In central Europe, three polities emerged, replacing earlier political organizations: the duchy of Bohemia, the kingdom of Hungary, and the kingdom of Poland. Politically, the three show important differences, though at least initially they faced similar challenges: the consolidation of power externally and internally. The three emerging polities at times became allies, often through marriage, and at other times fought against each other; exiled rival members of a ruling family from one country often found support in another to return and make their claim good by military force. Although rulers could enhance their power through Christianization, Latin Christianity did not necessarily determine political allegiances: rulers continued to form military alliances with pagans, and political ties to Byzantium served the interests of the Hungarian dynasty. At least during the early period of their development, all three countries were to some extent subordinated to and paid annual tribute to the German emperor, who at times waged war against them over territories, or to help a rival contender representing imperial interests to the throne, or to enforce subordinate status. Bohemia became part of the German Empire, although its rulers enjoyed full autonomy within their duchy and obtained the royal title in 1198. In contrast, Polish and Hungarian rulers, although often paying tribute or being subordinate to imperial interests, conserved their separate status. Political structures developed gradually over the course of the period. Borrowings from the West were manifest at the rulers’ courts; courtly offices were generally modelled on Frankish ones and bore their Latin names. The comes palatinus, the highest official, supervised the court. Others fulfilled a number of functions at court (for example, in the treasury and chancery) or in the country as representatives of the ruler, administering estates, dispensing justice, collecting revenues, and serving as military leaders. However, there were local differences: for example, the Hungarian conquest entailed the incorporation of local
Slavic populations during the tenth century, which resulted in linguistic and institutional borrowing. The administrative system grew more complex over time. One example of this was the establishment of a separate chancery at the royal court, with a concurrent rise in the number of charters issued.
There was nothing predetermined about the shape of the three central European countries. The kingdom of Hungary emerged following the conquest of the area from the 890s onwards by the Hungarian (Magyar) tribal association and a period of raids in German, French, Italian, and Byzantine territories. Large territories changed hands even repeatedly—for example, Silesia belonged at times to Bohemia and at other times to Poland, and attempts continued well beyond the period radically to extend the area of sovereignty of the various rulers. The most important territorial acquisitions included the Bohemian conquest of Moravia by around 1021; subordinate rulers from the Premyslid family were installed. Hungarian rulers attached the territory between the Rivers Drave and Save to their kingdom in the eleventh century; Croatia became part of Hungary in the late eleventh and early twelfth century, as did Dalmatian coastal towns for a period, which then led to conflict with Venice. In the mid-twelfth century competition erupted between Hungary and Byzantium for the possession of Bosnia and Serbia. Polish rulers tried to expand their territories towards the north and were involved in recurring hostilities with Rus' and the German Empire. Poland and Hungary both tried to gain suzerainty over Galicia in the late twelfth century. In the second half of the thirteenth century, the Teutonic Order and the German margraves of Brandenburg, the Lithuanians, and Bohemian rulers all threatened various territories under Polish rule. In the 1240s the Mongol attack devastated all three central European countries. The Mongols killed many people, took captives, and destroyed crops and cities. The Mongol raids against Poland and to a lesser extent Hungary continued in the second half of the thirteenth century, but did not result in their permanent subjugation, as it did in Rus'.
The three polities developed different solutions to the problem of succession within the ruling dynasty. Rivalry for the succession in Hungary often led to instability and civil wars, and to the establishment of a duchy within the kingdom under a prince of the dynasty in the second half of the eleventh century. Yet the Hungarian kingdom did not disintegrate. In Poland, Duke Mieszko left power divided between his sons, but Boleslaw I (992-1025) managed to become sole ruler. Though Boleslaw II assumed the royal title in 1076, his successors were not crowned; and Boleslaw III in his testament divided the realm into principalities for his sons. Poland was often divided between heirs before that, but this time the division proved to be lasting: upon Boleslaw’s death in 1138, Poland disintegrated into dukedoms. The law of seniority (first established in 1058) gave the oldest prince suzerainty, while younger members of the dynasty inherited independent provinces; these were to be hereditary in the various branches of the dynasty. In 1138 the ruler of Krakow was made the senior prince, but he rapidly lost any meaningful overall authority. Although the specific details of the arrangement were modified over time, a number of dukes, rather than a king, continued to rule over a growing number of independent duchies in the thirteenth century. Poland was reunified only in the fourteenth century. In Bohemia, the most senior member of the dynasty had the right to ascend the throne; but this could always be contested. Amidst constant challenges, no man without effective allies and military power, however legitimate his claim, could seize and hold power. Attempts to secure succession to the eldest son of the ruler recurred, and were finally realized in the thirteenth century. Premysl Otakar I (1198-1230) succeeded in turning Bohemia into a hereditary kingdom, although ties to the empire were not severed; indeed, the Bohemian ruler became one of the seven electors of the emperor. Otakar II (1253-78), who was also duke of Austria, created unparalleled strong rulership in Bohemia, but failed in his bid to become German emperor, and lost his life in battle. In 1300, Vaclav II of Bohemia was also elected king of Poland; the two polities briefly came under the same ruler.
Two contrary trends—the consolidation of the ruler’s power and forces of fragmentation—clashed in all three countries. Kings and dukes never had absolute power, but relied on a council of nobles and ecclesiastics; yet their powers became more centralized, and came to include the conduct of foreign diplomacy, decisions about warfare, and extensive or even monopolistic powers of jurisdiction. The basis of the rulers’ power was their landed domain as well as services, payments for justice, tolls, taxes, and military service and construction work owed by the population. Dukes of Bohemia and kings of Hungary had a monopoly on the construction and custody of fortresses into the thirteenth century. Royal monopoly also extended to mining, minting coins, and the settling of immigrants, whose utility included technical expertise in agriculture or warfare and an increase in revenues. Rulers also tried to reinforce their power through Christianity; thus Bohemian dukes appropriated Saint Vaclav, saint and duke, as their patron, portraying him on their seals and coins.53 However, nobles gradually gained previously royal rights in the thirteenth century. The high nobility increasingly took over political and judicial power, which undermined royal control. The nobility became the new challenge to royal power at the end of the period.
Over these centuries, society became more hierarchically structured. Initially it consisted of free warriors and workers of various degrees of unfreedom. The representative of the ruler such as the Hungarian ispan*, Bohemian castellan, or the lord of the castle town in Poland held military, administrative, judicial, and fiscal powers in his district. They were appointed by the ruler and did not acquire independent power. The unfree provided agricultural labour and other services, and in all three central European countries there were villages that communally owed a certain type of service, reflected in the name of the village, a system that disappeared during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In Poland, for example, historians have counted artisans and servants of up to forty different crafts, such as cobblers, bakers, cooks, and beaver-hunters, attested by placenames such as Kuchary (‘cooks’) or Bartodzieje (‘honey-collectors’), which survived after the system itself disappeared. While the various conditions of unfreedom increasingly coalesced into serfdom, the freemen slowly became stratified and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a separate nobility started to emerge. At the same time, knighthood and chivalry appeared in central Europe, though they did not gain prominence during the period. Also beginning in the twelfth century, peasants were becoming directly dependent on lords. Although ecclesiastics and high-ranking members of the rulers’ entourage were frequently immigrants from western Europe already in the first century of Christianization, mass immigration increased only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Immigrant communities of
Germans, Jews, and Romance-speakers lived in Bohemia and Poland; so did, in addition to such groups, Turkic nomads and Muslims in Hungary. These groups played a variety of roles. Peasant settlers were important in agricultural expansion. Turkic groups and Muslims, as members of the light cavalry in Hungary, and Western immigrants, as members of the heavy cavalry, had a significant military role. Westerners were involved in trade, mining, and urbanization—for instance, German merchants and miners and Walloon weavers were important in thirteenth-century Poland.
An agrarian subsistence economy was transformed by the end of the period through ‘internal’ colonization (the expansion of agricultural cultivation), the increased importance of trade, urbanization, and monetarization. The clearing of forests and draining of marshes started in the twelfth century, increasing the area of cultivated land, while new agricultural tools and methods were also introduced. Although the process was driven by the initiative of rulers and the nobility, Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and foreign settlers played a key role in it. The latter received privileges in order to bring new areas under cultivation. The influx of German settlers increased in the thirteenth century; rural and urban settlement under ius theu-tonicum or ‘German law’ (often even for natives) guaranteed personal freedom, juridical immunities, and fixed rent. Urbanization also took off in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The new legal status of cities emerged as immigrant immunities based on Western law developed into municipal law. German law, especially Magdeburg law, was the most significant model of the new urban law in Bohemia and Poland, while in Hungary a law developed for ‘Latins’ (French, Flemish, and Italian settlers) was also used. The minting of coins appeared at the same time as Christian rulership, but a monetarized economy became widespread only during the thirteenth century, although it has been argued that the Bohemian economy was already based on money in the eleventh century.7
Although eastern Europe and the Balkans were not part of Latin Christendom, it is important to signal that many of the major trends in these regions were similar to those found in central and northern Europe. The Christianization of Kievan Rus’ was roughly contemporaneous with that of central Europe (in 988), and was
Similarly initiatiated by a ruler, Vladimir, who accepted Byzantine Christianity. Taking advantage of Byzantine weakness, new polities emerged in the Balkans at the end of the twelfth and during the thirteenth centuries. These copied many of the Byzantine administrative structures, and the population adhered to Byzantine Christianity. Serbia was mostly under Byzantine control until Stephen Nemanja established an independent polity around 1170. His son, Stephen Nemanja II, adopted the royal title in 1217. Bulgaria, annexed in the early eleventh century by the Byzantine emperor, gained independence through a rebellion led by Peter and Asen in 1185 (the so-called second Bulgarian empire), and subsequently incorporated a large part of the Balkans. Patterns of religious and administrative adaptation coupled with political independence from the major power, Byzantium, were similar to the relations of central European polities to the German Empire.
World History
