Hastening Toward Prague. Lisa Wolverton

nature of the changes suggested here. Rather than indicating systemic transformations as yet, the documentation points toward the activities of a few enterprising individuals (and ecclesiastical institutions).

       Consolidation of Land

      Close attention to the nature and content of the charters from this time—by far the majority of those that survive from the eleventh and twelfth centuries—reveals newcircumstances behind their redaction. In the second half of the twelfth century, for instance, more charters than ever before record transactions involving parties other than the duke, particularly lay freemen. This shift accompanied new patterns of land management. Of the fourteen charters pertaining to magnates from 1170 to 1198, half document exchanges or sales, rather than outright donations, to monasteries. These charters make plain that among the legitimate ways for laymen and clerics to acquire land, sales and trades allowed the most control over where and how much land would change hands. Gifts of land from the duke, for instance, could prove less advantageous than expected; two charters record freemen disposing of their rewards soon after receiving them. Circa 1180–82, Čéč sold Plasy two villages and a circuitus, which “the glorious Duke Frederick, mindful of my service, gave me in the first year of his reign”; he then used the money to buy an estate else-where.⁹⁸ Since Frederick became duke in 1178, Čéč must have made the sale only a few years after receiving the land. Hermann, son of William, similarly traded with Plasy part of a village “acquired by him for the faithfulness of his service.”⁹⁹ The duke’s gifts were certainly valuable and these magnates were grateful to receive them, but they also knew best how to profit by them. Without any doubt, exchange was incited by the desire to consolidate landholding. In a trade with George of Milevsko in 1184, Bishop Henry of Prague made his motivation clear:

      We discovered episcopal fields dispersed here and there and mixed with fields of George of Milevsko. So it was agreed between us and George, that we would cede to him from ours and receive a fitting exchange from him—namely four villages: one called Stranné, another Bratřejov, a third Budov, and a fourth Chrastná. We made this exchange from mutual goodwill, not from any necessity of ours or his, except that our field was adjacent to his and was less useful to us, while his was not far from our court at Roudnice.¹⁰⁰

      How George acquired villages near Roudnice so far north of his “seat” at Milevsko—whether by ducal grant, marriage, or inheritance from a near or distant relative—cannot be determined, but they must indeed have been inconvenient to administer. The documents, thus, show laymen and ecclesiastical institutions making mutually beneficial deals with one another as they tried to improve their wealth.

      It must have been as troublesome for monasteries as for bishops and freemen to own scattered properties. Plasy, the Cistercian monastery with which both Čéč and Hermann traded land, was particularly aggressive in consolidating its holdings in the last years of the twelfth century. Of thirteen extant charters pertaining to Plasy from the years 1175 to 1194, seven are sales or exchanges of some form. In trading the salt tax from Děčin back to the duke for a village named Kopidlo, the charter describes one disadvantage of distant holdings: “They held the toll in salt at Děčin, ⋯ the profit from which they were unable to bring back to the monastery without serious danger to their souls on account of the length of the road and the plots of thieves.”¹⁰¹ On the other hand, the monks were so eager to retain the estate of Lomany granted by Oldřich in 1193, that they paid 22 marks and another estate quasi concambium to compel Oldřich’s father and uncle to quit their claim to Lomany the following year.¹⁰² In another instance, they traded Luhov and 12 marks for part of Čečín, acquired another estate in the same village from Duchess Helicha, and then made an exchange with the bishop and chapter of Prague for another estate there.¹⁰³ Earlier they had received Luhov from Duke Soběslav II in exhange for Erpužice, further west.¹⁰⁴ The Cistercians at Plasy were not interested merely in amassing sufficient resources to support the community but were busily and deliberately engaged in consolidating their holdings in a narrow area close to home (Map 3). This kind of activity, not atypical for Cistercians elsewhere in Europe, may have spurred their wealthier lay neighbors to act likewise.¹⁰⁵

      Plasy was not the only landowner willing to pay a high price for choice pieces of land. The document written by the chapter at Vyšehrad confirming an exchange with Marcant demonstrates that an entrepreneurial spirit inspired some men in their efforts to acquire more profitable lands. It reads, in part:

      Marcant made an exchange of fields in Zaběhlice with bellringers of our church, namely Krazon and his brother Krisan, who gave to Marcant from their fields—moved by no command of necessity, but inflamed with the spirit only of good will ⋯ And similarly Marcant made an exchange such that he gave his fields and his money—generously—for the orchard and farm and a certain mountain, ⋯ On which mountain he then began to construct a vineyard. After this deed, Marcant promised the bellringers that, if any trouble should come to them concerning the fields he gave them, he would then give them other fields for those fields.¹⁰⁶

Map 3. Land consolidation by Plasy before 1198.

      Marcant was so avid to get his vineyard planted that he was willing to promise the bellringers other fields than those originally exchanged if the need later arose. In fact, to sweeten the deal, Marcant “willingly” gave the Vyšehrad chapter two gilded candelabra and a mark of silver, and promised a tenth of the produce from the vineyard in perpetuity.¹⁰⁷ Whether similar payments “to even out” exchanges were offered simply to entice the second party to trade cannot be known but certainly seems plausible. Noteworthy, in Marcant’s document, as in the agreement between the bishop and George of Milevsko, is the emphatic assertion that the parties entered into the exchange willingly and not “from necessity”—an obvious euphemism for coercion or duress. The stakes, like the profits, in these land exchanges must have been quite high. More importantly perhaps, the stress on the will of the donor demonstrates that the actions were taken by individuals of their own power and, again, in light of a conception of their own best interests.

      Marcant apparently saw a profitable use for previously uncultivated land; he established a vineyard on the mountain almost immediately. Although we have little direct testimony, the second half of the twelfth century seems to have witnessed the intensification of a movement to clear and colonize uncultivated lands.¹⁰⁸ When such colonization began, or markedly increased, remains uncertain; probably the clearing of new lands was a regular feature of local life from the earliest times. The second half of the twelfth century, however, provides clearer written confirmation of such activities. The most common evidence appears in grants of újezdy (the Czech term is usually employed in the Latin documents) and villages so named. One charter defines an újezd as an ambitum (meaning “circuit” literally, “edge” in practice), in this case located “in the forest of the province of Sedlec.”¹⁰⁹ Although here no village is named, in other instances it seems to have been the forest at the outer perimeter of a village or town. These újezdy were the logical places for medieval Czechs to begin extending the land under cultivation. Thus many villages, presumably new, were themselves simply named Újezd or Újezdec, and the progress of twelfth-century colonization can be partially traced by analysis of such place names.¹¹⁰ Hroznata’s foundation charter for Teplá makes clear that colonization was encouraged. Men holding land “in the forest” could apparently continue to do so but the monastery was not obliged to pay them, presumably because the lands were not yet guaranteed as profitable and would require substantial effort from both those living there and the monastery to make them so.¹¹¹

      Although largely undetectable in this period, colonization must have offered great opportunities to individual magnates willing and with the resources to take advantage of them.¹¹² Milhost’s foundation endowment for Mašt’ov reflects this, as does the grant Hroznata of Peruc made to the Hospital of St. John in Prague (Maps 4 and 5).¹¹³