Hastening Toward Prague. Lisa Wolverton
and for the ceremonial reception of dukes returning from abroad. On the three occasions when papal legates traveled to Bohemia (in 1073, 1143, and 1197), synods were called at Prague.11 When Vladislav II came back from the Milan campaign of 1158, similarly, Vincent reports: “The king, who was received in the holy city of Prague by the clergy, princes, nobles, and people, returned happily with his men to his land.”12 Notices of a duke’s arrival in Prague are usually laconic, but a few give some indication of celebration, for instance, when, Soběslav returned “to his sweet metropolis” after the great victory at Chlumec in February 1126.13
Without any doubt, Prague was understood to constitute the locus of authority. Succession contests and revolts invariably had Prague as their goal, though battles were as often fought en route as at the castle walls or in their immediate vicinity.14 As Gerlach says of Frederick: once he secured Barbarossa’s backing to unseat Soběslav II in 1179, he “headed for Prague by the direct route.”15 Dukes facing rebellion moved swiftly to secure Prague: in 1068, Vratislav rushed there though his deposition was in no way in question; en route to the imperial court in 1109, Vladislav I turned back at Plzeň at word of Bořivoj’s impending move toward Prague; Vladislav II left it in his brother’s secure hands before repairing to the emperor for help in 1142; during the 1180s, Frederick’s wife Elizabeth on two occasions acted to prevent its capture.16 Meanwhile, pretenders who saw in a sickly duke their chance to succeed lurked in the forests around Prague.17 Not merely dukes and pretenders ran to Prague in times of impending political turmoil. In 1109, after Otto’s election in camp, he, the rest of the freemen in the army, and all those who had not been on campaign, instinctively converged on Prague within days of Svatopluk’s death. Later that same year, when Bořivoj threatened to invade soon after Vladislav I was enthroned, many men, Cosmas says, “rejoicing in the novelty of things, awaited the ambiguous turn of fate while burning and plundering villages here and there; but others of higher mind and purer loyalty ran to the princely seat in the city of Prague.”18
Curiae and colloquia, both routine and exceptional, were frequently held at Prague whether convened upon the ruler’s summons or at traditional set times, such as St. Václav’s day. Probably sometimes these were little more than festive displays of ducal munificence and dominance.19 There is no doubt, however, that matters of vital interest to all freemen were announced, debated, and decided at such gatherings of freemen.20 For instance, the Canon of Vyšehrad noted that all the clergy and the people were already gathered at Prague for the feast of St. Václav, when Soběslav brought before them the matter of episcopal succession.21 Likewise, the freemen were convened when Vladislav returned as king from Regensburg to announce his plans for Milan, and there made plain their opposition; so, too, a decade later concerning intervention in a Hungarian succession crisis.22 While the throne and Prague always lay at the center of succession ritual and conflict, neither was requisite for formal gatherings of the Czechs over which the duke presided. Both charters and chroniclers also show that assemblies were held elsewhere as when Vratislav called the Czechs to Dobenina on the Polish border in 1068, when Soběslav I summoned the magnates to Vyšehrad for the trial of plotters in 1130, or when Conrad Otto convened a colloquium at Sazská in 1189.23 And, in fact, nothing prevented freemen from meeting in the duke’s absence altogether, even assembling as an army—itself not so different from a colloquium.
Nevertheless, in Cosmas’s day, if not long before, Prague had already become the heart of a community. No wonder then that legends linked Prague’s foundation with the first Czech duke. Thus, in Cosmas’s telling, the appointment of a ruler preceded the establishment of Prague as his capital, though not by much.24 The name, location, and status of Prague—“totius Boemie domna”—arose from Libuše’s prophecy, just as Přemysl himself had been chosen. (The Václav legend by Kristián tells a similar story, although there Prague is established before Přemysl is chosen.25) In the Chronica Boemorum version, the pagan seer even predicts its special status as the burial place of two Christian saints, Václav and Adalbert.
Among the first beginnings of the laws, one day the aforesaid lady [Libuše], excited by prophecy, in the presence of her husband Přemysl and other elders of the people, thus foretold: ‘I see a city, whose fame touches the stars, situated in a forest, thirty stades distant from the village where the Vltava ends in streams. From the north the stream Brusnice in a deep valley strongly fortifies the city; from the south a broad, very rocky mountain, called Petřín from ‘petris’ [stones], dominates the place. The mountain in that spot is curved like a dolphin, a sea pig, stretching to the aforesaid stream. When you come to that place, you will find man putting up the doorway of a house in the middle of the forest. And since even a great lord must duck under a humble threshold, from that consequence the city you will build, you shall call “Praha” [from “prah,” “threshold”]. In this city, one day in the future two golden olive-trees will grow up; they will reach the seventh heaven with their tops and glitter throughout the whole world with signs and miracles. All the tribes of the Bohemian land, and other nations too, will worship and adore them, against their enemies and with gifts. One of these will be called Greater Glory, the other Consolation of the Army. More was to be said, if the pestilential and prophetic spirit had not fled from the image of God. Immediately going to the ancient forest and having found the given sign in the said place, they built the city of Prague, mistress of all Bohemia.26
Almost from time immemorial, as Cosmas envisaged it, Prague was the undisputed center of all aspects of Czech life. In political matters, in moments of crisis especially, Prague was principally the location of the ducal throne. In his description of the revolt of 1142, Vincent remarks that Duke Vladislav II deployed troops: “in order to protect the castle and the princely throne, a certain stone one, which even now stands in the castle’s center; for its sake, not only now but from of old, many thousands of warriors have rushed to war.”27 This remark, among so many others, is a striking reminder too that, while undoubtedly the Přemyslids’ dynastic seat (and the bishops’ as well), ultimately Prague was, for all Czechs, their capital.
Violence
While the lives of the Czech freemen always revolved to some degree around Prague, they also remained engaged with their duke for other, more coercive reasons. The chroniclers describe vividly how a whisper from an enemy at court and an irate duke could lead to dire consequences. It was a lesson the slaughtered Vršovici men, women, and children—to take the most dramatic case—learned painfully late.28 Outside this instance the sources, typically, do not describewhat the victims’ families and dependents endured, but undoubtedly their lives were dramatically affected when freemen suffered death, mutilation, exile, imprisonment, or the confiscation of property at the hands of their ruler. The knowledge that the duke, especially an angry one, was inclined to perpetrate, or react with, violence must have generated considerable anxiety among Czech laymen in dealings, routine or extraordinary, with their lord. Here again we recall Libuše’s admonition and her vision of courtiers with trembling knees, mouths too dry to utter more than “yes, lord.”29 Little wonder then that, in 1091, the young men who had sided with his rebellious son opted for exile rather than trusting King Vratislav’s promise of peace: “We fear his friendships more than his enmities,” Cosmas has them declare.30 In the later twelfth century, under Soběslav II, when the summary execution of magnates was less easily practiced, men who deserted the Czech army in Italy still knew better than to present themselves at court.31 While we should not take too literally the picture of freemen trembling in the duke’s presence, nor assume that they lived in absolute fear and dread of him, there is ample reason to believe that they could not thwart his will lightly. Both ducal violence and its threat profoundly constrained the actions of the Czech freemen.32
In many cases, it was surely intended to do so. While dukes were sometimes motivated by fury or revenge and often by specific political agendas, they also aimed broadly to intimidate. For instance:
At Duke Vladislav’s order, all the supporters of Bořivoj were some deprived of sight and some of property, others despoiled of their real goods and the rest—those who were able to escape under cover of darkness—fled to Soběslav, the son of the king [Vratislav], in Poland.