Hastening Toward Prague. Lisa Wolverton

the duke saw this as a dangerous possibility, and that they were easily identified by their murderers.³³ Thus, the Vršovici—while undoubtedly exceptional—exemplify all that cannot be known about the eleventh and twelfth century freemen, even the most influential.

Map 2. Vršovici lands.

      The same care is required for questions of ethnicity as for kinship or identity. We must be cautious, in other words, about classifying persons with German names as ethnically German. There is little doubt that many people immigrated to the Czech Lands from German-speaking regions—and elsewhere—and some rose to great prominence. Although many laymen of the eleventh and twelfth centuries with obviously German names appear to have been immigrants, nothing specific is known of their origins, much less about what German ethnicity or identity meant to them. As with one of the Hroznatas, the son of Hermann, or the sons of Marquard, named Hermann, Zaviše, and Gall, a German name is often linked with a clearly Slavic one. Probably, at some time, a German and a Czech were married and their children bear names from both ethnic groups, or simply from both sides of the family, and such names continued to be passed down among descendants. Some names appear frequently so we cannot be sure whether the name itself had simply become common, for example, Hermann or Marquard; this is further true for German names used by Přemyslid dynasts, particularly Oldřich (Ulrich), and with the names of Christian saints, such as Henry. For the majority of laymen, there is often no way to determine whether they were indeed born and raised in a German-speaking land before coming to the Czech Lands or, more important, what connections they maintained with relatives and friends there.³⁴

      In reference to freemen, twelfth-century chroniclers routinely use comparative nouns, describing men, both individuals and groups, simply as “those more noble,” “wiser” or just “better” (nobiliores, saniores, meliores), or speaking of “the elder” and “the younger.” Thus, the written sources eschew altogether designations reflecting legal conditions of status, kinship, or titular rank. Because seniores is regularly juxtaposed against iuniores, moreover, there is little doubt that the term had nothing to do with lordship (like French seigneur). To be “elder” probably did not indicate any specific or even advanced age, but instead a combination of maturity, prowess, wealth and wisdom, respect, and experience that set them apart. Distinctions between iuniores and seniores primarily differentiate those eager to make their name, increase their wealth, and occupy positions of prominence, and men who had already done so. Neither narrative nor documentary sources indicate that social categories—outside free and unfree—were legally defined, ranked objectively, or hierarchically arranged as “orders.” It is crucially important not to overinterpret, institutionalize, or generate rigid social categories from Cosmas’s oft-cited remark that “all the Czechs of the first and second rank loved [Soběslav I] and supported his cause,” for it simply expresses this same broad, comparative distinction among the leading men of the realm.³⁵ Nobiliores appears far more frequently than nobiles, a word used most often to head lists of witnesses in charters—akin to but less common than primates, optimates, comites, or, once, the Czech term, župané (equivalent to comites). Here again we get the clear impression that comites broadly signified “better” men, as primates generally did “leaders” among the freemen.

      In charters from the mid-twelfth century testifying to their donations to or foundations of ecclesiastical institutions, freemen identify themselves in the same relative terms. Miroslav, founder of a Cistercian monastery on his extensive lands at Sedlec in the mid-twelfth century, was styled merely “one of the leading men of Bohemia” (“quidam de primatibus Boemie”).³⁶ The foundation charter of 1197 for Teplá likewise opens: “I Hroznata, by the grace of God, descending from one of the more illustrious lines of the leaders of Bohemia … ” (“Ego Hroznata dei gratia de primatum Boemie clariori stemate descendens”).³⁷ Such phrases, applied to specific individuals—even by a magnate of himself—affirm the inherent fluidity of differences within the ranks of Czech freemen, including those among the “leading men” or the descendents of “more illustrious lineages.” Outside their membership in such a loose collection of prominent individuals, men like Hroznata and Miroslav stand relatively isolated in these documents. While both make provisions for their immediate families in the body of the grant (their sisters and, in Miroslav’s case, his children), neither mentions his parents. Hroznata’s charter bears his personal seal, showing a set of antlers (which may be an early heraldic device).³⁸ Neither of these two, nor any other lay donors to monasteries, identifies themselves by reference to court offices or castellanies, though some may be seen in the witness lists to have held such appointments. However frustrating it may be to speak generally of “Czechs,” “magnates,” or “more prominent men,” these are the very terms—collective and comparative—by which twelfth-century freemen understood themselves.

       The Circle at Court

      As a consequence of the medieval preference for loose, comparative classifications and the ostensible absence of rigidly defined strata among the free, this study routinely refers broadly, and in a deliberately inspecific way, to “freemen”—as already noted. Before completely resigning ourselves to speaking of the Czechs as an undifferentiated mass, however, we must take a closer look at the individuals who emerge from the sources. The most detailed evidence concerning Czech laymen at any social level comes from the witness lists to charters issued in the second half, and especially the last quarter, of the twelfth century. They are invaluable—and underexploited—records of continuity and of change among the men around the duke. Certain magnates of the highest echelon are also mentioned in the chronicles, as advisors to dukes, leaders of insurrection, or men entrusted with special tasks, such as diplomatic missions. The chroniclers sometimes offer other small indications about the situation of these individuals. The witness lists, on the other hand, provide detailed information about promotion to court offices and castellanies. To these we now turn, in an effort to bring to life those individual Czech freemen who rise out of the largely faceless crowd and the group of men that might be called “the circle at court.”

      In the most dramatic events of Czech political life described by the chroniclers, not only dukes and lesser Přemyslids take the stage but their closest associates and counselors. Duke Spitihněv, for instance, entrusted the care of his exiled brother’s wife to Mstiš, son of Boris, in 1055 castellan of Lštění and by 1061 promoted to Bílina.³⁹ Cosmas describes him as “a man of great boldness, greater eloquence, and less prudence.” Mstiš fled into exile when Vratislav replaced him with Kojata, son of Všebor, as castellan of Bílina. Although nothing is known of his connections to other magnates or his landed resources, at the time of his appointment to Bílina, Kojata was “first in the duke’s palace.”⁴⁰ Seven years later, still described as “palace comes” and standing to the immediate right of Vice-duke Otto, Kojata led the opposition to Duke Vratislav’s episcopal candidate at the colloquium at Dobenina, then again on the battlefield.⁴¹ These two men, Mstiš and Kojata, represent two slightly different types of “favorites.” Mstiš earned the castellany of Bílina after performing a delicate task to Spitihněv’s satisfaction, while Kojata was already the preeminent magnate at Vratislav’s court. Both lost office upon losing the duke’s grace, one by outright insurrection and the other, when the occupant of the throne changed, by the very deed that had earned him his duke’s gratitude.

      Another type was Zderad, described only as Vratislav’s villicus; he died at the hand of Vratislav’s own son over a petty insult—and was, so Cosmas reports, mourned by no one but the king.⁴² Whatever his rank vis-à-vis other freemen, this hated “bailiff” had sufficient standing in the king’s presence to publicly mock his son. Another “homo peior pessimo,” as Cosmas says, was Vratislav’s chamberlain a few years earlier, Vitus, son of Želibor; in 1088 he was the only man to accompany the king in a private interview with Beneda, son of Jurata, in which both Vratislav and Beneda were badly wounded.⁴³ Since Cosmas explicitly notes that he was “reinstated” in that post upon Bořivoj’s accession in 1100, Mutina, of the Vršovici, was apparently castellan of Litoměřice at the time of