Hastening Toward Prague. Lisa Wolverton

Stephen pincerna (and others)

      Among other things, the witness lists conclusively demonstrate the rotation of castellans and court officers among various high-level posts. The most dramatic evidence comes from two charters expressly dated to February and March 1177, which reveal a shuffle among Soběslav II’s officers in the space of a month, although the chroniclers give no indication that these were weeks of particular turmoil (Table 2). The list and titles given in the first charter, on the whole, accord with an earlier document of Soběslav’s from 1175, except that Hermann was there agazo.⁶⁸ In the late winter of 1177, however, Hermann was promoted from marscalcus to chamberlain and Dluhomil from pincerna to marscalcus, while an apparent newcomer, Stephen, became pincerna. Two men moved from court to castellany: Vítek, from dapifer to Kladsko on the Polish border, and Zdeslav, from the office of chamberlain to Žatec. Sežima was transferred from Plzeň to Bílina. Neither Rivin nor Jarohněv appears in the second document, and the posts they held at Žatec and Kladsko have been reallocated.⁶⁹ The two may have died, “retired,” or fallen permanently from favor; for all we know, these events may even have initiated the rotation. Not every office experienced a turnover: Čéč remained court judge and Blah retained Litoměřice.

      One of the preeminent administrative posts in Bohemia, without any doubt, was that of duke’s chamberlain; like all other offices, it was filled on a temporary basis. King Vladislav had four chamberlains in ten years: in 1159, Marquard; in 1160, Němoj; by 1165, Stibor, promoted from castellan of Bautzen;⁷⁰ and by 1169, Bohuslav.⁷¹ Adding the chamberlains of his successors shows a small group of prominent magnates dominating the office, but still rotating in and out. Zdeslav was Soběslav II’s chamberlain, although Hermann, son of Marquard, held the post in March 1177.⁷² Frederick had three: Hrabiše, Hroznata the “Curly-Haired,” and Lothar, with Hrabiše appointed again at the end of his reign.⁷³ Hermann, son of Marquard, returned to the position under Conrad Otto in 1189.⁷⁴ After him, Hrabiše was reappointed, serving from 1192 through 1197 under both Duke Přemysl and Duke/Bishop Henry.⁷⁵ Some correspondence patently existed between turnover among chamberlains and a change on the ducal throne. Mentioned for the first time by Cosmas (concerning the year 1088), ducal chamberlains had existed well before the later twelfth century; yet, as with castellans, their precise duties remain obscure.⁷⁶ The chronicler’s remarks concerning the duke’s camera invariably involve sums of money, yet the privilege granted the Prague Germans ca. 1174 indicates a judicial function for the camerarius.⁷⁷

      These charters from the second half of the twelfth century provide the first indication of the organization of offices at the duke’s court; not only chamberlains and chancellors appear but, as we have seen, men bearing the titles dapifer, pincerna, and agazo. The nature of these offices, traditionally translated “seneschal,” “butler,” and “footman,” remains altogether obscure (and for this reason are here given consistently in the Latin). They may have been merely honorary titles, or ones superficially adopted from foreign courts. Although the shift in documentation, whereby witness lists are recorded in charters, may account for the apparent innovation of these court offices, it may also be that Vladislav, during his long reign as duke and then king, reorganized the court: the first references to a chancellor, as well as pincerna, dapifer, and agazo, and especially the “court judge” (iudex curie) appear under his rule.⁷⁸ The first chancellor named, Bartholomew, also appears at this time; while no charter mentions his name, Vincent reports that he died in 1147.⁷⁹ Certainly, by the late twelfth century, both the ruler’s wife and the bishop of Prague adopted a similar court organization.⁸⁰ Queen Judith, for instance, sent her “highest chamberlain,” Sežima, to escort her granddaughter for marriage to the grandson of the Byzantine emperor, in 1165. Ultimately, we simply do not know what it meant for a man to be, for instance, the “seneschal” or, literally, “plate-bearer” of the duke of Bohemia.

      The witness lists provide evidence concerning the constitution of the duke’s court and about the nature of office-holding among leading freemen, but may also be analyzed as a corpus for more general patterns. Compared to imperial charters, the most striking aspects of the Czech witness lists are that titles are rarely given for laymen and that they are listed without strict regard to them when included. This is congruent with the absence of titulature or hierarchy noted for the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a whole. The apparent failure to order the names of lay witnesses seems not to have resulted from cartulary norms or from the quirks of particular scribes: the clergy in Czech witness lists are indeed ranked strictly, and members of the Přemyslid dynasty, when present, are always identified first among all witnesses. When court officers (dapifer, agazo, pincerna) appear, they may be in any order, grouped together or separate, at the beginning or in the middle of the list, and so forth. Though the chamberlain (camerarius) is often listed first, or at least toward the top of the list, no fixed pattern prevails. This holds even when the same individuals are concerned, so we may be certain that it does not result from social rankings not associated with titles or offices (see Table 2).⁸¹ On the other hand more important men do tend to appear toward the beginning, particularly if a list is long, while men who make only one appearance in our corpus of lists are most often in the second half.

      A careful reading of the lists of lay witnesses gives two other strong impressions. The first is that there was no fixed group at court or in castellanies.⁸² In the second half of the twelfth century, no two lists are the same.⁸³ Shorter lists show more stability, but presumably they have been limited to only the most noteworthy witnesses. Even among the court officers, the dapifer may be present, while the agazo or pincerna is not—keeping in mind here that offices are not always specified. Furthermore, taking 1175 as an arbitrary starting date, a rough average of half the names in long witness lists thereafter are new at the time of their first appearance;⁸⁴ many will not appear again. The other strong impression one gets from the witness lists is that the same laymen continually resurface, though without pattern. Remarkably, Table 3 shows no significant turnover after the accession of new dukes. Some men appear only in Frederick’s charters and some are one-timers, but many appear in one or more documents before or after this one from 1187, and even in those of Sobeslav II whom Frederick deposed.⁸⁵ The same sort of table could be drawn up based on a different sample charter with similar results, since some of those who are not listed here also appear quite frequently. Accounting for sanguinal connections—for instance, when the son or brother of a magnate named in one charter appears in another—reinforces the impression that, however much variation appears from list to list at first glance, the witnesses were largely being drawn from the same circle of men.

TABLE 3. WITNESSES TO DUKE FREDERICK’S CHARTER OF 2 MAY 1187 (CDB NO. 317)

      a. I have given here the documents’ CDB numbers, preceded by the duke’s initial as follows: S=Soběslav II, F=Frederick (none from first reign), C=Conrad Otto, P=Přemysl Otakar I (first reign), H=Henry (simultaneously bishop), VH=Vladislav Henry. The range of dates is 1175–98. I have not noted, for lack of space, the few occasions in previous or subsequent documents when a title is provided for the individual named. In consideration of “previous” documents I have not included those of Duke/King Vladislav because it is difficult to assume that men from as much as forty years earlier with the same names are identical to the individuals listed here.

      b. With Christian names, is itmuch more difficult (ormerely seems so) to be sure that identical individuals are signified by the same names. I have not ventured to guess here unless I can make a determination from other evidence—for example, by family relations. In the case of John, he appears as either Johannes or Jan with the title iudex in all the documents listed in this table.

      c.