Hastening Toward Prague by Wolverton Lisa;

Author:Wolverton, Lisa;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Coupled with the earlier confirmation of all the lands held by the see of Olomouc,172 this charter reflects the vice-dukes’ active, perhaps abusive, exercise of their authority and the resulting clashes with the only other powerful lord in their lands, the bishop of Olomouc. The duke of Bohemia, as overlord of the vice-dukes and protector of the bishop, could mediate these disputes and declare the freedom of the church. To do so was to succor the church, certainly, but it also worked, and must have been intended, to weaken the vice-dukes (surely it is no accident that such immunities were still vehemently denied the bishop of Prague seventy years after being generously granted the bishop of Olomouc).

In the end, the chronicles are remarkably silent about the fate of the rebels of 1142. Probably most lost their castellanies and court offices to Vladislav’s “younger” supporters. (Vincent says that those warriors who participated in Vladislav’s punitive devastation of Moravia in 1143 were “enriched with many benefices.”173) Some perhaps remained in Moravia, serving the vice-dukes in a partial exile. Clearly, however, a certain equilibrium was achieved after 1142, and it was not entirely the work of the duke. In 1147, Vladislav II, together with his brother Henry, went to Jerusalem on crusade, leaving Theobald in charge of affairs in his absence—something no duke of the previous generation would have dared.174 Not only did the freemen who stayed home not revolt but when Soběslav entered Bohemia to seize the throne, hardly any rallied around him; Theobald was able to capture his cousin and hold him until the return of his brother, who imprisoned him.175 Meanwhile, even Moravia was quiet; after the turbulent 1140s, the vice-dukes presumably ruled well and in harmony with the duke. The deaths of Conrad of Znojmo, Vratislav of Brno, and Otto III of Olomouc are not recorded. Partly from a reduction in the number of contenders and partly out of recognition of the strengthened position of the vice-dukes, the new dynastic politics meant a reorientation of magnate dissatisfaction toward strategies centered on Moravia. Thus, although trouble with the freemen and with nonruling Přemyslids would erupt again at Vladislav’s abdication, the road was paved for an increasingly separate and independent Moravia. For the freemen, all the dynastic reorientation seems less to have caused dissatisfaction than to have changed the manner in which they acted upon it. The freemen, moreover, not only altered their strategies to adjust to the consequences of ducal policies toward fellow Přemyslids or towards Moravia, but had an active hand in their formation.

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