Particularly in England and France, sumptuary laws contain other types of criticism of crackows or poulaines. The sumptuary laws of German urban communities also prohibited pointed shoes in various ways. There, however, any Polish connection is absent. Mid-​fourteenth-​century Italians held Spanish and French influences responsible for this fashion.29 A chronicle from Nuremberg contains the statement that, in 1452, pointed shoes, this object of haughtiness, were introduced from Swabia.30 Further east, sumptuary laws make less reference to them. Dress regulations enacted in Vienna around 1450 forbid them for burghers and craftsmen as well as their servants.31 A fifteenth-​ century law from Tyrol prohibits them, but, similar to Frowin’s poem from c. 1340, exempts members of the nobility and their servants from the ban,32 which ensured the maintenance of social distinction through attire. Communication between Central and Western Europe can also be traced with regard to the raw material for producing costumes and accessories. Leather from Hungary was exported to fourteenth-​century England, cloth from Tournai is noted in Hungary, where it is mentioned as statutory wear for judges in 1344.33 Many late-​medieval Central European sources, for instance, inventories and last wills contain information about clothing made from English, French, or Flemish cloth. In 1292, a burgher from Vienna is said to have nearly been ruined by buying cloth from Ghent and Ypres. It is doubtful, however, that all the foreign cloth mentioned in Central European sources of the fifteenth century still came from abroad and was not produced locally in the manner of English, French, or Flemish originals.34 The material culture of the daily life of elites, even rulers, was also discussed and critiqued. A connection between clothing and policy touching the “daily life” of a Central European ruler can be seen explicitly in a letter by Pope Clement VI from February 25, 1348, to King Charles IV, the later emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.35 Clement (born Pierre Roger) had been Charles’ tutor at the French court. In the letter, Clement refers to the complaints of a number of German magnates who had been disturbed by Charles’s habits of dress. He wore, according to them, short, tight garments and enjoyed tournaments; thus, they claimed, he did not maintain the imperial dignity they expected. Clement emphasizes his paternal affection and says he wishes to increase the honor of his former pupil. He asks Charles to wear long full clothes, to abstain from tournaments, and to show always his maturity and dignity. Besides clothing, sometimes similar developments and evaluations can be traced for food and diet. Medieval Hungarian cookbooks themselves have not been traced yet, but a cookbook written or compiled in South Germany or Austria between 1469 and 1474 is kept in a library in Debrecen (eastern Hungary).36 Hungarian influences were noted with regard to food in the West and Italy. It is a common assumption that the dough for preparing strudel was adopted in Europe from the Turks. A Venetian cookbook from the fourteenth century, however, mentions a Torta ungaresca (Hungarian pie) per xii persone, a meat strudel consisting of capon and pork loin cut into small pieces,

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    419 mixed with onions and spices, put in between eighteen pastry sheets, and baked with little lower heat and good top heat.37 Hungary also played an important role with regard to preparing freshwater fish that can be traced not only in sources from Hungary but also in references to “Hungarian” fish recipes in other areas of Europe. The anonymous Descriptio Europae Orientalis, probably composed by a French monk at the beginning of the fourteenth century, remarks that Hungary excels almost every country except Norway in the abundance of fish.38 Hungarian fish were, for instance, exported in barrels to Poland39 and late medieval Italian cookbooks refer to a Hungarian fish soup.40 A Bavarian astronomical-​medical manuscript from the second half of the fifteenth century contains four recipes whose origin is mentioned as Bohemian or Hungarian: “Noted a good art of cooking Hungarian or Bohemian dishes that are good” (Vermerk ein güede kunst von ungrischen oder pehamischen essen zw kochen dy guet sein).41 They deal with carp in pepper broth, a broth for Lent, a ginger broth for roasted capon, a clove broth for pike or carp, and a pepper broth for venison. As no records of these recipes have been found in other German cookbooks, it may be assumed that they really were imported from Hungary or Bohemia. Fifteenth-​century German recipes also mention different ways of preparing “Bohemian chicken”: either as whole birds stuffed with lard, eggs, and spices between the body and skin, wrapped into an egg dough and then sautéed on a spit; or the stomach, neck, feet, and liver of the chicken to be boiled in a pot, then pounded in a mortar and mixed with parsley and pounded, boiled, beef or veal; the whole mixture to be strained through a cloth, then again boiled and seasoned with ginger and pepper; at last, the rest of the whole chicken should be put into the mixture, be brought to a boil and served hot.42 An interesting case can be found in the famous bůch von gůter spise (Book of Good Food), the oldest surviving German cookbook, from about 1350, which contains a recipe for so-​called pagan peas, a mixture of pounded almonds, honey, herbs, and spices. While the heading of the recipe says “pagan peas” (heidenische erweiz), the recipe itself starts with, “If you want to make Bohemian peas” (Wilt du machen behemmische erweiz).43 They can be identified as a kind of nougat (Türkischer Honig). As “Bohemian” or “pagan” they can also be identified as synonymous with oriental, exotic, or strange. Additionally, this may also be seen as an expression of spite against the Bohemians,44 just like the mentioned “Bohemian,” that is, “pagan,” attire of the German student John Butzbach when he returned home from Bohemia.45 The same bůch von gůter spise contains two other “pagan” recipes, “heathen heads” and a “heathen cake.” “Bohemian peas” also occur in other German cookbooks of the fifteenth century, this time not connected to pagans and not sweet but using actual peas.46 Therefore, generally, interregional connections and influences in medieval cookery did not exclude Central Europe in the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, and literary comparisons can also be found. In the 1558 Katzipori by Michael Lindener, a German writer of farces, two journeymen discuss about the quality of cheese. The French journeyman states, inter alia, that Swiss cheese is better than Bohemian or English cheese, which the other journeyman contradicts, stating that Swiss cheese tastes like slipper wood or buffalo skin.47

420   Gerhard Jaritz Most of Central Europe is a long distance from the sea. For this reason, the food of the fast days of the year concentrated on freshwater fish that were found and raised widely, particularly in Hungary. The elites of society had exceptions in their menus; they regularly served imported sea-​fish, above all during the pre-​Easter Lenten period as a special time of the Christian year when one ate less and no meat but sometimes special, that, is, more expensive, food. This could lead to the situation that the expenses for “special” sea fish during Lent became much higher than on Fridays not in Lent, when regional fish species were eaten more commonly.48 Another exception was herring, which turns up as regular Lenten food even in the lower levels of society, in hospitals, for instance.49 They were mainly imported from Polish fishing centers on the Baltic Sea.50 From the mid-​fifteenth century onward, dispensations from fasting laws by the Apostolic Penitentiary became common throughout Europe. In Central Europe, requests to the pope for such “butter letters” were justified by the problem that olive oil as a replacement for butter or lard was too expensive. Many such papal dispensations were issued for countries, cities, and market towns as well as for individual people.51 In 1475, Pope Sixtus IV authorized the use of butter in Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia during Advent for the five following years.52 The best-​known “butter letter” for a German region is the one that Pope Innocent VIII sent to Duke Albrecht of Saxony and his subjects in 1491.53 In secondary sources, this letter is often connected with the development of the so-​called Dresdener Stollen, the famous traditional Christmas cake from Dresden.54 Regional aspects of food consumption can sometimes also be traced in late medieval visual sources in which the images, mainly with religious content, show the environment of their audience, for instance, an image representing the biblical dinner at Bethany on a panel painting of a winged altarpiece in St. Corbinian’s church in the East Tyrolean village of Thal (see Figure 17.2). On the table, five flat, round, bread rolls are shown that are still characteristic today for the Tyrol region and named after the Vinschgau Valley, that is the upper part of the Etsch River Valley in the western part of the province of South Tyrol. The Vinschgauer (Vinschgerl) bread rolls on the dinner table on the occasion when Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus’s feet thus emphasize the regionalization of this rather important religious event in a particular way. On festive occasions, elite households produced specific meals that are significant because of the large number of courses served. The same can also be recognized for the Central European area, not only in rulers’ kitchens and tables but also in the houses of rich burghers in rather unimportant urban communities. An example is the meal that was served on a visitation journey, in 1486, to the Bishop of Caorle and his entourage when they were invited to the house of a burgher in the Carinthian town of Villach. The meal, prepared by the burgher’s wife, had ten courses, each one better than the next, the bishop’s secretary remarked in his travelog so that one would have thought they were in the center of Florence.55 What was important at these meals was not the quantity, but the variety of dishes served. Moreover, all the dishes were often served simultaneously, and the dinner guests chose and helped themselves to suit their own tastes.56 Late medieval Central Europe had, like other parts of the continent, a remarkable spice culture incorporating native as well as the more expensive imported varieties.

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    421

Figure 17.2.  Vinschgauer bread rolls on the table at the Dinner at Bethany: detail on a panel of a winged altarpiece. Wolfgang Pacher circle, 1498. Thal (East Tyrol), Saint Corbinian’s church (Photo: Institut für Realienkunde, University of Salzburg).

Pepper and saffron played the most important roles among the imported seasonings. Their value was recognized and can be clearly seen in a number of sources. Pepper and saffron are even listed sometimes as bequeathed objects in last wills.57 Most of the saffron imported into Central Europe came from Southern Italy. Attempts to grow saffron regionally were successful in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, particularly in Lower Austria and Switzerland. Saffron gardens became valuable agricultural features and sometimes again appear in last wills. Still, there seem to have been differences in quality as one finds a differentiation between Italian (welsch safran) and homegrown saffron (landsafran).58 Growing saffron in parts of Central Europe developed quite well, but similar attempts to produce other important objects of daily life led to failure. In the context of the war against Venice, for example, Emperor Maximilian I tried to stop the import of the prestigious Venetian soap to Austria and, in 1516, ordered a soap factory to be built in Vienna. This was quickly done, but, as early as 1517, exceptions from the prohibition to import soap from Venice were made and, in 1518, its imports were generally permitted again, which demonstrates that the Viennese project was not a resounding success in

422   Gerhard Jaritz producing soap of a quality comparable to that from Venice. Meanwhile, still in 1519, Viennese soap was exported to Sopron in Western Hungary. Altogether, however, the project seems to have been a failure.59 A well-​developed beer culture is found mainly in Bohemia and Poland. It was fermented from a number of different grains, such as wheat, millet, rye, barley, and oats. A number of remarks about the preference of Poles for beer can be found in medieval chronicles. The Polish chronicler Jan Długozs, for instance, offers the story of Conrad, duke of Steinau (Śtinawa) and provost of Wrocław cathedral, who was elected archbishop of Salzburg in 1303. On his way to Salzburg, he learned that in Vienna one drank only wine and that there was none of the wheat beer he had been accustomed to from childhood. This became the reason that he declined and decided not to go to Salzburg but returned to Wrocław.60 With regard to wine, Austria and Hungary played the most important roles in Central Europe. The Lower Austrian Danube area was a particular wine-​growing region. From there, exports went mainly to Southern Germany, as indicated by a large number of grape-​growing centers of Bavarian monasteries in the Wachau area on the Danube in particular.61 Medium-​priced red and white wines were imported into late medieval Poland mainly from Hungary, but wine also came from France, Italy, Austria, Spain, and the eastern Mediterranean.62 One group of objects that demonstrate the intensive workshop and trade connections throughout late medieval Central Europe are stoves and stove tiles. The extensive studies of the Hungarian archaeologist Imre Holl, in particular, have shown a variety of influences and links among Hungarian, Austrian, German, Swiss, Bohemian, and Polish workshops.63 Individual craftsmen offered a great deal of variety in the range of products they produced. A late example, from December 1532, is the price list for shoes that the shoemakers of the Western Hungarian town of Sopron composed at the behest of the town council. This list includes not only shoes for women, men, and children, and for peasants and soldiers, but also shoes explicitly labeled Hungarian and Italian (Wellisch).64 The visual representation of everyday life situations that explicitly show people or communities from Central Europe are rare; most of such images represent craftspeople at work. For instance, the Nuremberg Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung (Housebook of the Endowment of the Mendel family’s twelve brothers), starting in 1425, shows a collection of idealized images of Nuremberg craftsmen no longer able to work who were admitted to a Bruderhaus (a kind of retirement institution).65 The famous Balthasar Behem Codex from 1505, a richly illustrated collection of statutes and privileges of the guilds of Cracow, also offers visual representations of guild members in their workshops.66 Moreover, there are a number of religious images containing mining scenes, mostly in the context of specific Central European mining areas, that connect depictions of patron saints and mining work (see Figure 17.3). They clearly follow iconographic traditions but, nevertheless, offer insights into attempts at self-​representation made with the help of depictions of idealized true-​to-​life work. East-​Central European mining sites were dominated by German shareholders and miners, who were considered the best specialists in the field. In general, German settlers

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    423

Figure 17.3.  Idealized mining scene in the background of a panel painting: detail of “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” 1513. Gold, silver, and iron mining community of Rožnava (Slovakia), parish church (Photo: Institut für Realienkunde, University of Salzburg).

and trade links to the German lands influenced the daily life in East-​Central Europe decisively, which can be seen clearly in objects of material and visual culture. The influence of Germans, however, could also lead to disturbances and turmoil, even in monastic space. In the mid-​fifteenth century, for instance, problems arose in the Bohemian Cistercian house of Zlatá Koruna (Goldenkron) between Czech and German monks and the abbot was advised not to accept any more conventuals from abroad. Such a situation occurred not only among monks of different mother tongues but also, in general, with “troublemakers” from abroad, as attested in the fifteenth century for the Carinthian Cistercian house of Viktring, where a group of native monks complained strongly against those coming from far away.67 Similar examples also exist for many other areas and social strata where residents came in contact with strangers.

424   Gerhard Jaritz Other information on the daily life of members of monastic communities is richer where the archive situation of still-​active houses is favorable, for example, in Austria or Bavaria. Beside normative documents, in the best case, account books or inventories may have survived that offer information on the material culture and daily life in religious houses. Again, also negative aspects, deviance, and excesses were worthy of recording for internal use as, for instance, in 1225, when the Cistercian General Chapter penalized a Hungarian Cistercian abbot because he had gone to the baths on Holy Saturday.68 Late medieval visitation protocols of religious houses and parishes record relatively uniform offenses. One of the most telling examples is the visitation protocol of the archdiocese of Prague from 1379 to 1382. The interrogations were trilingual, orally in Czech or German and written down in Latin. The source deals mainly with the lives and offenses of the parish clergy and contains a large number of criticized and (to some extent) punished, cases. More than 20 percent of the entries dealing with the parish clergy refer to concubinage. The records also reveal priests who only offer spiritual help for money or neglect their religious duties; they deal with their alcoholism, visiting taverns, gambling, profane singing, hunting, pigeon breeding, and so on. The numbers of entries are much lower for the misbehavior of the parishioners than the clergy and mainly refer to clandestine marriage, usury, and ignoring the Sacraments.69 It is clear that most of such documents refer to behavioral aberrations. Nevertheless, they provide vivid impressions of problems in the daily life of members of different social groups in late medieval Central European society, similarly to the way normative sources deal with attempts to prevent such problems or literature and poetry criticize them didactically or satirically. All these evidences offer valuable information on discourse about one’s own quotidian live and the one of others. Thus, this is just the reality of the representation of daily life and not the actual reality of daily life, but, nevertheless, it offers important testimony on mentality, communication, and the world of wishes and ideas in context. In 2017, János M. Bak emphasized for East-​Central Europe that “it is to be hoped that the alleged special character of the region will vanish and merge into an all-​European (or even global) view of the past.”70 Central Europe was in no way separate from the rest of Europe, but an integral part of it, with numerous avenues of communication, mutual influences, adoption, and rejection of practices and objects. This chapter attempts to show this by harnessing aspects of daily life and with the help of some examples and nuances, signs and distinct patterns, tactics and strategies, as well as opportunities and boundaries offered by the analysis of different sources. Each source has to be seen in context with political, religious, economic, and other cultural circumstances, conditions, and developments.

Notes 1. For Hungary, see Gábor Klaniczay, “Everyday Life and Elites in the Later Middle Ages: The Civilised and the Barbarian,” in The Medieval World, edited by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), 679.

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    425 2. With regard to food culture, see Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, translated by Carl Ipsen (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 110; with regard to the “unified [late] medieval costume of Europe,” see Eduard Wagner, Zoroslava Drobná, and Jan Durdík, Medieval Costume, Armour and Weapons, with a new introduction by Vladimír Dolínek (London: Andrew Dakers, 1958), repr. Dover Fashion and Costumes (Mineola, NY: Courier, 2014), 22 and 26. 3. Seifried Helbling, edited by Joseph Seemüller (Halle/​Saale: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1886), 26–​28. 4. Ibid., 209–​210. 5. Ibid., 1–​3. 6. See Wernher der Gartenaere, Helmbrecht, 10th ed., edited by Friedrich Panzer, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 11 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993); English translations: Clair Hayden Bell, Peasant Life in Old German Epics: Meier Helmbrecht and Der Arme Heinrich (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931, repr. New York: Octagon, 1965); Wernher der Gartenaere, Helmbrecht, German edited by Ulrich Seelbach, translated by Linda B. Parshall, Garland Library of Medieval Literature A28 (New York: Garland, 1987). 7. Wernher der Gartenaere, 25–​27. 8. Leo Zehnder, Volkskundliches in der älteren schweizerischen Chronistik, Schriften der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 60 (Basel: G. Krebs, 1976), 156. 9. Nürnberger Polizeiordnungen aus dem XIII. bis XV. Jahrhundert, edited by Joseph Baader (Stuttgart: Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins, 1861; repr. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1966), 108–​109. 10. Gerhard Jaritz, “Das ‘Neue’ im Alltag des Spätmittelalters: Annahme–​Zurückweisung–​ Förderung,” in Alltag und Fortschritt im Mittelalter, Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-​hist. Klasse 470 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1986), 87. 11. Die Gedichte Heinrichs des Teichners, vol. 3, edited by Heinrich Niewöhner, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters 48 (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 1956), 13. 12. Hartmann J. Zeibig, “Die kleine Klosterneuburger Chronik (1322–​1428),” Archiv für österreichische Geschichte 7 (1851, repr. 1965): 241. 13. Anonymi Leobiensis Chronicon, edited by Josef Zahn (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1865), 29. 14. Petra Žitavského kronika zbraslavská [The Königsaal chronicle of Peter of Zittau], edited by Josef Emler, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum 4 (Prague: Nákladem Nadání Františka Palackého, 1884; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 2004), 404; Chronicon Francisci Pragensis, edited by Jana Zachová, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, n.s. 1 (Prague: Historický ústav Akademie věd Česke republiky, 1998), 126–​127; Mieczysław Mejor, “On Novelties in Customs (de novitatibus morum) at the Beginning of the 14th Century,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 22 (2017): 385–​387. 15. See also Jan Keupp, Die Wahl des Gewandes: Mode, Macht und Möglichkeitssinn in Gesellschaft Forschungen 33 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, und Politik des Mittelalters, Mittelalter-​ 2014), 96–​97. 16. Mejor, “On Novelties,” 407. 17. Die Berner Chronik des Valerius Anshelm, vol. 2, edited by Historischer Verein des Kantons Bern (Bern: K. J. Wyss, 1886), 389–​391. 18. Johannes Butzbach, Odeporicon: Eine Autobiographie aus dem Jahre 1506. Zweisprachige Ausgabe, translated Andreas Beriger (Weinheim: VCH Acta Humaniora, 1991),

426   Gerhard Jaritz 244–​245; Gerhard Jaritz, “Outer Appearance and the Construction of Identities,” in Hybrid Identities, edited by Flocel Sabbaté (Bern: Peter Lang, 2014), 83. 19. Melitta Weiss Adamson, Daz bůch von gůter spise (The Book of Good Food): A Study, Edition, and English Translation of the Oldest German Cookbook, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, Sonderband 9 (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 2000), 83 and 105. See also Wolfgang Holanik, “Böhmisches Huhn: ein herzhafter Grenzgänger?” (2018) (https://​nahrha​ftes​mitt​elal​ter.com/​2018/​11/​12/​boeh​misc​hes-​huhn-​ein-​her​zhaf​t er-​grenz​ gaen​ger, accessed June 29, 2020). 20. Jenő Szűcs, “Zwei Fragmente,” in Studien zum Nationalbewußtsein: Mittelalter und Gegenwart, East Central Europe–​L’Europe du Centre-​Est 20–​23, part 2, special issue (Idyllwild, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1998), 88. 21. Ernő Marosi, “Zur Frage des Quellenwertes mittelalterlicher Darstellungen: ‘Orientalismus’ in der Ungarischen Bilderchronik,” in Alltag und materielle Kultur im mittelalterlichen Ungarn, edited by András Kubinyi and József Laszlovszky, Medium Aevum Quotidianum 22 (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1991), 74–​107. 22. Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–​1365 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1980; repr. 1999), 87. 23. Anton von Geusau, Die Geschichte der Belagerung Wiens durch den König Mathias von Hungarn, in den Jahren 1484–​1485 (Vienna: Anton Strauss, 1805), 93; https://​www.uibk. ac.at/​urges​chic​hte/​pro​jekt​e_​fo​rsch​ung/​abt/​quel​len/​wien.html (accessed June 29, 2020). 24. Die Limburger Chronik des Tileman Elhen von Wolfhagen, edited by Arthur Wyss, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Deutsche Chroniken, vol. 4, 1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1883), 80. 25. Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi II: Angliae Regis, a monacho quodam de Evesham consignata, edited by Thomas Hearne (Oxford: Theatrum Sheldonianum, 1729), 126. For this and the following, see also Mark Chambers and Louise Sylvester, “Lexicological Confusion and Medieval Clothing Culture: Redressing Medieval Dress with the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain Project,” in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, edited by Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 73–​76. 26. Eulogium (Historiarum sive Temporis): Chronicon ab orbe condito usque ad annum domini M.CCC.LXVI a monacho quodam Malmesburiensi exaratum, vol. 3, edited by Frank Scott Haydon (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1863), 231. 27. Mejor, “On Novelties,” 390–​391. 28. “Kronika Beneše Krabice z Weitmile” [Chronicle of Beneš Krabice of Veitmile], edited by Josef Emler, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum 4 (Prague: Nákladem Nadání Františka Palackého, 1884; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 2004), 536. 29. Rosita Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume in Italia, vol. 2 (Milan: Istituto editoriale italiano, 1964), 9–​11. 30. Die Chroniken der fränkischen Städte: Nürnberg, vol. 4, edited by Matthias Lexer, Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert 10 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1872), 197. 31. Geusau, Geschichte der Belagerung, 92; https://​www.uibk.ac.at/​urges​chic​hte/​pro​jekt​e_​fo​ rsch​ung/​abt/​quel​len/​wien.html (accessed June 29, 2020). 32. Werner Köfler, Land, Landschaft, Landtag: Geschichte der Tiroler Landtage von den Anfängen bis zur Aufhebung der Landständischen Verfassung 1808 (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1985), 111.

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    427 33. Newton, Fashion, 2 and 62. 34. Gerhard Jaritz, Zwischen Augenblick und Ewigkeit: Einführung in die Alltagsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Vienna: Böhlau, 1989), 186. 35. Monumenta Vaticana res gestas Bohemicas illustrantia 1: Acta Clementis VI. 1342–​1352, edited by Ladislav Klicman (Prague: Typis Gregerianis, 1903), 555–​556; Gerhard Jaritz, “Daily Life,” in Handbook of Medieval Culture, vol. 1, edited by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 301. 36. Adamson, Daz bůch von gůter spise, 43; Andras Vizkelety, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der altdeutschen Handschriften in ungarischen Bibliotheken, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1973), 125–​127. 37. Anonimo Veneziano, Libro di cucina del secolo XIV, edited by Ludovico Frati (Livorno: Raffaelo Giusti, 1899), 59–​60. 38. Tibor Živković, Vladeta Petrović, and Aleksandar Uzelac, Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis, edited and translated into Serbian by Dragana Kunčer, Sources for Serbian History 13, 2 (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2013), 136–​137. See also Katalin Szende, “The Sopron Fish Market,” in Genius loci: Laszlovszky 60, edited by Dóra Mérai et al. (Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2018), 159–​164. 39. Maria Dembinska, Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 100. 40. Simon Varey, “Medieval and Renaissance Italy A: The Peninsula,” in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays, edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 102. The famous German cookbook of Sabine Welser from c. 1553 also mentions a Hungarian pike soup; see Das Kochbuch der Sabine Welserin, edited by Hugo Stopp (Heidelberg: Winter, 1980), 158 n. 191. 41. Trude Ehlert, ed., Münchner Kochbuchhandschriften aus dem 15. Jahrhundert: Cgm 349, 384, 467, 725, 811 und Clm 15632 (Frankfurt: Tupperware. 1999), 104–​110; Holanik, “Böhmisches Huhn.” 42. Holanik, “Böhmisches Huhn.” 43. Adamson, Daz bůch von gůter spise, 83 and 105. See also Holanik, “Böhmisches Huhn.” 44. Helmut Hundsbichler, “Nahrung,” in Alltag im Spätmittelalter, edited by Harry Kühnel (Graz: Styria, 1984), 231; Holanik, “Böhmisches Huhn.” 45. Butzbach, Odeporicon; Jaritz, “Outer Appearance and the Construction of Identities,” 83. 46. Doris Aichholzer, Wiltu machen ayn guet essen: Drei mittelhochdeutsche Kochbücher; Erstedition, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Wiener Arbeiten zur Germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologie 35 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), 218–​221 n. 86, n. 88; 288–​289 n. 73. 47. Michael Lindener, Schwankbücher: Rastbüchlein und Katzipori, 2 vols., edited by Kyra Heidemann, Arbeiten zur Mittleren Deutschen Literatur und Sprache 20/​1: Texte, and 20/​2: Kommentar und Register (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991), vol. 1, 143–​144 n. 77, vol. 2, 134–​135. 48. Jaritz, Zwischen Augenblick, 37. 49. See, for instance, Gerhard Jaritz, “Die ‘Armen Leuteʼ im Spital: Zur Aussage der Kremser Spitalmeisterrechnungen aus den Jahren 1459–​1461,” Mitteilungen des Kremser Stadtarchivs 21, no. 22 (1982): 29 and 52. 50. Daniel Makowiecki, “Some Remarks on Medieval Fishing in Poland,” in Animals and Man in the Past: Essays in Honour of Dr. A. T. Clason, Emeritus Professor of Archaeozoology, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands, edited by H. Buitenhuis and W. Prummel (Groningen: Archaeological Research and Consultancy BV, 2001), 236–​239.

428   Gerhard Jaritz 51. See Erwin Ettlin, Butterbriefe: Beiträge und Quellen zur Geschichte der Fastendispensen in der Schweizerischen Quart des Bistums Konstanz im Spätmittelalter (Bern: Peter Lang, 1977); Herwig Weigl, “Ambulans per plateam: Die Register der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie als Quellen zur Stadtgeschichte,” Pro Civitate Austriae: Informationen zur Stadtgeschichtsforschung in Österreich, n.s. 13 (2008): 112–​113. 52. Darra Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 53. Urkundenbuch der Stadt Freiberg in Sachsen, vol. 1, edited by Hubert Ermisch, Codex Diplomaticus Saxoniae Regiae II/​12 (Leipzig: Giesecke & Devrient, 1883), 562–​563 n. 789. 54. See, for instance, Ursula Heinzelmann, Food Culture in Germany (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008), 144. 55. Rudolf Egger, Die Reisetagebücher des Paolo Santonino 1485–​1487 (Klagenfurt: Kleinmayr, 1947; repr. Völkermarkt: Galerie Manet, 1988), 127. 56. See Massimo Montanari, “Das nahe, das ferne und das erfundene Mittelalter,” in Kunst und saelde: Festschrift für Trude Ehlert, edited by Katharina Boll and Katrin Wenig (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011), 206. 57. Gerhard Jaritz, “Zwei Töpfe Schmalz, ein Pfund Safran und alle Äpfel im Keller,” in Grundlagen der österreichischen Rechtskultur: Festschrift für Werner Ogris zum 75. Geburtstag, edited by Thomas Oleschowski, Christian Neschwara, and Alina Lengauer (Vienna: Böhlau, 2010), 184–​185. 58. Jaritz, Zwischen Augenblick, 171–​172. 59. Gerhard Jaritz, “Espace urbain et communication ‘internationale’ en Autriche aux XVe et XVIe siècles,” in L’Europe central au seuil de la modernité: Mutations sociales, religieuses et culturelles (Rennes: Presses universitaires des Rennes, 2010), 33. 60. Joannis Dlugossii Senioris Canonici Cracoviensis Historiae Polonicae Libri XII, vol. 3, edited by Alexander Przezdziecki (Cracow: Typographia Ephemeridum “Czas,” 1876), 13; Dembinska, Food and Drink, 79. 61. See Andreas Otto Weber, Studien zum Weinbau der altbayerischen Klöster im Mittelalter: Altbayern, Österreichischer Donauraum, Südtirol, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial-​ und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Beiheft 141 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999). 62. Dembinska, Food and Drink, 77. 63. E.g., Imre Holl, “Spätgotische Ofenkacheln: 1. Werke einer mitteleuropäischen Ofenhafnerwerkstatt 2. Ein böhmischer Ofen am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Acta 214; Imre Holl, archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 50 (1998): 139–​ “Spätgotische Öfen aus Österreich,” Acta archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 52 (2001): 353–​414; Imre Holl,“Ungarisch-​polnische Beziehungen aufgrund der Ofenkacheln (zweite Hälfte 15.–​erste Hälfte 16. Jahrhundert),” Acta archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 55 (2004): 333–​376. 64. Károly Mollay, “Árszabások (A soproni vargák 1532. evi árszabása)” [Appraisals (The tariffs of Sopron shoemakers from 1532)], Soproni Szemle 41, no. 4 (1987): 289–​307. 65. Wilhelm Treue, Das Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung zu Nürnberg, 2 vols. (Munich: Bruckmann, 1965). 66. Codex picturatus Balthasaris Behem, facsimile (Warsaw: Krajowa Agencja Wydawn, 1999). 67. Gerhard Jaritz, “Monastische Kommunitäten und räumliche Mobilität in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit,” in Migration in der Feudalgesellschaft, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Albert Müller, Studien zur Historischen Sozialwissenschaft 8 (Frankfurt: Campus, 1988), 167.

Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life    429 68. Reinhard Schneider, “Lebensverhältnisse bei den Zisterziensern im Spätmittelalter,” in Klösterliche Sachkultur des Spätmittelalters, edited by Harry Kühnel, Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-​hist. Klasse 367 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), 60. 69. Protocollum visitationis archidiaconatus Pragensis annis 1379–​ 1382 per Paulum de Janowicz archidiaconum Pragensum factae, edited by Ivan Hlaváček and Zdeňka Hledíková (Prague: Academia, 1973); Ivan Hlaváček, “Beiträge zum Alltagsleben im vorhussitischen Böhmen: Zur Aussagekraft des Prager Visitationsprotokolls von 1379–​ 1381 und der benachbarten Quellen,” Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 34–​35 (1975): 865–​82; Brigitte Rath, “‘De sacramentis, concubinatu et ludo taxillorum . . . ’: Über ein böhmisches Visitationsprotokoll aus dem 14. Jahrhundert,” in Von Menschen und ihren Zeichen: Sozialhistorische Untersuchungen zum Spätmittelalter und zur Neuzeit, edited by Ingrid Matschinegg, Brigitte Rath, and Barbara Schuh (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 1990), 41–​59. 70. János M. Bak, “What Did We Learn? What Is to Be Done? Some Insights and Visions after Reading This Book,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 255.

Further reading Dembinska, Maria. Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Jaritz, Gerhard. “The Good and the Bad Example, or Making Use of ‘Le petit peuple’ in Late Medieval Central Europe.” In Le petit peuple dans l’Occident médiéval: Terminologies, perceptions, realités, edited by Pierre Boglioni, Robert Delort, and Claude Gauvard, 83–​95. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002. Jaritz, Gerhard. “Images, Urban Space, and the Language and Grammar of Elite Dress (Central Europe, 15th Century).” In Le verbe, l’image et les représentations de la société urbaine au Moyen Âge, edited by Marc Boone, Elodie Lecuppre-​Desjardin, and Jean-​Pierre Sosson, 219–​225, 286–​290. Antwerp: Garant, 2002. Klaniczay, Gábor. “Everyday Life and Elites in the Later Middle Ages: The Civilised and the Barbarian.” In The Medieval World, edited by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson, 671–​690. London: Routledge, 2001. Mejor, Mieczysław. “On Novelties in Customs (de novitatibus morum) at the Beginning of the 14th Century.” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 22 (2017): 385–​412.

Chapter 18

Re ligiou s Pr ac t i c e s ( a nd C onfe s si ona l Variants) in Me di eva l Central Eu rope Stanislava Kuzmová

This chapter focuses on religious practices among the lay populations in medieval Central Europe, which follows Western Christianity. The kingdoms of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia, with the adjacent Baltic areas, made up what we usually consider medieval Central Europe. The people in this territory, located between the Latin Church and German Empire of the West and the Greek Orthodox-​Byzantine sphere to the southeast, adopted Christianity by about ad 1000 (see ­chapter 7 in this volume, by Schwedler and Figurski). Historians of religion have characterized Central Europe as distinctive, a region of “new Christianity”; they see the transition to Christianity (Christianization) as a long and complex process during which Christian beliefs and practices gradually diffused and were adopted in society.1 Some historians see Central Europe as a periphery of medieval western Latin Christendom;2 others see it as a border zone where various western and eastern influences met. The region has always been diverse in ethnicities and social origins. Periodic waves of contacts and immigration, from the East (in the early period the Avars and Hungarians, later the Ottomans) and from Western Europe throughout the medieval period intermingled with local residents, creating a different form of society from the neighbors to both the east and west. The region developed its own synthesis of cultural and social groups. Here the focus is on the lay population; in addition to the secular powers, the laity interacted constantly with the Church and lay involvement and initiative grew over time. The development of Church institutions and structures, including monastic orders, was part of the process of Christianization and directly related to the gradual spread of religious practices and beliefs in society (see c­ hapter 21 in this volume, by de Cevins, Derwich, and Romhanyi).

432   Stanislava Kuzmová In the first stage of Christianization, the rulers and elites adopted Christianity, which then spread from above, mostly basic and formalized practices limited to monks, clerics, and the elites. The sources for the early period up to the twelfth century are scarce, but the number and variety increase over time. The second stage was a continuation of the Christianization process, when religious practices and beliefs spread and began to be internalized among the broader population. This was manifested in changes in devotional practices starting from the turn of the thirteenth century. The third phase, from the second half of the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century, was marked by an increasing plurality of practices, both communal and personal, and by calls for reform and renewal.

Christianization: Founders, Saints, and Practices (Ninth to Twelfth Century) Between the ninth and eleventh century the area witnessed acts of official conversion by the rulers and the elites, followed by the broader population, a development that paralleled the formation of kingdoms. Christianity had been known about in Central Europe from the Roman period. The ruling elites in the Carpathian Basin converted starting in the ninth century, among them various Slavic tribes and polities, importantly Moravia, Bohemia, Carinthia, and elsewhere. Christianization impulses came from both the Latin West (the Frankish Empire, Bavaria, and Northern Italy) and also the Byzantine East, with changing allegiances and varying success, as seen in the case of Moravia.3 Missionaries from the west initially led Moravian elites to introduce Christianity, but it was not firmly established; in 863 Duke Rastislav requested missionaries from the Byzantine Empire, two brothers, Sts. Constantine-​Cyril (d. 869) and Methodius (d. 885). Their mission, liturgy, and pastoral work were particularly significant because they created a new script (Glagolitic) for the Slavic language. Their heritage and cult, fostered by their disciples, became the foundation of hagiography and written culture in Old Slavonic across all the Slavic-​speaking areas.4 The process of Christianization went together with the formation of new polities, the kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland,5 accompanied by the top-​down establishment of Church structure with a network of dioceses and parishes, monastic institutions (mainly Benedictine), and legislative initiatives regulating religious obligations (tithes, feast days, festivals, and burials, among other things). The extent of the continuity of church structures and Christian beliefs among the population is debated, especially after the collapse of Great Moravia,6 but some ecclesiastical structures were certainly present. The parish was the basic unit of integration and control; rituals and religious acts that everyone should perform were guided by the liturgical calendar. The parish

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    433 network was rather patchy in the early period and developed gradually, especially from the late twelfth century onward.7 Rulers took a few legislative initiatives that denounced and punished “pagan” customs and imposed new obligations.8 Sources from the early period, especially those describing religious practices, are limited and often focus on outstanding individuals and members of the elite rather than the broader society. A series of hagiographical texts that emerged in the tenth and eleventh centuries sheds some light on the religious experience in the first centuries and illustrates the trends in communities in Central Europe.9 These are the lives of missionary saints (bishops and martyrs such as Adalbert, the Five Brethren, Cyril and Methodius, Gerard), founders and rulers of recently Christianized polities (Wenceslaus, Stephen,10 and later figures like Ladislaus), ascetics who settled there (Zoerard and Benedict), and pious women who contributed to the spread of the Christian faith (Ludmila).11 The hagiographic works describe a lukewarm Christianity in society, difficulties of transition, and the persistence of pagan customs, even pagan opposition. Above all, Christianity is presented as a social custom and the norm of behavior. The legends of the Bohemian duke Wenceslaus (d. 935) and his grandmother Ludmila (d. 921), from the first generations of baptized Bohemian rulers, were written shortly after their deaths. The legends also tell stories of conflicts between the Christian and pagan elites (represented by Wenceslaus’s mother, Drahomíra, and his murderer, his brother Boleslaus), which resulted in martyrs’ deaths, although they may actually have been victims of political struggles. Despite little contemporary information it seems that their cults achieved quick success. Wenceslaus was the prototype of a pious ruler, investing in establishing Christianity in Bohemia, allegedly intending to abandon the throne and retire to a monastery. Wenceslaus became the patron saint and symbolic eternal ruler of the kingdom, venerated throughout society in the following centuries.12 The hagiography of St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, shows the difficulties of transition from a pagan to a Christian society.13 The lives of Adalbert describe a Bohemia where part of the population still followed pagan customs several decades after St. Wenceslaus, including polygamy, the slave trade, and clerical marriages.14 Part of the population, however, such as the family of Adalbert, are presented as practicing the Christian faith, including charitable works, fasting, praying, invoking the Virgin Mary, and making a vow when baby Adalbert became ill.15 As bishop, Adalbert attempted in vain to correct the customs of his flock. He preferred to live as a monk and missionary and twice abandoned his see. The life of Adalbert embodies another important aspect of religious life at the turn of the eleventh century in Central Europe and its neighboring areas to the east—​the attraction of a missionary life. As a missionary, Adalbert, evangelized pagan Hungarians and was killed while evangelizing Prussians in the Baltic region. His missionary zeal was an influential model for his contemporaries such as Bruno of Querfurt, the author of his second legend, and for the Five Brethren, martyred in the lands adjacent to Poland.16 Central Europe was seen as a place where hermits settled during early Christianization, the image presented in the oldest preserved legend in Latin in the Kingdom of Hungary,

434   Stanislava Kuzmová written by Bishop Maurus of Pécs (1064), about the ascetic hermits Sts Zoerard-​Andrew and Benedict.17 The difficulties of converting the population, the presence of pagan opposition (sometimes violent), and the resilience of non-​Christian practices are depicted in various sources for all the areas of newly Christianized Central Europe—​hagiography, chronicles, and material evidence. The sources about Sts. Wenceslaus and Adalbert, the lives of St. Stephen, king of Hungary, who fought the pagans in his kingdom,18 the legend of St. Gerard, the bishop martyred in 1046 during a violent revolt against King Stephen, and praises for the Přemyslid ruler Břetislav II of Bohemia (ruled 1092–​1100) by the chronicler Cosmas of Prague for eradicating superstitious practices all suggest that Christian religious practices did not spread immediately to all spheres of society and that in many places Christianity remained lukewarm in practice.19 Interpretations of “paganism” and recurrent criticism of “superstition” in the descriptions of resistance in newly formed polities and in missionary lives should be viewed with caution;20 they may be exaggerated or used as topoi to enhance the heroic prestige of Christianizers and saintly figures. The authority of the founding figures who introduced Christianity and came to be venerated as saints, such as Wenceslaus of Bohemia and Stephen of Hungary, was important for the legitimacy of rulers and dynasties.21 Similar patterns of dynastic sainthood appeared in Central Europe as in other parts of Europe, for example, the Capetians in France.22 In the case of St. Wenceslaus, this was the pattern of a holy ruler who became a saint because he despised his worldly office and was killed by his opponents, in line with the cults of assassinated rulers like St. Edmund and St. Edward in Britain and St. Olaf of Norway, for example. In the hagiographical legends, Stephen I, king of Hungary, was not only an example of piety himself, but also an able administrator, instrumental in establishing the Church institutions in the kingdom (distributing alms, building churches). King Stephen, elevated at the initiative of King Ladislaus in 1083, represents a new type of sainthood and hagiography compared to martyred rulers like Wenceslaus: a confessor and founder, but not a martyr. In this respect, Central Europe actually anticipated the development of cults of saintly rulers like St. Louis of France and others.23 The cults of saintly rulers strengthened the legitimacy and symbolic representation of the rulers of Christianized polities. Cults of saints in general, saintly rulers, universal saints like the apostles, and others, contributed to strengthening the role of the Church in the lives of the population during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With their physical presence (relics, cult places, church dedications), in narratives (as native-​born, performing supernatural interventions, and as intercessors in times of danger), patron saints created ties with the community on various levels (institutions, towns, dioceses, countries), whether native or imported cults.24 Sometimes saints were adopted and the figure “reshaped” and “naturalized” to fit a new community, such as Sts. Giles, Peter, Martin, and Sigismund, or St. Florian.25 The Virgin Mary was one of the most popular patrons and protectors of medieval communities on various levels, acting as a mediator

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    435 among the faithful, the Church, and her son, God; she appears in numerous visual and textual records.26 Hartvic connected the Virgin Mary with the protection of Hungary in his legend of St. Stephen. The early Marian patronage puzzled historians, who attempted to explain its exceptionally early appearance in various ways: by emphasizing the Byzantine influence of the Theotokos cult in Hungary (which may have been a mediator of this Byzantine tradition in Western Europe), as a counterweight to St. Peter’s patronage symbolizing papal dominance in contrast to political “independence” or by seeing the roots of Mary’s special role in Magyar pre-​Christian religious tradition (a nineteenth-​century concept).27 Explaining the early Marian patronage in Hungary by Byzantine influence may reflect the position of Central Europe at the meeting point between Latin and Orthodox Christendom.28 Both Latin missions and Byzantine influences are visible in early liturgical formulas and hagiography. The Old Slavonic language and rite were already present in Great Moravia, with varied (and also variously interpreted) relationships to Latin usages.29 The Lives of Constantine and Methodius note that these priests of different origins “taught differently.”30 The ties to Latin Christendom proved decisive, however. To what extent the heritage of the Cyrillo-​Methodian mission, especially the Slavic liturgy, was present in Bohemia, parts of Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere after 1000 is still a question. In Bohemia, the continuity, although possibly of only the script, lasted perhaps until the end of the eleventh century or later.31 Some Greek monasteries survived in Hungary into the thirteenth century. Byzantine influences did not cease, but weakened, especially from the thirteenth century onwards.32 Lithuania, the eastern parts of the Polish lands, and of the Hungarian kingdom including Transylvania and Moldavia continued to be a region of intense interaction between Western and Eastern Christianity due to the proximity of Orthodox territories. There were continuous attempts to expand the frontiers of Latin Christianity with the help of monastic communities, who conducted missionary activities among pagan people (Lithuanians, Cumans, eastern Hungarians, Tartars). The mendicants, especially, missionized the “schismatic” territories of Orthodoxy from the thirteenth century onward;33 they were temporarily successful in Moldavia, inhabited by a mixed population of Orthodox, pagans, and “heretics.”34 Various aspects of interaction have been studied in Transylvania, for example, where they are documented in mural paintings.35 The number of Orthodox Christians (Romanians, Ruthenians, Serbs) gradually increased, especially in the kingdom of Hungary, as Balkan inhabitants moved north to escape Ottoman expansion and warfare along the southern border from the 1390s onward. This process continued intermittently, especially in the second half of the fifteenth century. The position “on the frontier” made the eastern and southern parts of East-​Central Europe not only a place of interaction and intersection, but sometimes also of confrontation, not only with the Orthodox but also with several waves of nomadic pagans.36 Its role as the bulwark of Christendom, protecting Europe from danger, was highlighted in a variety of narrative, hagiographic, and diplomatic sources.

436   Stanislava Kuzmová

Continued Christianization: Pastoral Care Innovations and Evangelical Life (Thirteenth to Fourteenth Century) During the twelfth century the population successfully “internalized” the faith beyond public rituals, at least to some extent, in the West. In Central Europe, these processes were somewhat delayed.37 Changes continued from the thirteenth century onward. Despite the difficulties of evaluating “internalization,” sources about the religious life of the population increase in number and broaden to include normative sources, evidence of pastoral care, preaching, and cults of saints. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) formally introduced changes in pastoral care (concerning the Eucharist, confession, other sacraments, and language), aimed at having the faithful instructed by educated clergy and emphasizing moral values. The opportunity for individual religious experience increased due to the improved living conditions and social status of large parts of the population, affected by a population explosion, urbanization, and colonization. Normative sources indicate that the demands of the Fourth Lateran Council were implemented slowly in Central Europe38. One of the important demands voiced at the Fourth Lateran Council was for preaching, an important means of communicating the doctrine and moral teachings of the Church. Demand increased for clerics suitable for pastoral service, but the demands were not finally satisfied until the fifteenth century.39 Mendicant friars partially remedied the deficiencies of parish clergy, primarily the Dominicans, the Order of Preachers. They came into the region in the early thirteenth century and cooperated with local bishops (e.g., in Cracow) and even rulers (e.g., in Hungary). Their activities and presence were connected with urbanization in Central Europe.40 Preaching was one of their basic activities and they reached a large public, assisted by model sermon collections in Latin. Sermon collections by authors from the region spread,41 among them the collections by the Silesian Dominican, Peregrinus of Opole, a “best-​seller” from the turn of the fourteenth century, used to propagate the Latin Christianity of the Fourth Lateran Council, particularly in urban settings.42 A delay in literacy and the dissemination of literature in the vernaculars meant that new, more internalized and personal forms of religious devotion in urban environments in Central Europe lagged behind Western and Southern Europe. The first visible changes were among the members of royal and aristocratic courts, especially princesses, who came to be closely connected with new religious orders. A number of royal and aristocratic women, like St. Elizabeth, adopted a vita apostolica, an evangelical way of living, with special emphasis on the vita activa, but not devoid of contemplative and ascetic dimensions. The type of the saintly princess, outstanding in chastity, poverty, asceticism, and works of mercy, was successful in the region, becoming a special kind of dynastic sainthood that guaranteed prestige and legitimacy for their royal families

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    437 and lineages.43 The spiritual background of St. Elizabeth’s religiosity came from the urban spirituality of the mendicant orders and had an impact among both the urban and nonurban populations. Charity toward the poor, care for needy children and the ill made her figure attractive in towns across Central Europe. She became the patron of hospitals, altars, churches, confraternities, even entire cities.44 The pattern continued across Central Europe, seen in Hedwig of Silesia, Kinga/​Cunegond of Cracow (d. 1292), Salomea of Galicia (d. 1268), Agnes of Bohemia (d. 1282), Margaret of Hungary (d. 1270), and others. Lay people, especially in the urban milieu, were increasingly interested in ethical and eschatological religious questions in everyday life. The Church’s basic teachings about the seven deadly sins and works of mercy were manifested in the founding of town hospitals and the charitable activities of confraternities and associations.45 Among the manifestations of “modernized” lay spirituality, inspired by the evangelical way of life and mostly tied to the urban environment, was the movement of beguines (women) and beghards (men), sometimes on the edge of heterodoxy. In Central Europe they tended to appear (but probably not in great numbers) in towns with German populations. Several beguine communities lived in Sandomierz and Cracow under the care of Dominican and Franciscan friars and in Prague (including the daughter of the nobleman and writer Tomáš of Štítné and beguine-​like communities inspired by popular preachers like Milíč) from the mid-​fourteenth century. Some raised suspicions of heresy, as seen in a trial in Silesian Świdnica in 1332, and alleged heretics were reported in Cracow diocese c. 1330, mentioned in the treatise of the Dominican Henry Harrer; who may have been suspicious of lay people who led a singularem vitam, i.e., practiced a new form of religious devotion.46 Practical piety has to be reconstructed from a variety of sources because there is little written evidence of private devotion among the lay population (except for some exceptional individuals like saints, learned religious, and rulers like Charles IV, and prayer books of Jagiellonian rulers, for example). The new religious forms were primarily associated with developed town environments and more sources describe the level of devotional and social practices.47 This was also true throughout the fifteenth century and even later, when the number of available sources increases, including last wills and testaments.48 Case studies with approaches informed by cultural anthropology have focused on particular public rituals of lay religious practice (processions, pilgrimages, cults of local saints, pious donations, lay confraternities), funding altars, votive masses, hospitals, confraternities (dedicated to universal saints and cults related to Christ and the Virgin Mary), which often played a central role in the life of a town and encompassed a whole range of activities and practices.49 Ecclesiastical and clerical sources view the laity as objects rather than subjects; with these new types of sources related to lay religious life, the researchers focused on social aspects of religion and actions rather than belief. However, the interest has shifted back to the doctrine (especially in preaching and liturgy) recently.50 The activities of various religious orders related to the lay faithful who were members of various third orders, confraternities, and communities have been researched around Central Europe.51 In continental Europe, including Central Europe,

438   Stanislava Kuzmová the research concerning lay religious practices has focused on the relations between mendicants and local communities and the influences of mendicant spirituality rather than the parochial one. It is desirable to bring these influences and agents of local religion together when portraying the communal piety, but it is often hindered by bad source situations and possible for some case studies only.52 By the early sixteenth century, parish churches had become the focus of urban religious life, receiving income from pious donations, altars, and chapels, which meant more prestige in the urban community that controlled the parish.53 Sources about cults of saints provide rich evidence for religious practices, public and private devotion, and changes that occurred from the thirteenth century. The centralized canonization process, controlled by the papacy, was introduced in the thirteenth century, resulting in various documents like miracle collections, supplications, and witnesses’ testimonies. The centralized procedure also precipitated contact of the “peripheries of Christendom” with Rome/​Avignon and showed different preferences in terms of typology of sainthood and cults, as compared to the “central” areas of Christendom. A small number of candidates from Central Europe were canonized; some processes coming to a halt before a successful ending. André Vauchez, interested in sainthood and its social dimensions, analyzed the statistics of canonization processes opened by the papacy between 1198 and 1431. He explains the low number of candidates from Central Europe canonized by the pope more by different pressures from local clergy and the faithful in favor of cult renewal than by unequal treatment by the papacy. In terms of types of sainthood, Vauchez notes the greater success of ancient saints and older types (like bishops and dynastic figures) in Central Europe compared to lay and mendicant saints in the West and the Mediterranean. Vauchez explains the different preferences for sainthood by less urbanization and weaker influence of the mendicant orders who promoted new saints.54 This thesis, however, has been reconsidered;55 the low number of canonized saints does not mean that local unofficial cults did not flourish; old cults could be readjusted to new devotional needs.56 Friars also actively supported cults in Central Europe. Besides cults of great mendicant figures in the region, there were local native persons from the orders or related circles who were not officially canonized in the Middle Ages but enjoyed a geographically limited reputation for sanctity, such as the Dominican Hyacinth (d. 1257),57 saintly princesses of the Poor Clares, and a number of friars, especially in the fifteenth century.58 Mendicants supported local cults and canonization efforts, like that of Stanislaus, canonized in 1253 through the cooperation of the Dominicans, Franciscans, and local clergy.59 Cults of saints were promoted by collecting miracles, celebrating, and organizing liturgical and nonliturgical gatherings on their feast days, promoting visits to their shrines and relics, and by preaching (sermons are mentioned in miracle accounts even if not preserved). The faithful were prompted to turn to the saintly person for intercession and also urged to follow the saint’s exemplar, convert from sin, confess, and change their lives. Thus, with the help of saintly figures, traditional and new forms of personal devotion and religious life could be advertised effectively among a large lay public.

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    439 Miracle collections and materials from canonization proceedings are rich sources for medieval religious practices and the experiences of people from various layers of society. In the case of modern, “living” candidates for sainthood who had died recently, they capture the religious experience of an outstanding individual in the testimonies about the virtues and life of the candidate and his or her personal devotion. They also reveal, perhaps unintentionally, information about the often formal and ritualized practices and imagination of the ordinary people who were beneficiaries and witnesses of the deeds and miracles. For example, sources related to the canonization process of Margaret of Hungary (c. 1275) capture both approaches to religious devotion. In the old approach, the beneficiaries of miracles—​lay people—​ practice traditional, formalized, and ritualized religiosity. Margaret and her fellow nuns embodied new religious sensitivities; they practiced charity and asceticism, and their devotion had personal traits.60 The attachment to and preference for miracles, especially post mortem, are often explained as a feature of archaic-​oriented religiosity compared to the new, “living” faith. Miracle-​working and supernatural powers were signs of the saintly person’s virtuous life, however. In addition, saints sometimes inspired others to convert or join a religious order, as St. Dominic urged Hyacinth (by a miracle) to join the Order of Preachers. Relics and miracles prompted not only “great” events like conversion and vocation, but also “smaller” conversions from sin to penitence and virtue in the everyday lives of the ordinary faithful, as numerous miracle accounts demonstrate. A vow of penitence, confession, or pilgrimage was an important prerequisite for a miraculous intervention or cure. In Central Europe, as elsewhere, scholars have observed increased spiritualization in miracle accounts; the contact between the saint and the beneficiary often occurs far from the shrine or relic, which is only visited subsequently.61 Miracle collections of “modern saints” like St. Margaret, reported by her fellow sisters in the convent, describe a number of miracles in vita. Miracles in life and other supernatural phenomena, however, including mystical experiences, were often considered suspicious. With the rising appreciation of mysticism, in the rewriting of her life by the Dominican Garinus (1330–​1340), Margaret was credited with a number of experiences besides stigmatization, such as levitation, apparitions, ecstasy, and so on, which did not appear in the original testimonies. By similar alterations, authors conformed to contemporary hagiographic preferences.62 Other innovations reflected a demand for Eucharistic devotion and veneration of Christ’s suffering with the help of christological relics, like those exhibited in Prague thanks to Emperor Charles IV, which became the foci of communal religion.63 Miracle accounts and numerous other sources document that religious pilgrimage flourished. Besides well-​ known centers of Latin Christianity (Rome, Jerusalem, Compostella, Aachen, Wilsnack, and so on), the network of local pilgrimage centers became denser and public manifestations of devotion increased. The traditions of Bohemian, Polish, and Hungarian patron saints persisted and were supplemented with dozens of new sites of sacred images, the Virgin Mary, and local saints (often related to monastic foundations).64

440   Stanislava Kuzmová

Revival and Reform, New Forms of Devotion, Moving toward the Reformation (Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century) The Christianization of society proceeded, on the one hand, toward broader spheres of population and community life, and on the other hand, toward deeper, personal, religious experience. The process became dynamic especially from the second half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth century onward. It achieved visible success in Central Europe slightly later than the West; the Church infrastructure took longer to prepare and demands for religious life by the faithful only increased after the social transformations that followed economic development. The call for religious renewal was one of the basic characteristics of the late medieval period. Reform was manifested in various currents on a continuum from orthodox to heterodox, discussed at councils and other forums. It concerned institutions and ecclesiastical administration, but also renewal of the religious life of individuals and communities on an everyday basis (the Observance movement, devotio moderna, and so on). The qualities of religious life in this period encompassed various manifestations of personalized devotion and a rich offering of doctrine and practices to meet individual and collective spiritual needs (sometimes seen as approaching heresy).65 The devotional turn initiated by the mendicants and Augustinians (and supported by reform-​minded bishops such as Archbishop Jan of Jenštejn of Prague) inspired new forms of piety and active religious life among both the religious and the lay, both private and public religious experience, devotional and social practices. In the first stage, it was mostly connected to royal and high aristocratic circles, as was the case with the saintly princesses and religious literature in the vernacular. Recently, scholars have debated the use of the umbrella term devotio moderna (calling for humility, obedience, and living a simple life) in Central Europe for a variety of reform movements for religious renewal from the fourteenth century onward.66 Bohemia is a special case in the spotlight of contemporary religious thought and modern historiography due to the success of the Hussite reform movement, which was unique to Central Europe. The density and concentration of pastoral structures—​parishes, religious institutions, and the number of clerics, especially educated clerics—​were prerequisites for extensive and intensive Christianization, although the density of ecclesiastical structures in Central Europe was uneven. During the fourteenth century Bohemia and Silesia lagged behind Western Europe in developing a network of parishes and religious institutions, but by the time of the Hussite revolution (c. 1420) they were catching up. The religious networks of the Polish and Hungarian kingdoms, especially in the eastern parts, were less complex, and did not catch up for another hundred years. By the 1400s, the Czech

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    441 lands had reached almost the same density of parish organization and level of sacramental services as the Rhineland and Central Germany, which made them fully congruent with the structures west of their borders. One factor, the close connection of the imperial throne and the Church during the reign of Charles IV, resulted in closer contacts with the papacy and its fiscal policy compared to their eastern neighbors.67 For the late medieval period especially, a larger number and variety of sources are extant for Church administration, such as synodal statutes, ecclesiastical court depositions, visitations, and indulgences, which are informative about religious practices among the population. Several important personalities, such as bishops Arnošt/​Ernest of Pardubice, archbishop of Prague (1344–​1364)68 and Piotr/​Peter Wysz, bishop of Cracow (1392–​ 1412), for example, pushed forward features of modernization (concerning the parish network and benefices, the discipline of the religious life of clerics and the faithful, and pastoral care). The statutes were supplemented with pastoral care manuals for diocesan priests. Synodal statutes include provisions (often repetitive) on sacraments, confession, preaching, and the provision of care in vernacular languages. The requirements of active participation in liturgical rituals were limited to gestures of prayer and reciting basic prayers (the Pater noster and Ave Maria), regulations for feast days and the liturgy, but not much beyond that.69 Polish synodal statutes repeatedly urged the teaching of basic prayers and the Ten Commandments (although it is difficult to know whether this is evidence of insufficient pastoral care); elsewhere the pastoral language was a source of problems.70 Late medieval ecclesiastical administrative sources disclose complaints about parish priests and other clergy not fulfilling their duties, which is supplemented with anticlerical polemics (such as in the Hussite movement). Simple lay folk emerge as the agents of religious renewal in such contexts. Although religious practices are often studied as a top-​down development, they also need to be seen as bottom-​up initiatives and mutual influences, in the late Middle Ages and toward the early modern period.71 Lay demand increased for the sacraments and liturgies and the role of clerics as mediators. Clearly, the real situation cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of normative sources, which were aimed at clerics.72 Sources for the religious imagination and behavior of the lay population, sometimes called by the problematic term of “popular religion,” are still limited.73 Criticism of superstition and lukewarm Christian beliefs and accusations of pagan customs (in folklore) were recurrent among preachers (such as Stanislaus of Skarbimiria and Piotr of Miłosław in Poland),74 reformers, and commentators in various periods and areas and should be viewed with caution. Historians are sometimes misled by commonplaces of the genre, by the possible agenda of a writer, or by power relations involved. In some cases, the authorities’ criticism does not signal that popular piety was weak, but that it was not under control.75 Another potential trap for historians is conceiving “peasant religion . . . typified by ‘syncretism’ between paganism and Catholicism.”76 Scholars have often connected problematic “popular” folkloric religion with the religiosity of peasants and countryside too simplistically. Differences in access to religious practices meant there were different sensitivities in urban environments and villages in the countryside. Equally, the availability and nature of sources for this period reflect these disparities. Bylina has researched village religious

442   Stanislava Kuzmová life in late medieval Poland in a variety of scarce and scattered sources.77 Besides synodal statutes and documents on establishing parishes, he used sermons, exempla, rhymed decalogs, religious songs, and paintings in churches, especially those with moralizing representations of the virtues and vices. Each type of source presents methodological problems as to what extent it is merely a model or whether it reflects the actual situation or had an impact on the faithful. The spread of preaching in the countryside, for example, is still questionable in many areas where instruction of faithful was limited to the basics. In addition, many sermons are only preserved in model collections and their real delivery and impact must be considered in a particular context, as many of them could have been used in both urban and rural milieus. Contemporary religious sensitivities, both orthodox and heterodox, had many similarities in terms of the features of devotion, such as the use of vernacular languages, the importance of preaching, and Eucharistic devotion. They were not entirely new concerns, but they received more emphasis and stood at the core of various calls for religious reform at the turn of the fifteenth century. Lay people across Europe were engaged more intensively with the sacraments, especially Eucharistic piety, emphasizing frequent communion, the introduction of the feast of Corpus Christi with processions, and the flourishing of various lay confraternities dedicated to the Corpus Christi in towns.78 The Eucharist was perceived as a tool for the moral renewal of society even before it became the token of the Hussite movement with the unifying demand of communion sub utraque specie (both the bread and wine) for lay people, not only clergy, not only once a year, but as often as the moral status of each individual allowed. Eucharistic piety was part of Christocentric devotional culture, which also included the cult of the suffering of Christ. “Dolorism” has been considered by some as a typical feature of late medieval Polish religiosity. Intensive participation in religious life was urged through Church rituals (the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession, the ritual of the mass, paraliturgical forms of devotion, marriage and burial, feasts and pilgrimages). The outer manifestations were criticized by intellectuals and reformers, but this did not imply refusal of all old religious practices, only emphasis on their sincerity—​in keeping with inner individual devotion. The Church felt that refusing religious practices involving sacralized objects and ritualized acts and a radical emphasis on individual inner piety were dangerous and could lead to a refusal of faith as such. Spiritual literature in the vernaculars, rather conventional (not mystical), mostly appeared later than the West and was related to lay engagement in religious matters.79 Among the earliest besides German, Tomáš of Štítné (1330–​1400) translated some works into Czech, including a reworking of the Revelations of St. Bridget of Sweden, in order to make Christian doctrine available to the lay public so as to deepen their personal individual experience of faith. For pastoral uses, extracts from Latin treatises and the Bible were translated and various preaching and penitential manuals were used, most numerous in the Czech vernacular.80 Religious literature only appeared later in other languages. Old Hungarian vernacular codices (or their surviving fragments) are mostly related to the Mendicant Orders, lay brethren, and the care of nuns (such as the manuscripts from the Dominican nunnery on Margaret Island and Poor Clares in Óbuda).81

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    443 Vernacular language played an important role in the spread of reform ideas and became the mobilization medium in pastoral care for charismatic preachers like Waldhauser, Milíč, Jan Hus, Jakoubek of Stříbro, and others. Hus wrote his works in the vernacular for lay people to read and contemplate as well as for pastoral care professionals for preparing sermons.82 The Bohemian religious movement can also be construed as a preachers’ movement that recruited both learned and popular followers, mixing discourses (thanks to the vernacular). Consequently, some aspects of lay participation in spiritual life became troublesome to the Church.83 Preaching intensified, with lay persons in urban centers funding preaching benefices; the situation varied across the countryside. Mendicants were preaching in rural areas of Poland; Franciscan Observants were especially active in rural areas of Hungary.84 The medieval Polish historian, Jan Długosz, praised the university in Cracow for filling the gap of preachers in the vernacular in villages as well as towns.85 Regular preaching, as evidenced in model sermon collections, was meant to educate the audience with moral and doctrinal teachings; on exceptional occasions, charismatic figures like Capistran could energize the religious sensitivities of the audience.86 Papal indulgences, although they mostly excuse irregularities and failures, also concern religious expressions such as promoting pilgrimage sites, arranging for specific devotions such as the Eucharist, allowing sermons to be delivered without supervision by the local ordinary, permitting portable altars, granting full remission of sins in articulo mortis, confession privileges (perhaps the most popular) including the right to choose one’s confessor, mass privileges, lifting fasting requirements, dispensations for marriages, the lifting of vows, and other issues (the first supplications came from the ruling elites).87 Comparing and matching the papal and local records, where available, is helpful. A comparative analysis of various territories in Central Europe and outside is not yet available to aid in assessing the situation of devotional practices. Scholars have noted that the spread of papal indulgences and the debate surrounding them was one of the indicators of religious devotion; it showed interest in and concern for religious practice in society.88 Again, Bohemia proved to be a special case within the region; the quick success of papal indulgences in the 1380s may have strengthened the interest of intellectuals and the general population in topics related to sin, guilt, punishment, penitence, atonement, and salvation, as seen in polemical reactions, confessors’ manuals, and public demonstrations in the early fifteenth century.89

The Special Case of Bohemian Reformation before the Reformation The religious situation in Bohemia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was significant not only in Central Europe but also across Europe. Various reform concepts and efforts from both popular and institutional sources were related to the development

444   Stanislava Kuzmová of religious consciousness and practices, particularly among the lay population. Eucharistic piety, developing infrastructure, the network of parishes, and education all accelerated during the fourteenth century compared to other areas in Central Europe, catching up with development in the West. What started as a reform movement through the public activity of Jan Hus developed into a multifarious heterodox national, social, and religious movement that encompassed large parts of the Bohemian population on various social levels and even posed a threat to neighboring lands. Scholars agree that expressions of religious sensitivities, orthodox or heterodox, were signs of the internalization of Christianity. Popular heresies were little known in the region until the fourteenth century.90 In less than a century, a great movement—​the Hussites—​alarmed the ecclesiastical administration and changed the religious landscape. Scholarly discussions of the Hussite movement, or, more broadly, the Bohemian Reformation, have focused on more than its religious aspects, addressing issues of national identity, its position among other reform currents, and heresies in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, its relation to the Reformation, and the applicability of the term “confessionalization.” Because of its key role in the formation of the modern Czech nation, the Hussite movement has overwhelmingly been perceived positively in Czech national historiography, which has complicated the evaluation of its religious significance. Historians have often tried to describe and define what is unique about the Hussite movement in the late Middle Ages in a European context, speaking of an “anomaly” of historical development, a “premature Reformation,” a reformation before the Reformation, and heresy.91 Instead of heresy, reformation, and Catholic Christianity, Kaminsky speaks more neutrally of the “modalities of Christian religious culture.”92 Hussitism differed from orthodox reform attempts, including earlier in Bohemia, because it deliberately challenged the authority of the Roman Church in terms of doctrine and practice. It was able to form an official structure, the Utraquist Church, with political backing, although insisting on the apostolic succession of priestly ordination.93 Unlike the later Reformation, the Utraquist Church did not break away from the sacramental Church and the role of priests as mediators between the faithful and God, although some practices changed in Utraquist areas, cults of saints in particular. The most radical currents refused cults of saints and any visual representations in churches (altars, painting, sculpture), which resulted in the destruction of numerous works.94 Most Utraquists were rather moderate; Hus and Jerome of Prague were venerated as holy martyrs.95 Historiography has often emphasized the division of Bohemian society during the Hussite era into two opposing blocks based on confessional adherence. Novotný’s focus is on their everyday coexistence (based on sources better preserved for the nobility) as represented in patronage rights, marriage practices, confessional conversions, changed testaments, burial places, rituals, epitaphs, education, and schooling—​also in the private sphere. The picture that emerges is subtle and not defined as strictly confessionally as thought before. Other motivations concerning everyday coexistence such as property and other elements of identity such as class, family, and region are important

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    445 (and present a continuum of attitudes rather than two clearly opposing, religiously defined, groups).96 By the early sixteenth century, religious changes were proceeding in several areas of Central Europe, not only Bohemia. The region was developing in terms of infrastructure, the network of institutions, and the involvement of the lay population in religious practices, which varied from place to place. Similar devotional and social forms existed in the region as in the West, particularly in urban centers. Studies of the early Europe-​wide Reformation show that late medieval Church reform and reformation movements were closely connected. They were all part of the long-​term process of the Christianization of society, marked by the permeation of religion into social life of communities, internalization of the Christian faith, and growing lay influence in the religious sphere.97 It is tempting to view Central Europe as a distinct religious landscape, a view that may even be strengthened by an anachronistic impression based on the later Habsburg cultural territory.98

Notes 1. This is the approach of the most recent collection of studies, Pohané a křestané: Christianizace českých zemí ve středověku [Pagans and Christians: Christianization of the Czech Lands in the Middle Ages], edited by Martin Nodl and František Šmahel (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 2019)​. 2. The distinction between the center and periphery also applies to Scandinavia, see Nora Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3. For a summary of the Christianization of Moravia, see Petr Sommer, Dušan Třeštík, and Josef Žemlička, “Bohemia and Moravia,” in Berend, Christianization, 219–​224; for a more detailed and complex account, see Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–​1300) (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 113–​127, esp. 179–​198. 4. Out of a huge amount of literature, see the recent volume edited by Pavel Kouřil et al., The Cyril and Methodius Mission and Europe: 1150 Years since the Arrival of the Thessaloniki Brothers in Great Moravia (Brno: The Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014). 5. Overview and literature in Berend, Christianization, 214–​368; Curta, Eastern Europe, 341–​408. 6. Berend, Christianization, 250, 326–​327; Curta, Eastern Europe, 125–​127, 363–​388. 7. Berend, Christianization, 26–​27, 245–​246, 287, 355. For the later development of the parish network, see what follows. 8. Berend, Christianization, 27, 233, 333–​334; János Bak, “Signs of Conversion in Central European Laws,” in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, edited by Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 115–​124. 9. Ian Wood, “The Hagiography of Conversion,” in Vitae Sanctorum Aetatis Conversionis Europae Centralis (Saec. X–​XI)/​Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe (Tenth–​ Eleventh Centuries), edited by Gábor Klaniczay, translated by Cristian Gaspar and

446   Stanislava Kuzmová Marina Miladinov (Budapest: CEU Press, 2013), 1–​16. To be sure, some lives of the first native saints and their authors (Wenceslaus by Gumpold; Adalbert, probably by Canaparius, Bruno of Querfurt, and the Five Brethren by Bruno of Querfurt) sprang from Ottonian and Italian circles. 10. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 62–​112. 11. Martin Homza, Mulieres suadentes–​Persuasive Women: Female Royal Saints in Medieval East Central and Eastern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2017); overview in G. Klaniczay, “North and East European Cults in Comparison with East-​Central Europe,” in Saints and Their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c. 1000–​1200), edited by H. Antonsson and I. H. Garizpanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 283–​304. 12. Marvin Kantor, The Origins of Christianity in Bohemia: Sources and Commentary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990). For legends of St. Wenceslaus, see Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–​1050 (New York: Longman, 2001), 187–​192; Petr Kubín, Sedm přemyslovských kultů [Seven Přemyslid cults] (Prague: Charles University, Katolická teologická fakulta, 2011), 81–​150. For his cult, see also Lisa Wolverton, Hastening toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). See his hagiographer, Gumpold of Mantua, from imperial circles, about pagan customs, including visiting pagan sanctuaries and temples where they could sacrifice to the gods in Bohemia during Wenceslaus’s rule, in the “Passion of Saint Wenceslas by Gumpold of Mantua,” edited and translated by Marina Miladinov, in Klaniczay, Gaspar, and Miladinov, Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe, 33, 39–​41. 13. The lives are discussed by Wood, The Missionary Life, 207–​239; a recent discussion and English translation of Vita prior by Canaparius, who most scholars accept as the author, in “The Life of Saint Adalbert, Bishop of Prague and Martyr,” edited and translated by Cristian Gaşpar, in Klaniczay, Gaspar, and Miladinov, Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe, 79–​181. 14. For example, criticized by Adalbert in “Life of Saint Adalbert Bishop of Prague and Martyr,” edited by Cristian Gaşpar, in Klaniczay, Gaspar, and Miladinov, Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe, 97; 125–​129. 15. Ibid., 97–​101. 16. Wood, The Missionary Life, 207–​239, on Adalbert and his vitae; Marina Miladinov, Margins of Solitude: Eremitism in Central Europe between East and West (Zagreb: Leykam International, 2008), 67–​83; Wood, “The Hagiography of Conversion,” 11–​16; Preface to “Life of the Five Brethren by Bruno of Querfurt,” edited and translated by Marina Miladinov in Klaniczay, Gaspar, and Miladinov, Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe, 187–​188. 17. The legend written by Bishop Maurus, “Lives of the Holy Hermits Zoerard the Confessor and Benedict the Martyr by Blessed Maurus, Bishop of Pécs,” edited and translated by Marina Miladinov, in Klaniczay, Gaspar, and Miladinov, Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe, 327. The hypothesis of features and influences of Eastern eremitism on the legends of these saints has also been discussed. 18. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 114–​193. Nora Berend, József Laszlovszky, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary,” in Berend, Christianization, 339. 19. For Gerard, see Berend et al., “The Kingdom of Hungary,” 332; Előd Nemerkényi, Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary, Eleventh Century (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004), ­chapter 3.

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    447 For a pagan revolt in Poland, see Przemysław Urbańczyk, “The Kingdom of Poland,” in Berend, Christianization, 277–​278. For Bohemia, see Curta, Eastern Europe, 525. 20. Robert Bartlett, “From Paganism to Christianity in Europe,” in Berend, Christianization, 67–​69. Similarly, material evidence such as burial is often open to various interpretations. 21. While in cases of Bohemia and Hungary, the holy kings and founders are protectors, patron saints in Poland have a certain antiroyal character; no dynastic saint succeeded as a holy king in Poland. 22. For a comparative overview see especially Klaniczay, Holy Rulers. 23. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 114–​193; see the translation of the legend by Bishop Hartvic in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, edited by Thomas Head (London: Routledge, 2000), 375–​398. For the canonizations in 1083 initiated by King Ladislaus, see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 123–​134. 24. Aleksander Gieysztor, “Saints d’implantation, saints de souche dans les pays évangélisés de l’Europe du Centre-​Est,” in Hagiographies, cultures et sociétés, IVe–​XIIe siècles (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1981), 573–​582. He includes universal saints among the imported ones; they are believed to reflect the provenance and devotional patterns of missionaries and also political ties. 25. Marie-​Madeleine De Cevins, “Conclusions,” in Les saints et leur culte en Europe centrale au Moyen Âge (XIe–​début du XVIe siècle, edited by Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins and Olivier Marin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 341–​349. When speaking about the saints “exported” from the region, St. Adalbert of Prague and his cult under the auspices of Otto III is an important example; the cults of holy kings and other dynastic saints were usually promoted abroad only to a limited extent, connected to particular dynastic ties or events, and some members of religious orders were promoted by their orders abroad in the later period. 26. Symbolically granted these territories, she was the protector of Hungary, Livonia, the Teutonic Order’s Prussia, Bavaria, Austria, Poland, and others, see Klaus Schreiner, “Schutzherrin und Schirmfrau Maria: Marienverehrung als Quelle politischer Identitätsbildung in Städten und Ländern des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit,” in Patriotische Heilige: Beiträge zur Konstruktion religiöser und politischer Identitäten in der Vormoderne, edited by Dieter R. Bauer, Klaus Herbers, and Gabriela Signori (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2007), 270–​276. The Marian cult became even more prominent in the early modern era. 27. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 140–​142. He also highlights the Marian devotion of the first apostles of Hungary, Sts. Adalbert and Gerard, along with the contemporary spirituality propagated by the Cistercians. László Veszprémy, “Royal Saints in Hungarian Chronicles, Legends, and Liturgy,” in The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–​1300), edited by Lars Boje Mortensen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2006), 226. 28. Summary in Nora Berend, Przemysław Wiszewski, and Przemysław Urbańczyk, Central Europe in the High Middle Age: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, 900–​1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 315–​317. 29. The use of the Old Slavonic liturgical language was first approved and then refused by the pope. See Maddalena Betti, The Making of Christian Moravia (858–​882): Papal Power and Political Reality (Leiden: Brill, 2014). The well-​known papal letter to the Bulgarian ruler Boris (866) lists the customs that clashed, see Curta, Eastern Europe, 202–​204. 30. Berend, Christianization, 230. Magnae Moraviae Fontes Historici, vol. 2, edited by Dagmar Bartoňková and Radoslav Večerka (Brno: Státní Pedagogické Nakladatelství, 1966), “Žitije Konstantina,” 98–​99, “Žitije Mefodija,” 144.

448   Stanislava Kuzmová 31. Berend, Christianization, 233–​235. The use of the Slavic rite was renewed when Charles IV introduced monks from Croatia to Prague. 32. Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1301 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31. Alexander Avenarius, Die byzantinische Kultur und die Slawen: Zum Problem der Rezeption und Transformation (6.bis12.Jh.) (Vienna: Instituts fur Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, 2000); Gábor Klaniczay, “Von Ostmitteleuropa zu Westmitteleuropa: Eine Umwandlung im Hochmittelalter,” in Böhmen und seine Nachbarn in der Premysliderzeit, edited by Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2011), 17–​48. See also the older works of Gyula Moravcsik for Byzantine influences and monasteries in Hungary; József Laszlovszky, Foreword to “Mendicant Missions in the Territory of Orthodoxy,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 9 (2003): 199–​201; Olha Kozubska-​Andrusiv, “The Dominicans in Thirteenth-​Century Kievan Rus’: History and Historiography,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 9 (2003): 203–​223. For missions, see, e.g., The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, edited by Zsolt Hunyadi and József Lászlovszky (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001). 33. For missions to the Baltic Slavs, and Livonia, see, e.g., Emilia Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe, 1090–​1500 (London: Routledge, 2013), 78–​82; Priit Raudkivi, “Cistercians and Livonia: Problems and Perspectives,” in L’espace cistercien, edited by Leon Pressouyre (Paris: Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifique, 1994), 349–​352. See also ­chapter 21, this volume, de Cevins, Derwich, and Romhányi. 34. Claudia Dobre, “The Mendicants’ Mission in an Orthodox Land: A Case Study of Moldavia in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 9 (2003): 225–​248, esp. 226–​231, 233; Claudine Delacroix-​Besnier, Les dominicains et la chrétienté grecque aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1997). 35. For example, Elena-​Dana Prioteasa, “Western and Eastern Themes in the Iconography of the Sanctuary of the Church of Strei (Hunedoara County, Romania),” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 9 (2003): 181–​196, and Medieval Wall Paintings in Transylvanian Orthodox Churches; Iconographic Subjects in Historical Context (Bucharest; Cluj; Napoca: Editura Academiei Române; Editura Mega, 2016). 36. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 23, 30. 37. František Šmahel, “Christianizace v duši a mysli? Interiorizace křesťanské víry v lucemburských Čechách” [Christianization in Soul and Mind? Interiorization of the Christian Faith in Luxembourg Bohemia], in Nodl and Šmahel, Pohané a křesťané [Pagans and Christians], 69–​100; Petr Sommer, “Druhá vlna christianizace české společnosti,” [The second wave of the Christianization of Bohemian society], in Přemyslovci: Budování státu, edited by Petr Sommer, Dušan Třeštík, and Jan Žemlička (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 2009), 398–​417. 38. Stanisław Bylina, Christianyzacja wsi polskiej u schyłku średniowiecza [Christianization of Polish Countryside at the End of the Middle Ages] (Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2002), 48–​50. Prescriptions for parish catechesis are found in the following provisions by legates, for example: Constitutiones Jacobi Archidiaconi Leodiensis in concilio Wratislaviae anno 1248 editae, in Starodawne prawa Polskiego Pomniki, vol. 1, edited by Antoni Zygmunt Helcel (Warsaw: Nakładem Księgarni Gustawa Sennewalda, 1856), 357; Constitutiones Philippi episcopi Firmani legati apostolici, in concilio Budensi editae anno 1279, ibid., 420. Similarly, the statutes of bishop Jakub Świnka of Gniezno at the provincial synod in 1285 included expositions of the Credo, the Lord’s Prayer, and the

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    449 Angelic prayer; Constitutiones Jacobi Archiepiscopi, editae Lanciciae anno 1285 ibid., 383–​ 384. Later statutes broadened the content. 39. E.g., for Bohemia, see Zdeňka Hledíková, “Úpadek nebo růst? K situaci církve v Čechách ve 14. století” [Decline or Rise? On the Situation of the Church in Bohemia in the fourteenth century], in Hledíková, Svět české středověké církve [The world of the Bohemian medieval church] (Prague: Argo, 2010), 191–​203; see also, in the same volume, “Církev v českých zemích na přelomu 14. a 15. století” [The Church in the Czech Lands at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries], 204–​228. 40. Jerzy Kłoczowski, “The Mendicant Orders between the Baltic and the Adriatic Seas in the Middle Ages,” in La Pologne au XVe siècle: Étude sur l’histoire de la culture de l’Europe centre-​orientale, Actes de Congrès international des sciences historiques à Bucarest (Wrocław: Zaklad Narodowy imienia Ossolinskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1980), 95–​110. For their urban impact and their support of dynastic sainthood, see Gábor Klaniczay, “The Mendicant Orders in East-​Central Europe and the Integration of Cultures,” in Hybride Kulturen im mittelalterlichen Europa, edited by Michael Borgolte and Bernd Schneidmüller (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 245–​260; Marie Madeleine de Cevins, “Les religieux et la ville au bas Moyen Age: Moines et frères mendiants dans les villes du royaume de Hongrie des années 1320 aux années 1490,” Revue Mabillon 9 (1998): 108 ; Marie Madeleine de Cevins, L’Église dans les villes hongroises à la fin du Moyen Âge (Paris–​Budapest–​Szeged: METEM, 2003). See also c­ hapters 19 and 21 in this volume. 41. For an overview of preaching in the region, see, e.g., Jerzy Wolny, “Kaznodziejstwo” [Preaching], in Dzieje teologii katolickiej w Polsce 1, edited by Marian Rechowicz (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1974), 275–​308. For Bohemia, see Zdeněk Uhlíř, Vztahy českého a polského kazatelství ve středověku: Prolegomena ve světle českých rukopisných fondů [Relations between Bohemian and Polish preaching in the Middle Ages: Prolegomena in the light of the Czech manuscript finds], a paper delivered at the conference “Czechy–​daleko czy blisko?” [Bohemia–​far or near?], Warsaw, January 24, 2005 (https://​www.acade​mia.edu/​24360​ 152/​Vzta ​hy_​%C4%8Desk%C3%A9ho_​a_​p o​lsk%C3%A9ho​_​kaz​atel​stv%C3%AD_​ve​_​ st%C5%99e​dov%C4%9Bku, accessed December 27, 2021). For preaching and sermons in the kingdom of Hungary, see Edit Madas, Középkori prédikációirodalmunk történetébol: a kezdetektol a XIV. század végéig [From the history of our medieval sermon literature: From the beginnings till the end of the fourteenth century] (Debrecen: Csokonai Universitas Könyvtár, 2002). For Mendicant sermons on Hungarian saints, see Edit Madas, “A Dominican Sermon-​Collection,” Budapest Review of Books 5 (1996): 193–​199. 42. Hervé Martin, Pérégrin d’Opole: Un prédicateur dominicain à l’apogée de la chrétienté médiévale (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008); Peregrinus de Opole, Sermones de tempore et de sanctis, edited by Ryszard Tatarzyński (Warsaw: Institutum Thomisticum PP. Dominicanorum, 1997). 43. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 195–​293. 44. For dedications to St. Elizabeth and her cult, see Ottó Gecser, The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–​ ca. 1500 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto medioevo, 2012), 37–​50. 45. Jana Grollová and Daniela Rywiková, Militia est vita hominis: Sedm smrtelných hříchů a sedm skutků milosrdenství v literárních a vizuálních pramenech českého středověku [Militia est vita hominis: Seven deadly sins and seven works of mercy in the literary and visual

450   Stanislava Kuzmová sources of the Bohemian Middle Ages] (Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita, Bohumír Němec–​ Veduta, 2013). 46. Tomasz Gałuszka, “Kryzys w diecezji krakowskiej w pierwszej połowie XIV wieku? Z badań nad Tractatus contra beghardos Henryka Harrera” [The crisis in the diocese of Cracow in the first half of the fourteenth century? From the research on Tractatus contra beghardos by Henry Harrer], in Ecclesia semper reformanda: Kryzysy i reformy średniowiecznego Kościoła [Ecclesia semper reformanda: Crises and reforms of the medieval church], edited by Tomasz Gałuszka, Tomasz Graff, and Grzegorz Ryś (Cracow: Societas Vistulana, 2013), 285–​310; there also literature on beguines and beghards in Poland. See also Hledíková, “Církev v českých zemích na přelomu 14.a 15.století,” 204–​228, esp. 214–​215, and “Projevy religiozity v době předhusitské” [Manifestations of religiosity in the pre-​Hussite period], 237, both in Hledíková, Svět české středověké církve. 47. Hledíková has warned against generalizing the situation based solely on urban centers like Prague for all of Bohemia, and likewise for other areas of Central Europe, Z. Hledíková, “Projevy religiozity v době předhusitské,” in Hledíková, Svět české středověké církve, 229. 48. John Martin Klassen, “Gifts for the Soul and Social Charity in Late Medieval Bohemia,” in Materielle Kultur und religiőse Stiftung im Spätmittelalter, edited by Gerhard Jaritz (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1990), 63–​81. For testaments in Bohemia, see also Pozdně středověké testamenty v českých městech: Prameny, metodologie a formy využití [Late medieval testaments in Bohemian towns: Sources, methodology and forms of use], edited by Kateřina Jirsová and Eva Doležalová (Prague: Scriptorum, 2006). For testaments in Cracow, see Elżbieta Piwowarczyk, Legaty testamentowe ad pias causas w XV–​wiecznym Krakowie: Z badań nad pobożnością miejską [Testament legations ad pias causas in the fifteenth-​ century Cracow: From the research on urban piety] (Cracow: Drukarnia Akcydensowa Dorosz Andrzej Wydawnictwo, 2010). For Bratislava in the kingdom of Hungary, see Judit Majorossy, “Church in Town: Urban Religious Life in the Mirror of Last Wills,” PhD dissertation, Budapest: Central European University, 2006. 49. Especially the studies of Pátková, Zaremska, de Cevins, and others. Hana Pátková, “Les confréries, les métiers et le culte des saints dans la Bohême médiévale,” in de Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, 311–​325 (with literature); Hanna Zaremska, Bractwa w średniowiecznym Krakowie [Confraternities in medieval Cracow] (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1977); Judit Majorossy, “Late Medieval Confraternities in Pressburg,” in Pfarreien in Mitteleuropa im Mittelalter: Deutschland, Polen, Tschechien und Ungarn im Vergleich, edited by Nathalie Kruppa and Leszek Zygner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2008), 339–​362; Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages: The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c. 1270–​c. 1530) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). Most recently an overview by Beata Wojciechowska, “The Development of Confraternities in Central Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period,” in A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 65–​90. An important collection is Ecclesia et civitas: Kościół i życie religijne w mieście średniowiecznym [Ecclesia et civitas: Church and religious life in a medieval town], edited by Halina Manikowska and Hanna Zaremska (Warsaw: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2002). 50. Gabriella Erdélyi, A Cloister on Trial: Religious Culture and Everyday Life in Late Medieval Hungary (London: Routledge, 2015), 12. 51. The impact of mendicant and other religious orders in the urban milieu is addressed in ­chapter 21 of this volume. See, e.g., Maria Craciun, “Mendicant Piety and the Saxon

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    451 Community of Transylvania, c. 1450–​ 1550,” and Marie Madeleine de Cevins, “The Influence of Franciscan Friars on Popular Piety in the Kingdom of Hungary at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–​1800, edited by Maria Craciun and Elaine Fulton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 29–​70 and 71–​90. 52. As discussed by Erdélyi, A Cloister on Trial, 9–​10. 53. Gabriella Erdélyi, Negotiating Violence. Papal Pardons and Everyday Life in East Central Europe, 1450–​1550 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 93–​95. The situation is documented in surveys by Cevins (mentioned earlier) and Elemér Mályusz, Egyházi társadalom a középkori Magyarországon [Church Society in Medieval Hungary] (Budapest: Műszaki Kiadó, 2007, 1st ed. 1947). 54. André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Using terms inspired by the structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-​Strauss, Vauchez presents two different regions of Europe with regard to permeability of change. The “hot” centre was open to new types of saints, modern saints, while the “cold” periphery (régions froides), including Central Europe, was more conservative and preferred the ancient, proven types. He was aware, however, that only a detailed study of the region would help explain these issues—​including the study of economic and social structures and research on various unofficial forms of sainthood and a variety of religious practices that were not sufficiently mapped at the time. 55. A recent reconsideration of his thesis concerning Central Europe; De Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, see the Introduction by Olivier Marin, 5–​28. 56. For example, St. Wenceslaus reinterpreted in the framework of Eucharistic piety or royal ladies representing a new type of dynastic sanctity, close to the Mendicant pattern. Marin, “Introduction,” 8–​9. For a reworking of the legend of St. Wenceslaus in Roudnice c. 1370 (Oriente iam sole), see Zdeněk Uhlíř, Literární prameny svatováclavského kultu a úcty ve vrcholném a pozdním středověku [Literary Sources concerning the Cult and Veneration of St. Wenceslaus in the High and Late Middle Ages] (Prague: Národní knihovna, 1996), 29–​30. 57. Anna Zajchowska, “Medieval Hagiography of St. Hyacinth,” in de Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, 195–​209. 58. See a brief discussion of the characteristics of Mendicant saintly figures in Central Europe by Marin, “Introduction,” in de Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, 15–​18, and de Cevins, “Conclusions,” in Les saints, 333–​334. 59. For a summary of the canonization of St. Stanislaus of Cracow, see Aleksandra Witkowska, “The Thirteenth-​century miracula of St. Stanislaus, Bishop of Krakow,” in Procés de canonisation au Moyen Âge: Aspects juridiques et religieux, edited by Gábor Klaniczay (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2004), 149–​163; for his cult and Mendicant preaching on him, see Stanislava Kuzmová, Preaching Saint Stanislaus. Medieval Sermons on Saint Stanislaus of Cracow, His Image and Cult (Warsaw: DiG, 2013). 60. Gábor Klaniczay, “Saint Margaret: Royal and Female Sanctity,” in Legenda Vetus, Acta Processus Canonizationis et Miracula Sanctae Margaritae de Hungaria/​The Oldest Legend, Acts of the Canonization Process, and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Hungary, edited by Ildiko Csepregi, Gábor Klaniczay, Bence Péterfi, translated by Ildiko Csepregi, Clifford Flanigan, and Louis Perraud (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018), 22–​26. 61. Aleksandra Witkowska, “Miracula małopolskie z XIII i XIV wieku: Studium źródłoznawcze” [The miracula in Lesser Poland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: A source study]

452   Stanislava Kuzmová Roczniki Humanistyczne 19, no. 2 (1971): 29–​161; Stanko Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran (Budapest: CEU Press, 2000). 62. Viktória Deák, “The Techniques of a Hagiographer: The Two legendae of Saint Margaret of Hungary,” in Promoting the Saints: Cults and Their Contexts from late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for his 60th Birthday, edited by Otto Gecser, Jószef Laszlovszky, Balasz Nagy, Marcell Sebők, and Katalin Szende (Budapest: CEU Press, 2011), 125–​136. 63. David C. Mengel, “Emperor Charles IV (1346–​78) as the Architect of Local Religion in Prague,” Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 15–​29; Martin Bauch, Divina favente clemencia. Auserwählung, Frömmigkeit und Heilsvermittlung in der Herrschaftspraxis Kaiser Karls IV. (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), esp. 365–​380. 64. Among numerous case studies, for the dynamics of local shrines in Cracow, see Aleksandra Witkowska, Kulty pątniczne piętnastowiecznego Krakowa [Pilgrimage cults in fifteenth-​ century Cracow] (Lublin: Towarzystwo naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1984). For Hungary, see Gábor Barna, Búcsújáró és kegyhelyek Magyarországon [Pilgrimage and shrines in Hungary] (Budapest: Panoráma Kiadó, 1990). Ilok (in Croatia), the place of Capistran’s death and burial in 1456, and the relic of St. Paul the Hermit in Budaszentlőrinc became popular Hungarian pilgrimage sites (with a number of miracles related to the liberation of Ottoman captives), besides Székesfehérvár, the burial place of Sts. Stephen and Emeric, Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania), the burial place of St. Ladislaus, Báta Benedictine Abbey with the relic of the Holy Blood, and the relic of St. John the Almsgiver in Buda. See Enikő Csukovits, “Les saints libérateurs des Turcs en Hongrie à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in de Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, 109–​121; Enikő Csukovits, “Miraculous Escapes from Ottoman Captivity,” in Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth-​ Early Eighteenth Centuries), edited by G. Dávid and P. Fodor (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–​18; Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, especially 311–​326. 65. Pavel Soukup, “Kauza reformace: Husitství v konkurenci reformních projektů” [The case of Reformation: Hussitism in the competition of reform projects] in Heresis seminaria. Pojmy a koncepty v bádání o husitství [Heresis seminaria. Terms and Concepts in the Research of Hussitism], edited by Pavlína Rychterová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Centrum medievistických studií a Filosofia, 2013), 193–​5 applied to Hussite Bohemia, after John van Engen, “Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-​Century Church,” Church History 77 (2008): 257–​284. 66. See the collected volume: Die ‘neue Frömmigkeit’ in Europa im Spätmittelalter, edited by Marek Derwich and Martial Staub (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). See a summary of methodological discussion in Pavel Soukup, Reformní kazatelství a Jakoubek ze Stříbra [Reform preaching and Jacobellus of Stříbro] (Prague: Filosofia, 2011), 25–​43. 67. Jan Hrdina, “Husitství a historická komparatistika. Církevní struktury ve střední Evropě v době velkého západního schismatu (1378–​1415/​1417)” [Hussitism and historical comparative studies: Church structures in Central Europe at the time of the Great Western Schism (1378–​1415/​1417)], in Heresis seminaria, 13–​47 (quote on p. 32–​33); in Italian, Jan Hrdina, “Le strutture ecclesiastiche nell’Europa centrale durante il Grande Scisma d’occidente (1378–​1415/​17). Sullo sfruttamento dei registri pontifici per la comparatistica storica,” Bolletino dell‘Istituto storico Ceco di Roma 8 (2012–​2013): 21–​51. Hrdina has commented on the differences between the Czech lands and other Central European territories: “with all the scepticism it causes concerning the concept of Slavic Europe,” or the “younger Europe” of Kłoczowski.

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    453 68. For Arnošt of Pardubice, his diocesan reforms and reform movement in pre-​Hussite Bohemia, see Olivier Marin, L‘archevêque, le maître et le dévot. Genéses du mouvement réformateur pragois. Années 1360–​1419 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005). 69. For synodal statutes, in Bohemia, see Jaroslav V. Polc, Zdeňka Hledíková, Pražské synody a koncily předhusitské doby [Prague synods and councils in the pre-​Hussite period] (Prague: Karolinum, 2002), esp. Ernest of Pardubice provincial statutes of 1349; Pavel Krafl, Synody a statuta olomoucké diecéze období středověku [Synods and statutes of the diocese of Olomouc in the Middle Ages] (Prague: Historický Ústav Akademie Věd České Republiky, 2014), for content esp. 57, 87–​92; in Polish lands, see Leszek Zygner, “Synody diecezjalne metropolii gnieźnienskiej na przelomie XIV i XV wieku (Gniezno-​Krakow-​ Plock-​Poznan-​Wloclawek)” [Diocesan Synods in the Metropolity of Gniezno at the turn of the 14th and 15th Centuries], in Kultura prawna w Europie Śródkowej [Legal culture in Central Europe], edited by Antoni Barciak (Katowice: Societas Scientiis Favendis Silesiae Superioris, 2006). Another type of source, rare from the earlier period, is the visitation protocol—​known for the Prague area, e.g., for Poland none extant, only interrogatoria, for Hungary scarcely preserved before the sixteenth century. 70. Stanisław Bylina, “Religijność mieszkańców Europy Środkowowschodniej w póżnym średniowieczu” [Religiosity of Population of East-​Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages], in Europa Śródkowowschodnia od X do XVIII wieku: Jedność czy różnorodość [East-​Central Europe from the tenth to the eighteenth century: Unity or diversity?], edited by Krzysztof Baczkowski and Janusz Smolucha (Cracow: Societas Vistulana, 2005), 160–​161. 71. For example, as shown in the microhistorical study of a cloister scandal in western Hungary in the early sixteenth century by Erdélyi, A Cloister on Trial. 72. Šmahel, “Christianizace,” 81–​83. 73. For Poland, see Stanisław Bylina, Chrystianizacja wsi polskiej; Stanisław Bylina, Religijność późnego średniowiecza [Religiosity in the Late Middle Ages] (Warsaw: Neriton, 2009). See the methodological discussion in Gábor Klaniczay, “Popular Culture in Medieval Hagiography and in Recent Historiography,” in Agiografia e culture popolari: Hagiography and popular cultures; In ricordo di Pietro Boglioni, ed. Paolo Golinelli (Bologna: CLUEB casa editrice, 2012), 17–​44. 74. Krzysztof Bracha, Nauczanie kaznodziejskie w Polsce późnego średniowiecza: Sermones dominicales et festivales z tzw.kolekcji Piotra z Miłosławia [Preaching in Late Medieval Poland: The Sermones dominicales et festivales from the so-​called Collection of Piotr of Miłosław] (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Akademii Świętokrzyskiej, 2007). 75. E.g., escaping diocesan and parish jurisdiction with special indulgences and licenses to celebrate masses on portable altars, at less worthy places in front of huge numbers of people, have sermons preached, as Rowell has shown for Lithuania in the late fifteenth century; Stephen C. Rowell, “Was Fifteenth-​Century Lithuanian Catholicism as Lukewarm as Sixteenth-​Century Reformers and Later Commentators Would Have Us Believe?,” Central Europe 8, no. 2 (2010): 103. 76. Rowell, “Fifteenth-​Century Lithuanian Catholicism,” 88. Among the traditional practices which took on Christian forms was, for example, feasting in memory of the dead, which came to be promoted by fraternities, among others. 77. Bylina, Chrystianizacja wsi polskiej. 78. For confraternities, see above. Károly Goda, “The Medieval Cult and Processional Veneration of the Eucharist in Central Europe: The Royal Cities of Cracow and Buda in

454   Stanislava Kuzmová a Comparative Perspective,” Mediaevalia Historica Bohemica 18, no. 1 (2015): 101–​184. For Eucharistic devotion, see Marin, L‘archevêque, le maître et le dévot, 453–​508. 79. Recently on the role of the vernaculars, Pursuing a New Order, Vol. 1: Religious Education in Late Medieval Central and Eastern Central Europe, edited by Pavlína Rychterová (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018) (includes the works of Tomáš of Štítné). 80. Vladimír Kyas, Česká bible v dějinách národního písemnictví [Czech Bible in the history of national written culture] (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1997); Daniela Rywiková, “The Question of the Krumlov Miscellanea: The Chalice as Utraquist Symbol?” Umění 57 (2009): 349–​363; Jana Grollová and Daniela Rywiková, Militia est vita hominis. 81. For Old Hungarian codex literature, see A. Dömötör, Régi magyar nyelvemlékek: A kezdetektől a XVI.század végéig [Old Hungarian language records: From the beginnings to the end of the sixteenth century] (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2006), 52–​95; there are a number of studies on specific aspects, e.g., legends of St. Francis, among others; Eszter Konrád, “The Oldest Legend of Francis of Assisi and His Stigmatization in Old Hungarian Codex Literature (c. 1440–​1530),” in de Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, 173–​194. For the education and needs of nuns in Hungary, see recently S. Lázs, Apácaműveltség Magyarországon a XV.–​XVI. század fordulóján: Az anyanyelvű irodalom kezdetei [The education of nuns in Hungary at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: The beginnings of vernacular literature] (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2016). 82. Pavlína Rychterová, “Gens, nacio, communitas—​lingua, sanguis, fides : Idea národa v českém díle Jana Husa,” in Heresis seminaria, 75–​110, esp. 85; Pursuing a New Order, Vol. 2: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation, edited by Pavlína Rychterová (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019); Šmahel, “Literacy and Heresy in Hussite Bohemia,” in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–​1350, edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 237–​254. 83. Soukup, “Kauza reformace,” 197–​203; also Soukup, Reformní kazatelství a Jakoubek ze Stříbra, 25–​120; Pavel Soukup, “Jan Hus as a Preacher,” in A Companion to Jan Hus, edited by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 96–​129; Peter C. A. Morée, Preaching in Fourteenth-​Century Bohemia: The Life and Ideas of Milicius de Chremsir (d.1374) and His Significance in the Historiography of Bohemia (Heršpice: EMAN, 2000). 84. For the impact of the popular preaching of Franciscan Observants in Hungary and their involvement in the Peasant Revolt of 1514, after the ideas presented by Szűcs in the 1970s, see Armed Memory: Agency and Peasant Revolts in Central and Southern Europe, edited by G. Erdélyi (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2015), 24–​29. 85. Joannes Dlugossius, Liber Beneficiorum Diocesis Cracoviensis, vol. 1, edited by Alexander Przezdziecki (Cracow: Typografia Kirchmajeriana, 1863), 261. 86. Among best-​seller sermon collections from the fifteenth century, Pelbárt of Temesvár and Osvald of Laskó. Capistran and his tour of Central Europe, most recently, The Mission of John of Capistrano and the Process of Europe Making in the Fifteenth Century. State of the Art, edited by Letizia Pellegrini (Rome, forthcoming 2020,). 87. Monika Saczyńska, “Sacrum na co dzień: Funkcje papieskich przywilejów dla polskich odbiorców individualnych w XIV i XV wieku” [The sacred for everyday life: The functions of papal privileges for Polish individual recipients in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries], in Sacrum: Obraz i funkcja w spoleczeństwie średniowiecznym [Sacrum: Image and function in medieval society], edited by Aneta Pieniadz-​Skrzypczak and Jerzy Pysiak (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2005), 353–​366. For the Grand Duchy, see Rowell, “Fifteenth-​Century Lithuanian Catholicism,” 96. See also Piroska Nagy

Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants)    455 and Kirsi Salonen, “East Central Europe and the Penitentiary (1458–​1484),” in The Long Arm of Papal Authority: Late Medieval Christian Peripheries and Their Communication with the Holy See, edited by Gerhard Jaritz, Torstein Jorgensen, and Kirsi Salonen, (Budapest: CEU Press, 2005), 107–​119. Erdélyi, Negotiating Violence. 88. Hrdina, “Husitství,” in Heresis, 24; comparative numbers were low for Hungary and Poland (except for the Cracow area, Transylvania, and Spiš), 25–​26. See also Eva Doležalová, Jan Hrdina, F. Šmahel, and Z. Uhlíř, “The Reception and Criticism of Indulgences in Late Medieval Czech Lands,” in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, edited by Robert N. Swanson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 100–​145. For Poland, see Wiktor Szymborski, Odpusty w Polsce średniowiecznej [Indulgences in Medieval Poland] (Cracow: Historia Iagellonica, 2011). 89. Hrdina, “Husitství,” 34–​ 35. See also Jiří Kejř, Summae confessorum a jiná díla pro foro interno v rukopisech českých a moravských knihoven [Summae confessorum and other works pro foro interno in the manuscripts from Czech and Moravian libraries] (Prague: Archiv Akademie věd ČR, 2003). 90. Gałuszka, “Kryzys,” 290–​291. Paweł Kras, “Repression of Heresy in Late Medieval Poland,” in Przestrzeń religijna Europy Środkowo-​Wschodniej w średniowieczu: Religious Space of East-​Central Europe in the Middle Ages, edited by Krzysztof Bracha and Paweł Kras (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2010), 309–​329, with literature listed. 91. Most importantly, numerous works by František Šmahel, in English, e.g., “Causa non Central grata: Premature Reformation in Hussite Bohemia,” in Christianity in East-​ Europe. Late Middle Ages, edited by Jerzy Kloczowski, Pawel Kras, and Wojciech Polak (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu w Lublinie, 1999), 224–​231; Thomas A. Fudge, Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). 92. Howard Kaminsky, “The Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘The Reformation,’ ” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, edited by František Šmahel (Munich: De Gruyter, 1998), 1–​22. 93. Soukup, “Kauza reformace,” 171–​217. The volume discusses theoretical debates related to the Hussite movement in several areas and fields of historiography. 94. For Hussites and images, see Milena Bartlová, “Obraz jako náboženský problém” [Image as a religious problem], in Umění české reformace (1380–​1620), edited by K. Horníčková and M. Šroněk (Prague: Academia, 2010), 41–​46. 95. See especially Ota Hlama, Otázka svatých v české reformaci [The problem of saints in the Bohemian Reformation] (Brno: L. Marek, 2002); Kateřina Horníčková, “Martyrs of “Our” Faith: Identity and the Cult of Saints in Post-​Hussite Bohemia,” in Symbolic Identity and Cultural Memory of Saints, edited by Nils Holger Petersen, Anu Mänd, Sebastián Salvadó, and Tracey Sands (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 59–​90. 96. Robert Novotný, “Konfesionalizace před konfesionalizací: Víra a společnost v husitské epoše” [Confessionalization before confessionalization: Faith and society in the Hussite period], in Heresis seminaria, 233–​266. For an overview of the confessionalization concept in East Central Europe, see Jorg Deventer, “‘Confessionalization’: A Useful Theoretical Concept for the Study of Religion, Politics and Society in Early Modern East-​Central Europe?,” European Review of History 11 (2004): 403–​425. For a discussion of Hussite confessionalization, see also Winfried Eberhard, “Zur reformatorischen Qualität und Konfessionalisierung des nachrevolutionären Hussitismus,” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, 213–​238.

456   Stanislava Kuzmová 97. As summarized by Erdélyi, A Cloister on Trial, 14–​15. For an overview of Reformation in Central Europe, out of numerous works, A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe, edited by Howard Louthan and Graeme Murdock (Leiden-​Boston: Brill, 2015); Katalin Péter, Studies on the History of the Reformation in Hungary and Transylvania, edited by G. Erdélyi (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2018). 98. Introduction and Conclusions to de Cevins and Marin, Les saints et leur culte, 25, 348–​350.

Further Reading Berend, Nora, ed. Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and the Rus’ c. 900–​1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Cevins, Marie-​Madeleine de, and Olivier Marin, ed. Les saints et leur culte en Europe centrale au Moyen Âge (XIe–​début du XVIe siècle). Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Craciun, Maria, and Elain Fulton, eds. Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–​1800. Farnham: Routledge, 2011. Klaniczay, Gábor. Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Central Kłoczowski, Jerzy, Paweł Kras, and Wojciech Polak, eds. Christianity in East-​ Europe: Late Middle Ages. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu w Lublinie, 1999. Louthan, Howard, and Graeme Murdock, eds. A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe. Leiden–​Boston: Brill, 2015. Rychterová, Pavlína, ed. Pursuing a New Order, Vol. 1: Religious Education in Late Medieval Central and Eastern Central Europe; Vol. 2: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018–​2019.

Chapter 19

The Papacy a nd t h e Region, Chu rc h St ructu re, a nd C l e rg y Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum

Poland, Prussia, the Baltic Coast, and Bohemia (Agata Zielinska) Studying the papacy—​“the world’s oldest continuously functioning institution”—​ poses many challenges,1 which arise in part from how diverse local contexts and accounts in national narratives use their relations with the papacy to create their own narratives. The papacy also tells its own story. The most productive recent debates address the tension between the limited scope of pontifical power and the rhetoric of papal supremacy embraced by the popes, especially following the pontificate of Gregory VII (1073–​1085). This has led historians to (re)approach the papacy as a reactive, “rescript” government that operated by sending written responses to petitions. The papacy had power because there was a demand for papal authority and legitimization, rather than being an institution that pursued its own policies and dictated how Christendom should be governed.2 While focused on the needs of localities, this system allowed the papacy to pursue specific goals of its own, such as general councils, preaching crusades, and conducting inquisitorial tribunals. The institution of the papacy can be investigated by examining those who accepted Roman authority and the position of the pope. One cannot assume, as many past works have, that the way the papacy interacted with East-​Central Europe was inherently different from how it interacted with Western polities and regions. Because Central Europe was both similar to and different from the rest of Europe, treating the West as normative in medieval studies hampers understanding. It is more productive to focus instead on the continuum of practices found throughout Europe that reflect regional developments.3

458    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum Throughout the historiography of East-​ Central Europe, the introduction of Christianity is closely linked with the formation of regnal and ducal polities, which were, in turn, the basis for the nation-​states of the modern period. Popes were not necessarily involved in the Christianization of the region from the beginning, however; lay and ecclesiastical powers already established in the neighboring provinces influenced the process. Missionary activity and the conversions of rulers were the first stages of the Christianization of Moravia, Bohemia, and Poland, which resulted in the creation of the first ecclesiastical structures in the second half of the tenth century. In Pomerania, Prussia, and further up the Baltic Coast missionizing and conquest continued up to the thirteenth century and beyond, enabling the papacy to take an active role in the oversight of missionary work and, importantly, crusading. The minimal papal involvement in the initial Christianization of East-​Central Europe was followed by increasingly strong ties, illustrating how strongly the region desired papal involvement. Once episcopal structures had been introduced, clerics and rulers quickly sought papal backing. The Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (962–​973) petitioned the pope for a new archbishopric in 962 in Magdeburg to help with the Christianization of the Slavs. Pope John XII (955–​964) agreed to this, but it was not formalized until 968, when Poznań, in the Piast polity, was incorporated into the archdiocese. The creation of the archdiocese of Magdeburg was an imperial rather than papal initiative, illustrating the dynamics of a reactive, rescript papal government—​the papacy replied in the affirmative to what Otto I had enacted. While John XII and his successors benefited from the territorial and institutional expansion of Christendom under their auspices, the initial push for this change came from Otto I, who was interested in expanding his realm. He needed papal support and approval to avoid the risk of challenges to his actions by other powerful rulers or indeed the clergy. In Poland, the first source reflecting formal contacts with the papacy is the infamous and contested Dagome iudex document, which purportedly “conferred” the early Polish polity on Pope John XV (985–​996) at the very end of the tenth century, potentially placing it under the direct protection of Saint Peter.4 Whether or not this document is a later forgery matters less than the fact that throughout the rest of the Middle Ages Poland was understood—​by the pope, Polish rulers, and prelates—​to be closely bound to the papacy. This had a significant impact on Polish–​papal relations in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries because it obligated Poland to pay Peter’s Pence (donations made directly to the Church in Rome), which was used in territorial disputes between Polish dukes and kings, the clergy, the Teutonic Knights, and the rulers and German-​ speaking inhabitants of Silesia. For example, Polish rulers and prelates attempted to prove that certain lands belonged to them rather than the Teutonic Knights because their inhabitants had always paid Peter’s Pence, which was understood to be a Polish duty. Regardless of the authenticity and dating of Dagome iudex, its explicit and implicit use in later centuries—​especially at times when payments of Peter’s Pence were contested—​ requires attention. While clearly there was some understanding of a

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    459 “special” relationship between Poland and the papacy related to payments in the Middle Ages, it is not clear whether this was based on the Dagome iudex. The initial administrative developments of the region such as the creation of dioceses took place with little papal involvement. In the eleventh century, new dioceses were established, including Gniezno, Wrocław, and Olomouc. How the papacy viewed the situation is perhaps best exemplified by Pope Gregory VII, who sent two legates to the Polish duke, soon to be king, Bolesław II Śmialy/​Szczodry (Duke of Poland 1058–​1076 and King of Poland 1076–​1079, the Bold/​the Generous) in 1075. The pope’s rationale for sending the legates was to aid the growth of the new local church structures. Gregory VII’s program of reform—​stamping out simony and clerical concubinage and the subsequent Investiture Contest/​Controversy with Emperor Henry IV (1050–​1106)—​suggests that the legates’ mission was to likewise curb lay influence on the Polish ecclesiastical hierarchy.5 Historians have often argued that this set of reforms took much longer to reach East-​ Central Europe than France, England, or Germany because the region needed to catch up in terms of institutional growth. The late “acceptance” of Latin Christianity in the region is sometimes seen as affecting political and religious developments.6 This has been an influential methodology, but it posits that there was a normative Western model to be followed in East-​Central Europe and then shows how this model was followed imperfectly as a consequence of the particularities of the region. While this is partly correct, it has also been pointed out that the Reform may not have been a cohesive plan. The Gregorian Reform was a long-​term, patchwork process to improve the moral integrity and independence of the clergy throughout Christendom, not just in East Central Europe.7 Clerical celibacy was a recurring issue at general councils called by the papacy and also at provincial and diocesan synods throughout Europe, as was simony (buying or selling church offices). Probably the only way that Gregory VII would have known that legates were required in Poland to strengthen the church hierarchy would be if this need had been reported to him, which highlights how important “peripheral” input was for papal authority. In the twelfth century, the papacy was more involved in regional diocesan politics than in the preceding centuries. For example, in 1133, the archbishop of Magdeburg attempted to incorporate the existing Polish dioceses into his province. Resistance arose, and by 1136 the pope had confirmed all of the current and future possessions of the archbishopric of Gniezno, effectively removing Magdeburg’s oversight. Like the Dagome iudex document, this privilege (Ex commisso nobis) does not survive in the original, and therefore the authenticity and details of its content have been questioned. Neither does it confirm the suffragan (assistant) bishops of Gniezno, purportedly appointed by the pope in aid of the archbishop. It was a significant document that resonated throughout the Middle Ages and may have been used by the Gniezno archbishop to strengthen his position locally. A consequence of this assumed apostolic protection for Poland and the Polish church was that Polish dukes sought papal backing and confirmation in their dynastic struggles. In 1180, the pope confirmed Duke Kazimierz II Sprawiedliwy’s

460    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum (1138–​1194, the Just) rule as princeps, at the same time solemnizing the immunities that the duke had promised the Polish church. This was an important step in the local acceptance of papal authority in matters both lay and religious in Poland. During the twelfth century, monasticism in the region expanded and grants of protection from the papacy to monasteries were regularized, a common trend that followed the emergence of monasteries elsewhere in Europe. Such privileges exempted monasteries from episcopal jurisdiction and gave them the autonomy to organize their own religious life, guaranteed by the popes. In addition to the protection at the highest level given to dukes and provinces, this behavior shows that the idea of papal protection was accepted locally, among the clergy and laity alike. Ideologically, protectio embodied the papacy’s universal jurisdiction; in practice it was a powerful tool for navigating local conflicts. It could be used as a weapon against lay powers, but also as a means of regulating the relationship between secular and regular clergy. By providing this protection, the papal curia accrued power. If conflicts arose, the pope would usually be accepted as the one who could resolve them; the papacy held a great deal of jurisdictional capital. The appointment of papal judges-​delegate (local prelates appointed by the pope to judge in his name) is a measure of the acceptance of papal authority. Their activities in Poland and Bohemia increased steadily throughout the century, seen in documentary sources. Papal protection for both kings and monasteries was varied and dynamic; local pressures—​fear of neighboring bishops or rulers—​were the primary motivator for institutions to request papal protection.8 Revisiting the ramifications of protectio for East-​Central Europe from a comparative perspective helps reassess the context and consequences of the Dagome iudex and Ex commisso nobis and also situates papal involvement in the Baltic in a regional context. Such an approach would also be useful for contextualizing the development of Bohemian and imperial church structures in the region and their relation not just to the papacy, but to neighboring dioceses and polities, since papal protectio was—​above all—​a tool in local power dynamics. In the thirteenth century, papal cooperation with local churches was at its height, exemplified in Poland by the close relationship between Innocent III (1198–​1215) and the archbishop of Gniezno, Henryk Kietlicz (1199–​1219) from 1207 to 1215. Their cooperation resulted in a comprehensive definition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and exemption from lay powers in the Polish province and solidified the position of the papacy as their guarantor. As part of this, the papacy confirmed many exemptions and privileges given to ecclesiastical bodies by lay powers, usually in exchange for papal protectio of the rulers who issued them. Since the Polish polity was made up of independent duchies rather than a centralized kingdom, the papacy and episcopate were sources of authority in an otherwise fragmented polity. The potentially unifying role of the papacy/​Church has often been (over)emphasized as the enabling factor for the reintroduction of monarchy in Poland between 1295 and 1320.9 While certainly an important factor, the relationship between “church” and “state” was not straightforward. In the centuries leading up to 1320, the clergy was interested in securing its position vis-​à-​vis lay powers and a strong monarchy could have nullified the privileges granted by independent dukes.

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    461 Other than privileges or mandates issued to people or institutions in response to petitions, the papacy intervened in two main ways: by appointing legates and by leading crusading efforts. Direct papal involvement in crusading and establishing the inquisition was a continuation of the assertion of papal leadership in these matters in the region. Papal legates a latere (representatives of the pope sharing his legal powers) were sent repeatedly to Poland, Bohemia, Prussia, and other adjacent regions throughout the thirteenth century. That local developments influenced the timing of this mode of papal governance can be seen by comparing material on papal legates and nuncios in Western Europe, which shows the peak of legatine activity in the twelfth century and that legates were active in the Holy Roman Empire from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries and beyond.10 Many of the legates were sent to cover all or parts of what we call East-​Central Europe throughout their mission, suggesting that the papacy had a specific understanding of the region and perceived it as a unit with similar ecclesiastical and political issues. This understanding, however, could only develop if the papacy was informed of these issues, which again illustrates how important “peripheral” input was in papal governance. In the Baltic, Christianization efforts intensified in the thirteenth century, which provided an avenue for papal involvement. The necessity for mediation among the Teutonic Knights, Poles, and various pagan tribes that were the focus of conversion and conquest allowed the papacy to establish itself as the accepted authority. The papacy played a leading role even though it depended on locals to crusade, preach, and so on. Rome was the authority that allowed papal legates to create new dioceses in Prussia and on the Baltic coast, many of which answered directly to the pope and thus had no other (local) superiors. Because crusading was consolidated under papal leadership, in line with practices elsewhere, the role of crusade preaching was gradually transferred to mendicant orders, especially the Dominicans, rather than the local diocesan clergy. Importantly, the papacy styled itself as the protector of the pagans, guarding against excessive violence, and more staunchly, protecting new converts from unjust treatment by crusaders or new lords. A comprehensive and thorough review illustrates the dynamic between papal policies and local engagements.11 The papacy also regulated how the region participated in the crusades to the Holy Land by deciding under what circumstances crusading vows could be commuted to the Baltic and when they could not. For the papacy, Outremer (crusader states in the Levant) was the focal point in crusading. But because the papacy was also responsive to local needs (a rescript government), there were multiple instances when crusades against Prussians or Mongols took precedence as a result of local petitions. Crusading was indeed part of the local elite ethos, whether locally or in Outremer.12 Synods are another area of study that contribute to understanding Latin Christendom. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the key councils, held wherever the pope was (often Rome or Lyon) aimed to increase the uniformity of religious practice throughout the Latin provinces. Prelates traveled from Poland, Bohemia, and the Baltic dioceses, which illustrates the strong attraction of councils held under papal aegis. Discussion of the reception and implementation of conciliar decrees in East-​Central Europe is often problematic, however. This may be because reforms took root later in Poland or

462    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum Bohemia than in Western Europe, but it may reflect the importance of the Latin Church in the fabric of local religious and lay institutions; the clergy may have been so focused on bolstering their position (in Poland, for instance) that reforms were accepted quickly and comprehensively. Examining canon law may clarify these issues by focusing on the practice rather than its reception.13 Similarly to the Gregorian Reforms, East Central Europe implemented changes slowly compared to Western Europe. However, no province or diocese of Christendom, in the East or West, was able to receive and put into action normative reforms promulgated by the papacy immediately and fully.14 The introduction of new laws or a change in institutional practice was a long-​term process, and no province had a perfect record. Thus, examining how general, legatine, and conciliar canon law supplemented one another in Poland is a promising research topic.15 Conciliar decrees need to be compared and contrasted in the Central European setting and also compared the rest of Christendom. For example, different levels of authority treated the increasingly diverse populations differently. One example is Jacques Pantaléon (1195–​1264, the future Pope Urban IV) passing decrees in 1248 that allowed Germans and Poles to fast for different lengths of time before Easter and mandating that the Credo should be said in the vernacular—​without stipulating which vernacular was meant.16 Polish provincial synods sometimes aimed to restrict the influence and presence of the German language, and papal pronouncements and locally issued laws also treated Europe’s Jewish population differently and may illuminate the tension between universal papal aims and the goals of particular provinces or even dioceses.17 The papacy of the fourteenth century has often been characterized as undergoing profound changes which rendered it a more centralized, rationalized, and financially oriented institution.18 This was certainly reflected in how it behaved in East-​Central Europe. One key aspect is the consistent presence of papal nuncios (papal representatives of a lesser standing than legates) in Poland throughout the century. They combined the role of papal legates and money collectors. They routinely collected dues and authorized the allocation of benefices to specific persons, which allowed the pope’s presence to permeate the province. While benefices were allocated by the papacy according to the requests of petitioners, the nuncios, and therefore the papacy, were ultimately the authority responsible for assigning them. The continuous and successful collection of taxes by papal nuncios can be seen as a signal that the structures within which they operated—​dioceses, deaconries, parishes—​were organized and administered in a way that allowed this systematic operation. The task of collecting Peter’s Pence by the nuncios in Poland was key in the ethnic tensions between Poles and German-​speakers in Poland and Pomerania, because the latter claimed that it was not their custom to pay these dues and resisted the collections.19 Nuncios carried out other tasks besides collecting dues, such as mediating and judging conflicts and distributing ecclesiastical benefices, which demonstrates the multiplicity of ways the papacy could interact with a region.20 Understanding the nature of relations with the papacy would benefit from a comparison among papal envoys in the fourteenth century to discern how important the Peter’s Pence was to defining the

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    463 nature of relations with the papacy. Nuncios’ and legates’ missions varied, but whether such variation stemmed from papal stipulations, or local understandings of the nature of their missions is still being investigated. Wide-​ranging prosopographical studies of legates in Hungary are ongoing and should be taken up in Poland and Bohemia as well. Cooperating with local rulers, the papacy asserted its authority through inquisitorial tribunals. In the mid-​thirteenth century, Přemysl Otakar II (1233–​1278) petitioned Pope Alexander IV (1254–​1261) for the establishment of inquisitorial tribunals in the lands of the Bohemian Crown. John XXII (1316–​1334) contributed to the formal establishment of inquisitorial tribunals in the kingdom of Poland, acting on his vision of a papal-​led fight against heresy carried out by the Dominicans, but also in cooperation with the king, Casimir the Great (1333–​1370). Heresies spread with people. The large influx of migrants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seeking lands and employment as well as clerics and monks setting up new religious foundations caused an increase in inquisitorial activities led by the papacy, especially in the fourteenth century, as unorthodox ideas were brought by the newcomers. The potential for heresy could also come from academia. The two first universities in East-​Central Europe were only established in the fourteenth century in Prague (1349) and Cracow (1364) and eventually generated ideas that local clerics and the papacy deemed unorthodox.21 Once universities were established, papal approval and protection was sought, demonstrating, in contrast to the inquisition, a form of “soft power” that the papacy wielded throughout Europe. It was also a key moment because universities became hubs of intellectual and political discussion that fed into Polish and Bohemian participation in the Council of Constance as well as the spread of Hussitism, a homegrown heresy. At the end of the fourteenth century, in 1378, the Great Western Schism placed the papacy at the center of European politics. Tracing how the allegiances to the Roman and Avignonese popes played out in Central Europe with a focus on the effects these political decisions had on local ecclesiastical structures is worth considering. This should be pursued blind to the eventual “triumph” ’ of Rome. Rather, the pragmatic, tangible changes—​if any—​that took place in the region should be discussed, for example the distribution of ecclesiastical benefices or the collection of papal dues. In the fifteenth century, the Council of Constance (1414–​1418) was the scene where multiple profound and destructive conflicts played out. The main focus was to end the papal schism, which all the participants had a stake in, but there were other problems as well. The wars between the Polish king and the Teutonic Knights had reached an all-​ time high in the decades on either side of the turn of the fifteenth century. The Polish embassy to the council consisted of experienced lawyers, such as Paulus Vladimiri/​ Paweł Włodkowic (c. 1370–​1435), who were to present the Polish case before the council. The problem of employing pagans to fight Christian enemies was key in this conflict, as were the responsibilities of Christian rulers toward their non-​Christian subjects. The debate did not lead directly to any resolution, however. Following precedents set at universities, the speakers of each session of the council were arranged according to their

464    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum nation: English, French, Italian, and German (comprising Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, Danes, and Swedes). This stifled public debate between Polish and Teutonic representatives, because both belonged to the same nation. The ideas spread by Jan Hus (1369–​1415) and his followers were the main Bohemian issues pursued at the council. Hus himself was burned at the stake, and the Hussite wars erupted in Bohemia and Silesia. Antonín Kalous’s work explores the consequences of this for Papal–​Bohemian relations in the following centuries, tracing the employment of papal nuncios and legates as leaders of the crusade called against the Hussites and subsequent negotiations of peace.22 Studying papal involvement in any region necessitates looking at both ecclesiastical and political matters and their interrelations. This raises the risk of conflating issues, which may not have been how they were seen contemporaneously. Great pan-​ European questions such as the Crusades and the fight against heresy were especially pertinent to the papacy’s dual role since they affected both Church and state. Strong ties with the papacy were key because of the political fragmentation in Poland and the newness of the papal presence in Prussia and on the Baltic Coast. They should not be treated as the only factor in the institutional development of these polities, however, since for the papacy the key to maintaining power was flexibility, moderation, and reliance on local input.

The Eyes of the Pope Look East: Papal Impact in Hungary and Croatia (Igor Razum) As the authority and power of the papacy grew from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, clamor arose for reform and the papacy attempted to assert a supreme position within Latin Christendom. Hungary and Croatia experienced the impact of the papacy’s growth of knowledge and power, especially since they were joined under the rule of the Árpád dynasty at the end of the eleventh and into the twelfth centuries. This was exemplified in the more frequent expressions of papal political will in letters sent to bishops and nobles in the two realms. The papacy’s growing authority and power was curtailed in the late medieval period as the institutional lay power structures and networks became more independent of ecclesiastical influence. These new power relations were formalized during the fifteenth century, when the Hungarian kings took greater control of ecclesiastical hierarchies in the kingdom, similarly to the developments in Western European realms. The Christianization of the Croatian people on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea would be a natural way to start the story. Exactly when this happened is an ongoing debate. Historiographic tradition and ecclesiastical mythology long perpetuated the

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    465 image of the Croats arriving in the seventh century and their almost instant baptism, which was connected to Pope Agatho (678–​681). He, according to Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913–​959), made a pact with the Croats after their baptism that they would “never go upon a foreign country and make war on it, but rather live at peace with all who are willing to do so.” The narrative construction of the conversion of the Croats can be compared to the text De conversione Bagoariorum et Carantanorum (On the conversion of the Bavarians and Carantanians), where the key source of the mission was the archbishopric of Salzburg.23 For a long time, this image was accepted, but recently scholars have been more inclined to think of the late eighth century as the time when the Croats arrived and were subsequently included in Latin Christendom. The most active factor in this process seems to have been the initiative of the fledgling Frankish Empire of Charlemagne, in ecclesiastical terms, of the patriarch of Aquileia.24 The papacy played a supporting role and some sources point to the long arm of Rome reaching across the Adriatic to Split, thus moving the Frankish agenda forward in the southeastern part of the empire. This was implemented through the donation of liturgical books, namely, the Evangeliarium Spalatense, whose Roman origins signal a papal interest in the area.25 This idea, although quite convincing, lacks sources, as is often the case when dealing with early medieval Croatian history. The papacy worked mostly through letters and delegations, mainly responding to requests and pleas; the few letters relating to this time offer only glimpses into the papacy’s views on the new Croatian polity. The key points for the papacy were the “restoration” of their authority in the old Roman province of Illyricum, the (re)establishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the eastern Adriatic, and concern for the general situation in the Balkans, primarily with regard to Bulgaria and its position between Rome and Constantinople (see ­chapter 7 in this volume, by Schwedler and Figurski).26 Croatia was not as attractive as Bulgaria, but as a newly integrated part of Christendom it still had its fair share of issues.27 To the north of Croatia, the Hungarians engaged actively in the process of Christianization in the tenth century. After settling in the Carpathian Basin in the late ninth century, they quickly established themselves as an active player in the region, if bothersome for their neighbors. Previously they had been resident in the area north of the Black Sea and the Lower Danube, however, after conflicts with other nomadic peoples such as the Khazars and Pechenegs, they began to migrate toward the west. At first they operated as allies of the forces already interested in the Carpathian Basin, the Franks and Moravians, yet they soon began acting for themselves. Conversions to Christianity began under the influence of Byzantium in the mid-​tenth century (the chieftains Bulcsú and Gyula). After two defeats by the Germans, especially that in 955, some Hungarian leaders started turning toward the idea of baptism. To what degree was this a political decision of a realm situated between two powerful empires (Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire) is difficult to ascertain. What is certain is that István (997–​1038) and before him his father, Géza (d. 997), turned toward Christianity as a religious and cultural decision that would enable them to stabilize the broad network of Hungarian clans that had arrived.28

466    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum Missionaries were arriving from various Western centers, mostly through German influence. The names mentioned in sources are Bruno, who was either a missionary or a diplomat sent by Emperor Otto I (936–​973), and Bishop Prunwart, who reputedly baptized many Hungarians. Bishop Adalbert of Prague was the most influential name mentioned; he both visited Hungary personally and sent missionaries to baptize the Hungarians. The question of how the papacy was involved is difficult to answer. While one source, Liutprand, mentions the pope sending Bishop Zacheus on a mission to Hungary prior to 972, it appears he never arrived. The tradition around Adalbert became the strongest, linking him with the conversion of Géza and István, as well as his own cult that developed in the kingdom.29 One of the key moves was establishing an ecclesiastical hierarchy, namely, new bishoprics. The first Croatian bishopric was established in Nin, smaller than the other Dalmatian bishoprics such as Split or Zadar. Pope John VIII (872–​882) demanded that he, the bishop of Rome, should be the only one to consecrate Theodosius, the bishop of Nin. Theodosius later became the archbishop of Split and actually tried to retain control over both episcopal sees. In ecclesiastical terms this was an impossible move, but it does point to the Croatian rulers’ interest in expanding their influence over the old Dalmatian cities. This ongoing process was completed at the two church councils of Split in 925 and 928. There, under the auspices of the Croatian ruler Tomislav (d. 928), and guided by the papal legates John, bishop of Ancona, and Leo, bishop of Palestrina, the council decided that Split would be the metropolitan see.30 At the second council, in 928, attended by the papal legate Madalbert, it was decided that Nin could no longer be a bishopric due to a lack of ecclesiastical tradition and its bishop was granted a choice of vacant sees in the province. Although it appears that popes John X (914–​928) and Leo VI (928–​929) did not prioritize this issue, they did support a continuity of papal interest and pastoral care in the area.31 The key symbolic event connected to the move toward a Christian Hungary was the coronation of King Stephen (István), probably in 1001. According to Hartvic’s biography and interpretation of the event in a legend, Pope Sylvester II (999–​1003) sent a crown to István. This claim is somewhat doubtful, as Hartvic was writing in the early twelfth century with an aim of providing a nonimperial context for the establishment of the Christian monarchy in Hungary. According to tradition, István established ten bishoprics, essentially the complete Hungarian church hierarchy. It is probable that Géza started to institute some level of ecclesiastical organization around Veszprém and then István expanded this to Győr and Estzergom, the latter becoming the first archbishopric. Though Hartvic credited the pope with legitimizing István rule, at the same time he excluded the papacy by giving (through the pope’s own words) István the apostolic title and authority to act in ecclesiastical matters.32 István clearly had a strong role in setting up bishoprics in Hungary, moving eastward from his core area west of the Danube. The lengthy period of Christianization, centuries-​long, needed a strong royal hand which was provided by the Árpád kings. It is apparent that the papacy played a minor role at this time; the initiative for Christian expansion was advanced by royal power. István and his successors used the Church to

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    467 create a stable kingdom that would be part of the Christian ecumene and thus be on a par with its neighboring empires. The papacy supported these efforts, from establishing churches, monasteries, and missions to converting pagan Hungarians and other newcomers, but it was not the prime mover in this initial period.33 Although both Croatia and Hungary at first turned toward the papacy and Latin Christendom, they lay on the eastern border, neighboring with non-​Christians as well as Christianity centered around Constantinople. The papal focus in the Balkans was on Bulgaria, and John VIII even asked the Croatian duke Zdeslav to aid the pope’s legate on his way to Bulgaria. In the tenth century, the legate Madalbert, returning from a mission to Bulgaria, attended a council in Split. While it is doubtful that Croatian rulers could exert much influence on Bulgaria, it is probable that keeping Croatia and Dalmatia close to Rome became imperative as well as precarious, not the least because of the resurgence of Byzantine power and influence on the Eastern Adriatic in the ninth century.34 The scarcity of sources allows for a multitude of ideas as to how the papal agenda in Dalmatia progressed. It appears that the Dalmatian bishoprics were aligned with Constantinople in the middle of the ninth century, at least during the time of the Photian schism (863–​867), swayed by Basil I’s political power.35 It was important for the popes (especially John VIII) to stress the authority of the Roman bishop over Croatia and Dalmatia in order to reassert themselves against Constantinople. This was the precise tone of the letters sent to Bishop Theodosius and the Croatian rulers at the time.36 The “contest” with Constantinople continued with regard to another important aspect, the Slavic liturgy. The papacy at first seemed supportive of the efforts of Cyril and Methodius, two monks (who could also be seen as agents) sent by the Byzantine emperor Michael III to Moravia to convert the Slavic populace and bring the polity closer to Constantinople. Pope Nicholas I (858–​867) invited them to Rome and in 868 they met with Adrian II (867–​872), who elevated Methodius to the rank of archbishop. The situation changed in the tenth century; Pope John X was not in favor of a Slavic liturgy. The problem, on the most basic level, was that everything related to the liturgical process had to be in Latin, the universal language of the Roman Church. Although Gregory the Great did present the papacy as a welcoming institution and Latin Christendom as a community inclusive of the various “barbarian” or “pagan” cultures wanting to enter, within a few centuries this idea became clouded by theological and political conflict between Rome and Constantinople. Croatia was becoming the Roman vanguard toward Bulgaria and Constantinople, and without establishing it firmly within Latin Christendom there was a risk of losing further ecclesiastical territory to Constantinople. In the eleventh century a movement developed within the monastic circles of Western Europe clamoring for ecclesiastical reform. The movement arose in the Roman Curia during the pontificate of Pope Leo IX (1049–​1054). One aspect of the reform, the Synod of Split in 1060, was a response to the Lateran synod of 1059, convened by Nicholas II to further a number of reform issues. Among them, the Slavic liturgy, already challenging in the late ninth century, was again raised as problematic. This synod was convened during the visit of the papal legate Mainard. Both synods can be seen as part of the first wave of the “Gregorian” reform.37 Besides language, the Croatian bishops decided

468    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum against, among other things, simony, clerical marriage, and lay influence in ecclesiastical matters. Although it is difficult to measure the impact of these normative decisions, the fact that they continued to be referenced not only in Croatia but throughout Latin Christendom points to the papacy struggling continuously to institute a stable clerical reform agenda.38 The eleventh century reforms have often been seen from the perspective of conflict between the papacy and lay power, the most visible examples being Pope Gregory VII (1073–​1085) and Emperor Henry IV (1054–​1105). The emperor’s contemporaries in Croatia, King Petar Krešimir IV (1058–​1074) and his successor Dmitar Zvonimir (1075/​76–​1089), did not have such issues with the papacy. In fact, as early as the tenth century, during the church councils in Split, King Tomislav was actively involved and supportive of resolving ecclesiastical conflict and moving toward a more harmonious understanding within the ecclesiastical hierarchies of Croatia and Dalmatia. More than a century later, the legate Mainard absolved Petar Krešimir of the murder of his brother, but this was just one of many legations—​the papacy had become a strong and welcome presence in Croatia. This was most apparent when Dmitar Zvonimir ascended the throne in 1076. Pope Gregory VII gave the king a royal crown, thus deepening the ties between Croatia and the see of St. Peter. Besides a political ally, Pope Gregory also wanted a strong ally to allow his reform to proceed within the Church. This further legitimized the king’s rule by giving him a universally acclaimed protector. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. After Zvonimir’s death and a period of infighting, Croatia was ruled by kings from the (Magyar) Árpád dynasty. Although Croatia came under the control of the kings of Hungary, the church of Split remained the metropolitan authority of Croatia.39 The situation changed dramatically during the late twelfth and thirteenth century, primarily due to the growing authority and political power of the Roman Church thanks to the development of the canon law tradition and the long conflict between various popes and emperors. The investiture contest—​the question of who should invest bishops with their positions—​came to a head with Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV and although tensions were eased following the pope’s death, the controversy did not completely vanish. By the end of the twelfth century, the papacy was emboldened to project its judgment toward princes across Europe, including Hungary. The specific and the seemingly strong connection between Rome and Hungary, starting with Pope Sylvester II and King István, continued during the second half of the twelfth century, when the popes and their legates started giving their own differing opinions on episcopal elections (e.g., Kalocsa in 1168, Split in 1180).40 At the turn of the twelfth century, the papacy took it upon itself to establish peace between the two royal brothers, King Imre (1196–​1204) and Duke András II (1205–​1235), buttressing the authority of the king and trying to curtail the rebellious brother. The conflicts began after the death of Béla III in 1196, and after his first revolt András rebelled again in 1199 and finally in 1203. András wanted to inherit the duchy (ducatus) that was usually given to the younger prince, namely, Croatia and Dalmatia. Béla, however, installed Imre as the administrator of these lands. These brotherly issues ended

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    469 only after King Imre died in 1204, and András assumed the throne the next year. While Pope Celestine III (1191–​1198) hoped that the conflict would end, this only happened during the time of Innocent III (1198–​1216), who had a more active approach to politics. It is difficult to gauge how much of an impact papal pressure had on the relationship between the Árpáds. The tools at papal disposal were the threat of excommunication (Celestine III) and papal suggestions that András redirect his military might against the enemies of the cross (Innocent III). Duke András, as part of the peace agreement, promised to assume his father’s crusading vow. He only fulfilled this vow in 1217 after going on an expedition to Egypt.41 In the thirty years András reigned, he often had conflicts with his nobles as well as differences of opinion with the papacy. The greatest bone of contention for the papacy, especially Pope Gregory IX (1227–​1241), was the position of non-​Christians in Hungary. The problem arose in the 1220s, when his predecessor, Pope Honorius III (1216–​1227), complained about Christians being servants and slaves to Muslims as well as Jews and Muslims holding public office.42 One reason for his complaint was the wide-​ranging papal policy promoted following the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 where such issues where singled out. These ideas were integrated into the 1231 redaction of the Golden Bull (1222) and two years later into the oath of Bereg. These two charters were liberties given by King András to the nobility to quell his rebellious nobles. The oath of Bereg was a proclamation of the high position of the Church in Hungary and it named the archbishop of Esztergom as the one to enforce that the king abided by the agreed-​on terms under threat of excommunication.43 What preceded this legal solution was a concerted effort by Robert, bishop of Veszprém, later archbishop of Esztergom, and the papal legate, Jacob of Pecorara.44 Archbishop Robert was likely the main source of information for the papacy, and he was strongly connected to Pope Honorius III. He seemed the ideal papal agent and was in fact given power to excommunicate the king’s counselors, including the palatine. The archbishop placed Hungary under an interdict in 1232. After attempted coercion and an apparent resolution, however, the king did not submit to the terms agreed with the papal legate, who rebuked King András in 1234. This time, Robert was politically more prudent and aligned himself with the king and against the pope.45 The conflict between the papacy and the Hungarian king over the position of non-​ Christians in the kingdom still remained unresolved when Hungary was confronted by a new threat, the Mongol invasion in 1241. András’s son, King Béla IV (1235–​1270), faced an overwhelming adversary and was furthering alliances with his neighbors to jointly oppose their, more often than not, common enemy. Béla rearranged the political agenda of the kingdom and promoted what Nora Berend has identified as a “frontier ideology.” This idea of being a “bulwark of Christendom” was a tool used by rulers in Central Europe not only in the thirteenth century, but up until the end of the Middle Ages.46 Although the idea of defending one’s kingdom seems quite logical, the concept that Béla introduced was not only a defensive tool, but one that could be used to strengthen power within the kingdom. It was asserted in letters to popes Gregory IX, Innocent IV (1243–​1254), and Alexander IV (1254–​1261); King Béla presented a beleaguered kingdom, forsaken by other Christian powers and left alone to fight a common enemy.47 He sought

470    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum help, practical aid, from the papacy, but the popes were occupied with disagreements with the emperor, Frederick II. Both Gregory IX and Innocent IV were afraid of the encroaching power of Emperor Frederick in Italy, and in 1239 Gregory excommunicated the emperor, ostensibly for not going on a crusade. This began a conflict that lasted until Frederick’s death in 1250.48 The only aid they could muster was prayer, discussion at the council of Lyon in 1245, and a crusade to aid Hungary against the Mongols. This crusade, though preached and formally granted through the extension of crusading indulgences, never materialized. Béla had to manage for himself. And he was fairly successful, allying himself with his neighbors, Poland and Galicia, as well as a new people in his kingdom, the Cumans. They were a nomadic group, previously living in the steppe area between the Lower Dnieper, the Lower Danube, and the Carpathians, who moved to Hungary after being defeated by the Mongols prior to 1241. The Cumans had been a missionary priority for the papacy and the Dominicans for some time, but Béla invited them to be an integral part of his kingdom, bolstering its defense as the Cumans were seen to be good light cavalry soldiers. He even married his son to a Cuman princess to strengthen the alliance.49 These actions were problematic from the perspective of the papacy, again raising the issue of non-​Christians in offices of power; the Cuman presence was seen as potentially “contagious” for Christianity in the Hungarian Kingdom.50 King Béla expanded on this and suggested a marriage alliance with the Mongols themselves. The king tried to assert his control over the Church in Hungary through a propaganda campaign focused on fears of a crumbling Christian kingdom. He asked to control episcopal elections and the appointment of benefices for the better defense of the kingdom and Christendom, essentially to allow himself the liberty to act pragmatically irrespective of papal intrusion. The popes did not see the situation this way, and the king was rebuked. But the idea of Hungary specifically defending Christendom came to be closely connected with the Árpáds.51 The end of the thirteenth century saw the end of the Árpád dynasty; Hungary was taken over by the Angevins. The strongest Angevin king of Hungary, Louis I (1342–​1382), was eager to use Christian ideology to portray himself as the defender of Christendom in the Balkans against Cathar heretics and pagan Lithuanians north of his realm. The papacy did not intrude much in the internal government of the kingdom. The popes of the fourteenth century faced new challenges, such as the papacy’s move to Avignon, the constant fight against “heresies” such as the Cathars in southern France and the Hussites in Bohemia. The final challenges to the singular authority of the pope came in 1378 with the split between Rome and Avignon and in 1409 with the addition of a Pisan pope. After King Louis’s death the Hungarian kingdom entered a period of conflict for the throne, from which two factions eventually emerged, that of Louis’s daughter, Mary, and her husband, Sigismund, of the Luxemburg dynasty and the Neapolitan Angevins, first Charles of Durazzo, then his son Ladislaus of Naples. The Roman pope, Boniface IX (1389–​1404), supported Ladislaus in his attempt to gain the Hungarian throne, but to no avail. Sigismund won the throne and took greater control of ecclesiastical policies. The kingdom of Hungary under Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387–​1437), Louis’s successor, was allied to the pope in Rome, however, after more than thirty years of the Great

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    471 Western Schism (1378–​1417), it was King Sigismund who took the lead to assert that the Church must be made whole. This was done at the Council of Constance (1414–​1418), presided over by Sigismund, yet the struggles within the Church were far from over and more voices of discontent were raised. Sigismund used the schism to issue a decree in 1404 (placitum regium) excluding the pope from episcopal elections and the issuing of benefices. This was reluctantly accepted by Pope Martin V after the Council of Constance, and thus Sigismund achieved a long-​standing ambition of Hungarian kings.52 “Heresy” was a word often used in the Middle Ages to describe beliefs and teachings deemed illicit by the Church. It was also quite important in papal policy, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.53 News of heresies was coming from the eastern Adriatic in the late twelfth century, and Pope Innocent III sent letters and legates to investigate. In a letter to King Imre, Pope Innocent wrote about Archbishop Bernard of Split expelling “Cathars” from Split and Trogir.54 In 1199, Vukan (1196–​1208), ruler of Duklja (a small kingdom in what is now Montenegro), mentions “heresy” in neighboring Bosnia in a letter to Pope Innocent III. He singled out the Bosnian ban, Kulin (c. 1180–​c. 1204), as a protector of heretics (specifically the Cathars from Dalmatia) in his realm, which was under the authority of the Hungarian king.55 This idea of “heresy” was developed in western ecclesiastical sources, and “Bosnian heretics” were placed among dualist beliefs (in a “higher” good god, and a “lower” bad god). The other main theory sets the Bosnian Church under the influence of Bogomilist dualist heretics from Bulgaria who were opposed to the reverence of icons and the cross.56 The claim of heresy can be tied to the political narrative of the Hungarian-​Dioclean alliance of the late twelfth century; kings Imre of Hungary and Vukan of Duklja used it to destabilize Bosnia.57 In 1203, Pope Innocent sent John de Casamari, to deal with the “heresy” in Bosnia, which ended with Kulin’s declaration of orthodoxy.58 The accusation of “heresy” in Bosnia resurfaced again in 1221 for Pope Honorius III and his legate, Acontius.59 This time Pope Honorius responded by calling for a crusade against the Bosnian heretics, a campaign that was supposed to be led by Archbishop Ugrin of Kalocsa. This crusade did not materialize, nor did a second attempt by Ugrin against Bosnia in 1225.60 The “Bosnian heresy” became a focal point of Hungarian interest, followed closely in 1237 by military action headed by Duke Coloman. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX sent his legate, Jacob of Pecorara, to investigate whether the Latin Bosnian bishop was ​sheltering the leader of the Bosnian heretics, and the Bosnian ban, Matej Ninoslav (1232–​1250), was accused of protecting heretics. Around this time the Dominicans arrived in Bosnia to try and combat the reported heresy. The accusation was not resolved, and Duke Coloman of Hungary was set for a successful campaign in Bosnia.61 Hungarian control was short-​lived due to the Mongol invasion in 1241, but within a decade it was decided that Bosnia would be exempt from the authority of the archbishop of Dubrovnik and placed under the archbishop of Kalocsa. This transfer was made because of the efforts of the Hungarian prelates, undoubtedly supported by King Béla IV and finally by the papacy. By 1252, the Bosnian see had been transferred north to Đakovo, closer to Kalocsa and completely outside the territory of the Bosnian banate. The only ecclesiastical hierarchy that remained in Bosnia was the “heretical” Bosnian Church. Crusades continued

472    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum to be declared against Bosnia in the fourteenth century, in 1337 against Ban Stjepan II (1322–​1353), in 1357, and in 1391, when Pope Boniface IX approved a campaign by King Sigismund, although it did not succeed.62 Bosnia was also the focus of Franciscan missionary work with a Bosnian vicariate founded around 1340 by Master Gerald Odonis.63 Although the Franciscans were present in Bosnia in some fashion as early as the thirteenth century, the vicariate was established only after the entire Catholic hierarchy was relocated out of the banate. Pope Benedict XII (1334–​1342) described this mission as aid to the Bosnian ban, Stjepan II, against heretics who had corrupted the land.64 The presence of the Franciscans became a key link between the papacy and the Bosnian bans and was also useful for spreading Latin literacy. The close ties between the Franciscans and the bans were exemplified by the Franciscan Vicar Peregrine the Saxon and Ban Stjepan II. The ban granted the Franciscans the collection of the tithe in his realm, and more missionaries were requested from the papacy.65 Ban Stjepan also tried to install Peregrine as archbishop of Split in 1348. Although this move failed, the Franciscan was made the bishop of Bosnia in the next year, and the Franciscan Order in Bosnia grew in importance and numbers in the next century.66 In 1377 Bosnia was elevated to a kingdom under its ruler, Tvrtko (ban from 1353, king from 1377 to 1391).67 In the mid-​fifteenth century the Bosnian ruling dynasty rejected the Bosnian church and reverted to Catholicism. The reasons behind this were pragmatic; the rising Ottoman threat in the Balkans necessitated papal and wider European aid for Bosnia, which made a more appealing propaganda narrative if the royal dynasty was Catholic. This process started with King Tvrtko II (1404–​1409, 1421–​1443) in 1443, who declared a break with the only church hierarchy in Bosnia heretofore. His successor, King Stjepan Tomaš (1443–​1461), also used this method to strengthen his position within the region.68 This mission was wholeheartedly supported by the papacy and carried out on the diplomatic level by the papal legate Bishop Thomas Tomasini.69 Tomasini was set to crown King Stjepan with a papal crown, but this was ultimately rejected by the king owing to internal politics. His son, King Stjepan Tomašević (1461–​1463), was finally crowned with a papal crown by a papal legate in 1461 in Jajce as part of a concerted effort to elicit aid from the papacy. This Catholic resurgence was cut short by the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463.70 The Franciscan order was put under the sultan’s protection and allowed to remain and work in the conquered realm. Missionary work was an important part of dealing with non-​Christians. During the thirteenth century the mendicant orders were perhaps the most present in that role, especially the Dominicans, who were sent on a mission that originated with their founder, St. Dominic, to convert the Cumans.71 As early as 1225 the Dominicans started establishing houses in Croatia (Dubrovnik) and Hungary (Győr, Esztergom); these missions were led by Paulus Hungarus and Sadok. The Franciscans became active around the same time, with the first houses established in Trogir and Esztergom. The Dominicans and Franciscans each put Hungary and Croatia under one province—​ Hungary (Dominicans by 1233, Franciscans by 1238).72 Both orders had steady growth

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    473 and by 1500 there were 247 mendicant houses.73 Besides the mendicants, chivalric orders were also present throughout the kingdom, Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic knights. The latter were expelled from the kingdom in 1225 (they had been invited by King András II in 1211) after establishing a stable defensive perimeter against the Cumans in Transylvania.74 Legates and bishops were agents of Christendom; the main proponents of papal policy were legates. They were either sent from Rome or the authority of the Roman pontiff was bestowed upon one of the local bishops.75 Legates were active in this region from the early medieval period, but sources are more numerous and extensive in the High and late Middle Ages. They could have a wide variety of objectives, from ecclesiastical reform, crusades, political matters, and diplomatic issues to adjudication. In thirteenth-​century Hungary-​Croatia their activities were mostly dealing with issues of reform or the position of non-​Christians (Muslims—​traders, minters, soldiers, slave holders; Jews—​tax collectors, minters, traders, moneylenders; Cumans—​light cavalry; heretics).76 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, legations by trusted curial officials such as John de Casamari, Jacob of Pecorara, and Philip of Fermo were the most secure way of promoting papal interests (ecclesiastical reform, centralization of ecclesiastical hierarchies, eradication of heresy, promoting crusades, convening synods) in the kingdom. In contrast to local networks of informants (bishops, abbots, lower clergy) of various statuses and credibility, the legate proceeded as another pope, conveniently present if there was a problem (e.g., legate Mainard reforming the Church in Dalmatia after the 1059 Lateran Synod or legate Acontius fighting pirates and heretics on the eastern Adriatic and, at least nominally, in Bosnia).77 On a local level there were bishops. They sent their problems, questions, and pleas to the Apostolic See, thus providing news on the status of the Church in their lands. Bishops were powerful in both Hungary and Croatia, more so in Hungary, since their bishoprics were much larger than the old Croatian bishoprics situated in the narrow strip of land along the Eastern Adriatic. In earlier periods, curial officials who were sent out as legates had a strong and strictly defined papal mandate to act, but toward the late Middle Ages, with the increase in mobility of prelates and clergy throughout Europe, local bishops became more frequent actors at the papal curia and were granted legatine authority to act in their local or regional territory. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Hungarian prelates and clergy were less present in Rome as the Hungarian king tried to limit their travels,78 but despite this the ties between the papacy and the kingdom of Hungary-​Croatia were quite active. Hungarian bishoprics were sought after by the popes on the basis of the authority of the Apostolic See and by the Hungarian kings based on the immense political and economic power the bishops and archbishops wielded. It is not at all surprising that through the centuries there were intermittent conflicts between the papacy and the Hungarian kings over the royal overreach toward the Church in Hungary.79 Bishops also promoted papal reform and policy, convening synods that detailed the various issues that needed to be rectified (e.g., at the Synod of Split in 1060 or the Synod of Buda in 1279) to promote these issues and advocate on behalf of the papacy with the kings. Their position had

474    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum to be balanced carefully between royal and papal power (e.g., Archbishop Robert of Esztergom, who in the matter of non-​Christians oppressing Christians in Hungary first supported Pope Gregory IX against King András II, but later took a more pragmatic approach and allied himself with the king). Hungarian and Croatian kings (until the end of the eleventh century) had firm control over their realms. They relied substantially on papal support early in the organization of their respective polities, but they had great influence in creating episcopal hierarchies, especially the Árpáds, since they were building up, compared to the Croats, who had found most of the hierarchy in place (if somewhat disorganized). The papacy looked after its own interests in the area, using the two polities in their quest to expand Latin Christendom to the east in competition with Constantinople. Periods of strong papal authority occurred in the late eleventh and first half of the thirteenth century, but it is difficult to see this as a systematic growth of papal authority; it is better understood as a contextual development based on the temporary weakness or strength of the secular power. During the thirteenth century the Hungarian kings, decided to rule above the pope’s authority in matters concerning ecclesiastical administration in Hungary, including ecclesiastical appointments. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, King Sigismund formalized this arrangement and thus created a situation that allowed a ruler to guide the church strongly. In the fourteenth century, inner weaknesses in the papacy led to the period in Avignon and the Great Western Schism. In addition to political conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire and France, the papacy could no longer hold sway as it had been accustomed to earlier. The shift was complete from the pope having almost absolute authority in the time of Innocent III to the pope being second to secular rulers in calling for a Church council. Although the papacy managed to reclaim part of its authority during the fifteenth century, it no longer had the power to exact its will.

Notes 1. T. F. X. Noble, “Narratives of Papal History,” in A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by C. Lansing and E. D. English (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 17–​33. 2. D. d’Avray, “Stages of Papal Law,” Journal of the British Academy 5 (2017): 37–​59; B. E. Whalen, The Medieval Papacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 3. E. Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe 1090–​1500 (London: Routledge, 2013); N. Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe, and Rus’, c. 900–​1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); N. Berend, ed., The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 4. For a synthesis of current studies, see P. Nowak, “Recent Work on the Dagome iudex in the Collectio Canonum of Cardinal Deusdedit,” in Sacri Canones Editandi, edited by P. Krafl (Brno: Reprocentrum, 2017), 25–​39. 5. U. R. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    475 6. J. Kłoczowski, Młodsza Europa: Europa Środkowo-​ Wschodnia w kręgu cywilizacji chrześcijańskiej średniowiecza [Younger Europe: East Central Europe in the sphere of medieval Christian civilization] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1998). 7. M. C. Miller, “New Religious Movements and Reform,” in A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by C. Lansing and E. D. English (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 211–​230. 8. See B. Wiedemann, Papal Overlordship of Kings in Europe, 1000–​1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), based on B. Wiedemann, “Papal Overlordship and Protectio of the King, c. 1000–​1300,” PhD dissertation, University College London, 2017. 9. S. Gawlas, O kształt zjednoczonego Królestwa: Niemieckie władztwo terytorialne a geneza społecznoustrojowej odrębności Polski [On the shape of a United Kingdom: German territorial lordship and the genesis of the sociopolitical difference of Poland] (Warsaw: DiG, 1996). 10. P. Ferguson, Medieval Papal Representatives in Scotland: Legates, Nuncios, and Judges-​ Delegate, 1125–​1286 (Edinburgh: The Stair Society, 1997), 13–​19; C. Zey, “Die Augen des Papstes: Zu Eigenschaften und Vollmachten päpstlicher Legaten,” in Römisches Zentrum and kirchliche Peripherie: Das universale Papsttum als Bezugspunkt der Kirchen von den Reformpäpsten bis zu Innozenz III, edited by H. Müller and J. Johrendt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 77–​108. 11. A. Selart, Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century, translated by F. Robb (Leiden: Brill, 2015); I. Fonnesberg-​Schmidt, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades 1147–​ 1254 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); B. Bombi, Novella plantation fiedi: Missione e crociata nel nord Europa tra la fine del XII e I primi decenni del XIII secolo (Rome: Instituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2007). 12. D. von Güttner-​Sporzyński, Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–​1230 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). 13. M.-​L. Neubauer, “The Implementation of Canon Law in Medieval Europe: The Case of Livonia, 1147–​1320,” PhD dissertation, University of Reading, forthcoming. 14. J. M. Wayno, “Rethinking the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215,” Speculum 93, no. 3 (2018): 611–​637; D. Summerlin, “The Reception and Authority of Conciliar Canons in the Later-​Twelfth Century: Alexander III’s 1179 Lateran Canons and Their Manuscript Context,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-​Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 131 (2014): 112–​131. 15. K. Ożóg, “Prawo kościelne w Polsce w XIII–​XV stuleciu” [Canon law in Poland in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries], in Sacri Canones Servandi Sunt: Ius canonicum et status ecclesiae saeculis XIII–​XV, edited by P. Krafl (Prague: Historický ústav Akademie věd České republiky, 2008), 57–​80. 16. A. Zielinska, “Remembering How to Fast in Medieval Poland: The Papal Legate Jacques Pantaléon on Regional and Ethnic Particularity,” Reading Medieval Studies 45 (2019): 47–​73. 17. R. A. C. Rist, Popes and Jews, 1095–​1291 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 18. C. Trottmann, “Giovanni XXII,” in Enciclopedia dei Papi (Rome: Instituto Treccani, 2000); A. Jamme, “De la banque à la chambre? Naissance et mutations d’une culture comptable dans les provinces papales entre XIIIe et Xve siècle,” in Offices, écrit et papauté, XIIIe–​XVIIe siècle, edited by A. Jamme and O. Poncet (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), 97–​161. 19. P. C. Milliman, The Slippery Memory of Men: The Place of Pomerania in the Medieval Kingdom of Poland (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 20. A. Kalous, The Late Medieval Papal Legation: Between the Council and the Reformation (Rome: Viella, 2017).

476    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum 21. T. Galuszka, Henry Harrer’s Tractatus Contra Beghardos: The Dominicans and Early Fourteenth Century Heresy in Lesser Poland, translated by M. Panz-​Sochacka (Cracow: Esprit, 2015); P. Kras, “Repression of Heresy in Late Medieval Poland,” in Przestrzeń religijna Europy Środkowo-​Wschodniej w średniowieczu/​Religious Space of East-​Central Europe in the Middle Ages, edited by K. Bracha and P. Kras (Warsaw: DiG, 2010), 310–​327; P. Kras, T. Gałuszka, and A. Poznański, Proces beginek świdnickich w 1332 roku: Studia historyczne i edycja łacińsko-​ polska (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2018). 22. Kalous, The Late Medieval Papal Legation, 151–​158. 23. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, edited by Gyula Moravcsik, translated by R. J. H. Jenkins (Washington, DC: Dunbarton Oaks, 1967), 149; for a recent interpretation of this source, see Tibor Živković, De Conversione Croatorum et Serborum: A Lost Source (Belgrade: Institute of History, 2012). 24. Trpimir Vedriš, “Pokrštavanje i rana kristijanizacija Hrvata” [Conversion and early Christianization of Croats], in Nova zraka u europskom svjetlu: Hrvatske zemlje u ranom srednjem vijeku [New ray in the European light: Croatian lands in the early middle ages (550–​1150)], edited by Zrinka Nikolić Jakus (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2015), 173–​200; Danijel Dzino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-​Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 25. Splitski evangelijar: Evangeliarium Spalatense, edited by Mirjana Matijević Sokol (Split: Književni krug–​Nadbiskupija splitsko-​makarska, 2016). 26. Illyricum consisted of several provinces including Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Noricum, the territory that was in the late fourth century called Western Illyricum in contrast to Eastern Illyricum, which consisted of the provinces of Macedonia and Dacia; 78; Maddalena Betti, “Rome and the Dzino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat, 74–​ Heritage of Ancient Illyricum in the Ninth Century,” in Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812), edited by Mladen Ančić, Jonathan Shepard, and Trpimir Vedriš (New York: Routledge, 2018), 243–​252. 27. Trpimir Vedriš, “Crkva i vjerski život” [Church and religious life], in Nova zraka u europskom svjetlu: Hrvatske zemlje u ranom srednjem vijeku, edited by Zrinka Nikolić Jakus (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2015), 201–​236; Ivan Majnarić, “Papinstvo” [The papacy], in Nova zraka u europskom svjetlu, edited by Zrinka Nikolić Jakus (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2015), 533–​548. 28. Nora Berend, József Laszlovszky, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary,” in Berend, Christianization, 319–​368, esp. 324–​341. 29. Berend, Laszlovszky, and Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary,” 328–​330. 30. Historia Salonitana Maior, edited by Nada Klaić (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka, Odelenje društvenih nauka: Naučno delo, 1967), 99–​101. 31. Vedriš, “Church and Religious Life,” 210–​214; Lovre Katić, “Borba Grgura Ninskog sa splitskim nadbiskupom Ivanom” [Conflict between Gregory of Nin and John the archbishop of Split], in Rasprave i članci iz hrvatske povijesti, edited by Vladimir Risimondo (Split: Književni krug, 1993), 71–​97. 32. Berend, Laszlovszky, and Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary,” 343–​350. 33. Szilveszter Sólymos, “Az első bencés szerzetesek hazánkban” [The first Benedictine monks in Hungary], in Paradisum plantavit: Bencés monostorok a középkori Magyarországon/​ Benedictine Monasteries of Medieval Hungary (Pannonhalma: Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma, 2001), 48–​60; Gyula Kristó, Szent István király [St. Stephen the king] (Budapest: Vince Kiadó, 2001), 19–​28, 33–​34, 52–​58.

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    477 34. Tibor Živković, “On the Baptism of the Serbs and Croats in the Time of Basil I (867–​886),” Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana 7, no. 1 (2013): 33–​53. 35. Predrag Komatina, “Dalmatian Bishops at the Council of Nicaea in 787 and the Status of the Dalmatian Church in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries,” in Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812), 253–​260; the “Photian schism” was a period when the sees of Rome and Constantinople stood apart due to the conflict between Pope Nicholas I and Patriarch Photius, who was supported by the Byzantine emperor Michael III; for more on the schism and its repercussions, see Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism: History and Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948); Johan Meijer, A Successful Council of Union: A Theological Analysis of the Photian Synod of 879–​880 (Thessaloniki: Patristics Institute, 1975). Clarence Gallagher, “Patriarch Photius and Pope Nicholas I and the Council of 879,” Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry 67 (2007): 72–​88. 36. Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, vols. 1–​9, edited by Marko Kostrenčić and Tadija Smičiklas (Zagreb: Tiskara izdavačkog zavoda jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti, 1904–​1967), vol. 1, 8–​19 (hereafter: CD). 37. Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 79–​133; Uta-​Renate Blumenthal, “The Papacy and Canon Law in the Eleventh-​Century Reform,” Catholic Historical Review 84, no. 2 (1998): 201–​218; I. S. Robinson, “Pope Gregory VII (1073–​1085),” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 3 (1985): 439–​483; for a more focused view of Croatia during the reform, see Majnarić, “Papinstvo,” 541–​543. 38. Vedriš, “Church and Religious Life,” 219–​223; Majnarić, “Papacy,” 541–​545. 39. Slavko Kovačić, “Splitska metropolija u dvanaestom stoljeću” [The Split metropolitan see in the twelfth century], in Krbavska biskupija u srednjem vijeku [Krbava bishopric in the middle ages], edited by Mile Bogović (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1988), 11–​39. 40. Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–​c 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 391–​393. 41. CD II, 288, 301; CD III, 32–​33; James Ross Sweeney, “The Problem of Inalienability in Innocent III’s Correspondence with Hungary: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Genesis of Intellecto,” Mediaeval Studies 37 (1975): 235–​251. 42. Augustinus Theiner, ed., Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, vol. 1 (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1859), 30, nos. LVIII, LIX (hereafter VMH); Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 152. 43. Pál Engel, The Realm of St Stephen (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 94–​97. 44. Berend, Gate of Christendom, 155–​160; Gábor Barabás, Das Papsttum und Ungarn in der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts (ca. 1198–​ca. 1241) (Vienna: Publikationen der ungarischen Geschichtsforschung in Wien, 2014), 207–​215. 45. Berend, Gate of Christendom, 153–​160; Lajos Besenyei, Géza Érszegi, and Maurizio Pedrazza Gorlero, eds., De Bulla Aurea: Andreae II regis hungariae MCCXXII (Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1999). 46. Attila Bárány, “The Expansions of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages (1000–​ 1490),” in The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages, edited by Nora Berend (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 333–​380, esp. 352–​357; Berend, Gate of Christendom, 163–​189.

478    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum 47. VMH, p. 182, no. CCCXXXV; VMH, p. 231, no. CCCCXL; Berend, Gate of Christendom, 164–​167. 48. James M. Powell, “Frederick II and the Church: A Revisionist View,” Catholic Historical Review 48, no. 4 (1963): 487–​497; Björn Weiler, “The Negotium Terrae Sanctae in the Political Discourse of Latin Christendom, 1215–​1311,” International History Review 25, no. 1 (2003): 1–​36. 49. Berend, Gate of Christendom, 142–​147. 50. VMH, p. 269–​270, no. CCCCXCIII; Berend, Gate of Christendom, 167–​168. 51. Berend, Gate of Christendom; Balázs Nagy, “King Béla IV of Hungary: A Monarch in a Period of Crisis and Recovery,” in Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900–​1400, edited by Donald Ostrowski and Christian Raffensperger (London: Routledge, 2018), 129–​136, esp. 134. 52. Engel, The Realm of St Stephen, 182–​211, 227–​231, 233–​236; Bárány, “The Expansions of Hungary,” 357–​370; Imre Bárd, “The Break of 1404 between the Hungarian Church and Rome,” Ungarn Jahrbuch 10 (1979): 59–​69; Elemér Mályusz, Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn. 1387–​1437 (Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1990), 97–​101; Jörg K. Hoensch, Kaiser Sigismund: Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit 1368–​1437 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996), 127–​128, 162–​268; Zsolt Hunyadi, “The Western Schism and Hungary: From Louis I to Sigismund of Luxembourg,” Chronica 13 (2017): 45–​53; Mišo Petrović, “Politicized Religion: The ‘Contested’ Prelates of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia during the Struggle for the Throne of the Kingdom of Hungary (1382–​1409),” in Papers and Proceedings of the Third Medieval Workshop in Rijeka, edited by Kosana Jovanović and Suzana Miljan (Rijeka: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Rijeka, 2018), 37–​53, esp. 50–​52. 53. R. I. Moore, “Heresy as Disease,” in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–​13th C.), edited by W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983), 1–​11. 54. CD II, 351; Archdeacon Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, edited by Damir Karbić et al. (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006), 138–​139. 55. CD II, 333–​334. 56. Franjo Šanjek, “Pojam ‘stvaranja’ u crkvi bosansko-​humskih krstjana” [The notion of “creation” in the Bosnian-​Hum Christian church], Prilozi za istraživanje hrvatske filozofske baštine 21, no. 1–​2 (1995): 7–​23, esp. 9; Franjo Šanjek, “Papa Inocent III. (1198.1216.) i bosansko-​humski krstjani” [Pope Innocent III (1198–​1216) and the krstjans of Bosnia-​ Hum], in Fenomen “krstjani” u srednjovjekovnoj Bosni i Humu [The phenomenon “krstjans” in medieval Bosnia and Hum], edited by Franjo Šanjek (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju u Sarajevu, 2005), 425, 437–​438. 57. Dženan Dautović, “Historiographic Controversy about the Crusades against Bosnian “Heretics,” Journal of Blakan and Black Sea Studies 3, no. 4 (2020): 63–​77, esp. 64; Gábor Barabás, “Heretics, Pirates, and Legates: The Bosnian Heresy, the Hungarian Kingdom, and the Popes in the Early 13th Century,” Specimina nova pars prima: Sectio Mediaevalis 9 (2017): 35–​58, esp. 39–​40, 42. 58. CD III, 24–​25; Ivan Majnarić, Papinski legati na istočnojadranskoj obali (1159.–​1204.) [Papal legates on the eastern Adriatic coast (1159–​1204)] (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2008), 116–​117; Ivan Majnarić, “Papinski kapelan Ivan od Casamarija i bilinopoljska abjuracija 1203: Papinski legat koji to u Bosni nije bio?” [The papal chaplain John of Casamari and the abjuration of Bilino polje in 1203: A papal legate who was not a legate

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    479 to Bosnia?], Radovi Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU Zadru 50 (2008): 1–​13; Barabás, “Heretics,” 41–​42. 59. CD III, 191–​192, 196–​199; Thomas of Split, History, 172–​177; Dautović, “Crusades,” 65–​67. 60. Dautović, “Crusades,” 67–​68. 61. Barabás, “Heretics,” 50–​55; Dautović, “Crusades,” 68–​70. 62. Dubravko Lovrenović, “Translatio sedis i uspostava novog konfesionalnog identiteta u srednjovjekovnoj Bosni–​I” [Translatio sedis and the establishing of a new confessional identity in medieval Bosnia–​I], in Franjevački samostan u Gučoj Gori, edited by Velimir Valjan (Sarajevo: Franjevački samostan Guča Gora i Kulturno-​povijesni institut Bosne Srebrene, 2010), 113–​125; Dautović, “Crusades,” 70–​74. 63. Julijan Jelenić, Problem dolaska franjevaca u Bosnu [The problem of the arrival of the Franciscans in Bosnia] (Split: Leonova tiskara, 1926), 37; Dominik Mandić, Franjevačka Bosna [Franciscan Bosnia] (Rome: Hrvatski povijesni institut, 1968), 50; Jozo Džambo, Die Franziskaner im mittelalterlichen Bosnien (Werl: Dietrich Coelde Verlag, 1991), 79–​80. 64. CD X, 525–​526; for more on Bosnia in the time of Stjepan II, see Neven Isailović, “Bosnia and Croatia-​Dalmatia in the Late Middle Ages: A Historical Perspective,” in Medieval Bosnia and South-​East European Relations, edited by Dženan Dautović, Emir O. Filipović, and Neven Isailović (Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2019), 5–​52, esp. 13–​18. 65. Although the papacy rejected this decision because only the Bosnian bishop could collect the tithe for Bosnia, it is doubtful that a bishop whose hierarchy was outside the realm would have had the power to collect the tithe; CD XI, 161–​162. 66. Šime Ljubić, ed., Listine o odnošajih izmedju južnog Slavenstva i Mletačke republike [Documents on the relations between the South Slavs and the Venetian Republic], vol. 3 (Zagreb: JAZU, 1872), 126–​127; VMH I, 768–​769, no. 1156. 67. Dubravko Lovrenović, Bosanska kvadratura kruga [Bosnian squaring the circle] (Zagreb: Dobra knjiga–​Synopsis, 2012), 329–​368. 68. Stjepan Tomaš was the illegitimate son of Stjepan Ostoja; Dubravko Lovrenović, Na klizištu povijesti: Sveta kruna ugarska i Sveta kruna bosanska 1387–​1463 [On the slippery slope of history: The Holy Crown of Hungary and the Holy Crown of Bosnia] (Sarajevo: Synopsis, 2006), 276. 69. Pejo Ćošković, Bosanska kraljevina u prijelomnim godinama 1443–​1446 [The Bosnian kingdom in the pivotal years 1443–​1446] (Banja Luka: Institut za istoriju, 1988), 24–​42. 70. Lovrenović, The Slippery Slope of History, 345; for more on the last Bosnian king in historiography, see Emir O. Filipović, “Historiografija o padu Bosanskog kraljevstva” [Historiography on the fall of the Bosnian kingdom], in Stjepan Tomašević (1461.–​1463.) slom srednjovjekovnog Bosanskog Kraljevstva, [Stjepan Tomašević (1461–​1463): The fall of the medieval Bosnian kingdom], edited by Ante Birin (Zagreb: Hrvatski Institut za povijest, 2013), 11–​28. 71. William A. Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order. Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500, vol. 2 (New York: Alba House, 1966), 236–​239. 72. Gábor Klaniczay, “The Mendicant Orders in East-​Central Europe and the Integration of Cultures,” in Hybrid Cultures in Medieval Europe, edited by Michael Borgolte and Bernd Schneidmüller (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 245–​ 260; Attila Györkös, “Magyar vonatkozású domonkos rendi történetek a XIII. században” [Dominican histories of Hungarian relevance from the thirteenth century], in A domonkos rend Magyarországon [Dominican Order in Hungary], edited by Pál Attila Illés and Czigány Balázs Zágorhidi (Budapest: PPKE BTK, 2007), 49–​60; Franjo Šanjek, Dominikanci i Hrvati: Osam stoljeća

480    Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum zajedništva (13.–​21. stoljeće) [Dominicans and Croats: Eight centuries together (thirteenth–​ twenty-​first century)] (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 2008), 11–​32; Franjo Emanuel Hoško, “Franjevci u Srijemu, Slavoniji i Bačkoj potkraj srednjeg vijeka” [Franciscans in Srijem, Slavonija, and Bačka toward the end of the Middle Ages], Croatica Christiana periodica 11, no. 19 (1987): 116–​130, esp. 117–​120; Franjo Šanjek, Crkva i kršćanstvo u Hrvata [The Church and Christianity among the Croats], vol. 1 (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1988), 304–​306; Engel, The Realm of St Stephen, 96–​97. 73. Beatrix F. Romhányi, “Mendicant Networks and Population in a European Perspective,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 99–​122. 74. Zsolt Hunyadi, “The Formation of the Territorial Structure of the Templars and Hospitallers in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary,” in Die geistlichen Ritterorden in Mitteleuropa: Mittelalter, edited by Karl Borchardt and Jan Libor (Brno: Matice moravská für das Forschungszentrum für die Geschichte Mitteleuropas, 2011), 183–​ 197; Zsolt Hunyadi, “The Teutonic Order in Burzenland (1211–​1225): Recent Reconsiderations,” in Der Deutsche Orden zwischen Mittelmeerraum und Baltikum: Begegnungen und Konfrontationen zwischen Religionen, Völker und Kulturen, edited by Hubert Houben and Kristjan Toomaspoeg (Galatina: Mario Congedo, 2008), 151–​164; Zsolt Hunyadi, “Milites Christi in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: A Historiographical Overview,” Chronica 3 (2003): 50–​57. 75. Kriston R. Rennie, The Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–​19, 102–​169; Claudia Zey, “Die Augen des Papstes: Zu Eigenschaften und Vollmachten päpstlicher Legaten,” in Römisches Zentrum und kirchliche Peripherie: Das universal Papsttum als Bezugspunkt der Kirchen von den Reformpäpsten bis zu Innozenz III., edited by Jochen Johrendt and Harald Müller (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 77–​108. 76. Berend, Gate of Christendom, 110–​163; Barabás, Pappstum und Ungarn, 205–​215. 77. Engel, The Realm of St Stephen, 109; Berend, Gate of Christendom, 171–​177; Majnarić, Papinski legati, 103–​128; Barabás, Das Papsttum und Ungarn, 14–​29. 78. One of the Hungarian king’s envoys in Rome was Stjepan Brodarić, provost of Pécs; Gábor Nemes, “The Relations of the Holy See and Hungary under the Pontificate of Clement VII (1523–​1526),” in The Jagiellonians in Europe: Dynastic Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, edited by Attila Bárány (Debrecen: Hungarian Academy of Sciences–​ University of Debrecen “Lendület,” 2016), 171–​182, esp. 176–​178. 79. Zoltan J. Kosztolnyik, “The Church and Béla III of Hungary (1172–​1196): The Role of Archbishop Lukács of Esztergom,” Church History 49, no. 4 (1980): 375–​386.

Further Reading Ančić, Mladen, Jonathan Shepard, and Trpimir Vedriš, eds. Imperial spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812). New York: Routledge, 2018. Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Dzino, Danijel. Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-​Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Engel, Pál. The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–​1526. Translated by Tamás Pálosfalvi and edited by Andrew Ayton. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001.

The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy    481 Fine, John V. A., Jr. The Bosnian Church: A New Interpretation; A Study of the Bosnian Church and Its Place in State and Society from the 13th to the 15th Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Kalous, Antonín. The Late Medieval Papal Legation: Between the Council and the Reformation. Rome: Viella, 2017. Selart, Anti. Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century. Translated by Fiona Robb. Leiden: Brill, 2015. von Güttner-​Sporzyński, Darius. Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–​1230. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Whalen, Brett Edward. The Medieval Papacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Chapter 20

Jews in M e di eva l Central E u rope Tamás Visi

In nineteenth-​century historiography the origin of the Jewish population of Central and Eastern Europe was a historical problem with ideological overtones. Struggling against antisemitic prejudices in the nineteenth-​century, Jewish historians emphasized the historical roots of the Jewish communities in the region and their integration into the majority society. Consequently, even though the available evidence was meager, contemporary historians tended to draw overarching conclusions about the origins of Jewish settlements in medieval Central and Eastern Europe. Obscure references that may indicate the temporary presence of a few Jews in certain places were often taken as proof that full-​fledged Jewish communities existed in the Early Middle Ages. Some of these nineteenth-​century opinions have been carried over to twentieth-​and twenty-​ first-​century publications without due caution. A popular theory about the origin of Central Eastern European Jews was proposed by nineteenth-​century Russian Jewish scholars such as Isaac Beer Levinsohn (1788–​1860), Avraham Harkavy (1839–​1919), and others. They argued that Jews living in Slavonic countries descended from the Khazars,1 spoke Slavonic languages, and for that reason should be considered ethnic Slavs (and cleared of the charge of murdering Jesus). The Khazar hypothesis was adopted by Sámuel Kohn (1841–​1920), a leading Hungarian Jewish historian, who transformed it into a theory about the origin of Hungarian Jews. Some antisemitic writers also endorsed this hypothesis in order to demonstrate that Jews belong to a different “race” than Slavs or Hungarians, or, in the twentieth and twenty-​first century, to deny the historical link between contemporary Jews and the land of Israel.2 In the twenty-​first century, the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazi Jews has been postulated on the basis of fanciful linguistic theories and gene pool analysis of modern populations, but not by applying sound methods of historical genetics.3 Despite its popularity, the Khazarian hypothesis is untenable, as it fails to explain the relevant historical data and is not supported by sufficient evidence. First, the Khazars’ conversion to Judaism is not mentioned by the well-​informed early medieval Byzantine,

484   Tamás Visi Muslim, and Jewish sources, nor is it supported by archaeological evidence.4 Some Jews may have settled in the Khazar Empire and some Khazars may have converted to Judaism, but it is doubtful that the Jewish population of Khazaria was significant enough to father the later Jewish population of medieval Central Eastern Europe. Moreover, there is no historical evidence, textual or archaeological, indicating any Jewish migration from Khazaria to Central Europe. On the contrary, the patterns and the development of Jewish settlements in East-​Central Europe suggest that Jews migrated from the West to the East, and not vice versa. The Khazars spoke a Turkic language, but no significant Turkic linguistic elements are detected in any of the languages (Germanic and Slavonic dialects/​ethnolects) used by Jews in medieval Central Eastern Europe. It is not impossible that some Khazar Jews migrated to Kyiv, and then further west, but there is no reason to think that the majority of Ashkenazi Jews originated in Khazaria. The earliest medieval source that indicates a Jewish presence, although transient, in Central Eastern Europe was written by a Persian official of the Abbasid caliphate in the middle of the ninth century.5 Describing the trade routes of the so-​called Radhanites, a clan of Jewish merchants from Baghdad, Ibn Khordadbeh mentions that “some of them turn to beyond Byzantium to the lands of the Slavs” and that Slavonic was one of the languages they spoke.6 Jewish merchants are mentioned in the custom ordinance of Raffelstetten (south of Linz in Austria on the Danube) at the beginning of the tenth century. Jewish merchants coming “from the lands of the Turks” to Prague are mentioned in a later medieval extract of the lost travelog of Ibrahim ibn Ya‘qub of Tortosa, who visited the eastern frontier of the Ottonian Empire in the 960s.7 These textual sources suggest that the earliest Jewish inhabitants of medieval Central Europe were merchants, who entered the region from the south (from Constantinople), from the east (from the Eurasian steppe, perhaps Kyiv) or from the southwest. Some of these merchants were Oriental Jews, while others presumably came from Balkan, Italian, and Western European Jewish communities. As Prague was an important trade hub, a small Jewish community may have emerged there as early as the tenth century. There is no unambiguous evidence of Jewish communities in Austria, Hungary, or Poland from this period.8 A Jewish community may have existed in Kyiv as early as the tenth century. Slightly later, during the eleventh century, there is definite evidence for a Jewish community in Prague and for Jewish merchants from the Rhineland regularly visiting Hungary, Poland, and the Kievan Rus’; moreover, some sources suggest that a few Jews may have settled in Przemyśl and in Cracow. An early eleventh-​century document found in the Cairo Genizah mentions a Jew “from the community of Russia” who moved to Thessaloniki and spoke Slavonic (“the language of Canaan”). The Latin chronicle by Cosmas of Prague (d. 1125) narrates that after the Crusaders attacked the Jewish community of Prague in 1096 some Jews intended to migrate from Bohemia to Poland and “Pannonia” (Lower Austria or Hungary), but Bretislav II (duke of Bohemia 1092–​1100) prevented them from doing so. A Hebrew source that allegedly refers to an eleventh-​century Jewish community in Esztergom, Hungary, does not actually mention Esztergom and probably reflects thirteenth-​century conditions.9

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    485 From the second half of the twelfth century, sporadic references to Jewish individuals or families who settled in Olomouc, Vienna, and the vicinity of Wrocław are found in Hebrew and Latin sources. Jewish communities may have existed in Volodymyr and Cholm, too.10 The available data suggest that Jews settled along a trade route from Prague to Kyiv via Olomouc, Cracow, and Volodymyr. Nevertheless, neither of two important Hebrew travelers, Benjamin of Tudela and Petahiah of Regensburg, who described the Jewish communities worldwide in the second half of the twelfth century, mentions any Jewish community east of Bohemia, although both of them were familiar with the region (Petahiah actually mentions Karaite Jews living in the Crimea).11 During the thirteenth century the number of the Jewish communities in East Central Europe increased dramatically. These new communities settled in the burgeoning new urban centers of the region that included Cheb, Brno, Znojmo, Sopron, Esztergom, Buda, Wrocław, and Świdnica. This development was directly connected to the process of urbanization; the new towns offered opportunities for Jews to settle and earn a living. During the thirteenth century, several Central European monarchs issued letters of privilege that defined the basic legal framework of Jewish life. Although most Jews lived in urban centers, there is sporadic information about Jews living in villages, too, especially from the middle of the fourteenth century on.12 The persecutions following the Black Death in 1347 to 1349 in Western Europe triggered a new wave of Jewish migration from west to east. It is not possible to measure the growth of the Jewish population of East-​Central Europe accurately, but the emergence of new rabbinic schools in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia suggests that the number of Western immigrants was significant. After the expulsion of Jews from the French kingdom in 1395, French-​speaking Jews appeared in Hungary and probably also in the Czech lands, where manuscript fragments of Old French biblical glossaries have been found in bookbindings.13 During the course of the fifteenth century a significant number of new communities were established in Lesser and Greater Poland by Jews who came from Germany. These new communities in Poland were significant economically and politically by the end of the Middle Ages, and their significance continued to grow during the Early Modern period and beyond. Violent persecutions and expulsions reshaped the settlement structure of Jewish population in Austria, Moravia, and Silesia from the end of the fourteenth century on. In 1389, an unprecedented pogrom shook the Prague Jewish community. In 1421, the Jewish community of Vienna was partly murdered and partly expelled from the city; afterward, Wiener Neustadt emerged as a new Jewish economic and cultural center that replaced Vienna in some sense. In 1453, the communities of Silesia were destroyed by a series of brutal pogroms. Moravian Jews succeeded in avoiding violent persecutions, but they were expelled from the major royal cities (Iglau in 1426; Brno, Znojmo, Olomouc, and Unicov in 1454) and settled in smaller towns and villages in the region. This development, namely, the expulsion of Jews from royal towns and their integration to rural economic and social structures during the second half of the fifteenth century, marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern period in terms of Jewish settlement history in many Western and Central European regions.

486   Tamás Visi

Legal and Political Framework In medieval Western and Central Europe the social status granted to Jews was that of a subordinate and often humiliated minority, which, nevertheless, enjoyed the privilege of not subscribing to the Christian faith. This was a serious privilege; for the rest of medieval society it was obligatory to endorse the Christian faith in principle and observe the ecclesiastical laws. Jews were virtually the only exceptions; other non-​Christian groups, such as Muslims or “pagans” were tolerated de facto, especially in frontier zones such as the Iberian peninsula, Sicily, the Baltic lands, and to some extent the kingdom of Hungary, but this toleration was due to pragmatic considerations and not grounded on a theological vision, as was the case with Jews.14 St. Augustine’s theological explanation of the historical role of the Jews, namely, their continual existence following and despite the emergence of Christianity, was transformed into a legal theory during the Early Middle Ages. According to St. Augustine’s perception, the Jews served the Christians as “custodians” of the Holy Scripture by preserving the books of the Old Testament independently of Christians.15 Hence, Augustine thought, Jews were “independent witnesses” to the truth of the Christian faith and, consequently, it was God’s will that the Jews would continue to exist within Christian society in this capacity. Therefore, Jews had to be permitted to live as Jews. Jews had to be clearly marked off, however, and removed from the company of Christians. Such measures were prescribed at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), repeated and adapted at the Council of Vienna in 1267, the Council of Wrocław in the same year, and several later provincial synods.16 Jews had to remain subordinate, and even disgraced, on account of their failure to recognize the truth of Christianity. The principal attitude of the Church toward Judaism demanded that the Jews live in “perpetual servitude” to the Christians. The concept of “perpetual servitude” was accorded a new meaning in the legislation of the monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire. Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1155–​1190) and Frederick II (1194–​1250) affixed to the Jews the official designation of “servants of our chamber” (servi camarae nostre). This formula implied that the Jews were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the sovereign (who “owned” them in a sense) and had to offer special taxes to the royal chamber. In the perception of the royal authorities, the Jews were tolerated not so much as “independent witnesses” to the Christian faith, but as a source of income for the royal treasury. They were heavily taxed and the state could confiscate their property at any time. Slightly later, these medieval legal theories were applied in East-​Central Europe and determined the way Jews were to be perceived by both their Christian neighbors and the governmental administration until the end of the eighteenth century. In Hungary, Jews were prohibited from having Christian servants by the laws of Ladislaus I (1077–​ 1095) and Coloman (1095–​1116)17 and a similar prohibition was issued in Bohemia in 1124.18 The principle that Jews were not supposed to have any power over Christians

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    487 was restated by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which also prescribed that Jews were forbidden to hold public office. Similar stipulations were adopted by the Golden Bull of Andrew II, king of Hungary (1222), and several later documents in Hungary. Nevertheless, this principle was often ignored; both Otakar II of Bohemia and Béla IV of Hungary (and his successors) employed Jews in royal service, especially for the office of “count of the chamber” (comes camarae, tenant of the mint) in Hungary, despite ecclesiastical, including papal, protests.19 In the fifteenth century Polish kings employed Jewish tax farmers.20 Jews were also perceived as hospites, however, and granted similar rights as, for example, German immigrants in Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland.21 Letters of privilege issued by Central European monarchs guaranteed the Jews basic rights of property and security; the model for these documents was the letter of privilege issued by Frederick II, duke of Austria, in 1244, which was followed by Béla IV, king of Hungary in 1251, Otakar II, king of the Bohemian realm in 1254, 1255, and 1268, and Bolesław, duke of Greater Poland in 1264, which was confirmed and extended to the whole Polish realm by Casimir the Great in 1334. Otakar II also adapted Pope Innocent IV’s bull that prohibited the forced conversion of Jews. The formula servi camarae was applied to Jews in the preamble of Otakar II’s letter of privilege to the Jews of Brno in 1268 and was often mentioned afterward. It has been suggested that both Frederick II and Otakar II intended to prevent the Holy Roman Emperor from claiming authority over the Jews living in their realms as the “servants” of the imperial treasury.22 The content of letters of general privilege was adapted in municipal law codes, for example, in Prague, Jihlava, Brno, and other places. The content of these regulations is similar; they set the maximum interest that Jewish moneylenders can charge, they include lists of items that cannot be taken in pledge, they define the conditions of testimony before the court and punishments for killing or robbing Jews as well as for sexual contacts between Jews and Christians.23 Kings sometimes urged municipal councils to defend the rights of Jews and punish severely offenders who killed or robbed Jews; Charles, margrave of Moravia (later Charles IV, king of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor) wrote such a letter in 1338 in defense of the Jews of Plzen.24 Although Jews remained royal “property” in principal, monarchs allowed towns to collect certain types of taxes from Jews, such as contributions to repairing city walls. In the late Middle Ages, monarchs often transferred their rights over some of the Jews to royal cities or noblemen.25 The royal privileges had to be renewed every time a new monarch was crowned, and, in principle, a king could rescind it, as happened for a brief time when Casimir IV, after having confirmed the earlier letter of privilege in 1453, annulled it in 1454.26 Neither the state nor the church had the ambition of interfering in legal debates between Jews; the medieval Jewish communities worked as typical self-​help groups that administered justice for themselves on the basis of their own traditions.27 Legal debates between Jews and Christians, however, demanded the cooperation of the Christian authorities; in Central European countries “judges of Jews” were appointed to deal with such matters. In the Czech lands each major town that hosted a sizable Jewish

488   Tamás Visi community had a “judge of the Jews,” an office often combined with others. In Hungary, the king appointed a single “judge of the Jews” for the whole Jewish population, which was probably much smaller than that of the Czech lands. The late Middle Ages saw a serious worsening in the political and social condition of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. A major reason was that modernized and popular antisemitic ideas from Western Europe gradually reached Central Eastern Europe, too. New theological ideas and devotional practices focusing on Christ’s blood encouraged the credibility of anti-​Jewish libel for host desecration. Another motivation was the appearance of new forms of lay piety and devotion in European cities. As urban life became increasingly Christianized, Jews were seen more and more as not being members of urban communities.28 This perception, together with economic concerns such as a fear of Jewish business competitors, and a desire to get rid of debts owed to Jews led to a new European phenomenon. Citizens began to demand that rulers expel the Jews from their cities. By the middle of the fifteenth century all these elements could be seen in Central Eastern Europe. In April 1338, after Easter, anti-​Jewish violence broke out in Pulkau, Austria, following charges that Jews had desecrated the host. Although host libel cases had occurred earlier in Austria (Korneuburg in 1305 and St. Pölten in 1306), the wave of violence in 1338 was unprecedented in the region; it spread to over two dozen mostly smaller towns in Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, and Bavaria, including Znojmo, Třebič, Jemnice, Jindřichův Hradec, Passau, and St. Pölten. Six decades later, in April 1389, a major pogrom, unprecedented in scale and intensity in Central Eastern Europe, occurred in Prague, again at Easter time. Jews were accused of throwing stones at a priest carrying the host: The mob murdered many Jews, plundered houses and the Jewish cemetery, and burned Torah scrolls. The fifteenth century saw the emergence of a new pattern. In earlier times East-​ Central European monarchs usually defended their Jewish subjects from physical violence and damages to property and if crimes were committed against the Jews they attempted to punish the perpetrators.29 During the fifteenth century, Jews could rely less often on traditional royal support. In 1385 and again in 1390, Wenceslas IV, king of Bohemia and the German king, declared all Christian debts to Jews void, which caused serious financial losses to many of his Jewish subjects. But the true turning point came in 1419, when the duke of Austria himself initiated violent persecution in Vienna. During the Hussite period, fantasies about host-​desecration were augmented by anxiety about the potential disloyalty of Jews; rumors that Jews secretly collaborated with the Hussites played an important role in the ensuing persecutions. In June 1419, theologians at the university of Vienna held a theoretical discussion about the question of whether an “alliance” (confederacio) existed between Jews, on the one hand, and “Hussites” and “Waldensians,” on the other. Other anti-​Jewish topoi, such as the Jews’ alleged luxury, usury, and blasphemous books, surfaced in the discussion. This well-​ educated and intellectual antisemitism appealed to Viennese burghers and to the ducal court as well. In the years 1420–​1421, Jews in Austrian communities experienced a series of persecutions (referred to as “Wiener Gezera” in Jewish historiographical tradition).

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    489 Duke Albrecht V blamed the Jews for selling weapons to the Hussites and ordered their arrest and later confiscation of their property and expulsion from Austria. Events soon took a violent turn in Vienna and other towns, and host-​desecration libel also occurred. On May 12, over 200 Jews were burned in Vienna by the order of the duke. The anti-​ Jewish atrocities in Moravia in the following years can be seen as an aftermath of the Wiener Gezera: in 1426, Jews were expelled from the town of Jihlava, in 1425 a host-​ desecration libel occurred in Olomouc that led to the (possibly forced) conversion of a certain Rabbi Moses and his disciples.30 Host-​desecration libel also played an important role in the events of 1453. After John Capistrano made a preaching tour in Silesia, Jews were accused of host-​desecration in Wrocław in May 1453. King Ladislaus Posthumus supported the process against the Jews. In June 1453 over forty Jews were executed in Wrocław and many others committed suicide. Jewish children under the age of seven were taken away from their parents and baptized; other Jews were expelled from the city.31 Anti-​Jewish violence soon spread to other Silesian towns; in Jawor (Jauer), Świdnica (Schweidnitz), and Strzegom (Strigau) many Jews were executed. During the second half of 1453 and the first half of 1454 Jews were driven out of other Silesian cities, including Löwenberg, Oels, and Reichenbach.32 Two other widespread antisemitic fantasies, blood libel and ritual murder accusations, were less frequent but by no means absent in Central Europe. The first case occurred in Cracow in 1407, when a canon accused the local Jews and the mob incited by his sermon murdered many Jews.33 Another case of blood libel occurred in 1494, which led to the torture and execution of a dozen of Jews in Nagyszombat (Trnava), Hungary (today Slovakia). Soon after the event a Hebrew poem commemorating the victims was composed and is preserved in a manuscript in the Cracow synagogue.34 Other discriminatory measures against Jews were motivated by economic and societal considerations. Since in theory the Jews were “servants” of the royal chamber, the king had the right to confiscate their property or to renounce their financial claims, that is, interests and debts that others owed them. Such actions were considered “magnanimity” on the part of the king toward his Christian subjects who owed money to Jews or could enjoy their confiscated property. Around 1360, the Hungarian king, Louis I, confiscated the immovable property of the Jews and expelled them from Hungary; he allowed them to return four years later.35 Several Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian rulers canceled the debts of particular cities. In 1454, on the demand of the citizens, Ladislaus Posthumus expelled the Jews from four Moravian royal towns: Brno, Znojmo, Olomouc, and Uničov. Jewish communities attempted to defend themselves by creating new mechanisms of political representation and communal leadership. In 1453, after the news of the Silesian massacres arrived in Prague, the leaders of the local Jewish community requested that other communities in Bohemia (and perhaps Moravia) contribute financially to their efforts to thwart similar persecutions in the Czech lands. This is the first clear evidence for an emerging regional organization of Jewish communities. In the following decades a new type of Jewish political representation can be detected in the sources. In Hungary, all the Jews of the kingdom were represented by a so-​called Jewish prefect appointed

490   Tamás Visi by the king; this office was held by a wealthy Jew in Buda, Jakab Mendel, and other members of his family, at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. The Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia had a single political representative who referred to himself as the “Jewish Master of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia” (Mistr židovský království Českého a markrabství Moravského). In 1490 this office was filled by a certain Mayer; how he was elected and appointed is unknown. These beginnings developed into more sophisticated forms of regional self-​ governance and political representation in the Early Modern period.

Jewish Communities The internal organization of Jewish communities in medieval Central Europe is poorly documented and poorly understood. Latin documents occasionally attest that certain Jewish men held the office called “bishop of the Jews” in urban communities. It is fair to assume that this position was important and that those who held it were considered the leaders or representatives of these communities. The responsibilities of the officials and the procedures of their election or appointment remain unclear. Hebrew sources refer to officials by terms taken from Late Antique rabbinic literature, such as “rabbi” or hazzan (prayer leader); however, it cannot be taken for granted that these terms referred to the same realties in medieval Central Europe as in the Late Classical Middle East. Statutes of Jewish communities that describe the offices of Jewish communities in sufficient detail are only known from the early modern period; it is reasonable to assume that some of the arrangements date back to the late Middle Ages, but it is difficult to demonstrate continuity. The most illuminating sources are records of inner conflicts that are preserved in halakhic responsa literature, which consists of rabbinic responses to legal inquiries, and occasionally reflected in non-​Jewish sources, too. Such documents prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jewish communities were perceived as economic “partnerships” or associations (shuttafut): members had a common responsibility to pay the taxes imposed on them by non-​Jewish authorities (whether royal, municipal, or ecclesiastic was irrelevant). Members of the shuttafut were obliged to contribute to the common expenses as long as they were members. It is sometimes unclear, however, under what conditions the shuttafut could be considered as dissolved.36 An important debate that took place during the middle or second half of the thirteenth century illustrates this problem. A Hebrew-​language source relates that a certain king divided his kingdom between himself and his son, the crown prince. Jews living in this country were obliged collectively to pay a certain amount of tax to the king. After the division of the kingdom, the Jews living in the king’s part demanded that the Jews living in the crown prince’s part continue contributing to the collective tax because in their opinion the shuttafut was still valid. Their demand was disputed by the Jews of the realm of the crown prince, however, because they believed that the division of the

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    491 kingdom ended the shuttafut. The question reached the greatest rabbinic authority in Central Europe of those times, R. Meir of Rothenburg, who decided that the shuttafut was indeed over. The Hebrew text does not name the kingdom where the debate took place. Two hypotheses have been proposed: (1) the division of the Přemyslid realm between Wenceslaus I and his son, Otakar II, in 1249 or (2) the division of the Hungarian kingdom between Béla IV and his son, later Stephan V, in 1262/​1263.37 Another interesting case is a debate that took place between the Jewish community of Brno and some of its former members who had moved to Jihlava. The Brno community probably claimed that the shuttafut was still valid and demanded that the members that were in Jihlava contribute to the taxes. This debate was resolved by Charles, margrave of Moravia; in a Latin document he explicitly dissolved the “partnership” (consorcio) between the Jews of Brno and those Jews who left for Jihlava. The Latin word consorcio in this source is an equivalent of the Hebrew shuttafut.38 It is reasonable to assume that sizable Jewish communities had elected or appointed officials in charge of dividing and collecting tax burdens among the members of the community. Jewish communities often owned real estate in medieval towns, especially ritual baths, synagogues, and cemeteries; therefore, it is likely that the leaders of the community were in charge of taking care of the common property. These communal leaders are denoted by phrases such as “provosts” (parnasim), “good men of the city” (tubbe ha-​‘ir), or “bishop of the Jews” (episcopus Iudeorum).39 The king granted certain individuals exemptions from taxes such as Pfeifer, Wenceslaus II’s surgeon or the community could grant them to rabbis or students of rabbinic schools. A rabbi, a hazzan (cantor), or a shohet (a kosher slaughterer) was sometimes granted a privileged position in the community, for example, by prohibiting the activities of potential rivals and thus ensuring income from the members of the community. It is unclear, however, whether the community employed anyone for a regular salary. An early thirteenth-​century letter by the Bohemian rabbi Eliezer ben Yitzhak to the famous mystic R. Judah he-​Hasid explains that in Hungary and Poland a hazzan receives presents and other remunerations from the members of the community without saying that they receive regular salaries. The same letter implies that in Bohemia the practice was different; the hazzanim were expected to work for free.40

The Rabbinic Movement It is helpful to think about medieval rabbis more as adherents to a religious movement than communal officials. Not every community leader was a rabbi, and not every rabbi was a community leader. Rabbis were not absolutely necessary for running a community; according to Eliezer ben Yitzhak’s letter, mentioned earlier, there were hardly any rabbis in Hungary, Poland, and Kievan Rus’ in the early thirteenth century. Nevertheless, some rabbis were certainly active in Poland in the second half of the thirteenth century and the same may be true of Hungary, too, although the evidence is weaker.

492   Tamás Visi Rabbis shared a set of core values and beliefs and were educated in the Babylonian Talmud and other sacred texts of rabbinic Judaism; they were legal experts who formulated legal opinions when requested and delivered verdicts agreed on in the rabbinical courts of justice (bet din) that met occasionally. They were related in an informal network that was partly based on teacher–​student relations and partly on intermarriage. They were rarely, if ever, paid employees of the communities during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, they may have received financial support from wealthier members of the community or enjoyed exemption from taxes.41 Rabbis, however, did not have an exclusive mandate over Jewish jurisprudence.42 Especially in the fields of commercial and financial law, legal disagreements were often settled by ad hoc elected judges who relied on their own sense of justice or appealed to norms that were commonly acceptable to tradesmen. Some rabbis were more respected and influential than others, but there was no formalized hierarchy among them. Christian monarchs sometimes attempted to create a rabbinic hierarchy on the model of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Thus, Emperor Sigismund appointed three “imperial” chief rabbis over three parts of the Holy Roman Empire. There is no trace of these appointments in Jewish sources. It is likely that Jewish society at large tacitly refused to ascribe any special authority to the emperor’s chief rabbis and the rabbis involved did not claim special authority for themselves on the basis of the title given them by the emperor. Nevertheless, there were certainly attempts to create a territorial rabbinic and communal authority during the fifteenth century. These attempts at centralization were meant to counter the dangers that threatened the Jews of larger territories. Potential violence accompanying the “crusades” against the Hussites were such a danger. During the Hussite wars, Rabbi Jacob Mollin ordered collective fasts in several provinces of the Holy Roman Empire, and this fast was indeed observed as far as we know.43 Most significantly, after the pogroms in Silesia in 1453, the leaders of the Prague community, together with Rabbi Eliah, imposed taxes on all the communities of Bohemia (and possibly Moravia) in order to raise the money necessary to thwart similar pogroms in Bohemia and Moravia. They encountered opposition from local leaders, but their case was supported by Rabbi Israel Bruna of Regensburg (who was originally from Brno). At the end of the fifteenth century, Czech Jews had a territorial representative and chief negotiator who was probably not a rabbi.44

Economic Life Antisemitic fantasies have influenced modern academic research about Jewish economic activities. A liberal economic historian, Wilhelm Roscher (1817–​1894), proposed the theory that the Jews were the “tutors” of other European nations in economic matters in the earlier half of the Middle Ages, but that the “tutelage” ended in the fourteenth century and the great persecutions that followed “liberated” economic life from

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    493 Jewish domination. Werner Sombart (1863–​1941) argued that Jews invented the “spirit of capitalism” as early as the Middle Ages and blamed the Jews for the consequences of capitalism that he did not like. Max Weber (1864–​1920) disagreed and ascribed a much greater role to Protestantism than to Judaism in the creation of capitalism. Nevertheless, Weber believed that Jews had become a “pariah people” in the Middle Ages and invented “pariah capitalism.”45 These ideas influenced earlier secondary literature, for example, Salo W. Baron’s (1895–​1989) monumental A Social and Religious History of the Jews (18 vols., 1952–​1983), but they do not stand up to critical scrutiny. Medieval Jews did not invent any form of capitalism nor was moneylending ever an exclusively Jewish activity.46 The role of Jews in early medieval trade has been overemphasized in secondary literature since the nineteenth century.47 Sober assessments of the available evidence show that Jewish merchants dominated neither the slave trade in particular nor trade in general; Jews were a tiny minority among early medieval merchants.48 Nevertheless, trade was probably a major occupation for European Jews; as noted earlier, the earliest documentation of a Jewish presence in medieval Central Eastern Europe is that of merchants. During the ninth and the tenth centuries Jewish merchants came to Central Eastern Europe from the west, south, and east. Some of them, namely, the Rhadanites in the ninth century, came from Baghdad and their mother tongue was presumably Aramaic, Arabic, or Persian. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, most of the merchants that are known came from the Rhineland, especially from Mainz, but there is also information about a Jewish merchant from Vladimir, Russia, who arrived in Cologne in 1171. An eleventh-​century treasure hoard excavated in Warlin, Germany, may have belonged to a Jewish merchant.49 Trade remained an important occupation among Jews in the Late Middle Ages on both the local and international level.50 A more specific business activity was converting silver to silver coins; an important though enigmatic case is attested from the eleventh century, probably in Hungary. From the late twelfth century on, Jewish mint masters are known in Poland; their names were sometimes minted on the coins in Hebrew letters. Coins with Hebrew letters are known from Hungary, and possibly from the Bohemian kingdom, although the meaning and function of many of the Hebrew legenda remain unclear. Sources in the early thirteenth century mention Jewish and Muslim chamber counts in Hungary. The sources at our disposal do not present the full picture of Jewish occupations; it is probable that Jewish men and women practiced by various crafts and services without leaving traces in written documents. In better-​documented Western and Southern Europe, Jews were involved in cultivating smaller pieces of land, especially vineyards, often employing Jewish or non-​Jewish workers for fixed wages or various sharecropping arrangements.51 As there are allusions to Jews possessing land and vineyards and producing wine in Western Europe, it stands to reason that similar practices were followed in Central Europe.52 In Central European towns Jews were often involved in local trade; in the last decade of the fifteenth century, towns (including Buda and Cracow) attempted to curtail Jewish trade by prohibiting Jews from selling anything but unredeemed pawn. In late medieval Polish sources there are occasional references to

494   Tamás Visi Jewish tailors, shoemakers, tanners, and other craftsmen.53 There is information about Jewish medical practitioners, too; a surgeon called Pfeifer migrated from the Middle East to Prague and served King Wenceslaus IV. From the second half of the thirteenth century on, moneylending is the most widely documented economic activity of Jews in East-​Central Europe. Making loans at interest and pawnbroking were the two major types of moneylending; the latter left few traces in the sources, and it can be assumed that it was more widespread than is apparent in the available documentation. The increasing role of moneylending probably influenced settlement patterns, too; while most Jewish merchants whom we encounter in eleventh-​century sources probably never settled permanently in Central Eastern Europe, moneylenders and pawnbrokers were likely to have done so as their profession required their continuous presence close to their customers. The fact that new Jewish communities emerged in Central European towns during the thirteenth century corroborates these assumptions. Many of the Jewish moneylenders were women; thus, the available documents present a rare opportunity to have a glimpse of Jewish women’s life in medieval Central Europe.54 A general pattern of change in Jewish moneylending has been identified.55 In the earlier period Jews often lent money to high-​status Christians, including monarchs, but in the late Middle Ages Jews typically lent smaller amounts to the lower classes. Thus social standing of Jewish creditors tended to decrease over the years. The rate of interest taken by Jews was higher than the interest taken by Christian creditors, which is yet another sign of the social insecurity of Jewish moneylenders. It has been argued that a lack of cash and the financial crisis of the fifteenth century increased the role of Jewish credit nevertheless. The extensive documentation of loans in some late medieval towns gives a glimpse of the inner stratification of Jewish moneylenders as well as that of their customers. A well-​ studied example is Olomouc, the most important Moravian royal city and episcopal seat, with about 5,000 inhabitants in the middle of the fifteenth century, the majority of them being craftsmen.56 The Liber Iudeorum (Jewish register) of Olomouc preserves documentation of loans from 1413 to 1428; thus, it includes some of the especially troublesome years of the Hussite wars. The number of local Jews involved ranged from twelve (in 1413) to twenty (in 1420). The average yearly rate of interest in Olomouc in these years fell between 81 percent and 86 percent depending on the amount of the loan and other circumstances. Over 40 percent of all the loan transactions in Olomouc were made by a single person called Solomon, who was probably the most successful Jewish creditor in the city. His father, Merkl, was engaged in about 11 percent of the loans, and an unrelated Ezra had a similar share. Thus, over 60 percent of the recorded transactions were the business of three Jewish businessmen, two of them certainly belonging to the same family. It is not surprising that Solomon made the largest loans (100 marks for two burghers called Lala and Saliczer and 33 shocks [about 31 marks] to the scribe Nicholas Fenix). Most of the loans were much smaller, ranging from one to six marks. Most of the debtors were craftsmen: weavers, maltsters, butchers, bakers, goldsmiths, and others. Officials of the

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    495 city and clerics, for example, the prior of the Dominican cloister, are also represented among them. One of the most important families in the city, the Greliczer family, was heavily indebted to Jewish creditors. Social tensions over debts undoubtedly contributed to the expulsion of the Jews from Olomouc in 1454.

Intellectual Life and Material Culture During the twelfth century some Jews from Eastern and Central Europe have been identified among the disciples of the Tosafist masters in Northern France.57 The Tosafists revolutionized the study of the Babylonian Talmud by dialectical methods of exegesis. The first Hebrew texts composed by Jews from Central Eastern Europe that are known about are commentaries on the Talmud that reflect the Tosafists’ methods and were composed by disciples of the great Tosafist masters. During the middle or second half of the twelfth century, R. Yitzhak ben Mordecai of Bohemia studied at the rabbinic academy of R. Tam in Northern France, and later wrote commentaries (“tosafot”) on several tractates of the Talmud; his works are lost and only quotations are known in later commentaries. Similarly, R. Yitzhak ha-​Lavan (“the Blond”) “from Bohemia” or “from Prague” was a disciple of R. Tam and R. Yitzhak ben Asher of Speyer and he wrote tosafot on the tractates Ketubbot (“Marriage Contract”) and Yoma (“Day of Atonement”) of the Talmud, which are extant. R. Yitzhak ha-​Lavan was active in Prague and he may also have been the author of a liturgical poem (piyyut). The brother of Yitzhak ha-​Lavan was Petahya of Regensburg, mentioned earlier, who authored an important travelog. During the last decades of the twelfth century one of the most original spiritual and mystic thinkers of Jewish tradition lived in Regensburg: R. Judah ben Samuel he-​ Hasid (d. 1217), the main author of the Sefer Hasidim and other important works and leader of the hasidei Ashkenaz (“German pietist”) movement. Students from Poland and Bohemia on their way to the Talmudic academies of the Rhineland and Northern France also encountered Judah he-​Hasid’s charismatic personality and his esoteric and pietist teachings. Rabbis from thirteenth-​century Poland are cited in an anonymous commentary on the mystical script Sefer Yetzira (Book of Creation). Abraham ben Azriel (c. 1170–​1240) was a significant rabbi from Bohemia; he began his studies in Prague, later moved to Regensburg where he learned from Judah he-​ Hasid, then continued his travels to the west, where he became a disciple of R. Elazar of Worms (another principal leader of the hasidei Ashkenaz), and studied at the rabbinic academies of Tosafist masters such as R. Yithak of Dampierre and R. Samson of Sens. He returned to Central Europe and wrote an important commentary on liturgical poems (piyyutim) in the 1240s. This book, titled Arugat ha-​bosem, is a valuable source of information about books that are no longer extant and rabbis of whose life and activity little is known. For

496   Tamás Visi example, R. Jacob of Cracow, one of the earliest rabbis in Poland, is cited in Arugat ha-​ bosem. He was also a disciple of Judah he-​Hasid. He became infamous in the middle of the thirteenth century for marrying a wet-​nursing woman, prohibited by Jewish religious law, and because he refused to divorce her; his case was widely discussed in the correspondence of thirteenth-​century rabbis throughout Europe.58 A certain R. Azriel of Belgrade is also cited in Arugat ha-​bosem; this is the earliest piece of information about Jews in Belgrade. Perhaps the most original mind among the rabbinic writers of thirteenth-​century Central Eastern Europe was R. Moses Taku, who is referred to as being “from Poland” in a contemporary source and whose tomb was seen in Wiener Neustadt during the fifteenth century. Unlike Abraham ben Azriel, he evaded the spell of Judah he-​Hasid and other representatives of the hasidei Ashkenaz movement and became a staunch critic of them. His Ketav Tamim criticized the rationalist philosophies of Sa‘adiah Gaon and Moses Maimonides as well as the mystical teachings of Judah he-​Hasid as different branches of the same tree of heresy. Taku argued for a radically anthropomorphic concept of God.59 Rationalist ideas taken from the works of Maimonides occur in a grammatical treatise composed by a certain David ha-​Yevani (“the Greek”). He probably came originally from the Byzantine empire, visited Central Europe probably in the 1220s or 1230s, and met Abraham ben Azriel, probably in Prague. He may have brought some of the philosophical ideas to the region that Moses Taku felt obliged to criticize in Ketav Tamim.60 One of the most influential rabbinic writers of the Middle Ages, R. Yitzhak ben Moses (c. 1200–​1270), the author of Or Zarua, was a disciple of R. Abraham ben Azriel, but also studied in German and French rabbinic academies and was influenced by the esoteric works of Eleazar of Worms. In Würzburg he taught R. Meir of Rothenburg and in the mid-​thirteenth century he settled in Vienna His chief work, Or zarua, is an encyclopedic summary of Jewish religious law and an important source on religious and legal practices in thirteenth century. It also includes legal responsa to debated questions, some arriving from Hungary. The Or zarua and other rabbinic works demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Jews in Central Eastern Europe followed Ashkenazi liturgical and ritual traditions. The works of Abraham ben Azriel and Yitzhak ben Moses contain a great number of Slavonic glosses, many of which can be understood as Old Czech words.61 Some passages suggest that Jews spoke Old Czech in everyday-​life situations in Prague during the thirteenth century.62 As has been mentioned, a much earlier document from the Cairo Genizah (early eleventh century) mentions a Jew from “Russia” whose mother tongue was Slavonic. Thus, there is compelling evidence that Slavonic dialects were spoken, probably as the mother tongue, by many Jews in Central Eastern Europe from the early eleventh to the late thirteenth centuries. This situation had probably changed by the end of the fourteenth century. Although Slavonic words do appear among vernacular glosses in the later Middle Ages, many more German glosses appear, which suggests that most Jews were probably native German speakers. It has been claimed that

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    497 a Hungarian gloss is also found in a medieval Hebrew text,63 but the evidence is inconclusive as the gloss in question is a Slavonic loanword.64 Following a century of flourishing, rabbinic culture declined in Bohemia from the middle of the thirteenth century onward. The causes of the collapse of rabbinic education in Prague in the middle of the thirteenth century are unknown. A unique document from the last years of the thirteenth century, a circular letter in defense of two Moravian Jews, David and Azriel, from the town of Slavkov (Austerlitz) reveals an impressive rabbinic network that stretched from Vienna to Barcelona. Two of the rabbis in this network were at least partially active in southern Moravia; R. Issakhar ben Shalom worked in Vienna and Brno and R. Jacob of Triusht/​Trosht [=​Trešt’?] in Znojmo. No rabbi from Bohemia, Poland, or Hungary was involved. The same document mentions that David and Azriel financially supported “study sessions” (yeshivot) that took place in their house in Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna).65 A period of intellectual revival began in the middle of the fourteenth century. Two general causes can be identified: First, the expansion and flourishing of the Jewish communities in Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Austria, and Hungary and a flow of refugees from the West in the wake of the pogroms connected to the Black Death around 1348–​ 1350 brought some great scholars to the region. The transfer of rabbinic knowledge from Germany to Bohemia is evidenced by the biographies of the rabbinic luminaries of the age.66 Avigdor Kara, an important rabbi in late fourteenth-​and early fifteenth-​ century Prague, the author of a famous piyyut (liturgical song) that commemorates the 1389 Prague pogrom, probably came originally from Germany, and his family moved to Prague after the pogroms following the Black Death. The case of Rabbi Meir ben Barukh ha-​Levi follows the same pattern; he originally came from Fulda but left Germany after the persecutions and settled in Vienna around 1360. His yeshiva attracted many students from all over Europe. The end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century saw the emergence of an extended rabbinic network stretching from Lower Austria to Western Hungary, Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, and Poland. Rabbinic students often moved from town to town learning with local masters. R. Meir ben Barukh ha-​Levi of Vienna attempted to regulate rabbinic education by defining the formal conditions of acquiring the title “moreinu” (“our teacher”); his concept was debated by other rabbis. The absence of clear regulations sometimes led to bitter conflicts among the rabbis themselves; a much discussed conflict began when R. Israel Bruna left Brno and settled in Regensburg in the 1440s, where R. Anshel disputed his right to work as a rabbi. Nevertheless, important and sometimes highly innovative Hebrew books were composed in the region at this time. In Prague, rabbis enriched their cultural repertoire by studying Hebrew philosophical texts, especially Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed and Moses Narboni’s commentary on it. In 1413, the rabbinical court of justice in Prague consisted of three persons: Yomtov Lippmann Mühlhausen, Menahem Shalem, and Avigdor Kara, mentioned earlier. Each of them wrote philosophical texts, and two of them, Mühlhausen and Kara, also studied Kabbalah, the major form of medieval Jewish mysticism. These cultural changes were

498   Tamás Visi probably connected to the emergence of Prague university (founded in 1348) and to the theological and philosophical debates surrounding Hussitism.67 Mühlhausen authored one of the most important anti-​Christian polemical scripts of all times, entitled Sefer Nitzahon (Book of Victory).68 A certain David ben David of Landshut and an anonymous author composed a medical tract on pestilence composed in Prague in the early fifteenth century. The authors used Latin and vernacular sources including Gentile da Foligno’s plague tract.69 Another intellectual pursuit was recording and stabilizing religious customs (minhagim). Abraham Klausner, in late fourteenth-​century Vienna, composed an influential work on Austrian customs. His disciple, Eizik Tirna, was active in Brno in the 1420s and composed another important book that records chiefly Moravian customs and also contains information about Austrian, Hungarian, and Polish minhagim. Tirna also wrote a polemic work against Christianity that relies heavily on Mühlhausen’s Sefer Nitzahon. Late nineteenth-​century Hungarian historiography turned Eizik Tirna into a Hungarian rabbi and called his Sefer ha-​minhagim (Book of customs) the “first Hebrew book composed in Hungary,” and even renamed him “Isaac of Nagyszombat.” Strangely, this outdated view of nineteenth-​century Hungarian historiography found its way into a recently published English handbook.70 Nevertheless, these ideas are clearly erroneous; the name “Isaac of Nagyszombat” does not occur in any primary source, and there is no text stating that he ever lived in Hungary. He himself refers to Brno as his place of residence in Sefer ha-​minhagim, and the evidence is compelling that the book has a Moravian background.71 This is not to say that Hungary was totally devoid of rabbinic learning; reliable information is known about fifteenth-​century rabbis who originated from Sopron, a community that had close ties to Wiener Neustadt. During the fifteenth century, a new style of Talmudic exegesis called pilpul developed in Austria, Bohemia, and Germany. It was endorsed by R. Jacob Pollak and his disciples in early sixteenth-​century Poland, and they developed it further.72 Some of the rabbis who were associated with this method were disciples of Israel Isserlein of Wiener Neustadt, who was the most influential rabbi in Central Eastern Europe in the mid-​fifteenth century. It has been suggested that pilpul was partly inspired by Aristotelian logic that was studied by Menahem Shalem and other rabbis in early fifteenth-​century Prague. In the middle of the fifteenth century the rabbinic network of Central Eastern Europe broke down to a considerable degree due to persecutions in Silesia in 1453, the expulsion of the Jews from major Moravian cities in 1454, and the expulsion of the Jews from Wiener Neustadt in 1496. Prague remained the only Jewish cultural center that continued to exist in the early modern period and beyond. In the sixteenth century, new rabbinic academies were established in Poland, Cracow, Lublin, and other places that carried on the legacy of late medieval Central European rabbinic culture. Hungary only became a significant center of rabbinic culture during the second half of the seventeenth century. Religious conversions were infrequent but not unheard of. In the eleventh century, a converted Jew named Povida owned a castle in Moravia that was called Povidin after him.73 More cases are known from the fifteenth century; in 1425, a rabbi named

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    499 Moses and his disciples in Olomouc were probably forced to convert to Christianity.74 In Hungary, a convert named John Ernuszt had a spectacular career in the royal administration in the 1460s and 1470s. In Cracow a prominent financier, Smerl and a royal banker, Stefan Fischel, were baptized.75 Earlier scholarship assumed that one or more Christians converted to Judaism in twelfth-​century Hungary; but the evidence is inconclusive.76 Only a few Hebrew manuscripts produced in East-​Central Europe have been preserved more or less intact, but hundreds of manuscript fragments have been preserved in bookbindings of Christian codices and archival documents, mostly manuscript fragments from biblical, liturgical, and halakhic manuscripts. The earliest dated manuscript is a copy of Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed that was copied in Prague in 1396. Marginal corrections in the liturgical manuscripts attest to the ongoing efforts of scribes and rabbis to preserve and emend prayer texts. It is likely that many of the biblical and liturgical manuscripts were donations to synagogues by individual Jews who could afford to express their piety in this way. Many of these manuscripts were probably confiscated when Jews were persecuted or expelled from cities and then reused by Christian bookbinders. Of special interest are fragments of Old French biblical glossaries (written in Hebrew letters) found in Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia that were probably brought to the region by Jews expelled from France in 1395. Jewish streets, cemeteries, and synagogues are mentioned relatively often in archival sources. Only a few of the medieval buildings still stand today; eminent examples are the Altneuschul in Prague, built in the thirteenth century, and the Old Synagogue (Alta Schul) of Casimir (today part of Cracow) from the fifteenth century. The Prague synagogue is still in use, thus one of the oldest continuously used Jewish buildings on earth. Other synagogues have been excavated by archaeologists; good examples are the Gothic synagogues and ritual bath (miqveh) of Sopron.77 Most of the medieval synagogues disappeared without trace, however. Some of them were confiscated when the Jews were persecuted or expelled and turned into churches or used for secular purposes, others were eventually demolished and even their original sites are difficult to identify. The fate of Jewish cemeteries was similar; almost all of them disappeared. The important exception is the Old Cemetery in Prague, which began in the fifteenth century (the earliest extant tomb is that of the famous Avigdor Kara, who died and was buried in 1439) and continued to be used into the early modern period. Displaced tombstones have been found in numerous places and provide important evidence of Jewish settlement history. A significant recent discovery is the excavation of the oldest Jewish street in medieval Buda. In addition to the remains of a late thirteenth or early fourteenth-​century synagogue, archaeologists found debris from everyday life that lacked pig bones and included fragments of objects with scratched Hebrew inscriptions.78 It can be hoped that similar discoveries in future may shed further light on the everyday life of Jews in medieval Central Europe.

500   Tamás Visi

Notes 1. The Khazars were a confederation of Turkic tribes that established a nomadic empire in the region between the Caspian and Black Seas from the seventh to the tenth centuries. 2. Cf. Victor Shnirelman, “The Story of a Euphemism: The Khazars in Russian Nationalist Literature,” in The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives, edited by Peter B. Golden, Haggai Ben-​Shammai, and András Róna-​Tas Handbook of Oriental Studies 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 353–​372; Vadim Rossman, Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post-​Communist Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 82–​87. 3. See Gil Atzmon, Li Hao, Itsik Pe’er, Christopher Velez, Alexander Pearlman, Pier Francesco Palamara, Bernice Morrow, Eitan Friedman, Carole Oddoux, Edward Burns, and Harry Ostrer, “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry,” American Journal of Human Genetics 86 (2010): 850–​859; Doron M. Behar, Mait Metspalu, Yael Baran, Naama M. Kopelman, Bayazit Yunusbayev, Ariella Gladstein, Shay Tzur, Hovhannes Sahakyan, Ardeshir Bahmanimehr, Levon Yepiskoposyan, Kristiina Tambets, Elza K. Khusnutdinova, Alena Kushniarevich, Oleg Balanovsky, Elena Balanovsky, Lejla Kovačević, Damir Marjanović, Evelin Mihailov, Anastasia Kouvatsi, Costas Triantaphyllidis, Roy J. King, Ormella Semino, Antonio Torroni, Michael F. Hammer, Ene Metspalu, Karl Skorecki, Saharon Rosset, Eran Halperin, Richards Villems, and Noah A. Rosenberg, “No Evidence from Genome-​Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews,” Human Biology 85 (2013): 859–​900. For a brief overview, consult Michael Toch, “The Emergence of the Medieval Jewish Diaspora(s) of Europe from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries, with Some Thoughts on Historical DNA Studies,” in Regional Identities and Cultures of Medieval Jews, edited by Javier Castaño, Talya Fishman, and Ephraim Kanarfogel (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2018), 29–​33. 4. See Moshe Gil, “Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?,” Revue des études juives 170 (2011): 429–​441. 5. Archaeological evidence indicates a Jewish presence in the Roman province of Pannonia during the third and fourth century ce. These Jewish communities were dissolved, however, at the end of the Roman period. For a recent overview of the evidence, see Tibor Grüll, “Jewish Presence in the Danubian Provinces of the Roman Empire,” in Židovský kultúrny fenomén v stredoeurópskom kontexte/​Zsidó kultúra közép-​európai kontextusban [Jewish culture in Central European context] edited by Magdaléna Hrbácsek (Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre, 2016), 9–​18. 6. Moshe Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, translated by David Strassler, Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval 28 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 618. 7. See Michael Toch, The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval 56 (Leiden: Brill: 2013), 21–​35. Note that there is no decisive proof that Ibrahim was a Jew nor that the phrase “lands of the Turks” refers specifically and exclusively to Hungary. See Petr Charvát, “Who are Ibrahim’s ‘Turks’? (A Discussion Note),” in Ibrahim ibn Ya’qub at Turtushi: Christianity, Islam and Judaism Meet in East-​Central Europe, c. 800–​1300 A. D., edited by Petr Charvát and Jiří Prosecký (Prague: Academy of the Sciences of the Czech Republic, 1996), 14–​25. 8. Hasday Ibn Shaprut’s letter to the Khazar king does not prove that Jews had settled in Hungary by the 950s, although it may confirm that Jews settled in Bohemia; see Toch,

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    501 The Economic History, 159, and Alexandr Putík, “Notes on the Name GBLYM in Hasdai’s Letter to the Khaqan of Khazaria,” in Charvát and Prosecký, Ibrahim ibn Ya’qub at Turtushi, 169–​175. 9. Cf. Tamás Visi, “Prolegomena egy jövendő héber forrásgyűjteményhez” [Prolegomena to a future collection of Hebrew sources on the history of the Jews in Hungary], BUKSZ (Budapesti Könyvszemle) 21 (2009): 239–​240. 10. Alexander Kulik, “Jews and the Language of Eastern Slavs,” Jewish Quarterly Review 104 (2014): 105–​143. 11. Compare Bernard D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), 22–​23. 12. See Weinryb, The Jews of Poland, 23; Germania Judaica, vol. 2, edited by Zvi Avneri (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1968), 91. 13. Tamás Visi and Magdaléna Jánošíková, “A Regional Perspective on Hebrew Fragments: The Case of Moravia,” in Books within Books: New Discoveries in Old Findings, edited by Andreas Lehnardt and Judith Olszowy-​Schlanger (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 205. 14. A tract written in 1416 by a Polish canon lawyer, Paweł Włodkowic, argued that Muslims and “pagans” were also to be tolerated by Christian states as long as they were peaceable and respected the law; see Robert Frost, The Oxford History of Poland-​Lithuania, Vol. 1: The Making of the Polish-​Lithuanian Union, 1385–​1569 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 124. 15. See Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 316–​319. 16. Eveline Brugger, “Neighbours, Business Partners, Victims: Jewish-​Christian Interaction in Austrian Towns during the Persecutions of the Fourteenth Century,” in Intricate Interfaith Networks: Quotidian Jewish-​Christian Contacts, edited by Ephraim Shoham-​ Steiner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 267–​268; Anthony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Vol. 1: 1350 to 1881 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009), 18. 17. Note that these laws may have targeted transient Jews in Hungary, therefore they do not constitute sufficient evidence for settled Jewish communities in Hungary as early as the eleventh century. 18. Germania Judaica, vol. 1, edited by I. Elbogen, A. Freimann, and H. Tykocinski (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1963), 32. 19. Katalin Szende, “Traders, ‘Court Jews,’ Town Jews: The Changing Roles of Hungary’s Jewish Population in the Light of Royal Policy between the Eleventh and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Shoham-​Steiner, Intricate Interfaith Networks, 125–​130. 20. Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 98. 21. Nora Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 6, edited by Robert Chazan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 286; Martin Musílek, “Introductory Study,” in Prameny k dějinám Židů v Čechách a na Moravě ve středověku: Od počátků do roku 1347 [Sources about the history of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia in the Middle Ages: From the beginnings to 1347], edited by Lenka Blechová, Eva Doležalová, Martin Musílek, and Jana Zachová, Archiv český 41 (Prague: Filosofia a Historický ústav AV ČR, 2015), xlv. 22. Musílek, “Introductory Study,” xlvi. 23. See also Musílek, “Introductory Study,” xlvi. 24. Prameny k dějinám Židů, 161.

502   Tamás Visi 25. Germania Judaica, vol. 3, part 3, edited by Arye Maimon, Mordechai Breuer, and Yacov Guggenheim (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 2003), 1822. 26. Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 42. On textual and historiographical problems concerning the Polish kings’ letters of privileges, see Shmuel A. Arthur Cygielman, “The Basic Privileges of the Jews of Great Poland as Reflected in Polish Historiography,” Polin 2 (1987): 117–​149. 27. Cf. Patricia Crone, Pre-​Industrial Societies (Oxford: Blackwell: 1989), 51–​52. 28. Cf. Dean Philip Bell, Sacred Communities: Jewish and Christian Identities in Fifteenth-​ Century Germany (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2001), esp. 83–​85 and 120–​125. 29. An exception is the expulsion of Jews from Hungary by King Louis I (1342–​1382) for a brief period. 30. Daniel Soukup, “The Alleged Conversion of the Olomouc Rabbi Moses in 1425: Contribution to the Host Desecration Legends in Medieval Literature,” Judaica Bohemiae 48 (2013): 5–​38. 31. See Germania Judaica, vol. 3, part 1, edited by Arye Maimon and Yacov Guggenheim (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987), 162. 32. See ibid., 758, 1059, 1230. 33. Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” 302. 34. Héber kútforrások Magyarország és a magyarországi zsidóság történetéhez a kezdetektől 1686-​ig [Hebrew sources relating to the history of Hungary and Hungarian Jewry in the Middle Ages from the beginnings to 1686], edited by Shlomo J. Spitzer, and Géza Komoróczy, and Andrea Strbik (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Judaisztikai Kutatócsoport–​Osiris, 2003), 252–​253. 35. Not much is known about this event besides a short remark in a fourteenth-​century chronicle (and much less reliable information in later chronicles), see Sámuel Kohn, A zsidók története Magyarországon [A history of the Jews in Hungary] (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1884), 132–​136. The date of the event is also unclear; 1360 is likely, because there are no documents about Jews in Hungary between 1360 and 1364. 36. See Tamás Visi, Words of Power: Studies in Rabbinical Authority and Literature in Medieval Moravia, Judaica Olomucensia 6 (Olomouc: Palacky University Press, 2015), 25–​26. 37. Visi, Words of Power, 27–​29. 38. Visi, Words of Power, 46–​48. 39. See also Germania Judaica, vol. 3, part 3, 2079–​2099. 40. Visi, Words of Power, 41–​42. 41. For a brief overview of medieval Ashkenazi rabbinate, consult Germania Judaica, vol. 3, part 3, 2100–​2104. For rabbinical culture in medieval Ashkenaz, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013). 42. For rabbinical courts in medieval Ashkenaz, see Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History, 38–​70. 43. Israel J. Yuval, “Juden, Hussiten und Deutsche: Nach einer hebräischen Chronik,” in Juden in der christlichen Umwelt während des späten Mittelalters, edited by Alfred Haverkamp and Franz-​Josef Ziwes (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1992), 59–​102. 44. Visi, Words of Power, 9–​105. 45. Toni Oelsner, “The Place of the Jews in Economic History as Viewed by German Scholars: A Critical-​Comparative Analysis,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 7 (1962): 183–​212, see also Julie L. Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, vol. 1, Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 31–​75.

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    503 46. Toni Oelsner, “Wilhelm Roscher’s Theory of the Economic and Social Position of the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Critical Examination,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 12 (1958–​1959): 176–​195; see also Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, 61–​64, 87–​88, and 158–​216. For a brief overview, consult Flora Cassen, “Jews and Money: Time for a New Story?” Jewish Quarterly Review 110 (2020): 372–​382. 47. See Michael Toch, “Jews and Commerce: Modern Fancies and Medieval Realities,” in Il ruolo economico delle minoranze in Europa. Secc. XIII–​XVIII (Atti della XXXI Settimana di Studi Istituto Francesco Datini, Prato), edited by Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 2000), 43–​58. 48. See Toch, The Economic History, 177–​193. 49. Toch, The Economic History, 168–​174. 50. Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” 293; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 101–​103. 51. Toch, The Economic History, 218–​224. 52. See also Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 129–​133. Wine transported from Sopron (western Hungary) to Austria is mentioned in a fifteenth-​ century Hebrew source, see Spitzer, Komoróczy, Strbik, Héber kútforrások, 179. 53. Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” 293–​294. 54. Martha Keil, “Business Success and Tax Debts: Jewish Women in Late Medieval Austrian Towns,” Jewish Studies at the Central European University 2 (2002): 103–​123. 55. See Michael Toch, “Economic Activities of German Jews in the Middle Ages,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Juden, edited by Michael Toch (München: Oldenbourg De Gruyter, 2008), 194–​196. 56. The data and analysis presented in this and the following paragraph are based on Roman Zaoral, “Financial Conditions in Early 15th-​Century Olomouc in the Light of the Jewish Register,” in Juden in mittelalterlichen Stadt/​Jews in the Medieval Town, edited by Eva Doležalová, Colloquia mediaevalia Pragensia 7 (Prague: Filosofia. 2015), 131–​137. 57. The following three paragraphs are based on Efraim E. Urbach, The Tosafists: Their History, Writings and Methods, 5th ed. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1986) (in Hebrew), Israel M. Ta Shma, “On the History of the Jews in Twelfth and Thirteenth-​Century Poland,” in Israel M. Ta Shma, Creativity and Tradition Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2007), 37–​69, and Visi, Words of Power. 58. Ta Shma, “On the History of the Jews,” 44–​48. 59. See also Joseph Dan, “Ashkenazi Hasidism and the Maimonidean Controversy,” in Jewish Mysticism, vol. 2 (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998), 193–​200. 60. Tamás Visi, “On the Peripheries of Ashkenaz: Medieval Jewish Philosophers in Normandy and in the Czech Lands from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century,” Habilitation Dissertation, Palacky University, Olomouc, 2012, 149–​155. 61. See Ondřej Bláha, Robert Dittmann, Karel Komárek, Daniel Polakovič, and Lenka Uličná, Kenaanské glosy ve středověkých hebrejských rukopisech s vazbou na české země [Kenaanic glosses in medieval Hebrew manuscript related to the Czech Lands] Judaica 16 (Prague: Academia, 2015). The Old Czech interpretation of some of the glosses has been challenged by Alexander Kulik, “Jews and the Language of Eastern Slavs,” Jewish Quarterly Review 104 (2014): 105–​143. 62. Lenka Uličná, “Towards the Everyday Life of Jews and Christians as Presented in the So-​ called Kenaanic Glosses,” in Doležalová, Juden in mittelalterlichen Stadt, 125–​129.

504   Tamás Visi 63. Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” 299. 64. Visi, “Prolegomena,” 236. 65. Visi, Words of Power, 29–​38. 66. For these biographies, consult Germania Judaica, vol. 3. 67. Tamás Visi, “The Emergence of Philosophy in Ashkenazic Contexts: The Case of Czech Lands in the Early Fifteenth Century,” Jahrbuch des Simon-​Dubnow-​Instituts/​Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 8 (2009): 213–​243. 68. Note, however, that Berend’s statement that medieval Jews called Christians “star-​ worshipers” is erroneous (cf. Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” 300, and Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 231). As is well known, the phrase “star-​worshipers” was inserted into medieval (and earlier) Hebrew texts by early modern censors, whose purpose was to disassociate these texts from Christianity (since Christians were clearly not star-​worshipers); see William Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books (New York: The Knickerbocker Press. 1899), 77–​89. 69. Tamás Visi, “Jewish Physicians in Late Medieval Ashkenaz,” Social History of Medicine 32 (2019): 678–​683. 70. See Berend “Northeastern Europe,” 298–​299. 71. See Germania Judaica, vol. 3, part 1, 180; Visi, “The Emergence of Philosophy,” 230; Abraham David, “R. Itzhak Isaac Tirna and His Polemical Tract Answer to the Christians: Preliminary Clarification,” in Ta Shma, Studies in Judaica in Memory of Israel M. Ta-​Shma, edited by Avraham (Rami) Reiner et al., vol. 1. (Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press, 2011), 257–​280 (in Hebrew). 72. Israel M. Ta Shma, Knesset Mehqarim [Collected studies], vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2004), 345–​370. 73. Toch, The Economic History, 167 and 173. 74. Soukup, “The Alleged Conversion.” 75. Berend, “Northeastern Europe,” 300. 76. See Norman Roth, “Conversion to Judaism,” in Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, edited by Norman Roth (London: Routledge, 2003), 201. 77. Ferenc Dávid, A soproni ó-​zsinagóga [The old synagogue of Sopron], A magyarországi zsidó hitközségek monográfiái, 8 (Budapest: MIOK, 1979). János Gömöri, “A soproni középkori zsinagóga régészeti kutatása” [Archaeological research of the medieval synagogue of Sopron], Soproni Szemle 33 (1979): 222–​242; despite its title, the latter study focuses on the ritual bath. 78. See Szende “Traders, Court Jews,” 136.

Further Reading Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–​c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Berend, Nora. “Northeastern Europe.” In The Cambridge History of Judaism, edited by Robert Chazan, vol. 6, 282–​304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Germania Judaica. Vol. 1. Edited by I. Elbogen, A. Freimann, and H. Tykocinski. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1963. Germania Judaica. Vol. 2. Edited by Zvi Avneri. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1968.

Jews in Medieval Central Europe    505 Germania Judaica. Vol. 3. Part 1. Edited by Arye Maimon and Yacov Guggenheim. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987. Germania Judaica. Vol. 3. Part 2. Edited by Arye Maimon, Mordechai Breuer, and Yacov Guggenheim. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995. Germania Judaica. Vol. 3. Part 3. Edited by Arye Maimon, Mordechai Breuer, and Yacov Guggenheim. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 2003. Polonsky, Anthony. The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume 1: 1350 to 1881. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009. Teufel, Helmut, Pavel Kocman, and Milan Řepa. Avigdor, Benesch, Gitl: Juden in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien im Mittelalter. Brno; Prague; Essen: Klartext-​Verlag, 2016. Toch, Michael. The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval 56. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Weinryb, Bernard D. The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973.

Chapter 21

Monasticism i n Me di eva l Central E u rope ( c. 800– c ​ . 15 50) Marie-​M adeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi

Monks, friars, and nuns contributed significantly to shaping the face of medieval Central Europe.* They had a deep, durable impact on the religiosity of the region. The evangelizers, the first bishops, and the local princes’ advisors in ecclesiastical matters were often monks, as were several local figures canonized during the Middle Ages. Furthermore, they played a major role in the cultural development of the region, especially through spreading writing and notarial activities, in local historiography, and in the development of Romanesque and Gothic art. Like cathedrals and some collegiate churches, a number of medieval abbeys and friaries are among the most visited historical sites of the region. Monastic life took root in Central Europe early on. The main orders established in Latin Christendom—​ whether they were eremitic, Benedictine, canonical, hospitaller, or mendicant—​also settled in Central Europe. In addition, Orthodox (Basilian) monasteries are recorded. Central Europe also saw the creation of new orders, some of which still have establishments across the world. Monks’ and friars’ communities were influential at royal courts and among the aristocracy and attracted many donations until the Lutheran Reformation, except in Hussite Bohemia. The monastic history of medieval Central Europe, the object of research (first of all by the monks themselves) for a long time, was then set aside during the communist period, and has gone through a period of deep renewal in the past three decades. Numerous archival documents have been found and edited. Among others, newly explored topics range from institutional aspects to geographic and sociological approaches. They include economic analysis, as well as cultural, intellectual, and spiritual issues.

508    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi The lack of written, archaeological, and artistic sources, however, strongly reduces research opportunities. Written evidence in medieval Central Europe, especially Hungary and Poland, has survived to a considerably lesser extent than in western and southern European countries partly because of more limited production, but most of all because of waves of large-​scale destruction (the Hussite wars, the Ottoman occupation, the Reformation, and the civil wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and World War II). Missing narrative sources and scarce archival records make it difficult to write the history of religious institutions. Central European research, however, uses archaeological and art historical data to a greater extent than in western countries, which helps to fill in the blanks to some extent. The identities of the members of religious communities, their social background, culture, and spirituality are little known. The surviving archival material mostly sheds light on the economic and jurisdictional aspects of these communities. An additional obstacle to knowledge is the vagueness of the vocabulary used in the documentation. Frequently, one cannot even identify the order mentioned in the text. This chapter begins with preliminary comments about the beginnings of monasticism in Central Europe. Then, in order to provide a comprehensive overview, we present each order separately, exploring the variety of “life project(s)” (propositum vitae) they adopted and the various ways in which each order adapted to the region.

The Beginnings of (Latin) Monasticism in Central Europe Latin-​rite monasticism in Central Europe began with the conversion of the princes who ruled the region around the same time as the first bishoprics were established. Monks were among the first missionaries (evangelizers) of the region (such as Bruno of Querfurt) and among the first bishops (which include Dietmar, the first bishop of Prague, Radim Gaudentius, the first archbishop of Gniezno, Aseric/​Astric, the first archbishop of Kalocsa, Gerhard the first bishop of Cenad, and Maurus, the first bishop of Hungarian origin, in Pécs).1 At the beginning of the eleventh century, hermits arrived in Central Europe, like Gunther of Niederaltaich, who lived in a hermitage in Bakonybél (Hungary), and Zoerard (canonized in 1083) and his disciple Benedict, who lived on Mount Zobor (Slovakia). The oldest Benedictine monasteries seem to have been established in the Czech lands: first in Prague (St. George’s Benedictine nunnery in 968) and nearby at Břevnov (in 992), followed by Ostrov (c. 1000) and Sázava (c. 1032). At the end of the twelfth century, Bohemia and Moravia had at least fifteen male Benedictine communities, mainly princely monastic foundations.2 Hungary and Poland followed a roughly similar pattern. Pannonhalma Archabbey, still active today, owes its fame to the fact that it is the oldest monastery founded in Hungary (before 997). Four more abbeys were established

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     509 by King St. Stephen: Bakonybél (c. 1019), Pécsvárad (c. 1015), Zalavár (c. 1019), and Zobor (in the 1010s). The prevalence of royal and aristocratic monastic patronage in this kingdom led to the foundation of one hundred Benedictine communities by c. 1200, a significant number.3 Poland welcomed its first Benedictine monasteries at the turn of the second millennium, possibly in Międzyrzecz (male) and Poznań (female), but we lose track of them after the 1030s. The next foundations, mostly driven by the Piast princes, led to a total of eleven Benedictine male communities being established by 1200. Several remain prestigious today, particularly Tyniec (founded c. 1044), Mogilno (c. 1050), and Lubiń (c. 1076, again c. 1137).4 The development of Latin monasticism in Central Europe was characterized by the strong involvement of princes and their families (members of the Přemysl, Piast, and Arpadian dynasties) in the foundation, endowment, and material support of the monasteries. In contrast, bishops played a rather marginal role, although there are examples of cofoundations with princes. Aristocrats began to found monasteries only from the mid-​eleventh century in Hungary and from the mid-​twelfth century in Bohemia and Poland. Their involvement in the densification of the monastic network increased from then on, in parallel with the growing importance of monastic foundations in the funeral function.5 Another characteristic is the strong influence of German monasticism, particularly Bavarian, Lotharingian, and Austrian. In the late tenth and eleventh centuries, monks and nuns came mostly from these regions, even though an Italian trend is also visible.

Orthodox (Basilian) Monasticism In medieval Central Europe, the line between Latin and Oriental monasticism remained blurry for a long time. Based on the Greek names of monks mentioned in twelfth-​ century sources, several monasteries later considered Benedictine could in reality have derived from communities who originally used the Slavonic liturgy (Sázava up to 1097, maybe Visegrád). Truly Orthodox male and female monasteries existed in the Middle Ages in Hungary and Poland.6 The southeastern part of the Carpathian Basin was first evangelized by Byzantine clerics in the second half of the tenth century. King Stephen I then established the Basilian nunnery of Veszprémvölgy. Three Orthodox monasteries were founded after 1046 by Andrew I—​who lived for a while in Kievan Rus’—​in Visegrád (where the Basilian monks of Sázava found asylum after 1097), Tihany-​Oroszkő, and Zebegény (with Russian monks). In the second half of the eleventh century at the latest, the Greek monastery of Sremska Mitrovica was also established, although this foundation was connected erroneously to King Stephen I. During the thirteenth century, the oriental male and female communities slowly disappeared, either abandoned or handed over to Latin orders.

510    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi Within the borders of Poland, numerous Orthodox monasteries appeared during the progressive expansion to the East after the annexation of Red Ruthenia (from 1340), and moreover after the union with Lithuania in 1386. They played a significant role in pastoral care and cultural life until they experienced a period of crisis in the mid-​ fifteenth century. A period of renewal for Orthodox monasteries in Hungary began in the second half of the fourteenth century, when Serbian refugees, as well as Wallachian transhumant shepherds, immigrated from the Balkans. Thirteen monasteries, although established and supported by the local Orthodox elite, were small, and some of them had an ephemeral existence. The oldest were built in the Hațeg region (Romania), and later ones in the Transylvanian Ore Mountains, around Cluj, in Maramureș, and near Mukacheve. In the late fifteenth century, a third group of Orthodox monasteries was founded in the Temesköz (later called the Banat) and Srem (Srijem, Szerémség) regions by Serbian refugees coming from the lands south of the Danube. The Hungarian landowning lords alternated between tolerance of the Orthodox and Catholic missionary projects up to the Union of Florence (1439). At that point they stopped hindering the creation of new Orthodox monasteries and most of the Observant Franciscan friaries were withdrawn from the areas mainly inhabited by Orthodox people. Since some of the Orthodox elite of Transylvania received the ideas of the Reformation favorably, several of the medieval Basilian monasteries were closed in the second half of the sixteenth century. Only those established in the Banat and Srem survived. The so-​called Emmaus monastery, dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint Jerome, is a peculiar case. It was founded in a suburb of Prague by the King Charles IV of Bohemia in 1347 and consecrated in 1372. Later it sent monks to monasteries in Oleśnica (c. 1370) and Cracow (c. 1390). Populated by monks coming from Krk Island in Croatia, the Emmaus monastery initially followed the Benedictine rule and the Ambrosian rite, but in the Slavonic language with the authorization of the pope. This foundation reflected the universal ecumenical vision of its imperial founder.7

Benedictines and Cistercians The number of Benedictine monasteries increased significantly in Central Europe during the twelfth century, then grew slowly in the following century.8 Monasteries were founded not only by kings and dukes, but also by aristocrats—​families or single individuals who sometimes made them their burial place—​and more rarely by bishops. Founders and benefactors granted them landed estates, toll incomes, and salt. By the second half of the thirteenth century, they were managing their properties like great secular landlords: estates were leased out, often to other monastic institutions, and feudal taxes were collected in cash. Yet the founders and their heirs considered them more or less as extensions of their own possessions and applied the

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     511 archaic system of the monasterium proprium (estimated at over 80% in 1200) under the official (Gregorian) name of ius patronatus. Despite papal attempts (especially by Honorius III in 1225) to put an end to this situation, the patroni not only expected monks to say prayers and masses for their souls as donors or protectors, but also drew on the monasteries’ resources for their own use. The Benedictines reached their maximum development around the middle of the thirteenth century. The first Mongol invasion (1241–​1242) destroyed about one-​ fifth of the Hungarian monasteries, and many of them never recovered. Even though Benedictine monasteries still dominated the monastic network in the mid-​fourteenth century, keeping their unique privileges (e.g., Pannonhalma remained under the direct jurisdiction of the pope), and sometimes their cultural role as scriptoria or places of authentication (loca credibilia), from that time on Benedictine monasticism suffered clear disaffection. This was partly due to a rivalry with the Cistercians and mendicant friars, to whom many abandoned Benedictine buildings were transferred, but also to internal problems. In Bohemia, the Benedictines were struck by the Hussite movement at the beginning of the fifteenth century. They also had difficulty implementing the internal reform initiated by the Summi magistri bull. Apart from a few monasteries where rigorous changes were imposed, e.g., in Łysa Góra (Poland), many communities became empty shells in the late Middle Ages. The Cistercians settled in Central Europe from the 1140s onward, first in Cikádor (Hungary), Sedlec (Bohemia), and Brzeźnica-​Jędrzejów (Poland),9 establishing new communities up until the late thirteenth century.10 They competed with the Benedictines in Poland (twenty-​four male communities c. 1350 for six Benedictine ones at this date) and in Bohemia (fifteen monasteries for sixteen Benedictine establishments, including Silesia), but were less numerous in Hungary (sixteen Cistercian communities for ninety-​seven Benedictine ones), even though the order received strong royal support.11 Princes played an important role in their development along with bishops and the nobility, founding the largest monasteries in Hungary (Pilis, Egres, Zirc, Szentgotthárd). In Bohemia, the monastery of Zbraslav, founded by King Wenceslaus II, maintained strong links with the Přemysl court, as did Lubiąż and Henryków (in Silesia) with the local Piast dynasty.12 King Béla III (1172–​1196) gave a significant French coloration to the Hungarian Cistercian monasteries. These were often in contact with Clairvaux and other Burgundian abbeys in a period where diplomatic and matrimonial bonds united the Árpádians and Capetians. This trend lasted until the 1230s and had a great artistic impact: the Gothic style first appeared in Hungary in the Cistercian abbeys built in the 1180s and 1190s (in Pilis, for example).13 In Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland, nobles and aristocrats initiated most of the Cistercian foundations, apparently inviting Bernard of Clairvaux to come to Poland. The Bohemian, Silesian, and Pomeranian monasteries, populated by monks coming from the German lands, were generally affiliated to Morimond, which also sent monks to the first Polish monasteries. The Cistercians remained popular in Hungary and Poland at least until the middle of the thirteenth century and in Bohemia until the late fourteenth century.14

512    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi

The Canons Regular The Premonstratensians, often referred to as Norbertines in Central Europe, came to Hungary in the 1130s and to Bohemia in the 1140s (e.g., Strahov). They settled in Poland in the 1160s, especially in Lesser Poland and in Silesia—​some of them were given Benedictine monasteries as in Bohemia.15 Their expansion reached a peak at the end of the thirteenth century, when they had eight monasteries in Bohemia and Moravia (including three nunneries), thirty-​three in Hungary (including two nunneries), and fifteen in Poland (among which were ten nunneries). Princes, bishops, and aristocrats were their main supporters. They welcomed the sons of the nobility such as Hroznata, founder and monk in Teplá, regarded as a saint. Some Hungarian Premonstratensian monasteries were places of authentication. They were active in the late Middle Ages and three of them were even re-​established after the Ottoman occupation.16 The Canons of St. Augustine established their first communities in Poland c. 1130 to 1155. They were later invited to the Czech lands by the bishop of Prague, John IV of Dražice, founder of Roudnice (1333). This monastery became a major center of spiritual life and ecclesiastical reform, spreading influence throughout Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria until the end of the fourteenth century. In 1398, the archbishop of Prague imposed the customs of Roudnice on all the houses of the Prague province.17 In Hungary, most of the houses of the Augustinian Canons belonged to the branch of the Surpliced Regular Canons. They gained great popularity in Poland in the fifteenth century following the foundation of the Cracow-​Kazimierz chapter in 1405. A small monastery of the Brothers of Common Life, founded in Chełmno (Poland) in 1473, existed for a few decades.18 The Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre settled mostly in Poland. They oversaw the running of thirty priories, parishes, and hospitals, and formed the Congregation of Miechów. Founded in 1163, this first and prominent establishment became the center of the order in the fifteenth century.19 They had also some houses in Hungary (Glogovnica and Lendak), all established under royal or ducal patronage. Only a few monasteries had the order of the Canons Regular of the Penance of the Blessed Martyrs—​called Cyriacs in Bohemia and “Marki” in Poland—​which appeared there in the second half of the thirteenth century.20 At least two canon or semicanon orders originated in the area: the Canons Regular of the Red Star Cross in Bohemia (see later) and the Canons of St. Stephen the King Hospital (Stephenites) in Hungary. The latter, founded in the mid-​twelfth century by King Géza II from the hospital of Szentkirály near Esztergom, was confirmed by the pope in 1187. It had settlements in the Holy Land and ran three or four hospitals in the kingdom of Hungary, but is no longer mentioned after 1439. The house of Szentkirály itself seems to have been abandoned even earlier, in the mid-​fourteenth century.

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     513

Eremitic and Semieremitic Orders and Communities The Carthusians remained in the background of the monastic landscape of medieval Central Europe. They arrived rather late; the first foundation in Hungary (Ercsi) dates to 1238 and in Bohemia to 1342. Only four Carthusian establishments are mentioned in Hungary, seven in Bohemia including Silesia, three in Western Pomerania, one in the March of Brandenburg, and one in the state of the Teutonic Order (then in Poland).21 These foundations were supported by the kings, the nobility, and sometimes bishops (of Prague). Carthusians wrote two famous Hungarian codices (Sermones dominicales and the Érdy Codex). The Williamites (Guillemites) had a handful of hermitages in Bohemia, Hungary, and western Pomerania in the mid-​thirteenth century, most of which were forced to merge with the Augustinian Hermits in 1256 by papal decision, unlike the houses at the German-​French border. In contrast, eremitism experienced great success in Hungary and Poland (including Silesia) through a locally founded order, the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit (the Paulines).22 This order arose the merger of a number of small independent eremitic communities documented in Hungary (in the Bakony Hills, near Pécs and Dubica, and in the Bükk Hills) from the 1220s onward. The order’s sixteenth-​century tradition connects the beginnings of the Paulines to the Pilis Hills, where a canon of Esztergom, Eusebius, allegedly organized dispersed hermitages into a religious order. In fact, the structuring and unification process of this order happened in various stages. In 1308–​ 1309, Papal Legate Gentilis of Montefiore acknowledged the existence of the Pilis community and gave the (future) provincial chapter the right to write Constitutions. The center of the new order was soon moved to St. Lawrence’s monastery near Buda, which became an important place of pilgrimage after King Louis I acquired the relics of Saint Paul the Hermit from Venice in 1381. The supporters of the order were members of the lower nobility, followed by the king, some bishops, and magnates. From the mid-​ fourteenth century, the Paulines began receiving large donations and were involved in pastoral care.23 The economy of the order also changed; the number of properties producing cash income—​vineyards, mills, and urban houses—​increased. Individuals from various social backgrounds also donated occasional and perpetual alms.24 By the end of the Middle Ages, the Pauline order was the most popular in Hungary along with the Observant Franciscans. It had around seventy houses in the mid-​fifteenth century, albeit rather small—​reminiscent of the eremitic tradition of their origin. The Paulines spread beyond the Hungarian borders into Poland (nine monasteries, including the famous Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, founded by Duke Ladislaus of Opole before 1382), Silesia (two), Austria (two), and Swabia (approximately fifteen).

514    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi

The Military and Hospitaller Orders As with the regular canons, the vagueness of sources makes it difficult to distinguish the military and hospitaller orders from each other, and sometimes even from other types of order. The term Cruciferi, common in Hungarian texts, has long been interpreted as designating the Hospitallers of St. John, but without evidence. Most of these orders settled in Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland soon after the middle of the twelfth century, and foundations continued until the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the partial recapture of the Holy Land spurred them to become military rather than charitable orders. Strongly supported by princes for clear politicostrategic reasons and also by the aristocracy, they continued to develop until the mid-​to late thirteenth century. The Knights Templar (up to 1312) and the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem (Johannites) were the most numerous. The Templars had about fifty commanderies throughout the region, in Bohemia (sixteen houses in 1312; the center was St. Lawrence in Prague), in the Polish lands (about twenty-​nine houses, mainly in Silesia, but also in Pomerania and Brandenburg),25 and in Hungary (twelve houses in Transdanubia and Slavonia). Endowed by kings and aristocrats with extended landed estates, they were dedicated to financing the defensive war in the Holy Land. The Templars who fought against the Mongol, Batu Khan, on the side of Duke Henry the Pious (at Legnickie Pole) and King Béla IV (at Muhi) in April 1241 died on the battlefield. After the dissolution of their order (1312), the Templars joined the Johannites and most of their houses were transferred to them. The Hospitallers had at least thirty houses in Poland, Silesia, and Pomerania, twenty in Bohemia and Moravia (the oldest in Prague, founded c. 1159), and about eighteen in Hungary (first in Esztergom and Székesfehérvár), mostly located in Slavonia. Vrana, near the Dalmatian coast, was the Hungarian center of the order until the Ottoman conquest.26 The Teutonic Knights established a handful of houses in Bohemia at the turn of the twelfth century.27 In 1211, in Hungary, King Andrew II called on them to protect the southeastern border of the kingdom (Burzenland) from the Cumans. The king’s army expelled them in 1225, however, as they were considered to have overstepped their initial privileges by building castles and minting coins without royal permission.28 In the 1420s, King Sigismund of Luxemburg initiated a second attempt to strengthen the southern defensive system of the kingdom of Hungary, this time in the Banat of Severin. This attempt also failed, probably for lack of financing and supply. In 1226, Duke Conrad of Mazovia invited the Teutonic Order to Poland to help with the submission of the pagan Prussians. He had previously asked the Order of Calatrava (established in Tyśmienica) for help with this problem.29 The Order of the Knights of Christ, the so-​called Brothers of Dobrzyń, were already established in the same area.30 In 1226, the Teutonic Knights were awarded land in Chełmno and absorbed in 1237 some of the Brothers of Dobrzyń, and the Livonian Order of the Brothers of the Sword as well (founded in 1202 to convert the inhabitants of modern-​day Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). By the mid-​thirteenth

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     515 century the Teutonic Knights had conquered Prussia and established a strong religious state there. After they occupied Eastern Pomerania in 1308, they built a fortified castle monastery in Malbork and the head of the order moved there.31 Bohemia saw the creation of a specific semimilitary order of canons that began as a Hospitaller confraternity: the Knights (or Canons) of the Cross with the Red Star. It was founded by Princess Agnes of Bohemia in several stages starting in 1233 in Prague on the model of the Hospitallers, and expanded in Bohemia and in Poland (Silesia, Cujavia) Although it later suffered from Hussite depredations in the 1420s, it recovered and is still in operation today.32 The Hospital Order of St. Anthony (Antonines) developed in Central Europe between the mid-​thirteenth and mid-​fourteenth century, although only to a modest extent. They only had a handful of houses in each country, mainly in towns (Bratislava, Brzeg in Silesia, Frombork in Warmia). The Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit were of greater importance. Their first house was established in Poland in 1220 (in Prudnik-​Cracow) and by the end of the fourteenth century they had spread to Hungary and Silesia.33

The Mendicant Orders Despite the relatively limited urbanization in the region, the Mendicant orders (usually associated with towns and cities) experienced great success in Central Europe, especially the Friars Minor and the Preachers, who arrived as early as the 1220s. Their development took place in roughly two waves of foundations. First, in the second and third quarters of the thirteenth century (in the context of the reconstruction that followed the Mongol invasion of 1241 in Hungary and Poland), mostly in towns, after which they were joined by the Augustinian friars and the Carmelites, last to arrive in the late 1340s. A second wave of foundations occurred from the late fourteenth century, mainly after the middle of the fifteenth century, in the context of the Observant reform. Around 1525, the number of mendicant friaries was nearly four hundred houses—​double the number of houses that had existed in 1300—​183 were in the Kingdom of Hungary and made up over half of all Hungarian religious houses (376), 112 were in Poland, and 76 in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.34 Apart from uninhabited zones, the Mendicant network covered the whole region. Friaries were mainly established in towns, where they were sometimes more numerous than parish churches, notably in the largest cities (Prague, Cracow, Buda and Pest, Wrocław, Oradea, and others), but the Franciscans (especially the Observants), and Augustinian friars also established communities in small towns and rural areas. In Hungary and Poland their success can be linked to their position in the “frontier” lands of Latin Christendom, which opened opportunities for missions of conversion toward the East. Another factor may have been the presence in Central Europe, a region where the (papal) Inquisition was not very active, of Waldensian heretics until the beginning of the fifteenth century.

516    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi The Franciscans were by far the most numerous. In Hungary, they had established nearly 110 friaries by 1500; about 70 belonged to the Observant branch, with about 1,700 friars;35 the Conventuals had at most forty houses, with generally smaller communities of friars. There were about thirty Franciscan male friaries in Bohemia in the late fifteenth century, housing generally larger communities than those in Hungary and Poland.36 The Franciscans settled in Bohemia as early as 1232 (in Prague), from where they went into Silesia (Wrocław) and Lesser Poland (Cracow). This led to the formation of the Bohemian-​Polish province in the 1230s. Hungary had its own Franciscan province from 1238, just after the foundation of the first permanent friary in Esztergom before 1235. In Greater Poland and Mazovia, the progress of the Franciscans was affected by the presence of the Dominicans, who had arrived first, supported by local bishops. They established a friary in Cracow in 1222 thanks to a canon related to Bishop Iwo, who became the first Polish Dominican known by name. By 1300, they had over eighteen houses in Poland and twelve in Silesia. Unlike the Franciscans, who were considered “German,” they were mostly Slavs. From Poland, the Preachers went on to Prague (1226). This led to the establishment of a common province in 1225, which split in 1301. At this date Bohemia (with Silesia) had twenty-​six Dominican friaries. The Dominicans arrived in the Hungarian kingdom as early as 1221, led by Nicolaus Hungarus, formerly a professor at the university of Bologna. The province of Hungary was created simultaneously. Further foundations followed, mostly in Western Hungary (in Székesfehérvár and Esztergom by 1231), and after the Mongol invasion, with the support of the royal family. By 1300 there were twenty-​five houses in the Hungarian province. Nevertheless, the Dominicans began to lose their influence at the Hungarian royal court from the 1260s onward. The implementation of missionary projects, e.g., converting the Cumans (originally a steppic pagan people), initially organized from the friary of Bistrița, and the spiritual care of the royal family were transferred to the Franciscans. This reversal is traditionally attributed to the dissatisfaction of King Béla IV, whose daughter Margaret (who was eventually canonized) refused to marry Otakar II in order to enter the Dominican nunnery of Margaret Island (now in Budapest). The friary in Buda, head of the Hungarian Dominican province, hosted the general chapter of the order in 1254. A second wave of foundations took place after the mid-​fifteenth century with the diffusion of the Observant reform. Around 1500, the Dominican province of Hungary included nearly forty establishments populated by 700 to 800 religious. Greatly affected by the Reformation, the order was abolished in 1568 because of a lack of friars. The Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine (the Augustinian Friars) came from Germany and experienced limited expansion in Central Europe.37 They first settled in Hungary, invited by King Béla IV in the 1250s. Thanks to the Árpádian kings, then King Louis I, and aristocrats and bishops, the number of friaries increased up to the fourteenth century. The province of Hungary, created in 1278, comprised more than thirty friaries in the late Middle Ages. The general chapter met in Esztergom in 1378. There were fewer Augustinian friaries in Bohemia and Poland. Prague welcomed the first Bohemian friary in 1263, but most of the foundations date from the fourteenth century and are linked to the patronage of Bishop John of Neumarkt. The fifteen or so Augustinian friaries of the Bohemian kingdom (without Silesia) still belonged to the

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     517 province of Lower Germany in the Late Middle Ages. Arriving in Pomerania and Silesia in the late thirteenth century, the Augustinian Friars established communities in Poland (Cracow and Wrocław) in the mid-​fourteenth century. The Mazovian Friars were involved in the pastoral and missionary activity taking place in Russia and Lithuania. The smaller communities established up to the middle of the fifteenth century in Lesser Poland, Lithuania, and Ruthenia belonged first to the German province, then (from 1299) to the Saxon and Bavarian provinces. The Polish Augustinian province was only created in 1547 in the context of the Reformation. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century the order faced recruitment problems in the whole region. The Carmelites settled in Central Europe from the mid-​fourteenth century: in Bohemia (Prague, 1347), followed by Hungary (Buda and Pécs, 1372), in the Teutonic state at the end of the fourteenth century (Gdańsk), in Silesia (Strzegom), and Poland (Cracow, Bydgoszcz and Poznań).38 A common province, called the Bohemian province, was established in 1411, but Hussite depredations led to the return of surviving houses to the province of Upper Germany (1440) and eventually to the restoration of a Polish-​Czech province (1462). Generally established in major towns and populated by German (or German-​speaking) friars, Carmelite friaries remained marginal in the monastic landscape of the region. There was a total of fourteen friaries: six in Poland, four in Hungary, three in Bohemia, and one in Silesia. A friary of Servites was built in the New Town of Prague in 1360 by King and Emperor Charles IV, whose confessor was a member of the order. Some distinctive features have emerged as scholars have recently begun to explore the social influence of the Mendicants, the economic management of their friaries, and their cultural and intellectual role.39 The Mendicants in Central Europe benefited from the support of kings, princes, bishops, and lay lords, all of whom were involved in founding and endowing mendicant establishments. Many of these benefactors belonged to the Mendicants’ spiritual confraternities. The urban bourgeoisie, individually or collectively, took longer to become patrons of the friars, especially in Hungary. Founders and their heirs maintained a right of patronage over Mendicant friaries that was not much different from the one that applied to Benedictine monasteries. Mendicant friaries had rather small landed estates and collected alms, but some also pursued craft industries, which are not noted in written sources. Archaeological investigations have revealed information about these activities40. The material dependence of the friars on their patrons increased in the fifteenth century with the development of Franciscan Observance, preserved to this day in the visual references on tombstones, keystones, and epigraphic inscriptions. Although texts only provide first names, a study of the social recruitment of the Observant Franciscans confirms the attraction of this mendicant propositum among the nobility in the fifteenth century. The sons of bourgeois families were more willing to enter the friaries of the Conventual Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Carmelites. In Central Europe, however, loyalty to the local parish church prevailed in the religious practices of most of the laity until the mid-​fifteenth century. Apart from the wills of nobles and princes, mendicant friaries were in third place in gifts made to the Church, following parishes and charitable establishments. The Dominicans, and to a lesser extent the Augustinian friars, seem to have played a prominent intellectual role. They

518    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi left behind important homiletic writings such as the collections of sermons written by Peregrinus of Opole. The substantial incomes of their friaries, endowed with large landed estates, allowed them to send a large number of friars to Italian universities. This facilitated the consolidation of the studium generale in Cracow in the late fourteenth century, followed by that of the Buda friary in 1485, which contributed to the foundation of a short-​lived university there.

Monastic Reforms in the Late Middle Ages: The Observants Long neglected by historians, the attempts of monks and friars to reform their orders were imposed from the outside (from the papacy, the heads of the orders, and kings), but also stemmed from local impulses. The Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries of Hungary and Poland were impacted by two waves of reform measures, the first in the mid-​fourteenth century and the second around 1500. In the wake of the Summi magistri bull (1336), Siegfried, abbot of Hronský Beňadik, tried in vain to re-​establish the Benedictine congregation of Hungary and recover its lost monasteries and their estates. Only four chapters are mentioned in the new Benedictine province of Hungary in the fourteenth century. In Poland, Henry, abbot of Tyniec, head of the province of the Polish and Silesian Benedictines, followed by another abbot of Tyniec in the 1390s, began reforming the abbeys of Lesser Poland with the help of the bishop of Cracow. They established contacts with Cluny, considered at that time to be Tyniec’s motherhouse. In the 1420s, the abbot of Łysiec, Michael Drozdek, sent Adalbert Calvus to Cluny, Melk, and Monte Cassino, ordering him to write down the customs they observed there. Based on their reports, consuetudines were drawn up in Łysiec and imposed on other Polish Benedictine monasteries (Lubiń), with the support of King Ladislaus Jagiellon—​but with no lasting results. Around 1400, monks from Tyniec participated in the reform of the abbey of Subiaco and in 1418, thanks to the initiative of Bishop Andrew Laskaris of Poznań, the monks from the reformed Subiaco set out to reform the abbey of Lubiń. They stopped off at Melk, where they carried out the reform.41 King Sigismund I (1387–​1437) named many gubernatores (instead of abbots) to head the Benedictine monasteries of Hungary. Sigismund used the monastic incomes for other purposes, such as defending the southern borders of the kingdom against the Ottomans. Then, from the 1460s onward, King Matthias Corvinus and his successor, Wladislaus II (King of Bohemia, 1471–​1516, King of Hungary and Croatia 1490–​1516), handed over some Benedictine monasteries to the Mendicants or the Paulines and incorporated others into bishoprics. Those that remained, though underpopulated, rivaled the richest landlords of the kingdom in wealth. Matthew of Tolna, abbot of Pannonhalma (1500–​1535), reformed his monastery by acquiring liturgical books and encouraging university studies. He successfully sent monks to other abbeys to reform them (like Pécsvárad), and established a congregation of Hungarian abbeys, with

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     519 Pannonhalma at its head, as archabbey. Although it was swept away by the Ottoman occupation, the organization served as a model in the eighteenth century. The Cistercians of Central Europe had only distant relations with the general chapters and the head of the order from the fourteenth century onward. In Hungary, reform was first introduced at the behest of King Louis I and Siegfried, abbot of Rein (Styria), in the mid-​fourteenth century, although it had no lasting effect. King Matthias took contradictory initiatives; he invited entire Cistercian communities from Germany to revive seven abandoned monasteries in Hungary but transferred two priories to secular ecclesiastical institutions. In Poland, the Cistercian reform planned in the 1440s was never carried out. The Premonstratensian provost of Šáhy, Ferenc Fegyverneki, back from the general chapter of Prémontré in 1505, introduced new rules in his community. He was followed by the monasteries of northern and western Hungary, although the trend was soon halted by the Ottoman and civil wars in addition to the dissemination of Reformation ideas. The Mendicants’ Observant reform, investigated by scholars in recent years, reached Central Europe in varying degrees and various ways depending on the order and the country.42 It led to the most visible changes among the Friars Minor, in the form of the sub vicariis reform (submitted to a vicar), which took place mostly in Hungary. It was a double process of friary transfers and new creations in unequal proportions that also took place in Poland and Bohemia although following a rather different chronology.43 In Hungary, the process started as early as the 1370s in the context of the conquest and conversion projects of Louis I inside the Kingdom of Hungary and outside (in Bulgaria).44 Detached from the familia cismontana for over half a century (1458–​ 1502), the Observant vicariate of Hungary was founded in 1448 by splitting off from the vicariate of Bosnia, adopted the name of the Province of the Holy Savior (‘Salvatorian’ province) in 1517. Beyond the constant support of the papacy, the expansion of the Observant Franciscans in Hungary was mostly owed to royal intervention and the continuous help of powerful aristocratic and noble dynasties linked to the Hunyadi family. The collections of sermons written by Pelbart of Temesvár and Oswald of Laskó,45 two major intellectual figures of the Salvatorian province, circulated across Europe after they were printed in 1498, paving the way for the Tridentine Reform. In Bohemia and Poland, the so-​called Central European tour of John of Capistrano in the 1450s was the starting point for the Observant movement.46 The Observant Franciscans of Poland became known as Bernardines because their first friary, established in Cracow in 1454, was dedicated to Bernardino of Sienna. They had about thirty friaries in Poland (including Silesia) around 1500 and soon saw their own members reputated as saints after they died (though canonized much later): Simon of Lipnice (in 1482), John of Dukla (in 1484), and Ladislaus of Gielniów (in 1505).47 The Observant Franciscans of Bohemia, united with Poland and Austria in the same vicariate in 1452, devoted themselves to restoring Franciscanism after the Hussite revolution.48 Dominican Observance is less documented. In Hungary, the general governor, John of Hunyad (Hunyadi), supported some reformed Transylvanian friaries with an income from salt. Following the bull of Pope Sixtus IV in 1475, new friaries were also established in smaller towns. The large number of Dominican students abroad also facilitated the

520    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi reform. In Poland, starting from Silesia in the 1430s, the reform reached many friaries. It changed the Preachers’ way of life by encouraging the enclosure of the friars instead of itinerant predication and by allowing the communities to acquire landed estates without any restrictions. In contrast to the Franciscans and the Dominicans, the Augustinian Friars and Carmelites had little involvement in the reform movement, despite warnings from the Augustinian prior general and the support of the Hungarian king for reform in the late fifteenth century.

Female Monasticism and Semimonastic Ways of Living Compared to other parts of medieval Europe, Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland had few nunneries in the Middle Ages. Only some orders developed a female branch in the region, and no new female order was established there. The foundation of the unique female monastery of Augustinian Hermits took place in Prague under the patronage of Charles IV. Two of the fifteen Benedictine monasteries founded in Bohemia by 1200 housed nuns, as did five of the twenty Cistercian communities. In Hungary, female monasteries made up only 5 percent of all regular communities mentioned in the Middle Ages, the lowest rate after Bohemia (8 percent, with Silesia) and Poland (7 percent). Only in 1500 did the rate increase to 7 percent. Three phases of development of nunneries can be identified. In the period of early Christianization, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, a handful of Benedictine nunneries were established along with male communities. Among the oldest Benedictine monasteries of Central Europe, St. George of Prague was initially founded for nuns, and, according to a fourteenth-​century tradition, the Benedictine nunnery of Somlóvásárhely was founded by King St. Stephen, who also established the Greek nunnery of Veszprémvölgy. By 1001, the first female abbey of Poland had been established, probably in Poznań. The second phase began in the mid-​twelfth century, when the female branches of the reformed orders (Cistercians and Premonstratensians), followed by the Mendicant orders, arrived in Central Europe. There were ten Premonstratensians (Norbertine) nunneries in Poland, some of which housed dozens of nuns, notably in Imbramowice, Strzelno, and Cracow-​Zwierzyniec. In Hungary, eight Premonstratensian nunneries are mentioned during the Middle Ages, the first in 1235 in Transylvania, and then in Slavonia, western, and southern Hungary. The nunnery of Szeged, founded in 1399, was able to send nuns to two other places to open new nunneries. Cistercian nuns are mentioned at a handful of monasteries. Trzebnica, the foundation and resting place of Saint Hedwiga, and its branches in Greater Poland, Ołobok and Owińska, were incorporated into the Cistercian order. One monastery of the canonesses of St. Augustine and three houses of the Sisters of St. Mary Magdalene of the Penance are mentioned in Silesia. In Cracow, a female monastery functioned next to the monastery of the Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit. The Bridgettine Order

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     521 established houses in the Polish lands—​ in Gdańsk, Lublin, and Elbląg—​ from the 1390s. The Dominicans and Franciscans also founded nunneries, but to a lesser extent than in Western European countries, receiving only the support of kings and queens at that time.49 In Hungary, the first attested nunneries of the Poor Clares (or Damianites) and the Dominican Sisters date back to the 1240s. Three Dominican nunneries were founded there in the thirteenth century—​among them the nunnery on Margaret Island, which became famous after the death of Margaret of Hungary in 1270, although recent research has presented this house as an confraternal community. Due to a second period of foundation in the fifteenth century, there were a total of eighteen Poor Clare and Dominican nunneries around 1500. In Poland, six nunneries of the Poor Clares were established, including three in Silesia. The two oldest communities were established by local duchesses in Wrocław and Zawichost in the mid-​thirteenth century. The largest, in Stary Sącz, was founded by Saint Kinga, a Hungarian princess and duchess of Lesser Poland. In Poland (including Silesia) only three nunneries of Dominican Sisters were founded, and six in Bohemia. There was only one nunnery under the control of the Observant Franciscans, in Cracow. The endowment, material situation, security, and recruitment of Mendicant nunneries relied entirely on the goodwill of kings (or queens) and aristocrats. Following a well-​ known pattern, the female members of royal or noble lineages who intended to spend (or to end) their lives in a monastery were among the benefactors of nunneries in this second phase. One among many examples is the Benedictine monastery of Teplice, founded in the 1160s by Queen Judith, wife of the Bohemian King Ladislaus II. The third wave of foundations took place in the second half of the fifteenth century, particularly among the Mendicant orders, especially the Dominicans (seven foundations in Hungary). Beside royal and noble support, burghers were now involved in their foundation and material management, in the German towns of Transylvania, for instance. Some nunneries played an important cultural role; their members knew not only how to read but also how to write and paint. There is a lack of documentation about semimonastic ways of life, especially before the mid-​fifteenth century. As far as we know, it mainly concerned women, apart from the Beghards mentioned in Poland at the end of the thirteenth century. There are mentions of reclusae; one example comes from Hungary as early as the eleventh century (according to the Major Legend of King Stephen I) and later in the Teutonic State, in Kwidzyń (Dorothy of Montau, canonized in 1394). Beguines arrived in Bohemia and Poland in the second half of the thirteenth century and settled in the larger towns of Silesia, Lesser, and Greater Poland, Western Pomerania, and the Teutonic State. A recently edited account of the interrogations of sixteen “cowled nuns” (moniales capuciatae) by the Dominicans documents the internal structure, everyday life, and spirituality of the Beguines of Silesia on the eve of their dissolution. The number of members (who called themselves “sisters”) did not exceed twelve to fifteen women, headed by a superior (magistra), and divided into younger and older sisters like the communities of the Rhineland and Thuringia. They lived independently from the local clergy according to principles modeled on cloistered congregations. They took vows of obedience and

522    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi poverty, practiced manual work such as weaving, intellectual activities such as teaching and study, and practiced strict mortification (self-​denial and privation).50 In Hungary, small “open” female communities were usually referred to as beginae, although they had no formal contacts with the Beguines of Flanders and Brabant. The first known female communities go back to the 1270s. They lived mainly in royal or episcopal towns (Pest, Buda, Veszprém, and Esztergom) and most of their communities were dedicated to Saint Catherine. Even before the publication of the provisions of the Council of Vienna, which prescribed incorporating the Beguines into the Mendicant orders (1317), they had close relations with local Mendicant friaries, which is confirmed by their topographical proximity. The friars provided the “Beguines” with pastoral care, although they did not belong to the third order. From the end of the fifteenth century to the 1530s, many communities (twenty-​seven in Hungary) came under the control of the Observant Franciscans. The success of this way of life may have been facilitated by social factors such as the opportunity to maintain contacts with lay relatives, to keep control over the family wealth as well as to meet the increasing social needs of urban society and the growing number of war widows. The monastic network of medieval Central Europe was not as dense as in the West, and more recent. It was, however, diverse and in accordance with the social and cultural context of the region. The patterns of foundations and structural organization were modeled on those of Germany, Italy, and France, where most of the orders and the first monks originated. In this sense, monasticism contributed to the cultural “occidentalization” of Central Europe, even though the proximity of Orthodox Christianity added a specific nuance to the monastic landscape of Hungary. Monasticism here served as a meeting point between Latin and Oriental Christianity. Moreover, from the thirteenth century onward, Christianity in the region was mature enough to allow for the foundation of new monastic and mendicant orders. The common features of Central European monasticism were strengthened by interactions among the monks, regular canons, and friars of the area, who often belonged to the same regular districts and studied at the same universities. Nevertheless, each country had its own specificities. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Hussite movement put a stop to the activity of most of the monasteries and friaries in central Bohemia until the middle of the fifteenth century. The medieval monastic landscape of Hungary was first shaped mostly by the success of the Benedictines, then by the Paulines and the Mendicant orders, especially the Observant Franciscans, although it suffered through many episodes of destruction (the Mongol invasions and later the Hussite and the Ottoman wars). Poland is distinguished by the impressive continuity of its monastic establishments, some of which still exist today. Among areas where research remains to be carried out, there are at least three major controversial or little-​known aspects relating to monasticism in Central Europe: the role of the Cyrillo-​Methodian missions in the origins of Central European monasticism, the impact of the commendator system on the “decline” of the Benedictine monasteries at the end of the Middle Ages, and the connection between monastic life and the rapid spread of the Reformation in the region.

Figure 21.1.  The late medieval monastic network of East Central Europe. This map shows the most important monasteries in each kingdom, whether mentioned or not in the text (see codes in the legend that follows). Not all the represented institutions survived until the end of the Middle Ages. Mendicant friaries established on non-​Catholic territories both outside and within the borders proved to be especially ephemeral, either because of the hostility of the local population or because of the Union of Florence (1439). Furthermore, some monasteries on the Great Hungarian Plain were abandoned before 1500 due to the Ottoman wars and demographic changes. Note: Because of the scale and density of the monastic network in certain regions, dots may overlap each other.

524    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi Map Legend Abbreviations f m B H P S >

female monastery male monastery Kingdom of Bohemia Kingdom of Hungary Kingdom of Poland Duchy of Silesia change of order or of branch

Codes B1 2 B B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 B8 B9 H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7 H8 H9 H10 H11 H12 H13 H14 H15 H16 H17 H18 H19 H20 H21 H22 H23 H24 H25 P0a P0b P1 P2 P3 P4

Prague, Saint George Abbey, Benedictine (f > m) Břevnov, Benedictine Vyšehrad, Benedictine Prague, Emmaus Monastery, Benedictine (Ambrosian) Strahov, Premonstratensian Sázava, Benedictine (Slavonic) Rajhrad, Benedictine Teplice, Benedictine f Sedlec, Cistercian Zbraslav, Cistercian Velehrad, Cistercian Hradiško, Premonstratensian Roudnice, Canons Regular Pannonhalma, Benedictine Pécsvárad, Benedictine Zalavár, Benedictine Zobor, Benedictine Somlóvásárhely, Benedictine f Veszprémvölgy, Greek Orthodox f > Cistercian f Tihany, Benedictine (& Orthodox) Visegrád, Orthodox > Benedictine > Pauline Szekszárd, Benedictine Somogyvár, Benedictine Cluj-​Manaştur, Benedictine Hronský Beňadik, Benedictine Sremska Mitrovica, Greek Orthodox Cikádor, Cistercian Igriş, Cistercian Pilis, Cistercian Szentgotthárd, Cistercian Zirc, Cistercian Oradea–​Promontorium, Premonstratensian > Pauline Šahy, Premonstratensian Szeged, Premonstratensian f Budaszentlőrinc, Pauline Lövöld, Carthusian Székesfehérvár, Hospitaller Vrana, Templar > Hospitaller Międzyrzec, Benedictine (abandoned before 1040) Poznań, Benedictine f (abandoned before 1040) Tyniec, Benedictine; Cracow, Benedictine (Ambrosian) Mogiła, Cistercian Kazimierz, Canons Regular Łysa Góra–​Świętokrzyskie (also called Łysiec), Benedictine Mogilno, Benedictine Lubiń, Benedictine

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     525 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P11 P12 P13 P14 P15 P16 P17 P18 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5

Brzeźnica-​Jędrzejów, Cistercian Wąchock, Cistercian Ołobok, Cistercian f Imbramowice, Premonstratensian f Strzelno, Premonstratensian f Chełmno, Canons Regular Miechów, Canons Regular Frombork, Antonine Tyśmienica, Order of Calatrava Malbork, Teutonic Order Jasna Góra, Pauline Elblag, Bridgettine Zawichost, Poor Clares Stary Sącz, Poor Clares Oleśnica, Benedictine (Ambrosian) Henryków, Cistercian Lubiąż, Cistercian Trzebnica, Cistercian f Brzeg, Antonine

Notes * Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins is the lead author of the chapter, with additional contributions by Marek Derwich and Beatrix Romhányi. 1. Ian N. Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe (400–​1050) (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001). 2. Franz Machilek, “Klöster und Stifte in Böhmen und Mähren von den Anfängen bis in den Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts,” in Deutsche in den böhmischen Ländern, vol. 1, edited by Hans Rothe (Cologne: Böhlau, 1992), 1–​27. 3. Lajos J. Csóka, Geschichte des benediktinischen Mönchtums in Ungarn (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1980); Imre Takács, ed., Paradisum plantavit: Bencés monostorok a középkori Magyarországon/​ Benedictine Monasteries in Medieval Hungary (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalmi Bencés Főapátság, 2001). 4. Marek Derwich, “Les fondations et implantations de monastères bénédictins en Pologne jusqu’au début du XVIe siècle,” in Moines et monastères dans les sociétés de rite grec et latin, edited by Jean-​Loup Lemaître, Michel Dmitriev, and Pierre Gonneau (Geneva: Droz, 1996), 49–​69. 5. Erik Fügedi, “Sepelierunt corpus eius in proprio monasterio: A nemzetségi monostor” [“Sepelierunt corpus eius in proprio monasterio: Clan monasteries], Századok 125, no. 1–​2 (1991): 35–​67; Erik Fügedi, “Quelques questions concernant les monastères des grandes familles en Hongrie (XIe–​XIVe s.),” in L’Église et le peuple chrétien dans les pays de l’Europe du Centre-​Est et du Nord (XIVe–​XVe s.) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1990), 201–​209. 6. Gergely Kiss, “Les influences de l’Église orthodoxe en Hongrie aux Xe–​XIIIe siècles,” in Specimina Nova Pars Prima Sectio Mediaevalis, edited by Márta Font and Gergely Kiss (Pécs: Université de Pécs, 2007), 51–​7 1. 7. Kateřina Kubínová, ed., Slovanský klášter Karla IV. [The Slavic monastery of Charles IV] (Prague: Artefactum, 2016).

526    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi 8. See the previous references about the first Benedictine monasteries. For a comprehensive review of Hungary, with maps, see Beatrix F. Romhányi, Kolostorok és társaskáptalanok a középkori Magyarországon [Monasteries and chapters in medieval Hungary] (Budapest: Pytheas, 2000; CD-​ROM 2008). 9. László Koszta, “Die Gründung von Zisterzienserklöstern in Ungarn 1142–​1270,” Ungarn Jahrbuch 23 (1997): 65–​80; Franz Machilek, “Die Zisterzienser in Böhmen und Mähren,” in Sacrum Pragense millennium, 973–​1973, edited by Augustinus Kurt Hube (Königstein im Taunus: Institut für Kirchengeschichte von Böhmen-​Mähren-​Schlesien, 1973), 185–​220; Andrzej M. Wyrwa, “Zeit und Lokalisierung der Zisterzienserklöstern in Grosspolen,” in Zisterzienser: Norm, Kultur, Reform. 900 Jahre Zisterzienser, edited by Ulrich Knefelkamp (Frankfurt am Oder: Springer, 2001), 92–​100. 10. Kateřina Charvátová, Dějiny cisterciáckého řádu v Čechách 1142–​1420 [History of the Cistercian Order in Bohemia] (Prague: Karolinum, 2002); Monasticon Cisterciense Poloniae, vols. 1–​2, edited by Andrzej M. Wyrwa, Jerzy Strzelczyk, and Krzysztof Kaczmarek (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1999); Ferenc Levente Hervay, Repertorium historicum ordinis cisterciensis in Hungaria (Rome: Editiones Cisterciences, 1984); Ferdinand Seibt, ed., Bohemia Sacra: Das Christentum in Böhmen 973–​1973 (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1974). 11. Beatrix F. Romhányi, “The Role of the Cistercians in Medieval Hungary: Political Activity or Internal Colonization?” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 1 (1994): 180–​204. 12. Klára Benešovská, “Aula regia près de Prague et Mons regalis près de Paris,” Cîteaux 47 (1996): 231–​245. 13. Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, “Les implantations cisterciennes en Hongrie médiévale: Un réseau?” in Unanimité et diversité cisterciennes: Filiations, réseaux, relectures du XIIe au XVIIe siècle, edited by Nicole Bouter (Saint-​Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint Étienne, 2000), 453–​484. 14. See, for instance, Józef Dobosz, “Die Kleinpolnischen Zisterzienser: Ihr Platz in Wirtschaft und Kultur Polens im 13. Jahrhundert,” in Zisterzienser: Norm, Kultur, Reform; 900 Jahre Zisterzienser, edited by Ulrich Knefelkamp (Frankfurt am Oder: Springer, 2001), 127–​134. 15. Marek Derwich, “Der Prämonstratenserorden im mittelalterlichen Polen: Seine Rolle,” in Studien zum Prämonstratenserorden, edited by Irene Crusius and Helmut Flachenecker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 311–​347. 16. James Bond, “The Premonstratensian Order: A Preliminary Survey of the Growth and Distribution in Medieval Europe,” in In Search of Cult: Archaeological Investigations in Honour of Philip Rahtz, edited by Martin Carver (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), 153–​185. 17. Franz Machilek, “Die Raudnitzer Reform der Augustiner-​ Chorherren im 14./​ 15. Jahrhundert,” in Reformen vor der Reformation: Sankt Ulrich und Afra und der monastisch-​ urbane Umkreis im 15. Jahrhundert, edited by Gisela Drossbach and Klaus Wolf (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 33–​74. 18. Marek Derwich, “Les ordres religieux et le développement de la ‘nouvelle piété’ en Pologne,” in Die “neue Frömmigkeit” in Europa im Spätmittelalter, edited by Marek Derwich and Martial Staub, Veröffentlichungen des Max-​Planck-​Institut für Geschichte 205 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 175–​190. 19. Maria Starnawska, Między Jerozolimą a Łukowem: Zakony krzyżowe na ziemiach polskich w średniowieczu [Between Jerusalem and Łuków: Crusader orders in the Polish lands in the Middle Ages] (Warsaw: DiG, 1990), 73–​106. 20. Ibid., 147–​153; Andrzej Bruździński, Kanonicy regularni od pokuty na ziemiach polskich [Regular canons of penance in Poland] (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Unum, 2003).

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     527 21. Gerhard Schlegel and James Hogg, eds., Monasticon Cartusiense II (Salzburg: Analecta Cartusiana, 2004), 61–​76, 88–​94, 102–​112, 149–​150, 152; Rafał Witkowski, Praedicare manibus: Zakon kartuzów w Europie Środkowej od początków XIV do połowy XVI wieku [The Carthusian Order in Central Europe from the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century], Analecta Cartusiana 285, no. 1 (Salzburg: Analecta Cartusiana. Institut für Anglistik und Ameristik Universität Salzburg, 2011). 22. Gábor Sarbak, ed., Der Paulinerorden. Geschichte–​Geist–​Kultur (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2010). 23. Beatrix Romhányi, “Life in the Pauline Monasteries of Late Medieval Hungary,” Periodica Polytechnica. Architecture 43, no. 2 (2012): 53–​56. 24. Beatrix F. Romhányi, Pauline Economy in the Middle Ages: “The Spiritual Cannot Be Maintained without the Temporal . . .” (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 25. Maria Starnawska, “Zur Geschichte der Templer in Polen,” in Regionalität und Transfergeschichte: Ritterordenkommenden der Templer und Johanniter im nordöstlichen Deutschland und in Polen seit dem Mittelalter, edited by Christian Gahlbeck, Heinz-​Dieter Heimann, and Dirk Schumann (Berlin: Lukas Verlag für Kunst-​und Geistesgeschichte, 2014), 47–​62. 26. Zsolt Hunyadi, The Hospitallers in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, c. 1150–​ 1387 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010); Maria Starnawska, “The Hospitallers in Medieval Poland,” in The Orders of St. John and Their Ties with Polish Territories, edited by Przemysław Deles and Przemysław Morozowski (Warsaw: Arx Regia, 2014), 113–​148. 27. Jürgen Sarnowsky, Der Deutsche Orden (Munich: Beck, 2012). 28. Harald Zimmermann, Der Deutsche Orden im Burzenland: Eine Diplomatische Untersuchung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000). 29. Marek Smoliński, “Kalatrawensi w Tymowie na Pomorzu Gdańskim: Idea sprowadzenia zakonu nad Morze Bałtyckie” [The Calatrava Order in Tymów in Gdańsk Pomerania: The idea of bringing the order to the Baltic Sea], Studia z Dziejów Średniowiecza 10 (2004): 205–​244. 30. Starnawska, Między Jerozolimą a Łukowem, 107–​118. 31. Hartmut Boockmann, Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte (Munich: Beck, 1981); Roman Czaja and Andrzej Radzimiński, eds., The Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures 13th–​ 16th Century (Toruń: Towarzystwo Naukowe; Cologne: Böhlau), 2016; Aleksander Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War and Colonisation (Aldershot: Routledge), 2013. 32. Zdeňka Hledíková, “Řád křižovníků s červeným srdcem ve středověku” [The Order of Crusaders with a Red Heart in the Middle Ages], Sborník prací východočeských archívů 5 (1984): 209–​235; Starnawska, Między Jerezolimą a Łukowem, 118–​127. 33. Starnawska, Między Jerezolimą a Łukowem, 128–​144. 34. See a revised, critical, and comparative assessment of the whole Central-​European mendicant network in Beatrix Fülopp-​Romhányi, “Mendicant Networks and Population in a European Perspective,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective, edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 99–​122. Former view: Jerzy Kłoczowski, “Les ordres mendiants en Europe du Centre-​Est et du Nord,” in L’Église et le peuple chrétien dans les pays de l’Europe du Centre-​Est et du Nord (XIVe–​XVe s.) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1990), 187–​200. 35. Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, Les Franciscains observants hongrois de l’expansion à la débâcle (vers 1450–​vers 1540) (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2008).

528    Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Marek Derwich, and Beatrix Romhányi 36. Petr Hlaváček, Die böhmischen Franziskaner im ausgehenden Mittelalter: Studien zur Kirchen-​und Kulturgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2011). 37. See a historiographical review in Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, “Les Ermites de saint Augustin en Hongrie médiévale: État des connaissances,” Augustiniana 62, nos. 1–​2 (2012): 77–​117. 38. Kund Miklós Regényi, Die Ungarischen Konvente der Oberdeutschen Karmelitenprovinz im Mittelalter (Budapest: Magyar Egyháztörténeti Enciklopédia Munkaközösség, 2001); Tadeusz M. Trajdos, U zarania karmelitów w Polsce [The beginnings of the Carmelites in Poland] (Warsaw, Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1993). 39. Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins, ed., “Le fonctionnement matériel des couvents mendiantsen Europe centrale (vers 1220–​vers 1550): Bilan historiographique,” Études franciscaines n.s. 6, no. 1 (2013): 5–​115; Marie-​Madeleine de Cevins and Ludovic Viallet, eds., L’économie des couvents mendiants en Europe centrale (Bohême, Hongrie, Pologne, v. 1220–​v. 1550) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018). 40. Just one example: Zoltán Soós, “Craftsmanship in a Medieval Franciscan Friary: A Medieval Bronze Workshop Excavated at the Tîrgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) Franciscan Friary,” Studia Universitatis Babeş-​Bolyai, Historia 60, no. 1 (June 2015): 97–​132. 41. Marek Derwich, “Réforme et la vie quotidienne dans les abbayes bénédictines en Pologne au XVe siècle,” in La vie quotidienne des moines et chanoines réguliers au Moyen Âge et Temps modernes, edited by Marek Derwich (Wrocław: Institut d’Histoire de l’Université de Wrocław, 1995), 275–​284. 42. For a general overview, though partly outdated, see Jerzy Kłoczowski, “L’observance en Europe centro-​orientale au XVe siècle,” Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: L’osservanza (Assisi–​Perugia: Università di Perugia, Centro di studi francescani, 1985), 171–​191. 43. Ludovic Viallet, Les sens de l’observance: Enquête sur les réformes franciscaines entre l’Elbe et l’Oder, de Capistran à Luther (vers 1450–​vers 1520) (Muenster: Lit, 2014). 44. De Cevins, Les Franciscains observants. 45. For an online edition of their sermons, see http://​ sermo​ nes.elte.hu/​ index_​ eng.php (accessed September 9, 2020). 46. Paweł Kras and James D. Mixson, eds., The Grand Tour of John of Capistrano in Central and Eastern Europe (1451–​1456): The Transfer of Ideas and the Strategies of Communication in the Late Middle Ages (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences; Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, 2018); Letizia Pellegrini and Ludovic Viallet, “Between christianitas and Europe: Giovanni of Capestrano as an Historical Issue,” Franciscan Studies 75 (2017): 5–​26. 47. Marek Derwich, Foyers et diffusion de l’Observance en Pologne et Lithuanie dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle, in Identités franciscaines à l’Âge des Réformes, edited by Frédéric Mayer and Ludovic Viallet (Clermont–​Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-​Pascal, 2005), 275–​283. 48. Hlaváček, Die böhmischen. 49. Gábor Klaniczay, “Agnes of Bohemia and Margaret of Hungary: A Comparison,” in Queens, Princesses and Mendicants: Close Relations in European Perspective, edited by Jaspert Nikolas and Just Imke (Muenster: LIT Verlag, 2019), 263–​281; Christian-​Frederik Felskau, “Shaping the Sainthood of a Central European Clarissan Princess,” in Les saints et leur culte en Europe centrale au Moyen Âge (XIe–​début du XVIe siècle), edited by Marie-​ Madeleine de Cevins and Olivier Marin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 125–​171. 50. Paweł Kras, Tomasz Gałuszka, and Adam Poznański, Proces beginek świdnickich w 1332 roku: Studia historyczne i edycja łacińsko-​polska [The Trial of the Beguines of Świdnica in

Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)     529 1332: Historical studies and bilingual edition] (Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2017).

Further Reading Encyclopedia of Monasticism. Edited by William M. Johnston. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000. See the following articles: Derwich, Marek. “Czech Republic.” Vol. 1, 350–​352. Mills, Frank A. “Hungary.” Vol. 1, 625–​627. Derwich, Marek. “Poland.” Vol. 2, 1034–​1036. Kłoczowski, Jerzy. “Dominicans of the Polish Province in the Middle Ages” and “The Brothers Minor in Medieval Poland.” In Jerzy Kłoczowski, La Pologne dans l’Église médiévale, 73–​118. Aldershot: Routledge, 1993. Open the Gates of Paradise: The Benedictines in the Heart of Europe 800–​1300. Prague: Národní galerie v Praze, 2014 [catalog].

Pa rt I V

I M AG E S OF T H E PA ST

Chapter 22

The Im age of E ast Central Eu rope i n M edieval Europe a n Literat u re Levente Seláf

Every medieval polity across Europe used the written word, in different languages and scripts, for a range of purposes—​legal documents, religious service books, royal histories, and literature. Writings in Latin and the vernacular languages about history and imagined events were enjoyed and shared among the literate. Writers read widely and borrowed freely. Imagology, a branch of comparative literature, specifically investigates the use of cultural perceptions and images of otherness as expressed in literature. Were the inhabitants of Central Europe seen and represented as “others,” from the point of view of medieval Western scholars, writers, poets, and everyday people? How is this reflected in the surviving written sources?

The Imagological Approach In 1528, in his testimony at a trial, a Hungarian peasant refers to a territory as being beside the “waters of Sicambria” (Sikambrio Wyze), referring to the hot springs of Óbuda (now Budapest).1 Did he, or the scribe writing down the document, know who the Sicambrians were? Was he aware of the fact that back in the days of Julius Caesar, the Germanic Sicambri tribe dwelled on the east bank of the Rhine near what is now the Netherlands? Where does this odd place name come from and what did it mean to the Latin-​speaking intelligentsia of medieval Hungary? Curiously, the term “Sicambria” certainly came from the origin myth of the French through the transmission of literary texts.

534   Levente Seláf As Tzvetan Todorov has stated, the use of national stereotypes reveals more about the speaker than about those being described, this overview explores “external,” “Western” opinions about medieval East Central Europe to discover more about their authors’ access to knowledge—​old and new—​about the region and the ways in which these descriptions affected their contemporary realities.2 The representation of the foreigner, of the ethnic Other, can hardly ever be objective, nor was it in the Middle Ages. Individual and communal experiences, aspirations, literary topoi, and long-​ lasting stereotypes mixed in the minds of authors, who might have additionally been influenced by the patrons who had commissioned the work and a need to appeal to the target audience. When a pattern related to a country’s citizens occurs in a text, it is difficult to ascertain to which factor accounts for it. In this study, “Western Europe” will be used as shorthand for peoples and polities in the western part of Latin Christendom, particularly the two centers of power that came into being from the Carolingian Empire (France and the Holy Roman Empire) and their western zones of cultural influence. The area of East-​Central Europe was located on the Carolingian Empire’s (or its successors’) eastern borders. After the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, a gradually developing awareness of national identities perception of the others slowly took shape in Western Europe. Today, many academic works are concerned with how medieval Europeans saw the East, Muslim or Jewish communities diametrically opposed to Christians in the Holy Land3 or the little known Far East, which had been mythologized since antiquity.4 But fewer works deal with the encounter with the nearer “other” as empirical reality, fiction, or art. Here I investigate to what extent Western authors identified East-​Central Europe with one of the many faces of the Orient: the pagan, unknown (and unknowable) Eurasian “East,” home to the ancient Scythians (and later nomads) of the steppes, the wild Nordic regions,5 the Islamic world, or even the enviously regarded Byzantine Empire, accused of heterodoxy. Here I explore briefly how Western concepts were applied to the region of East-​Central Europe and whether this territory, in many respects marginal, had any other specific distinguishing features. It is often stated that Latin-​ Christian authors saw the inhabitants beyond the margins of their territory as racially inferior schismatics, heretics, or infidels, and their countries as part of a buffer zone separating them from Pliny’s monstrous races.6 East-​Central Europe was indeed such a buffer zone, a veritable mixture of confessions; some countries followed the Roman rite, others the Byzantine, and they lay adjacent to non-​Christian states. Sometimes authors from Western Europe treated the region as belonging to the West, sometimes as being entirely external or even as an imaginary transition zone stretching from their own civilization toward the lands populated by people different in their religion, customs, ethics, and closer to the fabulous oriental beings of the world. It would be unreasonable to expect a coherent image to emerge from the different types of sources in different languages concerning all the countries from the Balkans to the Baltic region across the entire period of the Middle Ages. The countries of East-​Central Europe are not all represented equally in the surviving written material; some territories and peoples are missing, whereas others are heavily represented.7 For

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    535 instance, in the Old French epic corpus of chanson de geste, sixty-​seven texts mention the country or inhabitants of Hungary; forty mention “Esclavonie,” a term generally referring to territories inhabited by Slavs (but often meaning simply the Saracens); twelve mention Bohemia; and eight Bulgaria.8 In French chivalric romances, which became popular somewhat later than the chansons de geste, it is still Hungary that is mentioned the most often.9 The contents and reliability of the surviving sources are equally uneven. The proximity of the observer to this region is not a guarantee of his reliability. German literature, for example, is no more informative or more accurate about medieval East-​Central Europe than its French or Spanish counterparts. Although German-​speaking authors all shared the same literary language and sense of belonging to the same literary and cultural heritage, they clearly had disparate visions of foreigners. Concerning the unreliability of German observers, it is notable that “many German intellectuals in the central Middle Ages wrongfully thought that there was only one Slavic language, incomprehensible and ‘barbarian,’ which according to some authors was also spoken in Hungary.”10 With a special situation in German sources, Bohemia is particularly pertinent here; it had strong ties to the Holy Roman Empire from 1212, and Prague was the center of the imperial court for several decades. Thus, in the German sources of that period, Bohemians were more “internal strangers” than neighboring allies or enemies. Like the question of accuracy, expressions of prejudice and exoticism also do not depend on proximity to the region being described. It would be an oversimplification to suggest that all German texts mentioning East-​Central Europe expressed prejudices against a malignant “neighbor” while French or English texts had a more distant, less precise, and thus more neutral, view of Central Europeans. The magician Clinschor, duke of Terre de Labour, homeland of Virgil—​also seen as a magician in the Middle Ages—​was a necromancer in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. His identification with the poet Klingschor von Ungerlant (Hungary) as the fictitious author of the poem Wartburgkrieg might be interpreted as an early example of Hungary’s “orientalization by association” as a land of wonders, in order to distance it from the German territories.11 Sometimes texts were corrected; for example, the late fourteenth-​century Roman de Melusine aptly demonstrates how the literary representation of Central Europeans changed in the course of rewritings and translations in different contexts. Translated into several languages, Roman de Melusine became a European best-​seller in the sixteenth century. The original, written by Jean d’Arras, was sponsored by Jean, duke of Berry, but he was not the only magnate interested in the work; as the author says at the end of the romance, Jobst, margrave of Moravia (1375–​1411) and a member of the House of Luxemburg, was also eager to obtain a copy of the text.12 The presence of Bohemia in the romance was likely due to this connection with the Luxemburgs, who ruled Bohemia from 1310 until 1437. The author narrates the fabulous story of the Lusignan dynasty, where, at one point, Frederic, king of Bohemia, attacked by Selodus, the pagan king of Craquo (Cracow, Poland), is rescued by two Lusignan brothers, Anthoine and Renaud. After Frederic’s death and victory over the pagans, Renaud marries Frederic’s daughter, Aiglantine, and becomes king of Bohemia. In this story, the Cracovians are presented simply as Saracens, adversaries

536   Levente Seláf of the Christian Bohemians. In a later rhymed version of the romance (1400–​1402) by Coudrette, “Craquo” is less readily recognizable; it is written as Craco, Croquo, Traquo, Traco, Tarquo, Troquo, or even Dostraquo in different manuscript copies.13 The textual corruption suggests that most of the scribes copying Coudrette’s adaptation had never heard of the city of Cracow. In the German adaptation of the romance by Thüring von Ringoltingen (1456), it is not the king of Craquo who leads the attack, but the Turkish emperor, whose troops comprise three groups: “Türcken, Heyden, Sclafen” (Turks, Heathens, Slavs).14 The German author changed his source, probably because it was easier for his public to accept an Ottoman attack on Bohemia, as by that time they had conquered most of the Balkan states and threatened Western Europe. For his readers, the Ottomans having some unidentified Slavic allies was more credible than the tenuous image of a pagan Polish king attacking Bohemia with a Saracen army. The distortion of the name of Cracow into forms like “Traquo,” containing the same consonants as the word Turk, may have facilitated this substitution, but the main reason was verisimilitude. This indicates that geographical representation in literary fiction was not entirely divorced from contemporary political reality.

East-​C entral Europe and the Origo Gentium (Origin Story) The similarity of the symbolic representation of geographical space in historiographical and literary texts is the most conspicuous in national protohistories (origenes gentium), which, although inserted into chronicles, had only mythical and literary bases. From this point of view there is no essential difference between fictitious and historiographic texts; the claims of veracity are constant in both categories and both treat any historical facts and geographic data with some liberty. Many authors wrote chronicles and romances or chansons de geste without creating or following a clear division of these genres according to the veracity of the events being narrated, and, most of the time, the same aesthetic principles guided their writing.15 Following the model of the history of Roman origins, most medieval authors claimed that the European peoples have a Trojan origin.16 Just like the Aenead, these texts describe how a fugitive prince of Troy led some Trojans to a new land. East-​Central Europe appears as one of the locations the wandering Franks passed on their way to Gaul.17 According to the eighth-​century Liber historiae francorum, the Trojan forefathers of the Franks first founded a city called Sicambria somewhere in the East, near the Maeotian Swamp, which ancient Greek sources located in the region of the Sea of Azov and later texts occasionally placed at the mouth of the Danube, neither being too far from the Roman province of Pannonia (now western Hungary and eastern Austria). Once defeated by the Roman emperor, Valentinian, the descendants of the refugees left the ruins of Sicambria, moved to Germania, and later to Gaul. The geographical location of Sicambria was only loosely defined by the author of

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    537 the Liber historiae Francorum and subsequent adaptations located it freely in different places between Asia and Germany. Around 1290, two texts, the Chroniques anonymes de Tournai (also known as Buscalus) and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum, identified the ruins of the Roman city of Aquincum (now in Budapest) with those of the legendary Sicambria, forging a strong connection between this early episode of the Franks’ story and medieval Hungary.18 Less than two decades later, the Descriptio Europae Orientalis (1308), a military geographical treatise composed by a Dominican friar, directly identifies the city of Buda with Sicambria.19 Several later Hungarian chroniclers, and even Hungarian charters (as noted earlier) do the same, and some Western sources also accept this identification. In 1502, Pierre Choque, a French diplomat escorting Anne Candale of Foix, who married King Wladislas II, King of Poland (1456), Bohemia (1471), Hungary and Croatia (1456–​1519), recounts that he visited the ruins of Sicambria during his stay in Buda. Presumably his hosts showed him the site of Aquincum as a memorial landmark of Franco-​Hungarian relations.20 This identification, however, was not unanimous. Some authors and copyists located the city elsewhere, in Thrace or Pannonia, while Gilles le Bouvier in his Livre de la description des pays du monde (c. 1450) moves it as far as the Baltic Sea, close to Prussia.21 The author of the romance Renart le Contrefait located it in Lombardy.22 For the authors interested in French protohistory, the possible localizations of Sicambria during the migration from east to west correspond to a vague definition of East-​Central Europe, if not as an imaginary perished homeland at least as a place of rest located somewhere in Europe between the Black Sea and Germany.

Vernacular Literary Traditions: The Three Matières (Matters) The first significant literary period of the largest European vernaculars, French and Middle High German, corresponded in time to the establishment of the Central European states, preceded shortly by the foundation of the Hungarian (c. 1000) and Polish kingdoms (1025), and roughly simultaneous with the founding of the Bohemian kingdom at end of the twelfth century. The use of French as a language of culture in many European courts as well as widely circulating translations and adaptations of French texts had a widespread influence on the literary landscape of the Western world. These French sources largely determined the literary image of East-​Central Europe. First, Occitan literature (1100–​1300), then Old French literary works in particular, served as models for almost all the other vernaculars on the continent. Later, Italian (c. 1400) works also began to exert a strong influence. Not necessarily fictional, geographical space was charged with symbolic significance in medieval literary texts. Around 1200, Jean Bodel from Arras proposed a threefold division of narrative genres into three matters (matières) by geographical setting. In current scholarship, this is considered a fairly successful attempt to seize on the difference

538   Levente Seláf between the three main narrative poetic paradigms of his time.23 The matière de Rome encompasses the rewritings of antique epics and romances (Roman de Thebes, Roman de Troie, Roman d’Alexandre); the matière de Bretagne consists mainly of Arthurian chivalric romance, and the matière de France is dedicated to the history of France during the Carolingian and Merovingian periods. Although most of the medieval Central European countries did not exist when the above kingdoms, real or imagined, flourished, they are often mentioned in various contexts. The anachronism of projecting contemporary geopolitical relationships onto the past is not restricted to a specific genre, matière, or language. In the Middle High German Song of the Nibelungen (c. 1200), the court of Attila, nomadic ruler of the Huns in the fifth century, is filled with Russian, Polish, Kievan, Wallachian, Greek, and Pecheneg warriors, pagans and Christians alike. Disregarding the realities of the Hun court, it reflects the late twelfth-​century Hungarian royal court or the author’s intention to fill Attila’s army with all the unpleasant eastern people known to him as potential enemies of the Holy Roman Empire.24

The Lands of Pagans in the “Matter of France” With our historical knowledge of Central Europe’s medieval past, we would expect the countries of the region to be represented in Bodel’s matière de France as part of the Christian community, even if the Balkan states mostly followed the Byzantine rite. Instead, they frequently appear as “lands of Saracens,” listed alongside any other Muslim countries in military conflict with Christian kingdoms as early as the twelfth century. Treated with a mixture of envy, fear, and hate, they are alienated as the Orient, and the same stereotyped descriptions are applied to them as to other Islamic kingdoms. The “matter of France,” written three centuries after the events it relates, is the narrative tradition where Central Europe is mentioned most often, frequently associated with symbolic functions. Russia and Hungary are occasionally mentioned as faraway lands, the limits of the inhabited world. Some texts evoke the richness of the area; the “gold of Hungary” is a common metaphor for wealth.25 Adenet le Roi’s Cleomades praises Poland for its wealth and the density of its population as “une terre riche et peuplee.”26 Although such references may reflect the authors’ (received) assumptions about the wealth of the region, it is more likely that they are orientalizing motifs.27 Besides descriptions of the people, indigenous animals also appear in these texts, more often than not transmitting and reflecting practical knowledge about the fauna of the region. In the French chansons de geste, Hungarian horses are the most frequently mentioned feature of East-​Central Europe, especially steeds.28 Over twenty works mention them, often emphasizing their excellent quality and usefulness in battles and tournaments. Hungarian horses also appear outside the world of the chanson de geste or the matière de France. They are mentioned in Jean le Nevelon’s Venjance Alixandre, which belongs to the matière de

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    539 Rome, and even in chivalric romances like the First Continuation of Chretien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Roman du comte de Poitiers, and Jehan Maillart’s Roman du comte d’Anjou. Since Hungarian horses were also praised as both excellent and well priced in a travel account by Bertrandon de la Broquière, a Burgundian spy sent to the Ottoman court in the early 1430s,29 it is likely that the literary motif describes a real phenomenon. Other, more fabulous, animals are noted in relation to Central Europe, however, which seemingly have no connection to reality outside the texts. Gervase of Tilbury describes a creature called onager native to Poland and Bartholomaeus Anglicus mentions a similar animal in Bohemia, both corresponding to the bonacon or bonasus. First described by Aristotle, then Pliny, this beast appears in almost all the subsequent bestiaries of the Middle Ages as a bison-​like animal which defends itself by spraying hot water or excrement at pursuers.30 This piece of knowledge was translated into a wide range of vernacular languages in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and later found its way into Jean Mansel’s fifteenth-​century chronicle, La fleur des histoires. Although the English encyclopedists may have used local information to localize this beast in the Polish homeland of the European bison fairly precisely, for later users of their texts this miraculous being living in East-​Central Europe was distant enough to be linked with some mirabilia of nature. Turning back to the matière de France, the mentions of East-​Central Europe often consist of no more than a single occurrence in an enumeration. Such an example occurs in the first chanson de geste, the Song of Roland. Charlemagne, while mourning the death of Roland, enumerates all the countries that will profit from this tragedy by attacking the Franks. In some manuscripts, Bulgarians and Hungarians are present among the Saxons, Romans, people of Puglia, Palermo, Africa, and “Califerne.”31 By the eleventh century, when the text was likely written, the Hungarians, Bulgarians, Saxons, and the inhabitants of Italy had all been Christianized, thus, this world alliance of “pagans,” the “enemies of the faith,” is entirely anachronistic, but it helps to orientalize by association the two Central European kingdoms.32 Other early chansons de geste also treat Bulgarians and Hungarians as pagans, whereas later texts tend to place them among the Franks’ allies.33 Treating East-​Central Europeans as pagans became less frequent with time, although prose rewritings of the chansons de geste still reflect this view as late as the fifteenth century. This exemplifies the slow and gradual infiltration of contemporary reality into a narrative world formerly determined by the historiographical tradition filled with the memory of military conflicts between the Franks and Slavs, and the pagan Hungarians’ raids on Western Europe in the tenth century. The ambiguity of geographical names related to the region is the most obvious in the case of Esclavonie, the so-​called land of the Slavs. Medieval scientific geographies, however, knew about and used the term Slavonia in reference to a country or a larger entity that encompassed all the countries mostly peopled by “ferocious” Slavs. Book XV of Bartholomeus Anglicus’s (1203–​1272) De proprietatibus rerum has a specific entry dedicated to Sclavonia, divided into two parts: the Minor (Bohemia, Poland, and other northern regions) and the Major (Dalmatia, Carinthia, and other regions in the south).34 Esclavon in French chansons de geste and romances is most frequently employed as a synonym for pagans; sometimes

540   Levente Seláf even used alongside Christian Behaignons and Polains (Bohemians and Poles). Literary historians struggle to find the original referent of this Esclavonie, identifying it either with medieval Slavonia, ruled by Hungarian kings from the twelfth century, or unidentified territories inhabited by Eastern Slavic people still not converted to Christianity. The use of the term is often ambiguous because most medieval French authors did not refer to a real country. For them, Esclavonie was a device that alienated a little-​known region of Europe, if not a reminiscence of the Slavs’ pagan past in the High Middle Ages, and their later adversity to the Carolingian Empire. One of the most intriguing motifs of the chansons de geste related to East-​Central Europe is the attribution of Hungarian origins to Charlemagne himself. According to Adenet le Roi’s Berte aus grans piés (c. 1275), Charlemagne is the son of the Frankish King Pipin and Berte, daughter of the Hungarian royal couple, Floire and Blanchefleur.35 In this text, Hungary is a wealthy, prosperous, powerful Catholic kingdom, although the name of the royal couple evokes the twelfth-​century romance Floire et Blanchefleur, where Floire is a Saracen prince who marries Blanchefleur, converts to Christianity, and inherits (in the earlier, more popular, version of the romance) the thrones of Hungary and “Bougerie” (Bulgaria). Peter Hoppenbrouwers describes the fantasy of the virtuous Christian princess who marries a Muslim king and then succeeds in effecting his conversion. This latter type of liaison is never represented as having offspring,36 but reading Berte aus grans piés as a continuation of Floire et Blanchefleur contradicts this observation; Adenet describes the union as being fruitful, and furthermore, their grandchild is Charlemagne himself.37 This astonishing tale of kinship might be explained by the influence of the myth of Sicambria. The Franks’ sojourn in or near Pannonia, which perhaps gave Adenet the idea to look for a Central European ancestor for Charlemagne, may also explain the numerous Franco-​Hungarian dynastic marriages that occur in romances. It could also be the key to understanding why, in the Grandes Chroniques de France, Marchomire, ancestor of the Frankish kings, is an Austrian prince, who, invited by the Franks, settled in Lutecia to rule over them. Like Hungary, medieval Austria was part of the ancient Roman province of Pannonia between Germania and the Maeotian Swamp, which could have led to identifying it as the homeland of a certain group of Trojan refugees.

The Early Crusades and the Shadow of Constantinople in the “Matter of Rome” Because of the partial overlap of geographical space, the countries of the Balkans appear in several texts as related to Greco-​Roman antiquity. The romans antiques—​ essentially rewritings of Greco-​Roman texts that are generally considered to correspond

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    541 to Bodel’s matière de Rome—​as well as other “new” fiction, such as the romance of the Seven Sages of Rome, tend to represent geographical space as if the Byzantine Empire existed at the time of the plot. This is another example of anachronism or rather the “contemporalizing” realism of medieval texts.38 For instance, the Roman de Thebes, a rewriting of Statius’s Thebaid, recounts the story of a delegation of tribal Pechenegs who offer their military help to Ethioclés if some of the territories invaded by his father are returned to them.39 This “father” is not so much the Oedipus of the romance as a representation of the Byzantine emperor Alexis Komnenos, who led a successful campaign against the nomadic Pechenegs (1091). This and many other episodes of the romance mirror the situation of the Byzantine Empire during or shortly after the events of the First Crusade, when a huge number of Western travelers first passed through East-​ Central Europe and Byzantium on their way to the Holy Land. In the romance, Pancrace, duke of Russia, supports Adrastus, whereas the Bulgarians fight for both camps; this reflects the fact that, although they were Christians, they were hostile toward the crusaders passing through their country. These “contemporalizing” motifs underpin the assumption that the text was written and read in the Plantagenet court of England, where its oldest manuscript has survived. Identifying the events of this “crusader romance” or “orientalizing romance,” with those of antiquity would have particularly appealed to this audience. A later, but similar, example from the fifteenth century can be found in the Roman de Jason. There, the antagonist of the famous Greek mythological hero, Jason, is the king of Esclavonie, whose army gathers the kings of Bougie (Bulgaria) and Polane (Poland). In this case the author had in mind a community of Slavic people he may have known from geographies, either via Bartholomeus Anglicus’s configuration of several countries inhabited by Slavs or through other users of the encyclopedia, for example, Jean Mansel.40 Aimon de Varennes’s Florimont, relating the adventures of Alexander the Great’s ancestors, also speaks of the international relations of antiquity as if they were happening in the twelfth century. This romance takes its inspiration from the earliest romances of the matière de Rome, and appears to have accurate knowledge of some geographical names in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Hungarians are one of the Greeks’ major opponents.41 The king of Bulgaria is described as being a vassal of the Hungarian king; he is sent by his lord to Greece to negotiate with Philip, Alexander’s father, because he speaks Greek. While this scenario is realistic in the sense that knowledge of Greek in the twelfth-​century Bulgarian court was more prevalent than in Hungary, it contradicts the actual political relationships of the time, as Bulgaria was part of the Byzantine Empire until 1185. As heir to Rome, Constantinople was a rival of the Carolingian—​and later the Holy Roman Empire as well as France—​and an object of envy and admiration.42 Its “oriental” character was unlike the Saracen kingdoms. Due to the Christian ecclesiastical tradition perceived as exuding wealth and excess, it was described as sumptuously rich, and largely condemned as a land of luxury, presumptuousness, and arrogance. Central and Eastern European countries appear in a similar symbolic position as Byzantium in several romances, as detailed in what follows. Sometimes they replace Constantinople as an

542   Levente Seláf Oriental center of power opposed to the Western world or they appear alongside it, as in the thirteenth-​and fourteenth-​century Old French continuations of the Roman des Sept Sages, especially the Roman de Kanor.43 East-​Central Europe’s Byzantine connections crop up in surprising configurations. In some versions of the legend of Saint Martin, for example, an imaginary Hungarian or Byzantine origin/​kinship was attributed to France’s apostle, born in Pannonia. The late twelfth-​century Historia septem sanctorum dormientium, a curious hagiographical narrative invented to support a new cult of the seven hermit saints of the abbey of Marmoutier, claims that Saint Martin of Tours descended from the royal family of the Hungarians.44 His father married the niece of the Byzantine emperor while he was living at the imperial court. Martin, born in Hungary, went to Constantinople to study, and was baptized there by Paul, patriarch of the city. A fourteenth-​century chanson d’aventure, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, went further in associating Byzantium and Saint Martin; Martin and Brice (historically his successor as bishop of Tours) are represented as brothers, sons of the Byzantine princess Hélène and King Henry of England. The overwhelming majority of manuscripts and two fifteenth-​century prose rewritings of this poem demonstrate that this alternative genealogy of the saint was much more popular than the earlier Historia. In the later text, Martin is not connected to Hungary; the roles are changed, Constantinople, more famous and more prestigious, supplants the symbolically less important Hungary as his place of birth.45 This means that for the audience, Constantinople was a better fit for an oriental birthplace and the origin of his holiness. The shadow of Constantinople obscured a relationship with an East-​Central European country, even where the connection was historically attested. Incest, closely connected in medieval minds to the capital sin of luxury, is another specific narrative motif connecting Constantinople and East-​Central Europe, especially Hungary, in French literature. It is found both in Belle Hélène de Constantinople and in one of its models, Philippe de Rémy’s Manekine. In this famous romance it is the king of Hungary who wants to marry his own daughter. The princess Joie escapes, and after some adventures she becomes queen of Scotland. A second set of adventures follow, and after a happy ending and general reconciliation in Rome, Joie’s children become kings and queens all over Europe. As Joie’s mother was a princess of Armenia, the whole of Christendom from Armenia to Scotland becomes allied through this family. On a symbolic level, the capital sin of incest committed in Hungary or in Constantinople is cured in and by Rome.

The Present in the Past in the Matière de Bretagne It is much harder to imagine how East-​Central European countries or peoples appeared in the matière de Bretagne, as the adventures of the Round Table’s knights were normally

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    543 limited to the British Isles and their surroundings. Nevertheless, some heroes of East European origin appear in Arthurian texts and, again, the region appears in association with Constantinople. Whereas the Eastern knight at the court of Arthur was the son of the emperor of Constantinople in Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès (imitated by the Roman de Laurin), the Suite du Roman de Merlin, part of the Lancelot-​Grail romance cycle, introduced a real East-​Central European knight. A probably later version of the text (late thirteenth or early fourteenth century) reveals that Sagremor, a young knight of the Round Table, was the son of the king of Wallachia and Hungary (“roi de Blasque et de Hongrie”) and married to the daughter of Audeam, emperor of Constantinople. The next East-​Central European knight of the Round Table is Sir Urre of Hungary, a secondary character created by Sir Thomas Malory in the late fifteenth century. In the Morte d’Arthur, Launcelot miraculously heals Sir Urre’s wounds. The day after his recovery, Urre participates in a tournament and is elected a member of the Round Table. Sir Urre also stands out among other East-​Central European characters because he is not presented as a member of a royal family. References to ordinary people coming from the East-​Central European region but not related to the king are extremely rare; some “seneschals” and vassals are noted, but few of them bear a name or play any role in the plot. Featuring a foreign king stresses their symbolic role as the embodiment of their country and shows that readers rarely got a detailed presentation of the faraway lands or East-​Central European persons in the matière de Bretagne.46 One of the most intriguing appearances of East-​Central Europe in Arthurian romances occurs in the late thirteenth-​century Floriant et Florete. A young knight, Floriant, fights with the help of the Breton heroes of the Round Table for the throne of Sicily against a usurper, helped by Filimenis, “emperor of Constantinople,” as the text designates him. Hungarians are fighting in the Greek camp. Floriant falls in love with Filimenis’s daughter, Florete, and, once his army wins a victory over the Byzantines, he marries her. King Arthur’s nephew, Gauvain, the greatest conqueror of women’s hearts in Arthurian verse romances, marries Blanchandine, daughter of King Geremie of Hungary. Gauvain, thus, becomes heir to the throne of Hungary and after Geremie’s death, the emperor crowns him king of the land. Modern editors of the romance suspect that this imaginary marriage reflects Angevin political aspirations and goals at the time when the romance was written, before Charles Robert of Anjou was elected king of Hungary (1301).47

The Crusades in East-​C entral Europe: Lands in Distress After the loss of the Holy Land at the Siege of Acre in 1291, the Western European—​French, English, and Burgundian—​knights participated in crusader campaigns elsewhere, most frequently in the islands of the Mediterranean, in the Balkans against the Ottomans, and around the northern borders of Europe, against the Prussians.48 After 1225, the Teutonic

544   Levente Seláf knights, established by the Baltic Sea, welcomed chivalric forces from the West and, during the fourteenth century, it became fashionable among Western knights in search of fame to participate in the Reise (raids), seasonal military campaigns against the pagans of the north. The aim of the participants was more often individual glory than defense of the Christian community. In contrast, the Turkish advance through the Balkans was a real and serious danger perceived all over Europe. That is why, in 1396, Sigismund of Luxemburg (king of Hungary 1387–​1437) called for a Crusade and the massive participation of French and Burgundian knights contributed to fix an image of East-​Central and Southeast Europe as a land threatened by infidels and requiring Western help to protect itself. This new state of affairs came to be reflected in literary texts of the era. From that time Southeast Europe and Hungary were once again considered a buffer zone, a place for meeting and fighting the Saracens. While mid-​fifteenth-​century Central European rulers often represented themselves as defenders of Christendom—​ for instance, Władysław III of Poland (1434–​1444) and Matthias Corvinus (1458–​1490)—​their countries appear in the romances more frequently as lands in distress, in desperate need of the help of a Western hero to defeat the invading Saracens. Unsurprisingly, the rescue motif became a fashionable element in the late medieval chivalric romance in this period. For example, Louis de Gavre in Jean de Wavrin’s Histoire des seigneurs de Gavre, decides to seek adventures in the East of the Mediterranean.49 First he helps the duke of Milan against the Florentines, then the count of Istria, who is accused of having murdered his sister, the wife of the count of Zadar. Louis defends the honor of the countess in a duel against the traitor Cassidorus de Cazop. He wins the duel and, after some adventures, he arrives in Athens, where he helps the local duke win a battle against the duke of Adrianopolis, and becomes engaged to his daughter. Crowned duke of Athens, Louis returns to France and succeeds in reconciling his parents with each other. This text re-​employs narrative elements of the Roman de Florimont and served in turn as a model for the shorter Baudouin de Gavre.50 In this later adaptation, the hero, called Baudouin, instead of becoming the duke of Athens, saves the king of Hungary from the assault of the Turks, marries his daughter, and inherits his throne. This text contains a vague generalizing description of Eastern Europe. The capital of the Hungarian kingdom, besieged by the Turks, is called Montaigne au Roy—​the French translation of the name of Königsberg, located in Prussia, and the favorite destination of the Western crusaders going on Reise against the pagan Lithuanians. The author merged two places: Königsberg may have been known to him via accounts of crusaders, and Hungary may have been important for the probable commissioner of the romance, Jeanne de Laval, wife of René d’Anjou, descendant of the Angevin dynasty that had ruled Hungary (1308–​1382).

Sainthood and Heresy The fervor of the crusades in East-​Central Europe was complemented by the ideology of dynastic sainthood, looking back to a great tradition in Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary.

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    545 Many European countries shared the aspiration to be renowned as the (or one of the) “most Christian kingdom(s),” but the role of the beatified members of the ruling dynasty was especially important in this region.51 Hungary is the best example of how local saints’ cults served ideological and political goals to heighten the country’s prestige in Christendom. The cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231), daughter of King Andrew II (1205–​1235), was widespread all over Europe; her legend was known in Latin and in vernaculars. Her popularity was a major contribution to the image of Hungary as a defender of the faith, despite the fact that she was not a warrior saint and was in reality more strongly connected to Thuringia, having only spent her early childhood at the Hungarian court. Elizabeth’s first vernacular legend, composed in French soon after her death, gives her genealogy and praises the holy rulers of Hungary. Her person was prestigious enough that it was important for the compiler to prove that Elizabeth had some family connections with the Capetian dynasty in order to raise the prestige of the French rulers by praising her virtues.52 It is noteworthy that some later manuscripts give a false reading of the title of Elizabeth’s maternal grandfather, the “duke of Merania,” and affirm that she was descended from “dukes and emirs” (ducs et amiraus). This orientalizes Elisabeth’s family, not even her Hungarian side, but her German ancestors; her maternal grandfather, Bertold IV of Andechs, was duke of Merania. The scribe certainly had no idea where Merania was, and he must have imagined Hungary as an Islamic kingdom. This small but telling misreading shows the ambivalent relationship of Western authors with everything geographically closer to an imaginary Saracen Orient than their homeland. The list of Hungarian saints was not restricted to the real canonized members of the Árpád dynasty. Across Europe, in Latin and vernacular hagiographical literature, they are rarer than the partly imaginary holy figures of alleged Eastern European origin or connection, like Honorat of Lerins, Honoffre, Albain, Helen (the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, who was born in Pannonia), or an unnamed imaginary patriarch of Aquileia, son of a spurious Hungarian king just like Saint Martin. They were not, of course, among the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, but their legends were known in some circles and sometimes local cults were dedicated to them. The international reputation of other East-​Central European dynastic saints, especially favored by the Přemyslid dynasty, was limited to the region. Whereas St. Elizabeth’s fame helped spread the awareness of Hungarian saints in the western regions of Europe, it is possible that the traditional role of Slavs as pagans in the matière de France, or later, the poor reputation of the Hussite movement in Western Europe, encumbered the spread of the cult of Slavic, especially Bohemian, saints. Just as deeply entrenched prejudice, traces of which are discernible in literary tropes, may have influenced the perceptions of a country, the positive image of a single individual in a given literary and cultural milieu could positively modify the reputation of his or her home country. Among the several dynastic relationships that positively influenced the image of East-​Central European countries in Western Europe, the 1381 marriage of Anne of Bohemia to Richard II of England (1377–​1399) stands out. The fourteenth century saw an amelioration of the image of Bohemia and, according to Alfred

546   Levente Seláf Thomas, this marriage contributed to it significantly. This suggests that in England, for at least a generation, Bohemia was synonymous with wealth, modernity, and refinement. Anne, from a brilliant, fascinating Central European court, provided England with a strong new cultural inspiration; in his Confessio amantis John Gower refers to their fashionable, elegant courtly manners as the “guise of Beawme.”53 Chaucer dedicated his Legend of Good Women to Anne, and she appears in several other English poems as either a recipient of dedication or source of inspiration. This suggests that in England, for a generation at least, Bohemia was synonymous with wealth, modernity, and refinement. The positive image of Bohemia is confirmed by small but memorable literary motifs, such as the figure of a Bohemian knight, Sir Artaymnere of Beme, in the fifteenth-​century Middle English matière de France romance, The Siege of Milan. This Bohemian warrior, killed by a Saracen, is not some pagan Slav, but a prominent member of the Christian army.54 Antoine de la Sale’s Jehan de Saintré (1456) recounts a colossal fight between Christians and Saracens, where Bohemians, Lithuanians, and Hungarians all fight on the Christian side while Wallachians support the Muslims.55 One of the hero’s bravest opponents during his jousts is a Polish knight, which places the political and cultural relationships of Eastern Europe into the fourteenth century in a rather realistic way. Not only national stereotypes but also Europe’s contemporary political and cultural relationships, glimmer through the descriptions of combat. The positive portrayal of Bohemians is contrary to the general view of Bohemia in Europe in the early 1400s, when the Hussite movement and the crusade against it gave rise to texts containing harsh judgment of the country. In fifteenth-​century French texts a new term arises to designate the heretic Hussites, “Pragois,” which joined the highly negative term “bougre” (originally Bulgarian), also used in the sense of “heretic.” This negative image was applied retrospectively to texts written even earlier. The Chronicle of Charles VI, for example, relates that at the request of the king of Hungary a French military expedition was sent against the Turks in 1393.56 When the Turks retreated without putting up a fight, the French crusaders attacked Bohemia instead, as, according to some rumors, the Bohemians were dishonest and had questionable religious beliefs. The chronicle calls them Patareni, by this time a generic term for dualist heresy, associating them with the southern Slav Bogomils of the Balkans. The chronicle places this event before the beginning of the Hussite movement, but heterodoxy is the pretext for the battle against a Christian kingdom.

East-​C entral Europe as Part of the German Cultural and Political Zone East-​Central Europe was under the political and cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire but, for an even longer period, also of the Holy Roman Empire. As the military

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    547 power of Byzantium waned, Western influences became dominant in the image of the area. And the ties were bilateral; in the late Middle Ages not only Austrian princes but also Czech and Hungarian kings, were crowned Holy Roman Emperor several times. Consequently, even from an external perspective, to consider these countries as part of the German cultural zone seemed self-​evident. Particularly in French texts, East-​ Central Europe is frequently represented as part of the German political, cultural, and linguistic sphere. The presence of Germans in Slavic lands is recorded in learned books from the thirteenth century onward; the aforementioned Bartholomeus Anglicus, for example, describes Slavs as ferocious, wild people, but he adds that in Slavonia Minor their morals are more refined because they are mixed with Germans, thus attributing a civilizing virtue to German colonists. Adenet’s Berte au grans piés (after 1273), in describing the Hungarian court, says that people are speaking “tyois” (German), but the narrator remarks that the courtiers are also learning French as a language of culture. Hungarian is not mentioned in the text as a separate language. The mid-​fifteenth-​century Roman de Buscalus, dedicated to the early history of the city of Tournai, relates that when the young Arnobaldus, son of Duke Aubery of Saxony, arrives in Hungary (identical with Sicambria in the romance), he could talk to the Hungarian soldiers without revealing his identity because “he knew the language, for Saxon and Hungarian are quite similar.”57 The author echoes an opinion shared by Dante in his De vulgari eloquentia, written in the late thirteenth century, that “the Slavs, the Hungarians, the Teutons, the Saxons, the English, and several other nations” shared a common language.58 But there are diametrically opposite views; in the early fifteenth century, Gilles le Bouvier, for instance, considered some East-​Central European countries as part of Germany, but knew that the Poles and Hungarians had distinct languages: “And these countries belong to Germany, except that Hungarians do not speak German at all, but they have a language on their own, just like the Polish, but they understand Latin, especially clerks and priests, and they are good Catholics, defenders of the faith.”59 Hungarians are portrayed as extremely pious; no other nations go on pilgrimage to Rome more than they do.60 At the same time, when Gilles remarks that Hungarians are “dirty people” (Ces gens portent tous grandes barbes et sont ordes gens), he probably understands this dirtiness literally as well as in a moral sense. He makes a similar remark about the Germans, and the joint denigration further strengthens the association between Hungarians and Germans in his text. In the late Middle Ages and beyond, literary works were no longer the main sources for encounters and perceptions between East and West. The number of surviving documentary sources is greater for this period, providing a glimpse into the impressions and experiences of people lesser than kings and queens. The first detailed account by an East-​Central European author about Western Europe relates how Czech travelers were welcomed abroad. During Leo Rozmital’s long journey through the continent in 1465 to 1467, Princess Magdalena of France was especially displeased to meet him and his retinue, as according to general rumors, her fiancée Ladislaus Posthumous,

548   Levente Seláf king of Hungary, was poisoned by Czechs.61 The traveler’s diary describes another meeting, with a hermit believed to be King Władysław III of Poland and Hungary, who disappeared at the Battle of Varna in 1444. The knight Leo and his fellows believe they can identify the hermit as the king by his having six toes. What these documents have in common is that they reveal that much as Western travelers headed east and encountered bonacons, Saracens, and hosts of saints, Eastern Europeans also visited the West in search of marvels and miracles. Particularly when pilgrims traveled to the Western extremities of the known world, Santiago de Compostela or Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, many encountered the supernatural in a manner that was relevant to them. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the structure of European politics changed considerably. Central Europe’s political importance was on the rise. Some East-​Central European rulers intervened in Western politics, for example, John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia (1310–​1346), who participated in the Hundred Years’ War on the side of the French and died in the Battle of Crécy (1346). Later, his grandson, Sigismund, with a great contingent of French and Burgundian knights, organized the “crusade” that ended at the disastrous battle of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund, king of Hungary and Croatia (1387–​1437) as well as Germany (1411–​1437), Bohemia (1419–​1437), and Italy (1431–​1437), and the Holy Roman Emperor (1433–​1437), organized the Council of Constance (1414) and visited France and England (1416) with his magnificent imperial court, which was a truly cosmopolitan entourage. Whether the Czechs or Hungarians in Sigismund’s service were viewed any differently than German or Italian members is unknown, but this was nevertheless a real and documented encounter that provided an opportunity for Western observers to reshape or confirm any previous stereotypes. *** The diversity of examples offered in this chapter—​some showing empirical reality represented in texts, some demonstrating the influence of texts on real perceptions and stereotypes—​illustrates that there was no constant image of the region in Western literature. Instead, a matrix of stereotypes emerges, with more pronounced points or characteristics that remained unchanged and unchallenged over the entire medieval period and connected the various kingdoms of the East-​Central European region. Various images and narrative functions, first encountered in this or that matière, wandered from one text and genre to another, which shows the complicated structure of intertextuality in medieval literature. This system was not static. After a long period when the lack of information about the region was compensated for by stereotypes and distinct ways of “orientalizing” by association, a growing number of personal encounters helped Western writers develop a more diversified vision of the region. Although these more nuanced representations still operate with stereotypes, by the late Middle Ages Western literature seems to have emancipated East-​Central Europe, which was increasingly portrayed as a land of highly mobile outstanding warriors and attractive princesses who played greater roles in fictitious political events, not unlike Eastern Europe’s intensifying significance in the affairs of Western kingdoms.

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    549

Notes 1. Alexandre Eckhardt, De Sicambria à Sans Souci: Histoires et légendes franco-​hongroises (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1943), 11–​51. 2. Tzvetan Todorov, Nous et les autres (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 28, cited by Alain Montandon, “Les caractères nationaux dans la littérature française: Problèmes de méthode,” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études francaises 54 (2002): 252. 3. John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 4. Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes von 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994); Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–​1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 5. See the Macrobian (zonal) maps collected in Leonid S. Chekin, Northern Eurasia in Medieval Cartography: Inventory, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 109–​123, 426–​446. 6. Peter Hoppenbrouwers, “Medieval Peoples Imagined,” in Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters; A Critical Survey, edited by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam: Brill/​Rodopi, 2007), 45–​62. 7. The huge number and variety of sources and the lack of indices hamper systematic data collection, as for example, in the case of German literature. 8. André Moisan, Répertoire des noms propres de personnes et de lieux cités dans les chansons de geste françaises et les œuvres étrangères dérivées (Geneva: Droz, 1986). 9. A nonexhaustive onomastic index of medieval French and Occitan romances contains over forty references to Hungary and Hungarians, twenty-​two to Esclavonie (and its inhabitants), eight mentions of Bohemia (Behaigne), and only four of Poland. See also Louis-​Fernand Flutre, Table des noms propres avec toutes leurs variantes figurant dans les romans du Moyen Age écrits en français ou en provençal et actuellement publiés ou analysés (Poitiers: Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale, 1962). 10. Hoppenbrouwers, “Medieval Peoples,” 60. 11. Burghart Wachinger, Der Sängerstreit auf der Wartburg: Von der Manesseschen Handschrift bis zu Moritz von Schwind (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004). 12. Jean d’Arras, Mélusine ou la noble histoire de Lusignan, roman du XIVe siècle, edited by Jean-​Jacques Vincensini (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2003), 811. 13. Couldrette, Mélusine (Roman de Parthenay ou Roman de Lusignan), edited by Matthew W. Morris and Jean-​Jacques Vincensini (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). 14. Thüring von Ringoltingen, Melusine (1456): Nach dem Erstdruck Basel: Richel um 1473/​74, edited by André Schnyder and Ursula Rautenberg (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2006). 15. Here I do not address the differences between prose and verse texts, analyzed by Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). 16. František Graus, “Troja und trojanische Herkunftssage im Mittelalter,” in Kontinuität und Transformation der Antike im Mittelalter: Veröffentlichung der Kongreßakten zum Freiburger Symposion des Mediävistenverbandes, edited by Willi Erzgräber (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989), 25–​43. 17. Eckhardt, De Sicambria à sans souci.

550   Levente Seláf 18. Yves Coutant, ed., Les vraies chroniques de Tournai (Louvain-​la-​Neuve, Réseau des médiévistes belges de langue française, 2012) 43–​178; Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, edited by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999). 19. Tibor Živković, Vladeta Petrović, and Aleksandar Uzelac, eds., Anonymi descriptio Europae Orientalis (Belgrade: Istorijski Institut Beograd, 2011). 20. Attila Györkös, Reneszánsz utazás: Anna királyné 1502-​es fogadtatásának ünnepségei Észak-​Itáliában és Magyarországon [Renaissance travel: Feasts of reception for Queen Anna in 1502 in Northern Italy and Hungary] (Máriabesnyő: Attraktor, 2016). 21. Ernest-​Théodore Hamy, ed., Le livre de la description des pays de Gilles le Bouvier, dit Berry (Paris: Leroux, 1908). 22. Gaston Raynaud and Henri Lemaître, eds., Le roman de Renart le Contrefait (Paris: Champion, 1914). 23. Jean Bodel, La chanson des Saisnes, edited by Annette Brasseur (Geneva: Droz, 1989). See Richard Trachsler’s method of analyzing medieval narratives based on the three narrative matters in his Disjointures-​Conjointures: Étude sur l’interférence des matières narratives dans la littérature française du Moyen Âge (Tübingen: A. Francke, 2000), and further reflections on the narrative matières in Matières à débat: La notion de matière littéraire dans la littérature médiévale, edited by Christine Ferlampin-​Acher and Catalina Girbea (Rennes: Presse universitaire de Rouen, 2017). 24. Manuscript A (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 34), strophes 1278–​1280. 25. The Occitan troubadour Gauceran affirms in a poem that he would prefer to possess a nude woman instead of having all gold of Tyre and that of the king of Hungary: “Q’enanz volria ieu tenir Avinen domna senz vestir Qe tot l’aur ni l’argen de Tyr Ni cel del rei d’Ongria,” Trobadorgedichte: Dreissig Stücke altprovenzalischer Lyrik zum ersten Male kritisch bearbeitet, edited by Adolf Kolsen (Halle: Niemeyer, 1925), 17. 26. Adenet le Roi, “Cleomadés,” in Les oeuvres d’Adenet le Roi, edited by Albert Henry (Brussels: Université de Bruxelles, 1971), vol. 5, 255–​256. 27. We know that Central European mines furnished much of the precious metal used on the continent. In other types of sources gold and silver are listed as export goods from Hungary and Bohemia to the markets of Champagne, so writers and readers of northern France and the Low Countries could have been aware of that. 28. On Hungarian horses in medieval French sources, see Levente Seláf, “Lovakról” [On horses], in Magistrae discipuli, edited by Előd Nemerkényi (Budapest: Argumentum, 2009), 291–​298. 29. Bertrandon de la Broquière, Voyage d’Orient: Espion en Turquie, edited by Jacques Paviot (Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2010). 30. Zsuzsanna Papp Reed, “Perpetual Preys: Pursuing the Bonacon across Space and Time,” in Medieval Animals on the Move, edited by László Bartosiewicz (London: Palgrave, 2021). 31. La chanson de Roland, edited by Ian Short (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1990), 198–​199. 32. On the conversion to Christianity of East-​Central European states, see Nora Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–​1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 33. Louis Karl, “La Hongrie et les hongrois dans les chansons de geste,” Revue des Langues Romanes 51 (1908): 5–​38. 34. Book 15 in Bartholomeus Anglicus (1203–​1272), De proprietatibus rerum, has a specific entry dedicated to “Sclavonia” divided into two parts: the Minor (Bohemia, Poland,

The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European Literature    551 and other northern regions) and the Major (Dalmatia, Carinthia, and other regions in the south). See BNF lat. 16098, fol. 147v: De Sclavonia. The text has no reliable critical edition yet. 35. Adenet le Roi, Berte as grans piés, edited by Albert Henry (Genf: Droz, 1982). 36. Hoppenbrouwers, “Medieval Peoples,” 56. 37. In the case of Floire et Blanchefleur it has been suggested that the marriage of Béla III (r. 1172–​1196) to Marguerite Capet (1186) was a recent memory of Franco-​Hungarian dynastic relationships could have stimulated the imagination of the author, but there is no evidence for it. 38. Aimé Petit, L’anachronisme dans les romans antiques du XIIe siècle: Le Roman de Thèbes, le Roman d’Énéas, Le Roman de Troie, le Roman d’Alexandre (Paris: Champion, 2002). 39. Le roman de Thèbes, edited by Aimé Petit (Paris: Champion, 2008). 40. Raoul Lefevre, L’histoire de Jason, edited by Gert Pinkernell (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1971). 41. Aimon von Varennes, Florimont, edited by Alfons Hilka (Halle: Niemeyer, 1933). 42. Rima Devereaux, Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature: Renewal and Utopia (London: Boydell & Brewer, 2012). 43. Levente Seláf, “Constantinople et la Hongrie dans le cycle des Sept sages de Rome,” in Byzance et l’Occident III: Écrits et manuscrits, edited by Emese Egedi-​ Kovács (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2016), 153–​166. 44. Levente Seláf, “Saint Martin: The Honorary Saint of Hungary,” Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 3 (2016): 487–​508. A vernacular version of the legend is Péan Gatineau, Vie de saint Martin, see Das altfranzösische Martinsleben des Péan Gatineau aus Tours, edited by Werner Söderhjelm (Helsinki: Wentzel Hagelstam, 1899). 45. The most common collections of legends did not identify Pannonia with Hungary and kept to the most reliable story of Martin’s life, written by Sulpicius Severus, ignoring his fabled royal origins. 46. Hoppenbrouwers, “Medieval Peoples,” 51–​53. 47. The Travels of Leo of Rozmital through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy 1465–​1467, edited by Malcolm Letts (Taylor & Francis: London, 2010). 48. The major forces of the Nordic crusades, however, still came from the Holy Roman Empire. 49. Histoire des seigneurs de Gavre, edited by René Stuip (Paris: Champion, 1993). 50. The romance is unpublished, preserved in a single manuscript, Paris, BnF, nouvelles acquisitions françaises, 1821. 51. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 52. Levente Seláf, “Le Modèle absolu de la princesse charitable: La première légende vernaculaire de sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie et sa réception,” Moyen Age 124 (2018): 371–​396. 53. Alfred Thomas, A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 14. 54. Alan Lupack, ed., Three Middle English Charlemagne Romances (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1990). 55. Antoine de La Sale, Jehan de Saintré, edited by Mario Eusebi (Paris: Champion, 1993–​1994). 56. Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France (Paris: A. Desrez, 1841), 385. 57. “Il savoit le langage, car le saxon et le hongrois sont assez sembles.” BnF fr. 9344, fol. 162v.

552   Levente Seláf 58. Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, edited by Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 59. “Et sont ces royaulmes des Alemaignes, ja soi ce que les Hongres ne parlent point alemant, mais ont ung langage à par eulx et aussi ont les Poulains, mais ilz entendent latin, espécialement prestres et clers et croient bien en Dieu et sont bons catholiques et deffendeurs de la foy.” Hamy, Le livre de la description, 100–​101. Author’s translation. 60. Hamy, Le livre de la description, 98. 61. The Travels of Leo of Rozmital.

Further Reading Classen, Albrecht, ed. East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Hoppenbrouwers, Peter. “Medieval Peoples Imagined.” In Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey, edited by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, 45–​62. Amsterdam: Brill/​Rodopi, 2007. Mühle, Eduard. Die Slawen im Mittelalter zwischen Idee und Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2020. Thomas, Alfred. A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Chapter 23

Musical C u lt u re in Medieva l Central E u rope Paweł Gancarczyk

“Central Europe” is quite a complex notion in music historiography. During the post–​ World War II decades, it was usually confined to the German-​speaking countries, while Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, within the Soviet sphere of influence, were referred to as “Eastern Europe” and remained invisible to Western historiography in many respects. Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the lifting of the Iron Curtain in 1989, contemporary musicology continues to struggle with mental barriers that result in the regionalization of Europe according to political criteria from the second half of the twentieth century. This also affects research into medieval musical culture, as is manifest, on one hand, in the cultural separation of Austria, Bavaria, and Saxony from Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, and, on the other, in the musical heritage of such states as the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary being overlooked in discussions of the history of Western music. Recent years have brought an increase in scholarly writings that break through those barriers, not just detailed studies, but also synthesizing works.1 It is becoming increasingly clear that German-​speaking countries and the lands of the former kingdoms of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary are linked by a range of shared phenomena, at times clearly distinct compared to both Western Europe and Eastern Europe. This can be seen in reference to musical culture during the Middle Ages, especially in the late period.

Plainchant In seeking the beginnings of notated professional music in Central Europe, we have to reach back to the times of Charlemagne, when the first notations of plainchant

554   Paweł Gancarczyk appeared, not just in French lands, but in German lands as well. At first, they comprised a modest selection of liturgical chants, while the musical notation itself, known as staffless or nondiastematic, was far from precise, tending to show rather the direction of the melody and its articulation than any specific notes. Already at that time, different ways of notating plainchant began to take shape, different in the form of the signs (neumes) and their positioning in relation to one another. In the territory of Central Europe, broadly understood, German neumes were used. Initially, the range was limited mainly to German lands, but during the tenth century—​along with the adoption of Latin Christianity by Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary—​they spread to the whole region. Staffless notation held its place in Central Europe long after the eleventh-​century introduction of staff (or diastematic) notation. It was used the longest, into the fourteenth century, by scriptoria in southern Germany. To a large extent, German neumes distinguished the chant that was cultivated in Central Europe. Influenced by other types of neumes and the development of various local customs, however, they gave rise to new notations. The adoption of Messine staff notation in Prague during the thirteenth century triggered the emergence of a specifically Bohemian notation. The notation used in Silesia developed from a blend of German and Messine elements, and Esztergom notation evolved from German, Messine, and Italian neumes.2 Each of them continued up to early modern times and clashed with the unifying power of musical printing during the second half of the fifteenth century. At the same time, the development of notation styles in the south of the German-​language area followed a different trajectory than in the Rhineland. In addition, some monastic orders, like the Cistercians, employed their own neumes or, like the Franciscans and Dominicans later, introduced the “foreign” square notation typical of Italy or France. A special plainchant dialect was linked to German notation, distinguished by a tendency to omit semitones, thanks to which it took on a pentatonic coloring (a pentatonic scale is often associated with traditional music). Local compositional output mainly took the form of new offices for the patron saints of particular centers, dioceses, or countries. As early as the first half of the eleventh century, for example, three offices were established in Regensburg for Sts. Emmeram, Denis, and Wolfgang, who were worshipped there. That output often involved adapting existing chants: compiling new texts, reworking melodies, and arranging them in cycles encompassing all the canonical hours. That was how Raimundus compiled, during the thirteenth century, an office to St. Stephen, patron saint of Hungary, and Wincenty of Kielcza composed an office to St. Stanisław, patron saint of Poland. Central Europe saw the spread of tropes and sequences—​poetic works accompanying liturgical chants. One of the earliest to write such works was Notker Balbulus of the Benedictine abbey of St. Gallen in Switzerland, whose sequences were collected in a Liber hymnorum for the year 884. Original chant works were composed by Hildegard von Bingen (1098–​1179), who wrote numerous antiphons and the liturgical drama Ordo Virtutum.

Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe     555

Sacred Songs During the Middle Ages, there was a whole range of musical genres used in church ceremonies that did not belong to liturgical chants such as antiphons, responsories, and mass sections. They include tropes, sequences, and dramas, which are termed paraliturgical chant. Paraliturgical output and liturgical hymns gave rise to the genre called the “cantio,” which was cultivated in Central Europe.3 This was a strophic Latin song that often functioned outside the church as devotional music. It could be in two parts (versus–​repetitio), with the first part repeated, and even the earliest form was notated and performed using rhythmic values. The cantio was cultivated particularly during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Prague, with its university, founded in 1348, is considered to have been the focal point of its development. During the fifteenth century, polyphonic compositions, most often for two voices, appeared alongside monophonic works. Besides Latin songs, songs in the vernacular that likewise display close links to plainchant were also composed in Central Europe. In German lands, this output dates back to at least the beginning of the twelfth century, although its notations date from later times. One of the most famous songs—​Christ ist erstanden—​has come down to us in neumes in an Austrian manuscript from c. 1165. It was later copied across Central Europe, not just in German-​speaking lands, and underwent various transformations, including translations and polyphonic settings. Referring directly to Gregorian chant, the Pentecost song Nu biten wir den heiligen geist and the Christmas song Der tag der ist so freidenreich, were also popular. In Bohemia, Hospodine, pomiluj ny (“Lord, have mercy”), is part of a long tradition reaching back to the Old Church Slavonic liturgy while Svatý Václave (“St. Wenceslas”), dated to the thirteenth century, derived from the tradition of the Latin Church. The development of a song repertoire in Czech intensified with the Hussite Revolution. In Poland, the oldest song in the vernacular is Bogurodzica (“Mother of God”), possibly dating from the fourteenth century, although it was not written down until the early fifteenth century. Most of these songs have maintained an unbroken presence in regional culture up to modern times. They have become national emblems, although during the Middle Ages their origins and geographic range did not suggest such usage. One of the most interesting composers of German sacred songs in Central Europe was the Monk of Salzburg. Although he has not been definitively identified, we know that his patron was the Archbishop of Salzburg, Pilgrim II von Puchheim (1365–​1396). The Monk wrote his own words and music and also translated or adapted Latin hymns and sequences. His songs, most often devoted to the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity, were copied (with or without the melodies) in numerous manuscripts during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Besides sacred output, he also wrote secular songs, examples of the court lyric of the late Middle Ages. Among them are the first polyphonic

556   Paweł Gancarczyk works in German, including a drinking song associated with St. Martin’s Day, Martein lieber herre (“Martin, dear Lord”), which takes the form of a three-​part canon.4

Minnesang Minnesang, a German tradition of courtly lyric and secular monophony, held an important place in the song tradition of Central Europe. It was cultivated from the twelfth to the first half of the fifteenth century, although the times of Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170 to c. 1230) are regarded as its “golden age.” Minnesang, modeled on the tradition of courtly song developed in Provence and northern France by troubadours and trouvères, was the domain of itinerant poet-​musicians, especially representatives of the nobility. It dealt with similar topics, most often a knight’s love for an unattainable woman and his consequent feelings of happiness, sadness, and longing, which were associated with descriptions of nature and the seasons. Songs about a woman’s yearning for a man (Frauenlied) were also composed, about lovers parting at dawn (Tagelied, derived from the Provençal alba), and about renouncing the world during a Crusade (Kreuzlied). The authors of minnesang frequently turned to biographical, sociopolitical, philosophical, moralizing, and religious subjects not related to courtly love.5 For example, Heinrich von Meissen, known as Frauenlob (c. 1260/​65–​1318), composed Marienleich, in praise of the Virgin Mary, which has more than five hundred lines and numerous references to the Song of Songs.6 This trend gave rise, toward the end of the Middle Ages, to Meistergesang, cultivated in guilds founded in German cities by members of the lower and middle social classes. Works of a dance character also appeared among the output linked to minnesang broadly conceived. Minnesang manuscripts are usually later than the works themselves and often contain the verse alone rather than the words and melody, which hampers musicological research. The three main categories—​Lied, Spruch, and Leich—​are somewhat unclear; they tend to be distinguished based on text rather than musical features. Countless problems also arise when reading the actual melodies, notated by means of plainchant notation (even staffless notation in the earliest sources). Doubts arise in particular about the rhythm and also about how instruments are to be used to accompany the singing. The musical output of the minnesingers generally remained within the domain of oral culture and was based largely on improvisation. One of the oldest sources of melodies of secular songs is the famous manuscript known as Carmina Burana (c. 1230), which probably originated in the southern Tyrol.7 Although the development of minnesang is linked mainly with the south of the German-​speaking area, its range was much greater. The authors traveled a great deal, presenting their art at various courts, and influencing local literary and musical life in the courts of the rulers and magnates in the kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. One example of such a traveling poet-​musician is Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376/​78–​1445), a representative of late minnesang, who came from an aristocratic family

Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe     557 in the southern Tyrol. On his European travels he visited the Teutonic Order state in Prussia (1399 and 1402) and also Hungary (1419).8 Oswald composed not only monophonic songs, but also thirty-​seven polyphonic settings, including German contrafacta of Italian and French works.9 The latter group includes a Latin song of Italian provenance, Ave mater, O Maria, translated into German as Ave mütter, küniginne.

Instruments Although we know that instrumental music held an important place in medieval culture, most sources contain only vocal music. The use of instruments is inferred in compositions where there is no text and the melody does not display typical vocal characteristics, employing large intervals and small rhythmic values. We know from iconography, mentions in literary sources, and archival records, however, about the wide range of instruments played at that time and their multiple uses. They included both organs built in churches and instruments used at courts and in towns. A division into loud and soft instruments was typical of the culture of the late Middle Ages. The former included shawms, which together with slide trumpets (or trombones), formed small ensembles (alta cappella) that performed music for ceremonies, dancing, and recreation. Poet-​ musicians performing minnesang and narrative poetry used soft instruments like the lute and the harp. Combining instruments in pairs or slightly larger groups shows that they were also used to perform polyphonic music. There is much to suggest that medieval Central Europe was an important center for the development of keyboard music. A large group of theoretical texts explaining the principles of playing the organ and the way it is tuned date from the fifteenth century. They include two treatises recently discovered in Prague written between 1427 and 1436 by Matthias Bohemus de Tyn, who traveled among Frankfurt an der Oder, Cracow, and Lanškroun in Bohemia.10 Three fragments of manuscripts containing organ music date from a similar period, written in Silesia in a special notation designed for keyboard instruments known as German tablature. A collection of around 250 pieces known as the Buxheim Organ Book, compiled in Bavaria or Switzerland, dates to the second half of the fifteenth century.11 Besides many vocal works arranged for keyboard, this contains original instrumental music, mainly dances and preludes (preambula). The blind organist and lutenist Conrad Paumann (c. 1410–​73), originally from Nürnberg, was active at that time; he wrote Fundamentum organisandi—​a set of musical examples illustrating ways of playing the organ. The issues explored in organ treatises and also the pieces written in tablatures were not only for large church organs or portable positive organs but also for other keyboard instruments played at court and in the home. In 1397, the Paduan lawyer Giovanni Lodovico Lambertacci wrote about his acquaintance, Hermann Poll from Vienna, who had invented an instrument called the clavicembalum.12 This was certainly an early form of harpsichord. A few years later, in 1404, Eberhard von Cersne

558   Paweł Gancarczyk of Minden mentions the clavichord (clavicordium), another previously unknown keyboard instrument, in his treatise on love, Der Minne Regel. A further mention of the clavicordium, dating from 1408, comes from the accounts of the grand master of the Teutonic Order, who sent such an instrument as a gift to the wife of the grand duke of Lithuania.13 Paulus Paulirinus de Praga described instruments used during the fifteenth century—​including the harpsichord and the clavichord—​in his encyclopedic work Liber viginti artium (Plzeň/​Pilsen, c. 1463).14

Polyphony Compared to France or England, the countries of Central Europe long remained on the margins of the development of polyphonic music. Up to 1400, local output was modest and concentrated mainly on simple liturgical polyphony, closely related to plainchant. Fragmented sources of the more refined mensural polyphony cultivated in France are often preserved in Central Europe, attesting to the import of music that belonged to ars antiqua and ars nova. Fragments of a marvelous Parisian manuscript from c. 1248 have even been found in the Poor Clares’ convent in Stary Sącz, southern Poland, far from the main centers of musical culture.15 Only from the end of the fourteenth century can we speak of a more intense presence of polyphony in the musical life of Central Europe. This may be linked to the work of the monasteries—​important centers for transferring musical thinking and output—​and also to the role of the universities; after Prague, institutions of higher education were founded in Cracow (1364), Vienna (1365), and Leipzig (1409). Imperial, royal, and ducal courts were also important meeting places for musicians from different parts of Europe. During the fifteenth century, permanent vocal ensembles were created at such courts employing foreign singers and composers, most often from the territory of present-​day Belgium and northeastern France. A similar practice could have been employed in large churches, as is suggested by the example of Dubrovnik (at that time under Hungarian tutelage), where, in 1449–​1450, the Grand Council employed three cantors of French origins to sing in the cathedral and other churches.16 Toward the end of the Middle Ages, a clear differentiation can be seen in the social functioning of polyphony in Central Europe. Music written for higher social strata, performed at courts and in cathedrals, clearly refers to Western models. It is based partly on imported repertoire and partly on repertoire produced by local composers inspired by French, Burgundian, or Italian polyphony. The music cultivated in monasteries, universities, and schools, meanwhile, displays distinctly local characteristics. They are sufficiently original and can be linked sufficiently strongly to the region that we can call it Central European polyphony. It is exemplified primarily by two musical genres: the cantio and the polytextual motet, harking back to the tradition of the thirteenth-​century ars antiqua motet, but developing in a different way than anywhere else.17 These are

Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe     559 mostly anonymous compositions, but Central European polyphony also has a representative: Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz.

Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz Petrus Wilhelmi was born in Grudziądz in the Teutonic Order state (now northern Poland) in 1392. He studied at Cracow University, where he earned his master’s degree (1430). Around 1440, he joined the court of Frederick III, king of Germany and later Holy Roman Emperor. He did not belong to the music chapel, led by the Burgundian composer Johannes Brassart, but held the function of royal chaplain. He probably attended the Council of Basel and Frederick’s coronation as emperor, which took place in Rome in 1452. It is thought that he spent some time in Bohemia and Silesia. More than fifty sources can be linked to the output of Petrus Wilhelmi. Their origin covers the area that we call Central Europe. The furthest points in the reception of his works are Frankfurt am Main in the west, Lviv in the east, the prince-​bishopric of Trent in the south, and the duchy of Mazovia in the north. His works were most popular in southern Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, northern Hungary (now Slovakia), Austria, south and central Germany. A similar geographical range of influence was attained by other phenomena of fifteenth-​century musical culture, including the tradition of the teaching of the principles of chant associated with the name of Johannes Hollandrinus, represented by almost thirty theoretical texts.18 Petrus Wilhelmi produced both polyphonic music and Latin poetry.19 The acrostic “Petrus” appears in the texts of his songs, motets, and canons and his full name, “Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz,” is encoded in one of his polytextual motets. Against the background of Western European polyphony of the first half of the fifteenth century these are not particularly elaborate or complicated compositions. They refer to earlier traditions, but at the same time have absorbed new elements (in harmony, for example) and display considerable melodic inventiveness and ingenuity in combining music and words. They include references to local customs, as in the four-​part canon Presulem ephebeatum, which has hidden allusions to the custom of eating goose and drinking young wine on St. Martin’s Day.20 In the motet Probitate eminentem/​Ploditando exarare, Petrus refers to the tradition of the ars nova motet, which often had ceremonial functions and panegyric themes. That is musical camouflage, however, since the verbal layer contains a veiled satire on the immoral life of clerics. The reference to foreign traditions in parody should be treated as an act of regional identification.21 Although Petrus has become known as a “Polish” composer (on account of the present-​day location of Grudziądz), he was rather a “Central European” composer. The works of Petrus Wilhelmi were popular in their day. They were still being copied many decades after his death and the latest sources date from the early seventeenth century. Around 1450, some of them were added to the repertoire of the Bohemian Utraquists, who were particularly fond of old local traditions. There are also examples of

560   Paweł Gancarczyk Petrus’s pieces being quoted by composers active in Central Europe during the sixteenth century, and one of his songs was adapted for the Lutheran songbook of Valentin Triller (Wrocław 1555).

Radomski and Edlerawer Mikołaj Radomski and Hermann Edlerawer were also composing at the same time as Petrus Wilhelmi, adapting models from outside Central Europe in their music. Familiarity with their works was no doubt confined to a single center and a short span of time. Mikołaj Radomski—​of whose life nothing is known for certain—​was linked in some way to the Polish royal court. Attempts have been made to identify him with one Nicolaus Geraldi de Radom, who received a prebend from Pope Boniface IX in 1390, and with another Nicolaus, clavicembalista to Queen Zofia, wife of Władysław Jagiełło, mentioned in 1422. Works by Mikołaj appear in two manuscripts probably compiled in Cracow c. 1440.22 They bear secure attributions: “Opus Nicolai de Radom” or—​in the Polish version—​“Slowye Micolayowo Radomskego.” These are the first known examples of the use of the word “opus” in reference to a musical work.23 Mikołaj Radomski wrote three pairs of sections of the mass Gloria-​Credo, in which one discerns clear influences from the master of the late Trecento, Antonio Zacara da Teramo. He also composed a Magnificat, using the then-​modern technique of fauxbourdon employed earlier by Guillaume Du Fay (1397–​1474), one of the most important composers of those times. One of Radomski’s two ballads was transmitted with the panegyric text Historigraphi aciem mentis, written for the birth of the royal couple’s son.24 Much more is known about Hermann Edlerawer. He came from Mainz, but settled in Vienna, where he studied at the university and served successive rulers of the Habsburg dynasty, including Frederick III. From 1440 to 1444, he was cantor of the Church of St. Stephen in Vienna,25 and there is no doubt that his compositional output should be associated with that post. He is documented by just seven works preserved in the St. Emmeram Codex.26 Like Radomski, he employed the fauxbourdon technique, although his works are far from the refinement achieved by the Polish composer. The St. Emmeram Codex gives a good picture of the nature of musical culture in Central Europe during the second quarter of the fifteenth century. Among the 276 polyphonic compositions are works by the most outstanding composers of the times, who worked in Burgundy, France, Italy, and England. There are also works by local composers, more or less skillfully imitating their Western colleagues, as well as a typically Central European repertoire represented by Petrus Wilhelmi and anonymous cantiones. The bulk of this collection was compiled in the years 1439 to 1443 by Hermann Pötzlinger, who traveled to Vienna from Franconia to study at the university there. On

Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe     561 returning home, he settled in Regensburg, where he became a teacher, and then rector of the school attached to the Benedictine monastery of St. Emmeram.

Tourout and Foreign Composers Also associated with the court of Emperor Frederick III was another important fifteenth-​century composer, Johannes Tourout. His name appears on many works familiar in Central Europe during the 1460s. The reasons for his popularity have only been discovered recently; Tourout was the imperial chaplain and belonged to a music ensemble which then comprised eight singers from the duchy of Burgundy. He came from Torhout in the diocese of Tournai and held a lucrative prebend at the Church of Our Lady in Antwerp. Besides French and Flemish musicians, cantors from Austrian lands were also active at the imperial court as well as Antonius Primi de Chaphoreto, an organist from Kobarid in present-​day Slovenia.27 Tourout’s output is now being discovered as among the most interesting of the fifteenth century.28 His mass cycles are preserved in the Trent Codices, which mainly document musical life at the imperial court,29 and in the Strahov Codex, probably compiled in southern Bohemia or Prague.30 His Missa Mon oeil is regarded as one of the earliest examples of the use of the parody technique which became widespread in the sixteenth century. It cannot be excluded that Tourout was the leader of a whole group of composers, since in the sources there are a number of anonymous works adhering to his highly individual style. Their local flavor involves the use of German songs as pre-​existing melodies forming a basis of polyphonic compositions (so-​called cantus firmus technique). Tourout also wrote French chansons, most often in rondeau form. These works could not have found many performers in Central Europe, hence the original words were replaced with Latin texts. This contrafactum practice was characteristic of this region; in manuscripts, many chansons occur with new texts on religious subjects which distort the original form and intention. For example, the Sagan partbooks (formerly called the “Glogauer Liederbuch”) is a large collection of originally French songs, a voluminous manuscript consisting of three partbooks containing discantus, tenor, and contratenor voices.31 It was probably compiled by Martin Rinkenberg, the abbot of the Canons Regular monastery in Żagań (German Sagan), Silesia. Between 1477 and 1482, he gathered almost three hundred compositions—​sacred and secular, Latin and German, imported and local. They include Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz’s motet Probitate eminentem/​Ploditando exarare and the chanson Joye me fuit ascribed 1514), compiler of the famous to Johannes Tourout.32 Hartmann Schedel (1440–​ Liber Chronicarum (also known as the “Nürnberg Chronicle”), also collected secular German and French songs.33 Outstanding foreign musicians traveled to Central European courts. One of the first was Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–​1377), secretary to John of Luxemburg, king

562   Paweł Gancarczyk of Bohemia.34 During the fifteenth century, besides Frederick III and then Maximilian I, the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus also maintained an international court. In 1483, Bishop Bartolomeo de Maraschi rated the royal music chapel there higher than that of the pontiff himself. The latest research suggests that between 1485 and 1488 Josquin des Prez (c. 1450/​55–​1521) may have been employed there.35 That would explain the presence of early copies of his works in Central European manuscripts, including the earliest copy of the famous Missa L’homme armé sexti toni in the Lviv fragments (c. 1490).36 Unfortunately, no Hungarian music sources from that time have come down to us.

Around 1500 In Central Europe, the years around 1500 were marked by the intense development of polyphonic music. Several large collections containing masses, motets, and songs of various provenance are preserved from that period that served as repositories of musical repertoire for ceremonies in churches and beyond. Linked by a network of contacts relating to both imported and local output, they are distinguished as a separate category of musical manuscript on account of their repertoire, scriptorial, and physical traits.37 Besides codices from Saxony, Tyrol, and Silesia, they include the Speciálník Codex, compiled in the Utraquist environment in Prague around 1485–​1500.38 The Speciálník synthesizes the musical culture of fifteenth-​century Central Europe in an interesting way since it contains both old local compositions written out in “archaic” black mensural notation and newer works in the white mensural notation characteristic of the times. The biographies of composers of those times reflect strong links among Central European centers. Heinrich Finck (1444/1445–​1527), born in Bamberg, was linked to the courts of the Jagiellons in Cracow and Vilnius for a long time; toward the end of his life he was employed at such places as the chapel of Emperor Maximilian I and Salzburg Cathedral. The outstanding organist Paul Hofhaimer (1459–​1537) was active in the imperial chapel and Salzburg Cathedral for a number of years, having served earlier at the Tyrolean and Saxon courts. Thomas Stoltzer (c. 1475–​1526), originally from Świdnica, Silesia, spent his career in the ensemble of the Hungarian King Louis II. Finck, although still rather underappreciated, was a master of sacred polyphony comparable to Josquin des Prez.39 The criticism of the “center-​periphery” concept that has been pursued in recent years, together with the crumbling of the mental remains of the Iron Curtain, makes it possible to look at the music of Central Europe in a different light than a few decades ago. Above all, we are discerning ever more clearly the complementarity of the cultural phenomena arising in different countries of this region. Central Europe drew on models from France, the Netherlands, and Italy, transforming them in an original way. At the same time, it developed its own, an important, recognizable quality, on the map of medieval Europe.40

Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe     563

Notes 1. See also Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380–​1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Tom R. Ward, “Polyphonic Music in Central Europe, c.1300–​ c.1520,” in Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, edited by Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 191–​243. 2. Janka Szendrei, “Choralnotationen in Mitteleuropa,” Studia Musicologica 30 (1988): 437–​446. 3. Jan Ciglbauer, “Antiphon oder Cantio? Auf der Suche nach der Identität des mitteleuropäischen geistlichen Liedes,” Hudební věda 53, no. 2–​3 (2016): 117–​128. 4. Hans Waechter and Franz Viktor Spechtler, eds., Der Mönch von Salzburg: Die Melodien zu sämtlichen geistlichen und weltlichen Liedern (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2004). 5. Günther Schweikle, Minnesang, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995). 6. Karl Stackmann and Karl Bertau, eds., Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen): Leichs, Sangsprüche, Lieder, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981), 236–​283. 7. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660 and 4660a. 8. Die Lebenszeugnisse Oswalds von Wolkenstein: Edition und Kommentar, vol. 1, edited by Anton Schwob (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), 19–​21, 59–​61, 328–​330. 9. Ivana Pelnar, Die mehrstimmigen Lieder Oswalds von Wolkenstein, 2 vols. (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1981–​1982). 10. Elżbieta Witkowska-​Zaremba, “New Elements of 15th Century ars organisandi: The Prague Organ Treatises and Their Relationship to Previously Known Sources,” in Neues zur Orgelspiellehre des 15. Jahrhunderts, edited by Theodor Göllner (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003), 1–​15. 11. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cim. 352b. 12. Reinhard Strohm, “Die private Kunst und das öffentliche Schicksal von Hermann Poll, dem Erfinder des Cembalos,” in Musica Privata: Die Rolle der Musik im privaten Leben; Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Walter Salmen, edited by Monika Fink, Rainer Gstrein, and Günter Mössmer (Innsbruck: Helbling, 1991), 53–​66. 13. Paweł Gancarczyk, “The Musical Culture of the Teutonic Order in Prussia Reflected in the Marienburger Tresslerbuch (1399–​1409),” in The Musical Heritage of the Jagiellonian Era, edited by Paweł Gancarczyk and Agnieszka Leszczyńska (Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2012), 198–​199. 14. Růžena Mužíková, “Musica instrumentalis v traktátu Pavla Žídka z Prahy,” Miscellanea musicologica 18 (1965): 85–​116. 15. Robert Curry, “Music East of the Rhine,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, edited by Mark Everist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 176–​177. 16. Miho Demović, Musik und Musiker in der Republik Dubrovnik (Ragusa) vom Anfang des XI. Jahrhunderts bis zur Mitte des XVII. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Bosse, 1981), 68–​69. 17. Paweł Gancarczyk, “Memory of Genre: The Polytextual Motet in Central Europe and Its Two Traditions,” in Resounding Pasts: Music as History and Memory, edited by Karl Kügle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 141–​155. 18. Michael Bernhard and Elżbieta Witkowska-​Zaremba, eds., Traditio Iohannis Hollandrini, 8 vols. (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010–​2016). 19. Jaromír Černý, ed., Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz Magister Cracoviensis: Opera musica (Cracow: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1993). 20. Paweł Gancarczyk, “Presulem ephebeatum by Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz and the Musical Identity of Central Europe,” in Musikalische Repertoires in Zentraleuropa

564   Paweł Gancarczyk (1420–​1450): Prozesse & Praktiken, edited by Alexander Rausch and Björn R. Tammen (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014), 135–​150. 21. Gancarczyk, “Memory of Genre,” 152–​155. 22. Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, MS III.8054 (olim Kras 52); Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, MS Lat. F.I.378 (manuscript lost during World War II). 23. Reinhard Strohm, “Opus: An Aspect of the Early History of the Musical Work-​ Concept,” in Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance: Festschrift Klaus-​Jürgen Sachs zum 80. Geburtstag, edited by Rainer Kleinertz, Christoph Flamm, and Wolf Frobenius (Hildesheim: Olms, 2010), 206–​207. 24. Mirosław Perz, “Il carattere internazionale delle opere di Mikołaj Radomski,” Musica Disciplina 41 (1987): 153–​159. 25. Ian Rumbold with Peter Wright, Hermann Pötzlinger’s Music Book: The St Emmeram Codex and Its Contexts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009), 42–​51. 26. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14274. 27. Paweł Gancarczyk, “Johannes Tourout and the Imperial Hofkantorei ca. 1460,” Hudební věda 50, no. 3–​4 (2013): 239–​257. 28. Jaap van Benthem, ed., Johannes Tourout: Ascribed and Attributable Compositions in 15th-​Century Sources from Central Europe, 4 vols. (Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 2015–​19). 29. Works by Tourout occur in three of the seven Trent Codices: Trent, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali, MS 1375 (olim 88), MS 1376 (olim 89), MS 1378 (olim 91). 30. Prague, Knihovna Královské kanonie premonstrátů na Strahově, MS D.G.IV.47. 31. Cracow, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Mus. ms. 40098. 32. Jaap van Benthem, “Die Saganer Stimmbücher (Das Glogauer Liederbuch): Eine unbeachtete Quelle für Johannes Tourout?,” in The Musical Culture of Silesia before 1742: New Contexts–​New Perspectives, edited by Paweł Gancarczyk, Lenka Hlávková-​Mráčková, and Remigiusz Pośpiech (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 71–​82. 33. MartinKirnbauer,HartmannSchedelundsein“Liederbuch”:Studienzueinerspätmittelalterlichen Musikhandschrift (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cgm 810) und ihrem Kontext (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001). 34. Uri Smilansky, “Machaut and Prague: A Rare New Sighting?” Early Music 46, no. 2 (2018): 211–​223. 35. David Fallows, Josquin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 112–​115. 36. Poznań, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, MS 7022; Paweł Gancarczyk and Lenka Hlávková, “The Lviv Fragments and Missa L’homme armé sexti toni: Questions on the Early Josquin Reception in Central Europe,” Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 67, no. 1–​2 (2017): 139–​161. 37. Martin Just, “Bemerkungen zu den kleinen Folio-​Handschriften deutscher Provenienz um 1500,” in Formen und Probleme der Überlieferung mehrstimmiger Musik im Zeitalter Josquin Desprez, edited by Ludwig Finscher (Munich: Kraus, 1981), 25–​43. 38. Hradec Králové, Muzeum východních Čech, MS II A 7; Lenka Mráčková [Hlávková], “Kodex Speciálník: Eine kleine Folio-​Handschrift böhmischer Provenienz,” Hudební věda 39, no. 2–​3 (2002): 163–​184. 39. See also Lothar Hoffmann-​Erbrecht, Henricus Finck: Musicus excellentissimus (1445–​1527) (Cologne: Gitarre und Laute Verlagsgesellschaft, 1982). 40. Translated by John Comber.

Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe     565

Further Reading Everist, Mark, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music. Cambridge: University Press, 2011. Hiley, David. The Gregorian Chant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Knighton, Tess, and David Fallows, eds. Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Strohm, Reinhard. The Rise of European Music, 1380–​1500. Cambridge: University Press, 1993.

Chapter 24

T he M iddle Ag e s a ft e r the M iddl e Ag e s Popular Traditions and Medievalism János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay

This chapter discusses a few examples of popular memories and various manifestations of revivals of interest in the—​real or imaginary—​Middle Ages during the last three centuries.* Often connected to political agendas, those we address here are usually referred to as “medievalism.”1 All this is just a small part of an issue that cannot be discussed here in detail that is called the “culture of memory,” which humans have always had to face, from deciding on burial customs in the Neolithic to handling the colonial or dictatorial past of much closer centuries.2

Folklore about the Middle Ages There is no doubt that the medieval centuries left real and imagined memories far beyond their own times. As far as one can reconstruct from modern collections of folklore, some medieval figures—​popular saints, celebrated heroes, and rulers—​came to be associated with folkloric motifs known worldwide, used as early as the late Middle Ages, narratives that survived several centuries. Historical research has paid much attention to the absorption of such folkloric elements into hagiographic narratives.3 Such phenomena have also been investigated in Central Europe, but little translated into international languages.4 The most important saint of medieval Hungary, St. Stephen (d. 1038), the founder of the Christian state, canonized in 1083, was celebrated in three legends,5 but his personality seems to have inspired medieval folk traditions only indirectly. He appears in the local lore of Southwestern Hungary connected with his (perhaps legendary) defeated

568    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay enemy, Koppány. Wells in different places have been “remembered” as the place where he relaxed after the battle.6 Several miraculous events associated with King St. Ladislas of Hungary (d. 1095) seem to have been current as early as the fifteenth century although not described in his hagiography.7 Some thirty locations claim that their well—​still giving water—​sprang up where the battle axe or lance of the king (or even the hoof of St. Ladislas’s steed) hit a rock. Also, according to tradition, the deep canyon of Torda in the Carpathian Mountains was brought about miraculously by the king’s prayer when he and his men were fleeing from a Cuman attack and God split the mountain to save His warriors. The track of his horse’s hoof is still pointed out at Patkóskő (“Hoof-​stone”) nearby. Similarly, lore about the “herb of St. Ladislas” is widely known; the story goes that pestilence broke out in Hungary and the king was desperate because he could not help his people. He prayed to God and an angel appeared to him, saying that he should shoot an arrow and where it landed would be a medicinal herb against the plague. He did so and thus a plant, scientifically called Gentiana cruciformis, was found and helped to treat the disease.8 Polish popular tradition contains analogous elements related to saints. An addition to her official Vita is the lore about St. Cunegond (Kynga) (d. 1292), daughter of King Béla IV of Hungary, wife of Boleslas the Chaste.9 She received salt mines in Maramureș as a wedding gift from her father and dropped her ring into the shaft. Arriving in Poland, she told miners to look for salt and, lo and behold, her ring was found and the important salt mine of Bochnia opened. She became the patron saint and helper of miners in time of need; an underground chapel dedicated to her continues to be a great tourist attraction in the now-​abandoned salt mine in Wieliczka, near Cracow. There are rather folkloric-​sounding myths about the founding of cities, best known from the chronicle of Cosmas about the vision of the seer Libuša designating the location of Prague.10 The Lithuanian duke Gediminas (d. 1341) was said to have fallen asleep while hunting after killing an aurochs. In a dream, he saw an iron wolf, which a pagan priest explained to him as an obligation to found a city as strong as iron and as famous as a wolf ’s howl. That was to be Vilnius, which became the ducal residence. This story was written down before 1520 and widely known.11 According to Karaite and Tatar lore, the magic horse of Grand Duke Vytautas (d. 1430) drank up the Flood and spit it out to become Lake Trakai (in modern Lithuania).12 Folklore about King Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490) assigned several dozen tales and anecdotes to him also known for many other rulers, such as the “king in disguise,” which were widespread in Hungary and the neighboring countries.13 A children’s song remembering the short-​lived king Władysław Warneńczyk (d. 1444), survived in the Hungarian countryside until the twentieth century, connected to a “bridge game” (like “Ring around the Rosy”) well known in many versions all around the world.14 The interaction of “learned” written and “popular” oral tradition can rarely be established in retrospect. There is, for example, no evidence that the myths about the origins of people and dynasties recorded in chronicles—​such as the plowmen Piast and Přemysl15 or the descent of the Hungarians from the Huns of Attila16—​would have been

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    569 known and transmitted among the “silent majority.” Another difficulty is to establish when and how folkloric motifs connected to the persons of widely venerated saints or kings came to be added to hagiographical or historical writings. In any case, the dating of legends and chronicles provides an ante quem and these texts attest the medieval existence of such traditions. After the invention of printing, and more recently through schoolbooks and popular calendars, these legends and chronicles became widely known and “folklorized.” It is more difficult to follow the late medieval folkloric development of secular chivalric heroes such as Miklós Toldi, the legendary knight-​hero of the Hungarian Angevins, whose memory has been preserved in the historical epic song by Péter Ilosvay Selymes (1574),17 or the Czech hero, Stilfríd.18 The emergence of vernacular literature, historical ballads, songs from the Hungarian resistance to the Ottoman conquest, and popular disputes related to the Reformation in early modern times have significantly enriched the documentation of folkloric traditions related to medieval Central Europe.

Medievalism and National Revival The principal subject of this present survey is the Europe-​wide change of attitude to the medieval past. This reversed the humanist and Protestant denigration of the “barbarian” and “papist” centuries that were seen to have followed the Fall of Rome and the early Church, respectively. While in Spain and Italy this change of perspective began as early as Cervantes and Tasso, the medievalist revival in Central Europe differed significantly from the rest of Europe because it only came in the nineteenth century and coincided with what is called national awakening.19 The Middle Ages came to be seen as a time of lost greatness. The Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth, the lands of the Crown of St. Wenceslaus or those of the Crown of St. Stephen were now subject to “foreign” empires. Recourse to the medieval centuries thus became the basis for constructing national identities founded in the past or on what the past was assumed to have been. A prime example of this connection is the fate of the so-​called Grünberg and Königinhof manuscripts, allegedly old Czech literary texts, “discovered” by the young Slavist Václav Hanka (1791–​1861) in 1817 and 1818. They were meant to prove the highly developed legal and social system as well as the literary skills of the Czechs in the mythical age, surpassing the German Minnesang of the Middle Ages in poetic quality. Despite being immediately recognized as forgeries by Josef Dobrovský (1753–​1829), a prominent Slavist scholar, František Palacký (1798–​1876), “the father of Czech historiography” and a leading figure in the national and Pan-​Slavic movement, defended them all his life long, even though he must have recognized their fake character. They were more important for the national agenda than scholarly scrutiny. It took several generations to admit

570    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay their falseness, in a time when the foundations of Czech national identity changed from medievalist phantasies to social reality.20 The fate of the so-​called Prokosz Chronicle, allegedly from the tenth century (with additions from the eleventh), published in Warsaw by Hipolit Kownacki in 1825, was different. It was supposed to prove that the nation of Poles was much older than assumed by the scholarship “subservient to foreigners.” It was denounced as a forgery within a year, however, by Joachim Lelewel (1786–​1861), the founder of Polish historical studies, and did not become part of the national mythology.21 In fact, the Polish-​ Lithuanian Commonwealth preceded all other countries in a kind of medievalism resting on early modern ideas of “Sarmatism,”22 claiming that the Poles descended from the ancient Sarmatians, which was reflected in fashion and literature and influenced the neighboring countries as well. The idea went back to the fourteenth century and had become widespread by the sixteenth. All this was resurrected in the twenty-​first century by a certain Janusz Bieszk, whose 2014 book about the “Slavic kings of Lechia” (published by an otherwise respectable house) goes back, following Prokosz, into the pre-​Christian seventh century for the origin of the Lechs-​Poles and proposes to present the true history, otherwise distorted by pro-​German and Christian authors.23 The twenty-​first century popularity of this conspiracy theory among the “turbo-​Slavs” (turbo meaning swirling or crazy) and supporters of right-​wing politics on social networks is impressive.24 Coincidentally, no major historical forgery appeared in nineteenth-​century Hungary.25 The discovery of the genuine twelfth-​century Gesta Hungarorum by the so-​called Anonymous in 174626 offered plenty of romantic and heroic motifs for a national narrative on the conquest of the land and the subjection of its previous inhabitants, some of whose descendants lived in the kingdom and were about to raise their own claims for recognition. In the nineteenth century, the celebration of Árpád and his seven chieftains in verse and prose, schoolbooks, and monuments, became a central narrative of national consciousness,27 joining the continuously expanding Hun-​Hungarian mythology, the cult of Attila, and the consciousness of Scythian origins.28 Arnold Ipolyi (1823–​1886), a learned bishop, collector, and researcher of medieval heritage, became the founding father of Hungarian folklore studies by compiling a Magyar Mythologia (Hungarian mythology) in 1854. It became a prolific resource for János Arany (1817–​1882), a prominent poet, the author of an epic trilogy on the medieval legendary knight Miklós Toldy and an unfinished trilogy on Attila, his brother, Buda, and his son, Csaba.29 Parallel to the romantic literary expansion of the memory of the Middle Ages, also cultivated in Poland by the dramas of Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–​1907), an important new phenomenon, the collecting and displaying “national antiquities” arose.30 In Hungary, the collection of Miklós Jankovich was sold to the Hungarian National Museum in 1836 and later the collection of Ferenc Pulszky, an 1848 émigré who became the director of this museum after 1867.31 The rediscovery of the value of a medieval historical legacy also led to the emergence of archaeology as a new state-​supported discipline and the foundation of commissions for the protection of monuments.

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    571

Medieval Architecture Revived One form of medievalism, the Gothic Revival, reached the region in the mid-​nineteenth century, when it was already in decline in Western Europe.32 The Wrocław Główny railway station of 1857 displays Neo-​Gothic features; it was followed by churches imitating medieval cathedrals, such as those in Hungary (for example, the Sacred Heart in Kőszeg, 1883–​1884, the Perpetual Adoration in Budapest, 1908), in the Czech lands (St. Ludmilla’s in Prague, 1888–​1892), and Croatia (St. Peter and Paul’s in Osijek, 1898). A great number of church buildings in the typical North European brick-​stone-​Gothic were built in Poland and the Baltic regions. The choice of the Neo-​Gothic (with neo-​ Renaissance elements) for the architectural style of the Parliament in Budapest had openly political implications—​explicitly prescribed in the tender for its design. It was to express, by competing with the Palace of Westminster, that the “thousand-​year-​old Hungarian constitution” was at least as old as that of the English. The next generation of architects then chose neo-​Romanesque forms, reaching even further into the past for building—​mainly, but not only—​churches.33 The same spirit was reflected in the extensive renovations (often, in fact, new constructions) mainly of churches and castles following the great apostle of the Neo-​ Gothic, Eugène Viollet-​le-​Duc. Pupils of Friedrich von Schmidt (1825–​1891), a Vienna professor of architecture, rebuilt and restored scores of churches and public buildings in the Gothic style across the old Habsburg monarchy. A classic case of virtual rebuilding is the former parish church of Buda, now called the Matthias Church, almost all of it being done anew according to the plan and taste of Frigyes Schulek (1841–​1919).34

Millennia, Anniversaries, and Politics Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the major occasions for medievalist events were the millennial celebrations connected with the founding of the states in Central Europe more or less a thousand years earlier. In 1894, the Hungarian parliament decided that the Magyars entered the Carpathian Basin in ad 896. In 1896, a city square—​ today’s Heroes’ Square—​was designed with statues of Árpád and the seven chieftains in the middle, selected Hungarian kings in a great circle and several copies of historical buildings, such as a Romanesque chapel and a wing of the castle of Vajdahunyad (now: Hunedoara) were built for the great exhibition and festivities in the City Park (and they are still standing). A 120-​meter-​long cyclorama, the “Entry of the Hungarians” by Árpád Feszty, had been unveiled two years before.35 At that time, Slavs and other minorities made up slightly more than half of the kingdom’s population. The Slavic altar with a human sacrifice is contrasted with the Magyar’s majestic pagan sacrifice of a white horse (the favorite scene of King Emperor Francis Joseph I).36 It is interesting

572    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay that a variation of the central scene, the victorious Árpád on top of a hill, was used by the Croatian painter, Oton Ivaković, for his monumental “Arrival of the Croats at the Adriatic Sea” in 1905. The afterlife of the panorama reflects nicely the development of medievalism in Hungarian politics. Almost entirely destroyed during World War II, the post-​Stalinist Kádár regime decided to reconstruct it in the 1970s, but it was not completed before the fall of Communism in 1989. Then it was taken to a “national historical park” founded in Pusztaszer (the location of the chieftains’ alleged blood contract, which was the “foundation of the constitution” according to Anonymous) and the panorama made part of obligatory visits for schoolchildren.37 That park had its own history going back to the 1896 millennium. At that time, a monumental memorial column was erected with a statue of Árpád, which became the focal point of yearly celebrations held in memory of the nomadic Hungarians. The event was sponsored first by the Árpád Association and then by the Turanian Society, founded in 1902 and 1910, respectively. Historical Hungarian dishes were served and military tournaments and traditional dances presented. A series of archaeological excavations were also initiated in search of the “grave of Attila.” Then the cyclorama was offered to the Árpád Association of Pusztaszer. By the 1930s the Árpád festival had become a gathering place for the extreme right-​wing organizations.38 In 1949, the new Communist regime appropriated the site, eager to give evidence of its national roots. It survived the fall of the regime and, in 1993, the Memorial Park was the site of the Great Scythian Historical Congress (organized by an émigré association headquartered in Cleveland). Starting in 1997. a festival called Hunniális has been held each year, with traditional horse-​riding and arrow-​shooting competitions. In 2012, Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, unveiled in Pusztaszer a bronze turul-​bird, the assumed totem of the Árpád clan, a sign of pre-​Christian Hungarians, which was formerly a symbol of Magyar supremacy in the historic kingdom.39 In the young Czechoslovak Republic another millennium wrought with contradictions was celebrated in 1929, the date regarded as the thousandth anniversary of the murder of Duke St. Wenceslas by his brother.40 Wenceslas had been venerated as a Catholic saint, a Schlachtenhelfer (miraculous helper in battle), and as the eternal ruler of the Czechs. T. G. Masaryk, president of a new secular and multiethnic republic that preferred to raise the memory of the reformer-​martyr and “heretic” Jan Hus on its banner had difficulty formulating the proper words for this religious-​national event, and attended but few of the major parades and demonstrations. The main project for the millennium was, however, a feature of “modern life”: a film about the medieval hero and martyr; Svatý Václav (St. Wenceslas) was produced at enormous cost with great hopes for international appeal. As one of the last movies made before the breakthrough of the talking picture, poorly designed, and unclear in its message it proved to be a total flop.41 In 1925, the millennium of the first Croatian ruler, Tomislav, allegedly crowned king, was combined with the celebration of the tenth-​century Bishop Gregory of Nin, a defender of Slavic culture against the Latin-​Italian one. Tomislav’s and King Zvonimir’s

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    573 cult survived changes of regimes and political preferences, even if the date and exact character of the tenth-​century events remained debated.42 In Lithuania, the 500th anniversary of the death of Grand Duke Vytautas (1392–​1430) was the occasion for emphasizing his victory over the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald/​ Tannenberg (also an important event in both imperial and Nazi German medievalism) and the past greatness of the nation. The episode of the Polish “theft” of the crown sent to the grand duke by the pope came to be paralleled with the occupation of Vilnius/​Wilna by Poland in 1919.43 Medieval “reminiscences” characterized all the new states following World War I: the Polish Republic, post-​Trianon Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic republics as well.44 In Latvia and Estonia the end of the oppression by the German knights was the central issue and triggered a revival of pre-​Christian “true” lore.45 In Poland, the Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth with its eastern expansion came to be the major point of reference in the national rhetoric as the “largest state in medieval Europe.”46 In Yugoslavia, the glorious Serbian past and, regardless of any anniversary, the “eternal myth” of the decisive Battle of Kosovo (1389) was celebrated. In church services the cult of the martyr-​ruler St. Lazar dominated the perception of the national past—​and still does.47 In Hungary, the cult of St. Stephen served, on the one hand, revisionist claims to the entire Carpathian Basin (“Saint Stephen’s Empire”) and, on the other, the country’s independence, with the rejection of the Communist, German, and local National Socialist threats. In 1938, the 950th anniversary of the death of Stephen was celebrated with a law commemorating the founder or the kingdom combined with ecclesiastical events (a World Eucharistic Congress) and the presentation of the relic of the king’s Holy Dexter in a golden train across the whole country.48 (Fifty years later, in the twilight of the Communist regime, a conference organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Roman Catholic Church marked the critical departure from the Party-​imposed negligence of medieval studies and the political misinterpretation of the past.49)

Socialist Medievalism The Communist regimes after World War II had little interest in using the Middle Ages for their legitimization; labeled “clerical and feudal,” they were disadvantaged in teaching and research. A few elements of the traditional national rhetoric, however, were retained and transformed in one way or another. These were given some attention as “progressive traditions.” The fights with the Teutonic Order and the victory at Grunwald were seen as forerunners of an “antifascist” struggle. The debate about the historical evaluation of Jan Hus and the leader of the militant Hussites, Jan Žižka, goes back at least to the nineteenth century, regarded as everything from precursor of the Enlightenment to class struggle and anti-​German resistance. Its being declared the major “progressive tradition” in Czechoslovakia and received a pseudo-​Marxist treatment.50 (A scholarly

574    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay and balanced monograph in an all-​European context had to wait until the fall of the Communist regime.51) At the time of the Moscow-​sponsored Peace Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, George of Podebrady’s “Peace Proposal” of 1453 was hailed as an example (and later seen as a forerunner of the European Union).52 The rural uprisings of the late Middle Ages, such as those led by György Székely Dózsa in Hungary (1514) and Matija Gubec in Croatia and Slavonia (1572–​1573), were elevated to the status of victories and defeats in the class struggle; the latter was also seen as a protonational victory. The anniversaries of both later triggered good historical research.53 The Polish millennium in 1966 was characterized by a confrontation between Church and state. The Communist government wished to celebrate a thousand years of statehood, the Church celebrated the baptism of the ruler a thousand years before. Pope Paul VI was twice denied permission to attend events in an attempt to marginalize the religious implications.54 An example of socialist medievalism is Slobodan Milosevich’s inflammatory speech about the great Serbian past, delivered on June 28, 1989 to an audience of about a million on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. This speech ignited Serbian nationalism with a biased formulation of historical reproaches reaching back to the Middle Ages. In retrospect, this led to the deaths of thousands and the systematic destruction of medieval cultural heritage during the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s.55

Medievalized Opposition In the 1970s and 1980s in the West (especially in North America), the younger generations viewed medieval times with newfound enthusiasm, seeing the Middle Ages as the last “natural age,” in contrast to the “consumer society” of the present. This view does not seem to have reached Central Europe, although medieval subjects were part of the anti-​Soviet opposition in the years before the end of state socialism. The disinterest, nay, opposition, of the socialist regimes to the study and teaching of “clerical and feudal” medieval history and culture—​except the “progressive traditions” such as Hussitism and peasant revolts—​which were seen as examples of the “class struggle”—​naturally triggered an interest in the subject, mainly among young people sick and tired of so-​called socialism and its heroes. In Hungary, the rock opera István a király (Stephen the King), written by oppositional musicians, premiered in 1983. The plot rephrased the principal dilemma of medieval Hungarian history: whether to accept the “Western” Catholic model or stick to oriental pagan origins. The success of the rock opera relied both on the re-​emerging prestige of the Church and on new countercultural neo-​pagan sympathies. The history of the crushed rebellion of Koppány, the assumed pagan rival of Saint Stephen, at the same time gave an opportunity for some bold allusions to the 1956 revolution. The rock opera has remained a lasting success in Hungary for the past three decades in ever renewing forms, mostly

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    575 cherished in the Catholic and nationalist ambience, but in 2013 it was staged with a number of new interpretations, now representing rather the cultural resistance to the current nationalist trend.56 Similarly, in Latvia, the rock opera Lāčplēsis (The Bearslayer), going back to the epic poem of Andrejs Pumpurs (1841–​1902) allegedly based on local folklore, set in the time of the Teutonic Order’s expansion in the Baltic, premiered in 1988 and was attended by thousands.57 In post-​Soviet times, the theme was transformed into a national day of commemoration of Latvian anti-​Bolshevik fighters in the war of 1919 and an Order of Lāčplēsis established by the nationalist government. Actually, medievalist historical drama can be decoded in different ways. In Soviet Lithuania, several popular plays about battles with the Teutonic Knights, the approved national epic, could also be read as remembering the heroic and failed resistance against Russian occupation.58

Medieval Heritage as a Battleground after 1989 If the nineteenth-​century Gothic revival was a movement to reconstruct and honor the style of medieval architecture, its opposite was the conscious destruction of medieval monuments to annihilate historical signs of the enemy’s glorious past, when medieval heritage became a battleground for the emerging new national states after 1989. The importance and the vulnerability of medieval heritage became painfully visible during the war in Yugoslavia. On December 6, 1991, hundreds of shells fell on the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik, mostly on its old town and harbor. Several palaces were completely destroyed, and many important medieval monuments were severely damaged. According to official statistics, around 300 churches and ecclesiastical buildings were destroyed in Croatia during the war from 1991 to 1995.59 In a similar manner many Orthodox churches have been destroyed on the other side. The Croats were responsible for the most prominent war destruction, the Mostar Bridge over the Neretva River, in a way a symbol of Muslim–​Christian coexistence. A classic example of a single-​span stone-​arch bridge, it was designed by the Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin (or Hayrettin) and completed by 1566 after nine years of work. On November 9, 1993, the Croatian Defense Council, fighting against the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, completely destroyed the bridge. Following a reconstruction supported by international cooperation, it reopened only eleven years later.60 Another noteworthy heritage battle took place in the Transylvanian city of Cluj/​ Kolozsvár/​Klausenburg, Romania, in the 1990s. The conflict started when, in 1992, Gheorghe Funar, a politician of the far right and Romanian nationalist, won the local election and became mayor for the following twelve years. First, he changed the name of the city to “Cluj-​Napoca” in reference to the Roman settlement in the same place, thus creating a challenge between two important periods in the town’s history—​the antique

576    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay and the medieval. Two years later, he decided to excavate Roman archaeological remains that lay directly under the main square, where the 1902 statue of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458–​1490), a son of the city, stood. The Hungarian inhabitants of the town poured into the streets to protect the historical monuments on the square and the demonstration threatened to erupt into serious interethnic strife. The project was finally abandoned.61

New and Old National Saints A kind of political-​cum-​religious medievalism can be detected in the upsurge of the cult of “national” saints in the late twentieth and early twenty-​first century. The renewed political importance of saints was greatly enhanced by the active role played in this field by Pope John Paul II, an emblematic figure in the eyes of the opponents of Communism. It is not surprising that he, as a Pole, paid special attention to Central Europe.62 It is symbolic that the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 coincided with the final phase of the canonization process of St. Agnes of Bohemia, a princess turned Poor Clare in the thirteenth century. Pope John Paul II pronounced her sanctity in 1989 before 10,000 Czech pilgrims in Rome. Her image appeared on the new 50 crown Czech banknotes, her cult as a new national patron, “Svatá Anežka Česká,” allowed the Catholic Church to assume a new public role.63 In 1997, Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage dedicated to the millennium of the martyrdom of St. Adalbert, holy patron of Bohemia and Poland.64 In Gniezno, St. Adalbert’s first burial place, he said, “There will not be a Europe unless it is a community of the Spirit.”65 Then, on June 8, in Cracow, he canonized Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Anjou, queen of Poland. The ceremony was an impressive event, attended by a crowd of several hundred thousand. The canonization of St. Jadwiga also pleased Hungarians, since she was the daughter of Louis the Great, king of Hungary. Another Polish-​Hungarian princess, Cunegond (mentioned earlier) was also canonized at this time.66 Not a canonization, but the preparation for one is connected to Gisela, sister of the German-​Roman Emperor Henry II and queen of King (St.) Stephen I of Hungary, beatified in 1911. The local government of the city of Veszprém in Western Hungary, connected to queens since the early Middle Ages, decided to identify itself as “the Town of Queens” and, since 1992, has arranged, “Gisela Days” every year, with a considerable contribution by the Catholic church and a successful touristic appeal. On October 26, 1995, the grave of Gisela in the Bavarian Niedernburg monastery was opened, her relics were elevated, and a common petition was sent to Rome for her canonization. An arm relic was donated to the Veszprém bishopric. The translatio of it, called a “homecoming,” took place on May 4, 1996, at the millenary of the wedding of Stephen and Gisela. For receiving Gisela’s relic, the relic of the Holy Right Hand of Saint Stephen was taken to Veszprém from Budapest. At the holy mass held for the meeting of the relics of the first

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    577 Christian-​ruler couple, Archbishop Szendi underlined in his sermon that “Gisela’s life has messages to the present as well, although paganism no longer menaces our nation from the east, but rather from the west. Faithless liberalism is the same danger for our future as socialist Marxism was previously.”67

The Holy Crown of a Republic It is hard to separate millennial ecclesiastical celebrations from the intertwined state-​ bound political commemorations; Hungary seems to be a special case in this respect. In fact, the most recent Hungarian Millennium was interrelated to the Millecentenarium of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, celebrated in 1996, repeating in a way the pompous celebrations of 1896. A special intensification occurred after the electoral victory of the right-​wing FIDESZ party in 1998, when the traditional political cult of St. Stephen, his relic, and “his” crown—​formerly part of the political rhetoric of the interwar Horthy regime—​was resurrected.68 The most spectacular act of this state-​sponsored cult was the solemn translatio of the crown jewels from the National Museum (where they had been kept since being returned from the United States in 1978) to the Parliament building on January 1, 2000. This ceremony was preceded by an extensive political debate. The right-​wing government attempted to restore the public legal status of the Hungarian Holy Crown—​a theory rooted in the Middle Ages and elaborated in the nineteenth century. Finally, a compromise (as it proved, temporary) was reached: The crown was to be moved to the Parliament building, but without legal status.69 The new campaign for the restitution of the political sovereignty of the crown in the Hungarian republic was also supported by a number of ridiculous occult speculations related to this sacra corona. A society was formed to promote the veneration of the Holy Crown; a group of amateur historians denounced the “lies” of the professional historians’ craft in a book titled Her Majesty the Hungarian Holy Crown (1999), where they tried to prove that the Hungarian crown was in fact identical with that of Attila, then of Charlemagne, and finally brought “back” to the Carpathian Basin for the coronation of Hungarian kings.70 According to Law 1: 2000 of the Republic of Hungary, the Holy Crown of St. Stephen is to be kept in the Parliament. The crown together with the scepter and orb were taken in a procession from Museum Ring, where they had been kept at the National Museum since they were returned from the United States, to the Parliament of the republic, where they have been kept and venerated, surrounded by operetta-​uniformed guards, ever since.71 The inherent symbolic contradiction was then resolved by the new constitution of 2011, adopted after a renewed sweeping victory of FIDESZ, the populist-​nationalist party. Its preamble (“National Avowal”) begins with St. Stephen as the founder of the state and ends by claiming that the Holy Crown “embodies the constitutional continuity of Hungary’s statehood.” Moreover, “Republic” is dropped from the name of the state. Medievalism won out.

578    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay

Places and Cults of the Pagan Past Pusztaszer in Hungary is, of course, not alone in the region. For example, in Slovenia-​ Carinthia the famous Fürstenstein, the inauguration place of early medieval Carinthian dukes, also became such a place,72 where the stone throne is indeed an authentic relic from the early Middle Ages. In Poland, on the Baltic coast, the festival of Wolin is the most well known: An ancient Slavic and Viking re-​enactment site, gathering some fifteen hundred participants every August since 2000. Besides the magnificent battle re-​enactments by adepts of the martial arts from nearly all East European and Scandinavian countries, the Wolin festival also developed activities labeled “experimental archaeology.”73 Groups of people for whom re-​enactment has become a vocation and philosophy of life decide to live for a few months every year (or even all the time) in precisely reconstructed living conditions of medieval Viking, Slavic, or Hungarian peasants, sharing their historically known and meticulously imitated activities, eating the food, wearing their clothing, living in their houses or tents, as they imagine that their long-​ ago dead forbears did. In fact, “creative anachronism” has led in some cases to genuinely interesting and historically relevant reconstructions such as, for example, the manufacture of chainmail. The groups who participate in these camps frequently develop into neo-​pagan tribal movements; this has emerged in all post-​Communist countries. The Lithuanian Romuva movement, named after a pagan Prussian sanctuary, goes back to the revival of ancient pagan traditions since the Romanticism of the nineteenth century. Due to its nationalist character, the faith was suppressed during the Soviet occupation and many practitioners were executed or deported to slave labor camps in Siberia. A clandestine Romuva group is known to have existed in the Gulag. After the members were released and returned to Lithuania around 1960, Jonas Trinkūnas formed the Vilnius Ethnographic Romuva Society and began organizing public celebrations of traditional Lithuanian religious holidays in 1967. After the country regained its independence in 1992, Romuva was recognized as an ancient Baltic, “nontraditional” religion.74 The most important Polish neo-​ pagan gathering is the Native Polish Church (Rodzimy Kościół Polski—​RKP), based on the example of the Native American Church. They follow the god Świętowit, in what is assumed to be have been the religion of the ancient Slavs. Archaeological finds are worshipped, the days of the winter and the summer solstices and the spring equinox—​dates celebrated in many other fictive ancient cults—​ are celebrated by ritual meals, putting up the “tree of life,” walking on embers, and similar practices.75 The Ancient Hungarian Táltos Church (Ősmagyar Táltos Egyház) is based on the revival of a special folkloric tradition. Hungarians had, up to the twentieth century, folk sorcerers called táltos, who were, according to ethnographic research, genuine descendants of Siberian shamanism, whose religious role may date back to pagan Hungarian prehistory. Based on this belief, and also with some influence from the American New Age neo-​shaman movement, they became a legally registered church in

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    579 1999. In their ceremonies they synthesize elements from ancient Hungarian religion and Christianity (especially the cult of the Virgin Mary). They practice regionally known folkloric traditions such as fire-​walking and are occupied principally with healing and teaching an elaborate fictive vision of ancient Hungarian history reaching back to Huns, Scythians, Parthians, or even the Mayas (Magyar and Maya being supposed to be related back to the times of the Atlantis).76 Another interest of revivalist, neo-​pagan groups in Hungary is the cultivation of old Hungarian and Transylvanian Székely runic script. Although there is some historical evidence for the sporadic medieval use of this script—​which is certainly of nomadic (Avar-​Turkic) origin—​similar, but not identical to Nordic runes also in renaissance today—​present-​day adepts are not satisfied with the mere historical documentation of these relicts. Devout cultivators of this alphabet aim at a renewed generalization of the knowledge and use of this writing, which they call “our propriety charter to the Carpathian Basin.” According to them, the runic script is proof of the Sumerian(!) origin of the Magyars, on the basis that Sumerian picture-​writing is, indeed, somewhat similar to this runic script—​just like all other primitive systems of symbols carved into wood or stone. This script has become the symbol of a traditionalist-​nationalist identity, which has moved a good number of localities to post the settlement’s name in runic letters at the entrance. There is also a movement to teach children the runic alphabet and publish national classics in runic transcript. Recently, the New Testament has been transcribed and published in “Hungarian-​Székely” runes.77

The Middle Ages as a Model for European Unity While in most of the cases discussed in this chapter medievalism was to serve to articulate and historicize national and ethnic divisions and conflict, a sizable part of East-​ Central European intelligentsia, in contrast to nationalist claims, saw the Middle Ages as a universalist idea along the lines of Jacques Le Goff ’s Making Europe series or Bronisław Geremek’s Common Roots of Europe.78 Medievalist historians, such as Jerzy Kłoczowski, Henryk Samsonowicz, Aleksander Gieysztor, Frantisek Šmahel, Jenő Szűcs, and Pál Engel, have argued for recognizing East-​Central Europe a valuable part of Europe equal to Western Europe, with extensive reference to its medieval foundations. This colored the accession process of these countries to the European Union. While these manifestations were motivated by underlining the separate, national—​ if not nationalist—​aspects, in fact entirely alien to the real Middle Ages, the currents of pan-​European medievalism only reached a much more limited, more sophisticated audience, however much money and effort was put into them. A series of medievalist exhibitions with conferences and hefty catalogs can be seen as connected to the unification of Europe and the place of the East Central region within it. They can be seen to begin with the great Charlemagne exhibition in 1965 in Aachen, sponsored by the

580    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay Council of Europe, to celebrate Emperor Charles the Great as the “father of Europe” (west of the Iron Curtain).79 Followed by several similar events for other European dynasties, it reached one of its peaks with the festivities for the anniversary of Charles IV of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia, “ein Kaiser in Europa.”80 Three decades later, Sigismund of Luxemburg was called the same.81 Then, another European Council exhibition with treasures from several countries was mounted in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Germany with the title “The Centre of Europe around 1000”—​in a way moving the center some thousand kilometers east of Aachen—​was a kind of preparation for the expansion of the European Community, à propos of the new millennium.82 The paternity claim for Europe was then also added, as mentioned earlier, to the titles of Vojtěch-​ Adalbert of Prague. For the region, the “Visegrád agreement” was the most representative political treaty that could capitalize on this aspect of medieval heritage. On February 15, 1991, a summit of the heads of state and prime ministers of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland was modeled on the “royal summit meeting” of Charles Robert of Hungary, John of Bohemia, and Casimir of Poland concluding a triple alliance in Visegrád in August 1335.83

From Barbecue to Politics Let us close with one example that started with a rather harmless Volksfest based on spurious ethnic claims but ended up with serious political commitment based on pseudomedieval elements. A Scythian-​orientalist-​native faith movement, that regards itself as a “guardian of tradition” (hagyományőrző), has organized an annual tribal gathering called Kurultaj (a Mongolian term for tribal assembly) with fancy costumes, wild horse-​riding, arrow shooting, and a big barbecue.84 The modern invention of a tradition of Kazakh-​Hungarian cooperation was based on the name, Madjar, of a tribe in Kazakhstan, believed to be remotely related to Hungarians. This claim (rejected by scholars) has been enthusiastically supported by some amateur anthropologists and geneticists from the Hungarian side. They celebrated the first Kurultaj in Kazakhstan in 2007, with the presence of Hungarian delegates; the next year it moved to Hungary, and in 2010, just after the victory of the FIDESZ party, a Great Kurultaj was held under the protectorate of no less than the vice president of the Hungarian parliament, Sándor Lezsák. By 2012, the feast had become an international gathering of delegates from twenty-​six Eurasian “nomadic” peoples.85 So what? Picturesque entertainment and perhaps some income for not-​too-​well-​off communities in the Hungarian Plain. It only became serious when, on September 3, 2018, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reportedly declared in Kyrgyzstan, participating at the 6th Summit of the Cooperation Council of the Turkic-​ speaking states, that Hungarian is a Turkic language and that the Magyars are “of Hun-​ Turkic origin . . . and see themselves as the late descendants of Attila”—​good sentences for winning the support of Central Asian dictators for his anti-​European stance.86 Sapienti sat.

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    581

Notes * János M. Bak worked on his contributions to this handbook right up until his passing in 2020. Please see the handbook preface for an account of his formative impact on this volume and on Central European medieval studies as a whole. 1. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols, eds., Medievalism and the Modernist Temper (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Richard Utz and Tom Shippey, eds., Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Elizabeth Emery and Richard J. Utz, eds., Medievalism: Key Critical Terms (Cambridge: Brewer, 2014). 2. Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). 3. Jacques Le Goff, “Ecclesiastical Culture and Folklore in the Middle Ages: Saint Marcellus of Paris and the Dragon,” in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 159–​188; 330–​341; Jean-​Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1983). 4. Bálint Sándor, Ünnepi kalendárium I–​II: A Mária-​ünnepek és jelesebb napok hazai és közép-​ európai hagyományvilágából [The festive calendar: Marian feasts and prominent feast days from the tradition of Hungary and Central Europe] (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 1977). 5. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 114–​133, 412–​417. 6. Zoltán Magyar, “Koppány emlékezete a néphagyományban” [Memory of Koppány in folklore], in Szent István és az államalapítás [Saint Stephen and the foundation of the state], edited by László Veszprémy (Budapest: Osiris, 2002), 95–​106; Zoltán Magyar, Motif Index of Legends of Early Hungarian Saints (Herne: Gabrielle Schäfer Verlag, 2009), 51–​ 57; László Veszprémy, ed., Hungarian Royal Saints: The Saints of the Árpádian Dynasty (Herne: Gabrielle Schäfer Verlag, 2012), 46–​59 and 141–​155. 7. On the hagiography of St. Ladislas, see Kornél Szovák, “The Image of the Ideal King in Twelfth-​Century Hungary (Remarks on the Legend of St. Ladislas),” in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, edited by Anne Duggan and Janet Nelson (London: King’s College, 1993), 241–​264; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 173–​193, 388–​392; Gábor Klaniczay, “San Ladislao d’Ungheria ‘Athleta Patriae,’” in La lettera e lo spirito: Studi di cultura e vita religiosa (secc. XII–​XV) per Edith Pásztor, edited by Marco Bartoli, Letizia Pellegrini, and Daniele Solvi (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2016), 157–​178. 8. Magyar, Motif Index, 64–​71; János M. Bak, “The Folklore of the Medieval Kings of Hungary,” in Secular Power and Sacred Authority in Medieval Central Europe, edited by Kosana Jovanović and Suzana Miljan (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2018), 17–​28. 9. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 206–​207, 221–​223. 10. František Graus, Lebendige Vergangenheit: Überlieferung im Mittelalter und in den Vorstellungen vom Mittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 1975), 89–​106; Patrick Geary, Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 34–​42; Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Bohemorum: The Chronicle of the Czechs, edited by János M. Bak and Pavlina Rychterová, translated by Petra Mutlova and Martyn Rady, Central European Medieval Texts 10 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2019), 37–​39. 11. Algirdas Julien Greimas, “Le songe de Gediminas: Essai d’analyse du mythe lithuanien de la fondation de la cité,” Lexia: Rivista di semiotica 1–​2 (2008): 411–​441.

582    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay 12. Giedrė Mickunāitė, Making a Great Ruler: Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006), 196–​197. 13. István Lukács, “King Mathias Corvinus in the Collective Memory of the Slovenian Nation,” Studia Slavica Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 55 (2010): 371–​379. 14. Bak, “The Folklore of the Medieval Kings.” 15. František Graus, “Kirchliche und heidnische (magische) Komponenten der Stellung der Přemysliden–​ Přemyslidensage und St. Wenzels Ideologie,” in Siedlung und Verfassung Böhmens in der Frühzeit, edited by František Graus and Herbert Ludat (Wiebaden: Harrasowitz, 1967), 148–​ 161; Jacek Banaszkiewicz, Podanie o Piascie i Popielu: Studium porównawcze nad wczesnosredniowiecznymi tradycjami dynastycznymi [The Piast and Popiel traditions: A study in early medieval dynastic traditions] (Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw, 1986). 16. Gábor Klaniczay, “The Myth of Scythian Origin and the Cult of Attila in the Nineteenth Century,” in Multiple Antiquities, Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, Michael Werner, and Ottó Gecser (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011), 189–​194. 17. Ildikó Kriza, “Supranational Hero in Central-​ East European Folk Tradition,” in Europäische Ethnologie und Folklore im internationalen Kontext: Festschrift für Leander Petzoldt zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Ingo Schneider (Frankfurt: Lang, 1999), 157–​167. 18. Robert Antonín, The Ideal Ruler in Medieval Bohemia (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 168–​169. 19. Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006); The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins, edited by Robert J. V. Evans and Guy P. Marchal (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 20. Pavlína Rychterová, “The Manuscripts of Grünberg and Königinhof: Romantic Lies about the Glorious Past of the Czech Nation,” in Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-​Century Europe, edited by János M. Bak, Patrick J. Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 3–​30. 21. Henryk Markiewicz, “O polskich mistyfikacjach literackich” [On Polish literary mystifications], Dekada Literacka 8 (1994): 5, 11 (http://​deka​dali​tera​cka.pl/​index.php?id=​3181, accessed December 15, 2018); on Lelewel, see Maciej Janowski, “Three Historians,” in Central European University History Department Yearbook (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001–​2002), 199–​ 232; Maciej Janowski, “Romantic Historiography as a Sociology of Liberty: Joachim Lelewel and his Contemporaries,” in Manufacturing Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-​Century Europe, edited by Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 89–​108. 22. Andrzej Walicki, Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980); Andrzej Wasko, “Sarmatism or the Enlightenment: The Dilemma of Polish www.ruf.rice.edu/​ ~sarma​tia/​497/​ Culture,” Sarmatian Review 17, no. 2 (1997): http://​ wasko.html (accessed January 2, 2022). 23. Janusz Bieszk, Słowiańscy królowie Lechii: Polska starożytna [Slavic kings of Lechia: Ancient Poland] (Warsaw: Bellona, 2014). 24. Mateusz Fafinski, “The Strange and Terryfying Case of the Turboslav Empire” (https://​ mfafin​ski.git​hub.io/​Tur​bosl​avs/​, accessed June 6, 2019).

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    583 25. On minor forgeries of ancient prayers and Hungarian “runes,” see Benedek Láng, “Invented Middle Ages in Nineteenth-​Century Hungary: The Forgeries of Sámuel Literáti Nemes,” in Bak, Geary, and Klaniczay, Manufacturing a Past, 128–​143. 26. Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy, ed. and trans., Anonymi Bele Regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, in Anonymus and Master Roger, edited by Martyn Rady, János M. Bak, and László Veszprémy, Central European Texts 5 (Budapest, CEU Press, 2010), 1–​129. 27. János M. Bak, “From the Anonymous Gesta to the Flight of Zalán by Vörösmarty,” in Bak, Geary, and Klaniczay, Manufacturing a Past, 96–​108; cf. Éva Mikos, Árpád pajzsa: A magyar honfoglalás-​hagyomány megszerkesztése és népszerűsítése a XVIII–​XIX. században [The shield of Árpád: The construction and popularization of the tradition of the Hungarian conquest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries] (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2010). 28. Klaniczay, “The Myth of Scythian Origin,” 185–​189, 199–​211. 29. László Szörényi, “János Arany’s Csaba Trilogy and Arnold Ipolyi’s Hungarian Mythology,” in Bak, Geary, and Klaniczay, Manufacturing a Past, 81–​95. See also Levente T. Szabó, “Narrating the ‘People’ and ‘Disciplining’ the Folk: The Constitution of the Hungarian Ethnographic Discipline,” in Diana Mishkova, ed., Visions of National Peculiarity and Political Modernities in the “Europe of Small Nations”: Fellows and Their Projects (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009), 207–​236 (also published as a working paper with the same title by the Center for Advanced Study, Sofia, 2011. Center for Advanced Study Working Paper Series 3). 30. Mónika Baár, Historians and Nationalism: East-​Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 167–​195, 224–​255. 31. The Nineteenth-​Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, edited by Ernő Marosi, Gábor Klaniczay, and Ottó Gecser, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 17 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2006); János György Szilágyi, “A Forty-​Eighter’s Vita Contemplativa: Ferenc Pulszky (1814–​1889),” Hungarian Quarterly 149 (1998): 3–​18. 32. David M. Wilson, “The Roots of Medievalism in North-​ West Europe: National Romanticism, Architecture, Literature,” in Geary and Klaniczay, Manufacturing Middle Ages, 111–​137. 33. Ernő Marosi, “Restoration as an Expression of Art History in Nineteenth-​Century Hungary,” in Geary and Klaniczay, Manufacturing Middle Ages, 159–​187; cf. Otto-​Gerhard Oexle, Áron Petneki, and Leszek Zygner, eds., Bilder gedeuteter Geschichte: Das Mittelalter in der Kunst und Architektur der Moderne, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004). 34. József Sisa, “Neo-​Gothic Architecture and Restoration of Historic Buildings in Central Europe: Friedrich Schmidt and His School,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61 (2002):170–​187. 35. The panorama painting shows the victorious Hungarian chieftains, in front of them the defeated Slav ruler and his people; “it was their homeland, too, but one without a constitution, like the field for the mole or the forest for the bear,” as the guidebook explained. 36. János M. Bak and Anna Bak-​Gara, “The Ideology of a ‘Millennial Constitution’ of Hungary,” East European Quarterly 15 (1981): 307–​ 326. repr. in Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects: Selected Studies, edited by Gábor Klaniczay and Balázs Nagy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), ­chapter 17. 37. See also János M. Bak, “Die Mediävisierung der Politik im Ungarn des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Umkämpfte Vergangenheit: Geschichtsbilder, Erinnerung und Vergangenheitspolitik im internationalen Vergleich, edited by Petra Bock and Edgar Wolfrum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999), 103–​113.

584    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay 38. Balázs Ablonczy, Keletre, magyar! A magyar turanizmus története [To the East, Hungarian! A history of Turanism in Hungary] (Budapest: Jaffa, 2016); reviewed by Ferenc Laczó in Hungarian Historical Review 6 (2017): 246–​249. 39. Károj D. Balla, “Orbán Viktor pusztaszeri beszéde—​ Turul-​ szobor, Ópusztaszer: Vérközösség, sátán és kétféle szív” [Pusztaszer speech of Viktor Orbán—​Turul monument, Ópusztaszer: Blood community, Satan, and a two-​sided heart], October 1, 2012 (https://​ notesz​gep.cafeb​log.hu/​2012/​10/​01/​orban-​vik​tor-​pusz​tasz​eri-​besz​ede-​turul-​szo​bor-​opus​ ztas​zer-​verk​ozos​seg-​satan-​es-​ketf​ele-​sziv/​, accessed January 3, 2019). 40. Nowadays the later date of 935 is more commonly accepted. Cf. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 101. 41. Pavlina Rychterová, “Hagiographie auf der Leinwand: Der Film Svatý Václav (1929) als gescheiterter Versuch, ein Nationaldenkmal zu konstruieren,” in Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–​21. Jahrhunder/​Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th–​21st Century/​ Usages et Mésusages du Moyen Age du XIXe au XXIe siècle, edited by János M. Bak, Jörg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet, and Bernd Schneidmüller, (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009), 145–​174. 42. Neven Budak, “Using the Middle Ages in Modern-​Day Croatia,” in Bak et al., Gebrauch und Missbrauch, 251. 43. Mickunāitė, Making a Great Ruler, 1–​3. 44. National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, edited by Katherine Verdery and Ivo Banac (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995). 45. Ergo-​Hart Västrik, “In Search of a Genuine Religion: The Contemporary Estonian Maausulised Movement and Nationalist Discourse,” in Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe: Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses, edited by Kathryn Rountree (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 130–​153, esp. 132–​134. 46. Balázs Trencsényi, Maciej Janowski, Mónika Baár, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopeček, A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), vol. 2, 41–​44. 47. Dejan Djokić, “Whose Myth? Whose Nation? The Serbian Kosovo Myth Revisited,” in Bak et al., Gebrauch und Missbrauch, 215–​234. Also analyzed in Ivan Čolović, Smrt na Kosovu Polju: Istorija kosovskog mita [Death at Kosovo Field: History of the myth of Kosovo] (Belgrade: XX vek, 2016); the subject is also well summarized in English at https: //​folk. uio.no/​palk/​Dubrov​nik/​Zoran%20Ba​jin%20-​%20es​say.htm (accessed December 5, 2018). For further references, see Branimir Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide (New York: New York University Press, 1999). 48. The three-​volume festive publication, edited by the primate of Hungary, Jusztinián Serédy, Emlékkönyv Szent István király halálának kilencszázadik évfordulóján [Commemorative volume for the nine-​hundredth anniversary of the death of King Saint Stephen] (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1938) contained a number of important historical studies. 49. Szent István és kora [St. Stephen and his age], edited by Ferenc Glatz and József Kardos (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Történettudományi Intézete, 1988); cf. Árpád von Klimó, “St Stephen’s Day: Religion and Politics in 20th Century Hungary,” East-​ Central Europe/​L’Europe de centre-​est 26, no. 2 (1999): 15–​30. 50. Josef Macek, The Hussite Movement in Bohemia (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965). 51. František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution, 3 vols., Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Schriften 43 (Hannover: Hahn, 2002). 52. Jiri Kejr, The Universal Peace Organization of King George of Bohemia: A Fifteenth-​Century Plan for World Peace, 1462/​1464 (Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1964).

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    585 53. Gusztáv Heckenast, ed., Aus der Geschichte der ostmitteleuropäischen Bauernbewegungen im 16.–​17. Jahrhundert: Vorträge der internationalen wissenschaftlichen Konferenz aus Anlass der 500. Wiederkehr der Geburt von György Dózsa. Budapest, 12.–​15. September 1972 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1977), and Gusztáv Heckenast, Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskoga fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 5 (1973): 329–​378, respectively; cf. János M. Bak, “Quincentennial of the Birth of György Székely Dózsa: A Report on the State of Research,” East Central Europe 1 (1974): 153–​167; Márta Fata, “War György Dózsa der ungarische Thomas Müntzer? Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in der Volksrepublik Ungarn und in der DDR im Vergleich,” in Armed Memory: Agency and Peasant Revolts in Central and Southern Europe (1450–​1700), edited by Gabriella Erdélyi (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2016) 323–​352, and other articles in the same volume with extensive bibliography. 54. Jan Rydel, “Sacrum Poloniae Millennium: The Anatomy of a Conflict under ‘Real Socialism,’” in Poland beyond Communism: “Transition” in Critical Perspective, edited by Michal Buchowski, Edouard Conte, and Carol Nagengast (Fribourg: University Press Fribourg Switzerland, 2001), 41–​60; On the pope’s reflections on this matter, see “The Millennium of the Polish People” (http://​www.mipolo​nia.net/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​ 2017/​10/​The-​Mil​lenn​ium-​of-​the-​Pol​ish-​Peo​ple_​966-​1966.pdf., 14–​15, accessed January 17, 2019). 55. The medievalist films Boj na Kosovu (The Battle of Kosovo) in 1989 and Banović Strahinja in 1983 were released earlier. By the time Milošević gave his speech, the discourse had already spread through popular media. Playing the gusle (a historic bowed stringed instrument) adapted traditional heroic song patterns to celebrate modern heroes such as Milošević, Ratko Mladić, and Radovan Karadžić. 56. Magdalena Wąsowicz, “István, a király: Rock-​Opera as an Expression of Hungarian National Identity,” in History of European Cinema: Intercultural Perspective, edited by M. Dondzik, M. Pabiś-​Orzeszyna, and B. Zając (Łódź: Łódź University Press, 2015), 119–​125 (http://​dx.doi.org/​10.18778/​8088-​266-​9.10, accessed January 4, 2019). 57. Guntis Smidchens, “National Heroic Narratives in the Baltics as a Source for Nonviolent Political Action,” Slavic Review 66, no. 3 (2007): 484–​508. 58. Giedrė Mickunāitė, “Disguised Nationhood: Imagined Middle Ages in the Arts of the Soviet Lithuania,” in Bak et al., Gebrauch und Missbrauch, 297–​312. Compare the Croatian rock-​opera Gubec-​beg (Gubec-​bey) (1975), commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Peasants’ War led by Matija Gubec (1573). Grafting on the novel Seljačka buna [Village rebellion] by August Šenoa, this work parallels the Dózsa official medievalism; see earlier n. 53 and Bak, “Quincentennial of the Birth of György Székely Dózsa.” 59. Nigel Thomas, The Yugoslav Wars: Slovenia and Croatia 1991–​95 (Oxford: Osprey, 2006). 60. Helen Walasek, Bosnia and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage (Dorchester: Ashgate, 2015); Maha Blasi Armaly and Hannah Lawrence Carlo, “Stari Most: Rebuilding More Than a Historic Bridge in Mostar,” Museum International 56, no. 4 (2004): 6–​17. 61. Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, and Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 119–​160. 62. James Ramon Felak, “Pope John Paul II, the Saints, and Communist Poland: The Papal Pilgrimages of 1979 and 1983,” Catholic Historical Review 3 (2014), 555–​574; Valentina Ciciliot, Donne sugli altari: Le canonizzazioni femminili di Giovanni Paolo II (Roma: Viella, 2018).

586    János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay 63. Jaroslav Němec, Die Verehrung der seligen Agnes von Böhmen und der Prozess ihrer Heiligsprechung (Thaur/​Tirol: Österreichischer Kulturverlag, 1989). 64. Svatý Vojtěch: Tisíc let svatovojtěšské tradice v Čechách; Katalog [Saint Adalbert: 1000 Years of the tradition of Saint Adalbert in Bohemia; Catalog], edited by Milena Bartlová (Prague: Národní galerie v Praze, 1997). 65. Środkowoeuropejskie dziedzictwo świętego Wojciecha [The Central European heritage of Saint Adalbert], edited by Antoni Barciak (Katowice: Societas Scientiis Favendis Silesiae Superioris–​Instytut Górnośląski, 1998). 66. Bolesław Przybyszewski, Saint Jadwiga: Queen of Poland 1374–​ 1399, translated by Bruce MacQueen (Rome: Postulate for the Canonisation of Blessed Queen Jadwiga; London: Veritas Foundation Publication Centre, 1997); Mieczysław Markowski, “Die Heilige Hedwig–​Gründerin der Universität in Krakau,” Acta Mediaevalia 13 (2000): 75–​ 91; Valentina Ciciliot, Donne sugli altari: Le canonizzazioni femminili di Giovanni Paolo II (Rome: Viella, 2018), 150–​153. 67. Reports on the event appeared in the Veszprém local newspaper Napló, May 6, 1996, 105, 1. 68. Cf. Klimó, “St Stephen’s Day. 69. László Kürti, “Neoshamanism, National Identity and the Holy Crown of Hungary,” Journal of Religion in Europe 8 (2015): 235–​260. 70. Lajos Csomor, Őfelsége, a Magyar Szent Korona [Her Majesty the Hungarian Holy Crown] (Székesfehérvár: Regia Rex kft, 1996). 71. Sándor Radnóti, “The Glass Cabinet: An Essay about the Place of the Hungarian Crown,” Acta Historiae Artium 43 (2002): 83–​111. 72. Patrick Geary, “Slovenian Gentile Identity: From Samo to the Fürstenstein,” in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, edited by Ildar H. Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 243–​257; Peter Štih, “Suche nach der Geschichte oder Wie der karantanische Fürstenstein das Nationalsymbol der Slowenen geworden ist,” Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung: Frühes Mittelalter und europäische Erinnerungskultur, edited by Helmut Reimitz and Bernhard Zeller (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften 2009), 229–​240. 73. See the picture gallery on https://​www.carnif​est.com/​festi​val-​of-​slavs-​and-​viki​ngs-​in-​ wolin-​2020/​ (accessed June 10, 2020). 74. Rasa Pranskevičiuté, “Contemporary Paganism in Lithuanian Context: Principal Beliefs and Practices of Romuva,” in Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Scott Simpson and Kaarina Aitamurto (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 77–​93. 75. Scott Simpson, Native Faith: Polish Neo-​Paganism at the Brink of the 21st Century (Cracow: Nomos, 2000). 76. Imre Lázár, “Táltos Healers, Neoshamans and Multiple Medical Realities in Postsocialist Hungary,” in Multiple Medical Realities: Patients and Healers in Biomedical, Alternative and Traditional Medicine, edited by Helle Johannesen and Imre Lázár (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 35–​53; Réka Szilárdi, “Neopaganism in Hungary: Under the Spell of the Roots,” in Simpson and Aitamurto, Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements, 230–​249; Kürti, “Neoshamanism.” 77. Alexander Maxwell, “Contemporary Hungarian Rune-​Writing: Ideological Linguistic Nationalism within a Homogeneous Nation,” Anthropos 99 (2004): 161–​175 (http://​rese​ arch​arch​ive.vuw.ac.nz/​bitstr​eam/​han​dle/​10063/​674/​arti​cle.pdf?seque​nce=​3, accessed December 15, 2018).

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages    587 78. Bronisław Geremek, Common Roots of Europe (Cambridge: Polity, 1996). The relevant works of the other historians are too numerous to be listed here other than four of them; see Pavlína Rychterová, Gábor Klaniczay, Paweł Kras, and Walter Pohl, eds., Times of Upheaval: Four Medievalists in Twentieth-​Century Central Europe; Conversations with Jerzy Kłoczowski, János M. Bak, František Šmahel, and Herwig Wolfram (Budapest: CEU Press, 2019). 79. Wolfgang Braunfels, Helmut Beumann, Bernhard Bischoff, Percy Ernst Schramm, and Hermann Schnitzler, eds., Karl der Große: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 5 vols. (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1965–​1968). 80. Ferdinand Seibt, ed., Karl IV: Ein Kaiser in Europa 1346–​1378 (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1978). 81. Michel Pauly and François Reinert, eds., Sigismund of Luxemburg: Ein Kaiser in Europa; Tagungsband des internationalen historischen und kunsthistorischen Tagung, Luxembourg, 8–​10 Juni 2005 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006). 82. Alfried Wieczorek, Hans M. Hintz, eds., Europas Mitte um 1000: Beiträge zur Geschichte, Kunst und Archäologie, 3 vols. (with abbreviated editions in several other languages) (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2000). 83. Joshua B. Spero, The Warsaw-​Prague-​Budapest Triangle: Central European Security after the Visegrad Summit, Occasional Papers No. 31 (Warsaw: Polish Institute of International Affairs, 1992). 84. A colorful addition to the orientalist dimension of medievalism: cf. John M. Ganim, Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture, and Cultural Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 85. See Magyarország–​Hungary Kulturtaj (Hungary Culture Space) (http://​kurul​taj.hu/​engl​ ish/​, accessed January 9, 2019). 86. Cf. https://​www.korm​any.hu/​en/​the-​prime-​minis​ter/​the-​prime-​minis​ter-​s-​speec​hes/​ prime-​minis​ter-​vik​tor-​orban-​s-​spe​ech-​at-​the-​6th-​sum​mit-​of-​the-​coop​erat​ion-​coun​cil-​ of-​tur​kic-​speak​ing-​sta​tes (accessed June 12, 2020).

Further Reading Bak, János M., Patrick J. Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay, eds. Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-​Century Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Bak, János M., Jörg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet, and Bernd Schneidmüller, eds. Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–​2 1. Jahrhunder/​Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th–​2 1st Century/​Usages et Mésusages du Moyen Age du XIXe au XXIe siècle. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009. Emery, Elizabeth, and Richard J. Utz, eds. Medievalism: Key Critical Terms. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Brewer, 2014. Evans, Robert, John Veston, and Guy P. Marchal, eds. The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Geary, Patrick J., and Gábor Klaniczay, eds. Manufacturing Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-​Century Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Graus, František. Lebendige Vergangenheit: Überlieferung im Mittelalter und in den Vorstellungen vom Mittelalter. Cologne: Böhlau, 1975.

Index

Figures are indicated by f following the page number A Adalbert, bishop of Prague, 433 administration, of local and central government, 99–​100, 107–​108 the chancellery, 100–​101 local government administration, 105–​107 agricultural economies, seventh to tenth century, 242–​245 agricultural landscapes, thirteenth-​century transformation and expansion of, 249–​252 agricultural structures, consolidating from tenth to twelfth century, 245–​248 András II, king of Hungary, 468–​469 Andrew II, king of Hungary, 117 animal husbandry, and rural land management, 254–​255 anthropological maps, 2, 2f, 3 Antigameratus, 326 archaeology early Slavic peoples in, 42 architecture Gothic Revival, 571 see also art and architecture aristocracy, 175–​189 administrative elites, 182–​183 becoming a noble, 185–​186 definitions of, 175–​179, 187n.10, 187n.16, 188n.21 early characteristics of, 176–​177 in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 178–​179 lesser nobility, role of, 185 migration and settlement, 198–​199 predominance of, 185 social terminology describing, 179–​182 stratification, 183–​184

in tenth and eleventh centuries, 177–​178 towns and villages associated with, 280 armies, eleventh through thirteenth century, 133–​135 Arnold of St. Emmeram, 321–​322 Árpád dynasty and emergence of Christian kingdoms, 53–​55 royal succession and political participation, 81–​85 art and architecture altarpiece panel, Prague, 387f Carolingian states, 361–​366, 363f, 364f castles, royal residences, and fortifications, 380–​382, 381f castle system, 366, 368f and Christianization, 366–​369 churches, 363f, 364f, 366–​372, 369f, 371f, 372f, 374f Cistercian Abbey, 373–​375, 374f civic aspirations, 390–​394, 391f Classical heritage, 360–​361 early Hungarians, 361–​366, 362f, 363f, 365f Early Middle Ages, 359–​372 female patrons, 377–​378, 378f Gothic style, beginnings of, 373–​377 Gothic-​style architecture, beginnings of, 374f Krems, Gozzoburg, wall paintings, 382f Late Middle Ages, 373–​398 migration period, 360–​361 Olomouc, Franciscan Church, 397f Prague Cathedral, 384f and princes of the church, 379–​380 regional identity, 390–​394, 391f religious trends and reformation, 394–​398, 397f

590   Index art and architecture (cont.) Romanesque art, 370–​372, 371f, 372f royal courts, 383–​390 St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral, Košice, 395f St. Mary’s Church, Gdansk, 393f and state formation, 366–​369, 367f attire, and maintaining identity, 416–​418, 417f pointed shoes, 417–​418 Augustine, Saint, 486 Augustinian Friars, order of, 516 Avars, in Carpathian Basin, 43–​46 art and architecture, 360–​361 B Balkans Bosnian heresy, 471–​472 cooperation and conflict in, 159–​161 forced resettlement in, 202 mining in, 293 Baltic coast, papacy and other religious institutions, 457–​464 Christianization, 461 beer culture, and diet in daily life, 422 Béla IV, king of Hungary, 469 Benedictine monasteries, 510–​511 bishoprics, 270 and papal impact in Croatia and Hungary, 466 bishops, papal policy and, 473 Bizere, floor mosaics at, 371f Bloch, Marc, 185 blood libel, and anti-​Semitic violence, 488–​489 Bohemia Bohemian Reformation, 443–​445 chancellery in, 101 cooperation and conflict in, 163–​165 development of nobility in, 176–​177 finances, development of, 298 gold mining in, 294 government finances in, 102–​103 local government administration, 105–​107 papacy and other religious institutions, 457–​464 Bohemians and early polities in Central Europe, 48–​50 and Premyslid dynasty, 55–​56, 81–​85

Boleslaw, king of Poland, 166 Bosnian heresy, 471–​472 boyars see nobility C Canistris, Opicinus de, 2, 2f Canons Regular, 512 Carmelites, 517 Carolingian states, art and architecture, 361–​366, 363f, 364f Carpathian Basin Avars in, 43–​46 early Hungarian settlement in, 50–​51 mining in, 291–​295 Carthusian monasticism, 513 castles art and architecture of, 380–​382 Karlstein Castle, 385, 386f Marienburg Castle, 382f and royal courts, 383–​390 state formation and, 366, 368f Visegrád royal palace, 381f cemeteries, Jewish, 499 Central Europe, representations of, 1–​9 anthropological maps, 2f, 3f Macinder Heartland map, 5f modern physical map of, 10f Nazi Lebensraum map, 4f central government administration, 99–​100, 107–​108 the chancellery, 100–​101 finances, 101–​104 cereal production, and rural land management, 253 chancellery, and government administration, 100–​101 Charles I, king of Hungary, 292 Christianization in Baltics, 461 of Croats, 464–​465 founders and practices, 432–​435 of Hungarians, 465–​466 Latin and Orthodox Christendom, 435 laws of, 114–​117 papacy and, 457–​458 Christian kingdoms, emergence of, 51–​58 Árpád dynasty, 53–​55

Index   591 and centralization of power, 58 Croats, 51–​52 Piasts and Poland, 56–​58 and Slavic polities, 52–​53 Christian monarchies after 1000, 79–​81 coronation rites, 80–​81 political participation, 81–​85 power representation, 85–​87 royal succession, 81–​85 churches altarpiece panel, Prague, 387f architectural influences, 366–​369, 369f art and architecture of, 361–​366, 363f, 364f Gothic-​style architecture, 373–​377, 374f Olomouc, Franciscan Church, 397f Prague Cathedral, 384f relics, public displays of, 385 Romanesque art, 370–​372, 371f, 372f and shrines, 386–​387 St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral, Košice, 395f St. Mary’s Church, Gdansk, 393f church organization bishoprics, 466 Great Western Schism, 463 and Gregorian Reform, 459 inquisitional tribunals, 463 and papacy, 460 papal nuncios, 462–​463 synods, 461–​462 Cistercians, 519 Abbey at Osek, 373–​375, 374f history of monasteries, 511 cities and towns, 267–​290 early urban centers, eighth to twelfth century, 268–​272 and establishment of royal courts, 383–​390 expansion and innovation in, 280–​285 geopolitical factors in development, 280–​281 ground plans, 275, 283f, 284f, 285f landowning gentry, towns and villages associated with, 280 mining communities, 279 research topics, sources, and debates, 267–​268 urban boom of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 274–​276

urban development of thirteenth to fifteenth century, 277–​280 urban network in Late Middle Ages, 283f Classical heritage, art and architecture, 360–​361 clergy and Gregorian Reform, 459 climate, impacts of, 25–​26 cloth exports of, 305 importing of, 304 clothing, raw material for, 418 coinage, 295–​296, 306 and social communication, 347 Coloman, King of Hungary laws of Christianization, 115=​116 commerce, history and development of, 300–​306 conflict, forms and extent of in Balkans, 159–​161 in Bohemia, 163–​165 in Hungary, 161–​163 in Kievan Rus’, 168–​169 in Poland, 165–​168 Constantinople, literary shadow of, 541–​542 convents, 520–​522 cookbooks, influences in daily life, 418–​419 cooperation, forms and extent of in Balkans, 159–​161 in Bohemia, 163–​165 in Hungary, 161–​163 in Kievan Rus’, 168–​169 in Poland, 165–​168 coronation rites, and legitimization of Christian monarchies, 80–​81 Council of Constance, 463 courts of justice, 121–​123 Cracow founding of university, 324 ground plan of, 285f Croatia churches, art and architecture of, 364, 364f cooperation and conflict in Balkans, 159–​161 Dubrovnik, art and architecture of, 390–​392, 391f impact of papacy in, 464–​474 laws of Christianization in, 116–​117 local government administration, 106 urban and village law in, 120

592   Index Croats Christianization of, 464–​465 early history and settlement, 51–​52 Crusades and Baltics, 461 and Kievan Rus’, 169 in literature, 540–​542, 543–​544 cultural landscape early period, 321–​322, 331n.4 institutions, 322–​324 literary output in Latin, 324–​327 vernacular literature, 327–​331 Cumans, 470 Czech lands books of law in, 121 cooperation and conflict in, 163–​165 Czech language as literary language, 330–​331 finances, development of, 298 gender and family, sources on, 215 laws of Christianization in, 116 mining in, 294 models of marriage and family life, 218 nineteenth-​century national revival, 569–​570 Prague, agglomeration of, 283f D daily life, contexts in Late Middle Ages, 413–​429 attire, 416–​418, 417f beer and wine culture, 422 clothing, raw material for, 418 cookbooks, influences on, 418–​419 food and diet, 418–​422, 421f German influence, 423–​424 guilds and trades, 422 identity, maintaining ethnic, 415–​416 languages, borrowing from other, 413–​414 Lenten diet, 420 novelty, interest in, 414–​415 in religious communities and orders, 424 Davies, Norman, 183–​184 defense, and military organization, 137 Deliberation, St. Gerard of Csanád, 324–​325 De quodam advocato Alberto, 330 Descriptio Europae orientalis, 24–​25

Dominican order, 516, 519–​520, 521 dowry property, 233n.38 Dubrovnik, art and architecture of, 390–​392, 391f E Edlerawer, Hermann, 560–​561 education and cultural institutions, 322–​324 literary output in Latin, 324–​327 vernacular literature, 327–​331 Elbe and Oder rivers Slavic polities between, 52–​53 Slavic population and settlement, 48 elites, in medieval Central Europe, 175–​189 administrative elites, 182–​183 becoming a noble, 185–​186 definitions of, 175–​179, 187n.10, 187n.16, 188n.21 early characteristics of, 176–​177 in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 178–​179 lesser nobility, role of, 185 migration and settlement, 198–​199 predominance of, 185 social terminology describing, 179–​182 stratification, 183–​184 in tenth and eleventh centuries, 177–​178 Emmaus monastery, 510 Engel, Pál, 184 environment, 23–​37 climate, impacts of, 25–​26 minerals, 29–​31 vegetation, 27–​28 Epistolary, 325 eremitic and semieremitic orders and communities, 513 Esztergom, Hungary, 379–​380 ethnic identity, maintaining, 415–​416 ethnicity, irrelevance in migration and settlement, 193–​194 F family and gender, 213–​237 in context of historiography, 224–​225 dowry property, 233n.38 models of marriage and family life, 216–​220 sexual violence, protections against, 235n.73

Index   593 singleness and widowhood, 220–​224 topics, sources, and debates, 213–​216, 230n.17 Feller, Laurent, 175 finances and government administration, 101–​104 history and development of, 295–​300 fisheries, and rural land management, 255–​256 folklore about the Middle Ages, 567–​569 food beer and wine culture, 422 and diet in daily life, 418–​422, 421f Lenten diet, 420 and social communication, 345 spice culture, 420–​422 Four Language Sigh, 328 Franciscan order, 516, 519, 521 G Gdansk, art and architecture of, 392, 393f gender and family, 213–​237 in context of historiography, 224–​225 dowry property, 233n.38 models of marriage and family life, 216–​220 sexual violence, protections against, 235n.73 singleness and widowhood, 220–​224 topics, sources, and debates, 213–​216, 230n.17 gentry, 175–​189 administrative elites, 182–​183 becoming a noble, 185–​186 definitions of, 175–​179, 187n.10, 187n.16, 188n.21 early characteristics of, 176–​177 in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 178–​179 lesser nobility, role of, 185 migration and settlement, 198–​199 predominance of, 185 social terminology describing, 179–​182 stratification, 183–​184 in tenth and eleventh centuries, 177–​178 towns and villages associated with, 280 geography, 23–​37 climate, impacts of, 25–​26 minerals, 29–​31 vegetation, 27–​28 Gerard of Csanád, 324–​325

Germanic peoples, early impact of, 40–​41, 275 Germans, influence in context of daily life, 423–​424 Germany cultural and political influence of, 546–​548 German settlement eastward, 191–​193 minnesang, and musical culture, 556–​557 pan-​German unity and notion of Mitteleuropa, 3–​6 gesture, social communication and, 343–​344 Giecz, ground plan of castle, 368f Gniezno, ground plan of, 282f Golden Bull of Andrew II of Hungary, 117, 179 Górecki, Piotr, 175–​176 Gothic Revival architecture, 571 Gothic-​style architecture, beginnings of, 373–​ 377, 374f government administration, 99–​100, 107–​108 the chancellery, 100–​101 finances, 101–​104 local government administration, 105–​108 Great Moravia, and early polities in Central Europe, 46–​47 Great Western Schism, 463 Gregorian Reform, 459, 467–​468 ground plans Cracow, 285f Gniezno, 282f Košice, 284f and urbanization of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 276 guilds and workshops, 422 H hagiography, and Christianization, 433–​435 hay meadows, and rural land management, 254 heresy Bosnian heresy, 471–​472 importance in papal policy, 471 and inquisitional tribunals, 463 in literature, 546 historiography future perspectives, 169–​170 research traditions, 158–​159 women, gender, and family in context of, 224–​225

594   Index historiography, and perceptions of Central Europe, 1–​9 Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, 514 host libel, and anti-​Semitic violence, 488–​489 Hrushevsky, Mykhailo, 158 Hungarians under Árpád dynasty, 53–​55, 81–​85 art and architecture of early, 361–​366, 362f, 363f, 365f Christianization of, 465–​466 defense and military organization, 137 early history and settlement, 50–​51 as warriors (from 895 to 1241), 131–​132 Hungary animal husbandry in, 255 chancellery in, 100 commerce in, 300–​303 cooperation and conflict in, 161–​163 finances, development of, 295–​297 gender and family, sources on, 215–​216 government finances in, 102 Holy Crown, tradition of, 577 immigration, encouragement of, 196 impact of papacy in, 464–​474 laws of Christianization in, 114–​116 lesser nobility, role of, 185 local government administration, 105–​107 models of marriage and family life, 217–​218, 219 and Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242, 138–​139 national revival in, 570 nobility, development of, 177–​179 statute law in, 119–​120 stratification of nobility in, 184 urban and village law in, 120 urbanization in, 274–​275 warfare and military organization, 142–​144 Huns, art and architecture, 360–​361 Hunyadi, János, 145–​146 Hus, John, 164–​165 Hussites, 141–​142, 164–​165 and Bohemian Reformation, 444–​445 and political and social situation of Jews, 488–​490 Hymn of the Three Children, The, 325

I identity, maintaining ethnic, 415–​416 imagological approach, to medieval European literature, 533–​536 immigration, 191–​211 ethnicity, irrelevance of, 193–​194 German settlement eastward, 191–​193 interactions with local population, 196–​197 Landesausbau, 191–​193, 197 of socially privileged elite, 198–​199 inquisitional tribunals, 463 insignia, royal, 367f and lances, 366 instruments, and musical culture, 557–​558 Intermarium, notion of, 5–​6 Istria, models of marriage in, 216–​217 itinerant occupations, migration and, 199–​ 200, 209n.81 J Jewish community, legal and social position of, 195–​196 Jews in medieval Central Europe, 483–​505 anti-​Semitic violence, 488–​489 cemeteries, 499 and economic life, 492–​495 intellectual life, 495–​499 Jewish communities, 490–​491 and Jewish streets, 499 legal and political framework, 486–​490 material culture, 495–​499 moneylending occupations and practices, 494–​495 origin of communities, 483–​484 persecution and expulsion, 485 population growth, 485 rabbinic movement, 491–​492 religious scholarship, 495–​499 and Slavonic languages, 496–​497 synagogues, 499 textual sources on, 484–​485 worsening political and social situation, 488–​490 Jirouškova, Lenka, 328 Johannites, 514 justice, administration of, 113–​130 books of law, 121

Index   595 Christianization, laws of, 114–​117 courts of justice, 121–​123 privilege as law, 117–​118 statute law, 118–​120 truth, ascertaining, 123–​124 urban and village law, 120–​121 written law, 117–​124 see also local government administration K Kalhous, David, 176 Karlstein Castle, 385, 386f keyboard music, 557–​558 Khazars, and origin of Jews in Central Europe, 483–​484 Kievan Rus’ cooperation and conflict in, 168–​169 Knights Templar, 514 Košice art and architecture of, 394, 395f ground plan and aerial view of, 284f religious trends and reformation, 394 Krems, Gozzoburg, wall paintings, 382f L Ladislas I, King of Hungary folklore associated with, 568 laws of Christianization, 115 laity, and evangelical life, 437–​438, 442 lances, and royal insignia, 366 Landesausbau, 191–​193, 197, 204n.7, 205n.18 land management, rural, 239–​242 agricultural economies, seventh to tenth century, 242–​245 agricultural landscapes, thirteenth-​century transformation and expansion of, 249–​252 agricultural structures, consolidating from tenth to twelfth century, 245–​248 animal husbandry, 254–​255 cereal production, 253 fisheries, 255–​256 hay meadows, 254 land use, fourteenth to sixteenth century, 252–​257 service settlements, 245–​246 settlement, fourteenth to sixteenth century, 252–​257

vineyards, 255 warfare, and abandonment of settlements, 253 water mills, 251 woodlands, 256 landscape features, and vegetation, 27–​28 languages, borrowing from other, 413–​414 Latin literary output in, 324–​327 literature of early period in, 322 law, and administration of justice, 113–​130 books of law, 121 Christianization, laws of, 114–​117 courts of justice, 121–​123 privilege as law, 117–​118 statute law, 118–​120 truth, ascertaining, 123–​124 urban and village law, 120–​121 written law, 117–​124 Lectionary of Arnold of Meissen, The, 376 legates, papal policy and, 473 Lelewel, Joachim, 158 Lenten diet, 420 literacy, and government administration, 100, 108n.9 literature and cultural institutions, 322–​324 in early period, 321–​322, 331n.4 literary output in Latin, 324–​327 vernacular literature, 327–​331 literature, image of East Central Europe in, 533, 548 in Arthurian texts, 542–​543 Constantinople, shadow of, 541–​542 and Crusades, 543–​544 early Crusades, 540–​542 German cultural and political influence, 546–​548 and heresy, 546 imagological approach, 533–​536 lands of the pagans, 538–​540 matière (matter) de Bretagne, 542–​543 matière (matter) de France, 538–​540 matière (matter) de Rome, 540–​542 matières (matters) addressed, 537–​538 Origo Gentium (origin story), 536–​537 sainthood, ideology of, 544–​546 vernacular literary traditions, 537–​538

596   Index Lithuania, papacy and other religious institutions, 457–​464 Lithuanians warfare and military organization, 140–​141 local government administration, 105–​107, 107–​108 see also justice, administration of locatores, and German settlement eastward, 193 Lowmianski, Henryk, 184 M Macinder, Halford J., 5f Magdeburg, 270, 275, 281f Marienburg Castle, 382f marketplaces, and early urban centers, 273 marriage, and family life, 216–​220 dowry property, 233n.38 Matthias, king of Hungary, 162–​163 medievalism, popular traditions and, 567, 580 and European unity, 579–​580 folklore about the Middle Ages, 567–​569 Gothic Revival architecture, 571 heritage and battlegrounds after 1989, 575–​576 Holy Crown of Hungary, 577 millennial celebrations, 571–​573 national revival, 569–​570 national saints, new and old, 576–​577 pagan past, celebrations of, 578–​579 and political opposition, 574–​575 socialist medievalism, 573–​574 Mendicant orders, 515–​518, 519 metalwork, of early Hungarians, 365, 365f migrations, 39–​75 art and architecture, effects on, 360–​361 Avars, in Carpathian Basin, 43–​46 Croats, 51–​52 and early polities, 46–​50, 52–​53 from east and southeast, 197–​198 forced resettlement, 201–​202 Germanic peoples, early impact of, 40–​41 Hungarians, 50–​51 and Hungary under Árpád dynasty, 53–​55 itinerant occupations, 209n.81 and itinerant occupations, 199–​200 Landesausbau, 204n.7, 205n.18

migration societies, 195–​197 pastoralism, 209n.81 peasant migration, 200–​201 and Piast dynasty in Poland, 56–​58 and Premyslid dynasty in Bohemia, 55–​56 and situational identity, 203 and slave trade, 202–​203 Slavs, early migration and settlement, 41–​43 see also immigration military organization (from 895 to 1241), 131–​139 armies, 133–​135 defense, 137 formation and tactics, 135–​136 Hungarian raids, 131–​132 Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242, 138–​139 Slavic peoples, 132 and territorial organization, 133 weaponry, 136 military organization (from 1242 to 1526), 139–​147 cavalry and infantry, 146–​147 formation and tactics, 145–​146 Hussites, 141–​142 leadership, 145 Lithuanians, 140–​141 Slavic peoples, 139–​140 Teutonic Order, 140–​141, 205n.12 minerals, and land development, 29–​31 mining, 291–​295, 306 mining scene, 423f mining communities, 279, 292, 423 minnesang, and musical culture, 556–​557 miracles, accounts of in religious practice, 438–​439 missionaries and conversion of Hungarians, 466 and dealing with non-​Christians, 472 Mitteleuropa, notion of, 3–​6 monasticism, 522 beginnings of, 508–​509 Benedictine monasteries, 510–​511 Canons Regular, 512 Cistercian monasteries, 511 eremitic and semieremitic orders and communities, 513 female monasticism, 520–​522

Index   597 late medieval monastic network, East Central Europe, 523f Mendicant orders, 515–​518 military and hospitaller orders, 514–​515 Orthodox (Basilian), 509–​510 reforms in Late Middle Ages, 518–​520 semimonastic ways of living, 521–​522 monasticism, and protection by papacy, 460 Mongol invasion and agricultural landscapes, 250, 252 and European military organization, 138–​139 in Hungary, 469–​470 and Kievan Rus’, 169 and migrant groups from east, 198 Monk of Salzburg, 555 Moravia and early polities in Central Europe, 46–​47 models of marriage and family life, 218, 219 mosaics, floor, 371f Münster, Sebastian, 2, 3f musical culture, 553 beginning of sixteenth century, 562 foreign composers, 561–​562 Hermann Edlerawer, 560–​561 instruments, 557–​558 Johannes Tourout, 561–​562 Mikolaj Radomski, 560–​561 minnesang, 556–​557 Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz, 559–​560 plainchant, 553–​554 polyphony, 558–​562 sacred songs, 555–​556 Muslim migration and settlement, 198 N national revival, medievalism and, 569–​570 natural resources, 23–​37 climate, impacts of, 25–​26 minerals, 29–​31 vegetation, 27–​28 nobility, 175–​189 administrative elites, 182–​183 becoming a noble, 185–​186 definitions of, 175–​179, 187n.10, 187n.16, 188n.21 early characteristics of, 176–​177

in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 178–​179 lesser nobility, role of, 185 migration and settlement, 198–​199 predominance of, 185 social terminology describing, 179–​182 stratification, 183–​184 in tenth and eleventh centuries, 177–​178 towns and villages associated with, 280 Novaković, Stojan, 158 novelty, daily life and interest in, 414–​415 nuncios, papal, 462–​463 nunneries, 520–​522 O Observants, and monastic reforms of Late Middle Ages, 519–​520 Oder and Elbe rivers Slavic polities between, 52–​53 Slavic population and settlement, 48 Olomouc, Franciscan Church, 397f orality, and social communication, 341–​343 organ music, 557–​558 origin story, and medieval European literature, 536–​537 Orlando’s Column, Dubrovnik, 391f Orthodox (Basilian) monasticism, 509–​510 Orthodox Christendom, and Christianization, 435 Orthographia Bohemica, 329 Ottoman Empire cooperation and conflict in Balkans, 159–​161 cooperation and conflict in Hungary, 162–​163 forced resettlement in, 202 and Hungarian military response, 142–​144 and Muslim migration and settlement, 198 P Palacky, František, 158 papacy and Christianization in Central Europe, 457–​458 and the church in Poland, 458–​460 Great Western Schism, 463 impact in Hungary and Croatia, 464–​474 inquisitional tribunals, 463 interventions by, 460–​461

598   Index papacy (cont.) legates and bishops, 473 missionaries, and conversion of Hungarians, 466 and monasticism, 460 papal nuncios, 462–​463 synods and, 461–​462 pastoralism, 209n.81 Pauline monasticism, 513 peasant migration, 200–​201 Piast dynasty, 165–​168 and emergence of Christian kingdoms, 56–​58 plainchant, and musical culture, 553–​554 Poland art and architecture of, 392, 393f chancellery in, 100–​101 cooperation and conflict in, 165–​168 courts of justice in, 122 defense and military organization, 137 development of nobility in, 177 finances, development of, 298 gender and family, sources on, 215 gold mining in, 294 government finances in, 103–​104 laws of Christianization in, 116–​117 local government administration, 106–​107 models of marriage and family life, 217, 218, 231n.24 and Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242, 139 nineteenth-​century national revival, 569–​570 papacy and, 458–​460 population and settlement, 56–​58 salt mining in, 295 statute law in, 119 stratification of nobility in, 183–​184 political community, in High and Late Middle Ages, 77–​79 assemblies, 86–​87 Christian monarchies after 1000, 79–​81 power representation, 85–​87 royal succession and political participation, 81–​85 polities in early Central Europe, 46–​50 Bohemians in ninth century, 48–​50 Great Moravia, 46–​47

Samo, realm of, 46 Slavic peoples, 48, 52–​53 Pollock, Sheldon, 327 polyphony, and musical culture, 558–​562 foreign composers, 561–​562 Hermann Edlerawer, 560–​561 Johannes Tourout, 561–​562 Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz, 559–​560 population and settlement, from 700 to 1100, 39–​75 Árpád dynasty, 53–​55 Avars, in Carpathian Basin, 43–​46 Christian kingdoms, emergence of, 51–​58 Croats, 51–​52 early polities, 46–​50, 52–​53 Germanic peoples, early impact of, 40–​41 Hungarians, 50–​51 Piasts and Poland, 56–​58 Premyslid dynasty, 55–​56 Slavs, early migration and settlement, 41–​43 Prague agglomeration of, 283f founding of university, 323 Old-​New Synagogue, 376f Prague Castle, 390 Prague Cathedral, 384f synagogues in, 499 Premyslid dynasty, 163–​164 and emergence of Christian kingdoms, 55–​56, 81–​85 Pressburg customs’ registers, 302–​303 prostitution, 223–​224, 236n.76, 236n.77 Prussia, papacy and other religious institutions, 457–​464 R rabbinic movement, 491–​492 relics, public displays of, 385 religious communities and orders and agricultural landscapes, 251 Cistercian Abbey, 373–​375, 374f daily life in, 424 and development of urban centers, 271–​272 female patrons, 377–​378, 378f and flourishing of Romanesque art, 370–​ 372, 371f, 372f Gothic-​style architecture, 375–​377

Index   599 life choice, 224 see also monasticism religious practices, 431–​456 Bohemian Reformation, 443–​445 and Christianization, 432–​435 and hagiography, 433–​435 Latin and Orthodox Christendom, 435 miracles, accounts of, 438–​439 pastoral care and evangelical life, 436–​439 revival and reform, 440–​443 and vernacular language, 442–​443 women and evangelical living, 436–​437 resettlement, forced, 201–​202 resources, natural, 23–​37 climate, impacts of, 25–​26 minerals, 29–​31 vegetation, 27–​28 Riurikids, rulers of Kievan Rus’, 168, 169 Roma migration and settlement, 198 Romanesque art, 370–​372, 371f royal courts, art and architecture of, 383–​390 royal insignia, 367f royal succession, and political participation, 81–​85 rural land management, 239–​242 agricultural economies, seventh to tenth century, 242–​245 agricultural landscapes, thirteenth-​century transformation and expansion of, 249–​252 agricultural structures, consolidating from tenth to twelfth century, 245–​248 animal husbandry, 254–​255 cereal production, 253 fisheries, 255–​256 hay meadows, 254 land use, fourteenth to sixteenth century, 252–​257 service settlements, 245–​246 settlement, fourteenth to sixteenth century, 252–​257 vineyards, 255 warfare, and abandonment of settlements, 253 water mills, 251 woodlands, 256

S sacred songs, and musical culture, 555–​556 saffron, and diet in daily life, 421–​422 sainthood in literature, 544–​546 and modern-​day medievalism, 576–​577 salt imports, 304 salt mining, 293, 295 Samo, realm of, 46 scholarship, and Jewish intellectual life, 495–​499 serfs, and peasant migration patterns, 200–​201 service settlements, 245–​246 settlement and population, from 700 to 1100, 39–​75 Árpád dynasty, 53–​55 Avars, in Carpathian Basin, 43–​46 Christian kingdoms, emergence of, 51–​58 Croats, 51–​52 early polities, 46–​50, 52–​53 Germanic peoples, early impact of, 40–​41 Hungarians, 50–​51 Piasts and Poland, 56–​58 Premyslid dynasty, 55–​56 Slavs, early migration and settlement, 41–​43 settlements, abandonment in wartime, 253 sexual violence, protections against, 235n.73 shoes, and attire in daily life, 417–​418 shrines, 386–​387 Sicambria, and the Origo Gentium (origin story), 533, 536–​537 Sigismund, king of Hungary, 296–​297, 329, 470–​471 singleness, and family life, 220–​224 slave trade, 202–​203 Slavic peoples early migration and settlement, 41–​43 and early polities in Central Europe, 48, 52–​53 early warfare (ninth to eleventh century), 132 models of marriage, 217 warfare and military organization, 139–​140 Slavonia, models of marriage and family life, 217–​218, 219 Slavonic languages, Jewish speakers of, 496–​497

600   Index smell, and social communication, 344–​345 social communication, 339–​341 gesture, 343–​344 performance and, 348 signs and images, 345–​346 touch, taste, and smell, 344–​345 word and sound, 341–​343 written word, 346–​349 spice culture, and diet in daily life, 420–​422 St. Emmeram Codex, 560–​561 Ständestaat emergence and development of, 80, 86, 87 Stephen, King of Hungary, 434 folklore associated with, 567–​568 laws of Christianization, 114–​115 steppe peoples, early migration and settlement, 43–​44 synagogues and Jewish cemeteries and streets, 499 Old-​New Synagogue, Prague, 375, 376f synods, and papal authority, 461–​462 T taste, and social communication, 344–​345 taxes, 299–​300 Teichner, Heinrich, 414 territorial organization (from eleventh to thirteenth century), 133 Teutonic Order, 140–​141, 205n.12 animal husbandry, 255 Teutonic Knights, 514 Thomas of Split, 349 Tosafist scholars, and Jewish intellectual life, 495 touch, and social communication, 344–​345 Tourout, Johannes, 561–​562 towns and cities, 267–​290 early urban centers, eighth to twelfth century, 268–​272 and establishment of royal courts, 383–​390 expansion and innovation in, 280–​285 geopolitical factors in development, 282–​283 ground plans, 276, 282f, 284f, 285f landowning gentry, towns and villages associated with, 280 mining communities, 279

research topics, sources, and debates, 267–​268 urban boom of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 274–​277 urban development of thirteenth to fifteenth century, 277–​280 urban network in Late Middle Ages, 286f trade and development of commerce, 300–​306 and development of finances, 297–​298 translation, horizontal vs. vertical process, 331n.4 Turkish expansionism see Ottoman Empire U urban centers boom of twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 274–​277 eighth to twelfth century, 268–​274 expansion and innovation in, 280–​285 geopolitical factors in development, 280–​281 and “golden age” of thirteenth to fifteenth century, 280–​281 ground plans, 275, 282f, 284f, 285f urban network in Late Middle Ages, 286f V vegetation, landscape features and, 27–​28 Venetian marriage model, 217, 231n.22 vineyards, and rural land management, 255 Visegrád royal palace, 381f W Waldhauser, Konrad, 328–​329 warfare, and abandonment of settlements, 253 warfare (from 895 to 1241), 131–​139 armies, 133–​135 defense, 137 formation and tactics, 135–​136 Hungarian raids, 131–​132 Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242, 138–​139 Slavic peoples, 132 and territorial organization, 133 weaponry, 136 warfare (from 1242 to 1526), 139–​147 cavalry and infantry, 146–​147

Index   601 formation and tactics, 145–​146 Hussites, 141–​142 leadership, 145 Lithuanians, 140–​141 Slavic peoples, 139–​140 Teutonic Order, 140–​141, 205n.12 water mills, 251 weaponry, eleventh through thirteenth century, 136 Wenceslas, Bohemian duke (d. 935), 433 Wenceslas II, King in Bohemia, 118–​119 Wenceslaus II and III, king of Bohemia, 164 Wickham, Chris, 175 widowhood, and family life, 220–​224, 234n.56 Wilhelmi, Petrus, 559–​560 wine growing regions, 422

Wolkenstein, Oswald von, 556–​557 women and family, 213–​237 in context of historiography, 224–​225 dowry property, 233n.38 models of marriage and family life, 216–​220 sexual violence, protections against, 235n.73 singleness and widowhood, 220–​224 topics, sources, and debates, 213–​216, 230n.17 woodlands, and rural land management, 256 workshops and trades, 422 writing, and social communication, 346–​349 Z Zizka, Jan, 141–​142 Zvonimir, King of Croatia, 116