Map 4. Lands of Hroznata of Peruc, Měsko of Peruc, and Hroznata (of Teplá).
A secondary but significant effect of the consolidation of land by magnates is reflected in the striking increase in place-name designations among magnates in thirteenth-century documents, where they serve as the primary means of identification for witnesses to important transactions.116 At the turn of the century, the primary purpose of such designations in charters, witness lists, and chronicles—as for patronymics—was simply the identification of individuals who might otherwise have been confused.117 This is borne out by the fact that one fairly early place designation is used for a man—among several—named Hroznata, that is, Hroznata of Peruc, who was also known as “the curly-haired,” while another Hroznata was sometimes called “the bald.”118 Designations are also given, however, for men who must have been widely known: Hroznata, for instance, was Frederick’s chamberlain, and is so listed in the same charter which identifies him as “of Peruc.”119 The earliest designation by place is for Marquard “of Doubrava” circa 1146–48;120 he and his sons appear so frequently in charters without this place-name, it is hard to imagine it was required for identification. None of the place designations were castles or towns; they seem rather to have been ordinary villages. In 1197 Ratibor is listed as “of Čečkovice,” as he and his son Jaroš were in 1177,121 in spite of the fact that, in the intervening two decades, he had been castellan of Netolice, Vyšehrad, and Kladsko as well as court judge.122 In the case of Hroznata of Peruc, we know for certain that Peruc was an ordinary village, located, as we have seen, relatively distant from his other possessions.123 These men must have perceived themselves in relation to that place and expected their contemporaries to do so as well; yet whether a designation derived from a man’s birthplace, main property holding, or conception of an ancestral seat cannot be determined. Mapping the actual locations of the village designations in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century lists yields a significant pattern, however.124 Most fall in those areas that had been heavily forested and would later undergo intense colonization activity, especially west of Plzeň. With a few exceptions, none are in the core area of old settlement, nor do they cluster around important castles.125
Map 5. Milhost’s foundation of Mašt’ov, 1196.
These changes, developing at the turn of the thirteenth century, prove especially revealing by contrast with the earlier era. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries it was not uncommon for freemen, especially wealthy ones, to own lands scattered throughout Bohemia or Moravia. (It seems to have been rare, however, for a freeman based in Bohemia to own lands in Moravia, and vice versa.) For even the most prominent magnates, this dispersion of lands meant that neither individuals nor families had a local base of power, isolated from the events and influences which shaped society in the Czech Lands as a whole. The freemen’s identification as a community remained centered around the duke and his capital at Prague, and their increasing local influence as wealthy landowners translated into greater leverage at that level only slowly. The occasional use of place-name designations, and their routine employment in witness lists during the thirteenth century, reinforces the impression that the consolidation and colonization of land was the means by which certain individual magnates, and others who followed their example, made themselves rich and prominent—and thereby less dependent upon the duke. At the end of the twelfth century, neither laymen nor ecclesiastics were banking their fortunes on the duke’s favor alone, but working instead to exploit their own properties more actively and to amass sufficient resources to continue to do so.
Warriors and Servitude
Hroznata’s foundation charter for Teplá from 1197—virtually the last charter issued in Bohemia during the twelfth century—refers strikingly to “warriors, who hold my estates from me.”126 Here, then, is a hint that prevailing conditions of military service were beginning to change, whether by limiting participation to specialists or by connecting military activity to landholding. Certainly, at the end of the twelfth century, lesser freemen still were capable and expected to participate in military activities. The German merchants of Prague, we recall, were obligated to fight pro patria and to contribute “shields” to the city’s defenses when the duke was away. In his chronicle, Gerlach could still describe armies made up of both warriors and “rustics” (“milites et rusticos”) in the last quarter of the twelfth century—even as such a description simultaneously points to a new meaning for the term miles.127 Soběslav II’s insistence upon having pauperes in his army at all times was noteworthy perhaps because it ran against the trend.128 Vincent, who gives a vivid description of peasants turning in their ploughs for swords in eagerness to join the imperial campaign to Milan in 1158, provides a clue to the beginnings of more restricted military participation: “For the selection of an army against Milan, a court at Prague was announced to the Czechs, at which suitable warriors were chosen.”129 Not everyone who volunteered was allowed to take part. One can imagine Vladislav II surveying the assembled men and immediately selecting all those better-trained and better-armed and ordering many part-time warriors home. However far it may have progressed at the turn of the century, the increasing limitation of military tasks to specialists surely contributed to widening the gulf between ordinary free farmers and wealthy magnates, especially in conjunction with consolidation and colonization.
This begs the further issue of whether the emergence of specialized warriors’ activities might have begun to alter the relationship between military service and landholding. Hroznata’s charter points to a new group forming in the growing gap between smallholders and landed magnates, for it speaks of men “who hold my lands from me.”130 Differentiated in the document from Hroznata’s unfree familia, they held whole villages but were not the owners of the land, as the redundant “my lands from me” emphasizes. Certainly, when Hroznata donated all his property to Teplá these lands were included. Because such warriors, like Hroznata himself, would have been obligated to muster at the duke’s call, it is difficult to imagine a military rationale for Hroznata’s maintaining his own knights. One possible explanation for this apparent infeudation is that, in the general land-grabbing atmosphere, Hroznata felt the need to secure his relatively broad territory with warriors who would defend it as their own. Elsewhere, usurpers seized lands belonging to the German monastery of Waldsassen, who turned to the duke to have them returned.131 Hroznata perhaps took measures to assure that such problems did not arise, infeoffing (or something like it) men who would assist his colonization efforts—effectively promoting, even farming out, the hard work of landclearing and settlement. For this reason then, even after ownership was transferred to the new monastery, the warriors living on Hroznata’s lands in the forest, that is, the newest lands, were entitled to keep them without the payment of any fee.132
The infeudation of poorer warriors necessarily lagged behind the consolidation and colonization of lands that made it feasible. Of all the men listed in the witness