Oath-Taking in Hungary, Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe
in the Middle Ages

Central and Eastern
Europe in the Middle Ages
A Cultural History
Edited by Piotr Górecki and

Nancy van Deusen
TAURIS ACADEMIC STUDIES

an imprint of
I.B.Tauris Publishers
LONDON • NEW YORK
Published in 2009
by Tauris Academic Studies,
an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States of America and Canada distributed by

Palgrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2009 Piotr S. Górecki and Nancy van Deusen
The right of Piotr S. Górecki and Nancy van Deusen to be identified as

editors of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any
part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
International Library of Historical Studies 51
ISBN: 978 1 84511 851 8
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press

from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author
Essays in Honour of Paul W. Knoll
Contents
Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 A road well travelled: Culture, politics and learning in the

work of Paul W. Knoll, 1966–2006 1
P. G Ó R E C KI
2 The city and the trade route in the early Middle Ages 20
H . S A M S ONOWI C Z
3 The archaeology of early medieval service settlements in

Eastern Europe 30
F. CURTA
4 Oath-taking in Hungary: A window on medieval social

interaction 42
N . B E R E ND
5 Conrad II’s theatrum rituale: Wipo on the earliest deeds

of the Salian ruler (Gesta Chuonradi imperatoris cap. 5) 50
J . B A N A S Z KI E WI C Z
6 The Dominican Order and the beginnings of higher

education in the Polish Lands 64
J . K Ł O C Z OWS KI
7 Matrimonium sub fide Judaica contractum: Were mixed

Christian–Jewish marriages possible in late medieval Poland? 82
T. J U R E K
viii Contents
8 Notes on the provision of water for the city of Dubrovnik
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 94
B . K RE KI Ć
9 Venice and Wrocław in the later Middle Ages 100

G . M Y Ś L I WS KI
10 Strekfusz: A fish dish links Jagiellonian Kraków to

distant waters 116
R . C . H OF F M ANN
11 Papal collectors and state power in Central Europe during

the fourteenth century 125
S . S Z C Z UR
12 University masters at the royal court of Hedwig of Anjou

and Władysław Jagiełło 147
K . O Ż ÓG
13 Between conciliar thought and mystical theology:

The development of ideas for church reform by
James of Paradyż (1380/1–1464/5) 161
T. WÜNS C H
14 ‘Good king Polish Ladislas . . .’: History and memory

of the short reign of Władysław Warneńczyk in Hungary 176
J . M . BAK
15 University studies and trivialised pursuits: The place of

music in medieval university education 184
N . VA N DE US E N
16 Toward a new cultural history of East Central Europe? 192

P. G Ó R E C KI and N. VA N DE US EN
Notes 213
Index 288
Contributors
János M. BAK is Professor Emeritus of the Department Medieval Studies,

Central European University, Budapest (Hungary) and of History,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada).
Jacek BANASZKIEWICZ is Professor of History, University of Warsaw
and Marie Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin (Poland).
Nora BEREND is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, University of
Cambridge and Fellow of St Catharine’s College (UK).
Florin CURTA is Associate Professor of History, University of Florida
(USA).
Piotr GÓRECKI is Professor of History, University of California, Riverside
(USA).
Richard C. HOFFMANN is Professor of History, York University
(Canada).
Tomasz JUREK is Professor of History, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Poznań (Poland).
Jerzy KŁOCZOWSKI is Professor of History, Catholic University of
Lublin and Director and Professor, Institute of East-Central Europe,
Lublin (Poland).
Bariša KREKIĆ is Professor of History, Emeritus, University of California,
Los Angeles (USA).
Grzegorz MYŚLIWSKI is Assistant Professor (adjunkt) of History,
University of Warsaw (Poland).
Krzysztof OŻÓG is Professor of History, Jagiellonian University, Kraków
(Poland).
x Contributors
Henryk SAMSONOWICZ is Professor of History, University of Warsaw
(Poland).
Stanisław SZCZUR was formerly Professor of History, Jagiellonian
University, Kraków (Poland).
Nancy VAN DEUSEN is Professor of Musicology and Louis and Mildred
Benezet Chair in the Humanities, Claremont Graduate University
(USA).
Thomas WÜNSCH is Professor of Eastern European History, University of
Passau (Germany).
Acknowledgments
For the two editors, work on this book has been a marvellous professional
experience and a privilege. For this, we are immensely grateful to the edi-
tors at I.B.Tauris, Lester Crook, Elizabeth Munns and her successor Rasna
Dhillon; to Patrick Geary and Richard Unger, who read the entire text and
commented upon it extensively; to Peter Barnes, who professionally copy-
edited and proofread the text and to Richard Willis of Swales & Willis who
managed the production of the book. Above all, perhaps, we owe thanks to the
authors of the individual articles: for their work, their cheerful collaboration,
and their patience. We also thank the Senate of the University of California,
Riverside, and The Kościuszko Foundation, Inc., An American Center for
Polish Culture, for generous subsidies in the production of this book.
Piotr Górecki
Nancy van Deusen
1 A road well travelled
Culture, politics and learning
in the work of Paul W. Knoll,
1966–2006
Piotr Górecki
The setting
Beginnings are, perhaps in the nature of things, difficult to anchor. This is
especially true in the case of a book such as this one, which performs two
closely interrelated roles: celebrating the work produced by a single scholar,
Paul W. Knoll, over (nearly) the past half-century; and engaging with our
understanding of that region of medieval Europe (and with it, inevitably, the
Continent in its entirety) which Paul Knoll has greatly affected through his
work. These two subjects, especially in conjunction, are all the more dif-
ficult because the decades spanning the outset of the work in the early- to
mid-1960s and today have been a period of transition – in the scholarly,
cultural and political world where Paul Knoll has been an actor – which can
only be described as seismic. Therefore, in addition to our concern with the
beginnings and the subsequent history of one distinguished academic oeuvre,
and of one specialised field within medieval history largely created by that
oeuvre, we need to locate both subjects in a dramatically shifting, even bigger
context.
One major area of transition has been the historiography. The place of
Poland, and more generally of what is today known as East Central Europe,
within our understanding of medieval and early modern Europe in its entirety,
is vastly different today than it was when Paul Knoll embarked upon his
scholarly career. Back then – with important but highly unusual exceptions,
to be addressed shortly – this macro-region barely existed in the historical lit-
erature conceived and written in English. This void continued into, and argu-
ably past, the 1970s – a fact reflected by the virtual invisibility of Bohemia or
Czechoslovakia in the otherwise splendid commemorative note about Paul’s
mentor at the University of Colorado, Samuel Harrison Thomson, published
in 1976 by Gray Boyce, Ruth Dean, Richard Hunt and Bryce Lyon.1
An even more dramatic transition, over these same decades, is the politi-
cal history of the region itself – a history for which the year 1989 is perhaps
2 Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages
the culminating watershed, and today the most important benchmark, but
which had been punctuated by a whole sequence of earlier, equally dramatic
watersheds: 1953, 1956, 1968, 1970, 1978, 1980 and 1981. In this sequence,
1968 was especially important, and there is, especially in retrospect, some
poignancy in the fact that an early article by Paul Knoll, based upon a lecture
delivered during the very first week of that year, discerned precisely this
transition during its early – though, as it soon turned out, entirely abortive
– phase, an article about current politics discussing early symptoms of the
long-term weakening of the Soviet bloc since the death of Joseph Stalin.2
A third transition during those decades affected the community of
medievalists and early modernists in North America. Paul’s entrance into
the profession coincided with, and was a part of, the early impact upon the
profession of the generation of historians on the western side of the Atlantic
who reached maturity two or three decades after the Second World War –
historians who, in turn, had been trained by an earlier generation, rooted
in the interwar period, and in some respects harking back to the great
founders of the medievalist enterprise in the United States, Henry Charles
Lea and especially Charles Homer Haskins. The substance behind these
generalisations, over the long decades preceding the 1960s, would require
a full treatment of American and Canadian medieval and early modern
historiography in its formative period – a subject entirely beyond the scope
of an introductory chapter – so let me limit my remarks about the schol-
arly world into which Paul Knoll entered over forty years ago to three
observations.
First, there is the matter of scale. In terms of sheer numbers of its active
participants, the scholarly universe of North American medievalists and
early modernists was much smaller in the first half of the twentieth century
than it is in the opening years of the twenty-first. Moreover, this universe was
housed, to a higher degree than has been the case since, in a relatively small
number of specific academic locations – New Haven, Princeton, Toronto,
among a few other places – which served as centres of scholarship and train-
ing for an expanding population of scholars, and, at least implicitly, as insti-
tutional models for other academic localities.
Perhaps for this reason, and because the resulting expansion is, from
today’s perspective, still relatively recent, North American medievalists
appear to be sharply aware of a sense of intellectual lineage – a fact reflected
by intermittent historiographical treatments of the profession and its specific
strands, in terms of descent from particular scholars, or in terms of personal
presence at particular universities.3 Although this kind of intellectual gene-
alogy has its limitations (above all, the risk of de-individualising particular
colleagues and their contributions)4 it is one point of departure for anchoring
the beginnings of individual scholarly pathways in a dynamic context. For
A road well travelled 3
example, it is surely significant that Paul Knoll’s mentor at Colorado, Samuel
Harrison Thomson, began his own intellectual formation many decades ear-
lier at Princeton, and that he later developed a deep interest in the intersection
of politics, learning and culture, as exemplified by late-medieval Prague, its
great university and the court of Charles IV.5
Second, a look back to the mid-twentieth century reveals, at that histo-
riographical moment, what I would, for lack of a better phrase, call a strong
degree of intellectual indeterminacy. That is to say, even though today, in
retrospect, it is possible for us to identify (though not necessarily to agree
upon) several distinctive conceptual and methodological elements of the
North American academic profile – and to contrast that profile, with, say, its
current French or German or British or Polish or Japanese counterparts – four
decades ago the emergence of that, or any other, constellation of elements
must have been utterly unforeseeable. Over a significant stretch of the twen-
tieth century, it was probably entirely unclear just what kind of ‘medieval-
ist world’ ‘we’, that is to say the historians who work here, would become.
The one possible exception is a strong, almost self-evident sense that, what-
ever else it entailed, medieval history occurred in, or very near to, historical
France and England. Apart from that shared, intuitive sense, the discipline
was then ‘open’ – exactly in the sense applied by its distinguished practitioner
Archibald Lewis to Europe’s medieval ‘frontier’ before its ‘closure’ in the
fourteenth century.6
Third, unforeseeable though it may have been, that distinctive conceptual
profile did indeed emerge. Aware here of the risk of grave oversimplification,
let me suggest three traits that seem distinctive to this particular population
of medievalists and early modernists. One is a strong interest in conceptu-
alisation: the meaning, and periodic reassessment, of those central concepts
and categories with which we understand the medieval past, sometimes
expressed in the form of active debate. One classic example is Elizabeth
E.R. Brown’s interrogation of the concept of feudalism, and its enormous
impact on other scholars ever since its appearance in 1974.7 Another is the
major debate about the ‘feudal revolution’, spanning the years 1994–7, in
which the conceptual disparities were perhaps most sharply posed by the
two American participants, Thomas N. Bisson and Stephen D. White.8 North
American medievalists have been crucial participants in the ongoing quest
for analytical categories related to the nature of power and its transformation
in the post-Carolingian period, especially as focused on ‘the year 1000’.9
There are so many other examples that it is fair to say that, on the western
side of the Atlantic, medieval history – perhaps history in general – is, in the
first order, a quest for adequate concepts. Erudition supports that quest, but,
in contrast to some other academic cultures, does not drive it, and is therefore
in that sense secondary.
A closely related trait is a shared recognition that concepts are malleable
and subject to negotiation, among historians today and during the actual
past to which they pertain; and that the relationship between concepts and
those past realities is always complicated, difficult to specify and above all
varied, throughout medieval Europe itself, and in its different historiogra-
phies. This general sense of open-ended variety relates quite closely to a
third distinctive trait of the North American world of medievalists today,
namely a strong, embracing openness to comparison and to interdiscipli-
narity. One example of this over the past few decades is a recurrent, stated
desire in our profession to move the geopolitical focus beyond France and
England.
Today, that desire is reflected in a whole legacy of superb studies of
Europe’s south, especially the Iberian Peninsula, and, increasingly, Italy;
and of Europe’s east (or, at least east in relation to France), meaning, above
all, Germany. That legacy stems from pioneering work, undertaken some
decades ago, by distinguished individual colleagues – above all, Robert I.
Burns in respect of Spain, and slightly later Patrick J. Geary, John B. Freed
and John W. Bernhard in that of Germany.10 It has been accelerated by the
responsiveness among North American academics to contemporary politi-
cal transition in Europe itself, so that the dramatic expansion of Iberian and
German studies, in the midst of which we now find ourselves, surely reflects
the impact of the rapid democratisation of Spain and Portugal after 1975, and
of Germany’s reunification nineteen years later.11
And yet – to return to my earlier point – when Paul Knoll was embarking
upon his work nearly half a century ago, the emergence of these, and other,
traits distinctive of our academic culture was utterly unforeseeable, let alone
inevitable. As of that time, he, as a protagonist, well exemplifies the openness
– the intellectual freedom – of the profession. At the same time, he exempli-
fies one specific field of specialisation within that profession, namely the
history of what was then called Eastern Europe. The small handful of Paul’s
older colleagues in this field who were then active in North America had
their origins in two very different places. Some – Oskar Halecki and Francis
Dvornik – were emigrés, who, soon after the Second World War, resettled
in the United States, where they continued (and completed) distinguished
careers begun much earlier in their home countries. Others had no genealogi-
cal connection to East Central Europe, and engaged with the region more or
less fortuitously, driven forward by their own individual intellectual develop-
ment, and (in my view, very pronouncedly indeed) by an intense, dare I say
passionate, emotional involvement with this region or some part of it – an
involvement which prefigures the emotional dynamic at work among North
American academics today, in its resonances with that other year of collec-
tive liberation, 1918.12
Paul Knoll’s work: the continuities
In the academic world surrounding him nearly half a century ago, Paul Knoll
promptly established his own, distinctive intellectual profile – a profile which,
despite several considerable transitions in his oeuvre, has in some respects
remained remarkably constant. Let me begin with those major continuities.
First, although right from its outset Paul’s work reflects a deep awareness of
the distinctness of Poland and East Central Europe in the medieval and early
modern world, his approach to that distinctness has always been robustly
unproblematic. Utterly absent from his prose is any assertion, implicit or
explicit, to the effect that his chosen area of study is important; or that it
has been unfairly excluded from the medievalists’ research and teaching
canon, and that his own work is therefore, in some moral and substantive
sense, remedial; or similar suggestions of a historiographical grievance or
complaint.
On the contrary: everything Paul Knoll has written, right from 1966 until
today, projects a quiet confidence that the story he is telling – a story about
one part of the medieval and early modern world – is, in an utterly transpar-
ent way, sufficiently interesting, instructive and framed by his own superb
knowledge of that world that such attributes need not be asserted, or ‘proven’
to the reader. Thus, we do not have here a historian on a mission; we have
a historian with an abiding research passion. Issues of peripherality, of the
importance (or otherwise) of the region, and so forth, do in fact arise in Paul’s
work, but they appear relatively late, quite seldom, and for specific reasons:
either when the sources produced in the actual historical past raise these sub-
jects,13 or when such issues are the principal subject for the type of publica-
tion in question, typically a collection of essays.14
Second, Paul has consistently focused principally on what might be called
the upswings, or the periods of robustness and consolidation, in medieval and
early modern Polish history. His work is clustered around two such periods:
the reunification of the kingdom under the last two Piasts, with special atten-
tion to Casimir the Great; and the earlier Jagiellon period, between the mar-
rige of Hedwig of Anjou with Jogaila (or, to the Poles, Władysław Jagiełło)
and the late fifteenth century. To be sure, Paul has moved chronologically
in time, either backward or forward – on rare occasion all the way up to
the seventeenth century, more often to various moments between the tenth
and the thirteenth centuries. However, his contributions on the later end of
this spectrum are rare and seem to have been elicited by the subject, or the
genre, of the publications in which they appear.15 The early material, while
much more ample, has, until relatively recently in his oeuvre, taken the form
of backward glances which work to contextualise the later, fuller and more
important story.16 Moreover, especially during the first half of Paul Knoll’s
professional activity, some of those references to the long thirteenth century
describe this as a period of decline, in pessimistic language.17 But let me
immediately add that, as early as 1972, again in 1976 and continuously there-
after, rhetorical formulations of this kind are tempered by descriptions of the
long thirteenth century as a time of creative, formative dynamism;18 and that
in Paul’s contributions, beginning with the later 1980s, the entire period of
Polish history culminating in the year 1300 has emerged as a fully distinct
subject, important on its own terms rather than as a backdrop to the reign of
the last two Piasts.19
Third, although in every piece of his writing his principal subject is crystal-
clear, it is difficult to compartmentalise his work in thematic terms. This is
because that work is consistently, and purposefully, multilayered and multi-
dimensional. That complexity is previewed, so to speak, right at the outset in
1966, when a straightforward political story of King Władysław the Short’s
efforts to reunify the Polish Kingdom works to frame – although, at this early
point, relatively briefly – several other themes or subjects: urban history,
regional dynastic issues, the presence of the Teutonic Order, the diplomatic
contacts between the king and the Avignon papacy.20 As is the case through-
out his entire subsequent work, we as readers can analytically separate those
and similar constituent subjects; but it is a marked characteristic of Paul’s
prose always to develop a series of interrelated subjects in conjunction with,
indeed in terms of, one another.
Moreover, over his output in its entirety, that range of interrelated subjects
has also remained, at least in its broad contours, strongly continuous. Paul
Knoll is, first of all, a student of politics and culture – with a strong emphasis
on the conjunction expressed by this phrase. Second, he specifies each of
these two subjects with considerable complexity. On one level, his approach
to politics is relatively straightforward: politics consists in an expansion of
power by a dynasty over people and territory. Among many other instances,
this is exemplified by his 1967 treatment of the stabilisation of Poland’s
western boundary under Casimir the Great,21 by his many references to the
far more turbulent circumstances on its northern and eastern frontiers,22 and
by his analysis, in a book published in 1972, of domestic institutions in the
reemerging Polish kingdom.23
However, in his hands politics is immensely enriched – indeed, it is defined
– by its close association with culture. Culture, in its turn, consists of pat-
terns of activity situated in several kinds of (figurative and literal) space:
the court, the school and the city. With great consistency, the core subject of
Paul Knoll’s oeuvre has been the interplay between the following subjects:
first, the king, considered as an active agent; second, the court – of the king,
the bishop or archbishop, and, at least implicitly, of others who mattered;
third, learning – that it to say, the settings where advanced knowledge was
disseminated, the ways in which that knowledge was used, and the most
tangible expression of that knowledge, namely books; and fourth, the urban
scene – in particular, that part of the civic space which bridged the court, the
cathedral and the city. All four subjects are focused specifically on Kraków;
they, and the interplay between them, constitute a major case study of the city.
Kraków is the place where the courts of the last two Piasts, Queen Hedwig,
the early Jagiellons and the bishop are – from the historian’s perspective
– most frequently or conveniently found. Above all, Kraków is the physical
location of learning, centred in its university, within and around which the
key intellectual and political resources of the reunited kingdom were most
effectively focused, experienced and used.
The choice of these particular locations for pinning down the intersec-
tion of politics and culture helps explain the importance of one recurrent,
very important, expository device in Paul Knoll’s work: the strongly etched
individual vignette, or, to put this differently, a well-crafted biogram. As he
presents it, the political world, centred on court, cathedral, city and culture,
consisted, at least in the first order, less of abstract or general categories of
people – officials, cathedral canons, masters and students – than of specific
persons, vividly portrayed, who, in addition to their individual traits and
accomplishments, serve, in Paul’s big story, as the avatars of that political
world. These protagonists played multiple political roles. They were learned,
and they used that learning. They originated in a variety of places – in terms
of status, geographical location, institutional affiliation and other criteria.
Thus, Paul’s work can, with great profit, be read as a collective biogra-
phy of people who mattered. The resulting population – the living stuff of
Paul Knoll’s world – is enormous; a small subset might include (in a roughly
chronological order of their lives) Bishop Gerward of Włocławek,24 Queen
Hedwig,25 Janko of Czarnków,26 Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki,27 Nicholas
Copernicus28 and, perhaps above all, the great chronicler John Długosz.29
To be sure, Paul does provide a context of collectivity, scale and sometimes
outright numbers – of scholars, for example, or of books30 – but the passion
seems to be the pursuit of the learned, active individual. Yet, those protago-
nists are always contextualised, in terms of the settings in which they acted
and the impact of their activities. It is these broader contextualisations that
lead us to a more abstract and generalised understanding of the groups and
populations comprising this world of politics and culture.
A quite different feature of Paul Knoll’s work has been its ‘public’ aspect.
Continuously, and throughout his career, he has been quite simply the expert
of first contact in the anglophone world in all areas of the assessment, selec-
tion and, very importantly, publicity of ongoing work concerning medieval
and early modern Poland and East Central Europe: a one-person, encyclo-
pedic repository of superb knowledge, good judgment and constructively
expressed rigour. He has also been, in North America, a senior colleague and
mentor, a kind of advisor-at-large for those of us who began our study of this
region in that free and open intellectual space which he has done so much to
create. He has played a parallel role in Europe. He is at the centre of a large
international network of contacts; has exercised a significant impact on the
field of medieval and early modern history as it is pursued in Poland and in
Germany; and has helped both to identify and reinforce excellent work pro-
duced there by (at this point) several generations of scholars – and to bring
that work to bear on scholarship conceived and executed in English. All these
roles are amply reflected by the chapters of this book.
This trans-Atlantic role also takes the form of several specialised strands of
written work, and venues for international contact. Paul has been an extraor-
dinarily prolific and versatile book reviewer. His reviews range in format
from the short reports for Choice, through conventionally-sized reviews, all
the way to review essays – published in a variety of journals. Paul’s reviews
encompass, but also purposefully extend beyond, his principal areas of inter-
est noted thus far. Here are just a few examples. One major review essay con-
cerns precisely his favourite subject – the conjunction of court, culture and
learning.31 Another is devoted specifically to the long thirteenth century and
the question of ‘feudalism’. In it – in addition to introducing to a non-Polish
audience the work published as of the 1970s by several major Polish medi-
evalists32 (and, through the footnotes, to the ample literature with which those
medievalists had engaged) – Paul moves on to a close and detailed treat-
ment of feudalism as a construct, especially in the Polish and East Central
European context – a subject contested then as now, and in this review framed
with reference to Elizabeth Brown’s article published four years earlier.33
Two substantial reviews focus on the battle of Grunwald (or Tannenberg) in
1410 – a major event marking one upswing of Polish history (and related to
one of those important actors in Paul’s story, John Długosz), but not other-
wise a recurrent subject in Paul’s writings.34
Shorter, conventionally-sized book reviews, well over a hundred of
them in total, conform to this pattern. This use of the book review as a tool
for surveying the full extent of learning, in and about medieval and early
Poland and East Central Europe – and, in the process, for offering substan-
tive, independent scholarly contributions to the literature and the concepts
reviewed – reflect a deliberate, sustained engagement with the scholarship
pertaining to Poland and the region at large. Paul Knoll’s role here is truly
ambassadorial: an active, ongoing mediation between two vastly differ-
ent academic cultures, quite parallel, and complementary, to the activities
pursued over substantially the same years by those three other great ‘ambas-
sadors’ of learning, František Graus, Aleksander Gieysztor and Jerzy
Kłoczowski.35
The same role is reflected in a different genre in 1982, with Paul Knoll’s
foreword to the English version of the book by Tadeusz Manteuffel on the
earliest period of Poland’s history, originally published in Polish in 1976,
and translated by Andrew Gorski.36 That foreword is, in the first order, yet
another biographic vignette of a scholar – this time Manteuffel himself –
extending chronologically back into the interwar, wartime and early post-
war period, and positioning its subject as a pivotal figure in the history of
that population of medievalists, in Poland, a part of whose work Paul had
reviewed a few years previously.37 Yet, fully in character, there is more to the
foreword. Manteuffel’s preoccupation with Poland’s earliest political system
elicits from Paul another excellent discussion of the meanings of feudalism,
in the different medieval historiographies, as of the year 1972;38 while Paul’s
preoccupation with Manteuffel elicits a moving personal reminiscence of
their meeting in Warsaw in 1966, as the first – one might say, the originating
– event in Paul’s scholarly career, interlaced, at this point of the narrative,
with a remembrance of Tadeusz Manteuffel’s own earlier relationship with
Samuel Harrison Thomson.39
Paul’s ambassadorial profile is further expressed by his long association
with two institutions: in New York, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences
in America – as a member of its board of directors, and as a prolific contribu-
tor to its prestigious journal, the Polish Review – thereby, incidentally, pro-
pelling the Review into preeminence as a forum for scholarship focused on
early East-Central European (as well as specifically Polish) history; and later
in Budapest, with the Central European University, especially its Department
of Medieval Studies, ever since the early plans for its activation in the early
1990s – quite simply in all aspects of the University’s and the Department’s
work.40 One crucial part of this association has been Paul’s active involve-
ment in the publication of the Central European Texts, the major editing and
translating series produced by CEU Press. He has translated, for publication
in that series, the autobiography of Charles IV of Bohemia, which appeared in
2001, and in collaboration with Frank Schaer and Wojciech Polak has trans-
lated, written the introduction for and partly revised the currently definitive
edition of Gallus the Anonymous’ (or the Polish Anonymous’) gesta of the
Piast dukes, published in 2003.41
Paul Knoll’s work: the transitions

Within this framework of continuous subjects, methods and roles, Paul
Knoll’s intellectual path has undergone several important transitions. One
concerns the exact historical period at the centre of his interest. Although, as
we have seen, at each stage of his career he has ranged across medieval and
early modern history in its entirety, his overall focus has shifted from the first
to the second big upswing of Polish medieval and early modern history: that
is to say, from the fourteenth century and the last two Piasts to the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries and the Jagiellon period, with more emphasis
on its beginnings – the start, as he put it in 1966 and later, of the ‘golden age’
in Poland-Lithuania.42 Coinciding with this shift in chronological focus is a
similar shift in subject matter. The works concerned with the earlier upswing
focus principally on politics and state-building. Their later counterparts move
principally into the world of thought.
This double shift occurred during the first decade of Paul’s work. The shift
is marked, or reflected, by two groups of articles and longer monographs
published in the course of that decade. Paul’s interest in the last two Piasts,
and (principally) political history, appears in his earliest three articles – one
about Władysław the Short, published in 1966, two others about Casimir the
Great, which appeared in 1967 and 1968 – and in his book of 1972, a major
synthesis of the reunification of the kingdom.43 The move to the Jagiellon
period, and (principally) the history of thought, first emerges in 1974, with an
article about the historical commonplace describing Poland as ‘the bulwark
of Christendom’ (antemurale christianitatis), focused upon King Władysław
Warneńczyk and the disastrous Varna crusade of 1444; and recurs in two
articles, both published in 1975, where the University of Kraków in the fif-
teenth century is presented as an intellectual context for the young Nicholas
Copernicus.44
This slightly later group of articles also differs from the former in terms
of one expository technique: retrospection. Even though Paul begins these
articles in the time of Władysław Warneńczyk, or Nicholas Copernicus, he
promptly moves back into a substantially earlier history of the phenomena
of which the two men serve as a culmination. Copernicus works to introduce
the real subject of both articles, namely the intellectual climate at the univer-
sity before and at the time when he enrolled as a student; while the dramatic
failure at Varna in 1444 is presented as a late and defining moment in the
much earlier history of an idea expressing a militant peripherality, stretching
all the way back to the eleventh century and the image of King Bolesław the
Brave striking the Golden Gate of Kiev.45 Exactly this kind of retrospection
– ranging far back into Poland’s history, but anchored, at least as a point of
departure, in a substantially later period – is developed most fully in 1976, in
the monographic treatment of ‘learning’46 – moving, at the end, toward and
somewhat beyond the end of the Piast period, but quite deliberately preview-
ing that subject across the three centuries that preceded the last two Piasts.
Among the output produced in that first decade, one article works as a
bridge – between the slightly earlier work, concerning principally politics,
and the later pieces emphasising ideas and learning; and, between that first
decade of Paul Knoll’s work in its entirety, and much of its aftermath, right into
the present. That article is the treatment, published in 1968, of King Casimir
the Great’s initial foundation of the University of Kraków between 1364 and
his death in 1370.47 As its point of departure, the article takes the administra-
tive, financial, military, economic and diplomatic activities of Władysław the
Short, and especially of Casimir the Great – subjects which, though from dif-
ferent perspectives, had been developed in 1966 and 1967.48 At the outset of
the article, Casimir’s plan to establish a university is understood as an aspect
of his consolidation of the kingdom. However, the focus promptly shifts onto
another context – the impact of learning on Poland in the years preceding the
foundation49 – and then, with this as background, moves on to the story of the
university’s establishment and its early existence between 1364 and 1370.50
That latter subject – learning and its significance for the university – emerges
as the core of the article, and focuses tightly on the local world consisting of
Kraków, the king’s court and the city’s ecclesiastical institutions.
We have, in these pages, exactly that juxtaposition between the very big
cultural and political issues and the very specific and localised sense of place
and time that marks Paul Knoll’s approach to the intersection of politics and
culture. That juxtaposition is here presented in terms of several discrete sub-
jects, each developed in some detail. One of these subjects is, quite simply,
Kraków. The problem of Casimir the Great’s initial placement of the univer-
sity – as initially planned, and as actually implemented – opens up, thanks to
Paul’s careful examination of the possibilities and the results, the subject of
urban geography. Thus, we are, so to speak, offered a quick tour of the Wawel
Hill (and so the castle and the cathedral), the king’s new town, Kazimierz,
and those other streets, houses or town quarters among which the early foun-
dation was interspersed; and, at some distance from the city, the royal salt
mine at Wieliczka, interesting both as a physical location and as a source of
revenues for the new school.51
Another subject of Paul’s article is the politics of initiating the university.
This is developed for the first time in this article, largely in terms of indi-
vidual vignettes of the key protagonists: the king himself, two bishops of
Kraków, and the emissaries sent by the king and by the bishops to Avignon
in order to elicit papal approval for the foundation.52 Then, there is learning
itself, entailing both the curriculum – the disciplines pursued at the university
– and the activity of several types of persons directly involved in that learn-
ing. The curriculum is sketched out with particular attention to books: the
learned manuscripts which were brought into, used and produced, at the new
school.53 The persons active in the learning include the scholars (presented
above all as the authors, or at least the transmitters, of those learned manu-
scripts), bishops and other ecclesiastics, and other actors, who either pursued
learning themselves, or set the institutional framework for its pursuit by oth-
ers.54 Here too the protagonists are to a large degree presented as individual
vignettes – vignettes in which, however, an important, perhaps defining, bio-
graphical event was interaction with books, and the consumption, enhance-
ment and use of the knowledge embodied in them.
Between that opening decade – the years 1966–76 – and the present, Paul
Knoll’s work has ranged along several lines. On occasion, he has shifted
his attention to subjects which are either altogether new, or framed in new
ways. Thus, the second article he published in 1976 concerns specifically the
Avignon papacy, and its role in the foundation of fourteenth-century univer-
sities – all of them, throughout Europe, with Europe’s regionalisation (espe-
cially between the ‘West’ and ‘East’, or ‘East-Centre’) secondary.55 Here we
have a study that is Europe-wide, centred at Avignon, and from that perspec-
tive providing a broad context for Prague, Kraków, Vienna and Pécs – to be
sure – but also for Bologna, Florence, Padua, Toulouse, Huesca and other
cities and universities.56 Some years later, in 1991, the essay about Prussian
humanism promptly turns into a thorough treatment of humanism, consid-
ered as a general subject – again, across Europe in its entirety, and across the
fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.57 Humanism, considered
as a similarly autonomous subject, is also pursued two years later, but now, as
in most of Paul’s work, it is strongly situated in a time, a place and a setting:
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Poland, at the University of Kraków.58
One article produced during the long period separating 1976 from the pres-
ent day returns, in its entirety, to the reign of Casimir the Great, and to two
aspects of Paul Knoll’s early political history: dynastic succession and ter-
ritorial claims. This is the 1986 study of the relationship between Casimir
and his Hungarian contemporary, Louis the Great.59 In addition, the focus
on these two protagonists is an example of Paul Knoll’s continuous use of a
well-crafted individual vignette, or portrait, as one of his principal expository
techniques. Especially interesting, fully-elaborated examples of that latter
approach are his treatments of the great chronicler John Długosz in 1982, and
of Queen Hedwig eleven years later.60 And here we come to another recur-
rent pattern in Paul’s work. As with Długosz and Hedwig, the vast majority
of the individuals populating the oeuvre Paul produced after 1976 lived and
acted during the fifteenth century, or at the earliest at the turn of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus, they entirely coincide with, and further
develop, that second, Jagiellon upswing of Polish history, especially in its
early phase.
Apart from Długosz, Hedwig, Copernicus and the other great figures,61
individual biographies of scholars, drawn with great attention to detail,
resurface throughout Paul Knoll’s writings right up to the present. This
biographical emphasis is seamlessly intertwined with an equally individu-
alised treatment of the subjects in which these individuals were learned; and
with the detailed treatment of the written documentation through which
they experienced, and expressed, that learning – again, above all books.
The resulting narrative comprises a collective bio-bibliography of advanced
knowledge in fifteenth-century Poland. For example, the two articles contex-
tualising the young Copernicus published in 1975 consist, each in substantial
part, of intellectual biograms of specific masters teaching and producing at
the fifteenth-century university62 – biograms interlaced with references to
external influence (Aristotelian thought, for example) and to the particular
disciplines and treatises, as available to – and further elaborated by – the core
population of scholars.63
Occasionally, we have a chronologically earlier contextualisation, con-
sisting of glances back at the thirteenth century – at one point, Vitelo makes
an appearance64 – but, the overwhelming focus is on Kraków and the fif-
teenth century. The overall result is a small galaxy of recurrent scholars
who, in conjunction with and in a presumed broader context, made up the
University of Kraków as a social group: Bartholomew of Jasło,65 Martin Król
of Żurawica,66 Martin Bylica,67 Nicholas Stobner,68 Sędziwój of Czechło,69
John Schelling of Głogów,70 Benedict Hesse,71 Wojciech of Brudzewo,72 Paul
Vladimiri,73 Stanisław of Skalbmierz,74 John Elgot,75 Nicholas Lasocki,76
Gregory of Sanok,77 John Ostroróg78 and James of Paradyż,79 among oth-
ers. This is coextensive with a full, clearly-drawn repertoire of academic
fields and specialisations specific to that group: the liberal arts, especially
rhetoric,80 theology,81 mathematics and astronomy,82 the natural sciences,83
Aristotelian philosophy and its alternatives,84 canon and Roman law,85 and
international law and political theory.86
Some other directions of Paul Knoll’s work since 1976 are varied, and
thus not easy to compartmentalise in terms of subject or form. Those direc-
tions continue, and further elaborate, a number of rather different, specific
subjects (and professional roles) noted above. The 1993 article on ethnic,
or ‘national’, self-awareness in late medieval and early modern Poland is
a contribution to the history of ideas, centred on identity and politics, and
in that sense resonates with Paul’s earliest piece concerning thought – the
1974 study of the idea of Poland as a ‘bulwark of Christendom’ – and with
his 1989 discussion of ideas about Poland’s unity and division in the con-
text of Polish-German interaction.87 The article about Kraków published in
1987 continues the strand of highly concrete, material, spatially-conceived
urban history which had earlier emerged in the context of Paul’s quest for the
material placement of the university within the city.88 The publication of two
major encyclopedia articles – in 1987 on medieval Poland, and in 1996 on
the Polish Reformation – and, in 2002, of a major introduction to Polish late
medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque art,89 continue Paul’s ‘public’ role,
that is to say, his active engagement in representing Poland’s history along
lines that include, yet also transcend, his own research agenda.90
However, as had also been the case at an earlier phase of his work, these
strands, despite their continuities, frame one overall thematic transition,
toward one new (though characteristically multifaceted and complex) major
subject. Not surprisingly, that subject is intimately related to – indeed, it
directly involves – everything that has been noted so far: Kraków; its uni-
versity; its royal and the episcopal courts; the king’s and the city’s interna-
tional contacts, especially with the papacy; royal state-building; and more.
However, this subject is located, literally and figuratively, not in Kraków
itself, but in the principal centres of papal and ecclesiastical power in four-
teenth- and fifteenth-century Europe: Avignon, Pavia, Constance and Basel.
The subject is the interaction between the world of politics and learning situ-
ated in Kraków – now, too, presented in all its complexity, always visible and
well-developed – and the political, diplomatic and intellectual activity taking
place at those faraway localities.
The result is a remarkable story of the presence and the impact of (as Paul
affectionately describes it) the ‘Cracovian’ political and intellectual world
in the highest echelons of the institutional Church, at two moments of the
Church’s own transition: the Avignon papacy, and the aftermath of the Great
Schism. In contrast to the 1968 article on King Casimir and the university,91
no one article, or monograph, published in or shortly after the late 1970s
works as a marker of transition to this big new subject. Moreover, quite
typically, the constituent elements of this subject had been present in Paul
Knoll’s oeuvre right from its beginnings.92 Nevertheless, the focus, first on
Avignon then, with increasing emphasis, on Pavia, Constance and Basel, is
especially visible in a sequence of three articles: the 1978 all-European sur-
vey of the Avignon papacy and university foundations; the 1984 article on
the University of Kraków and conciliar thought; and, published in 2004, the
culminating section in Paul’s article on literary production, especially of con-
ciliarist texts, also at the University of Kraków.93
Between them, these three articles trace a wide thematic arc, bridging Paul
Knoll’s principal concerns at different stages of his professional output. First,
they echo – reiterate, as it were – the much earlier transition from the late
Piast to the Jagiellon period. Second, they underscore the pragmatic, political
considerations which the Poles brought with them, out of the Kraków-based
world of power and learning, to Avignon, Pavia, Constance and Basel, on
behalf of their king, their Church and their university. Implicitly in 1978, and
explicitly six years later, Paul notes the continued importance of one such
pragmatic consideration, namely Poland’s conflict with the Teutonic Order.94
Thus the first part of his article on the University of Kraków and conciliar
thought, published in 1984, completes the story (begun right at the begin-
ning, in 1966) of Kraków’s response to that challenge – but now, in the later
phase, at the Council of Constance, and with the intellectual and political
resources represented by the university’s skill in canon law and theology
– once again exemplified by several finely-etched individual vignettes, espe-
cially of Paul Vladimiri.95
The second part of the same article presents the pragmatic use of learning
from a related but different angle. The subject is the imprint made by the
Polish participants in the Council of Constance, and especially in the Council
of Basel, on conciliar theory, and on its practical implementation during the
long decades between the end of the Great Schism and the ultimate failure of
conciliarism after the mid-fifteenth century.96 This subject too presupposes,
and incorporates, the existence of a vigorous, learned culture, again centred
at, and emanating from, the University of Kraków. It too is told, as a story, by
means of a sequence of portraits of especially interesting learned individuals
– above all, perhaps, James of Paradyż.97
Third, therefore, the second part of the 1984 article returns to the subject
of Kraków and its university, but now – in the mid-fifteenth century – as
a mature, intellectually and institutionally autonomous learned community,
engaged in intellectual and political communications and exchanges with
similar communities in Vienna, Erfurt, Leipzig, Cologne and Paris.98 Thus
we gain access, from yet another perspective, to a greater academic, political,
and cultural world – a world of which Kraków, in Paul Knoll’s hands, had
been an example ever since 1966. These thematic connections are reiterated
by the very thorough treatment of the Kraków conciliarists’ work, which
comprises the concluding section of the 2004 article on the literary output
produced at the university.99 This recurrent web of subjects points us to the
present and the future. Conciliarism – viewed from the perspective of the
thick, biographically and conceptually multilayered setting of Kraków – is
the subject of Paul Knoll’s currently ongoing work. In that sense, the contri-
butions of 1978, 1984 and 2004 quite possibly mark out for us another major,
discrete subject in the making – emerging, as other subjects have done earlier,
within and out of the broad spectrum of the author’s interests.
The setting, revisited

Paul Knoll’s oeuvre, in its entirety and in each of its principal subjects and
phases, nicely resonates with one of his own favourite expository techniques:
it is, in itself, highly individualised, that is to say very much a product of a
scholar who, while fully engaged with contemporary work, has developed
his own distinctive and intellectually versatile research trajectory. Yet, as
was the case with, say, John Długosz, Paul Vladimiri or James of Paradyż,
that trajectory is a part of (and affects) a world of scholarship – consisting,
ultimately, of hundreds of other colleagues worldwide, and their output. Let
me then turn back to one of the subjects with which this chapter began: the
historiography of which Paul’s work is a part, and which it has helped shape.
That historiography is really several historiographies. It is international – a
fact well reflected by Paul’s prolific engagement with it, through his ‘ambas-
sadorial’ activities.
In particular, it includes work produced in East Central Europe itself; and
work conceived, written and published in North America, to which I now
briefly return. In retrospect, it seems especially important that Paul Knoll’s
oeuvre began during the years characterised, in North America, by intellec-
tual indeterminacy – a time when, to paraphrase H.L.A. Hart, the history of
medieval Europe (and even more so of Europe’s distant ‘East’), as viewed
from North America, was a subject with an open texture.100 The creation of
that subject must have been a daring, perhaps intimidating, activity – a fact
well conjured up by Paul’s reminiscence of his initial encounter, in the sum-
mer of 1966, with Tadeusz Manteuffel, the doyen of a very different kind of
medieval historiography – one which, despite the great traumas of the early
twentieth century, was then well-entrenched, long-established and (to stay
with Hart’s metaphor) highly textured.101
Now, I do not mean here to create some kind of heroic myth of our own,
North American, professional past. Yet, at least in my view, it is quite clear
that Paul Knoll’s entrance into the profession, and into Tadeusz Manteuffel’s
office in Warsaw, occurred at a time of one – as it turned out, great – medi-
eval historiography in the making, the North American; and that, within that
incipient medieval historiography, he has pursued his project with a continued
sense of individuality and intellectual freedom. Of course, in these regards, he
was, and is, not alone. A different book of essays could be written about any
one of a number of those great North American medievalists whose careers,
like Paul’s, began around the mid-twentieth century; and, of course, such
books have been written.102 Such works, each intended to honour a specific
colleague, are sometimes viewed as primarily celebratory. But they do not,
principally, celebrate. They chronicle the texturing of our profession, much
as Paul Knoll himself does when he writes about fifteenth-century Kraków:
by a sustained reference to one, individual protagonist in this process.
And then, there is the long North American historiographical aftermath.
Among its other major watersheds, it has been marked by three moments of
strong discontinuity, during which North American historians moved toward
a collective discovery of an intriguing subject: ‘Eastern’, ‘East Central’ or,
as Jerzy Kłoczowski put it (relatively late during this process), the ‘younger’
Europe.103 The first such moment occurred in the 1970s, with a climax
in 1980–1. That decade entailed the first major upswing, in the English-
thinking world, of generalised attention to the extraordinary output of that
generation of medievalists which reached maturity in the decades after the
war – the same generation of which, as Paul had pointed out some years later,
Tadeusz Manteuffel was one of the doyens.104 Those were the years when the
works of – among many others – Witold Kula, Aleksander Gieysztor, Brygida
Kürbis, Karol Modzelewski, Dušan Třeštík, Jerzy Kłoczowski, Eric Fügedi,
Maria Bogucka, Bronisław Geremek, Pál Engel, Henryk Samsonowicz and
Stanisław Suchodolski began to draw the attention of historians beyond
the small group specialising in Eastern or East Central Europe.105 This
interest gained impetus from the dramatic events of 1980–1, thanks to which,
in North America, East Central Europe, Poland included, moved from a
presumptive obscurity into the realm of the presumptively good, positive
and interesting.
The great changes of 1989 reinforced that latter wave of interest – an inter-
est which can properly be called moral and empathetic as well as intellectual.
In addition, by the end of that decade, and then throughout the nineties, the
North American culture of academic medievalists fully acquired the specific,
distinctive profile which I briefly sketched out at the outset of this essay:
strong emphasis on conceptualisation, in preference to erudition; contesta-
tion of basic concepts, typically through debate; a quest for new paradigms;
and, in these contexts, a yearning for comparison or (which may or may not
be the same thing) for models of looking at the medieval past that would pre-
sumptively include, rather than exclude, regions, peoples, social groups and
religious groups throughout the continent – all of this in a spirit of a robust
optimism that it can all be done. Hence, interest in the places which Paul
Knoll has long studied has become, at the same time, somewhat pervasive
and somewhat diffuse. The results of this broadening of our conceptual hori-
zon are as difficult to predict today as the developments in our profession that
enabled that broadening had been forty years ago.
At present, regarding Europe’s ‘East’, we are not, I think, in the midst of
yet another dynamic rupture or sudden upswing, but of a pattern of sustained
activity. This activity has, as of now, produced a legacy, and a continuous
flow, of sustained production, in English, of good work concerning East
Central Europe conceived and executed entirely in North America, and in
English. Moreover, on the western side of the Atlantic, East Central Europe
in the Middle Ages is like Europe in the Middle Ages, in the sense that there
are currently more colleagues, doing more work – all of it varied and highly
individual yet, on several levels, related. When we note a similar trend in the
United Kingdom, that population increases considerably. Several contribu-
tors to this book are among those anglophone colleagues.
There is perhaps some symbolism in the fact that a crucial event in that
aspect of our professional history can be dated back to 1989: the year of pub-
lication of Richard Hoffmann’s remarkable study of the economy and society
of the duchy of Wrocław,106 and of the first of Robert Bartlett’s two books
about Europe’s frontiers, the essays co-edited by Angus MacKay,107 which
include Paul Knoll’s article on the Polish-German frontier.108 This burst of
activity was, at that time, an aspect of a new interest in the frontier as a con-
cept among English-language historians, on both sides of the Atlantic.109 In
his scholarly contributions, Paul Knoll both antedated and anticipated those
changes, and thereafter has actively participated in them. His work has been
a continuing, individual story of texturing a field.
Polish matters
Unlike (obviously) Paul Knoll himself, the readers of this book may not know
Polish, or East Central European history. Therefore, let me briefly align some
portions of Paul’s oeuvre with the actual chronology of Poland’s historical
development. As we have seen, his work, especially over its first decade, had
moved along a chronological course (roughly speaking from the fourteenth to
the fifteenth centuries), whereas his principal contributions concerning those
periods of Poland’s history which antedated or followed these two centuries
were written relatively late in his career. These contributions, too, occurred
at a rather specific moment in the chronology of his oeuvre. The principal
treatments of the long period beginning with the first Piasts and ending with
the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries appeared in 1978, 1987 and
1989.110 The most substantial work concerning the late sixteenth and the early
seventeenth centuries was published in 1996 and 2002.111
The articles in this book do not address, even implicitly, that second, later
period of Poland’s history. Thus, the later sixteenth and the seventeenth cen-
turies are outside the scope of this book, and of the present remarks. However,
several articles do raise a number of issues which are specific to the earlier
period of that history, and which Paul Knoll has treated in considerable detail
in his work. Those issues cluster around what might be called the problem of
beginnings: very large-scale beginnings, entailing the entire political, social,
demographic, economic and ecological order, in terms of which Poland and
(less directly) East Central Europe may be understood. Paul has addressed
that problem on several levels.
First, he has framed it by straightforward political history. This is most
pronounced in his encyclopedia article on medieval Poland, and reiterated in
the 1987 contribution on towns, and in the 1989 article on the Polish-German
frontier.112 On this level, we are guided from the period preceding the earliest
Piast expansion under Siemomysł, Mieszko I and Bolesław I the Brave all
the way forward to the end of the thirteenth century and the various attempts
to reunify the kingdom, culminating with Władysław the Short. In addition,
framed by that political history is another subject, namely what might be
called the basic building blocks, or elements, of that very early order over
which the Piasts, especially the first Piasts, presided. Paul observes the fact
that right from its foundations, the Piast polity consisted of several com-
plexes of towns – fortified centres, around which was settled a complicated
and, from early on, an expanding population – and the countryside.113 This
raises, for him and for us, the question of hierarchy of settlement, the differ-
entiation between towns and villages, and the conceptual meaning of town
and village in medieval societies.114
Paul also notes that, over the long early period, power over those com-
plexes of settlement and population underwent a change – away from the
absolute preeminence of a duke, and toward the rising role of an aristocracy
(‘nobility’) and the clergy. The presumed early centrality of the ruler, to the
exclusion of other agents of power, raises the problem of the earliest ducal
power and lordship – conceptualised by Polish historians as ‘ducal law’ (ius
ducale), a term which Paul himself both employs and explains, specifically
in the 1989 article on the Polish-German frontier.115 Moreover, he informs us
that throughout the early period the (overwhelmingly rural) subject popula-
tion was confronted with confiscatory ducal power, along lines that were
highly specific to Poland and East Central Europe. Hence the attention – again
expressed most fully in the same 1989 article – to the importance in early Piast
Poland of what is conventionally known as ‘service settlements’.116 Finally,
Paul notes that in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries all those
features underwent enormous, systemic transition.
With this brief mapping of Poland’s early history and of some of its spe-
cific, relatively unfamiliar issues onto parts of Paul Knoll’s work, we may
close, adding two final points. First, those issues – ‘ducal law’, ‘service settle-
ments’, the long transitions of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries – were
controversial when Paul wrote about them, and have, to a degree, remained
controversial ever since. One of these controversies – the problem of the ‘ser-
vice settlements’ – reverberates in this book, thanks to Florin Curta. Second,
there are real connections, historical and historiographic, between the issues
just raised, which fully appear relatively late in Paul’s work, and the quite dif-
ferent, continued, defining core of his pursuits: politics, learning and culture,
especially as they are accessible in one Polish medieval town, Kraków. Now
– with the major exception of Casimir the Great and his original university
foundation – Paul himself does not explicitly make that connection. His prin-
cipal interests do not lie in that long sweep of Polish history which in fact
bridged the gap between, say, the town or learning under the early Piasts and
those phenomena under their later descendants, the Jagiellons. But, among
his other contributions, he has set out those, and many other, connections for
us to pursue.
2 The city and the trade route
in the early Middle Ages
Henryk Samsonowicz
The era of the ‘Great Migrations’ was a catastrophe for the cities of Europe1.
In the territories of the Roman Empire, especially its western portion, cit-
ies were substantially destroyed. A few remained in ‘shadow’ form, such as
Arles, whose entire surviving population subsisted in one of the intact amphi-
theatres. Others – Salona or Aquincum, for example – disappeared from the
urban map of Europe altogether. To be sure, this phenomenon should not be
excessively generalised. In the territories of the eastern empire, the former
Roman civitates continued to play a significant role, while during the second
half of the first millennium, Constantinople may be compared to the metro-
politan areas of today. Likewise in the west of Europe, some cities of Roman
origin continued to function; Seville even elicited a magnificent encomium
from its bishop, Isidore.2
In the regions of the former barbaricum, the situation was quite different,
because here towns – meaning localities with specialised economic func-
tions, settled by a population sustaining itself not merely by agriculture – did
not, for all practical purposes, exist. There were, to be sure, settlements of
a type which – to coin a phrase used by some scholars – we might wish to
call ‘proto-urban’.3 These might be inhabited by as many as several hundred
people, who were engaged, along with other activities, in commerce and craft
production. However, the economic role of such localities does not appear to
have transcended a strictly local horizon, nor does their differentiation of eco-
nomic specialisation appear to have led to the formation of new social struc-
tures. Most of their inhabitants (as has remained the case throughout Europe
until the modern period) were engaged in a range of activities, and treated
craft, commerce and services as supplementary to the more basic activities,
which were typically related to agriculture. Moreover, their relatively uni-
form pattern of economic sustenance did not encourage contact with new
people – one of the principal distinguishing traits of an urban civilisation.
In the territories of ‘barbarian Europe’, this state of affairs began to change
during the eighth century, with the appearance of a network of settlements of
The city and the trade route in the early Middle Ages 21
an altogether new character.4 Their genesis is not fully understood. Among the
triggering factors, we should note, as many scholars have observed in detail,
the requirements of political power. Power, exercised no longer merely over
people, but ‘over land’, called for the creation of centres of political, military
and economic administration. Occasionally, as we know from the written
accounts of the Rus’ or of the Polabian Slavs, settlements emerged around
cult centres. In regions undergoing Christianisation, specifically the eastern
portions of the Carolingian state, a significant stimulus to urbanisation was
the creation of centres of ecclesiastical authority and pilgrimage. Sometimes
the prospect of access to minerals – proximity to sources of salt, or to deposits
of precious metal – came into play.
However – without wishing to negate the importance of all such factors in
the emergence and expansion of towns – it appears that the main thrust behind
the creation of new economic centres in Eastern Europe was long-distance
commercial exchange. This was quite different from the widespread local
commerce – an activity which worked as one mode of supplementing the
household economy, and which drew in, as active participants, agricultural-
ists, hunters and nomads, among others. Generally speaking (although we do
know of exceptions to this rule), that latter type of commerce was conducted
over relatively modest spaces, encompassed small quantities of goods, and
focused upon local markets, which attracted inhabitants of nearby locali-
ties. The type of commerce properly called ‘distant’ concerned, to a much
larger degree, a wholesale exchange carried out over long distances. It also
entailed a highly specific, and much more complicated, protocol of activi-
ties; and it presupposed the existence of a differentiated, professional group.
Long-distance commerce was accessible to those people who possessed the
requisite financial means, an appropriate level of knowledge of ‘economic
geography’, and rather specific psychological and physical capacities.
We may trace the beginnings of their activity in Eastern Europe to the
appearance of the people known today as the Vikings (or Varangians), and to
the role they played in the creation of the early framework of Europe’s econ-
omy.5 As is well known, during the Carolingian period the territories of the
former western Roman Empire ranked quite low, in terms of wealth, within the
hierarchy of their contemporary ‘economic worlds’ (economies-mondes).6 In
comparison with the Muslim caliphates (not to mention the countries of far-
eastern Asia) or with Byzantium, they were less populated, poorer and more
thoroughly destroyed. The means for their reconstruction were found during
the earliest stages of Carolingian power; as Henri Pirenne noted: ‘If it were
not for Mohammed, Charlemagne would have been unthinkable.’7
Needless to say, the regions comprising Eastern Europe, deprived of con-
tacts with the developed centres of economy and culture, occupied a propor-
tionally even lower rung within that same hierarchy of ‘economic worlds’.
The emergence of a market for the commodities with which these regions
might supply the Mediterranean world created a conjuncture favourable to the
economic peripheries of the time. The geographical mobility of the Vikings,
who readily crossed thousands of kilometres, marked out a clearly identifi-
able network of roads connecting Europe’s north and south. As is well known,
these trails were not used for merely peaceful purposes: Viking commerce
was based, to a substantial degree, on plunder and pillage. Nevertheless, that
commerce, to an increasing degree, also entailed economic dynamics, the
interaction of supply and demand. Contacts with economically developed
countries – Byzantium, the Arab world – also opened access to an increas-
ingly valued form of wealth and prestige: money. This form of wealth opened
avenues of social mobility to persons originating from new social groups.
Sometimes such persons originated from among tribal elders; at other times,
they were recruited from among those for whom the traditionally available
forms of collective life had become too constraining.8
Commercial exchange with Europe’s south was enabled by the emergence
of local centres, into which desirable commodities could be brought by plun-
der or purchase. Such commodities, first of all, had to be known to the Greek
and Arab merchants who, as early as the eighth century, regularly visited
these locations of permanent contact with the Vikings and with the indig-
enous populations; and, second, they had to be susceptible of relatively easy
modes of physical transport, meaning, in this period, proximity to bodies of
water. Among the most frequently used routes of access in the Continent’s
south were the Black and the Caspian Seas, with their tributary rivers, the
Dnieper, the Volga and the Danube; and, in the north, the Baltic, together with
its lowland, readily navigable rivers, the Elbe, the Odra (Oder), the Vistula,
the Dvina and the Neva. Along these water-based routes there emerged,
from the eighth century onward, early urban commercial centres, marking
out a route that extended from Flanders (Durstede, subsequently Bruges)
through Haithabu, Old Lübeck and Rügen (Arkona, Strzała), Wolin, Truso
and Wiskiautai, to Old Ladoga. Its extension stretched along the Volga (Great
Bulgar) or the Dnieper (Kiev), through Byzantium or the Khazar domin-
ions, to the Arab countries. These centres of exchange are noteworthy for two
reasons. First – at the risk of stating the obvious – commerce which is ter-
ritorially this far-flung encourages a wide variety of human contact. Second,
such centres relate to the task of defining a ‘city’. This is because they entail
a rather specific type of culture – one that is open, that is to say, receptive to
new forms of collective activity and new ideas.
The period extending from the eighth to the twelfth century is documented
by various types of sources, written and material, which comprise the basis
for our knowledge of Europe’s urban network. As a point of departure, let us
consider schedules of toll obligations – a type of document which principally
concerns commodities involved in long-distance commerce, and which dis-
regards products intended for everyday use. The Raffelstetten toll schedule
observes that ‘the Bavarians and the Slavs . . . who depart in order to sell
food . . . do not pay toll.’ Which commodities entered commerce on a grand
scale?9 We can categorise them into eight groups: (1) consumable goods;
(2) people (slaves); (3) cattle; (4) horses; (5) metal ores, specifically gold,
silver, tin and lead; (6) fur and hides; (7) wax; (8) textiles (cloth, brocade).
It seems that the most valuable commodity sought in the Scandinavian, the
Slavic and the Baltic regions was human beings. In schedules of tolls, human
beings resoundingly hold the first place in terms of levels of assessed value,
far exceeding the assessments placed upon other commodities. Whether
these human beings were in every case slaves bound and led in chains, is
difficult to say. It is noteworthy that they were used for work in the fields, on
warships and in harems – but that they were also formed into military con-
tingents. Quite possibly, they may have sought on occasion to improve their
fate by migrating south.
Among the foodstuffs, we may include the types which were indispensable
but not accessible in a particular region (salt), or which were desired as an
attractive supplement to the diet (spices). Occasionally, grain was sent over
long distances, in response to shortages caused by natural disasters. During
the thirteenth century, grain was certainly exported by northern German cities
to Scandinavia, in a permanent process of exchange. Trade in meat appears
to have played a significant role. Toll schedules quite often note herds of
cattle; trade may have been the most reliable mode of procuring fresh meat.
For the early Middle Ages, we can clearly identify especially fertile regions,
from which, if the need arose, grain could be exported; or which enjoyed
especially suitable conditions for animal husbandry. Such regions certainly
included, among others, the lands of the Île-de-France, Champagne, the river
systems of the Moselle and the Rhine, the Low Countries, Limburg, Brabant,
part of Flanders, and northern and central Italy. Within ‘New Europe’ – the
Europe incorporated into the Christian community during the tenth century
– the equivalent regions included, quite possibly, the steppe areas of today’s
Ukraine, the lowlands of the major rivers flowing into the Baltic and the
North Sea, and, in due course, forests, which were cleared less intensively
than was the case in the West, and which supplied honey.
Spices occupied an important place in the balance of exchange. Commerce
in these commodities, imported from Asia, occurred along permanent, well-
known exchange routes. However, the modest written record concerning this
product in the toll schedules – especially the near-absence of pepper, saffron
or ginger – suggests that these goods were transported in small quantities.
On the other hand, commercial exchange in salt apparently had a rather spe-
cific character. Needless to say, this essential element of sustenance had to
be transported from the localities where it was extracted, that is to say, ini-
tially, above all saltwater springs. One gets the impression that salt circulated
together with other commodities, rather like a credit card account does today.
Salt was transported in various directions (as in the instance recorded by the
schedules of the toll houses on the Bug)10 and sometimes itself served as a
medium for the payment of tolls assessed on other commodities. During the
later, Christianised period, herring played a similar role. Moreover, while
salt was one of the main commodities whose exchange was regulated by
the state, it merely supplemented the full range of the transported commodi-
ties. A similar position was occupied by honey, the basic sweetening agent,
and by wax, whose importance grew with the increase in the use of candles.
However, honey and wax were, perhaps, less frequently used as mediums of
payment for other commodities.
Fur and hides played a far more important role in long-distance trade. As
early as in the ninth century, the forests of northern and eastern Rus’ were the
specific region from which the vast majority of the fur traded in European
markets originated. This does not concern solely the luxurious and most
prized kinds of fur; as is well known, the fourteenth-century transports out of
Novgorod, which might contain as many as 20,000 pelts of fur each, included
principally furs of small and extremely common animals: squirrels, martens,
hares and foxes.11 Certainly, already in the twelfth century, trade between
Novgorod and the cities on the southern Baltic, mediated by the ‘association
of the German merchants who frequent Gotland’,12 was based on transac-
tions in fur. It does not seem likely that this product was destined principally
for Middle Eastern countries. Instead, it is generally believed to have been
the trade equivalent of the cloth transported eastward along the Baltic ever
since the Carolingian period. Judging from the descriptions of Arab journeys
northward, it is quite possible that, apart from slaves, the aim of the Arab
travellers was also to obtain fur of various kinds – in this case, perhaps of the
more valuable kind, such as sable.
Cloth trade definitely played a significant role in the making of urban cen-
tres. This product of medieval industry emerged as the basis for Netherlandish
towns as early as the ninth century, and enabled the expansion of their com-
mercial presence not merely into the Rhineland and the fairs of Champagne,
but further, into the north of Europe. Units of Flemish, or perhaps Frisian,
cloth (palia frisonica) were the single most valuable commodity traded for
all the other products of the East. When, after the battle of Borhnöved in 1227,
the central role in Baltic commerce passed to the Germans, cloth became the
specific commodity whose exchange accelerated the formation of a chain
of cities, which, in due course, came to constitute the core of the German
Hansa: Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Szczecin, Gdańsk,
Elbląg, Riga, Dorpat and Reval (Tallin). The old Viking centres (which, to
use Max Weber’s well-known typology, had been an example of ‘Asiatic cit-
ies’) were replaced by self-governing cities of the ‘European’ type, inhabited
by citizen-townspeople. Toll schedules issued for them during the first quar-
ter of the thirteenth century record above all payments assessed on imported
cloth. The names used for this cloth (the frisal, the burnat) suggest a Flemish
provenance of the payments, while the names of the ships used in its trans-
port (the koggen, the maior navis) indicate an origin that is either German or
Netherlandish.
Quite probably the same, or closely similar, types of cloth were transported
a bit later through the toll booths of Great Poland. Toward the end of the
Middle Ages, over sixty types of cloth – the local, the Netherlandish, the
Lusatian, the English, the Italian, even the French – were involved in the
commercial network encompassing the Polish lands.13 Most of this commod-
ity was transported to the north and east of Europe; on the other hand, there
were Polish or Lusatian variants of the product, which satisfied demand in
the piedmont of the Alps, and even of the Pyrenees, at the end of the Middle
Ages. However, during the earlier Middle Ages, the Flemish was definitely
preeminent among the more luxurious kinds of cloth, and we surely cannot
speak of an export of an indigenous, Polish commodity westward.
Placement of a toll both was intended to be a lucrative investment. However,
in order for the booth to function effectively, it needed in addition to benefit
the merchants. Hence, next to the toll booths was established a permanent
framework intended to facilitate the crossing of rivers, of which we have a
good example in Pomnichów. Elsewhere – as in the Truso region – massive
dykes were built to ease travel across swamps.14 Investments of this kind
reflect an existence of reasonably stable long-distance trade routes, some-
thing that differentiates, in yet another respect, long-distance trade from its
local variant. Because that local variant usually did not require complicated
methods of transport, a need for permanent points comprising a transport
network did not arise. Instead, each locality interacted with its neighbouring
points of settlement through the simplest and the most convenient spatial
connections available at any given moment. On the other hand – as is attested
by Constanine Porphyrogenitus’s description of the Varangians’ activities,15
and by the evidence about merchants reflected in the Primary Chronicle – the
major commercial journeys followed permanent, well-known routes.
On occasion, toll schedules also inform us about the geographical direc-
tion of the transport of merchandise – although, contrary to what we might
expect, they do not always do so with precision. Cattle drives (the most
economical mode of transporting meat in the pre-industrial era), or instances
of transport of salt by water or by land (which are well known to us from
Masovia), do not reflect the specific direction along which such goods were
transported. Even the most valuable early-medieval commodity, slaves,
who were typically exported toward Europe’s south, might instead, at least
theoretically, have been brought into ducal estates in the northern region of
a particular country. But in certain cases, the direction of transport leaves
no doubt. The herring noted in the toll schedules of Pomnichów, Oleśno,
Poznań or Gniezno was obviously exported from the Baltic southward. One
may also surmise that, consistently with Ibrahim ibn-Ya’qub’s account, pre-
cious metals were exported from Prague to the Mediterranean countries.
Charlemagne’s well known embargo on the export of weapons into Slavic
countries also quite clearly attests to the flow of armaments from west to
east. It seems that, toward the end of the first millennium, Kiev, the largest
metropolis in Eastern Europe, was the main centre of trade in those slaves
who were exported to the south; and that tin was exported from Prague in
the same direction.16
Europe’s northwestern cities also sought access to the highly desired
Byzantine and Arabic goods. This may be reflected by an attempt, par-
tially successful, to reach the Black Sea by a land route – a mode of access
which, while certainly shorter than the maritime alternative described ear-
lier, required a much higher level of effort and expenditure to traverse. The
early-fourteenth-century documents from Toruń show that, at the outset of its
economic prosperity, this town, situated on an old trade route – a secondary
branch of ‘the road from the Varangians to the Greeks’, linking the Baltic
with the Black Sea – sought connections with Silesia and with the Rus’.17
The oldest of the three ‘Russian roads’, stretching along the Vistula and the
Bug, extended up to Vladimir Volyn’skii, and from there turned toward Kiev.
Two later ‘roads’, favoured by the kings of Poland, proceeded along a rather
different route: in the direction of Lwów, the newly emerged centre of com-
merce with Black Sea towns. Just as was the case along the route running
along the Baltic coast, Hansa merchants were probably involved in the formal
establishment of a network of geographically-intermediate staging centres.
Warsaw appears in the sources rather unexpectedly: as a fully self-govern-
ing town, partly built of stone (something quite rare in Masovia), subject to
its superior court in Toruń and laid out on a plan conforming to the pattern
that characterised the smaller towns in the dominions of the Teutonic Order
during the thirteenth century.18 In the early period of its history, Warsaw prob-
ably served as an entrepôt on the southern route of those Hansa merchants
who sought connections with Byzantium.
The benefits of long-distance trade for town development are well illus-
trated in the description of the proposal made by Prince Sviatoslav, around
969, to establish Pereiaslavets, situated in the Danube delta, as the state capi-
tal. ‘I do not like it in Kiev. I wish to be in Pereiaslavets on the Danube,
because there is the centre of my land . . . , and there all kinds of wealth come
together: from the Greeks, gold, brocade, wine and a variety of fruit; from
Bohemia and Hungary, silver and horses; and from the Rus’, leather hides,
wax, honey and slaves.’19
In addition, from early on (the tenth century at the latest), commercial
towns attracted new kinds of investment, advantageous for merchants. In
Drohiczyn, we have physical remnants of the production of non-coin mediums
of exchange, that is to say, forms of non-metallic money: squirrel skins, shorn
of hair and bound together with lead seals in bundles.20 Ibrahim ibn-Ya’qub’s
narration about Prague – where the city is described, in the same sentence,
as the ‘wealthiest in merchandise in the country’, and as ‘built from rock and
limestone’ – contains a description of non-coin mediums of exchange, which
were used in commerce, and, in Prague itself, were themselves exchanged
for metallic money.21 If we have correctly understood Adam of Bremen, the
inhabitants of Birka built an entrance into the port, which was ‘dangerous to
their own people and to strangers’, yet which gave access to ‘the ships of the
Danes, . . . the Slavs, the Sambians and other peoples of Scythia, arriving for
their trading needs’. Presumably a most unusual kind of investment was ‘the
lighthouse, called Greek fire by the inhabitants’, built in Wolin – a locality
described by the chronicler as ‘the biggest city among all in Europe’, and
as ‘a most frequently visited place of rest for the barbarians and the Greeks
. . . inhabited by Slavs, Greeks and barbarians . . . and also by Saxon newcom-
ers’.22 Investment in ports is known, among other places, from the Norwegian
Konungahela, where ‘a wooden dock’ was built, at which merchant ships
arrived.23
There seems to be no doubt that the larger demographic centres benefited
from a service sector. Household and mercantile servants (including the
unfree), prostitutes, taverners, brewers, but in addition beggars and socially
unattached people – all those groups constituted a comparatively diverse col-
lectivity, quite different in character from the inhabitants of the countryside.
In the ninth century, Ubbaiadh Allah ibn-Hurdadbeh described the commerce
conducted by Jewish merchants, across an enormous region stretching from
Spain to China, and from the Slavic world to central Africa. These merchants’
ability to use several languages – languages indispensable for the transac-
tions conducted – seems to have especially fascinated their contemporaries.
Those Jewish merchants were reputed to speak ‘in Arabic, Persian, Roman’
(the last of these meaning either Latin or Greek, that is, the language of
the Roman empire), ‘Frankish, Spanish, [and] Slavic’.24 As is well known,
Jewish merchants were also present in the towns of the western and eastern
Slavs, beginning as early as the turn of the tenth and the eleventh centuries.
Their contacts encompassed both northern Italy and the western countries of
the former empire.
An example confirming the merchants’ reputation for geographical mobil-
ity (as noted by the later Hanseatic proverb, koplude loplude, meaning ‘the
merchants are people who run about’)25 is the description of the activities by
the Varangians in the territories of Kievan Rus’. They led extremely mobile
lives, procuring goods in the lands of various east-Slavic tribes, then travel-
ling with those goods ‘to the Greeks’. They began their regular cycle of activ-
ity in Kiev, and returned there after receiving payment from the Byzantines.26
One may speculate that that payment was spent on an ‘extensive pattern of
consumption’; no less importantly, we may confidently infer the presence in
Kiev, at least temporarily, of a population sustaining itself from commerce
on a grand scale.
As the Primary Chronicle shows us, that population was recruited from
among the grand-princely retinue – people who comprised a new hierarchy of
power and social prestige. The possibilities opened to them by their acquired
wealth, as well as the power they wielded, created conditions which, in turn,
worked to alter the urban landscape. In the Great Moravian State – as well
as in other early Slavonic states, specifically the Rus’ and Bulgaria – chapels
and churches were built within the main fortified centres in remarkable num-
bers.27 Over forty sacral objects have been discovered in Mikulčice, over fifty
in Stara Tyrnov, and the numbers are similar for Kiev, Devin and Stare Mésto.
We may surmise that this is a result of the formation, during the earliest phase
of the creation of a state framework, of ‘aristocratic towns’: seats of new
social elites, whose members sought revenues accruing from commerce, and
for whom possession of ‘one’s own church’ was evidence of membership of
a social stratum that wielded power.
Without getting into the exact mechanisms that brought about this par-
ticular social system, let us note the emergence of heretofore unknown,
specialised groups, situated near the aristocratic courts: people who lived
exclusively from fighting, or were court servants or served as clergy, all of
whom were obligated to draw on reserves of food and other sources of physi-
cal sustenance; and labourers, engaged in a comparatively extensive network
of food supply, specialised craft workshops, and, in all likelihood, entertain-
ment, connected with taverns, inns, the hunt and the tournament. It is quite
clear that this professional and social differentiation underway in early towns
was an outcome, or an aspect, of a transition from a tribal to a state-based
framework. However, it also seems that the level of investment entailed in
these transformations was enabled by grand-scale commercial activity.
Today’s archaeology confirms the accuracy of Henri Pirenne’s view noted
at the outset of this essay: the ores, the people and the ideas drawn from the
south and from the east made possible the construction of state organisa-
tions, above all the Carolingian Empire. The patterns of exchange underlying
that process were based on a network of emerging centres, which constituted
entrepôts of grand-scale commerce. That network led not only toward an
enrichment of the people associated with the new power, but also to a social
differentiation, and to the appearance of new callings, among which an espe-
cially important place was occupied by the merchant. Quite apart from their
additional functions – whether military or political – the collective activity
by the participants in grand-scale commerce was the principal causal factor
behind the emergence of towns in those regions of Europe which had not
been part of the Roman Empire.
3 The archaeology of early
medieval service settlements
in Eastern Europe
Florin Curta
‘Service settlement’ is a favourite phrase of several Polish and Czech medie-

valists, who use it commonly to refer to villages of specialised workers (peas-
ants or craftsmen) serving the exclusive needs of neighbouring fortresses or
manor houses.1 In Poland, Roman Grodecki first linked service settlements
to ducal or royal estates and argued that such villages emerged to meet the
exclusive demands of the Polish duke or king and of his court.2 In a now
classic book dedicated exclusively to the problem of the ‘royal servants’,
Karol Buczek took Grodecki’s thesis a step farther and argued that the royal
servants living in such villages were bound to the land given to them by the
duke or the king. Service settlements were therefore to be found around ducal
or royal residences and palaces located both within and outside regional for-
tifications.
According to Buczek, service settlements originated in Bohemia and as a
form of labour organisation were a specifically ‘Slavic’ phenomenon, with-
out any West European analogies.3 In the 1950s, this idea was very popular
among Slovak historians and linguists, who promoted the idea that service
settlements were a ninth-century, Moravian invention.4 Others rejected such
opinions and argued instead that service settlements must be linked to the
organisation of the Hungarian state and, as a consequence, could not be dated
earlier than the tenth century. Maintaining the idea of a specifically Slavic
institution thus became impractical, especially since no service settlements
were known from sources referring to either the Elbe Slavs or Kievan Rus’.5
As a consequence, it became fashionable in the 1960s and early 1970s, espe-
cially among Czech and Polish historians, to explain service settlements as
a Central (East Central) European adaptation of an essentially Carolingian
institution.6
To Karol Modzelewski service settlements signaled the existence of
groups of peasants or enslaved war captives turned into a specialised, ser-
vile labour force, with specific tasks pertaining to the feeding and military
maintenance of the duke’s or king’s household. Village names that appear in
The archaeology of early medieval service settlements 31
twelfth-, and especially thirteenth-century, charters were thus derived from
the names of the specific tasks performed by the ducal or royal servants.7 In
Poland, the largest number of place names deriving from servile tasks appear
in the hinterland of Sandomierz, one of the sedes regni principales of the
early Piast polity. Because villages with such names were located no more
than thirty kilometres from Sandomierz, they are believed to have catered
for the needs of the administrative and military personnel garrisoned in that
provincial capital of early medieval Poland.8 Under the assumption that the
sedes regni principales were primarily consumption centres, service settle-
ments are therefore viewed as the hallmark of a dramatic reorganisation of
the countryside accompanying the rise of the Piast state.9 As suppliers of
either royal manors or of regional centres of royal power, service settlements
are therefore commonly understood as by-products of the imposition of a
despotic form of political power over land and labour force.
However, the main reason for which the ‘regalian command’ model has
been so widely accepted by Polish medievalists may be that it offers a ‘seduc-
tively stark contrast between the early Polish monarchy and society and their
western counterparts’.10 To claim that service settlements were a uniquely
East-Central European phenomenon is to stress the absolute power that early
medieval rulers in that region had over their subjects. Henry VIII of England
may well have destroyed the church and several houses to build his Nonsuch
Palace on the site of the village of Cuddington, in Surrey.11 Long before him,
Piast rulers had the incomparably greater power of moving around entire
groups of population, as well as numerous prisoners of war, and of creating
new settlements for them around regional centres of power.
The current research on service settlements in medieval East Central
Europe relies on a macro-economic model of a centralised state, mainly
derived from the preoccupation of national historiographic schools with
the inevitability of political organisation and the decisive roles of political
elites.12 This is essentially a pre-archaeological model, which may still be
found in East Central Europe, for example, in the work of Dušan Třeštík,
Jerzy Strzelczyk or Gyula Kristó, although it is quite rare among archaeolo-
gists.13 However, while the foundation of regional centres of power may have
well been accompanied by the re-settling of groups of military population,
there is in fact no evidence that service settlements were planted at specific
locations by royal fiat.14 Moreover, without a detailed archaeological study
of regional settlement patterns it is impossible to ascertain the relative age of
each service settlement known from documentary sources and to establish
its relation to pre-existing settlement sites. Detailed studies of the so-called
Kietze or Kietzsiedlungen of eastern Germany, which have long been viewed
in German historiography as typically Slavic, have demonstrated that the
number of such service settlements began to increase dramatically in the
mid-1100s, the period of organisation of the margraviate of Brandenburg
under the rule of Albert I the Bear.15 Many Kietzsiedlungen were undoubtedly
new foundations, but several others produced potsherds that could be dated
before the mid-twelfth century, which suggests that those settlements were in
existence before the dynasty of the Askanians came to power in Brandenburg.
A great deal of evidence for the Kietzsiedlungen of eastern Germany is pri-
marily archaeological, which is not what one could say about the service set-
tlements of early medieval Poland or Bohemia, none of which has so far been
explored archaeologically.16 Ever since the 1960s, place names have been the
most important category of evidence for the study of the medieval service
settlements of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, with archaeology playing only
a minor role, if any at all.17
While research perspectives on the archaeology of service settlements in
Bohemia and Poland look rather unpromising, there has been a great deal of
new work in the last ten years or so on the rural hinterland of ninth-century
centres of power in Moravia, western Hungary and Bulgaria. More than a
century of archaeological excavations in Pliska and its hinterland produced
sufficient evidence for sketching the settlement pattern of the ‘first capital of
medieval Bulgaria’.18 On the basis of older and more recent excavations of
rural settlements, both within and outside the so-called Outer Town (the larg-
est earthen rampart surrounding the palatial compound), Joachim Henning
has recently proposed that the cluster of settlement sites within the Outer
Town (many of which may be dated to the tenth and early eleventh century)
be compared to the service settlements of medieval Poland and Bohemia.19
Since few if any of these settlements existed in the previous two centuries,
the sudden explosion of sites is interpreted as a forceful implementation
of relatively large groups of servile population, all attached to the palatial
compound in Pliska and existing only in order to meet the supposedly great
demands of that centre of consumption.
In a stance reminiscent of the ‘regalian command’ model so dear to Czech
and Polish scholars of the 1960s and 1970s, Henning further viewed the his-
tory of Pliska and its rural hinterland of service settlements as an example of
a typically East-European macro-economic model, in sharp contrast to the
economic and social structures commonly found in the early Middle Ages in
Western Europe: ‘Political power in early medieval Eastern Europe had very
few limits: palaces could be built at various points, as desired, while entire
communities of peasants and craftsmen could be moved around as needed.’20
The premise of Henning’s interpretation is that Pliska was above all a large
centre of consumption. The decision of the Bulgar rulers to establish a cen-
tre of power in Pliska thus created a considerable demand for victuals, for
which there was no pre-existing settlement infrastructure. In order to meet
that demand, those rulers therefore created settlements ex nihilo by moving
to the environs of their capital large groups of population from various other
parts of their realm.
But Henning also insists that most rural settlements previously dated by
Bulgarian archaeologists before 900 or thereabouts are in fact of a later date.21
If so, then they must be dated after the capital of early medieval Bulgaria had
moved from Pliska to Preslav, following the conversion to Christianity and
Boris’s crushing of the last pagan revolt of the Bulgar boilades.22 At the time
most service settlements came into being, Pliska had therefore ceased to be
the gigantic centre of consumption which supposedly caused the population
transfer responsible for the foundation of the service settlements. Moreover,
recent use of aerial photographs has revealed that many of the sites said to
be ‘rural’ and shown on Henning’s map of the Outer Town at Pliska, espe-
cially those to the northeast and east from the Inner Town, have massive
stone buildings, which could indicate the existence of manors.23 These are
therefore unlikely to be service settlements of the kind postulated by Czech
and Polish scholars.
To be sure, some of the sites indicated by Henning have in fact been dated
before around 900, and could therefore have been in existence at the time
the first major buildings appeared within the palatial compound of the Inner
Town. A rural settlement dated to the eighth and ninth century (primarily on
the basis of ceramic assemblages) has been found on the site of the later Great
Basilica, but only a few houses have so far been excavated.24 Similarly, only
a few houses are known from the rural site around the so-called ‘building
no. 31’ in the immediate vicinity of the Inner Town, to the west.25 Several
houses have been found near the southwestern corner of the Inner Town, at
Cekha.26 Finally, excavations in the southeastern region of the Outer Town,
about a mile away from the southern rampart of the Inner Town, have recently
produced a relatively large settlement dated to the late eighth and early ninth
century. No less than 36 sunken-featured buildings and six workshops have
been excavated on that site. Some of them were enclosed by wooden pali-
sades forming rectangular compounds interpreted as ‘manors’.27 Is there a
pattern discernible in the distribution of these early settlements that could be
interpreted as an indication of service settlements?
A recent study of the settlement pattern in the hinterland of Pliska has
shown that the distribution of sites depends upon access to water, a major
problem in the steppe-like micro-climate of the Ludogorie, the region of
northeastern Bulgaria in which Pliska is located.28 The cluster of early sites
can only be explained in terms of proximity to the Asar Dere creek, the only
permanent source of water in the area. This would explain why the earliest
settlements near the palatial compound are those located at the confluence of
the Kafar Dere and Deniz Dere, the two streams forming the Asar Dere. The
large settlement in the southwestern region of the Outer Town grew around
the confluence of the Asar Dere with an intermittent tributary. It is only when
a sophisticated system for bringing water from a great distance was built at
Pliska in the late ninth or, more probably, tenth century that the manors with
stone buildings appeared in the area to the northeast and east of the Inner
Town, an area otherwise devoid of water.29 The earliest datable settlement
pattern at Pliska may therefore be explained in terms of the general landscape
of the region, and not necessarily as a consequence of the despotic behavior
of the ruler.
What, if any, are the archaeological correlates of a service settlement?
Judging from the published evidence, there can be no doubt about the
agricultural character of the sites located within the Outer Town of Pliska.
But Pliska also produced evidence of industrial activities. On the site of the
tenth- to eleventh-century commercial quarter, next to the western wall of
the Inner Town, Bulgarian archaeologists have found a number of smelting
furnaces, which they have dated to the ninth and tenth centuries on the
basis of the associated pottery.30 An important discovery of the most recent
excavations at Pliska is that the relatively large industrial area located to the
west of the palatial compound included not only a metal-working production
centre, but also workshops producing glass, both for vessels and for
windows.31 There can be no doubt that the workshop produced glass for the
palace, the only possible centre of consumption in the region for that type of
artifact. To Joachim Henning, the eighth- to ninth-century industrial centre
at Pliska appears as an indication that ‘specific circumstances in the East
led to the establishment of large, but in the long run often unstable, artisan
centres dependent upon residences of rulers and exclusively serving their
needs.’32 We are led to believe that Pliska was unlike any manorial centre
in contemporary Western Europe in that the industrial centre emerging next
to the palatial compound was not the result of a ‘natural growth’ from local,
pre-existing resources, but a creation ex nihilo serving the exclusive needs
of the East-European ruler. But was Pliska truly different from more or less
contemporary centres of power in Western and Central Europe?
At Karlburg, on the Main river, German archaeologists have recently
revealed a Carolingian royal court (vill), with a cluster of sunken-featured
buildings stretching downstream from the central manorial buildings for
over a kilometre. Many if not all sunken-featured buildings were in fact
workshops for the production of metalwork.33 Peter Donat’s excavations at
Gebesee near Erfurt opened up the northern suburbium of the Ottonian royal
court, an impressive industrial area with over 250 sunken-featured buildings.
None of these was suitable for living, and all were used as workshops
for the production of cloth.34 The current model of interpretation of the
industrial centre at Gebesee has craftsmen (or craftswomen) coming from
neighbouring villages to perform regular socage service for the royal court
by working in the workshops. Such an interpretation of the archaeological
evidence resonates with what is otherwise known from the written evidence
about the organisation of crafts and industrial production on Carolingian
estates.35 Despite the lack of comparable evidence from written sources,
there is no reason to interpret the situation at Pliska any differently. Those
working in the workshops to the west of the palatial compound may have
come from the neighbouring villages, such as that in the southeastern region
of the Outer Town. Should we therefore treat such rural sites as service
settlements?
The significance of the industrial quarter at Pliska may be further
highlighted by means of comparison with a different kind of site. Develier-
Courtételle in northern Switzerland was an iron-smelting and smithing
centre, the excavation of which has produced over four tons of slag and
hammer-scale scattered over no less than six plots of buildings.36 The site
also produced a collection of buildings and structures interpreted as relating
to the storage of crops and the penning of livestock. Develier-Courtételle
appears to have been a settlement of specialist metal-workers, whose
inhabitants produced iron and steel artifacts in exchange for agricultural
produce and livestock, or were cared for within a wider state framework.37
There is no sign that the industrial quarter at Pliska included any
dwellings. It is of course quite possible that some, at least, of the inhabitants
of the rural sites in the Outer Town may have provided their skills for the
operation of the metal- and glass-working shops. If so, then the artifacts
they produced were certainly not designed to be exchanged on site for
agricultural produce. There are no storage facilities in the industrial quarter,
and among all early settlements so far known around the Inner Town, only
the large one in the southeastern area of the Outer Town produced pit-like
features that could be interpreted as silos. All of them were located behind
adjacent houses and no significant cluster was identified in any part of the
settlement.38 The intra-site distribution of silos strongly suggests that they
were used for individual accumulation. Nothing indicates therefore that the
economy of this particular settlement was organised in such a way as to meet
the exclusive needs of the elites residing in the palatial compound. Judging
from the surviving evidence, the village in the southeastern region of the
Outer Town was no different from other villages in northern or northeastern
Bulgaria of the same or earlier date, but with no adjacent ‘central places’.39
The situation at Pliska is best understood when compared to that at
Pohansko near Břeclav (Czech Republic), the closest one can come in East
Central Europe to an archaeological example of settlements producing food
for a neighbouring consumption centre.40 In the ninth century, Pohansko was
not only an important ‘central place’, but also at the top of the settlement
hierarchy in Moravia. Czech archaeologists have linked the political and
administrative functions of the site to a palatial compound thought to
be the residence of the Moravian ruler or of one of his deputies. Long-
term excavations have revealed a massive fortification, as well as several
cemeteries with weapon burials bespeaking the presence of relatively large
numbers of warriors.41 The large area enclosed by ramparts, as well as the
extensive industrial quarter discovered inside, suggest the existence of a
relatively numerous population.42 It has been estimated that by the mid-ninth
century, the site must have had between 700 and over 1,000 inhabitants.
Recent archaeo-botanical studies have demonstrated that the staple
cereal in Pohansko was wheat.43 However, the immediate hinterland of the
fortification is not suitable for agriculture, as Pohansko is located on the
flood plain of the river Dyje, near its confluence with the Morava. Moreover,
the absence of any storage facilities and the relatively small number of
agricultural tools and implements found inside the ramparts suggest that
food was brought into the fortification from the outside. In order to feed
the estimated number of inhabitants, the site’s catchment area must have
been no smaller than 100 hectares.44 The archaeological exploration of
that area has only begun, but a combination of fieldwork, Geographical
Information Systems (GIS) analysis and systematic excavations has already
produced some remarkable results.45 Only two rural settlements have so
far been identified in the hinterland of Pohansko, one at Poštorná, the other
at Líbivá, both within the present-day city of Břeclav.46 On the latter site,
Jiří Macháček’s recent excavations revealed more than ninety settlement
features and 37 post-holes.
The analysis of the ceramic assemblages indicates the existence of two
phases of occupation, with the latest coinciding in time with the fortification
and palatial compound at Pohansko. Most prominent among the settlement
features excavated at Líbivá were ten large silos, all grouped inside a special
enclosure on the edge of the settlement at about ten metres from the nearest
house. Adjacent to several individual sunken-featured buildings were other
silos of smaller size. The existence of two types of silos suggests two types
of accumulation, one for the individual needs of each household, the other
for the storage of food to be shipped to Pohansko. Líbivá has therefore
been viewed as a self-sufficient settlement of farmers, whose inhabitants
produced food for the nearby ‘central place’.
The exact nature of the relations between the inhabitants of Líbivá and
the elites in Pohansko remains unknown. The analysis of zoo-archaeological
assemblages may provide some support for the idea that Líbivá was a
subservient settlement whose inhabitants were perhaps subject to the
lord residing in Pohansko. At Karlburg, the pattern of meat consumption
within the vill sharply contrasts with that of its attendant valley settlement.
During the eighth and ninth centuries, most domestic animals were killed
for consumption in the vill before reaching three years of age, while bones
recuperated from the valley settlement belonged to much older animals. In
addition, while wild animals (mostly red deer) make up more than ten percent
of all faunal remains from the vill, they represent less than one percent of all
animal bones from the valley settlement.47 A similarly comparative analysis
may shed more light on the relations between Líbivá and Pohansko within
the broader context of the settlement hierarchy in the region.
Such an interpretation has already been advanced for the hinterland
of the contemporary estate court at Zalavár in western Hungary. The
site has long been identified with the ducal seat of Mosapurc, which was
granted to Pribina by Louis the German at some point between 838 and
847. According to the written sources, Pribina built a large fortification in
Mosapurc, ‘gathered the surrounding peoples, and greatly thrived in that
land’ for the following two decades.48 Ever since 1980, field surveys and
excavations in the marshy hinterland of Zalavár, at the southwestern tip
of Lake Balaton, have brought to light a number of rural sites located on
islands and on the banks of the river Zala. Sites dated to the ninth and tenth
century were at a short distance (one to one and a half kilometres) from each
other. The largest among them was Balatonmagyaród-Hidvégpuszta, which
produced twenty sunken-featured buildings, five clay ovens, and several
silos. Both ovens and silos were somewhat isolated from the houses, on the
northwestern edge of the settlement.
The excavator interpreted the site as a service settlement founded at the
time of the Frankish conquest of the area, shortly before or after Pribina
built his fortification in Zalavár.49 Other archaeologists went as far as to
identify the ‘surrounding peoples’ that Pribina gathered in Mosapurc with
the population burying its dead in local cemeteries. Male skeletons with
marks of lethal wounds were interpreted as members of Pribina’s military
retinue if found in association with one or two weapons (spear heads,
axes, swords), as in Garabonc I, or if without weapons as commoners, as
in Garabonc II.50 Unfortunately, no anthropological comparisons have so
far been drawn between burials of ‘commoners’ from Garabonc and those
from other contemporary cemeteries in the area, such as that associated with
the Carolingian manor at Zalaszabar.51 In the absence of such studies, the
interpretation of male burials from Garabonc must be treated with caution.
Nevertheless it is quite possible that some at least of the settlements in the
hinterland of Zalavár were inhabited by people of unfree status toiling for
Pribina and his retinue of warriors. As in the case of Líbivá and Pohansko,
much is to be expected from the comparative analysis of consumption
patterns on the basis of archaeo-botanical and zoo-archaeological remains
found in Balatonmagyaród-Hidvégpuszta and Zalavár.
Such an analysis has already produced some interesting conclusions
regarding ‘central places’ in early medieval Rus’. As Riurik’s Stronghold
(Riurikovo Gorodishche) near Novgorod became the most important
power centre in the northwestern region of early medieval Rus’, a number
of settlements seem to have emerged solely for the purpose of satisfying
the needs of the prince and his retinue of warriors.52 On the other hand,
the establishment of Riurik’s Stronghold in the late ninth or early tenth
century was accompanied by drastic changes in the agrarian economy of
the region. Archaeo-botanical studies have demonstrated that on the narrow
strip of land between the northwestern shore of Lake Il’men and the river
Veriazha, slash-and-burn cultivation of Neolithic tradition was suddenly
replaced by intensive agriculture. At Georgii on the Veriazha river, Russian
archaeologists identified plow furrows underneath the foundations of the
late ninth- or early tenth-century fortification.53
A large village was excavated at Prost’ on the opposite bank of the river
Volkhov from Riurik’s Stronghold.54 There were many silos in Prost’, some
of them quite large, others still containing remains of charred seeds. The
archaeo-botanical study of one such deposit of over 3,000 seeds shows
that the preferred cereals of the local diet were farro (Triticum dicoccum)
and spelt (Triticum spelta).55 Given that both are hulled wheat species, the
study also suggests that hulling was performed on site, even though no
corresponding facility has so far been found. By contrast, assemblages of
charred seeds in Riurik’s Stronghold contain primarily barley (Hordeum
vulgare vulgare) in the ninth century, and rye (Secale cereale) and wheat
(Triticum aestivum) in the tenth century. This further suggests different
consumption patterns, with cereals of different qualities for the Stronghold
and the countryside respectively.
Since Riurik’s Stronghold, much like Pohansko, had little, if any, arable
land outside its ramparts, the relatively large quantities of barley, rye and
wheat must have come from the agricultural settlements in the northwestern
region of Lake Il’men known as Poozer’e. That the economy of some, at
least, of these settlements was primarily agricultural is further confirmed
by finds of agricultural implements. Excavations in a sand dune at Kholopy
Gorodok, on a promontory separating Lake Kholop’e from the Volkhov
River, a few miles to the northeast of Riurik’s Stronghold, produced a
ninth-century hoard of agricultural implements (ploughshares, scythes,
an axe and a mattock) and dirhems.56 A ploughshare has also been found
in a sopka burial mound in Derevianitsy on the Volkhov River, mid-way
between Riurik’s Stronghold and Kholopy Gorodok.57 A scythe and a sickle
are among the implements found in Georgii in association with the open
settlement in existence before the stronghold was built, as well as with the
plough furrows underneath the stronghold’s foundations.58
A number of lines of evidence point to the existence of a special category
of early medieval settlement sites, for which there is currently no better name
than ‘service settlements’. Nevertheless, in evaluating their significance for
the social history of early medieval Eastern Europe, two points must be
borne in mind. First, comparing the archaeological evidence from ninth-
and tenth-century Eastern and Western Europe, it becomes clear that there
are substantial differences in both focus and methodology. In formerly
Communist countries, the official Marxist ideology had long required
archaeologists to focus more on the life of the ‘common people’ living in
villages than on palaces or monastic sites.59 Even in cases in which the
phrase ‘service settlement’ was never used, rural sites clustering around hill
forts tended to be interpreted as attendant settlements.60 By contrast, a very
recent survey of Carolingian rural settlements complains that ‘the attendant
settlement zones, away from high-status nuclei or palaces, estate centres or
monasteries, desperately need archaeological attention in order to assess
their role in relation to the high-status foci that they supported’, and that
the number of nucleated settlements and hamlets is ‘dangerously small for
purposes of comparison’.61 This contrast may perhaps explain why Polish
and Czech medievalists still point to Carolingian institutions as the origin
of the East-European service settlements, while prominent historians of the
West European Middle Ages illustrate their conclusions with archaeological
evidence from Eastern Europe.62
The archaeological evidence considered here shows that, while there are
many parallel developments, imitation of Carolingian attendant settlements
(themselves poorly known archaeologically) can hardly be an explanation
for the service settlements near Riurik’s Stronghold. On the other hand,
it is methodologically wrong to assume that the agglomeration of rural
sites around the Inner Town at Pliska is sufficient evidence for drawing
comparisons with the service settlements postulated by Czech and Polish
scholars on the basis of place names alone. A much more complicated
picture emerges for Pliska from a closer analysis of the published evidence
of rural settlements within the Outer Town. On the one hand, preliminary
data from older and more recent excavations on the left bank of the Asar
Dere, to the west of the Inner Town, provide such an outstanding sample
of industrial activities that we can hardly avoid drawing comparisons with
contemporary sites within the Carolingian Empire, such as Karlburg. Social
structures are hard to trace by excavation alone, and as a consequence there
is still a major gap in our understanding of the operation of the workshops
and of the relation between the inhabitants of the attendant settlements
within the Outer Town and the elites in the palatial compound.
There is likewise still a major gap between the material remains of rural
settlements, and their interpretation in terms of social structures. We may
suspect that the difference between a village of free farmers and a service
settlement whose inhabitants were not free may not have been marked at all,
but the stark differences between the palatial compound and any other site in
its hinterland leave no doubt about the fact that the hierarchy of settlements
is a mirror of social difference. Although we can argue a direct relation
between water streams (or lack thereof) and the siting of villages around the
Inner Town, it seems that a close topographic relationship implies a clear
interest on the part of the residents of the palatial compound, especially
when taking into account the location of the industrial quarter. The same
may not necessarily be true, however, for the later, tenth- to eleventh-century
situation at Pliska. The prominent ‘manors’ to the east of the Inner Town,
as well as the military and political events taking place after the capital
was transferred to Preslav are complicating factors that need to be taken
into account before drawing comparisons between Pliska and Sandomierz.63
We can possibly see in the sudden increase in the number of settlements
within the Outer Town a sign of either the fragmentation of land property
or a precarious situation in the countryside. The reasons which led to the
multiplication of villages, some of which may well have been subservient
settlements, are far more complex than the despotic will of a ruler who, in
any case, was at that time in either Preslav or Constantinople.
Admittedly, the question remains open. There is already sufficient
evidence for storage of crops in some settlements, but it remains unclear
for what purpose. Equally unclear is the relation between the latest phase of
occupation in the palatial compound and the ‘manors’ erected just outside
the walls of the Inner Town. In any case, it is to be noted that progress in
the study of service settlements is in the end dependent less on place-name
analysis, and more on intensive archaeological research. The latter can only
be undertaken through long-term excavation and modern techniques of
spatial analysis. As the example of Pohansko has shown, the understanding
of a historical problem for which there are no written sources benefits
greatly from the further refinement of a combination of stratigraphical
excavation, field surveys and GIS analysis. Other ways to analyse social
status, especially through burial, have been explored during the excavation
of cemeteries in the hinterland of Zalavár. Finally, the study of consumption
patterns is a very promising avenue of future research. This is now clear
for the zoo-archaeological studies at Karlburg and the archaeo-botanical
studies at Pohansko and Riurik’s Stronghold.
Before more conclusive statements can be made, much further research
is therefore needed in the immediate future. Although it is not yet possible
to generalise meaningfully on a pan-European level about service
settlements, the archaeological evidence published so far already suggests
that the establishment of service settlements should not be viewed either
as an exclusively East-European phenomenon or as a local imitation of
Carolingian prototypes. It is unclear as yet whether early medieval attendant
settlement zones were created by royal fiat, or, as seems more probable,
were yet another facet of the complex process of economic and social
reorganisation accompanying the rise of early medieval states. In terms of
methodology, it is clear that much of our knowledge of service settlements
has depended simply on crude generalisations from a rather heterogeneous
body of information; to improve on this we must seek the definition of a
range of interpretative models. Just as important is to seek out the threads
which connect them.
4 Oath-taking in Hungary
A window on medieval social
interaction
Nora Berend
Oaths, effective because they were part of a religious system, have been
important in many cultures throughout history. The significance of oaths in
medieval societies is well-known.1 For example, in the Peace of God move-
ments, people swore an oath to uphold the peace; men also swore an oath of
fidelity to their lord.2 Oaths were especially crucial in the legal process, both
because they were transmitted by Roman tradition and because they were
linked to the importance of oral testimony. They were a method of proof as
well as a guarantee of truth.3 People attesting to, for example, the property
rights of an individual or institution swore oaths. Plaintiffs could rely on the
sworn testimony of credible witnesses to the event that formed the core of a
case. The calumny oath was sworn by litigants in canonical courts, to guaran-
tee that they would prove their claims honestly.4 Oaths taken by the accused
and his compurgators could exculpate him.5 Oaths were taken by witnesses
to tell the truth. Ordeals and trial by combat could entail swearing oaths, and
with the 1215 ecclesiastical prohibition against ordeals, oaths replaced them,
and came to be even more prominent.6
Taking an oath involved more than pronouncing certain words; they were
also accompanied by gestures, most notably swearing on a symbolic object.
Such gestures, as shown by Jean-Claude Schmitt’s analysis, entailed the
engagement of the entire person, putting him in physical contact with sources
of holy power. Such acts invited divine vengeance for perjury.7 The function
of the oath and a testing of the boundaries is also highlighted by an interest in
medieval literature in oaths that were literally true, but were worded in a way
that was meant to be deceitful.8 It is also possible that, as has been shown for
early modern Europe, people taking oaths had different attitudes, from play-
ful to solemn, that did not always necessarily match the ecclesiastical views
and accounts.9 Certain groups, branded as heretical by Catholic authorities,
refused to take oaths at all, based on Biblical injunctions.10 In order for an
oath to be recognised as valid, both the person taking the oath and those
who were to accept it as a proof or guarantee had to abide by a recognised
Oath-taking in Hungary 43
procedure and to understand the oath ‘as a provisional self-curse’. Within
11
Christian society, such procedures were established in the early Middle Ages,
and usually meant taking an oath on the Bible or on relics, lifting the right
hand, sometimes with the index and middle finger extended, or touching the
holy object.12
When oaths were meant to be binding in treaties, agreements or litigation
between parties of different religious adherence, however, the issue of how
to ensure the validity of the oath became much more problematic. Such a
problem usually arose in the interaction between either two polities or a
Christian ruler and non-Christian peoples outside his realm, and in interac-
tions with Jews and Muslims within Christian societies. Christian suspi-
cion about the reliability of the oath of non-Christians was easily aroused;
one can cite the example of a long-standing topos about the unreliability
of nomads, whose oaths cannot be trusted.13 Examples of such oaths show
that in fact they entailed swearing two separate types of oaths, according to
the custom of both parties; in the case of agreements between polities, the
oaths were sometimes also accompanied by the writing down of the treaty.
Usually each party invoked their own deity (or other transcendental author-
ity) when taking the oath, in order to be truly bound by it. It made eminent
sense to expect the other party to swear by what they held sacred, rather than
by someone else’s religion, which would have been meaningless to them
and therefore rendered the oath invalid. Sometimes, however, each party
took two oaths, one according to their own custom, and one according to the
custom of the other side.
From the early Middle Ages on, treaties made by ‘pagans’ with Christian
rulers entailed an oath by the non-Christian side based on their own law.14 In
907, a treaty between the Rus’ and the Byzantines was sealed by the Emperor
Leo VI kissing the cross and the Rus’ swearing on their weapons and their
gods Perun and Volos. Similarly, in the 971 treaty between the Rus’ ruler
Sviatoslav and the Byzantine emperor, the former invoked the curse of Perun
and Volos and declared he should be killed with his own weapons if he broke
the treaty.15 Thirteenth-century Lithuanians used oaths by their gods, by the
shaking of the hand, and ‘sanctified by the slaughter of an animal’, with the
animal’s blood smeared on the face of the oath-taker.16 Even in the fourteenth
century, the Lithuanian Duke Kestutis swore a Lithuanian oath and performed
an animal sacrifice at the court of the Hungarian King Louis when they con-
cluded a treaty; the king swore a Christian oath.17 When the Lithuanian ruler
Gediminas and his sons, the princes of Vitebsk and Polotsk, made a trade
agreement with Livonian merchants in 1338, the pagans swore ‘according
to their own sacra’, while the princes, as representatives of Christian Rus’
– although the prince of Vitebsk himself was a pagan – kissed the cross, as
did the Christian merchants.18
Interesting instances of a double ritual include a peace treaty between
Byzantines and Avars in 579/80, when the Avar ruler pronounced an elaborate
self-curse on his sword, and then also wanted to swear according to the cus-
tom of the Byzantines and so took an oath on Scripture.19 At the peace treaty
between the Byzantine Emperor Leo V and the Bulgarian ruler Omurtag
in 816, each ruler swore an oath according to his own religion but also
according to the other side’s custom: thus Leo V adopted the Bulgar rituals
of oath-taking, described by divergent sources as swearing on a sword and
sacrificing dogs, or as pouring water on the ground, turning saddles upside
down and touching the reins, finally holding up grass, all of which signified a
self-curse for perjury; the pagan Bulgars swore by touching the Gospel. Both
sides were criticised by Byzantine commentators.20 A treaty in 944 between
the Rus’ and the Byzantines was concluded by the baptised Rus’ swearing
on the cross, and adding the stipulation that if any Christian or non-Christian
violated the treaty, he should die by his own weapons; the unbaptised Rus’
swore as well, and the treaty also invoked the curse of both the Christian God
and of Perun for violating the oath.21
In some medieval Christian kingdoms, significant non-Christian minori-
ties lived in the realm, and this raised the issue of oaths in litigation between
inhabitants of different religions, and of oaths extracted from non-Christian
inhabitants; examples of such areas include the Crusader states, Sicily,
the Iberian kingdoms and Hungary. For example in the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem, when litigation involved parties of different religions, Jews swore
on the Torah, Muslims on the Qur’an, Oriental Christians on the cross and
the Gospels written in their own language.22 Similarly in Norman Sicily, in
litigation between Muslims and people of other faiths, Muslims swore on the
Qur’an.23 In medieval Iberia provision had to be made for Jews and Muslims
to take oaths in legal cases that involved them with Christians; they could
not be required to swear on the Gospels, and various different types of oaths
were created for them.24 In all these areas, mechanisms remained in place for
legal decisions to be made within each non-Christian community according
to their own customs, when the cases involved members of that community
only.
In medieval Hungary, groups holding different religious beliefs lived
inside the kingdom; in addition, interaction with steppe nomads, who raided
the realm but also settled in it, recurred. Therefore we encounter the need
both to find exceptional solutions for treaties with outsiders, and to develop
mechanisms for dealing with everyday issues such as litigation in the course
of which oaths had to be taken. In addition, it seems from the sources that a
local tradition of royal oath-taking existed as well as the standard Christian
forms introduced in conformity to Western practices. Oaths were a frequently
used form of proof in Hungary, just as elsewhere in medieval Europe.25 The
medieval kingdom of Hungary incorporated a very diverse population, both
through conquest and immigration. The heterogeneity of the inhabitants was
also expressed in a legal structure where many different groups, Christians
as well as non-Christians, had their own recognised legal status, with duties
and privileges which were increasingly put into writing during the thirteenth
century. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the number of sources
increases, providing scholars with more material to analyse these issues, and
when, at the same time, the diversity of the population has not yet started
to diminish, three important non-Christian groups formed part of the king-
dom: Jews, Muslims and a third group of non-Christians holding animistic-
shamanistic beliefs, who were ‘pagans’ from a Christian point of view, that
is, they were seen as having no recognised form of religion, but only super-
stitious beliefs.26 Of the last, we have the best sources on the Cumans, who
raided Hungary and then settled in the kingdom in the middle of the thirteenth
century. In each case, evidence of oath-taking offers an opportunity to exam-
ine the forms of incorporation of these groups into a Christian society.
The case of the Cumans is the closest parallel to those of the nomads
mentioned above. The sources reveal their oath-taking after their second
entry into the kingdom, when they concluded a marriage alliance with the
king. After entering the kingdom prior to the Mongol invasion, the Cumans
were attacked by the local population, who saw them as the vanguard of
the Mongols, and they left Hungary. After the Mongol invasion, however,
they were invited to return, and this time their loyalty to the king was to be
ensured by a marriage between Prince István (Stephen), heir to the throne,
and a Cuman princess. The ceremony also known from the steppe was then
performed, cutting a dog in two while swearing an oath. Ten Cuman lords
swore during the wedding feast over a dog ‘cut into two by a sword, as is
their custom, that they would hold the land of the Hungarians, as men faith-
ful to the king, against the Tartars and barbarous nations’.27 From accounts
of this form of oath in the world of the steppe, it is clear that the significance
of cutting the dog apart lay in wishing its fate on the party who broke the
oath.28 Later on, as the Cumans integrated into local society, their particular
form of oath was no longer practised: in 1279, when their representatives
were obliged to promise solemnly in front of the papal legate Philip and the
king of Hungary to observe certain forms of behaviour (including accept-
ing baptism and settling down), there is no mention of such an oath.29 Both
instances are significant. During the initial period of their immigration into
the kingdom, they retained their own form of oath and promised allegiance to
a Christian king through that oath; that is, their incorporation was expressed
through their own custom, and consisted of allegiance to a ruler while retain-
ing their own social and legal structure. This form of integration into a polity
was what steppe nomads were accustomed to. Later on, however, as part of
their further integration, they had to give up many of their traditions, includ-
ing that of a type of oath abhorrent to Christians, and adopt the customs and
religion of the host society. The incorporation of ‘pagans’ who were expected
to convert was different from that of Jews and Muslims, whose religion was
recognised by Christians. For the latter two groups, although conversion was
often encouraged, it was not an obligation that was imposed on them in the
same way as on the Cumans.
A separate form of oath existed for the Jews as well. In this case, however,
it was not simply a question of the Jews retaining their own forms of oath;
in addition, there was a concern from a Christian perspective of ensuring
that the oath Jews would take would be reliable. Given the background of
deteriorating relations between Christians and Jews in much of Europe, with
the mounting of Christian prejudice and persecution, it is not surprising that
in many parts of Europe new forms of Jewish oaths were devised. Although
they existed from the early Middle Ages on, oath formulas became more
common from the late twelfth century. Christian authorities wanted to ensure
that Jews, routinely described as perfidious by Christian authors, would take
an oath that was truly binding. Apart from swearing on their own scripture,
elaborate self-curses and ritual were added to the Jewry-oath in many parts
of Europe in order to ensure this goal was met.30 In Hungary, however, the
Jewish oath seems not to have incorporated the humiliating elements added
in many other areas. The privileges King Béla IV granted to the Jews of
Hungary in 1251 exempted them from swearing on the Torah for insignifi-
cant matters (it was up to the king to decide whether they had to swear).
Although the text of the oath was not specified in the privileges, and does
not survive from the thirteenth century, the privileges do state that the oath
was to be taken super libris Moysi qui rodale appellatur, that is on Jewish
scripture, which was usually designated as a roll, to distinguish it from the
book format of the Gospels.31 A fifteenth-century oath formula in Hungary
was still devoid of degrading elements; it was only in the sixteenth century
that, as a result of German influences, humiliating clauses were added to the
Jewry oath in the kingdom.32 The Jewish oath in Hungary, then, shows that
the Jews lived in the kingdom as an accepted minority, and that suspicion
and persecution in the mid-thirteenth century did not reach the levels it did in
many Western areas.
Muslims lived in the kingdom of Hungary as a small minority. We have
fewer sources on them than on the Jews, and it is impossible to know whether
there was a specific oath formula that pertained to Muslims. They appear,
however, in three cases of litigation that came before the canons of Várad.33
This in itself is interesting, because the canons administered and recorded
cases of ordeal, which usually were not applied to non-Christians.34 In all
three cases Muslims (Ysmaelitae) accused Christians: one accusation is
not recorded, the other two concerned theft. The accuser in one case was an
individual, in the other cases groups. One case was decided by a settlement
reached before a royal judge: in this instance the Muslim accuser received a
payment, although it was less than he had originally demanded. The other
two cases were decided by the ordeal of hot iron, which led to the exculpation
of the accused in one case and their being burnt and thus declared guilty in the
other. In the case that ended in a settlement, the Muslim accuser acted alone.
In the two other instances, however, which actually did proceed to ordeal, the
Muslim accusers were supported by others – they acted coadiuvantibus aliis.
This may indicate the presence of oath-helpers.35 The Muslims of Hungary,
then, at least as accusers, had access to a specifically Christian form of trial,
ordeals.
Forms of oaths differed not simply for the non-Christian minorities: we
find a diverse set of formulas at every level of society, even including its pin-
nacle. Oaths appeared early in the Christian kingdom of Hungary, at least in
the laws; they are alluded to already in the first surviving legislation – King
István (Stephen) I’s laws. According to these laws, those who commit perjury
are to be punished by the amputation of a hand unless they can redeem it by a
fixed number of steers.36 This text already states that it concerns the powerful
as well as the commoners (although the number of steers to be given by the
two categories differ).
Oaths varied according to the nature of the case: for example, the number
of oath-helpers was determined according to the value of the disputed land
or the damage caused, or according to the amount of the wergild or the seri-
ousness of the crime in criminal cases.37 The oath of different status-groups
(for example nobles or serfs) had a different weight.38 The place and man-
ner of taking oaths varied as well: the most common, but by no means only,
form was oaths taken in church, touching the altar or relics.39 In charters,
various cases of different types of oaths among Christians can be found. A
good example comes from 1236, when the abbot of a Benedictine monastery
with two brothers had to swear that a piece of land rightfully belonged to the
monastery: they did so by laying their hand on the Benedictine Rule – super
librum regularum sancti Benedicti manus imponentes. In addition, two of the
monastery’s serfs swore standing on the disputed land itself, putting earth
on their head – super predicta terra stantes et terram super capita eorum
ponentes.40 The latter type of oath, involved in decisions about boundary dis-
putes, crops up several times in the sources.41 In 1288, King László (Ladislas)
IV granted members of the church of Esztergom the right to swear on the
extent of damages without the necessity of obtaining other testimony.42 Many
groups had the right to take oaths in a specific church or chapel, for example,
in the local monastic church.43 Some members of the elite swore in the royal
chapel.44 Prelates wore their full ecclesiastical dress.45
Royal oaths are mentioned without specifying the details, for example that
of Béla IV in 1263 to keep the peace with his son István after civil wars.46
Kings swore in front of papal legates several times over the course of the
thirteenth century. This was often on the Gospels, one of the standard forms
of oath-taking in medieval Europe. For example, in 1233, András (Andrew)
II took the oath of Bereg on the Gospels. His son Béla (IV) as younger king
took a similar oath in the same year to the papal legate James, touching the
Gospels, tactis sacrosanctis evangeliis, and also had a charter written, sealed
with a golden bull, to keep an agreement together with his father.47 László
IV in 1279 took a solemn oath on the Gospels to keep the articles dictated
by the papal legate Philip concerning the Cumans – sollemniter promisimus
et iuravimus ad sacrosancta dei evangelia.48 Even oaths in front of a papal
legate, however, could be more complex. In one of his letters to King László
IV, dated 9 December 1279, Pope Nicholas III reminded the king that he
had promised super Altare, tactis evangeliis that he would obey the legate.
Concerning the policy he promised to implement about the Cumans, he first
solemnly swore in front of the cross at the altar, and then also swore pledg-
ing his royal faith according to the Hungarian custom – coram ligno cru-
cis solempniter in Altari primo, et iterum Regia fide data Ungarico more
iurasti.49 Further on, the papal letter elaborates on the latter form of oath
– per manum dextram, Regia fide data, Ungarico more similiter, . . . tactis
sacrosanctis evangeliis iurasti. This has been interpreted as shaking hands,50
an interpretation that lacks foundation in the text. The Hungarian custom
referred to by the pope has to do with the king giving his royal promise.
The pope probably understood László IV’s pledge as fitting into a series of
promises made by Hungarian rulers either at the time of their coronation or
at some other time during a king’s reign, which were also accompanied by
the promulgation of a royal charter (such as the Golden Bull of 1222). This
interpretation is buttressed by the fact that King László IV, in his earlier oath
that year which the pope referred to, mentioned the oaths of previous kings of
Hungary.51 The precise gesture made with the right hand is not explained, but
parallels of status-group specific gestures can be found in Hungarian docu-
ments. For example, members of another group, ecclesiastics, took oaths
putting their (right) hand on their breast when taking an oath – manum suam
dextram super pectus suum faciendo – as described in fourteenth-century
sources.52 Coronation oaths of Hungarian kings are known to have existed
from at least the late twelfth century on, but detailed data is only available
starting at the end of the thirteenth century. The coronation oath in the later
medieval period meant swearing with the hands on a coronation cross (when
the custom started is unkown). Its content came to include guaranteeing the
privileges of the church and of nobles, and promising to uphold justice and
the integrity of the kingdom. It differed from ecclesiastical oaths taken by
Hungarian kings, which were sworn with the hand on the Bible. Royal oaths
53
per fidem regiam are also mentioned in the later Middle Ages.54
These texts from Hungary provide a window on a society that incorporated
different groups and different customs. Oaths, because they had to be seen
by others as binding on the oath-taker, are key evidence concerning social
interaction. They attest to the perceptions concerning the status and reliabil-
ity of various groups and individuals and indicate the measures that were
seen as appropriate to ensure that the oath could be accepted. It is clear that
people of different status-groups sometimes took oaths on different objects.
Whereas swearing on the altar, on a cross or on a relic was suitable for eve-
ryone, other objects were appropriate for members of certain groups. In this
way, Benedictine monks swearing on their Rule were seen as fulfilling the
criteria of reliability. Groups adhering to another religion might have their
own oaths, as did the Jews, but could also be incorporated, at least as accus-
ers, into the system of ordeals, as Muslims. A group undergoing a process
of imposed religious change, the Cumans, experienced that transformation
partially through the loss of their own form of oath. Finally, even for rulers,
a particular form of oath existed in addition to the usual ones, pledging their
royal faith to fulfil a promise. Oath-taking therefore mirrors the complex-
ity of social interaction in medieval Hungary: the religion, social status and
perceived reliability of the oath-taker, as well as the context and object of the
oath, all played a part in determining the exact form of each oath.
5 Conrad II’s theatrum rituale
Wipo on the earliest deeds
of the Salian ruler (Gesta
Chuonradi imperatoris cap. 5)
Jacek Banaszkiewicz
Over the past 15 years there has been a significant rise in interest among
medieval historians in those stories, or chroniclers’ accounts, which confirm
our increasingly widespread conviction that medieval political and social
realities functioned thanks to periodic rejuvenation effected by an omnipres-
ent ritualised practice – a practice that varied in its form and meaning, and
that was proscribed by certain scenarios, of which both parties to a particular
act were aware. Scholars have, so to speak, luxuriated in the sheer wealth of
pertinent material which, as they realise, remains at their disposal. Out of this
mass of material are carefully extracted all the fragments containing descrip-
tions of some act performed by the protagonist (or protagonists) in an event
(or a sequence of events); with a conviction that such activity, even if it does
not constitute a rite that was actually used in the past, must at least, on first
principles, have been subject during that past to then-binding forms of social
conduct.1
Thus, while receiving from medieval historians those pictures of human
behaviour, one would be supposed to get the then-practised rituals, or stag-
ing, whereby members of the community accomplished their goals – or (to
put this as generally as possible) whereby they communicated with one
another in a process of social interaction. The hunt in the material of medi-
eval narrative sources for such ritual-laden (or such thickly-staged) stories
has led to a rather unceremonious extraction, out of the narrative corpus, of
such examples, or ‘ritual morsels’, as if they themselves were able to justify
their substantive message and brought-into-being reality – without the need
to relate their content to the contextual scope of a work in its entirety, or to
other narrative productions which resemble the work.2 The compositional
and literary background of such staged, ritualised pieces – or their narra-
tive shape, a shape which is always authorially imposed, ‘fake’, and indeed
related to a meta-verbal reality to an entirely unknown degree – such ques-
tions are, in the course of this hunt, of secondary importance. After all, we
are concerned here with practices which really did happen in the Middle
Conrad II’s theatrum rituale 51
Ages! Such considerations become entirely unimportant when we also offer
ourselves this kind of luxury – as, indeed, Hans Kurt Schulze has done in his
treatment of a certain passage by Wipo about Conrad II, and about an event
immediately preceding Conrad’s enthronement – a passage which forms the
specific material for our inquiry.3
This interestingly constructed and appealing little story has attracted
much attention recently, and this not merely in biographical treatments of
the first Salian monarch.4 Before we take a closer look at it, let us return for a
moment to Schulze and to (as I would call it) the programmatic exclamation
with which Schulze summed up the image conveyed by this story: Wipo war
Augenzeuge. To be sure (Schulze further observes), Conrad II’s court chap-
lain might have slightly embellished the circumstances, but surely he did not
simply fabricate, or make up, the core event itself. Obviously (Schulze adds),
that event was arranged as a stage play!5
By means of that latter statement, Schulze defends the empirical value of
this little tale – a tale which, as we will shortly see, seems incredible even at
first glance. Nevertheless, even though the sequence of events described by
Wipo does not, on its own terms and ‘in the natural scheme of things’, seem
to be part of a historical reality, it becomes that reality provided we assume
that it was arranged as a stage play by medieval orchestrators. Wipo had seen
those events, and so his description conveys reality – slightly embellished
perhaps, but reality nevertheless. It is a pity that Schulze did not present the
possible reservations concerning that reality. All in all, the sequence of events
– which is also classified by other scholars as a staging, a mise-en-scène, a
theatre of political propaganda – is fully a part of the history of Conrad II, and
of history in general.
It is time to look, at long last, at the only actual piece of reality at our
disposal: the short story by Wipo to which we have been referring. Wipo
viewed this story as a narrative account of several acts performed by King
Conrad right at the outset of his royal career. For the author, for the story
in its entirety, and for the sequence of the events described in the story, the
placement of Conrad’s deeds during the initial period of his position as king
is of crucial importance. Wipo, as he himself put it, was telling a story de
primis gestis Chuonradi regis, but, strictly speaking, those deeds belong to
a time that is even more extraordinary and important.6 In the story, Conrad
is the king-elect who has just travelled from Kamba and arrived at Mainz, in
order to receive in the local cathedral of Saint Martin the royal anointment
and the fullness of power over the country. This spatio-temporal placement of
the circumstances comprising Wipo’s story is underscored emphatically and
brought into the foreground by the narrator. Twice, in close sequence, Wipo
conveys to us the extraordinary context of the accomplishments of Conrad’s
rule; these accomplishments occur in ipsa die consecrationis [Chuonradi],
and in ipsa processione regis, precisely as the king is in transit to the cathedral
and the consecration ceremonies.
What, then, had Conrad done to prompt historians today to assert that the
king’s anoinment was preceded by a staging? And, to have prompted Wipo
himself to document those very first gesta performed by the ruler, licet parva
videantur? The king, together with the entourage, moved toward the cathe-
dral. At that point, Wipo wrote, he was approached by three persons, each
with a separate claim and with an individual complaint. Of the petitioners,
one was a peasant of the church of Mainz, another was an unspecified orphan
and the third was a woman described only as a widow.
Conrad began to listen to the problems these three people brought to him.
At that time, some of the accompanying princes tried to pull him away from
the little group, urging him not to delay his anointment, but to take part in the
church ceremony at the due time. The king-elect directed his answer not to
those great lords, but to the bishops who were also present near him. ‘Because
I am assuming royal office’, he said, ‘and because a worthy man never aban-
dons that which ought to be done rightly, it seems more appropriate to me
to do what I ought, than to hear what I ought to do from someone else.’ He
enhanced this ‘all-wise’, rhetorically charged locution with additional truths,
which he directed to those luminaries in his entourage who were urging him
on. He observed that ‘I remember how you have often said that most worthy
of admiration are not those who study the law, but those who carry it out. And
if, as you maintain, there is a need to hurry so that the anointment ceremonies
may be completed, then the more fully I know that I am approaching a great
dignity, the more circumspectly I ought to strengthen my steps along the path
of God’s work.’
Thus Conrad, in his own words. On his side, Wipo continued the story,
and, from the narrator’s viewpoint, reported the subsequent events, compris-
ing the episode in its entirety. The chronicler noted that, as he was utter-
ing these words, Conrad remained in the same spot where the claimants had
approached him: ‘He paused on his way and resolved their cases, according
to the law.’ But this is not the end of our story. Wipo continued his tale about
the final moments that preceded Conrad’s royal anointment. Just as the king
finished with the three petitioners, and moved forward a bit, a fourth claimant
appeared. At this point, we learn the exact nature of the grievance for which
this next man to place himself upon the trajectory of the king’s advance was
seeking a remedy. He had been (he assured the king) expelled from his home-
land, through no fault of his own. What follows is discernible, strictly speak-
ing, not to Wipo, but to us. As he had done with the earlier three petitioners
for royal justice, Conrad displayed great patience and understanding with the
fourth; but in this case, the king acted differently than he had done with the
others. We know this because the chronicler tells us that ‘[t]he king took [the
fourth claimant] by the hand, led him through the crowd past the bystanders
and up to the throne, and there caringly entrusted the case of this unfortunate
to one of his princes.’
This report by Wipo, and this act by Conrad, conclude the description (and
the enumeration) of the deeds performed by the ruler immediately before the
application of the royal chrism in the cathedral. The narration at this point sets
the scene for a whole series of rhetorical flourishes of delight with Conrad’s
actions, interlaced with interpretations of the symbolic systems employed by
the king, and of the prophetic significance of his behaviour. There is a recur-
rence of the problem (persistent in Wipo’s account of the ruler-elect’s initial
acts) of the Salian’s haste – or, should I say, absence of haste – in the pursuit
of the royal office. Wipo writes, ‘He was afraid to rush [to obtain the crown],
lest he fail to attain the true majesty of king.’ After a while, and after noting
how praiseworthy it is – inter nova gaudia, and inter deliciosa regis minis-
teria – to hear the cries of so many unfortunates and to bring their cases to a
conclusion, Wipo again belaboured the idea of Conrad’s unhasty assumption
of the supreme position in the state.7
In his propagandistic zeal, Wipo did not deny himself the opportunity to
drive this point home in full. Even before he received the anointment and
took a seat upon the throne, Conrad acted in exemplary fashion – consistent,
we might say, with the prescribed, normative pattern. He was attentive to
complaints by precisely those categories of people who deserved the king’s
(and the Church’s) protection as a matter of principle. For centuries, one of
the fundamental truths of medieval ‘social science’ had been the proposi-
tion that priests, along with the most vulnerable social groups – widows,
orphans, and newcomers or ‘foreigners’ – merited a special degree of pro-
tection by the ruler.8 Because Conrad’s ‘pre-coronation snapshot’ appears
to be, in every inch, so good and accurate, and because it is difficult to
imagine that in the course of a ceremony which was this dignified (that is to
say, at a time when everyone among the aristocrats wished to be seen in the
proximity of the person who was about to become king), as many as four
low-status persons could have achieved access to Conrad, historians are
compelled, or at least prefer, to speak about these events as a mise-en-scène.
This reading allows historians to overcome the quaint, artificial character
of the entire affair. One may then also disregard all the illogicality of the
narrated action, and all its conspicuous moments of incoherence – includ-
ing, among others, the fact that at the beginning Wipo had his protagonist,
who was supposedly reluctant to assume power, rapidly proceed from the
assembly field to Mainz in order to complete the required ceremonies; and
including the fact that later in the story, as the narration assumes an explic-
itly didactic purpose, Wipo delayed the ruler-elect’s entrance into Saint
Martin’s cathedral.9
At present, we claim that in the study of narrative representations made by
chroniclers there is little value in interpreting the text by relating the events
described in it to that readily and easily invoked construct called historical
reality; this is especially true if we think that that latter mirage is an entity
which can be objectively apprehended.10 The distortion inflicted upon the
flow of events by the eye of the observer, and subsequently by the observer’s
semantic repertoire, whereby the perceived phenomena are reduced into
words and subjected to ‘meta-historical’ rules of narration, are so varied,
complicated and difficult to grasp that an attempt to nail down the text of the
story with the simple questions – did the narrated story happen, or did it not?
and, if we are in doubt, what did in fact occur? – usually lead us not to the
desired historical facts, but into a cognitive muddle.
Therefore, without pretending to verify the facts conveyed by Wipo’s nar-
ration sub specie historiae, let us examine the structure of the plot, and of
the events described by the chronicler in their entirety. Concerning our story,
others (as we have noted above) have already observed that, in view of the
selection of the place, and especially of the time, of Conrad’s deeds, the story
assumes a special significance, in the sense that it foreshadows the king-
elect’s successful governance in the future. Yet it is worth noting that the
most important move – a device deliberately intended to build up suspense
in the story, and to generate its most important ideas – is the placement of the
protagonist in a situation where he must decide to take on a certain obligatory
role – even a role of a kind that, for formal reasons, he ought not to undertake
– a role in which this decision exposes him to the risk of various inconve-
niences, including serious danger. In Conrad’s case, as presented by Wipo,
the intrigue is crafted with exceptional skill. By assuming, before due time,
the obligations of a king and of a just judge, Conrad deprived himself of the
ability to become an ‘ordinary’ ruler; although – only for a time, to be sure
– he placed his own royal future in suspension.11
These self-delaying behaviours by Conrad in the course of his progression
toward royal power – so meticulously displayed and ideologically interpreted
by the narrating chronicler, as we have seen – remind us of a frequent situa-
tional outcome under similar circumstances, namely cases when the protago-
nist confronts an inescapable requirement to assume power. As Roger Collins
notes, the future ruler or bishop, pressed by the electors or by the community
that wishes to have him as leader, usually, and consistent with a standardised
political rhetoric, tries in various ways to postpone the moment of assump-
tion of high office.12 With Charlemagne, the subject of Collins’s book, this
‘refusal of power’ assumed the form of a somewhat delayed afterthought by
the Frankish king concerning the event that had just transpired in Saint Peter’s
basilica on Christmas Day. ‘Had I known what the pope intended – that he
would bestow upon me the imperial dignity – I would not have entered the
church, even on the greatest holiday.’ This is how, in Einhard’s view, Charles
excused himself: as a person overwhelmed by ‘unwanted’ power.13
Saul, the first king of Israel, hid in his house when Samuel and the people
sought to endow him with kingship.14 The Visigothic king, Wamba, resisted
accepting the crown so categorically that he had to be threatened with behead-
ing. Others who had been selected by Providence – chosen as leaders of their
people from on high – also procrastinated in their acceptances of the regal
offer – an offer that caused the poor egg-trader Dagobert to deploy elaborate
attempts at evasion. Meanwhile, Ine – who was, likewise by a higher dis-
pensation, selected rex citra Humbram – was detained in the village hut, and
discouraged from travelling to the royal palace, by his father and by the local
community, who feared for his safety. John Agnus, who kept his distance
from high politics, was also not eager to assume high office – in his, case the
bishopric of Maastricht. He agreed to God’s verdict only after observing that
his candidacy had universal support.15
We could surely add more examples of reluctance to assume the high-
est power; yet the above suffice to situate Conrad’s leisurely path to power,
punctuated by delays required for the pronouncement of judgments about his
subjects, within a highly adaptable but widespread canon of political rheto-
ric: the trope of a ‘refusal of power’. The literary effectiveness of the appli-
cation of this canon in this particular story stems, in our opinion, from the
fact that the absence of haste to assume power by the protagonist (who, by
the way, did not specifically flinch from the royal dignity) does not merely
serve, as is usually the case in the cited examples, to highlight the elect’s
exceptional modesty – an absence of a lust for power – but in addition it
has a constructive value: the candidate for the crown promptly and convinc-
ingly displays his excellent practical qualifications for the performance of
the highest office. He acts like a true king, although he has not yet received
the full mandate to do so. An ordinary (though, to be sure, successful) ruler-
elect would have gone through the expected ceremonies rapidly, and, as we
hear from Thegan about Louis the Pious, would immediately upon assum-
ing power turn precisely to those tasks which, as it were, occupied Conrad’s
attention prematurely.16
Two centuries before Wipo composed Conrad’s gesta, Thegan, the auxil-
iary bishop of Trier, produced, in writing, a paradigmatic image of what a per-
fect king ought to do after being formally vested in power.17 Several months
before his death, Charlemagne admitted his son Louis to power, so that when
the great emperor was gone it ought to have been enough for his son to hasten
from Aquitaine to the palace in Aachen, and assume his predecessor’s throne.
And yet, what deeds opened the new monarch’s reign? We find that, very rap-
idly, Louis demanded a viewing of the treasure (or treasures) accumulated by
the predecessor. Next, we hear that he divided those goods among his sisters;
that he sent part of them to the pope; and that he dedicated another part to
prayer for his father’s soul. Out of the remainder – and this sensitivity of the
king as benefactor is of special interest to us – he made gifts to the priests, the
poor, travellers or foreigners, widows and orphans.18
Louis embarked upon other courses of action, which the biographer
used to illustrate the modes whereby, during the interval that followed his
assumption of power, Charlemagne’s son convinced his subjects that he was
an authentic and good lord of the community.19 Suffice it to say that this
sequence of actions originating Louis’s rule closed with an inquiry – ordered
by him, apparently addressed to the relatively poor, low-status social groups,
and intended to discover a wide range of misconduct committed in the past.20
To carry out this task, envoys were sent to all the kingdoms subject to Louis,
and the ruler ordered that anyone able to prove having suffered a damage
immediately be allowed to appear before the king in person. By virtue of
this procedure, the community’s top leader and the wretched victim might
encounter one another, so that justice was served.21 Thegan noted that the
envoys did discover a huge population aggrieved by local officials and counts.
More specifically, he reported two categories of transgression by agents of
royal power – forced seizures of patrimony, and subjections of poor but free
persons to servile status – suggesting here that these transgressions must have
been especially frequent, and acutely felt.22
Thus, the newly-minted ruler had a good opportunity to advertise himself
as a just judge, sensitive to the misfortunes of the poor. However, like Wipo,
other biographers had their protagonists acting in an official capacity, and
putting their best foot forward – before, strictly speaking, the time for so
doing had arrived. Suetonius wrote about Vespasian that, ever since assum-
ing the principate, that emperor kept to the following constant daily schedule.
He rose early, before dawn, and got down to work. He read letters and reports
from his officials. As soon as he completed those tasks, he admitted friends
into his presence. As they were greeting him, he was still putting on his shoes
and getting dressed.23 In other words, Vespasian was commencing his public,
official performance as emperor on each successive day of his reign, prior to
assuming the full posture appropriate to the ruler, a posture that constituted
rulership. During these moments, he was emerging from a zone of personal
privacy, which he had not quite left yet, while already acting as emperor. To
be sure, the emperor’s audience were his friends – a group that was specifi-
cally allowed contact with him while he was in the course of assuming the
full imperial dignity.
Nevertheless, Charlemagne’s conduct shows that, even during the time
when the ruler was entering the formally-differentiated role of community
leader, he may already discharge the duties of kingship with complete dedica-
tion. Without a doubt, Einhard trumped Suetonius; Einhard’s protagonist not
only admitted friends to himself as he was dressing and putting on his shoes,
but, right in those very same moments of transition (or, to put it differently,
of his authentication of himself as emperor), he discharged, when needed,
an extremely important responsibility of kingship. We hear that putting on
shoes and getting dressed did not prevent Charles from adjudicating a legal
case that required his intervention. Whenever the count palatine encountered
a case of that kind, the emperor immediately ordered the parties to be brought
into the royal chamber, and ‘as if sitting on a judgment seat, examined the
matter and pronounced a verdict’.24
In the context of these two stories, the subject of the ruler putting on or
removing his shoes is especially notable. Here and in other sources, this act
most effectively and vividly depicted the moment of the protagonist’s pas-
sage across the boundary of personal privacy, and entrance into (or out of)
the zone of public power.25 Gerhard of Augsburg gives us an anecdote, quite
touching in this regard, about the bishop of Augsburg, Saint Udalric. When
this man of austere habits was in his advanced years, after completing mass
he never went to bed before dusk. Moreover, in order to prevent himself from
resting before the appropriate time, he remained sitting in his chair with his
shoes on; and so, the biographer notes, as he waited for the right time to go to
sleep, he suffered, nodding now to the right, now to the left, until he finally
collapsed against the backrest of the cathedral throne.26 Charlemagne had no
such inhibitions. We know that during the summer, after an afternoon meal,
he routinely prepared dessert for himself, and removed himself from official
circulation for a few hours. Einhard shows us how Charles habitually freed
himself from imperial routine: the king ‘got undressed and removed his shoes
as if for the night’.27
Within the narrative contexts in which we are now interested, the ruler’s
act of removal or putting on his shoes is thus a clue to a particular valorisation
of time, and to a particular valorisation of the events that occur before or after
that act – in the same way as Conrad II’s activities are valorised by the caesura
of the ceremony of his ascension to royal office. If the king is without shoes
– and, moreover, undressed – and yet wishes to assume the responsibilities
that await him just past the threshhold of the royal chamber; if the protagonist
does not yet have the royal chrism, and yet does not concern himself above
all with that chrism, but takes on the royal responsibilities instead – then, in
every such case, we are dealing with a perfect ruler.
The story about Conrad II which interests us here finds narrative rework-
ings, or analogies, not merely on the level of structure and meaning. In addi-
tion, we have accounts which – as they employ narrative outcomes where
the main protagonist places his obligations ahead of all the consequences
that threaten him as a result of that choice – bring to life a reality which is
similar, in terms of its staging, to the reality we know from Wipo’s story. As
he sketched out the history of the Piast dynasty ruling Poland, Gallus the
Anonymous (the chronicler, or more properly the author of the deeds of his
lord, Duke Bolesław the Wrymouth, active in Poland during the first quarter
of the twelfth century, but undoubtedly educated in the West), discussed,
among other subjects, one of that dynasty’s most outstanding members,
Bolesław the Brave.28 In Gallus’s hands, Bolesław takes on the full propor-
tions of creator of the greatness of the Polish kingdom; his reign constitutes
a golden age. Gallus treated this ruler in several distinct passages, which, in
conjunction, attest to this actor’s extraordinary traits. Among them was the
Polish king’s immense sense of justice, coupled with humility.
The representation of these two traits takes the form of a lengthy story.
The starting point of the plot is Gallus’s assertion that ‘whenever a poor peas-
ant or an ordinary modest woman brought a complaint against some prince
or count, Bolesław did not budge from where he was until he heard out the
case with which those poor people had approached him’.29 We hear that the
ruler acted in this way habitually, even when he was otherwise preoccupied
with important responsibilities, and when he was surrounded by a crowd of
aristocrats and knights. There was more: as he attentively listened ‘to the
complaint of some poor wretch’, he immediately ordered that an official be
sent to fetch the accused. This part of Bolesław’s portrait – a just judge, and
a defender of the oppressed – corresponds well to the image of Conrad II
that we owe to Wipo. Explicitly, and quite similarly, both stories describe the
price paid by every ruler for his desire to be, with no reservation whatever,
a lord who delivers justice to even his most ordinary subjects. The pressure
and the splendour of the aristocrats in attendance on the ruler, and the burden
of state responsibilites weighing upon him, are confronted with an ideal: an
ideal so obviously stipulatory and theoretical as the right to royal justice,
enjoyed by even the most base, abject individual.
Both kings, as we know, rose to the occasion, as expected; yet, what we
learn from the two plots is that it was Bolesław who better fulfilled his obliga-
tions – or, that it was Gallus who presented the key event better than Wipo had
done. After admonishing his companions not to disturb him in the activity
he had undertaken, Conrad attended to the petitioners. However, the ‘trials’
were one-sided: the defendants – that is to say, the persons at fault in the three
victims’ misfortunes – were absent. Strictly speaking, we do not know why
Conrad treated the fourth complainant differently from the other three, and
why he needed to drag him all the way before the royal throne, there only to
place the case in the hands of one of his princes. Was he unable to resolve the
case quickly himself, as he had done in the previous cases? Even if he sud-
denly began to hurry, the act of ‘meticulously entrusting’ the complaint to one
of the princes must have been time-consuming.
We are quarrying this episode of Conrad’s judgment quite intensively even
though we fully realise that, on the basis of similar conjectures, historians may
augment their connection to an extra-narrative reality in a whole variety of
ways. Yet we also have Bolesław, who – according to Gallus’s vignette – right
after familiarising himself with the claim of the poor man or woman who had
approached him, set in motion a full-fledged trial for the victim. As we have
seen, the ruler immediately summoned the high-status accused to appear; and
he entrusted the low-status plaintiff to a reliable royal companion, something
that Conrad had done only in the case of the final, fourth petitioner. From this
point onward, the legal case proceeded along a routine course.
Gallus also informs us that after the high-status accused appeared, the
caretaker of the case, and of the impoverished plaintiff, routinely reminded
the ruler about the trial. The accused magnate arrived at the court promptly,
just as the king had ordered him to do in the summons; he did not disregard
the date of trial set by Bolesław. In turn, the king gave the accused dignitary a
friendly welcome, showing the accused no dislike, but instead inviting him to
the royal table. Legal proceedings took place only on the second or the third
day since the accused lord’s arrival. Our story does not end with the message
that, in confrontation with a rich man, the poor man is always right. The idea
which informs the chronicler’s entire tale points us in a different direction:
Bolesław the Brave, Gallus tells us, treated a case of a poor man exactly as
he would treat a case of ‘some great prince’. When the king stood in judg-
ment, it was not the position of the person but the merits of the controversy
that mattered.30
As we look at the stories of Conrad and Bolesław – stories of two just kings
and judges – we note that in Gallus’s narration the accused is treated with a
higher degree of respect. In the face of the damage he allegedly inflicts upon
the poor, the wealthy accused does not, as a generic type, suddenly morph
into an evil official-culprit – a literary device which, had it been used, would
have fictionalised this story even further. Likewise, the activities whereby
Bolesław the Brave sought to deliver justice to the people who sought it are
shown in fuller detail than is the case with Wipo’s narration about Conrad. In
Wipo’s story, the actors against whom the accusations were lodged are not
specified, even in the broadest terms. The weak are oppressed by the strong:
this truism suffices for Wipo in the creation of the incident discussed here.
Wipo treated the process of delivery of justice (an important subject, after all)
with a similar superficiality: wham, bam, and presto, the widow, the orphan
and the rustic all receive what they have sought.
Surely, as we oscillate between these two stories, we do not wish to prove
that one is more realistic (‘truthful’) than the other. We merely wish to note
that Wipo’s example belongs to a certain genre of expressing, by means of a
tale, the idea of an ‘industrious, dutiful’ ruler; an idea which included, above
all, doing justice. Conrad’s biographer used this particular narrative structure;
he developed his literary invention in that portion of his presentation where
the protagonist was subjected to a severe test, the purpose of which was to
ascertain whether, under adverse conditions, the protagonist would confirm
that he was a good ruler, sensitive to the misfortune of his subjects. On the
other hand, even though Gallus put this structural, situational asset to good
use in his story about Bolesław, he shifted the core focus of the story onto the
technical side of delivering royal justice to those who were at the lowest rungs
of society and had been harmed by the wealthy.
The impact of the story about the just king upon the reader presumably
increased as a function of the effectiveness with which the tension between
the ruler’s need to do justice to the poor, and the objective difficulties that
hampered the ruler in the performance of that role, was resolved. In this
regard, let us turn to one more account which belongs to the same family of
stories. This account seems to enhance the other stories with a new element,
the blueprint of intrigue – intrigue that compels the ruler, under very adverse
circumstances, to come to grips with his obligation as a judge who does jus-
tice to the poor. We are referring to the story concerning Emperor Trajan
included in the vita of Gregory the Great written by a certain monk of Whitby.
The vita was most probably written in the first decade of the eighth century,
while the anecdote concerning the emperor is included among Gregory’s
miracle stories.31
Thus we hear that Trajan was hastily leading out an army prepared to fight
an enemy, when suddenly ‘the ruler of the entire world’ brought the march
to a halt out of pity for one widow. She complained to the emperor that right
there, among the troops, were the people who had killed her son, and who did
not wish to compensate her for the heinous crime. ‘When I return’, Trajan
replied, ‘bring the case before me, and I will cause them to compensate you
for your harm.’ But the widow demanded a more prompt disposal of her
complaint, saying, ‘If you do not return from the campaign, no one will help
me.’ At this point, right there on the spot, without removing his military gear,
the emperor turned, for a moment, into a judge, and caused the culprits to pay
the widow, in his presence, compensatory damages for the boy’s death. Some
centuries later, Dante used the same little story to illustrate the trait of humil-
ity – which was so important to rulers – plus an additional royal trait which
we know well, namely the willingness to treat justly even the least important
subjects.32 Indeed, the Poet assures us that he is showing us only one of three
reliefs, carved in the rock of the first terrace of Purgatory, in the place where
people who have been excessively vain during their lives are now doing pen-
ance for the sin of pride.
The set design of the event remains unchanged. A great army has set out
for war, cavalry troops are everywhere, banners with golden eagles flap in
the wind – and yet some poor little widow, who had somehow found herself
in the midst of this martial gathering, causes the emperor to pause as a result
of her complaint. She asks Trajan to do justice to her, as compensation for her
son, who had been deprived of his life. A dialogue between the two ensues.
It does not differ from the dialogue we have noted in the story described a
moment ago, except that it exceeds that dialogue by one additional exchange
of utterances between the woman and the emperor. This time, the aggrieved
woman compelled Trajan to action by means of the following rhetorical
question: ‘What good will come to you from your successor’s good deed if
you yourself forget to do good, to fulfil your obligations?’ Trajan once again
decided to attend to the widow’s complaint immediately. Moreover, he gave
a justification for that decision: ‘This is required by justice; moreover, mercy
compels me to pause.’33
Similarly, compassion compelled the Czech ruler, Spitignev (substituted
by the chronicler Cosmas in the role of Trajan), to interrupt a military cam-
paign for the duration of a ducal trial.34 In this, ‘Slavic’ version of the incident,
the stage setting for the course of events is less splendid than it later became
with Dante. Nevertheless, we do hear that the Přemyslid ruler had been on
the march with the army, and ‘with the insignia raised’, for almost one full
day, and that at this point a widow approached Spitignev, lamenting and cry-
ing, and sought his protection from a menacing enemy. The whole picture is
well situated within the realities of time and place by the chronicler’s obser-
vation that, as she sought to attract the duke’s attention to herself and her
case, the widow intensely and repeatedly kissed Spitignev’s feet. Thus, she
must have been running, for some time, on one side of the ruler’s horse; and
must have placed the imploring kisses not, strictly speaking, on his feet, but
on one of his legs, resting in a stirrup. Thereafter, she continued to follow
Spitignev’s horse. These were the circumstances in which the dialogue just
noted between the ruler and the widow took place. The widow used the same
argument which, as we learn from Dante, persuaded Trajan: ‘Spitignev, if for
a good deed you are able to receive a reward from God, why do disregard that
reward?’ Accordingly, the duke interrupted the military expedition, presided
over a trial and, by means of a just verdict, protected the widow from her
enemy.
Next, the chronicler drew out the moral and ideological underpinnings
of this story (or, rather, of this narrated historical event), in order to laud
and celebrate Spitignev as an exceptionally splendid ruler: father of the
clergy, protector of widows.35 Cosmas juxtaposed the mercy shown by this
Přemyslid (one of those Czech rulers whom he viewed as models of good
rule) against the pompous pride characteristic of the lords of Prague.36
Our short story – which is preceded by the news of Spitignev building a
more impressive church in the Prague castle – closes an otherwise rather
superficial treatment of Spitignev’s reign, infusing the narration with
apologetic features, especially in conjunction with its reports about the
prince’s piety.
It is difficult to surmise who, among our protagonists, risked the most in the
game of attaining the position of the ruler who was the most just, and the most
sensitive to his subjects’ misfortunes. Was it Conrad, as he agreed to delay his
own anointment? Was it Trajan, as he interrupted a military campaign right at
its outset? In any event, it is worth noting here a pair of concepts which well
reflect the main ideas implicit in those (and other) activities by rulers of inter-
est here: iustitia and pietas. Although in his commentary about the events that
transpired with the ruler-elect’s participation in front of the Mainz cathedral,
Wipo did not explicitly, by that word, identify pietas as one of Conrad’s vir-
tues, the reader clearly senses that the author did, in fact, attribute this trait
to Conrad. Apart from Conrad’s expressly noted, and praised, sense of jus-
tice (iustitia), Wipo also wrote about his protagonist’s sense of compassion or
mercy (studium miserationis).37 After all, in a similar situation – but one that
took place in the cathedral – Conrad showed that, for a newly-enthroned ruler,
the pietas regis (Wipo’s words!) was not a meaningless concept.38 Moved by
the archbishop’s speech – which concluded with a plea for forgiveness of the
transgressions inflicted upon the king by a certain Otto – Conrad, ‘touched by
mercy, began to cry’. Moreover, he absolved not only Otto, but everyone who
had transgressed against him in the period before he became king.
Pietas and misericordia stand close to one another, and so the Whitby monk
described Trajan as acting toward the widow misericorditer.39 Meanwhile,
like the protagonists in the events that interest us here, Bolesław the Brave
was, of course, motivated in his actions by iustitia – coupled, however, with
humilitas.40 It is easy to prove that a modest and humble man is also filled
with the fear of God, that is to say, with love; and that his conduct is informed
by a tenderness and affection toward another. Therefore, pietas, humilitas
and misericordia are located in a common semantic field, and the values
represented by each are to a large degree interchangeable. Hagen Keller has
observed precisely this kind of proximity between iustitia and misericordia.
He has also put forward an argument, important for us and well-founded, that
the coupling, in the form of a slogan, of these two virtues and values – iustitia
et pietas – may also be viewed as an ideological motto chosen by Henry III,
and intended as an advertisement for his rulership.41 In Keller’s view, the
programme of royal conduct based on these two pillars matured, or perhaps
became especially conspicuous, in the intellectual circles of Regensburg.
What is especially interesting is its clear presence in Wipo’s work.42 Iustitia
et pietas are also visible, indeed preeminent, in the ideological programmes
of royal power reflected by the iconographical sources of this period, such as
Henry III’s lectionary from Monte Cassino, or the Book of Pericopes com-
piled for the same ruler and kept in Bremen.43
At present, we neither wish nor are able to pursue this somewhat different
subject – a project that would considerably broaden the field of our inquiry.
Let us settle for the following conclusion. The first monarchs of the Salian
dynasty used a potent propagandistic construct, which served to support
their rule. It is even quite possible that Wipo himself actively participated in
the formulation of that construct. Conrad II’s biographer presented the two
scenes that opened the king’s reign precisely in the spirit of, so to speak, the
flagship slogans conveying this set of ideas. He accomplished his mission
by turning to a well-tested narrative script – updated, to be sure, with much
ingenuity – which, for centuries, had served to manifest precisely the virtues
of a ruler who was now put on the pedestal by the new dynasty.
The tradition of seeking help directly from the ruler, above all in cases
which were especially painful to the petitioner, was as old and venerable
as royal office itself; it was always alive, as can also be noted for the later
medieval period.44 The most suitable occasions for realising this undertak-
ing were public, ‘festive’ appearances by the king, above all appearances
initiating his reign – or appearances that served as replicas of that initiation,
namely entries into the capital, or towns in general. Using a variety of meth-
ods, desperate and aggrieved people (as well as ordinary criminals) sought
to attract the monarch’s attention in hope of a favourable resolution of their
problems.45 This large population surely includes the four people who sought
help from the new king, and whom we know from Wipo’s account. Yet, what-
ever may ‘truthfully’ have taken place at that moment when, on 8 October
1024, Conrad II progressed toward the Mainz cathedral, it is all in any event
both overlaid and structured by the narrative – not by a rite, not by a staging,
but by the narrative – which summons to life its own reality, ‘appropriately
represented’.46
6 The Dominican Order and
the beginnings of higher
education in the Polish Lands
Jerzy Kłoczowski
We are becoming increasingly familiar with the organisation of the schools

of the mendicant orders (the studia) between the thirteenth and the fifteenth
centuries. An important breakthrough in the study of this subject was the con-
ference held at Todi in 1976, where an ambitious attempt was made to sketch
out a broad, Europe-wide overview of these studia during the thirteenth and
the fourteenth centuries.1 On that occasion, one of today’s leading historians
of the medieval European university, Jacques Verger, clearly demonstrated
that we may speak of two parallel networks of advanced learning in the West
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: universities in the strict sense,
which were assuming a definitive shape during the first half of the thirteenth
century; and the mendicant studia – that is to say, the studia of the begging
orders – which had been deeply enmeshed with the university world since the
outset of the thirteenth century, or, more exactly, since the turn of the 1220s
and 1230s.2 We may note, on the one hand, the close similarities between
those two systems, their common university-based intellectual culture, and
their resemblance in terms of mentalities and the basic approach to reality
– and yet, on the other, their differences, understood institutionally, or related
to the functions for which the university and the mendicant communities
were designed. We should also recall that both systems were based on privi-
leges and legal status granted by the supreme, universal power – the papacy.
The connections between the two systems are related above all to the spe-
cific discipline, and faculty, which achieved primacy within the university
community (above all in Paris, slightly later in Oxford and Cambridge) in
the course of the thirteenth century – theology. The mendicant studia were
meant to endow their students with a solid, fully university-level, theological
formation. Because a prerequisite for studying this subject in universities
was the prior completion of a department of liberal studies (the arts), the men-
dicants developed in their provinces a network of schools of the arts, intended
to prepare the candidates for subsequent theological study.3 The Order of
Preachers (the Dominican Order) was the first to establish its own system of
The Dominican Order and the beginnings of higher education 65
studia, which in due course became a model for the other mendicant orders.
Close research in recent years has shed additional light on how, right in the
first years of the Order’s formation – indeed, while Dominic was still alive
– the place of the studium (specifically including a university studium) was
clearly defined in the life and the principles of the Order of Preachers. The
earliest, painstakingly reconstructed constitutions of 1220 comprise the basis
of a school system which was intensively expanded thereafter.4
We are also deepening our knowledge of the operation of this system in the
Polish Dominican province – one of the original twelve provincial organisa-
tions of the Order, originating in the years 1222–5, during the early, ‘heroic’
years of this exceptionally dynamic and superbly organised monastic enter-
prise.5 The extant source base allows us relatively good insight into the fif-
teenth century; the documentation of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
however, is far sparser. And yet, in light of our current knowledge about the
two-tiered system of higher learning which had existed since the thirteenth
century, we confront a fundamental question: did the Dominican school-
system function in Poland, and, if so, how and when? And may we consider
that system as the first symptom of the existence, in Poland, of the European
framework of higher learning, as a legally-established institution, with its
own, routinely implemented curriculum? In this context, we must not over-
look the Friars Minor (the Franciscans), who simultaneously collaborated
and competed with the Dominicans in Poland from the late 1230s onward.
1
Let us briefly recall the most important elements of the system of Dominican
studia, and of their relationship to university studies. Each Dominican mon-
astery was also a school, devoted to a permanent study of theology, and
obligatory for all friars. In that capacity, the monastery was led by a teacher
called a ‘lector’, who was required to have completed a four-year study of
theology. In the monastery school, the vast majority of friars acquired the
theological background needed for the performance of pastoral, preaching or
confessional functions; thereafter, until the end of their lives, the friars were
able draw on the schools for the intellectual, or the moral, support needed in
their work. Indeed, they were obligated to take part in the courses designed
for them. In other words, one feature of the Dominican school ever since
its beginning was ‘continuing education’, so admired throughout the world
today.6
In Paris, where they appeared in 1217, the Dominicans encountered a
very strong institutional base of support within the emerging university.
About a dozen years later, they had their own two monastic schools – chairs
of theology, which were also a part of the theology department, with all
the rights and privileges pertaining to that department. The Paris monastery
of Saint James’s, superbly situated in the centre of the university quarter,
became a studium-collegium intended to service all the provinces. Until as
late as the second half of the fourteenth century, the Paris studium-collegium
comprised the centre of the entire Dominican school system in Europe.7 It
is worth recalling that it was precisely the mendicant convent-collegium, of
which Saint James’s in Paris is an institutional prototype, which inspired
the formation of the secular university collegia, beginning with Robert
Sorbon’s collegium in the mid-thirteenth century. In time, the collegia came
to assume a great importance in university life; right up to the present day,
Oxford and Cambridge provide a vivid example of the enduring strength of
this institution.8
On the initiative of the papacy, which was especially interested in the
custody of and control over the development and the teaching of theology,
Paris long retained a de facto monopoly in the conferral of professional
degrees in theology, that is to say, the master’s title. Oxford, and slightly later
Cambridge, had the same rights, but in practice the students who received
degrees there were almost exclusively English.9 The monopoly enjoyed by
Paris fully ended for all practical purposes only as a result of a grant of similar
privileges to the university in Prague in 1347–8. After that grant, this process
gradually began to affect more and more centres, both the old and the newly
established.10 Every Dominican province was allowed to train a few of its
students in Paris for a few years, and to do so across several generations – an
arrangement which gave the Order an elite that was, relatively speaking, uni-
formly well-trained intellectually, and important in the maintenance of the
organisation’s structure – a task which was quite difficult for a community
this numerous and dispersed over hundreds of monasteries throughout the
entire Western Christendom.
The need to train large numbers of lectors for all the provinces and monas-
teries became apparent quite early. In view of the Order’s dynamic develop-
ment, the establishment, in 1248, of four new studia generalia in addition to
Paris – Oxford (officially recognised in that capacity in that year), Cologne,
Bologna and Montpellier – was not adequate to the task. In order to meet its
own needs, each province was required to organise its own school network.
The great majority of young friars settled for the level of preparation avail-
able in conventual schools, and adequate for pastoral work. Only the most
talented (perhaps ten, maybe just over 12, per cent of the entire population
of friars) were directed to the schools which were created specifically for
the purpose of forming their own professorial cadre. Of paramount impor-
tance was the acceptance, and the faithful observance, of the principle that
the curriculum of such schools was to correspond to the curriculum used in
Paris. In practice, this meant an attempt to create throughout Christendom
dozens, in time hundreds, of small daughter-campuses of the University
of Paris.
From the outset, an attempt had been made to base the programme of
study in the Order on the Paris curricula; however, those curricula were
themselves a subject of intense debate during the first half of the thirteenth
century, relating above all to the reception of Aristotle. Only in 1255 did the
Paris department of the arts at last confirm a complete sequence of courses
that incorporated Aristotle’s writings in their entirety.11 At the same time,
after protracted conflicts and papal interventions, the theologians accepted
the Aristotelian conception of the liberal arts as a mandatory route toward
advanced theological study. To be sure, this left for a long time unresolved the
dilemma of the relationship between the two authorities viewed as supreme,
Augustine and Aristotle; but Aristotle himself (variously interpreted) became
established for a long time, as truly the foundation of scholasticism. Those
great masters of Paris University who were also mendicants, such as Albert
the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura and many others, played an enor-
mous role in this crystallisation of a mature scholasticism, as expressed in the
curriculum of both the arts and theology.12
It is noteworthy that as early as 1259, the Dominican general chapter estab-
lished the definitive version of the curriculum for the mendicant studia, a
version fully resonant with the then-current Paris course of study; a course
that included Aristotle, whose acceptance had long elicited serious reserva-
tions from the perspective of a traditional ecclesiastical outlook. A course of
study mandatory for every student of the arts and theology was established
with precision. Each province of the Order was placed under an obligation
to create a network of schools implementing that course of study. For the
arts, the course comprised grammar, logic and natural philosophy; for the-
ology, it consisted of studies based on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the
Bible. The curriculum and the system of schools, in their entirety, were devel-
oped by a commission established by the general chapter, and consisting of
Dominican friars recruited from among the most outstanding scholars of that
age and generation – including Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Peter
of Tarentaire (the future Pope Innocent V).13
Harnessed into the programme of implementing this very ambitious and
bold undertaking was the Dominican monastic organisation – a framework
which was truly outstanding within the context of the other major contem-
porary monastic orders. Interesting material is recorded in the extant acts of
the Dominican general chapters and provincial chapters – the latter, unfor-
tunately, surviving only in fragments. In many respects, the Dominican
and other mendicant evidence helps us close major gaps in the documenta-
tion concerning the University of Paris in the thirteenth century. The Order
paid special attention to control over the functioning of the schools, and to
visitation; and it introduced such changes as became necessary over time.
Especially important were the changes and enhancements introduced by the
general chapter in 1305, between 1313 and 1315, and in 1405.14
The relatively well-preserved acts of the chapters of the Italian provinces
and of Provence give us a good insight into the actual workings of the system
in a single province from the second half of the thirteenth century onward.15
The system was based on small groups, or classes, each including a few (per-
haps up to about a dozen) students, and led by lector-professors and by their
assistants, the master-students. At the lower levels of the curriculum, such
groups were transferred after one or a few years away from the monastery-
school, and into some other house of the Order; the purpose of this was obvi-
ously to distribute the economic burden of maintaining the group (which
was exempt from the ordinary obligations of friars) across the province in
its entirety.
Grammar schools were meant to ensure something quite basic, namely a
good knowledge of spoken and written Latin. Later came the schools teach-
ing logic, usually categorised either as the Old or the New Logic, depend-
ing on the actual books studied. Crucially important in the development of
their teaching was the incorporation of Aristotle’s new texts (especially the
Organon) into scholastic thought. Logic, understood as the art of reasoning,
and together with grammar and rhetoric, comprising the university trivium,
was the foundation of the entire subsequent university intellectual formation.
It was often described as the ars artium, ‘the art of the arts’. Logic was fol-
lowed by the discipline generally described as philosophy, which included
both the philosophy of ‘nature’ and moral philosophy (or ethics), and whose
basic foundation was the group of Aristotelian treatises consisting of the
Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric, all of which were to be
studied, jointly, over three years – as provided for in 1327 by one of the extant
Dominican teaching programmes, in Toulouse.16
Many years of study – three of logic and two of philosophy, for example –
were indispensable prerequisites for a study of theology at a level consistent
with the curriculum of the Paris theology faculty, a study crucial for the Order
and for its functions.17 The essential foundation here included, of course,
Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the Bible. A school of theology designated
to service a single province was called a studium particulare, or solemne; the
word particulare referred to a restriction of the recruitment to a single prov-
ince, in contrast to a studium generale, which was open to students from all
provinces. The curriculum in all theological schools was modelled upon the
programme and the methods used in Paris. Needless to say, the overall intel-
lectual level of those studia generalia, which were staffed by the best, most
select professorial cadre, and which were destinations for small numbers of
the most talented student-friars, far exceeded the level of the local or regional
schools. Within the system as a whole, Saint James’s in Paris managed to
assemble a true ‘elite of elites’, helped in this by its de facto monopoly on
the granting of the professional titles of bachelor and master of theology
– titles which were honoured throughout the entire Christian civilisation. On
the other hand, granting the degree of lector (in principle after four years of
theological study) fell within the competence of the leadership of the Order
itself.
It is worth illustrating this scheme with examples of its specific applica-
tions – of which the extant acts of chapters from the province of Rome are
especially full. Thus, for example, in 1288 we encounter in that province
two studia artium, each of which enrolled ten students, plus a full dozen stu-
dia in naturis (or studia naturalibus) – meaning schools of (needless to say,
Aristotelian) natural philosophy. Three years later, in 1291, the acts mention
only four studia of natural philosophy, with a total of 32 students; five studia
of Old Logic, with a total of 39 students; and three studia of New Logic, with
26 persons engaged in them. This telling example reveals quite well the fluid-
ity of this – as we may aptly call it – ‘flying Dominican university’, and the
adaptation of its schools to the needs of the moment.
Needless to say, each individual school was established in a different city
and monastery; ‘circulation’ was a recurrent practice, allowing the shar-
ing among a group of monasteries of the high cost of maintaining any one
individual school. In 1331, the chapter register notes a total of 181 alumni
from the Roman province, distributed among 27 schools-studia: 26 alumni
at three studia of specialised theology, 58 in 13 studia of philosophy, 30
in six schools of logic, and 15 enrolled in the studia generalia – studia
of their own provinces (Naples and Florence), and studia that belonged
to other provinces (Toulouse and Montpellier). The 27 schools were sit-
uated in a total of 21 localities. Although we lack profound comparative
studies concerning the different provinces, there are many indications of a
considerable variety in practical arrangements, and of a considerable flu-
idity, within the framework of a single, well-defined and apparently well-
controlled system.18
Crucially important for the organisation of territorial networks of schools
was regional cooperation between monastic houses situated relatively near
each other; quite simply, they communicated among themselves in order to
create, by a shared effort, a single school that served the shared requirements
of several communities. Very important in this regard was the subdivision,
mandated by the general chapters between 1271 and 1275, of provinces into
smaller districts, each headed by a vicar appointed by the provincial, and act-
ing on the provincial’s behalf, within a precisely specified territorial unit.19
The Order generated several names for such districts; in the Polish prov-
ince, they were called contratae (or nationes). Within the boundaries of that
province (after the secession of Bohemia), we encounter the contratae of
Little Poland, Great Poland, Masovia, Prussia, Cassubia and Silesia. Their
origins undoubtedly extend back to the final decades of the thirteenth century.
Throughout the Order, we have clear traces of the fact that it was precisely
within the framework of the contratae (or, to use their alternative names,
the nationes, or vicariates) that the schools devoted to the arts and theology
were established. Again, the surviving acts of the province of Provence give
an example of the trajectories along which, we may surmise, other prov-
inces also moved. In 1275, this province was divided into six districts – here
called vicariates – each of which was obligated to create one studium of logic:
‘Ordinamus quod in qualibet vicaria sit unum studium logicale’.20 Change in
location of schools was, as we know, common practice, although the larger
and wealthier monasteries in a contrata undoubtedly hosted schools on their
premises relatively frequently – if not, indeed, permanently. This perma-
nence was especially important for the schools of theology, which required
larger resources and a more substantial intellectual endowment that did the
schools of the arts.
2
This entire context of a ‘flying university’ – a phenomenon increasingly
understood and appreciated today – enables us to take a new and more accu-
rate look at the question of specific interest to us, namely the situation in the
Polish province. We need to assume as a first principle – an obvious propo-
sition, as it were – that the developing province, encompassing the Polish
and the Czech lands as well as Western Pomerania, simply had to accept
and implement this general system of schools – truly a crucial feature of the
Order of Preachers, the existence and function of which had long enabled the
Order to perform its basic preaching and penitential roles. The only problem
here concerns the degree of a Polish, or a Czech-Polish, regional distinctness
within this system – the question of that system’s professional level, and
of its capacity for adaptation within this region in response to emerging
requirements.
Current research gives us fairly good grounds for accepting the view that,
during the second half of the thirteenth century, a Dominican network of
higher philosophical and theological schools, using the curriculum of the
University of Paris, emerged in the Polish province of the Order, that is to
say, in Poland and Bohemia.21 Especially noteworthy from this perspective is
the decree issued by the 1261 general chapter held in Barcelona. The decree
was adopted two years after the introduction of a new, very Aristotelian, arts
curriculum as obligatory throughout the entire Order. This important text is
worth citing in its entirety:
Iniungimus prioribus provincialibus et diffinitoribus provinciarum
Hyspanie, Romane provincie, Theutonie, Polonie, Ungarie, Dacie quod
ordinent, quod fratres iuniores et docibiles in logicalibus instruantur.
In provincia veri Theutonie instituant duo vel tria studia huiusmodi in
conventibus ydoneis ad predicta.22
This list of provinces seems to encompass territories heretofore relatively

untouched, so to speak, by the philosophical and theological scholastic move-
ment, which was concentrated – in a rather broad circumference – upon and
around Paris. Provence, France, England and Lombardy (in northern Italy)
are all provinces not mentioned in the resolution, which suggests that they
were well on their way to the implementation of the regulations concerning
the schools of logic and philosophy promulgated in 1259. From the perspec-
tive of Paris, the concern here is with peripheral provinces, which require a
forceful reminder of the obligation that has been placed on them. What is
quite interesting is the fact that the most peripheral provinces – functioning
in entirely different conditions – namely Greece and the Holy Land, are not
mentioned at all. Evidently, within them there was, at least for the time being,
no chance for, if I may so put it, a modernisation of their modest educational
possibilities. Poland, Bohemia and Hungary are, quite notably, treated on a
par with Spain, with central and southern Italy, and with Germany – a fact
which (within the broader context of clear differences between the ‘younger’
and the ‘older’ Europe, differences which were still very pronounced) bears a
very special emphasis. The chapter treats these territories as clearly normal,
capable of taking action themselves and of creating new structures – a state
of affairs that must have arisen during the nearly 40 years of their existence.
The regulation concerning Germany seems to indicate that the local realities
in that province permitted the establishment of two or three constellations of
schools of logic. On the other hand, the remaining provinces elicited more
preliminary steps – steps surely reflecting a concern, above all, with the pro-
curement of a cadre of lectors equipped to conduct courses.
The earliest confirmation in the sources of the existence of a studium of
the arts in the Roman province dates to 1269, which is eight years after the
1261 resolution by the general chapter, and ten years after the regulation of
1259.23 We may attribute this time-lag to resistance within the conservative,
traditional milieux of the friars to the instructions issued in 1259 – instruc-
tions which had introduced secular texts, of which not all were considered
orthodox for purposes of regular study. At the beginnings of the Order there
had been a clear emphasis on the need to concentrate on the Bible and on
theology, without ‘secular’ contamination. The intellectual breakthrough
away from this position emerged within the Order’s elites, concentrated in
the University of Paris. The moment of breakthrough was the bold decision
of 1259, confirmed by the Order’s supreme lawmaking authority, the general
chapter. However, needless to say, its impact and implementation presup-
posed, and required, a profound change in the mentalities and the intellectual
formation of the Friars Preachers. Doubtless important in this regard was
the support lent to the curriculum taught by Dominican scholars (above all,
Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas) by the outstanding master-general of
the Order between 1254 and 1263, Humbert of Romans. Through his admin-
istrative skill and wide-ranging written output, he placed the Order’s devel-
opment upon the firm foundation of a solid intellectual culture.24
Fragmentary and incidental as it is, the evidence concerning the Polish
province in the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century reveals – and this
should be most emphatically asserted – a normally functioning school-sys-
tem. To be sure, that system was probably weaker and less developed than
its counterpart in the leading, much wealthier provinces, but it did exist. It
simply had to exist, within the enormous organisational body of the Order in
its entirety, a framework in which the individual provinces were under close
control, subject to continuous and repeated admonition; control which, if the
need arose, was bolstered by friars recruited from provinces more developed
in some relevant respect. Existence of schools is directly attested by refer-
ences, recurrent in the sources, to lectors in Poland’s Dominican monaster-
ies. These references may be to lectors of the monastic schools (which were,
in effect, public schools, because non-Dominican clerics were allowed to
take part in them), and of the whole network of schools devoted to educat-
ing the most talented friars, systematically and at an essentially university
level. From 1259 and 1261 onward, the training of theologians – which was
required in order to service monasteries as they increased in numbers and in
size – was also to be enhanced by the schools of the arts, which were indis-
pensable prerequisites for theological study. The relatively rich source mate-
rial from the fourteenth century multiplies our evidence of lectors of various
kinds. In addition, we find very clear confirmation of the position of the lector
in the monastic community of the Order – a confirmation of, so to speak, the
normality of the lector’s role.25
We may conclude that the system of Dominican schools of arts and theol-
ogy, clearly implementing the curriculum used in the departments of arts
and theology at the University of Paris, most likely assumed its definitive
form during the 1270s, with perhaps some continuity into the 1280s. The
origins of, or the earliest attempts to establish, such schools may date back to
the very beginnings of the Polish province. It is surely not coincidental that
the first provincial, appointed in 1225, was a Paris student – an educational
pedigree long held in special esteem by the Order – by the name of Gerard,
to whom we may probably attribute the beginnings of Dominican schools in
the province.26 But let us not forget that only those schools which educated
a relatively restricted elite within the province acquired a university-cur-
riculum profile; and that that process could truly get underway only after the
bold, top-down decisions made in 1259 and 1261.
3
Theological study was the essential aim of the Dominican school system.
That study was, above all, a response to the requirement by all monasteries
for an adequate cadre of lectors – needless to say, including a cadre active
in the schools internal to the Order (schools that were not public, but very
deliberately mendicant). The lectors were promptly entrusted with a variety
of functions outside the schools: they were elected as priors, entrusted with
inquisitorial and other roles, or appointed as bishops. Thus, the requirements
for graduates of the theological studia significantly exceeded the normal
‘academic line’ of the lector. For this reason, each province was required to
possess at least one school (and frequently two or more schools) of theology,
with a multi-year programme focused on the Sentences and the Bible. A school
of this kind was referred to as a studium particulare, or a studium solemne.
Originally, even in the legislation of the Order, such schools were also called,
simultaneously or interchangeably, by the name studium generale; the pre-
cise distinction between the two kinds of studium (a distinction referring to
the geographical extent of recruitment allowed to a school, either from one
province, or from the entire Order) was a later development.
As a rule, each studium of theology, regardless of its name, implemented
the same multi-year programme, and each was an advanced school of theol-
ogy – with, of course, wide variation in scholarly level attained by the indi-
vidual studia.27 The type of studium which was later classified as ‘general’
was designed to attract a very small handful of the most outstanding stu-
dent-theologians from each province, who thereby received the opportunity
to deepen their knowledge, and quite possibly (though as an exceedingly
remote prospect) to earn the title of bachelor or master of sacred theology
– an educational accomplishment possible, until as late as the mid-fourteenth
century, exclusively in Paris, Oxford or Cambridge. But this was a very dif-
ficult and costly project, and in practice almost everyone settled merely for a
stay at Saint James’s in Paris, for example, without acquiring those academic
degrees and titles. Of course, acquisition of the title of lector within the Order
was an entirely different matter.28
In the second half of the fourteenth century, the Polish province experi-
enced a clear intellectual preeminence of (indeed, a competition between)
two large monasteries, in Wrocław and in Kraków.29 We may, without a doubt,
extend this state of affairs far back into the thirteenth century, with Kraków’s
unquestioned position (apart from a few interruptions) as the principal, we
may truly say the capital, convent in the very large Polish province. We may
also assume the presence of an advanced studium of theology, servicing the
entire Polish province, most probably in Kraków, although we should not
rule out the possibility that similar schools (permanent or temporary) were
situated in monasteries elswhere. The exact nature of this main centre of a
school network within the province is a subject of debate, principally con-
cerning the acquisition by this central school of the title and the privileges of
a studium generale.
We do know that at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and definitely
in 1304, the general chapters obligated every province to create a studium
generale, apart from Denmark (that is to say, essentially all Scandinavia),
Greece and the Holy Land. However, as early as 1305, the general chapter
prohibited the enrolment of students from outside the Hungarian, Czech and
Polish provinces in the studia located in those provinces.30 In subsequent
decades, we do not find Kraków or any other Polish monastery on the lists of
studia generalia included in the acts of the general chapters – a silence which
confirms the continuing effects of the prohibition of 1305. Bohemia, which
had belonged to the Polish province in the thirteenth century but became an
independent province at the beginning of the fourteenth, acquired permanent
studia generalia in 1347, clearly in connection with the establishment of
the university there.31 The mendicant studia were intended to serve in that
province as a foundation for a theology department – a department which,
we will recall, was then in the process of breaking down the monopoly on
the granting of academic degrees in theology enjoyed by Paris and the two
English universities.
Because of the Dominican Order’s consistent policy toward its own studia
generalia we can more fully understand the complexity of the relationships
between the Order – with its system of schools – and the universities. The
depth and the multi-dimensionality of these relationships are beyond doubt.
Since the University of Paris served, for many years, as the theological centre
of Christendom, a crucial strategic priority for the Order was the mainte-
nance of institutional connections with the university’s theology department.
When, in the course of an exceptionally bitter conflict in the 1250s between
the secular and the mendicant masters, the latter were about to be removed
from the university, the arbitrating commission established by the archbish-
ops proposed the creation in Paris of a separate, independent mendicant uni-
versity. The Dominicans and Franciscans resolutely rejected this proposal:
they wished to remain within a single, organic, educational framework.32 At
the same time, however, they also sought to retain their independence, and
full control over their own school system.
As the legal construct of studium generale assumed its definitive shape
during the second half of the thirteenth century, the Dominicans invested that
construct with their own, specific content.33 A studium generale, established
with the consent of the pope or the emperor, acquired in particular the right
to authorise its graduates to teach throughout the world (ius ubique docendi).
From now on, this right clearly differentiated a university – a studium generale
– from other schools. On their side, the Dominicans (and, in their footsteps,
other mendicant orders) reserved for their highest authority, namely the
general chapter, the right to establish their own studia generalia; they were
allowed to do so by papal privileges. A mendicant studium generale of this
specific type meant, above all, its openness to all the provinces of the Order.
Unlike all the other studia, it did not function as a provincial studium, that is,
a studium limited in its recruitment to a single province; and it was directly
subject to the highest authority of the Order. Furthermore, it was situated in
an established, specific locality, without the fluidity and migration between
locations which was characteristic of the province-wide systems of schools
comprising ‘the flying university’.
In creating a network of its own studia generalia, the Order of Preachers
was clearly motivated by the need to strengthen its own school system and
educate its own elite of lectors, and not by the need to accommodate its own
school network to the gradually expanding network of universities through-
out Christendom. The Order knew the distinction between a studium generale
fratrum and a studium generale saecularium – meaning, respectively, a men-
dicant studium, intended for the Order’s own friars, and a ‘secular’ studium,
incorporated into a university, and therefore necessarily also open to secu-
lar students. At the end of the thirteenth century, there were a total of seven
Dominican studia generalia: shortly before 1300, Paris, Oxford, Cologne,
Montpellier and Bologna were joined by Barcelona, and by a studium in the
Roman province, which was in due course permanently situated in Florence.
Among this group, only two, Paris and Oxford, were also ‘secular’ studia
– that is, studia integrated with the theology faculties active in those cities.
Two other studia, at Bologna and Montpellier, were direct ‘neighbours’ of
the universities situated there, but the latter lacked theology departments.
The remaining three locations – Cologne, Florence and Barcelona – were not
university towns.
Quite curiously, the theology department at the University of Toulouse,
established by the Dominicans as early as 1229, was not treated by the Order
itself as its own studium generale. The situation was similar in Cambridge,
where, around 1250, a clearly mendicant theology faculty was established,
with a central role played by the Dominicans.34 It appears that the most impor-
tant reason for this was a reluctance to create two studia generalia in a single
mendicant province. Toulouse belonged to the province of Provence, with
its own studium generale in Montpellier, while in England, since the mid-
thirteenth century, the same role was performed by Oxford. From the end of
the thirteenth century onward, boundary changes, and the creation of new
provinces, enabled an expansion of the network of studia generalia. Only at
this point did Toulouse – now at the head of its own province – acquire the
rights of a studium generale. Naples, initially envisioned as the location of a
studium generale for the Roman province, was able to create a studium of this
kind after it became part of the province of Sicily.
The logical outcome of the strategy pursued throughout the thirteenth cen-
tury was the general chapter’s ambitious resolution of 1304, noted above, to
establish a studium generale in every Dominican province, the old and the
newly established – except only for those provinces which were assumed,
a priori, to be incapable of this undertaking, that is to say the Danish (or
Scandinavian) and Greek provinces and the Holy Land. We do know that
this attempt was not entirely successful. In particular, the Polish, Hungarian
and Czech provinces most likely lacked the resources needed to create their
own studia generalia, understood in the sense in which the Order referred to
that institution. In the light of this situation, during the subsequent decades
the general chapter frequently revisited the subject of sending students from
the provinces lacking studia generalia to the provinces that had them. For
example, in 1316 it was decided that the provinces of Poland, Bohemia and
Hungary had the right to send two of their students each to the studia genera-
lia situated in Italy and Germany35 – a resolution which was changed in 1326
to a right of sending two students to all of the existing studia generalia.36
Despite all the difficulties, including the financial, the practice of educating
the elites of each province abroad was, without a doubt, recurrent and solidly
entrenched.
4
The second half of the fourteenth century brought about crucial changes in
the well-established system of the Dominican studia – and, indeed, of the
mendicant studia in general, which by then functioned everywhere in accor-
dance with the Dominican model. The watershed was the gradual loss of its
monopoly by Parisian theology, a loss initiated by the papal consent to the
establishment of a university in Prague in 1347–8. From then on, the number
of theological faculties in the universities increased, and from 1378 onward
the primacy of Paris was definitively ended by the Great Schism.37
Generally speaking, in the southern regions of Christendom the theology
departments situated in universities were created on the basis of mendicant
studia previously in existence, whereas the north was dominated by the recep-
tion of ‘secular’ departments of theology, patterned on Paris – a reception that,
needless to say, did not preclude participation by mendicant studia. Bologna
is a good example of the ‘southern’ solution. After 1360, professors of its
theology faculty were recruited from among the lecturers at the local mendi-
cant studia – one Dominican, three Franciscan, two Carmelite, two belong-
ing to Augustinian hermits – plus one cardinal, who was also a Benedictine
monk.38 Strictly speaking, under the ‘southern’ university model, mendicant
studia performed, right from the outset, the actual functions of theology fac-
ulties – a fact that did not change significantly after their formal incorpora-
tion into universities. The data on doctoral matriculations in Bologna seem
to reflect this situation quite well: out of 447 masters of theology promoted
there in the years 1364–1500, 419 were mendicants, 24 were secular clerics
and four were monks.39 During the same period, in neighbouring Padua, men-
dicants comprised about 80 per cent of the entire teaching staff.40
Things were quite different under the ‘northern’, Parisian model. Among
the many universities which had arisen in the Empire since the closing years
of the fourteenth century, the most mendicant – indeed, Dominican – in char-
acter was Cologne, where the well-known studium of the Friars Preachers
served as the base of the theology faculty. Between 1388 and 1517, the 58
professors who were also Dominicans comprised approximately one-third of
a total of 187 teachers working there during those same years.41 The situation
varied widely across different universities, and underwent changes over time.
Thus, for example, in Prague the theology department was initially intended
to be based upon the mendicant studia generalia, but as early as the end of
the fourteenth century professors recruited from the secular clergy appear to
be predominant.42 Out of these same circles of secular clergy also emerged
the first professors of the University of Kraków – a university which was
renewed in 1400, and where a theology department was established during,
or soon after, that year.43
Parallel to the process of associating the Dominican studia generalia with
the rising number of university theology departments – a process that encom-
passed the second half of the fourteenth and the entire fifteenth century – was
an increase in the numbers of such studia themselves, from seven in 1300
all the way to 27 in 1550.44 The proliferation of theology departments was
also significant in the light of a problem which became quite pressing with
time, namely the small numbers of Dominicans able to receive the title of
master of sacred theology in Paris, Oxford or Cambridge. The formal pro-
cedure, the time required and the cost created enormous difficulties in this
regard, especially for candidates from outside Paris (and France in general)
and from outside England.45 The recurrent difficulties with which foreigners
were confronted in Oxford or Paris were also quite significant. A mid-four-
teenth-century Italian chronicler, himself a master of theology, observed that
in all of Italy he had encountered a mere three of his mendicant brothers who
possessed this academic title.46 In all likelihood, in the same period only two
existed in Germany.47
Needless to say, this situation created pressure for a solution to the prob-
lem. In addition to the growing number of theology faculties, the outcome
was an increasingly available alternative – based on papal privileges permit-
ting, under the appropriate circumstances, the conferral of a master’s title
by the masters-general of the Order, and, above all, by the general chapter.48
The overall result was a rapid increase in the numbers of Dominicans, and
other mendicants, endowed with the title of master. This process continued
throughout the fifteenth century, with results that were important both to the
systems of the studia, and to the functioning of the orders themselves. For
example, based on the membership of the Dominican general chapter, it is
possible to demonstrate that in the course of the fifteenth century masters of
theology became predominant in this highest locus of the power within the
Order.49
This entire context, of which I have been briefly reminding the reader,
is essential for a fuller understanding than we currently have of the defini-
tive establishment of a Dominican studium generale for the Polish province,
in Kraków. According to one hypothesis, this occurred at the very end of
the fourteenth century – 1394, to be exact.50 One source of support for this
hypothesis is the fact that the province managed to receive its first handful of
degrees of master of sacred theology by nomination from the general chap-
ter. Paweł Kielar is inclined to connect one specific recipient of that degree
– Francis Oczko from Brzeg in Silesia, provincial in the years 1393–6 – to
the implementation in the Polish province of the institutional framework
developed by the Order nearly a hundred years earlier.51 The circumstances,
thoroughly described by Kielar, clearly appear to reflect an important event,
and thus support the likelihood of its occurrence. Nevertheless, we need to
state bluntly and explicitly that the hypothesis just presented does not, in
essential contours, get us beyond conjecture. This has recently been demon-
strated, with absolute clarity, by a close and convincing analysis.52
Therefore, we need to return to the text of the general chapter resolution
of 1419, which I extracted many years ago out of the valuable transcrip-
tion made in manuscript form by Wawrzyniec Teleżyński.53 This is the earli-
est clearly authentic record of a decision by the general chapter concerning
Kraków – a city which, from this moment onward, was routinely included
in the lists of mendicant studia generalia. Moreover, we may interpret the
notice about the 1419 decree of the general chapter, happily preserved by
Teleżyński, as a decision to create a studium of this kind. Of course, this
interpretation does not rule out earlier attempts (which are indeed very likely
from the end of the fourteenth century onward) to elevate the rank of the old
studium of theology in Kraków, at a time of the ultimately successful effort
to create a university theology department in the city. The Dominicans, who
had long enjoyed in Kraków a near-monopoly on the systematic teaching
of theology as a university discipline, must have been supremely interested
above all in the emerging theology department.
Among the obstacles to the intended transformation of the Kraków studium,
two seem to have been especially important. The first was the deep divi-
sion within the Polish province between its northern and western districts,
dominated by Germans, and the districts encompassed by the then-current
boundaries of the Kingdom of Poland. This conflict is clearly visible at the
end of the fourteenth century, and reflected in the attempt to create a separate
province of Lower Germany between 1415 and 1417, with the support of
Pope John XXIII. A decisive posture by the Polish king and Church – person-
ified by the Archbishop-Primate Nicholas Trąba – was required to achieve, in
1417, a return to the status quo ante, and to confirm the traditional boundaries
of the Polish province for a long time thereafter.54 We may surmise that this
genuine stabilisation is what allowed the first general chapter that met after
these events to make the crucial decision to designate for the newly-ordered
province its own studium generale, based on its own trained cadre, which had
been available in that province for some time beforehand.
We also need to take into account the tensions between the scholars –
especially the theologians connected to Prague, and involved in laying the
groundwork for university-level theology in Kraków – and the Dominicans.
Quite important here are the patterns of relations within Prague itself, where
the Collegium Carolinum, intended for secular theologians and founded in
1366 on the model of the Sorbonne, appears to have been especially domi-
nating in the theology department;55 and where – although the mendicant
(including the Dominican) studia generalia were connected to the depart-
ment – their true role requires a further scholarly inquiry.56 It is also an open
question at present whether the very conspicuous absence of collaboration
between the Order of Preachers and the Kraków theology department was a
result of tensions imported from Prague, or of local, Kraków-based patterns
of interaction.57
This fact differs so dramatically from the situation long established
throughout Christendom as to require an especially close inquiry, and a seri-
ous attempt at an explanation, framed by a broad, Europe-wide context of
comparable relations. As we well know, an attempt to bring the two institu-
tions closer, by way of incorporation of the Dominican studium into the uni-
versity, was made only several decades later, in the mid-fifteenth century.58
This fact corresponds to a more general tendency, which emerged with clarity
in the course of the fifteenth century, namely the loss of stature and impor-
tance by those Dominican studia generalia which did not become associated
with university theology departments. Thus, for example, in the province of
Saxony, neighbouring on Poland, the heretofore leading studium generale in
Magdeburg receded perceptibly into a rank quite distant from the other studia
based on the new universities, especially the university founded in Erfurt in
1392. Currently, however, we do not clearly know the exact significance for
the Dominican Kraków, or for the province, of the formal association with
the university, or of the act of incorporation into the university.
5
In conclusion, we may accept it as established that the beginnings of the
Polish system of higher education, of the university type – a type resonating
with the university culture established in Europe from the thirteenth century
onward, and in existence continuously thereafter, in the midst of ceaseless
debate and transition – are related to the Order of Preachers, very strongly
rooted in Poland since the thirteenth century. To invoke an expression so
well known in Poland: during the second half of the thirteenth century, the
Dominican monasteries and the mendicant elite of the Polish province com-
prised a peculiar kind of ‘flying university’. The Order’s schools implemented
the Paris programme of the arts department – in its innovative, Aristotelian
version, definitively accepted in Paris after the long debates around the mid-
century. Mendicant professors – Albert, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura
– had played an enormous role in the definition of those programmes, which
became the basis of the then-modern culture of schools, scholasticism, and
universities.
However, for the Dominicans, study of the arts was merely a point of
departure for the study of theology, which had, within the context of the con-
temporary scholastic culture, become a university discipline different from
traditional, patristic-monastic theology. The Dominican schools of theology,
situated at different rungs (starting with the conventual schools), were the
first to implement in the Polish lands theology understood as a science of
that kind, closely connected to the solutions devised in Paris, and used as a
model for all of Christendom.59 We ought to consider this educational system
– present throughout all of Christian Europe, and closely tied to the system of
universities in the strict sense of that word – as, at the same time, more or less
parallel to the universities, yet, in the contemporary world of higher educa-
tion, quite distinct.
What remains an open question is the degree to which the Order of Preachers
in Poland shared all these pioneering roles with the Order of the Friars Minor,
who were equally strongly rooted in the Polish lands during the thirteenth
century. The Friars Minor received from the Preachers the essential elements
of a school system; yet, for them, the place of school culture always looked
very different from the view of the strongly ‘school-and-university-based’
Dominicans.60 For the entire thirteenth century, the preponderance of school-
related documentation concerning the Dominicans is so overwhelming that
as a result the other orders, the Franciscans in particular, as it were recede into
relative obscurity. In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that
documentation changes in favour of the non-Dominican mendicants. What
remains quite difficult is to be entirely certain about the relationship between
this source-driven perspective and reality.
On the other hand, it seems beyond doubt that the cathedral and collegiate
schooling in the Polish lands long retained a rather more traditional character.
For example, university-level theology entered those schools very gradually
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We may safely assume that,
for several generations, Dominican (and probably Franciscan) schools also
played the role of public schools of theology, open to interested secular cler-
ics. We may assume that virtually every Dominican monastery (and the more
important Franciscan houses) which had a permanently functioning school
obligatory for all friar-priests was, at the same time, a convent and a colle-
gium: a model institution, adapted and greatly elaborated by the universities
of the European Middle Ages. Right up to the present day, that institution in
many places shows a trace of the great ‘flying university’ – enormously sig-
nificant for the very foundations of culture, European as well as Polish.
7 Matrimonium sub fide
Judaica contractum
Were mixed Christian–
Jewish marriages possible in
late medieval Poland?
Tomasz Jurek
1
The conubium has always been fundamental to the processes of assimilation
between social or ethnic groups living in close proximity. Mixed marriage
opened the way to eliminating differences between such groups. To put the
same proposition in reverse, we might say that an absence of marital ties
tends to strengthen, indeed perpetuate, social or ethnic difference. As a clas-
sic example we might consider the fate of the Jewish diaspora, which had
for centuries lived in Europe, surrounded by a Christian majority, but which
had retained its distinctness of religion, custom and culture – specifically by
avoiding intermarriage with that majority. That distinctness was sustained
by bilateral prohibitions. Ever since antiquity, Jewish law had prohibited
marriages to non-Jews; such unions were, in their essence and from the out-
set, void. The basis for this view was the prohibition, expressed as early as
in the Old Testament, upon forming ties with the foreign peoples whom the
Chosen People had displaced from the Holy Land.1 This principle remained
binding during the Middle Ages.2 On the other side, Christian legislation
prohibited marital association with Jews.3 Though early medieval synods
often forbade marriage with Jews, they treated such marriage as illicit, sinful
and punishable – but, in its essence, valid. Gratian’s Decretum (ca. 1142),
in a systematic compilation of these individual pieces of legislation, intro-
duced the prohibition upon marriage with ‘infidels’ as a norm of universal
canon law. According to the formulation by twelfth- and thirteenth-century
canonists, a difference of faith (cultus disparitas) acquired the status of an
impedimentum dirimens, that is, a circumstance precluding the possibility
of entrance into a legal marriage – which was, after all, viewed as a sacra-
ment.4 ‘If a member of the faith marries someone outside the faith, this is not
a marriage’, wrote Robert of Saint-Victor at the beginning of the thirteenth
century.5 Accepted as valid, however, was an engagement (sponsalia) with
persons outside the faith, as long as this was coupled with the promise of a
Matrimonium sub fide Judaica contractum 83
conversion, which was viewed as a condition for the subsequent entrance
into marriage.6
These concepts began to reach Poland with the diffusion of canon law dur-
ing the thirteenth century. The earliest regulations limiting contact with Jews
appear in the statutes of the 1267 provincial synod led by the papal legate
Guido.7 These regulations were among the several provisions drawn from the
legislation of the universal Church, which limited the freedom of everyday
interaction between Christians and Jews. The prohibited activities included
common eating and drinking with the Jews, participating in their weddings
and entertainments, and buying food from them. Jewish homes were to be
concentrated in a specific section of each town, and strictly separated from
Christian dwellings. Jews were obligated to wear distinct dress to make them
easy to recognise. They were not allowed to visit Christian taverns or baths,
or to hire Christian servants or nursemaids. The purpose here was clearly
to limit opportunity for unwanted sexual contact. Immediately below, in
the same breath as it were, is expressed a strict prohibition precisely on this
subject:8 a Jewish man caught in ‘fornication’ with a Christian woman was
to be subject to a high monetary fine and imprisonment, while the woman
who took part ‘in such despicable union’ was to be banished from the town.
Although in this case prohibition against mixed marriage was not formulated
anywhere in the document in explicit terms, in the light of the other provi-
sions it was obviously a part of the reality. After all, if eating or dancing with
the Jews was prohibited, marital cohabitation was surely unthinkable. The
norms of the 1267 legatine statute were applicable to the entire Polish eccle-
siastical province, and entered the local tradition of canon law. They were
echoed, indeed repeated in their entirety, by the statutes of the provincial
synod of Archbishop Nicholas Trąba, held in Wieluń and Kalisz in 1420.9 We
may therefore speak about a permanence of anti-Jewish norms – though, on
the other hand, the need for their reiteration may also mean that they were not
strictly followed in practice.
In light of our knowledge about patterns of Jewish settlement, it is clear
that the legatine demand for a separation of Jewish homes from Christian
sections of cities, ‘by a fence, a wall or a ditch’, for which Guido had estab-
lished a deadline of a few months, was never implemented. Were the remain-
ing provisions of the statutes respected? Current historiography presents the
problem of Christian–Jewish marriages unequivocally and unambiguously:
such unions could have occurred in the West only during the earlier Middle
Ages, and were thereafter virtually impossible.10 Studies by Polish scholars
repeat this view concerning their country: ‘Obviously, marriages among Jews
and Christians were unacceptable’.11 However, this opinion rests above all
upon normative formulations of the kind just noted; it is always worthwhile
to confront the resulting knowledge with information drawn from sources
reflecting practice. In the Polish context, those latter sources are above all
book registers, issued by a variety of courts – noble, urban and ecclesiasti-
cal – which survive in large numbers from the turn of the fourteenth and the
fifteenth centuries onwards. At present, I should like to present two source-
based case studies concerning mixed marital unions. Both studies are drawn
from fifteenth-century books of the episcopal (that is, consistory) court in
Poznań.12
Poznań13 was one of the most important cities of the late medieval Kingdom
of Poland, and, as the seat of the bishopric and capital of a district, the unques-
tioned centre of the province of Great Poland – though by European standards
it must be considered a small town, estimated at between 6,000 and 10,000
inhabitants in the fifteenth century. For the city, the Jagiellon period, begin-
ning with the Polish-Lithuanian union of 1385, was a period of high prosper-
ity, fuelled by the expansion of trade between Germany and Lithuania. One
symptom of the city’s level of development was the presence of a relatively
strong and dynamic Jewish community.14 That community’s significance is
well reflected by the assessed levels of tax paid by the Jews of the individ-
ual cities in the Kingdom in 1507. In that year, the Poznań community was
assessed at a level of 200 florins, which was the highest level owed in Great
Poland, and, within Poland as a whole, second only to Kraków, the capital
city, with its assessment of 300 florins.15 The size of Poznań’s Jewish com-
munity may be assessed at several hundred heads, and thus a small percent-
age of the city’s entire population. The economic base of the strength of the
Poznań Jews was their engagment with credit operations, and with usury.
That base began to break down only toward the end of the fifteenth century,
from which period onwards trade and craft production became the basis of
the Jewish economy.
2
On 27 March 1431, two inhabitants of Poznań16 appeared before the consis-
tory court of the city. On one side was Hedwig, recorded simply as ‘a woman’
(mulier); on the other, John, described as ‘a new Christian’. The subsequent
record makes it clear that beneath that latter expression lurked a reference to
a recently baptised Jew. Hedwig sued John in order to compel him to con-
summate his marriage with her, ‘in the face of the Church’. This is because
she had been meeting with him for a year, when he was still an adherent to
Judaism. Over that year, he solemnly reiterated to her, invoking God, that
he planned to receive baptism, that he wished to take her as wife, and that
he promised her marital fidelity. Nevertheless, after being sued, he denied
everything. Though he did not negate his entire relationship with Hedwig,
he maintained that, even if they had established some kind of liaison, at that
time he was still ‘a sly Jew’, and, as a follower of Judaism, was unable to enter
marital obligations.
Having heard the arguments of both sides, the officialis adjourned the case
in order to decide whether to allow the woman to present her proof. Two
weeks later, on 11 April, Hedwig’s legal representative expanded the plea
which had been made earlier, by noting that, after receiving baptism, John had
renewed his ‘marriage, which had been entered into in the Jewish faith’, and,
as a result, began carnal cohabitation with Hedwig. This time, the officialis
resolved his earlier doubts, and ordered the woman to present an appropriate
proof of her side of the argument.17 This led to the presentation of witnesses:
two women on 13 April, and, on 16 April, two men.18 We know that they tes-
tified, but not what that testimony was. This is because it was recorded in a
different set of court books, the so-called Depositiones testium, which are not
extant for this period. After another exchange of statements between the par-
ties – whose substance, again, we do not know precisely, because the notes
referring to them are extremely laconic19 – the officialis finally made a deci-
sion. On 28 May 1431, he pronounced sentence in favour of John, aquitting
him of Hedwig’s claims. Her legal representative immediately declared an
intention to appeal the sentence to the court of the metropolis in Gniezno.20
What is of fundamental importance for us is to specify the exact subject of
this conflict. The woman was demanding a confirmation, in facie ecclesie, of a
marriage which, as she maintained, she had previously entered into with John
per verba. Here we are encountering a reference to a practice, still current at
the time, of entering into marriage by means of an utterance, before witnesses,
of the appropriate words – words which expressed a declaration of choice of a
spouse, and a promise of due fidelity to that spouse.21 Although in principle the
Polish Church demanded entrance into marriage in a church, before a priest,
and with the performance of the appropriate religious rituals, it accepted the
validity of the secular mode in the creation of a sacramental marriage. This is
because that mode fulfilled the pre-condition which was most important for the
establishment of a marriage tie, namely the consent of the parties.22 Marriages
per verba were especially widespread among the relatively poor social strata;
on occasion, such marriages were described as having been entered into modo
rusticano. Nevertheless, we do encounter a clear insistence by women that
secular marriage be supplemented with ecclesiastical ritual, since that step
offered the union a stronger guarantee of stability.
This is what occurred in this case. However, it presented a special dif-
ficulty, because the betrothed man was turning out to be a Jew. In Hedwig’s
eyes, that fact did not constitute an essential obstacle, because her partner
was alleged to have uttered explicit promises of fidelity, presumably by
means of a solemn oath. Quite possibly this promise had taken place before
witnesses; after all, the woman was able to summon as many as four persons
in support of her claims. It seems beyond doubt that the mutual betrothal was
accompanied by cohabitation, which continued over a year of encounters, in
Hedwig’s hut, or perhaps in her cellar (the word celarium used in the record is
somewhat ambiguous),23 in the course of which it is quite difficult to imagine
that cohabitation did not occur. Therefore, though at a certain point in the trial
Hedwig’s legal representative situated her entrance into sexual relations with
John chronologically in the period subsequent to his baptism, in fact relations
between them must have begun earlier. Hedwig was convinced that this was
the exact point at which, strictly speaking, the marriage began. This convic-
tion is clearly confirmed by the notices cited here. In the first, the scribe felt
obliged, after describing in the text the circumstances of the union between
John and Hedwig, to add on the margin that the woman ‘is demanding that he
be compelled to complete, in the face of the Church, the marriage which had
been entered by the utterance of words’. Likewise, the second notice states
unambiguously that, after his baptism, John ‘confirmed and renewed the
union, entered into in the Jewish faith, by the utterance of words’. Therefore,
both Hedwig and her legal representative took the view that a marriage con-
tract entered into by a Jew who had not yet been baptised was valid.
Apparently, the officialis saw the matter differently. He did not immedi-
ately agree with the arguments presented by the woman plaintiff. He took
some time to reflect on whether she might be allowed to present proof, thus
betraying his disagreement with her interpretation of the facts. It is worth not-
ing, however, that he did not dismiss her interpretation out of hand, and also
that he did not in any sense chastise the woman for her sexual relations with
a Jew – severely prohibited though such relations were by recently-reiter-
ated provincial statutes. Working in Hedwig’s favour was the fact that John
had supposedly promised her that he would accept baptism. The officialis’s
doubts were eased by the additional declaration, made by Hedwig’s legal
advisor, that after his baptism John had renewed his marital vows. In the
judge’s eyes, this changed things completely, since he immediately instructed
the woman plaintiff to present witnesses.
Though the final verdict went against Hedwig, that fact does not necessar-
ily mean that the court disagreed with her interpretation of the nature of her
union with the defendant. The highly formalised sequence of events which
comprised medieval procedure raised many possibilities of loss in claims that
were, on their merits, justified. We do not even know the course and outcome
of the witness testimony. Quite possibly, the witnesses were unable to cor-
roborate convincingly Hedwig’s assertions. In all likelihood, that is exactly
what happened; had it been possible to prove that, as she asserted, the marital
promises made per verba were renewed after John’s baptism, the officialis
ought to have accepted the legal validity of the marriage formed in this way.
This was, after all, the common practice of ecclesiastical courts.
The only person who acted in this whole matter consistently with canoni-
cal norms was the newly baptised John himself. This is because, right from
the outset, he kept reiterating that his union with Hedwig could not have
been a marriage, since he, as a Jew, lacked the capacity to enter a marriage.
However, his motivation is transparent. Quite simply, the man wished to
avoid being forced to remain with a woman whom he no longer desired. It is
perhaps not insignificant that Hedwig seems to have belonged to the poorer
strata of the population; this is suggested by the consistent reference to her
in the record as a mulier, without any kind of surname, or nickname, or even
an identification of her father. The frequent use of her given name, Hedwig,
makes it impossible to indentify her any further.
We can, however, observe John’s subsequent fate. That fate is quite inter-
esting – and instructive concerning the character of this restless man. As early
as one year after the successful termination of the case with Hedwig, and the
rebuttal of her grievances, the same man emerges in the record as the hus-
band of another woman. On 24 May 1432, before the court of the bench in
Poznań, ‘the baptised Jew’ Hannos (meaning John in German-language texts)
entered a settlement with his wife, Margaret, widow of the Poznań merchant
Kokundorf, and with her brothers, Matthew and Peter (Pecze) Morlin.24 The
Morlins stipulated that for a period of five years John and Margaret might not
buy out the rent revenues which had been conveyed in writing to her son, as a
result of her earlier marriage to Kokundorf.25 Quite clear here is the fear, by the
wife’s family, that John might embezzle from his stepson the money that was
due to him by succession from his father. This fact shows that, in the opinion
of that milieu, the ‘new convert’ had married Margaret exclusively because
of her wealth, and that his intentions raised suspicions. The family into which
he married, the Morlins, were relatively modest craftsmen.26 Indirectly, this
suggests that ‘the baptised Jew’ himself must have been poor.
The Morlins’ fears turned out to be justified, and the union between John
and Margaret was unsuccessful. The marriage, in all likelihood, had been
entered into shortly before the making of the May 1432 settlement just noted.
A few months later, we note clear traces of dramatic misunderstandings
between the spouses. The consistory court was compelled to intervene. On
11 August 1432, the Poznań officialis instructed the two parties to remain
peacefully within their marriage, and to abandon all their quarrels. An indi-
cation of a perilous escalation of those quarrels is the fact that both spouses
were compelled to swear, upon a crucifix, that they would renounce all plot-
ting against each other’s lives. John swore that, from now on, he would not
beat his wife ‘beyond measure’, damage her limbs, or kill her. On her side,
Margaret swore that she would not poison her husband by giving him toxic
food.27 Despite mutual assurances, the marriage in all likelihood did not long
survive. When, in 1444, Margaret was entering yet another settlement with
her brother Peter, the relevant notice lacks any mention of her husband, or
about her own widowhood.28 Furthermore, in 1450 Margaret continued to
appear as a Kokundorf.29 Thus, the marriage with John must have collapsed
some time earlier.
In its entirety, the story of the converted Jew named John shows us a rest-
less young man with a disordered life. John undoubtedly abandoned his fore-
fathers’ faith of his own volition; in the years 1430–1, we do not know of any
anti-Jewish disturbances in Poznań which might have generated a compul-
sion among Jews to convert. His union and suspect marriage with Hedwig
turned out to be a mere passing adventure. Likewise, the marriage into the
family of craftspeople, the Morlins, did not give him stability, because John
was ultimately unable to find himself in that new milieu. His fate is, surely,
unconventional – but quite possibly at the same time characteristic of a poor
member of a minority group, attemping, to no avail, to escape from that
group.30 In the context of our initial question concerning the existence of
mixed marital unions, this case shows that in the lower social strata it was
possible to maintain with the Jews sexual relations that were prohibited by
ecclesiastical law; and, moreover, that the people engaged in such unions
were ready to treat them as marriage.
3
Less clear is the second example which I should like to present. On 7 March
1429, a legal case was in progress before the consistory court of Poznań,
brought by a nobleman, Gregory of Gulcz, against a Jewish woman, Jochna
of Poznań. The defendant was represented in court by a Master Nicholas
Młynek, who is described in the record as Jochna’s ‘proctor and husband’.31
Master Młynek was clearly one of the professional advocates practising
before the consistory court, and earning their living by offering learned legal
services to disputing parties. The fact of representation of a Jewish woman by
an advocate of this kind is not at all surprising. As a rule, Jews who appeared
before the consistory court sought help from advocates.32 Nor would there
have been anything odd about Nicholas Młynek’s marital status. Although
they were in permanent contact with the consistory court, and personally
situated on the boundary of the clerical orders, advocates were nevertheless
usually laypeople, and there was no impediment against their getting mar-
ried.33 But could Nicholas have been a husband of a Jew? The word used
here, maritus, is entirely unambiguous, and it is impossible to assign it any
other meaning.34 One might, just barely, speculate that we are dealing here
with some kind of scribal error. The entry in the consistory court book was
undoubtedly made on the basis of a rough earlier version. In writing down
that earlier version, the scribe may have made a mechanical error. However,
the entry could not possibly have concerned some other person referred to
as maritus. As we can see from other entries about this case, the matter con-
cerned exclusively Jochna herself. We would in any case need to assume that
the scribe altered the order of the words in the text, which seems impossible.
It is somewhat more plausible that the word maritus is a distortion of some
other word. On palaeographical and logical grounds, we might speculate that
the original words were procurator et nuncius. And yet, nuncius – a word
meaning, among others, an agent in the legal process – was a term employed
not in consistory court documents, but exclusively in the books of noble (that
is, land and castle) courts.35 Therefore, it is difficult to accept the need for an
emendation of the entry. We must, after all, accept that fact that the entry does
indeed state procurator et maritus.
What was the subject of Jochna’s case in the consistory court? She was
sued there by Gregory of Gulcz.36 Previously, those two parties had been
involved in a dispute before the noble land court in Poznań. Concerning this
dispute, we have entries of January and February 1428, and of January 1429,
from which we know that Jochna had demanded from Gregory the payment
of five marks in debt.37 This was therefore a typical case concerning debt due
to a Jew, a subject with which the court books are replete. This is because
the land court was the proper forum for matters of this kind. As late as 6
January 1429, we have an entry in the court books from the trial between
Gregory and Jochna, but shortly afterwards Gregory initiated the case in the
consistory court. On 21 January he established as his representative there the
attorney Stanisław Stadnik.38 The matter was first heard before the bench of
the consistory court on 7 March – from which day we have the entry cited
above, referring to Nicholas Młynek as Jochna’s husband. The subsequent
sessions took place on 8 April and 20 April.39 In the second of the two ses-
sions, Jochna’s representative asserted that the parties were already pursuing
a case in the secular court. Stadnik answered, as Gregory’s representative,
that the subject more properly belonged in an ecclesiastical forum, because
it concerned usury. However, the officialis never pronounced a verdict. This
is because, shortly thereafter, the parties entered a preliminary settlement
before the land court, and at that time Gregory agreed to withdraw the case
from the consistory court. The dispute was to be entrusted for resolution to
the captain, the palatine, or the vice-palatine.40
These details are important to us. It turns out that Gregory sued Jochna
over the practice of usury. This may seem odd: after all, Jews were allowed to
practice usury.41 Cases concerning debt to Jews were heard in secular courts,
and always involved Jewish plaintiffs against unreliable Christian debtors.
In principle, the consistory court ought to have been concerned only with
cases of usury practised by Christians, who were prohibited from engaging
in this activity by canon law. We do encounter such cases in the court books.42
However, allegations of usury at an excessive level also occurred against
Jews before the ecclesiastical court. Because of usury, Słoma, a Poznań Jew,
together with his wife Rosa, were even subject to excommunication.43 Thus
the situation of Jochna, accused of usury before the officialis, was not entirely
extraordinary. That situation need not, therefore, suggest changes in her sta-
tus which might cause her to be treated as a Christian. Nevertheless, the case
involving her must have been very difficult and ambiguous, because Gregory
withdrew his suit, and thus did not expect to prevail in it; and because, as part
of the settlement, the case was remanded for resolution to the highest authori-
ties of the land. We do not know what solution these authorities devised in
response.
Can the matter be further illuminated by inquiry into the personal histories
of the main protagonists? Fortunately, the individuals concerned are very
clearly reflected in contemporary sources. Nicholas Młynek worked as an
attorney in the Poznań consistory court. It is difficult to follow his exact activ-
ities in that capacity, since to do so would require an exact perusal of dozens
of volumes of court proceedings. According to the sources currently known
to me, Nicholas Młynek played the role of advocate from 1427 to 1440.44 He
originated from Margonin, a small town in northern Great Poland,45 definitely
from a burgher family, about which, however, we know very little. Like other
advocates, he often used the title magister, which does not at all mean that he
had obtained this title in a university; magister was a customary title ascribed
to lawyers who had a consistory court practice. However, Młynek certainly
had the capacities of a notary public (we know that he composed notarial
documents),46 and thus it is possible that, somewhere, he had snatched a bit
of university training. Starting with February 1433, we encounter his wife,
Barbara.47 She was a daughter of Master Christopher, Nicholas’s older col-
league on the consistory court, who had originated from a burgher family
from Miłosław.48 In the Poznań city books, Nicholas Młynek appears as a
burgher, and is designated by the epithet providus (typical for persons of this
estate), as he sells a garden, carries out transactions in various rent revenues,
or warrants the acts of his fellow burghers.49 He was definitely still alive at
the end of 1440. On the other hand, on 31 January 1443, we have a record of a
suburban garden qui fuit olim Nicolai Mlinek,50 which seems to indicate that
at that time our magister was deceased.
And now concerning Jochna. The Poznań land and city books contain
multiple records of her. She is referred to as daughter of Manlin the Old,51
widow of Abraham,52 and, later, wife of Pessach.53 Is this always the same
person, and, if so, how do we relate her to that Jochna who was allegedly
the wife of Nicholas Młynek? The latter had a legal case against Gregory
of Gulcz. That case was undoubtedly connected to the case which Jochna
was simultaneously pursuing against Nicholas of Wargów. This is because,
as it turns out, the two men’s financial obligations to Jochna were closely
interrelated: Gregory was the principal debtor, while Nicholas Wargowski
was Gregory’s warrantor.54 The Jochna who was Wargowski’s creditor is
undoubtedly the same person as Jochna the creditor of Janusz from Wielkie,
and of James from Gorzew – since their cases are frequently recorded in
the books in sequences,55 and thus must concern the same Jewish woman.
Moreover, because the case against James of Gorzew concerned the debts
of his mother, Catherine, we must identify our Jochna with the Jochna who
pursued a drawn-out legal case against Catherine of Gorzew.56 That case
continued until Jochna’s death, after which it was re-initiated by her hus-
band, Pessach.57 In turn, we also have clear evidence that Pessach’s wife
was Manlin’s daughter.58 Finally, there is no doubt that this same daughter
of Manlin’s had earlier been Abraham’s wife. This is because Abraham’s
widow and Manlin the Old had common debtors, Andrew Krupka of
Skórzewo and Nicholas of Chomęcice; Manlin very often took Jochna’s
place in these matters;59 and Abraham is recorded as Manlin’s son-in-law.60
Tracing out, at this point, all these detailed bits of evidence was necessary,
in order to prove that, regardless of her specific descriptions in particular
instances, the Jochna who appears in the Poznań sources during this period
is always one and the same person.
And thus the course of her life may be reconstructed, as follows. She was
the daughter of Manlin the Old. Her father was among the wealthiest and the
most active Poznań usurers of his time.61 Her first husband was Abraham.
In all likelihood, this was Abraham, son of Aaron, the wealthiest banker in
Poznań at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.62 Abraham him-
self also engaged in very lively credit activity. Jochna, it seems, appears in
the sources only as a widow, beginning in 1426.63 She therefore embarked
upon her own activity in the usury sector only after becoming a widow for
the first time. As is clear from the perusal of the land books, in her time she
was among the most active lenders. The overall extent of her credit cannot
be assessed, because the court entries reflect fragmentary, and often unclear,
data about the level of debt obligations. It is possible to note, however, that
she succeeded in acquiring the landholdings of one of the debtors.64 Usually
she appears simply as Jochna Judea de Poznania, and thus she conducted
her business independently. As early as January 1431, however, she had a
another husband, by the name of Pessach.65 Because this person had previ-
ously not appeared within the close group of the Poznań bankers, he either
had to have originated from among the poorer members of the local com-
munity, or had to have been a recent newcomer from the outside world. In
February 1434, Jochna still appeared in the land court in her own person.66
Yet, on 18 March we have an entry which, while recording Jochna herself
as the party, in the subsequent text discusses the debt obligations as due to
Pessach and to Jochna’s children.67 Quite possibly, therefore, as of that day
Jochna was dead. She was explicitly identified as deceased in an entry of
13 April.68 She was survived by the children of two of her Jewish marriages
– all of them, it appears, still very young at the time of her death. At that time,
the only child mentioned by name was Muszka, undoubtedly a son from her
union with Abraham.69 The affairs of the deceased wife continued to be man-
aged by her husband Pessach. In the sources known to me, he continues to
make appearances until 1448.70
Thus, Jochna was a married woman before 1426, and, at the latest, since
1431. We therefore have a gap, into which her union with Nicholas Młynek
attested by the entry of March 1429 may theoretically be placed.
But was it really possible for Młynek and Jochna to have been married? It
seems unthinkable, especially since we are in now in a social circle close to
the cathedral and the higher clergy, where anti-Jewish limitations imposed by
canon law were surely treated far more seriously than may have been the case
among the common people. Jochna could probably not have become the wife
of an attorney engaged in the consistory court without first having accepted
baptism. Yet, from our perusal of her entire life, we know that she always
remained a Jew. We note her in the city books in the spring of 1429 – that is
to say, at the time when Młynek is supposed to have been her husband – in
a series of court trials, always with her usual epithet, Judea de Poznania,71
and later as having entered into another one of her Jewish marriages. We are,
however, left with the fact that, on 7 March 1429, the consistory court scribe
explicitly wrote down the words procurator et maritus. Perhaps we may infer
here the existence of an informal union between Nicholas Młynek and the
Jewish woman. Quite possibly, the word maritus, used here only once, was a
deliberate act of sacrasm on the scribe’s part: a possible concubinage between
an attorney of the consistory court and a Jew must have been scandalising in
the ecclesiastical milieu.
Quite possibly, there had been a preliminary contract of betrothal, stipu-
lating conversion by the future wife. Canon law recognised the validity of
a contract of this kind. However, the wedding and the baptism probably
never occurred. Consistent with the looseness of the union is the fact that,
soon afterwards, both parties entered new, legal marriages – Jochna before
January 1431, Nicholas before February 1433. In any event – at least if we
do not accept here an outright scribal lapsus calami – Młynek’s ‘marriage’
to the Jewish woman can probably only be imagined as a transient, loose
union. Who knows whether we may also not suspect the attorney Nicholas
of a purely material motivation? After all, his partner was one of the wealthi-
est persons in the Poznań financial world. All this must, however, remain a
hypothesis – a hypothesis which is difficult to confirm with certainty.
4
The two examples presented here are not entirely free of uncertainties. The
first shows us a well-attested union between a Jewish man and a Christian
woman, but the nature of that union remains unclear. In the second, we cannot
be certain of the existence of a union between a Jewish woman and a Christian
man at all. In any event, we surely have here atypical, unusual situations,
from which it would be difficult to draw any generalisations. Nevertheless,
they are worth examining closely, and presenting in detail, because they
serve as instances of a phenomenon heretofore virtually unnoticed. As it
was actually lived, life in past centuries turns out to have been richer than
its images, which are so well entrenched in the scholarly literature. Some
types of intimate relationships among members of the mutually self-isolat-
ing Christian and Jewish communities were, after all, possible. The most
significant outcome of this highly fragmentary study is one methodological
insight. An accurate picture of the life of the Polish Jews, especially of their
bilateral relations with the Christian society surrounding them, cannot be
drawn from a mere analysis of different kinds of normative documents, or
from fragmentary remarks in the historiography. What is necessary is a broad
and comprehensive inquiry into the sources reflecting court practice, which,
by the later Middle Ages, are quite ample: the books of the noble land and
urban courts, the city books, and, perhaps above all, the extremely interesting
books of the consistory courts.72
8 Notes on the provision
of water for the city of
Dubrovnik in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries
Bariša Krekić
The city of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea,
reached the peak of its development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Its role as intermediary in the trade between the Balkan hinterland and the
Adriatic and Mediterranean area brought to the city substantial wealth and
significant demographic growth. However, Dubrovnik is located in a region
which did not provide sufficient foodstuffs or drinking water for its popula-
tion; thus it was forced to import a great deal of food, but it was much more
difficult to cope with the problem of water supply. There could be no pur-
chase and import of large quantities of this substance: everything depended
on natural resources, that is to say on rain and springs.
In earlier times, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there were some
public and private wells and cisterns in the city. There is mention of some
cisterns, and of imports of water on small boats from the nearby area, as early
as in the city Statutes of 1272.1 As the city grew during the fourteenth century,
the Ragusan government intensified these imports.2 However, by the first
half of the fifteenth century, all of this could not satisfy the needs of the city,
despite the increase in the number and the size of ships sent to bring water.
This became especially true after textile production started in Dubrovnik
in the early fifteenth century.3 As a consequence, the Ragusan government
decided to resolve the problem of water for good by financing the construc-
tion of an important and very expensive major project.
In June 1436 a detailed agreement was made between Dubrovnik and the
Neapolitan Onofrio de la Cava for the building of an aqueduct approximately
five miles long, which would bring to the city the water from a source at
Šumet, on a hill above the Ragusan suburb of Gruž (Gravosa). Work on this
big enterprise seems to have been finished in a mere two years, and the aque-
duct remained the only source of water for Dubrovnik until the mid-twentieth
century. Onofrio also built two beautiful public fountains, near the western
and eastern entrances to the main street of the city.4
During the subsequent decades the Ragusan government carefully watched
Notes on the provision of water for the city of Dubrovnik 95
over the aqueduct, adding minor water resources to it from time to time.5 The
authorities threatened with severe punishment anyone who dared to harm
the precious structure. In 1443, when it was realised that there were people
who abused the aqueduct by making holes, opening channels and diverting
water for their own use, or otherwise impeding the free flow of water, the
government decreed that anyone who committed such malfeasance would
have his right arm severed.6 A later order directed the officials in charge of
the aqueduct ‘to cut and eradicate all vines and trees which have been planted
around the canali’.7
Rainwater was no less important than the water from the aqueduct, and
the authorities constantly tried to improve its collection and preservation.
In December 1478 and again in June 1479 they ordered that rainwater run-
offs which had changed their earlier course should be made to return to their
previous location.8 Indeed, the spring and summer of 1479 seem to have been
a period of serious water shortage. In early May the government appointed
a special committee, consisting of three patricians, ‘to review all cisterns
existing in Dubrovnik and to report, separating those which are good from
those which are not good’. Masons and other craftsmen were prohibited from
working for private citizens; instead, ‘they all must work for one month on
communal works’.9 A little later the officiales aqueductus were authorised to
open the aqueduct ‘to clean it of mud and roots’ and then ‘to repair and cover
it’.10 Probably because of a persistent scarcity of water, in July 1479 the gov-
ernment again appointed three patricians ‘to talk to craftsmen, [and] thus to
understand where it would be most convenient and best and least expensive
to preserve water in Dubrovnik’.11
The government also supervised very carefully the water resources out-
side the city, and regulated their use.12 However, the owner of the land con-
taining a water spring could allocate the water to another person in return for
compensation. Thus, in February 1480, the patrician ser Marinus Triffonis de
Bonda granted to Peter Miletić, from the Ragusan peninsula of Pelješac, the
use of water ‘called Vota which originates and flows on the possession of ser
Marinus’ in Pelješac. Peter and his family, with their animals, were allowed
‘to go to the said water and use it as long as Peter lives’. For his part, Peter was
to give the patrician two chickens each year at Lent.13 In August of the same
year another patrician, ser Marinus Mart. De Georgio, made an agreement
with a group of ten peasants from the Ragusan region of Konavle, according
to which the patrician would allow them and their families to use ‘forever’
a pond (loquam) on his land in Konavle, and they were to give him and his
descendants every Christmas ‘one bread [loaf], one good chicken and one
bucket of sour milk’, and every Easter one hyperper and six grossi.14
Cisterns existed in Ragusan homes, churches, monasteries and public
places, as did fountains, the most important of the latter being the two already
mentioned, built by Onofrio de la Cava.15 In February 1480 a mason promised
two patricians, representing the cathedral church of Saint Mary, ‘to repair and
solidify two cisterns in the said church of Saint Mary, so that they may hold
and preserve water well and without any defect’ for the duration of three
years.16 Contracts for the building of cisterns could be very elaborate. In June
1480 three masons agreed with a commoner to build within two months a cis-
tern in his house for the price of thirty hyperpers. The cistern was supposed to
last ten years and, if during that time it developed any faults, the masons were
to repair them at no charge.17 Yet another interesting and elaborate contract
was written in December 1480, when a mason promised to the patrician ser
Franchus Jo. De Sorgo to make him a cistern ‘the Greek way’.18
The location of a cistern did not depend solely on the decision of its owner,
but also, very frequently, on the convenience of that facility for the general
public. In December 1480 the Minor Council allowed Luka Radovanović ‘to
make at his own expense a cistern on the land belonging to the church of Saint
John de Pusterna’, where he had already started excavations for that purpose,
‘because, when the Lord Rector and the Minor Council saw the said place,
and when the master-masons were taken to that place, it was evident that the
cistern would be convenient for the whole neighbourhood and also, in case of
necessity, for the whole city’.19
Yet another example of care for the interest of the community came in
1487. On 13 March of that year the Senate rejected a petition by the nuns
of the monastery of Saint Claire – all of them patrician women and girls.
However, persevering in their efforts, the nuns resubmitted their petition to
the Senate at some point between 13 March and 23 June 1487. In this peti-
tion the nuns begged the Senate to grant them a piece of land adjacent to their
monastery, so that they might enlarge their living space. They pointed out,
in very lively and direct terms, that their numbers were growing and that
they were living in impossibly cramped quarters. The Rector himself and the
Minor Council had visited the monastery and acquainted themselves with
the nuns’ miserable condition, but nothing was done to correct it. Although
they were fully aware of many matters with which the Rector and the Council
were occupied, the nuns nevertheless urged the authorities to grant them the
land they asked for, ‘because extreme necessity is forcing us’, especially
during the summer when ‘respectfully speaking, indescribable quantities of
bugs and fleas’ were torturing them, ‘and this can be understood by those who
have experienced them as we are experiencing [them]’.
The problem was that on the land that the nuns were requesting for the
enlargement of their monastery, there was a cistern. The nuns offered to build
a new cistern and a fountain in a place accessible to the public at all times.
They were also willing to make sure that the new cistern would be salizada
cum creta, so that ‘the water of the said cistern will never be contaminated.’20
On 23 June 1487, during the debate in the Senate on the nuns’ petition, ser
Junius Pasqualis de Sorgo promised that he would cover all expenses should
it be necessary at any time to repair any manchamentum of the water in the
cistern on the nuns’ land arising from this concession. Sorgo also promised
that the fountain would be located so that everyone could use the water,
except for the times when the government closed it.21
Immediately after this, the Senate, with 26 ballots for and ten against,
approved the nuns’ petition and granted them the land they had asked for. The
Senate’s decision concerning this concession explicitly referred to Sorgo’s
obligation.22 The fact that the nuns had succeeded in achieving their goal
can also be deduced from an act of 16 July 1487. A man from Senj, on the
northern Croatian littoral, came to an agreement with ser Junius Pasqualis de
Sorgo and his companions, officials who were to supervise the construction
work on the new cistern which was to replace the one adjacent to the mon-
astery of Saint Claire. He was to bring to Dubrovnik by the end of August a
variety of equipment needed for the building of the new cistern.23
While the case of the nuns’ cistern seems to have been favourably resolved,
cisterns and wells could also be a cause of conflicts among people, especially
when they were shared by several. Thus, in June 1480, litigation broke out
between ser Vladissauus de Goze and his nephew ser Clemens de Goze.
They had a cistern in a jointly owned courtyard, and the controversy ended up
in the Minor Council. The Council decided that the cistern should take only
rainwater, and that ‘if any one of them affixes to the wall of the said courtyard
any pots to place flowers or odoriferous herbs’, such pots should be removed
within three days. It seems, however, that this order was not obeyed, because
in October of the same year both patricians were admonished once again by
the Council, to the effect ‘that none of them may from now on keep pots over
their cistern’.24 At the same time two members of the Minor Council were
authorised to spend up to fifty hyperpers from the state treasury ‘to clean and
repair the old water channel’.25
The care with which the government supervised not only public but also
private and ecclesiastical cisterns, and everything else that had to do with the
supply of water, is quite understandable. As already mentioned, Dubrovnik
was situated in an area where prolonged dry periods were not a rarity. One
such period was 1426, when, in October, the Minor Council ordered ‘that
our Ragusan clergy, as is the habit, organise a solemn procession tomor-
row, Friday, and on Saturday . . . as a token of respect toward Almighty God
and the whole heavenly court, so that they may deign to grant us salutary
rain’.26
The year 1513 was another dry year. In July the government decided to
close all wells along the aqueduct ‘from the source of the water to the city’,
with the exception of two cisterns.27 By October the water-supply situation
had significantly worsened, and on the fifteenth of that month a fine of 25
hyperpers was imposed on anyone opening canals at any point along the
entire length of the aqueduct.28 The end of that month must have seen a drastic
shortage of water in Dubrovnik: the authorities appointed officiales fontane
on duty near all fountains and wells in the city, with the task of seeing to it
‘that people can use those waters in abundance during this extreme drought’
(in hac extrema siccitate).29
Such shortages of water, which Dubrovnik suffered from time to time,
were due primarily to the lack of rain. In November 1513 the government
decreed that a well be built at a fresh-water spring inside the city itself,
and ordered a search for another spring in the same area of the city.30
Paradoxically, these measures seem to have been adopted between two big
storms that hit Dubrovnik at this time. Although there is no systematic study
of the climate and rainfall in the region in late-medieval and Renaissance
times, there is data which allows us a partial insight into the weather situa-
tion in Dubrovnik.
In November 1512 a powerful storm with violent rain inflicted damage
on parts of the fortifications and on the harbour, where it was necessary to
repair ‘what the tempestuous sea had destroyed’.31 Yet another even more
powerful storm hit the city and the whole territory of the Ragusan Republic in
September 1514. The government talked of a ‘deluge of rain’, and losses were
extensive. Some roofs in the city itself had suffered damage: in the village
of Slano, to the north, the salt-works were damaged, and the town of Cavtat,
to the south, was also hit.32 One can assume that this unusually violent storm
came after the scorching summer heat which is frequent in Dubrovnik.
The storms certainly helped replenish the Ragusan sources of water.
Nevertheless, the authorities’ vigilance over the flow of rainwater was main-
tained when it came to the aqueduct. For example, in August 1567 the Senate
ordered that all homeowners from whose roofs water was flowing downward
onto the street must, by the end of December, under the penalty of twenty
hyperpers, ‘conduct the said rainwater down inside the wall, so that it no
longer falls from on high . . . onto the public street’. Houses built in the future
were subject to the same rule, on pain of severe fines.33 There were from time
to time problems with the engineers of the aqueduct (protomagistri aqueduc-
tus), who were supposed to supervise this important construction and to make
sure that it was in sound condition and functioned in a satisfactory manner at
all times. In September 1529 the engineer Peter was dismissed ‘because of
his neglect . . . of the said job’.34 In 1566 the engineer of the aqueduct, Pasco,
from Nin – a city in northern Dalmatia – and all the workers who had been
repairing a cistern in the monastery of Saint Andrew, were sentenced to a
reimbursement of all expenses incurred by the monastery toward the repair of
the cistern, ‘because through their fault the cistern has been ruined and holds
no water’.35 In October 1550 a new and detailed decree was issued concern-
ing the duties of the officials entrusted with the care of the aqueduct.36
* * *
Water had an extraordinary importance in the life of Dubrovnik, even more

so than was the case in many other medieval/Renaissance cities, because
of the specific geographic and political position of the Republic, squeezed
as it was into an extremely narrow strip of land and a few small islands
along the Adriatic Sea coast, between two opposite and frequently hostile
worlds: the eastern and Balkan, at the time increasingly dominated by the
Ottoman Empire, and the western and Adriatic, dominated by Venice. This
situation enhanced the importance of fresh water as an indispensable means
to Dubrovnik’s very existence as a free city-state, and to the survival of its
inhabitants. Surrounded by the sea and barren mountains, Dubrovnik badly
needed a steady supply of water because – for all the famed diplomatic skill
and wise statesmanship of its governing patricians – without food and water
the state would have been forced to capitulate to any one among its powerful
neighbours. But, as has already been mentioned, while food could be bought
with Dubrovnik’s vast wealth and transported on its numerous ships, often
from distant regions, water could not. Therein lies the importance of the
aqueduct, the fountains, the wells and the cisterns; and it also gave scope
to the wisdom of the people who built and constantly supervised those
facilities.
However, water also played an important role in other aspects of Dubrov-
nik’s daily life, in particular in the struggle against fires, which were a perma-
nent menace to all medieval cities. True, Dubrovnik was on the seashore, and
seawater was certainly used to put out fires, but one can surmise that, on many
occasions, especially when the danger was imminent and drastic, people used
water from nearby cisterns and fountains to put out the flames. The great
fire of 1296, which consumed a large portion of the still-wooden city, was
one such case, and there were no doubt other similar instances of grave dan-
ger.37 The gradual and systematic replacement of wooden with stone houses,
and the paving of city streets and squares with stone and brick, beginning in
the early fifteenth century, reduced the menace of fire and the need to use
water from cisterns and fountains to fight it. This was certainly a significant
development at a time when water was increasingly used for the needs of a
growing population and for the newly introduced production of textiles. It is
not surprising therefore that the Ragusan authorities paid so much attention
to the problems connected with fresh water and that they strove consistently
through the centuries to make water accessible to all inhabitants of the city. It
was yet another proof of their well-known versatility and far-sighedness.
9 Venice and Wrocław in the
later Middle Ages
Grzegorz Myśliwski
In the economic history of Western Europe, the thirteenth century is the apex
of development, the watershed of an intercontinental economic system which
extended, until around the middle of the subsequent century, from Flanders,
through Italy, Egypt and India, all the way to China.1 The dissolution of this
system around the mid-fourteenth century coincided with several areas of
crisis that afflicted the West until the mid-fifteenth century.2 In contrast, for
the countries of Central Europe, the end of the central Middle Ages and the
late medieval period, were, in the opinion of most historians, a time of for-
mation and of the intensification of economic contacts with the cores of the
Western European economy: Italy, Flanders and the Brabant.3 One segment
of this long-term process was the history of contacts between the Republic
of Venice and Wrocław (Breslau in German) – a city serving as the hub of
Silesia, a province among Central Europe’s most developed regions. In the
thirteenth century, the significance of these two cities differed diametrically.
As is well known, after participating in the partition of a large part of the
Byzantine Empire in 1204, the Venetian Republic acquired hegemony over
significant territories in the eastern Mediterranean basin, and reached the
apex of its political and economic power.4 Despite the troublesome conse-
quences of Turkish expansion in the late Middle Ages, in this period Venice’s
economic profile, and place on the economic map of Europe, remained pre-
eminent.5 By the mid-fourteenth century, the city had no fewer than 100,000
inhabitants, whilst between the catastrophe of the Black Death and the end of
the Middle Ages, the population did not exceed 85,000.6
Meanwhile, in the first half of the thirteenth century, Wrocław’s signifi-
cance was limited to the northwestern portion of Central Europe. This seat
of a bishopric, and political centre of one of the Polish duchies, was then in
the early phases of its development – having gained the status of an auto-
monous urban community, founded according to the law of Magdeburg
around 1230.7 Until the 1240s, Wrocław functioned merely as a transit point
between Prague and western Poland (the Great Poland region), Pomerania
Venice and Wrocław in the later Middle Ages 101
and the Baltic zone.8 Historians also discern, at this time, economic ties
between Wrocław and the towns of eastern Germany.9 In the same period,
Wrocław and Silesia were part of what is known as the Sudeto-Carpathian, or
simply the Carpathian, economic zone, encompassing the Czech Kingdom,
Hungary (including Slovakia and Transylvania) and southern Poland.10 That
zone’s main asset was a variety of metal ores, the demand for which elicited
interest in Central Europe among Western European merchants from pre-
cisely the thirteenth century onwards.11 At the outset of the fifteenth century
– that is to say, at the height of its prosperity – the number of Wrocław’s
inhabitants did not exceed 20,000.12
The earliest encounter between the merchants of Wrocław and of Venice
may have occurred as early as 1245, in Kiev, which, despite the destruction
caused by the Mongols in 1240, attracted merchants not only from Wrocław
but also from other Polish and southern German towns (especially, I would
argue, Regensburg), plus occasional visitors from the main Italian cities and
from Acre.13 Although in all likelihood the encounter in the historical capital
of the Rus’ had no consequences for Wrocław-Venice contacts, we may nev-
ertheless consider it symbolic. Until the Mongol conquest, Kiev had func-
tioned as the chief transit point of the commerce between Asia and Europe.
Paradoxically, though it was ushered in by massive destruction and slaugh-
ter, the pax mongolica made possible the development of an intercontinental
commercial exchange – but with only a minimal participation by the former
capital of the Rus’, now nearly in ruins.14 The visit by the Wrocław merchants
reflects their interest in merchandise from the Orient, and their search for
commercial contacts across an expanded horizon. Similarly, the Venetians
in Kiev, and the other Italians who arrived in the Rus’ capital per Tartaros
– meaning, presumably, across the western regions of the Mongol empire
– also sought new access to Asian products, and possibly to terrains for com-
mercial expansion. The efforts by Wrocław merchants led to results – though
less in the east of Europe than in the much more important Italian north.
The beginnings of relatively regular contact between Wrocław and north-
ern Italy may be dated to the end of the second third of the thirteenth century.
This is because in 1266 at the latest the sources report the importation into
Wrocław of a type of wine, described as de vino Gallico sive Rivali.15 Despite
considerable disagreement among historians in interpreting the geographical
references expressed by those words, the description refers to the regions
of northern Italy which were under the influence of Venice, rather than to
French territories.16 We do not know whether Wrocław merchants purchased
wine directly in Italy, or whether they did so in Bavaria, along a trade route
leading to Italy which they frequently traversed. Such visits are shown by
the toll tariff, dated 1270 or 1271, from the locality called Chamb (today,
Cham), situated in the German-Czech frontier zone, and traversed by the
trade route leading to Regensburg.17 In Regensburg, which among all the
towns of Germany enjoyed the closest contacts with Venice until the mid-fif-
teenth century,18 it was also possible to buy merchandise from regions of the
South and the East. For this reason, instead of slogging their way across the
Alps, Wrocław merchants were able to make purchases in Bavaria, though
undoubtedly at a relatively high price.
But it seems that Silesian merchants travelled even further south – to
Munich (gen Muenichen), among other places.19 At the time a relatively
unimportant town in European commerce,20 Munich could not have been
their final destination. It therefore seems likely that such merchants from
Wrocław were en route to northern Italy, in order to purchase Mediterranean
and Oriental commodities. But were they travelling only for that purpose? By
retrogression, we may suppose that Wrocław merchants came to Italy with
East-Central European commodities. We may suspect this from the slightly
later notes made by agents of the Frescobaldi bank in Florence, and discov-
ered by F. Bastian. In 1299, on the orders of this powerful banking enterprise,
a certain Wrocław merchant by the name of David brought a transport of
fur to the boundary region between Tyrol and Italy.21 A year later, the same
David, and a certain Diemon (possibly Damian), received reimbursement
for expenditures they had incurred in Bozen (Bolzano) and Trent, in all like-
lihood on the instructions of the Frescobaldi.22 They must have scaled the
Brenner Pass – the critical link between the Empire and nothern Italy in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,23 from which the distances to Verona, to
the vinyeards of Rivoli and to Venice were quite short. However, it was not
Venice, but the Verona region, or Bolzano and Florence, which first attracted
merchants from faraway Wrocław. Although a likely motive for travelling
to the Mediterranean region was the desire for Levantine goods, even more
important was the response to the demand for fur in northern Italy. This
motivation – in conjunction with the skills of the Wrocław entrepreneurs
in furnishing the requisite supply (skills that were most probably expressed
in Russian pelts) – is the specific explanation for the rise of long-term ties
between East Central Europe (among other regions) and the Italian north.
Likewise, the Venetians required fur, with which they were supplied by
Wrocław merchants around the same period. Thanks to H. Amman, we know
that in the first decade of the fourteenth century, at the latest, Wrocław mer-
chants were travelling southward by a different trade route, through eastern
Austria.24 We know this because the toll tariff of Wiener Neustadt (compiled
around 1310) contains a notice about merchants from Wrocław transporting
fur.25 We must concur with Amman, who discerned here a reflection of com-
mercial journeys by Wrocław merchants to Venice itself;26 Wiener Neustadt,
a town of a distant rank on the economic map of Europe, could not have
been the final destination of these long-distance journeys. The Wrocław
merchants in all likelihood traversed Moravia and Vienna, and, after passing
Wiener Neustadt, progressed by the route leading through the Semmering
Pass, Judenburg and Villach, from where Venice was within easy reach.27
Contrary to the views held by the dean of Wrocław’s trade history, H.
Wendt, contacts between Wrocław and Venice do not appear to have subsided
during the first half of the fourteenth century, despite the absence of similarly
eloquent sources.28 The incorporation of Polish Wrocław into the Kingdom of
Bohemia, which took place de jure in 1327 and de facto in 1335,29 must have
encouraged such contacts. Czech merchants had been present in Venice since
at least 1300.30 In addition, judging from later evidence, demand for fur along
the Adriatic remained strong. Confirming the economic ties between Venice’s
colonial empire and Silesia’s chief city is the extensive Wrocław tariff of cus-
toms and tolls, compiled in 1327, which splendidly reflects the city’s com-
modity trade. Thus, among other commodities, a variety of furs continued to
be brought to Wrocław. Their massive importation is attested by the large size
of the basic unit on which such payment was assessed: one thousand pelts.31
In addition, numerous commodities were imported from beyond trans-Alpine
Europe: exotic cloth-making material and clothing (clause 4: silk and silk out-
fits, brocade, gold-interlaced ribbons, taffeta), spices (clause 5: pepper, gin-
ger, sugar, saffron, muscat and unde allirleige gekrude, i.e. ‘all other spices’,
and, in clause 7, cummin), fruit (clause 8: figs, raisins), Italian wine (clause
19: still the reinval, and in addition the velsch).32 The regulation concerning
hucksters issued in the same year, 1327, also notes rice and almonds.33
We cannot exclude the possibility that all these commodities had origi-
nally been purchased in the Venice market. Indeed, the literature on this sub-
ject has long maintained that most Oriental commodities reached the Odra
specifically from Venice.34 In all likelihood, some proportion of the com-
modities just noted could have originated in Venice; however, the influx of
Mediterranean and Oriental goods into Wrocław could also have originated
from elsewhere – the Netherlands, where Wrocław merchants were present
as early as the second half of the thirteenth century, or Genoa’s Black Sea
colonies, through the Kingdom of Hungary, or through Lwów and Kraków.35
The suppliers of these Levantine commodities are described in the documents
with the word gast, which may in this context be translated as ‘a [merchant]
stranger’.36 In all likelihood, some proportion of the commodities originating
in Venice were imported by entrepreneurs from outside Wrocław. Active here
may have been merchants from southern Germany (Regensburg, Passau),
and possibly from southern Poland (Kraków), and from Prussia under the
Teutonic Order (Toruń), whose importance in this regard is well attested in
the 1350s.37
Nevertheless, we should not rule out a role by the Wrocław merchants
themselves in supplying their own city with commodities imported from
Venice. This is because the word gast apparently refers not merely to a for-
eigner, but also to any merchant arriving in Wrocław from abroad – including
a merchant on his return home. Apart from a single clause concerning small
objects (the cromerie, clause 6), all the commodities – even the regional wine
(the lant win, clause 19) – were imported by persons described with the word
gast. Thus, if we interpret that word as simply a synonym for foreigner, we
would be compelled to conclude that Wrocław merchants never travelled
abroad in search of those commodities which were inaccessible in Silesia.
Yet it appears that the volume of such commodities imported was, in the
comparative contemporary context, relatively high – a fact we can infer from
the basic unit on which the toll was assessed: a centner, that is, about fifty
kilograms.
Based on this evidence, it is difficult to assess the intensity of the con-
tacts between Wrocław and Venice; quite possibly, such contacts were not
especially frequent. On the other hand, we may also assume that they never
ceased, since there were no specific reasons for their cessation. What is, how-
ever, absolutely beyond doubt is their increase during the second half, and
especially the final quarter, of the fourteenth century. Of great benefit here
was Wrocław’s subjection to the Kingdom of Bohemia, whose ruler (since
1355, emperor) conducted an active Italian policy. Thanks to an agreement
with the doge of Venice, all of Charles IV’s subjects acquired, in 1358, the
privilege of engaging in trade with the Republic.38 However, it appears that
merchants specifically from Wrocław began to appear with an appreciable
frequency along the route through Austria only in the fourth quarter of the
century; in the 1360s, Austria’s rulers Duke Rudolph IV and Duke Albrecht
III issued rights of free passage only to merchants from Prague.39
The whole issue of travel by Wrocław merchants arose only in the 1380s
– a fact which may be viewed as proof of an intensification of trading expe-
ditions to Venice. In 1381, the duke of Carinthia, Leopold, granted to such
expeditions free passage though the territories subject to him, for a period
of two years.40 However, travel by Wrocław merchants elicited resistance
from the inhabitants of Vienna and other Austrian towns. The harassment
directed against merchants travelling from Wrocław to Venice prompted a
response from the king of Bohemia, Wenceslas IV,41 who, in 1387, threatened
the Austrians with retaliation against their merchants en route to Bohemia
and Poland.42 But the monarch’s intervention was useless; as early as the fol-
lowing year, the Prague town council asked the Wrocław authorities to join
in the efforts against those inhabitants of the duchy of Austria who continued
to impede transit toward Venice.43
Contrary to the optimistic view voiced by C. Grünhagen, this did not lead
to the desired results.44 Only after another attempt, when the margrave of
Moravia, Jodok, was asked to mediate, was a compromise reached between
the rulers of Bohemia and Austria, as well as between the principal towns of
those countries. Some time in the period 1391–4, the margrave induced the
protagonists to enter a treaty, which was to last for six years, whereby the
inhabitants of Prague and Wrocław obtained the right of free transit through
eastern Austria, after the payment of customary tolls.45 In a separate clause,
the treaty guaranteed merchants from Wrocław free transit through the region
of Zeiring in Styria (near Judenburg) – but without commodities, and only
with money and bills of exchange.46 Thus, the Austrian impediments did
not prevent the expansion of contacts between the Venetian Republic and
Wrocław, contacts which entered their most dynamic phase approximately
between 1387 and the end of the 1440s.47 Yet, it is worth recalling the discov-
ery made by A. Hoffmann, who established the presence in Silesia of a visitor
from Venice as early as 1380.48 It seems quite likely that that particular visit
(which was related to exacting a debt owed by a townsman of Strzegom) had
its contemporary counterparts in Wrocław itself – a city which was, after all,
much more important than Strzegom.
The development of Wrocław’s interactions with Venice is further reflected
by the emerging use, from the 1380s onward, of a third trade route to the
south: through Linz and Salzburg.49 These contacts continued, without inter-
ruption by the trade war which was waged intermittently between 1412 and
1437 by Sigismund of Luxemburg (simultaneously the Roman king and the
king of Hungary and Bohemia). The fact that the inhabitants of Wrocław were
subject to Sigismund only from 1419 onward50 is not very significant in this
context, because all the trade routes to Venice led through the Empire and the
Kingdom of Hungary. Thus, the emperor allowed outright one of Wrocław’s
inhabitants, Richard Sak, to assault and plunder the Venetians’ trading expe-
ditions,51 while another (Antonio Ricci, an immigrant from Florence, and
possibly a relative of the Medicis) was forced to explain himself on account
of his visit to Venice on commercial business during a prohibited period.52
Moreover, in certain years after the renewal of the prohibition on visits by
Wrocław merchants to Venice (specifically 1420 and 1431),53 evidence of
economic contacts by the city’s merchants with the Mediterranean city-state
does indeed disappear.
Nevertheless, the scepticism expressed by some historians regarding the
full effectiveness of the blockade54 is supported by the history of Wrocław
itself. One example is the commercial notes (preserved in eighteenth-century
copies) which were made by Paul Beringer, who travelled regularly to Venice
between 1410 and 1419 on instructions from his principal, Michael Banke.55
To be sure, the years between April 1413 and July 1418 were a time of truce,56
but the notes made in 1412 and 1419 attest to visits in Venice by this agent
during the blockade.57 Also mistaken is the view of W. von Stromer, to the
effect that, as a result of Sigismund of Luxemburg’s tariff war against Venice,
the contacts of Wrocław merchants on the Adriatic were permanently appro-
priated by the merchants of Nuremberg, a city which was the principal ally of
the emperor.58 To be sure, we have cases that might support this view, but only
in the years 1421–3,59 and even then with reservations. In 1422, a Venetian
arrived in Wrocław, in person, to demand repayment of a loan, using for this
purpose a letter from the doge and other documents.60 In the subsequent years,
we have examples of direct contact between the merchants from Wrocław on
the one hand, and Venice and the Venetians on the other.61 Usually, it was the
Wrocław merchants who travelled to the Adriatic, although we also know
of instances when Italians arrived at the Odra (including just after 1433, the
year of the end of the trade war), such as Simone Fastilmi, Gerònimo della
Torre, Giovanni Bindi of Lucca, Laurencio Bindi and Phebo Capella.62 Direct
contacts between Wrocław and Venice merchants also occurred in Lwów
(Leopolis, Lemburga) during the third quarter of the fifteenth century.63 The
ties between the two cities lasted until the end of the 1480s, if not later64
– and they appear to have continued after that decade, as attested by fragmen-
tary evidence from the first quarter of the sixteenth century.65 An additional,
indirect corroboration of the permanence of direct connections is Wrocław’s
contacts with the Apostolic See, whose intensity would have been difficult to
maintain without strong ties with the Republic.66
Direct economic contacts between Wrocław and Venice entailed both com-
modity trade and credit. As is well known, Venice was, next to Bruges, one
of the two most important emporia of Western Europe, where just about any
commodity could be purchased.67 Despite the difference in the trading poten-
tials of Wrocław and Venice, sale of commodities occurred in both directions,
over a period lasting at least until 1489.68 The level of supply on Venice’s side,
and of the intermediaries acting on Venice’s behalf, far outweighed the level
of supply from the other direction. In order to give a sense of the stream of
commodities into Central Europe, H. Wendt has used as an example a long
list of commodities that flowed northward through St. Veit in Carinthia.69 As
in the other towns of the Empire (Passau, for example), in Wrocław Venetian
goods comprised a separate category of merchandise (alle venedische war),
and trade in those goods was controlled by the Wrocław town council.70
However, if we limit ourselves to Wrocław, and to those commodities
which we know to have been imported by Wrocław merchants, the list
becomes much shorter. The commodities imported into Silesia were above
all spices and precious fabrics. In addition, in Venice Wrocław merchants
purchased heavy wine,71 although we cannot easily say how often this was
transported directly from the Republic, and how often from localities situ-
ated on the Republic’s trade route, such as Prague. Sporadically, travellers
from Wrocław also procured in Venice: rabbit furs originating outside of
Christendom (vir heydenische kanichin),72 jewels (pearls, among others),73
and other, unspecified small objects – an Venedischen pfennwarten, presu-
mably craft products.74
Among spices, the most important were pepper75 and saffron – the lat-
ter used, among other things, as a medicine and aphrodisiac.76 In addition,
Wrocław merchants imported, directly or through agents, ginger,77 a simi-
lar spice called santonica (also used as a medicine), cloves,78 nutmeg, dye-
wood,79 and soap (venedische Seiffe).80 Other commodities are possible; we
do have notices about goods which were purchased in Venice, but were not
expressly identified.81 Little data survives concerning the quantities of spices
imported, because the record is frequently limited to the sums paid, or to
the quantities of sacks – a measure of volume which is unknown to us. For
example, in the familiar (though not, as of yet, profoundly researched) eig-
hteenth-century extracts from Paul Bellinger’s accounts spanning the years
1410–19,82 we can only rarely find information about the quantities of pepper
purchased. On the other hand, we do know that Michael Banke’s agent was
importing far more pepper than other spices, because he disbursed over half
his expenditure in Venice (1,460 out of 2,600 ducats) on that commodity.83 In
contrast, he devoted only about 260 ducats to the procurement of saffron, and
only 73 ducats to ginger.
In order to assess the approximate size of Beringer’s purchases, let us
assume that, as of 1420, the price of pepper was 24 ducats for one centner.84
This suggests, at a first approximation, that this Wrocław agent purchased
as much as three tons of ordinary pepper. The remaining purchases were
far more modest: about 566 pounds (that is, approximately 170 kilograms)
of ginger; almost 300 pounds (about 90 kilograms) of saffron – a portion of
which was lost early on, in Friuli, during the return trip from Venice; 255
pounds (about 77 kilograms) of cloves; and 204 pounds (about 61.5 kilo-
grams) of santonica.85 All this indicates that, in contrast to Western Europe,
where the import of pepper was eclipsed by the import of other spices,86
demand in Wrocław continued to favour this commodity. Since 1456 at the
latest, the inhabitants of Wrocław also procured pepper on their own acco-
unt, and directly.87 They purchased it in person – needless to say, not only in
Venice, but also in Buda (Ofen),88 and later in Antwerp.89 Huge supplies of
pepper were also brought to Wrocław by foreigners, especially in the first
quarter of the fifteenth century.90
The Wrocław merchants also imported from Venice wool,91 cotton,92 and
luxury fabrics. The latter included silk and taffeta,93 gold-cloth, baldechin
(balkini, a silk-based fabric inerwoven with cotton or linen), a silk-like fabric
called bukeschin, and satin94 – the latter sometimes used as a pledge, that is,
as collateral for repayment to a Venetian creditor.95 Evidence concerning the
quantities of the imported textiles is much sparser.96 We do know that Beringer
imported a large volume of wool (1,346 pounds) and ‘much’ grey bukeschin
(vil groe bukeschin). As for the more valuable materials, he imported those in
enumerated lengths: eight lengths of brocade, ten lengths of decorated wool-
len cloth (gespreng),97 27 lengths of baldechin, and four lengths of satin. This
difference is not surprising in the light of the prices of these commodities. A
hundred pounds of wool cost five ducats less eight groats, whereas one length
of gold-cloth required an outlay of fifteen ducats, and one length of satin or
of baldachin cost eight ducats. On the other hand, we lack information about
the quantity of silk and taffeta with which the Florence merchant, Antonio
Ricci, is reported to have supplied the chief wholesaler of Wrocław, Johann
Banke.
The data noted above do not constitute the full evidence concerning the
import of spices, materials required for the production of cloth, or the fabrics
traded in Wrocław. In all likelihood, those commodities were, in many cases,
imported from Venice, but on the initiative of merchants from outside Silesia.
Such imports actively involved, above all, entrepreneurs from the towns of
Bavaria, Franconia, Switzerland and today’s Austria, entrepreneurs who,
according to M. Scholz-Babisch, brought in, in the course of the 1440s, that
same range of spices – plus, now, nutmeg and cinnamon, fruit (figs, raisins,
almonds), sweets (candy), medicines (gum, kenkur root), sweet wines, mul-
ticoloured linen cloth, chamois, damask and a red dye-stuff called Brazil-
wood.98
In its trading relations with Venice, Wrocław was not merely a recipient.
It was through Silesia, and by the mediation of Wrocław merchants, that a
variety of commodities, of highly varied origin, reached Italy. These inclu-
ded furs, dye-stuffs and mineral ores. In one exceptional instance, in 1399,
Wrocław merchants transported to Venice a cargo of precious stone, lapis
lazuli.99 As I have already noted, the commodities earliest to be exported to
Italy by Wrocław merchants, at the end of the thirteenth century, were pro-
ducts of the forest economy. Florence, and in all likelihood Venice, received
in this way both small furs and long fur coats (verch, es sein chürsen oder
palge). Demand for this product, supplied through Wrocław, remained strong
in Venice well into the first half of the fifteenth century – a fact attested by
the litigation between Johann Banke and Antonio Ricci, spanning the years
1428–32.100 Without getting into detail about this conflict between former
partners – a conflict which has been well studied elsewhere101 – let me merely
note that Ricci ordered from Banke 6,500 pelts of small fur (de vario 6 milia
quinque cento) for export to Venice.102 Although this commodity quite pos-
sibly originated in the region of Novgorod, it seems equally likely that, at this
time, another source of supply for Wrocław was Lithuania.103
The merchandise ordered for the Venice market by this Florentine entrepre-
neur also included the red dye-stuff called Polish cochineal dye (czerwiec).
Ricci procured by contract approximately 264 kilograms of this commodity
(ad Venetias . . . de cremesi . . . in toto lapides 22 minus 1 libra).104 It was
imported to satisfy the needs of the Venetian textile industry, either from the
territories of the Polish Kingdom or from Masovia, at this time separate from
the Kingdom.105 This was hardly the only instance of transport of cochineal
dye from Wrocław to Venice.106
The final category of commodities exported to Venice by Wrocław mer-
chants were mineral ores. Early on in the scholarship, C. Grünhagen was cer-
tain that Hungarian copper was exported to the Adriatic coast by merchants
from Wrocław.107 More important than this seems to have been the export of
gold and silver, required by Venetian mints. The Venetian Republic also nee-
ded gold and silver for transactions in foreign markets; this is because Venice
was the largest centre of commerce in precious metals in Western Europe.108
It also seems that traders from Wrocław may have played a part in the supply
of silver and gold. As early as in the thirteenth century, Wrocław merchants
transported those two ores to Bruges.109 Both ores were extracted in Silesia,
though gold was more abundant;110 one of the mining centres, Zlate Hory
(Zuckmantel in German), has been historiographically dubbed ‘a Silesian
California’.111 But it appears that Wrocław merchants sometimes traded gold
imported from the Kingdom of Hungary, where the largest reserves of gold
ore were situated. This is where most of the gold imported into Venice during
the late Middle Ages originated.112 An important role in the transfer of that
mineral to Wrocław was played by Vienna – situated as it was on the trade
route connecting the Hungarian Kingdom to southern Germany, and northern
Italy to (among other regions) Silesia.113 Examples known to me of individual
transports of gold to Venice by Wrocław merchants all entail modest quan-
tities, on the order of two or three pieces of ore per transport – pieces whose
weight is, moreover, unknown.114 I would therefore not wish to exaggerate
the extent of the export, and the reexport, of this commodity.
Matters seem a bit different regarding the export of silver, which German
merchants brought to Venice in great quantities as early as the thirteenth
century.115 Crucial to its export by Wrocław merchants must have been the
privilege issued by Charles IV in 1373, which guaranteed them free pas-
sage with silver (as well as with gold and other commodities) out of Kutná
Hora.116 Literally interpreted, this source does not rule out the possibility that
Wrocław merchants were unable to travel through Kutná Hora with precious
metals they had purchased in Silesia; more likely, however, at least in the case
of silver, is purchase in Kutná Hora itself. This was probably the location of
the purchase by the Wrocław merchant Johann Petka, from whom as much
as 10,000 marks of ore – czehentausent mark silbers, that is to say, about
two tons of silver, or a transport of that metal assessed at the value of 10,000
marks – were confiscated at the toll house in Linz.117 In conjunction, Petka’s
place of origin, the presumed location of his purchase of silver, and the place
where this merchant was detained for payment of toll, all indicate that he
was planning to transport the ore to Venice. Although Petka subsequently
prevailed in a lawsuit for legal compensation, in which he was awarded 4,000
marks, his silver never made it to Venice. This is because instead of the silver,
he received immovable property and lifetime rent-revenues in Passau. It does
not seem that Petka’s undertaking was an exception; Charles IV’s privilege
must have stemmed, among other factors, from attempts by Wrocław’s civic
authorities to obtain access to the mineral reserves of Kutná Hora.
Whether the earliest credit links arose during the reign of Charles IV cannot
be established with certainty, although it cannot be ruled out. To be sure, the
earliest clearly documented loan from a Venetian to an inhabitant of Wrocław
was incurred relatively late, only sometime before 1397 – a year when a cer-
tain Venetian travelled to Wrocław in order to demand repayment of a debt.118
However, A. Hoffmann’s discovery noted above, which clearly attests to a
claim, lodged as early as 1380 by a Venetian for repayment of a loan against
an inhabitant of the relatively unimportant town of Strzegom, allows us to
assume the existence of earlier credit relations between the inhabitants of
Wrocław and Venice. The extant sources indicate that those relations were far
more one-sided than was the case with commodity exchange. Apart from one
case (which occurred late, in 1466, and concerned only the modest sum of
ten Hungarian florins),119 in this set of bilateral relations all the debtors were
the inabitants of Wrocław. All the instances of their entrance into debt known
to me occurred in the years leading up to 1461; in one of these instances,
repayment was made as late as 1463.120 The clear majority of cases took
place before 1440. Records compiled in the 1440s concern attempts by the
Venetians to force repayment of debt. In the years 1395–1461, the inhabitants
of Wrocław borrowed from the Venetians a total of 6,361 Hungarian florins,
1,183 ducats, 151 marks and 12 individual coins of Prague groats, plus three
pieces of a coin with a name which cannot be explained today, the perner.121
Let us try to convert these sums into the two basic currencies of Central
Europe, the golden Hungarian florin and the silver Prague groat (the latter
quantified in a unit of account, the mark). Whereas the relative values of
the Prague (or Czech) groat, and of the Hungarian florin, are currently well
ascertained and known,122 the relative values of the golden Hungarian flo-
rin and the Venetian ducat require further clarification. In the light of the
Wrocław sources, the exchange rate was one-to-one: in one case, an agent of
the Venetian creditors was instructed to transfer 427 florins or ducats (ffirhun-
dert Siebnundczwenczik ungerische gulden adir gute ducaten).123 Assuming
the accuracy of this ratio, we can convert the sum total of Venetian credit
extended to the inhabitants of Wrocław into approximately 7,855 florins, or
4,301 marks of Prague groats. Using the florin as our sole basis for conver-
sion, we may infer that loans made by the Venetians exceeded, by a factor of
three, the total credit extended to the inhabitants of Wrocław over a longer
period (until 1491) by the merchants of Nuremberg, the most important town
of the upper-German economic zone.124
These levels raise a question: the purpose of the credit incurred. According
to H. Samsonowicz, Central Europe’s merchants intended the credit to
finance a diversified consumption, including the procurement of luxury
items in Venice.125 However, in the large towns of the region, including
Wrocław, hoarding was more important than either investment for profit (in
commerce or in land rent) or for consumption. The price data established for
Venice by W. Stieda allows us to infer that, for the full sum obtained by the
credit incurred there, Wrocław merchants would have been able to buy 22.5
tons of cotton at its higher price; or approximately ten tons of pepper; or more
than 6.5 tons of ginger at its higher price.126 However, one cannot rule out the
use of Venetian loans in the Wrocław market. In view of the prices of some
immovables and commodities available in that market, the credit obtained
in Venice comprised the equivalent of seven expensive houses in the market
square of Wrocław; or more than twelve cheaper houses in that same loca-
tion; or nine castles; or more than 218 bales of Brussels woollen cloth; or
approximately seven tons of pepper; or more than 392 tons of lead; or 65 tons
of copper from Hungary.127
The debt to the Venetians was owed by a total of 17 debtors. However, one-
half (more than about 52.75 per cent) of the overall debt (which, after conver-
sions from the several coinages, totalled approximately 4148 florins), was
incurred by the family of the Wrocław chief wholesaler and long-term coun-
cillor, Johann Banke.128 Banke himself owed to a group of nineteen Venetians
the huge sum of over 3,528 Hungarian florins, which comprised about 45 per
cent of all the debt obligations toward merchants from Venice.129 The remain-
ing two Bankes from Johann’s kindred (who also held important positions)
owed the Venetians 620 florins.130 Meanwhile, the entreprenurial group con-
sisting of Michael Banke (unrelated to Johann and his two relatives, but no
less prominent), his colleague on the town council Peter Stronechen and Paul
Beringer, noted above, borrowed from the Venetians a total of about 1,081
florins, which was 14.75 per cent of the overall debt.131 Among the remaining
debtors (who jointly incurred a debt of 2,626 florins, or about 33.5 percent
of the total debt), especially notable are the obligations incurred by Andreas
Peiserer, consisting of 640 florins (320 marks); by Hans Kunig, 328 florins
(114 marks); and by a certain Jenitz, 150 marks (300 florins).132
It is worth noting that, despite the occasional occurrence of very modest
loans (at a level below 22 florins),133 most acquisitions of credit from the
Venetians exceeded 100 florins. The people who entered commercial con-
tacts with the Venetians could not have belonged to the lower social strata.
However, these remaining debtors very rarely included town councillors
(Heinrich Gurteler, Beda-Biedau) or assessors (Peiserer).134 Others were
members of patrician families who did not hold office in either the town or the
duchy of Wrocław (Frantzke Dumlose, Stephan Domenicke).135 Nothing is
known about the remaining debtors. However, their connections with Venice
– which, in the single documented case of Johann Grosfener, entailed a trip
to that city – suggest a group of people specialising exclusively in economic
activity on a supra-local scale.
On the other side of the transaction, who were the donors of the credit
extended to the inhabitants of Wrocław, and what was their position in their
own entrepreneurial world? How much did each of them lend to Wrocław
entrepreneurs? In view of the source record, the latter question is often impos-
sible to answer. For example, the exceptionally high debt incurred by Johann
Banke is expressed as a lump sum, and not disaggregated among the 17 indi-
vidual creditors. Nevertheless, it seems quite certain that the main creditors
to Wrocław inhabitants were the Peruta family (Marco, Bartolomeò and
Gerònimo), who were also a well-known partnership.136 In Venetian sources,
Bartolomeò is identified as a nobleman, while in the Wrocław records all
the Peruti are identified with the word Seidenere, which we may interpret
to mean silk manufacturers.137 Thirteen inhabitants of Wrocław owed this
group 1,229 Hungarian florins, 241 ducats, and 33 groats – that is to say, a
total of over 1,471 Hungarian florins – a level comprising about nineteen per
cent of the entire Wrocław debt. We may also classify as Venetian patricians
the Amadi brothers, Francesco and Giovanni,138 to whom the inhabitants of
Wrocław owed a total of about 840 florins (about eleven per cent of the over-
all debt). The remaining creditors are more familiar, if for no other reason
than because of their ancestors or descendants. Thus Andrea Priulli and his
brothers ran a well-known bank, headquartered in Rialto, which functioned
until Priulli’s death in 1424,139 while Matteo and Zenobio Zane appear to
have been relatives of the banker Antonio Zane.140
As for the others, we are confronted with a big question mark. Their sur-
names – Barbarigo, Loredano, Contarini – were well-known in the Venetian
and international business world of the late Middle Ages.141 But we cannot be
sure that the overlap between the surnames of those Venetians who furnished
Wrocław inhabitants with credit and the surnames of the famed Venetian
bankers is not a mere coincidence. Thus, we can only ask: Was the Marco
Barbarigo who loaned 94 florins to Beda a blood relation of that famous
Andrea Barbarigo who played an important role in the Venetian economy
between the 1430s and 1449?142 Did the Giovanni Lauredan (Lardano,
Lordan’) to whom Johann Grosfener owed 100 florins belong to those
well-known Venetian bankers, the Loredano family?143 Was the Giovanni
Contareno (or Kanthareno) who lent Michael Banke and his partnership
386 florins and 82 ducats a member of the well-known banker kindred, the
Contarini?144 For the time being, such questions must remain unanswered,
although we cannot, presumptively, simply rule out such identifications.
Apart from private individuals, commercial partnerships and banks, the
economic ties with Silesia and Wrocław also involved the governing authori-
ties of the Adriatic republic and this Central European city. The Venetian
doges included Silesia in their policy of economic protection for activities of
their citizens. In addition to the 1358 privilege issued by Giovanni Dolfino,
noted earlier, we have, extant in their full versions, letters by Doge Michele
Steno (1410) and by Doge Francesco Foscari (1440, 1441).145 Testimonies
by agents of the Venetian creditors indicate that the doges supported the
creditors’ attempts to collect on the debts, and that they did so by means
of written documents, far more often than we might think on the basis of
currently extant letters. In addition to the subsequent letters written by
Francesco Foscari,146 similar documents indicate the authorship of Tomasso
Mocenigo147 and of Antonio Venier.148 The delay in repayment of the debts
owed by Johannes Banke and his son Hans elicited a formal response from
the Senate of the Republic.149 In one instance, the letter to the town council
was undersigned by the Consoli dei Mercanti (socii consules mercatorum
civitatis Venetiarum).150
Contacts with Venice affected the development of Wrocław’s commer-
cial culture. Following H. Wendt, let us recall their positive impact on the
forms of the organisation of commerce (specifically, the commission arran-
gement), and upon the use of the bill of exchange.151 The earliest example
of this mode of cashless exchange occurs in the passage, cited above, of the
1391–4 Czech–Austrian trade treaty by which, among other things, Wrocław
merchants were allowed passage with bills of exchange (mit irem wechsel)
through Zeiring, and therefore presumably to Venice.152 While we do not
know whether, in this document, this expression was being used in connec-
tion with merchants from Prague (who were at this time more closely invol-
ved with Venice than their Wrocław colleagues were, and who therefore were
probably the group using the bill of exchange), or whether the expression
was being used ‘just in case’, the earliest certain example of use of a bill of
exchange by a Wrocław merchant is dated 26 March 1413. This bill con-
cerned a financial agreement between Vincenz Melzer and Piro Zirelli of
Venice, to which the third party was Niklas Diettrich from Legnica.153 This
instance is not the only use of this instrument of cashless exchange in contacts
between Wrocław and Venice.154
Venice’s impact on Wrocław’s commercial culture is also visible in the
area of quality control over the traded commodities. Despite their own con-
siderable experience with Levantine products, on at least two occasions
the inhabitants of Wrocław solicited the authorities of the Republic to have
Venetian officials (the estimatores, or the garbellatores piperis) assess the
quality of saffron and pepper imported into Wrocław from the Republic’s
capital.155 Despite the absence of direct evidence, we may also conjecture that
the direct contacts between the Silesians and the Italians (not, we should add,
merely the Venetians) facilitated the learning of the Italian language among
the merchants of Central Europe.
Was Wrocław a significant point on the overall map of the Venetian
Republic’s economic contacts? For the Venetians, Wrocław mattered above
all as a supplier of commodities related to the forest and to furriery (furs, long
fur coats), as well as to the herbal economy (cochineal dye). At present, it is
difficult to be certain whether Wrocław’s merchants played a significant role
in furnishing metals for Venetian minting. On the other hand, Wrocław had
some significance as an entrepôt between Venice and the northern part of
Central Europe, a region which was a sphere of activity for (among others)
entrepreneurs interested in commodities and credit from Venice. Thus, the
townspeople of Wrocław formed partnerships with merchants from outside
Silesia, in order to conduct business on the Adriatic. One example is the
firm established jointly by the Wrocław inhabitant Wenzel Reichel; David
Rosenfeld from Toruń (a town which belonged to the Teutonic Order), who
was also, for a time, a citizen of Wrocław; Niklas Diettrich from Legnica; and
Niklas Strosberg from Poznań.156 It is worth adding that, like their Wrocław
peers, the partners in this firm benefited from the economic mediation provi-
ded by the inhabitants of Salzburg. Wrocław’s role in their activity is clearly
indicated by the fact that when these partners’ Salzburg-based agent, Hans
Frechen, began to be pressured by their Venetian creditors, the town council
of Salzburg raised the problem of the delinquent debtors with the town coun-
cil of Wrocław.157
Lower Silesia’s capital also served as a point of contact, and as a loca-
tion for settling financial accounts, between Venice and the urban population
of Central Europe. This function concerned, among other places, the urban
centres of Silesia: Nysa, Świdnica, Brzeg,158 Osiek near Wrocław, Żagań,
Legnica and Ziębice.159 The inhabitant of Legnica noted above was also a
member of another – likewise international – partnership, consisting, among
others, of Piro Bicharani (or Picoranos) from Venice, at this time a lessee of
salt mines in southern Poland, and of Antonio Ricci from Florence – who,
however, also had Wrocław citizenship at the time.160 It is worth noting that,
in Wrocław, Bicharani settled accounts with the Nuremberg merchant Ulrich
Kamerer, who was active above all in Kraków.161
It is quite certain that Silesia, and the regions situated to the north of the
Sudeto-Carpathian mountain range, were not the principal sphere of Venice’s
economic interests. Yet they had some significance to Venice – a fact espe-
cially pronounced in the case of the Kingdom of Poland. It is worth recalling
that, while mutiple contacts between ‘the Queen of the Adriatic’ and these
regions arose during the late Middle Ages, the pioneers of the contacts between
the great Venetian centre of Europe’s economy and the Sudeto-Carpathian,
Baltic and Russian zone, were the merchants of Wrocław. Furthermore, these
merchants played a crucial role in the maintenance and expansion of those
far-flung contacts throughout the late Midde Ages.
10 Strekfusz
A fish dish links Jagiellonian
Kraków to distant waters1
Richard C. Hoffmann
On 26 August 1405, a Wednesday and thus a day of abstinence for the most
observant of medieval Catholics, Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland and
Lithuania, and his (second) queen Anne dined at the royal hunting lodge on
Onicze manor with a large and impressive retinue. The king’s dinner table
(prandium) offered fresh fish, four measures of crayfish and 240 pisces
stracfusz nuncupatur. The queen was served half as much of the same selec-
tion. The king’s Lithuanian kinsmen, Dukes Švitrigaila, Bolko, Bernard and
Sigismund, stayed with only the fresh fish and crayfish, but Duke Semisco
and the lord marshal of Poland also enjoyed the stracfusz. So, too, did the
royal falconers and ‘some Ruthenians and other Poles’ attending the mon-
arch, while the vice-chancellor of Poland took what the household clerk
called ‘dried fish’ (piscibus siccis) along with his crustaceans and fresh fish.
With more of the latter for the royal couple’s supper (cena), the fish came to
just over ten marks, or about 40 per cent of the court’s total expenditures for
that day’s food. About one mark in four went for stracfusz.2
Much earlier in Władysław’s reign, on Friday, 14 May 1389, only three
years after his baptism and marriage to the Polish heiress Hedwig, the royal
couple had dined at Niepołomice on fresh fish and eel brought in live from
Kraków. Distributed to the accompanying ‘Lithuanian, Ruthenian and other
Polish courtiers’ (ad distribuciones Litwanorum, Ruthenorum et aliorum
Polonorum curiensium) were more eels and sicci pisces strekfussy dicti, de
Cracouia aducti.3
Financial accounts from almost half of the years between 1388 and 1420,
kept by regional managers for the Polish royal household, survive (and have
long been published). Throughout the period the royal household consumed
fish whenever church rules made meat taboo (and not at all otherwise). Next
to generic mention of ‘fish’ (pisces) and ‘salt fish’ (pisces salsi), the most
frequent entry by the royal bookkeepers was for dried fish, otherwise known
as strekfuss.4
What, then, was the Polish court eating?5 Was strekfusz (alias stracfuss,
Strekfusz 117
strakus, etc.) but another name for northern Europe’s best-known dried fish
product, stockfish (bacalao, bacalá), the air-dried Atlantic cod from medi-
eval Norway, Orkney and Iceland?6 Was it an expensive local rarity like
whale or porpoise meat on elite western tables, or a luxury import like pepper
or figs? What were its origins? Had use of this food any broader historical
significance? To approach such issues this paper first identifies the social and
regional circles consuming and trading in strekfusz. This will lead to hints
about how it was prepared. There follows a look at the evidence, especially
archaeological evidence, for the medieval production and export of dried
fish in interior northern and eastern Europe, which implies certain ecologi-
cal contexts. This first systematic examination of strekfusz calls up linkages
of the Jagiellonian Polish court and its capital city with local and European
environments and with evolving economic networks.
The food called strekfusz was not in Poland peculiar to the royal kitchens. In
the city of Kraków itself, expense accounts from the same early Jagiellonian
decades (1390–1410) record prestigious food gifts and banquets where the
city council honoured visiting dignitaries, ambassadors and royal officials. At
various times functionaries bought for such honores impressive specimens
of salmon, sturgeon, pike, stokfisch [sic] and both ‘dried fishes’ and strekws
[sic].7 Royal clerks had never named stockfish, but their municipal counter-
parts plainly distinguished stockfish and strekfusz from one another, and both
from generic dried fish. City records further indicate that all these fishes and
more were normally for sale in local markets, whether the one for fresh fishes
in the suburban Garbary quarter or that for preserved fish close to the Wawel
palace hill. A council ordinance of 1471 allowed a foreign merchant who had
brought dried fishes to Kraków to sell them freely for three days of his choice
(so as not to be forced to sell on ‘flesh days’), but thereafter, in a familiar
protection of local retailers, only in wholesale quantities of 60.8 These provi-
sions and more a later council incorporated into a new ordinance de siccis sal-
sique piscibus vendendis of 1519, which unfortunately survives only in a later
Polish-language translation. This distinguished the importers of salt herring
or salmon from those merchants who arrived in town to sell ‘dried fishes such
as strakusy’ and established the authority of municipal inspectors to control
the quality of the merchandise.9 Alien traders were not to carry their unsold
goods to markets beyond Kraków, so that local merchants could handle ship-
ments of preserved fish across the Carpathians into Hungary.10
The remarkable concentration of written evidence about fish being eaten
and traded around late-medieval Kraków thus reveals considerable use and
dealing in a dried product called strekfusz, which was seemingly neither
stockfish nor of normally local origin, by political elites, their servants and
urban merchants in deepest inland Europe. It was reasonably well thought of,
but by no means an exotically unique food for days of abstinence.
In fact, contemporary medicine held all such preserved fish in disrepute,
believing it a hazardous food for humans. The health advice (Regimen sani-
tatis) by Thomas of Wrocław, a mid-fourteenth-century English-born and
French-trained clerical physician, strongly recommended fresh over brined
or salted fish.11 His view parallelled those of other medico-dietary writers
from the school of Arnald of Villanova and his follower Conrad of Eichstätt,
whose manuscript treatises circulated widely in central and eastern Europe,
that pisces vero saliti nullo modo sunt comedendi. All ultimately echoed
such influential Arab physicians as the learned eleventh-century Baghdadis
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Ibn Butlan.12 Such articulate medical laymen as
sixteenth-century Swedish archbishop Olaus Magnus likewise favoured the
health and food value, as well as the taste, of air-dried fishes over salted ones,
but ranked all preserved forms below fresh fish.13 Strekfusz thus belonged to
a class of foods always considered less a luxurious pleasure than as meeting
a culturally constrained need. Fish was defined as the acceptable substitute
when religious rules forbade eating meat.
With Kraków since the 1380s as a benchmark in the historical record of
strekfusz, then, what may be found further afield?
Stay for a time with the written record, for that is where contemporaries
named and described this commodity. Perhaps ironically, the next circle of
documentary information comes from the Poles’ antagonistic neighbours,
the Teutonic Knights, and the state those warrior monks built and ruled in
late medieval Prussia. The semi-monastic rule of the Teutonic Order forbade
meat 250 days of the year, so its houses everywhere acquired and main-
tained stores of fish, and its territorial administrators in Prussia established
and managed elaborate fisheries. Barely a generation after the Order arrived
there, it declared a special interest in catches de rumbo, de esoce, de pisce, qui
dicitur rape et de pisce [qui] dicitur w[losce], commonly read as sturgeon
(Acipenser sturio), pike (Esox lucius), asp (Aspius aspius, German Rapfe,
Polish boleń) and salmon (Salmo salar).14 Note that the pre-Linnean use of
esox (rather than lucius or occasionally lupus) to refer to pike is peculiar to
certain Latin texts from the Baltic region. Most medieval esoces are plainly
salmon (as the Celtic root) or sturgeon.15
Early in the first decade of the 1400s, and thus contemporary with
Władysław Jagiełło, the Knights’ headquarters in Marienburg twice shipped
240 fish called strekffus alias sternipes to the garrison at Goteswerder, and
when the Grand Master entertained Lithuanian Duke Vytautas in 1404, the
treasurer paid for 1,800 of them. In some years around this time the mother
house received large supplies from the regional commandery at Memel,
while in 1409 it was the eastern stronghold of Königsberg which provided
‘eel [Anguilla anguilla], pike, pike-perch [Stizostedion lucioperca], [and]
strcfüs [sic]’.16 Inventories at local houses of the Order counted up dozens
Strekfusz 119
and hundreds of salt and dried fish of various types, including stockfish (also
called ‘Bergerfisch’, so split and dried Norwegian cod, Gadus morhua);
rundfisch (dried whole Baltic cod) and strekfusz.17 Arthur Seligo has pointed
out that these strekfusz, and also the ones he claimed to have found in records
from contemporary Gdańsk, were always sold by count, normally as sexage-
nae or schock, that is to say, in 60s, so certainly dried rather than brined and
barrelled.18 And in the same decade records kept by district managers of the
Knights’ estates at Chomutov, Plzeň, Řepin and Dobrovice in Bohemia also
inventoried stores of dried fish, sometimes explicitly noted as coming from
Prussia, or specified as, for instance, 12 dried cod and three dried pike.19
Prussian sources also indicate the Order’s earlier interest in dried fish. The
renewed municipal charter for Gdańsk in 1387 allowed fishermen and mer-
chants freely to sell their fresh or dried fish on the city market, but only after
first offering it to the local house of Knights.20 Back in 1328, when the Order’s
house at Goldingen near Elbląg was unable to cover its own needs for fish,
the Grand Master allowed brethren there to buy those fish qui communiter
dicuntur sternipedes, idest strekvus, at 2.5 marks for una magna sexagena (id
est unum sechzik), as compared to 1.5 marks for 100 fresh pike from the local
fishermen.21 If only because actual types and varieties of fishes are most rarely
specified in the relatively sparse documentary record from before about 1350
in East Central Europe, this is the earliest mention of strekfusz so far found.22
Later Prussian records both reaffirm local consumption of strekfusz and
suggest some quantity of exports. During the Order’s attempted reforms
following their defeat at Grunwald/Tannenberg, kitchen accounts from the
commandery at Chełmno in 1436–7 itemise the purchase of 60 stockfish,
60 trugis hechtis and 104 strekfusz. Diplomatic correspondence confirms
Prussian shipments to the Silesian metropolis of Wrocław.23 And at the very
moment when the last Grand Master, Albrecht von Hohenzollern, was turn-
ing the beaten Order’s rump in eastern Prussia into a new secular state, the
Königsberg humanist Simon Grünau actually described the region’s fisheries
resources and economy. His Preussische Chronik of 1526 praised the innu-
merable lakes and coastal waters of the country, named 57 indigenous ‘fish’
varieties, and reported import of dried and salted beluga (Huso huso), flatfish,
stockfish, dried pike (here called plateisen) and herring (Clupea harengus).
He went on to describe the Prussians’ own trade in fish:
Item man furt aus Preussen mancherlei fische yn fessir gesaltzen, getreu-
get von oele, von stüre, von laxen, von heringen, von hechtin, von ront-
fischen und von bressem und diese nennt man stregfüssen von der stelle
do man sie erst hott in der luft getreuget, und die Polen, die Slesier, die
Lausitzer, die Behemen, die Merher und die Meixser sy füren und haven
davon ihren nutz.24
Grünau thus confirms and contextualises what had up to this point been only
an inference from the record sources. Dried fish was a widely traded com-
modity in late-medieval East Central Europe. Besides imports (including both
stockfish and pike), Prussians themselves produced and exported dried eel,
salmon (Salmo salar), herring, pike, Baltic cod, and bream (Abramis brama),
generically called strekfusz. Grünau adds a suggestive etymological observa-
tion, deriving the term strekfusz from how the fish were ‘spread out’ (strecken
is Middle High German, Middle Low German and Middle Netherlandish
for ‘stretch [out]’ [to use the English cognate] in the air to dry). The relevant
counterpart is ‘stockfish’, from the Middle Low German dialect stokvisch
of Hanseatic merchants, with a root meaning ‘stick’ or ‘stock’ (‘post’, ‘tree
trunk’, etc.), which refers ambiguously both to the wooden stakes or scaf-
fold where the cod were hung to dry and to the board-like consistency of that
product. More southerly or inland consumers thus knew each of these foods
by the names merchant intermediaries, not necessarily the producers or the
fishermen, used for it.
While the high oil-content of eel, salmon and herring flesh requires salt
for a dry product with a somewhat longer shelf life (westerners referred to
sapoudre [‘powdered’] herring), fishes such as cod, pike and bream have
less oily white flesh which, in the seasonal cold, dry conditions of northern
Europe can be preserved for long periods without expensive salt, a rare com-
modity in the north.25 Beheaded and split to dry on racks in the sub-arctic
spring, Norwegian and Icelandic cod provided a major medieval trade good,
stockfish, with sites of production marked by archaeological fish remains
with distinctive ‘signatures’ (disproportionately numerous head and shoul-
der bones, and certain bones cut in the preparation process) and other fea-
tures (few anterior elements, many vertebrae, and additional distinctive cut
marks) where the fish were finally consumed.26 Pike and bream are common
natives of still-water ecosystems in northern and eastern Europe, includ-
ing brackish Baltic bays and lagoons and the Gulf of Bothnia. Both spe-
cies assemble there for spring spawning in shallows where large numbers
can be taken for the sort of bulk-processing which major commercial use
would require. Ethnographic evidence from Balto-Slavic and Finnic peo-
ples around the eastern Baltic reports the drying of pike and bream on flat
rocks in spring (‘spread out’!) and transport as bundles of dried fish.27 Small-
scale oven-drying, which would fit with hot smoking, is also known. Indeed,
certain pits found in early medieval contexts at several inland Slavic sites
have been interpreted as fish-smoking facilities. Remains of pike, bream and
other freshwater species occur in association with these structures.28 But are
any distinctive taphonomic29 features of the dried fishes which became strek-
fusz recognisable, whether in places where they were consumed or in those
where they were produced? Does the archaeological record hold evidence
Strekfusz 121
which might differentiate local processing and local consumption of native
fish from what had to be a preserved form of the same species that would be
or had been moved around in interregional commerce? In other words, can
material evidence, which of course bears no contemporary name, be plausi-
bly associated with strekfusz (as it can with stockfish)?
In this regard the medieval evidence from Sweden has been the most
closely examined and is the most informative. People at early medieval trad-
ing-sites in central Sweden, Birka and Sigtuna, consumed pike and bream
along with some cod. The cod specimens found at twelfth-century Sigtuna
lacked head bones, and have been interpreted as imported stockfish. Not far
away, at Uppsala, large numbers of big headless cod occurred only in late
thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century contexts, which also held remains
of smaller cod and pike, both disproportionately represented by head bones.
Pike dentaries (jaw bones) have marks from a knife used to cut out the gills.
Assuming this was preparatory to drying, Leif Jonsson has interpreted the
smaller cod and the pike, whose numbers rise exponentially from the early
fourteenth century, as dried imports to Uppsala from the Baltic and/or Gulf
of Bothnia.30 Dentaries of pike recovered from contexts dated 1390–1434 at
the Swedish castle of Borganäs, about a hundred kilometres inland from the
Baltic, are cut in the same way, and also occur together with cod of probable
Baltic, not Atlantic, origin. This processing feature is likewise present in the
pike which made up 75 per cent of the fish remains found in fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century material from a hospice in Stockholm, as was their associa-
tion with bream and small Baltic cod.31 But what distinguishes remains of
imported dried pike from heads removed to prepare a fresh local catch for
the pot?
Strengthening the credibility of a large-scale interregional trade in dried
pike – what Prussians and Poles probably called strekfusz – in competi-
tion with Atlantic stockfish is the slightly later Swedish written evidence.
When Swedish internal customs records begin in the mid-sixteenth century,
salmon and dried pike make up between 80 and 90 per cent of shipments to
Stockholm from Bothnia.32 The exiled Swedish archbishop, Olaus Magnus,
in his Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (‘Description of the Northern
Peoples’) published in Rome in 1555, painted an unforgettable picture of the
production area around a rocky island called ‘Bjuröklubb’, far up the Gulf
of Bothnia:
Yet when you come in towards the shore, such an abundance of fish is
to be seen at its base on every side that you are dumfounded at the sight
and your appetitite can be wholly satisfied. Some of the fishes of this
sort, sprinkled with brine from the sea, are commonly spread out over
two or three acres of the flat, level ground at the foot of the mountain,
to be parched and dried by the wind; some, chiefly fish of the larger
kind, are hoisted on poles to be dehydrated by the sun and air. They
are all reserved for consumption at home or for the lucrative profit of
tradesmen, and also for the needs and pleasure of people living overseas,
chiefly in order that, by bartering these fish, the Northerners may obtain
plenty of grain . . . From the foot, then, of this crowned mountain there
rises such a stench of fish hung up to dry that far out at sea sailors as they
approach are aware of it flying out to meet them.33
In a much later systematic discussion of northern fishes, Magnus stressed the

importance of the pike fishery, telling how pike were dried for storage and
exported overseas in bundles or ‘stacked like great piles of logs’.34
Perhaps the best archaeological parallel so far known, from south of the
Baltic, to the Swedish traces of what eastern Europeans might call strekfusz
comes from late-thirteenth- or fourteenth-century Schleswig, where an asso-
ciation of many large headless cod, smaller whole cod, and a pike with more
anterior than vertebral elements recalls the finds described above from con-
temporary Uppsala.35 In the absence of the cut dentaries, however, ought this
pike to be understood as a fresh or dried specimen and Schleswig as its point
of production or of consumption?
A return to the southeastern Baltic region uncovers tantalisingly close
but eventually still indeterminate evidence of strekfusz remains. At what
was around 1400 the Teutonic Order’s commandery of Nessau (now Mała
Nieszawka), a forward post pushed across the Vistula from Toruń, 75 per
cent of identified fish bones were cod, large and small, with cut marks that
identify them with the supplies of Atlantic stockfish and of Baltic rundfisch
which the Order’s officials provided for their garrison. Pike remains ranked
third in frequency behind bones from unspecified carp-like fish.36 Had those
pike remains any potentially diagnostic features? The published analysis is
silent.
While pike and bream had ranked high among the freshwater fishes of pre-
sumably local origin typically eaten by inhabitants of the many early medi-
eval sites in northern Poland,37 during the later Middle Ages these varieties
were important in only a small fraction of the much less numerous excava-
tions. Worth attention are the Benedictine monastery at Lubin, still consum-
ing entirely freshwater species in the late-thirteenth to fifteenth centuries,
where pike bones were as numerous as perch (Perca fluviatilis) and bream
ranked third; and the leading role of pike among freshwater fishes at Gdańsk,
where cod and sturgeon were the most common bones found.38 In all these
cases the pike are of moderate size, centred in the range of between 50 and 60
centimetres, approximately one to 1.5 kilograms. No reports indicate an unu-
sual distribution of elements or butchering marks, so the remains are hard to
Strekfusz 123
assess; the common inference is exploitation of local wild stocks. In the light
of the Polish and Prussian written evidence and of the archaeological results
from Sweden, however, it is important to consider the possibility of large-
volume commercial imports of preserved specimens of fish which were also
available locally, though in less economic numbers.39 Isotope analysis might
also help discriminate between fish of local and far-northern provenance.
Sadly – and none are more aware of this than the Polish archaeozoologists
– no meaningful collections of fish remains have been made from medieval
sites in southern Poland,40 the then politically dominant and wealthiest region
which produced the principal written evidence of people trading and eating
strekfusz.
The hermeneutic circle thus remains incomplete, requiring a still specula-
tive leap from the masses of dried pike and bream moving south from Bothnia
and inland from the Baltic coast to the dried strekfusz on royal and other tables
across late medieval East Central Europe. Yet even fragmentary answers
laboriously teased from both verbal (written) and material (archaeological)
sources inform several different perspectives on the economic, cultural and
environmental histories of later medieval Poland and Europe. Poland’s royal
court and Kraków’s city market participated in a relatively elaborate, long-
distance, large-scale trade in dried fish, not just oceanic cod but freshwater
species native to East Central and Northern Europe. The commodity called
strekfusz most likely used pike and bream and moved from north to south.
Present-day knowledge and appreciation of historical humans handling
these products comes from a critical combination of written and archaeolog-
ical data. Traditional historical sources name commodities, consumers, sell-
ers and market places; they offer explanations and motives. Archaeological
(and in this instance notably archaeozoological) sources establish actual
consumption, the species eaten, food preparation and sometimes produc-
tion. Neither source of evidence can tell us as much on its own, or even
just by simple addition, as consciously integrated, possibly collaborative
work can, by treating both together in an interdisciplinary science of the past.
Historians aware of material evidence and its relevance to historical enquiry
can help historical archaeologists achieve more problem-oriented research
strategies. The apparent lack of serious modern environmental-archaeol-
ogy research on medieval urban sites in southern Poland, notably Kraków,
borders on the shameful, preventing, among other things, comparison with
well-explored contemporary urban centres elsewhere in the country and its
closest neighbours.
Verbal and material sources together establish a particular dried-fish
product, strekfusz, as a competitor to stockfish on the regional market of late
medieval East Central Europe. Demand for this food was driven by Catholic
Christendom’s rules of abstinence – fish could substitute for prohibited meat
– into which a newly baptised monarch and his court now publicly fit. Friday
and Lenten fish-eating displayed adherence to cultural norms and, as fish
was never a cheap source of calories and never compulsory, simultaneously
showed off the diner’s wealth and social rank.
Eating strekfusz in late medieval Kraków and its environs fits at least the
leading Polish circles and the country’s leading region into the large shift-
ing patterns of Europeans’ relations with one another and with their natural
surroundings. As human populations and their economic networks became
more dense, consumption habits reached beyond the natural local ecosys-
tems which had hitherto covered the needs and wants of local and regional
communities. Wealthy, market-linked, commonly urban-based consumers
exported their demand to less populated frontiers, terrestrial or aquatic, of
perceived resource abundance. Simon Grünau and Olaus Magnus bragged
about the rich fisheries of Prussia and Bothnia which could feed burgeon-
ing demand to the south. There is, however, an at least retrospective irony in
seeing urban and court circles in Poland eat fish from the far north, for they
did so at almost the same time other Polish regions were becoming important
frontier producers of export commodities for the more densely populated
west: the Vistula basin shipped cereal grains and Masovia live cattle.41 Long-
distance trade in natural products and the concomitant separation of consum-
ers from producing ecosystems – there is no sign Kraków consumers had any
idea what kind of fish strekfusz was – has become a familiar theme for mod-
ern environmental historians. Following the movements of strekfusz shows
late-medieval Polish and neighbouring consumers operating on, indeed help-
ing to drive, regional and wider markets, and thus participating in a process
of medieval economic and environmental Europeanisation that was a visible
precursor to present-day globalisation.
11 Papal collectors and state
power in Central Europe
during the fourteenth century
Stanisław Szczur
1
The forced relocation of the papal see to Avignon caused major changes
in the central administration of the Church. The successors of Saint Peter,
temporarily deprived of their influence in Italy, were forced to undertake
a struggle to regain it. The beginning of that struggle coincided with great
political changes sweeping across Europe in the early fourteenth century. In
the new situation, the papacy needed, once again, to define its place within
the European system. This was especially necessary in view of the decline
of a universal imperial power, without which (as it was to turn out) papal
universalism was impossible.
The new challenges confronting the papacy were already well understood
by the first pope in Avignon, the Gascon, Clement V. Dependent as he was at
the outset of his pontificate on the king of France, and fearful of a return to
Rome, he sought to free the papacy from French domination, by, among other
things, securing for the Holy See adequate sources of revenue.1 This was
especially pressing in view of the partial loss of papal control over posses-
sions in Italy. Clement’s pontificate marks the beginning of a gradual proc-
ess of transition in the structure of papal revenues. Among those revenues,
individual obligations from the clergy became increasingly important, as the
clergy was compelled to share those revenues with the Holy See. This proc-
ess accelerated under Clement V’s successors. Pope John XXII reformed the
flow of revenue so thoroughly that most of that revenue was obtained from
individual obligations imposed upon the clergy. His successors merely per-
fected the financial system.2
The placement upon the clergy of the burden of financing the papacy
enhanced the importance of the Holy See, and accelerated a real, practical
centralisation of papal power. This is because the French popes residing on the
Rhône devised an entire system of granting offices and ecclesiastical dignities,
a system in which advancement within the ecclesiastical structure depended
on the pope’s will. In practice, this meant depriving the local churches of their
autonomy. Acquisition of the office of bishop or abbot, or of a lower-level
benefice, was in most cases dependent on the volition of the pope,3 whose
grant of a benefice in turn entailed an obligation by the recipient to share a por-
tion of his revenue with the pope. In time, the popes were able to dispose of an
ever-increasing number of benefices – which meant a growth in revenues, but
also an increase in the number of persons subject to payment, who, before they
received their benefices, were compelled to promise to fulfil their financial
obligations to the pope. Because more and more benefices were at the pope’s
disposal, the number of persons subject to payment increased over the years.
Payments associated with acquisition of benefices were not the only bur-
den placed upon the clergy. Equally important as sources of papal revenue
were extraordinary payments. These consisted of various kinds of subsidies,
occasional payments, and papal tithes. That latter obligation in particular
elicited resistance from the clergy. The individual dues to the papacy were
nothing out of the ordinary – the popes had also collected them in the earlier
period. What distinguished the Avignon period was their mass character – and
their extension to virtually the entire clergy, and in some European countries,
to the laity. The occasional obligations were fully and effectively enforced
by the local episcopates. Depending on their needs, the popes appointed par-
ticular bishops as their collectors, granting them appropriate powers to act on
their behalf.4 But these papal agents were not always able to collect the sums
due from the clergy who were subject to them. Another major problem was
the transfer of the collected monies to the papal curia.
This increase in the number of types of obligation, and especially in the
number of clerics subject to the resulting obligations, was bound to lead to
important changes in the central administration of the Church. In the new
administrative and financial system, the papal camera – the top office of the
Roman curia – inevitably increased in importance, assuming the double role
of a ministry of finance and a treasury. The papal camerarius was charged
with effective enforcement of the payments owed to the pope. Therefore, it
became necessary to establish a reasonably effective treasury apparatus, sub-
ordinate to the papal camera, and able to collect obligations from thousands
of people scattered throughout Europe.5
Given the socioeconomic realities of the fourteenth century, the creation
of officials of this type was no easy matter. Early on, the popes entrusted
these functions to members of the local clergy. During the pontificate of
John XXII, local ecclesiastics were increasingly replaced by their colleagues
from Avignon, and entrusted with special powers of agency to gather pay-
ments within precisely-defined territories. The 1340s (or, more exactly, the
pontificate of Clement VI) witnessed the beginnings of papal ‘collectories’,
which functioned as territorially-based departments of the papal camera.6 In
Papal collectors and state power in Central Europe 127
its geographical extent, a collectory could encompass a single diocese, or an
ecclesiastical province consisting of several dioceses, or even the territory
of an entire state. There were no papal regulations concerning the size of
individual collectories. This seems to have depended on the size of the popu-
lation which was subject to payment: as a rule, the larger that population,
the smaller the territory. Thus the territories comprising the French kingdom
were serviced by more than a dozen collectories, whereas all of Scandinavia
comprised a single collectory.7
Each collectory was presided over by a member of the papal camera, usu-
ally called the ‘collector’; the title pertained to a papal fiscal representative,
recruited from among the clergy of a given collectory. In cases where he
was a foreigner, and where he assumed this role as a papal emissary, he was
described with the title nuncius et collector. However, in this case we should
not identify the word nuntius with papal diplomacy.8 Diplomatic activity was
not the collector’s primary function, though he may have performed that role
on occasion. The exact position, and responsibilities, of the pope’s fiscal rep-
resentative were always specified for each individual. In practice this meant
the issuance by the papal chancery of the appropriate facultates, in the form
of papal administrative documents. The precise roster of these responsibili-
ties (which were always temporally limited to the period in office) depended
on the current situation in the territory over which a particular papal emissary
acquired this office. Above all, the extent of his fiscal powers and responsi-
bilities was specified with great precision, and with a scrupulous accounting
of all the payments he was entitled to collect. The nature and extent of those
payments depended on the Holy See’s current fiscal policy toward the clergy
in a given locality. On occasion, during the first half of the fourteenth century,
the papal representative sent out into a locality had the right to collect only
selected kinds of payment, and the collection of the remainder was left in the
hands of the local bishop. In that event, the bishop also carried the title of
collector.9
The collector also acquired several powers which allowed him to con-
solidate and expand his standing within the local ecclesiastical establishment
into which he was sent. He received the right to impose ecclesiastical penal-
ties prescribed by the law upon persons who evaded the payment obligations.
In the name of the pope himself, he was able to initiate canon-law prosecution
against the evaders, and to excommunicate them. By virtue of the power –
reserved to the pope, and delegated to the collector by him – to grant favours,
the collector was easily able to create a tight-knit group of close associates.
He did so by granting specified powers and privileges to clerics whom he
specially trusted, thereby setting the recipients apart from other clergy. And,
as a rule, he received the right to appoint, auctoritate apostolica, a specified
number of notaries.
Before his emissary actually assumed the office of collector, the pope
recommended him to the local episcopate by separate letters, in which he
reminded the local ecclesiastical recipients of their obligation to cooper-
ate with the emissary. The activities of the papal camera which preceded
the actual placement of the emissary in the designated region were aimed at
strengthening his authority among the local clergy. This is because the central
administration of the Church was aware that the collectors were viewed as
tax-gatherers, and that, as such, were not held in high esteem. The extent of
their responsibilities depended largely upon the designated region where a
given collector was to exercise his office, and upon the territorial extent of
that region. Here we can observe a general pattern: the larger the territory
of a collectory, the broader the powers and responsibilities entrusted to the
papal representative. In case of collectories encompassing entire ecclesiasti-
cal provinces, or entire countries, he was usually the sole representative of
the papal fiscal administration, and served as a general representative of the
Holy See and its financial interests. In collectories situated at the peripher-
ies of the Christian world, where papal legates seldom appeared, it was the
collector who – at least in a widely-diffused societal perception – was the
personal representative of the successor of Saint Peter.
In relation to the central administration of the Church, the collector’s power
was not very great. This is because he was under control of the officials of the
papal camera, who could demand from him detailed financial reports, and
who, at least potentially, controlled every decision he made. In the event of
irregularities in the work of his collectory, he could be removed by the pope,
and replaced with another churchman.
2
The changes in the functioning of the papacy that occurred in the early four-
teenth century coincided with major transitions in the countries of Central
Europe. In Bohemia, after the extinction of the indigenous dynasty, the crown
of Saint Wenceslas passed on to the dynasty of Luxemburg. After the extinc-
tion of the indigenous dynasty in Hungary, that throne, thanks to the skill-
ful policy of Boniface VIII, was acquired by the Angevins. In Poland, also
with papal support, the indigenous dynasty managed to regain royal power;10
the throne in Kraków accrued to its Cuiavian branch. Despite the inevitable
domestic complications, the succession of a dynasty did not always lead to
territorial change; only in Poland was Władysław the Short unable to incorpo-
rate all of the historical Piast provinces into his kingdom. He failed to estab-
lish power over the Piasts of Silesia and Masovia, who chose Luxemburg
overlordship,11 whilst eastern Pomerania, together with the territories at the
mouth of the Vistula river, remained under the control of the Teutonic Order.
What made Władysław’s situation even more complicated was the fact that
he had given certain financial promises to John XXII while seeking the pope’s
support for his plans to become the Polish king. He did this by reminding
the pope that his kingdom was subject to the Holy See, and for this reason
agreed to a modification of the principles of collecting Peter’s Pence in his
country.12 In their communications at the beginning of their bilateral nego-
tiations concerning the restoration of the monarchy, the two sides – presum-
ably on purpose – did not specify the precise extent of the territory subject
to this payment. That omission promptly led to misunderstandings. As early
as 1318 – that is to say, during Władysław’s endeavours to obtain the crown
– the pope demanded collection of Peter’s Pence throughout the entire Polish
Kingdom, by which the Roman curia understood the historical boundaries
of the ecclesiastical province of Gniezno.13 These boundaries also included
regions remaining under the sovereign power of the dukes of Silesia and of
the Teutonic Order. The appointment of the archbishop of Gniezno and the
bishop of Wrocław as collectors of Peter’s Pence did not bode well for the
future, because the bishop of Wrocław was unable to force his congregation to
assume additional financial obligations to the papacy. Thus in Silesia the ques-
tion of Peter’s Pence very promptly became a political problem. The situation
in Pomerania, a region under the control of the Teutonic Order, was identical.
The collectories in the countries of Central Europe experienced a path of
development similar to their counterparts in the dioceses of France, Spain
or Germany. There, too, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the func-
tions of papal collector were assumed by indigenous ecclesiastics, selected
by the pope to perform specified tasks. Most often, the papal collectors were
entrusted with the obligation to collect the papal tithe, or (as was the case
in Poland) both the papal tithe and Peter’s Pence. Fundamental change was
brought about only by the universal introduction of the payment of annates
from vacant benefices.14 Pope John XXII decided to appoint a single collec-
tor for Poland, Bohemia, Moravia and some German dioceses. This mission
was entrusted to an Italian, Gabriel de Fabriano.15 Although they were limited
to three years, his activities had a great impact upon the papal fiscal system,
because his successors promptly began to displace the local bishops in the
responsibilities of collection, and thus acquired sole responsibility for the
gathering of all financial obligations owed to the pope.
Because in Central Europe the task of the collectors was control over
specified territories, contacts between them and the state authorities were
almost inevitable. The popes well understood this fact, since, in separate
letters, they recommended the collectors to the rulers. Such secret docu-
ments were received by Gabriel de Fabriano, and he was to pass them on
to the Czech king, John of Luxemburg, and to the Polish duke (after 1320,
king), Władysław the Short.16 As the pope presumably hoped, the protection
extended by the state authorities to his collectors would facilitate the diffi-
cult task of collecting the financial obligations. Gabriel’s successors received
similar documents, which took the form of letters of reference. Doubtless
such letters had some impact on a collector’s position, because it was pos-
sible for a ruler to influence the attitudes of the local bishops and clergy.
Perhaps this is why collectors in Poland or Hungary felt safer than did their
colleagues in other collectories.
Subsequent papal representatives also received documents by which the
popes recommended them to rulers.17 The mere issuance of such documents
need not have reflected actual contact between a collector and a ruler, since
his relationship with the ruler might be limited only to the presentation of the
documents. Yet in most cases the issuance of such letters entailed a grant to
the papal emissary of more authority than was usual.
3
As a result of the political situation in Central Europe, papal fiscal emis-
saries began to assume roles exceeding their customary responsibilities. On
papal instructions, they involved themselves as mediators in the settlement
of inter-state conflicts. They were not always well prepared to perform such
tasks. It is quite puzzling that the popes should use the services of their lower
administrative personnel, and not involve their closest advisors in solving
disputes. Undoubtedly, the successors of Saint Peter were influenced by the
local nature of such conflicts; this is how the claim by the king of Poland,
Władysław the Short, against the Teutonic Order was perceived in its early
stages. At first, the claim did not attract much interest from Avignon. Only
the conjuncture of Philip the Fair’s conflict with the Templars, the claims by
the archbishop of Riga against the Teutonic Order, and the involvement of
Władysław the Short’s emissaries in the papal curia, elevated this local ter-
ritorial dispute into a problem of European significance.
Having suffered damage from the Order, the archbishop of Riga sought
justice from Pope Clement V. As early as June 1310, the pope mandated his
representatives to inquire into the Teutonic Order’s transgressions against
the Church of Riga. At the same time – by chance, as it were – he ordered an
investigation into the crimes committed by the Knights during their seizure
of Gdańsk Pomerania (that is to say, the eastern portion of that province, of
which Gdańsk was the principal city). Two years later, an inquiry was carried
out into the accusations made against the Order. The formal trial of the Order
commenced before the papal delegate, Francis de Molinio.18 This trial was
important because it set a precedent for a specific mode of proceeding in con-
flict resolution: the side which considered itself aggrieved sought to pursue
its claims before a papal tribunal, by means of a court trial.
This is how Władysław the Short sought to find resolution of his claim. On
behalf of the Polish duke, complaint against the Order was brought in 1318
by one of Władysław’s closest collaborators, Bishop Gerward of Cuiavia.19
Pope John XXII appointed three judges to carry out the trial in the papal tri-
bunal, choosing them from among the Polish clergy.20 This selection could
easily be questioned by the defendants; not surprisingly, the Order alleged
that the judges were biased, and that all three were subjects of one of the par-
ties to the conflict. Despite the trial, which took place in 1320 and 1321, the
pope did not endorse the verdict, which was favourable to the Polish side. The
efforts made by the Polish representatives in Avignon to change the pope’s
decision were unsuccessful,21 because John did not wish to take an unequivo-
cal position concerning a local conflict.
But the matter of the Order’s seizure of Gdańsk Pomerania was sufficiently
notorious, and the efforts by the Polish side in Avignon sufficiently persistent,
to propel the Holy See into further involvement with the conflict. However,
the papacy continued to avoid reaching an unequivocal decision in favour of
either side, and sought instead to resolve the dispute by acting as mediator.
Papal mediation was acceptable to both sides, but we should not assume that
it occurred specifically on the pope’s initiative; John XXII was simply acting
on the parties’ request. In April 1332, the pope mandated Peter of Auvergne
to bring about a permanent peace between Poland and the Order.22 In addition
to this capacity, this papal mediator held (jointly with Andrew of Verola), the
office of collector for the papal camera in Poland. In order to make the col-
lector responsible for mediating between the parties in the conflict – that is,
in order to entrust him with an extremely politicised function – the pope had
to grant him additional powers. Together with a special letter appointing him
as mediator, the papal chancery addressed to the parties separate documents,
in which the papal chancery appealed for peace.23
This collector’s first political mission ended in a partial success; he man-
aged to convince the parties to prolong a truce. However, in evaluating his
activities we need to bear in mind that both sides to the conflict sought to
avoid military engagement. Therefore, the truce was acceptable to all. It post-
poned a definitive resolution of the conflict. After the one-year cease-fire, the
situation did not return to its starting point. After Władysław the Short’s death
in 1333, royal power passed to his son, Casimir the Great. Without interven-
tion by the mediators, Casimir extended the truce with the Teutonic Order for
another year.24 This, of course, did not solve the problem, but it did set the
stage for the parties to prepare more fully for its final resolution.
Mediation was not the most important task of the papal collector Peter
of Auvergne; that task was the collection of payments owed to the pope.
Nevertheless, thanks to the pope’s decisions, Peter initiated a new type of
activity by papal fiscal agents. Peter’s successor in the office of collector,
Galhard of Carces, who arrived in Poland in 1334, was, in the Polish condi-
tions, more a man of politics than of finance. Doubtless his task was made
easier by the fact that he had previously occupied the post of papal treasurer
in Benevento, and was well prepared to perform the collector’s duties. His
mission in Poland was further facilitated by his acquaintance with Jarosław of
Bogoria – archdeacon of Kraków, subsequently archbishop of Gniezno, and
one of Casimir the Great’s closest advisors – which perhaps had begun during
their studies in Bologna.25 The selection of Kraków as the seat of Galhard’s
office made contact with the monarch inevitable. It is not insignificant that
he wrote his financial reports in castro Cracoviensi. The papal delegation of
authority enabled him not only to collect levies, but also to undertake purely
political activities.
As noted earlier, the collector’s mediation in the conflict between Poland
and the Teutonic Knights only brought about a truce, which was subsequently
prolonged several times. During the truce, both Casimir the Great and the
Teutonic Order made attempts to influence the papacy. John XXII tried to act
very carefully; he did not choose to send a legate to the countries involved in
the conflict, but, once again, had recourse to the collector. Therefore it is not
surprising that during the initial period of his mission as collector, Galhard
devoted himself to diplomatic activity.26 Preparations for his mediating mis-
sion also directly involved the proctor of the Teutonic Order in the papal
curia, who presented the preliminary conditions upon which the Knights
were inclined to conclude a peace treaty with Poland.27 This involvement of
the Knights clearly indicates that they were interested in maintaining peace.
They were not willing to restart the conflict, yet at the same time they were
reluctant to make any concessions.28
John XXII introduced his future agent by means of two separate, identi-
cally-worded letters – one sent to the king of Poland, Casimir the Great, the
other to the Grand Master of the Order, Dietrich von Altenburg – in which he
noted that he had conferred upon his representative all the essential powers
of agency required by a papal emissary. Galhard was to act specifically on
behalf of the pope himself. Informing the interested parties about the planned
mediating activities was a part of normal, routine diplomatic practice. In
the case of the anticipated mission by Galhard, separate letters were sent to
Hedwig, wife of Władysław the Short, to the archbishop of Gniezno, and to
the entire Polish episcopate.29
The mediator’s impartiality could be thrown into doubt. As a papal collec-
tor, he was associated with the Polish Church for reasons that went beyond
the exercise of that office. At the very outset of his tenure in office, he entered
into a conflict with the Teutonic Order over the collection of Peter’s Pence
from the lands seized by the Knights. Despite the fact that Galhard repre-
sented above all the financial interests of the papacy, his mediation led to
yet another prolongation of the truce.30 Thus an attempt could be made to
solve the whole problem by means of diplomatic negotiations. These were
carried out with the participation of (among others) the papal collector, who,
in trying to fulfil this task, in fact exceeded the powers of agency granted
to him. He tried to establish personal contacts with the bishop of Cuiavia,
Matthew, who was formally a party to the conflict. Historians have long (and
rightly) supposed that this collector had entered into talks with the bishop
at the request of Casimir the Great.31 When during the negotiations to pro-
long the truce the Teutonic Order was willing to transfer the Brześć district
into the hands of a neutral party, the papal mediator was encouraging Bishop
Matthew to take the district under his own, temporary administration. The
Knights were inclined to accept this solution. However, for several reasons,
the bishop was unable to accept the proposed role of administrator of the
contested territory.32
Galhard’s mediating activities did not bring about a permanent peace.
However, they familiarised him with the nature of the conflict sufficiently
to enable the emissary to participate actively in subsequent attempts at a
solution. We cannot even rule out the possibility that it was Galhard who
prompted the Polish side to lodge a formal complaint against the Teutonic
Order in the curia.
From 1335 onward, the Polish side proceeded against the Order along two
tracks. The king of Poland and the archbishop of Gniezno lodged a complaint
against the Order in Avignon. Simultaneously, the king agreed to submit the
case to a court of arbitration, presided over by the kings of Hungary and
Bohemia.33 The filing of a formal charge at the curia compelled the pope once
again to take a position concerning the conflict. In accordance with the law
in force, Benedict XII designated two cardinals to examine the merits of the
most serious charges levelled against the Order by the Polish side. Further
actions by the Holy See depended on the cardinals’ opinion.34 The cardinals,
however, were in no hurry to issue that opinion. Using the papal collector, the
Polish side attempted to change this state of affairs, and to compel the Holy
See toward further activity.
In 1335, Galhard informed Benedict XII that Casimir the Great was inclined
to split with the pope the sum of 30,000 marks awarded to Poland in the trial
against the Teutonic Order in 1321. The curia well knew that, despite efforts
by the Polish side, John XXII had never confimed that verdict. Nevertheless,
the collector’s message was treated very seriously, especially since it was
confirmed by Casimir the Great’s envoys, by the archdeacon of Kraków
Jarosław of Bogoria and by Andrew of Verola, the former papal collector in
Poland. Under such circumstances, the pope instructed Galhard to inquire
diligently into the possibility of collecting the proposed 15,000 marks for the
papal camera.35 This whole course of action was undoubtedly a propaganda
campaign of sorts, aimed at the Teutonic Order. Had the pope ordered the
commencement of enforcement proceedings against the Order, that would
have implied his acceptance of the verdict of Inowrocław, contrary to the
decision made by his predecessor; this is because the damages awarded to
the king of Poland had been an integral part of that verdict. One may assume
that it was the papal collector who initiated the whole action, since he well
understood that Avignon would take note of the financial argument.
Regardless of his representatives’ efforts in Avignon, Casimir the Great
was preparing for arbitration. In accordance with the arbitrators’ wish, the
case was investigated and the verdict pronounced in Visegrád, in November
1335.36 The papal collector was also present at the special convention of
Central European monarchs held on this occasion; however, we do not know
whether he was there on the pope’s instruction, or on his own initiative. The
second possibility is more likely.37 The presence of the collector may have
indicated his interest in the conflict.
The verdict, announced in the presence of King Casimir the Great and
the representative of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, was adverse
to Poland. Consistent with the principles of arbitration, the parties agreed
to accept it. Casimir the Great also expressed his agreement, and issued a
separate document on the matter.38 However, while the parties accepted the
arbitrators’ verdict, they agreed among themselves that they would also
present the verdict to the pope for acceptance. This step raised the possibil-
ity of revision of the adverse verdict pronounced by the kings of Bohemia
and Hungary. It is not unlikely that it was Galhard of Carces himself who
proposed this solution. Quite possibly, too, Pope Benedict XII abstained
from confirming the arbitrators’ unfavourable verdict specifically because
of Galhard’s information. However, the pope did not issue any official docu-
ment on this subject; only in a letter addressed to Casimir the Great did he
state that Poland had been wronged by the verdict. At the same time – as if
he were anticipating Polish diplomatic activity – Benedict XII expressed the
wish to mediate in the conflict with the Order.39 The fact that the pope did not
approve of the arbitrators’ verdict was politically very significant, because it
allowed Poland to return to the concept of settling the conflict before a papal
tribunal.
The entrance of John of Luxemburg into Poland’s conflict with the Order
complicated somewhat the Polish propaganda activity in Avignon. Exploiting
his position as arbitrator, the Czech king managed to bring about peace talks
between the parties in 1337. He appointed himself as a mediator. The numer-
ous conditions of the ultimate peace included guarantees which the king of
Hungary, Charles Robert and his wife Elizabeth, sister of Casimir the Great,
were supposed to offer for the treaty.40 The Polish side was expected to obtain
the required Angevin documents. In 1337, the papal collector informed the
pope that he was unable to appear before the court, because he had left cum
domino rege Polonie in Ungariam pro confirmacione concordie inter ipsum
et Cruciferos.41 We do not know whether the papal collector’s presence
among the royal attendants had any influence on the outcome of the Polish-
Hungarian talks about the peace treaty with the Teutonic Knights. According
to later sources, the treaties of Inowrocław were not ratified because Casimir
the Great was unable to obtain Hungarian guarantees for the planned treaty.42
It is quite possible that this solution was reached at the suggestion of Galhard
of Carces, since proceedings before the papal tribunal were allowed only in
the absence of ratification.
But Benedict XII dragged his feet over the appointment of judges; the
papal curia had already taken three years to examine the merits of the Polish
complaint. The pope decided to commence the judicial proceedings only in
1338, when it was clear that the Inowrocław agreements would not be rati-
fied. Galhard’s appointment as one of the judges was, it seems, a natural result
of his earlier involvement with the conflict. The second person appointed as
judge was Peter Gervasis, a former papal collector in Scandinavia.43 Yet again,
the papal collectors were entrusted with functions exceeding their ordinary
competence. We do not know with certainty why Benedict XII granted judi-
cial duties specifically to collectors. Obviously, they knew the subject well,
and the circumstances of the conflict. They had the proper education in law, a
fact which could guarantee the correct conduct of judicial proceedings. On the
other hand, the fact that fiscal officers of middling rank were given the function
of judge might indicate that the pope did not consider this local territorial con-
flict especially significant. The Polish party must also have anticipated that,
just as had been the case in the earlier trial, the Teutonic Knights might accuse
the judges of partiality. The leaders of the Order had their bishops spread infor-
mation about the close relationship between the collector and the Polish and
Hungarian royal courts. A letter to the pope stated outright that the judges were
singulares amici et quasi domestici regum Ungarie et Polonie . . . totaliter
eidem ordini fratrum de domo Theutonica diffavorabiles et suscepti.44
Before the expected term of trial, Casimir the Great once again tried
to use the papal collector in order to revive the Holy See’s interest in the
same 15,000 marks about which the collector had informed the pope three
years earlier. On 8 September 1338, in the cathedral on Wawel Hill, the king
granted Pope Benedict XII (through the agency of the papal collector) all the
rights to half of the compensation owed to him by the Order according to the
verdict of 1321.45 The place where the document was officially handed over,
the witnesses assembled on this occasion (the king’s closest advisers) and the
presence of the collector, all suggest that the Kraków court was engaging in
a well-designed propaganda campaign. Its orchestrators surely knew that the
collector would pass the royal gift to the curia.
The trial of the Teutonic Order before the papal tribunal took place in
Warsaw in 1339. The judges passed down a verdict favourable to Poland.
However, citing formal errors, Benedict XII refused to approve the verdict.46
The king’s many efforts did not sway the pope in favour of the Polish argu-
ments. Likewise, the collectors, though favourably inclined to Casimir the
Great, had no capacity to influence papal policy. After 1339, the conflict
between Poland and the Knights escaped the control of the Holy See. Truth
to tell, at this point neither side was interested in papal mediation. This is
very apparent from the course of the subsequent events. Instead of using the
procedure of appeal – typical in contemporary judicial procedure – Benedict
XII attempted, without effect, to impose his own resolution of the conflict.
In this way, he definitively annulled the verdict issued by the papal judges.
He gradually began to remove collectors from political affairs, and to entrust
diplomatic missions to bishops.
The pope entrusted the fulfilment of this peace plan to three bishops: those
of Meissen, Chełmno and Kraków. They were expected to carry out a peace-
making mediation on behalf of the pope, and to lead the negotiations to a
permanent resolution of the conflict, on terms dictated by the pope.47 If the
territories at issue continued to be contested, the bishops were obligated to
reconsider the grievances by means of accelerated judicial proceedings.48
Thus, on papal command, they could become judges in the conflict. The mis-
sion of the papal representatives ended in a complete fiasco, which defini-
tively excluded the Holy See from the peace negotiations. Ultimately, the
role of mediator fell to the archbishop of Gniezno.
4
The financial obligation commonly called Peter’s Pence, owed to the Holy
See by the population of certain countries of the Baltic Sea basin, acquired
political significance in Poland. This resulted from Duke Władysław the
Short’s quest for the royal crown, undertaken in 1318. In that year, as has been
noted earlier, the duke agreed to a change in the method of assessing the obli-
gation which was less favourable to the payers than had been the case earlier.
This, at least, was the widespread social perception regarding the duke’s shift
from a household-based to a head-tax-based assessment.49 However, it was
not the change in the system that, in the context of the present subject, was
most important; what was most important was the fact that the duke’s prom-
ises aligned perfectly with John XXII’s fiscal policy. Approximately from the
time when Władysław the Short began his quest for the crown, Peter’s Pence
began to be enforced in Poland quite effectively. However, no-one foresaw,
or wished to foresee, the political complications related to that fact; these
were bound to arise with the changes in the Polish boundaries during the
early fourteenth century. To the papacy, the concept Polonia meant the ter-
ritory of the ecclesiastical province of Gniezno, which covered all the lands
historically under the rule of the Piast dynasty. This meant that the obligation
to pay Peter’s Pence continued to apply to the inhabitants of the Silesian duch-
ies, despite their choice of Czech allegiance; to the inhabitants of the diocese
of Chełmno and of eastern Pomerania, both of which had become part of
the state of the Teutonic Order; and even to the inhabitants of the diocese of
Kamień, in western Pomerania.
At the outset, Pope John XXII’s position concerning the territory subject
to the obligation to pay Peter’s Pence had no political subtext. The view in
Avignon was that long-standing obligations ought to be enforced, regard-
less of political changes in international boundary lines. This approach was
bound to be attractive to the Polish side; it was a very favourable one from
the propaganda point of view. It was in Poland that the assertion ubicumque
datur denarius sancti Petri tunc fuit Polonia was specifically accepted.50
Thus it is not surprising that Poland sought to exploit Peter’s Pence to the
utmost for propaganda purposes, with the help and cooperation of papal
collectors. This inevitably led to conflict between the collectors and the
inhabitants of the lands remaining outside the territory of the Kingdom of
Poland. The conflict began in Pomerania, yet it was fiercest in the diocese
of Wrocław.
In 1317, Pope John XXII mandated the archbishop of Gniezno and the
bishop of Włocławek to commence the collection of Peter’s Pence in the
diocese of Chełmno on the same basis as in the other Polish dioceses.51 But
the enforcement of this obligation met resistance from both the clergy and
the leadership of the Teutonic Order, despite the fact that the papal exac-
tors had the right to wield ecclesiastical penalties against the insubordi-
nate. Difficulties with collection also emerged in that portion of Pomerania
which did not belong to the diocese of Chełmno. In 1323, the Grand Master
of the Order, Charles of Trier, travelled to Avignon and personally tried
to convince the pope to accept the Order’s view on this subject.52 The
Knights agreed to the collection of Peter’s Pence in Pomerania because
that province lay within the boundaries of the diocese of Włocławek. On
the other hand, they argued that the diocese of Chełmno had never paid
Peter’s Pence. Initially the pope accepted this argument, but as early as
1325 he mandated his collectors, Andrew of Verola and Peter of Auvergne,
to collect Peter’s Pence in all the lands infra dicti regni antiquos limites.53
It is possible that the change in the pope’s position was influenced by the
collectors, and by the activities of the Polish side behind the scenes. At least
the Order’s leadership was thoroughly convinced that Poland was running
a propaganda campaign. The Grand Master maintained that Avignon was
rife with rumour, disseminated by the Polish side, to the effect that, while
Peter’s Pence had in fact always been collected in the Chełmno diocese, the
collected revenues were never sent to the pope, but were instead spent on
the needs of the Order.54
The Polish side was in a better position in the conflict concerning the col-
lection of Peter’s Pence in Pomerania, since here it had the support of the
papal collectors. It was they who, wielding the appropriate powers of agency
on the pope’s behalf, were authorised to resolve all the contested issues on the
spot. Therefore, bypassing Avignon, the Order’s representatives undertook
negotiations with the collector in Kraków. However, the latter, despite com-
promise proposals by the Order, proved intransigent, demanding aderence to
all the previously assumed financial obligations.55 The collector’s position
suited the Polish side. Even though in a formal sense Władysław the Short
was not engaged in this conflict, no one doubted that continuation of the con-
flict was in the interest of the Kraków royal court. The king’s advisors could
always use the Peter’s Pence argument to prove that Pomerania had once
been part of Poland. It appears that the leaders of the Teutonic Order fully
understood the Polish point of view, and that that is why they were willing to
accept a far-reaching compromise. They believed, however, that the dispute
ought to be resolved without the involvement of papal collectors. This, in
all likelihood, is why attempts were made to carry out talks directly with the
pope. The proctor of the Order in permanent residence at Avignon took part
in them, and the ultimate agreement on Peter’s Pence concluded in 1333 can
be attributed chiefly to his involvement.56
In the dioceses of Kamień and Lubusz, the conflict over Peter’s Pence
had a similar origin, but a slightly different course. In ordering the collec-
tion of the payment, John XXII relied (as he had with respect to Gdańsk
Pomerania and the Chełmno district) on arguments by the Polish side. The
papal collector was brought into the resolution of this conflict. While reit-
erating the pope’s arguments, which were based on historical grounds, he
also drew attention to some other aspects of the conflict. This dispute about
Peter’s Pence lasted for an unusually long time. Even the lawsuit brought by
the papal collector against the bishop of Kamień in 1343 did not bring about
a settlement. The bishop’s representatives maintained that the diocese had
never been part of the Gniezno ecclesiastical organisation, and that therefore
the demands for Peter’s Pence were groundless. This line of argument did
not convince Galhard, who was well-disposed toward Poland. In view of
the difficulties over the enforcement of the obligation, he sought to recast
the conflict from another angle, and to relate it to the ongoing major dispute
between the papacy and the Wittelsbach dynasty. In the reports addressed to
Pope Benedict XII, Galhard observed that the problem with Peter’s Pence in
this particular group of dioceses stemmed from the fact that they were under
the influence of Lewis of Bavaria.57
The conflict over Peter’s Pence in Silesia took the most dramatic course;
moreover, it involved both the Church and the laity. In this conflict, we note
the most intensive involvement of the papal collectors, and of the kings of
Poland and Bohemia. The parties to the conflict employed all the arguments
that could possibly be useful in convincing the pope to take an unequivocal
position. In Silesia, the problem of Peter’s Pence was additionally compli-
cated by the fact that, right from the outset, the conflict had become politi-
cal; the participants were less concerned with finances than they were with
principles. In 1317, Pope John XXII had ordered the collection of Peter’s
Pence in all the dioceses of the metropolitan province of Gniezno. The papal
collector Gabriel de Fabriano therefore mandated the bishop of Wrocław to
collect the payment in his diocese.58 But the first attempt to enforce Peter’s
Pence provoked universal resistance; the Silesian dukes even sent their own
emissary to present their point of view to the pope.59 This action by the
dukes did not discourage the bishop of Wrocław, who imposed ecclesiasti-
cal sanctions upon those who evaded the payment – a step which further
escalated the conflict. The bishop’s sudden death caused even greater havoc.
The Wrocław chapter (which, after the bishop’s death, assumed de facto
rule in the diocese) turned to the archbishop of Gniezno for help. The letter
sent by the Wrocław chapter to the archbishop indicates the beginnings of a
more compromising attitude: some clergy and some dukes were willing to
pay Peter’s Pence. Duke Henry of Głogów even issued a letter to the pope
asserting his duchy’s readiness to pay Peter’s Pence as a sign of subjection
to the Holy See. At the same time, he expressed the hope that the pope would
defend the dukes of Silesia in the event the emperor should wish to gain
control over them.60
Viewed from the political perspective, the duke’s move was quite skilful.
By means of the same argument as the king employed in Kraków, Henry
used Peter’s Pence as a basis for allying himself with the pope, who was
in conflict with the emperor at the time. The possible support of Pope John
XXII for the duke of Głogów might have worked to strengthen his position
in Silesia. However, the conflict over Peter’s Pence drew in the Czech king,
John of Luxemburg, who, as of this point, had assumed the dominant position
in this province. The acceptance by the Silesian dukes of the Czech king’s
overlordship between 1327 and 1329 crucially transformed the situation in
all the Piast duchies. The papal collector fully understood this new political
and institutional constellation, and in a letter to the Czech king expressed the
hope that the changes in Silesia would not adversely impact papal revenues.
Though the king accepted the collector’s arguments, in reality he treated
Peter’s Pence as an indication of the fact that Silesia belonged to the ecclesi-
astical province of Gniezno.
After 1327, the conflict entered a new phase. The Piast dukes of Silesia
were aware of support from the Czech monarch, and they began to oppose
the papal collectors – who in turn were attempting, from Kraków, to exact
the payments owed to the pope. The uncompromising demands for the pay-
ment of Peter’s Pence further escalated the conflict. The people of Silesia
consistently refused to pay, while, with an equal consistency, the collector
imposed ecclesiastical penalties as prescribed by the law. The collector, Peter
of Auvergne, was compelled to flee Silesia for fear of his life. His successor
Galhard took an equally intransigent position. At the same time, he entangled
himself in risky lawsuits against the Silesian clergy – lawsuits that were adju-
dicated, among others, by the same persons against whom he was making
fiscal demands.
Especially important in the whole Silesian conflict was the position of the
Kraków court. Casimir the Great and his ecclesiastical advisers did not wish
to enter directly the conflict over Peter’s Pence in the diocese of Wrocław.
A long and protracted conflict was very useful for their political interests,
because it kept alive the memory of the Silesian duchies’ former political
subjection, and because, within Silesia itself, it maintained a certain level of
tension. This, however, did not mean a real neutrality. With the collector on
its side, the Kraków royal court sought to make political use of the conflict,
using the collector for help in this endeavour. On his side, Galhard clearly
understood that only Kraków could serve as a base of support for his activi-
ties. One might think that, in this entire conflict, Peter’s Pence was only a
pretext – especially in view of the fact that, after all, the collector himself was
not hiding his close relationship with Casimir the Great. Galhard informed
the pope that he had agreed to extend the deadline for payment ad consil-
ium et preces domini regis Poloniae illustri. According to Galhard, the main
obstacle to the resolution of the conflict was the Czech king, and the German
clergy of the Wrocław diocese. Such opinions simply must have had their ori-
gins in the royal court of Kraków. Casimir the Great’s court milieu undoubt-
edly affected the way the papal collector perceived the problem. It cannot be
ruled out that the court had initiated certain activities undertaken by Galhard.
This is suggested by the reports Galhard sent to the pope. In extensive mis-
sives, he tried to sensitise the Holy See to the problem of Silesia; he presented
financial matters (always a subject of interest to the pope) essentially as a
political issue.
In 1337, the collector sent a lengthy report on his collecting activities
to the Pope. In it he wrote about the difficulties he had encountered in the
enforcement of the payments owed to the pope, especially in Silesia; and he
called himself a fervent defender of papal rights in these lands. Moreover, he
included a series of recommendations of a strictly political nature, and sug-
gested to the pope very specific, concrete solutions. About the situation in
Silesia, he wrote directly and bluntly:
Item sciat sanctitas vestra quod in omnibus civitatis regni Polonie in qui-
bus Theutonici dominantur omnia iura sedis apostolice et vestre camere
quasi depereunt in totum, unde in civitate et diocesi Wratislaviensibus
quamdiu fuerunt sub dominio domini regis Polonie et ibidem domina-
batur et census beati Petri et decima decime et omnia iura camere peni-
tus erant illesa; nunc vero quia rex Bohemie dominatur ibidem censum
beati Petri restituere denegant indebite et iniuste, et in residua decime
imposite per bone memorie Clementem papam concilio Viennensi clerus
solvit pessime.61
But Galhard did not limit himself to pointing out nationality issues. Probably
taking his cue from the Polish Church, he proposed to the pope specific, pre-
ventative steps. First of all, he suggested that the pope reserve the bishopric
of Wrocław – a step which in the future would allow the pope to appoint a
bishop who would guarantee suitable revenues to the papacy. In this connec-
tion, he unambiguously suggested that that new bishop ought to be a Pole.
Reservation of the bishopric was necessary, Galhard maintained, because the
Wrocław chapter, dominated by people loyal to John of Luxemburg, would
never elect a Pole.
It was probably also at Polish prompting that the collector alerted Benedict
XII to the problem of the episcopal castle in Milicz, which the Czech king
intended to purchase. Galhard observed that this castle was quasi clavis
regni Polonie, and that its acquisition by the Czechs would lead to the loss of
papal revenues from the entire territory, sicut aliis in locis per eum occupatis
inter regnum Polonie. Moreover, the change of owner would pose a direct
threat to Casimir the Great. In view of these dangers, the collector recom-
mended that the pope prohibit the bishop of Wrocław from selling the castle.
The collector’s second extensive report, dated June 1338 and compiled in
Visegrád, Hungary, was similar in tone. Here, too, Galhard described the
enormity of the dangers posed to the Holy See by Czech domination in
Silesia, and did not even conceal his own ties to Casimir the Great and his
innermost circle.62
It is impossible to establish with certainty to what extent Galhard’s reports
contributed to the resolution of the conflicts around Peter’s Pence in Silesia.
Further publicity of the conflict, and the presentation of Polish arguments
through the good offices of the papal collector, may have adversely affected
the Czech king’s public image. It was the Czech monarchs who were inter-
ested in the speediest possible resolution of the conflict; hence, they made
isolated, conciliatory gestures toward the papal collector. It is therefore
entirely unsurprising that they sought to invite Galhard to Prague, in order to
clear up all the contested issues.63 Galhard did not accept those invitations, so
as not to appear to favour the Luxemburg side.
As has already been noted, the entire conflict over Peter’s Pence in Silesia
– dramatic in its circumstances – had a political subtext, and could only be
resolved by political decisions. Without a doubt, Casimir the Great’s gradual
withdrawal from active politics in Silesia helped facilitate that resolution.
Once the political priorities of the Kraków court changed, Galhard, whose
activities had led to an acute conflict with the Silesian clergy, could no longer
count on the backing of the king of Poland. Likewise, he did not find ade-
quate support from Benedict XII. After his defeats in the lawsuits against the
Silesian prelates, he merely managed to elicit from the pope an annulment of
all the ecclesiastical penalties to which he had been subjected; and a grant of
the right to impose, without the possibility of appeal, ecclesiastical penalties
upon all who failed to pay Peter’s Pence. The pope agreed to his collector’s
request in very early 1339.64
Around the same time, Galhard concluded a settlement concerning Peter’s
Pence with Charles, the margrave of Moravia. Thus, in his financial accounts
Galhard may have requested reimbursement of the money he had spent on
the journey to Wrocław which he made cum abaxiatoribus marchionis. Only
after obtaining the support of the Czech authorities was Galhard able effec-
tively to impose ecclesiastical penalties upon those Silesian dukes who failed
to pay Peter’s Pence. Prior to that, however, the collector had concluded an
agreement on this matter with the Czech king. The circumstances behind this
compromise are unknown. Interestingly, the date of its signing coincides with
the date Casimir the Great issued documents, for the house of Luxemburg,
promising to leave the current level of Czech control over Silesia entirely
undisturbed.65 In practice, this meant Poland’s withdrawal from active poli-
tics in Silesia.
It seems that this declaration finally led to the resolution of the conflict
over Peter’s Pence in the Wrocław diocese. In 1340, the rulers of Bohemia
travelled to Avignon, ad papam Benedictum duodecimum ad concordan-
dum cum eo de denario Sancti Petri qui datur in diocesi Wratislaviensi.66
Despite the visit, they did not manage to resolve all the outstanding issues.
Matters relating chiefly to the past-due payments remained unresolved, as
the Holy See was not going to give up this type of income. In 1343 John of
Luxemburg submitted to Pope Clement VI a supplication in which he asked
the pope to grant him the entire past-due revenues from Peter’s Pence in the
Wrocław diocese.67 The king’s request implied that he was accepting Peter’s
Pence in Silesia, and that he was no longer viewing its collection as a politi-
cal matter. As was the case in other bishoprics, Peter’s Pence was becoming
a purely financial arrangement. This turn of events was made possible by
the withdrawal of the Kraków court from active involvement in Silesian
politics.
5
When discussing the political involvement of the collectors, we must not
overlook their financial contacts with the state authorities. Such contacts
were bound to occur, if for no other reason than because the collector had at
his disposal a supply of cash, while the rulers suffered from its deficiency. It
is therefore not surprising that the monarchs often used this papal official as
a desirable moneylender. This role of the collector was related to the broader
issue of papal attitude toward the policies of the individual monarchs. In the
fourteenth century, the popes quite often shared their incomes with rulers,
and for many reasons. In practice, this meant that the Holy See shared a part
of its revenues from a given country with its ruler, or that it imposed upon the
clergy special taxes which were devoted specifically to the needs of the king-
dom. In the latter case, the popes usually discontinued the practice of receiv-
ing, through papal collectors, the payments that were being relinquished,
and instead allowed the ruler to collect them by means of the state’s own
administrative apparatus. A ruler who received this kind of papal gift was not
obligated to account for the outcome of the resulting collection; as a result, in
most cases we do not know the amounts generated for the royal treasury, or
the effectiveness with which the payments were enforced.
The nature of the collectors’ influence upon the decisions of the popes is
difficult to assess. It is not improbable that, since they remained in intimate
contact with the state authorities, the collectors themselves suggested to rul-
ers that the latter turn to the successor of Saint Peter for help; or, that the col-
lectors expressed such suggestions directly to the pope. Sometimes this was
necessary for an efficient collection of a payment; this was because the state
power was in a position to force far-reaching concessions upon the pope. The
kinds of activity which the kings of France carried out in this regard were
soon imitated in Central Europe. The Czech king Václav II was able to seize
the papal monies collected in the diocese of Olomouc – monies which the
popes subsequently (and without effect) demanded from the Luxemburgs.68
Things were similar in Hungary. When, in 1331, papal collectors undertook
to gather the Vienne tithe, Charles Robert protested, and his protest sufficed
to prevent the papal emissaries from even embarking upon the collection.
Only after John XXII granted one third of the gathered revenue to the king
were the collectors allowed to function relatively effectively.69
The rulers of Hungary and Bohemia were in a position to make finan-
cial demands on the pope, and to make their own consent to the collection
of extraordinary obligations in their countries conditional upon his accept-
ance of those demands. However, the rulers of the Kingdom of Poland were
unable to make similar demands; for them, papal support, even if it was not
effective, was nevertheless too valuable to risk in a conflict over finances.
This does not mean that the king of Poland did not use papal monies. This
occurred along lines similar to what happened in other countries, but with
a different rationale: Casimir the Great skilfully managed to involve him-
self in the Avignon popes’ crusading policy.70 The king’s wars against pagan
Lithuania for supremacy over Galich–Vladimir Rus’ gradually acquired the
status of crusades, which in turn allowed the Polish side to seek financial
support from the papacy. As early as 1343, Pope Clement VI handed over to
the king all his income from the papal two-year tithe proclaimed in Poland.71
The king benefited from papal help for the second time in the 1350s, when
the pope gave him the income from the four-year tithe imposed on the Polish
clergy.72 Innocent VI and Urban V also pitched in with financial support for
the king.73
We do not know whether in his endeavours to obtain financial aid from the
papacy the king received support from the collectors of the papal camera. It
is quite possible that the collectors provided the king with help and advice. In
extraordinary circumstances, they themselves provided financial support for
the king. Likewise in exceptional situations, a monarch could ask the papal
collector for a simple loan; in turn, the collector could use for this purpose
money he had managed to gather into his collectory. For all practical pur-
poses, detailed papal regulations concerning transfers of money from the col-
lectory to the papal camera completely prevented the collector from freely
managing the revenues he had gathered. One kind of activity affected by this
prohibition was lending; for that act, the collector needed the consent of the
pope, or at least of the camerarius. In Poland, the collectors, acting in the
interests of the state authority, quite often freely managed the accumulated
sums. In 1340, Galhard of Carces lent Casimir the Great 3,000 golden florins
toward the expenses of the Russian campaign; the guarantors of the loan were
the townspeople of Kraków and the higher clergy.74 The king paid back his
debt only three years later, under threat of excommunication, directed against
the guarantors.
In 1352, without unnecessary guarantees or the knowledge of the papal
camera, Galhard’s successor Arnald of Caussinh lent the king the much larger
sum of more than 13,000 golden florins. The pope learned about the transac-
tion only from the petition by the king to the pope, to be excused from repay-
ing that entire sum. Only at this point did Innocent VI order the collector to
exact the debt from the king immediately, and to send the resulting revenue
to the camera.75 The execution of the debt must have proceeded with great
difficulty, since as late as in 1357 the king was still a debtor to the camera.
Extensions of the deadline for repayment did not bring about the expected
results. As late as the pontificate of Urban V, the camera was demanding over
6,000 florins; we do not know whether this was an old debt, or whether the
collector had furnished the king with a new loan.76 Be that as it may, Casimir
the Great died as a debtor to the papal camera. After his death, the pope
tried to reclaim the amounts owed from his successor, Louis the Great. In
this matter, he turned, among others, to Louis’s mother and the dead king’s
sister, Elizabeth Łokietkówna.77 Arnald’s financial documents, secured after
his death, include a record of two obligations incurred by Casimir the Great,
jointly equalling over 4000 florins.78 We do not know when these obligations
were incurred, though we may presume it was in the final years of the king’s
life. If the presumption is accurate, this would mean that, against the wishes
of the Holy See, the papal collector continued to give financial support to the
Polish king.
6
The pontificates of John XXII (1316–34) and Benedict XII (1334–42) together
constitute the period of the greatest political activity by collectors in Poland.
Their involvement in settling local disputes, and their mediating activities,
elevated their position in the Polish Church far beyond its equivalent in other
papal collectories. It is difficult to define clearly whether in their policies
the collectors were simply complying with the guidelines of the Holy See. It
seems that such a hypothesis would be difficult to prove. The source material
demonstrates unambiguously that it was the state authority which sought to
make use of the presence of the Holy See’s representatives for its own ends,
and to accomplish its own political aims with their participation. This is very
clearly visible in the Piast monarchy in the 1330s. The collectors were the
sole representatives of the pope in the Piast state. Despite their relatively low
position in the institutional framework of the Roman curia, they had very
real possibilities of creating a desirable image of a given country in Avignon.
As representatives of the pope, they may have been considered more objec-
tive observers than were the emissaries sent to the papal court by the rulers.
The Kraków court skilfully managed to engage the papal representatives in
the pursuit of its own political agenda. Considering the political isolation
in which the Kingdom of Poland found itself by the end of Władysław the
Short’s reign and at the beginning Casimir the Great’s, the papal representa-
tive could prove a very valuable ally in the international arena, the more valu-
able as in some cases he was Poland’s only ally.
The collectors also benefited from good cooperation with the state authori-
ties, and from representing those authorities’ interests. First of all, they could
count on the monarch’s support for their basic role, namely organising the
collection of payments owed to the pope. The importance of such support,
or even of a mere impartiality, cannot be overestimated; during the period of
interest here, we have no record of any incidents in the collection of papal
payments. Thanks to the good cooperation with the state authorities, the papal
collector felt relatively safe in the Kingdom of Poland, in contrast to other
collectories. The ruler’s favour could also faciliate a collector’s ecclesiasti-
cal career. To cite an early example, Władysław the Short sought to reward a
favour by a papal representative with attempts to furnish the representative
with benefices. So did Casimir the Great. It was during his reign that the col-
lector was viewed as a resident of the royal household – a fact that says much
about this particular relationship. On the other hand, the collectors active in
the Kingdom of Poland and in Hungary did not play major roles in high-level
papal politics. One can even venture that they were treated instrumentally, by
the rulers as well as by the pope. Quite simply, they were financial officials,
at a rank too low for them to have an effective impact on the policies of the
successors of Saint Peter.
12 University masters at the
royal court of Hedwig of
Anjou and Władysław
Jagiełło
Krzysztof Ożóg
During the rule of Hedwig of Anjou and Władysław Jagiełło in the years
1384–1434, the royal court in Kraków played an important role in the func-
tioning of the emerging Jagiellon monarchy. After a long interregnum, with
the arrival of Hedwig in Poland and her coronation in October 1384 the court
became organised anew. Hedwig’s marriage to Władysław Jagiełło and his
coronation as King of Poland on 4 March 1386 led to a reorganisation of the
royal court, and the establishment of a separate court attending to the queen.
After Hedwig of Anjou’s death, Władysław’s subsequent three wives had
similar small courts. Medievalists have long been interested in various issues
related to the court circles of Kraków at the end of the fourteenth and in the
first half of the fifteenth century, but no comprehensive monograph on this
issue has appeared.1 Until now, university scholars involved in court service
have received relatively little attention. Above all, this group consisted of
preachers, confessors, writers, physicians, astrologers and the teachers of the
king’s sons, as well as of persons who carried out a variety of intellectual and
spiritual instructions issued by the monarch, unrelated to the aforementioned
court functions.2 In the present article, we shall not consider intellectuals
engaged by the king in the royal council and chancery, or their colleagues
who took part in Polish diplomacy.
As a matter of fact, until 1400 there had been no regular academic circle
in the Kingdom of Poland. Only the foundation in that year, which had been
arranged by Hedwig of Anjou and Władysław Jagiełło, and implemented
after the queen’s death, provided the basis for the functioning of a univer-
sity in Kraków. By the last decade of the fourteenth century, there was a
substantial group of intellectuals in Kraków – graduates of universities in
Prague, Paris, Montpellier, Bologna and Padua – centred around the Church.
Some of them belonged to Hedwig and Jagiełło’s court. They had a signifi-
cant influence on the decisions made by the royal couple: first, regarding
the attempt, undertaken in the years 1390–3, to renew the studium generale
formerly founded by Casimir the Great; and second, concerning the efforts
(in addition to the reestablishment of the university in its entirety) to establish
a faculty of theology, which was indeed accomplished, on 11 January 1397.3
Beginning in 1400, Władysław Jagiełło and his subsequent wives, Anne of
Cilli, Elizabeth of Pilica and Sophia of Holszany, were able to use at court the
services of masters of the University of Kraków.
Confessors, preachers and chaplains

Historical sources provide modest information about the learned clergymen
present at the court; that is to say, about Queen Hedwig of Anjou’s confes-
sors, preachers and chaplains. They performed various services in addition
to the ministry. They were a rather varied group, including monks as well as
the diocesan clergy.4 The group of Hedwig’s confessors consisted of three
learned men: the Dominican John Sartoris, the Cistercian John Štěkna and
most probably also Stanisław of Skarbimierz. John Sartoris, who had been a
Dominican lector at the monastery of Świdnica in 1373, probably received
his education in philosophy and theology in one of the Dominican general
colleges. There are no records concerning his university studies or career.
He disseminated the works and thought of Thomas Aquinas by editing the
Itinerarium s. Thomae and the Tabulae for the needs of Dominican students
and preachers.5 He certainly joined Hedwig and Jagiełło’s court before 1388,
in which year, thanks to their support, he became bishop of Seret after the
relocation of Andrew Jastrzębiec to Vilnius. However, he spent most of
his time in Kraków, as suffragan of Bishop John Radlica, and later of Peter
Wysz.6 In a document issued in the Benedictine monastery on Mount Holy
Cross (Święty Krzyż) for the Dominican convent in Seret (without an indi-
cation of the year), Sartoris used the title of ‘papal penitentiary’, and that of
‘confessor’ to Hedwig and Jagiełło.7 He probably performed the office of
confessor at the Kraków court until his death in 1394.8
From 1397, the post of Hedwig’s chaplain was held by a Czech Cistercian
monk, John Štěkna, at the time a teacher of theology and an outstanding
preacher. Most historians assume that he was Hedwig of Anjou’s confes-
sor, because the queen’s foundation document for the Lithuanian College in
Prague, issued on 10 November 1397, describes him as curiae nostrae cap-
pellanus familiaris, devotus, dilectus.9 Although he is not directly identified
as confessor, the hypothesis is highly plausible. He first studied in Prague,
where he received the title of master of arts in 1376 and a biblical baccalaure-
ate before 1391, and, after his relocation to Kraków, completed theological
studies and received his doctorate in 1402. In Prague, he became renowned as
a preacher in the Bethlehem Chapel during the years 1393–6.10
University masters at the royal court 149
John Štěkna also preached at the Kraków court, where he enjoyed the repu-
tation of a splendid preacher. He wrote a series of sermons, including the
Carcer animae and the Sermones de sanctis super Evangelia et Epistolas.11
Some of his sermons aroused controversy among Polish noblemen, who
sent him a letter (which is undated) calling on him to retract the opinion that
mulier adulterii commisso crimine ipsa minus peccaret, quam vir similiter
deliquens et per consequens minoribus digna suppliciis censeretur, which
he had expressed during a Sunday sermon in the presence of the noblemen’s
wives, sisters, daughters and relatives.12 The Czech theologian must have
complied with the noblemen’s demand, since he remained among Hedwig of
Anjou’s associates, probably until the queen’s death.
Based on the clear connections between Stanisław of Skarbimierz and
Hedwig of Anjou, Jerzy Wolny has offered a highly plausible hypothesis:
that in the final years of the queen’s life Stanisław was her confessor.13 That
this hypothesis is very probably correct is shown by Stanisław’s references
to Hedwig in a series of works: the Soliloquium de transitu Hedvigis Reginae
Poloniae, the Soliloquium de consolatione mortis, the Sermo in exequiis
dominae Hedvigis reginae Poloniae, and the Sermo ad regem et proceres
eius de obitu Hedvigis Reginae et vitae eius.14 What deserves special empha-
sis is Hedwig’s cooperation with Stanisław of Skarbimierz on the subject of a
jubilee indulgence in 1390. The queen used her influence to receive a jubilee
indulgence from Pope Boniface IX, which was granted in Kraków, probably
beginning on the eve of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (1 June) and ending
on 30 September 1392.15 For this special occasion Stanisław of Skarbimierz
prepared three sermons on indulgences, a treatise titled De indulgenciis and
Sermones super Gloria (a cycle of 20 sermons on the mass hymn), and prob-
ably also a collection of 19 sermons devoted to Jesus Christ, Sermones de
incarnatione Christi.16 As can be concluded, at the royal court Stanisław per-
formed the function of a preacher. Together with Władysław Jagiełło and
Hedwig, and with Bishops John Radlica and Peter Wysz, he made efforts to
relaunch King Casimir’s foundation, and later on to arrange for the second
foundation of the university.17
The office of preacher at Wawel Castle in the years 1394–1410 was per-
formed by the Premonastratensian monk, John Sylwan (or John-Jerome)
of Prague, who arrived in Poland after completing theological studies at
the Prague university; he had become a magister artium in 1392.18 In the
prologue to the collection of sermons, Quadragena Salutis, he wrote that he
had stayed at the Kraków royal court as a predicator serenissimi Wladislai
regis Polonie.19 In addition, John of Segovia reported, in his written account
of John Sylwan’s delegation by the Council of Basel as an envoy to King
Władysław in 1433, that Sylwan had once been the confessor of the Polish
monarch.20 Hedwig of Anjou and Anne of Cilly may have heard him preach,
and he probably was also their confessor. John-Jerome obtained a doctorate
in theology at the University of Kraków before 1404, and was a professor
of the university for several years, perhaps until 1408.21 While preaching
in Kraków, he prepared two sermon collections, the Linea salutis aeter-
nae (1405), and the Exemplar salutis aeternae (1409).22 He was a man of
great faith, admired by his contemporaries. He was mentioned by John
Długosz in his account of Władysław Jagiełło’s 1409 foundation of the
Premonstratensian monastery of the Holy Spirit in Nowy Sącz; the king
launched this foundation at the request of John-Jerome, qui pro illo tempore
rare sanctitatis vir habebatur et qui verbo sue doctrine et vite arctitudine
multas virtutes in Polonie Regno plantaverat.23 John-Jerome’s unusual
piety as the monastery’s first abbot is also noted in Jagiełło’s founding
document.24
John-Jerome undertook missionary activities in Lithuania twice, for the
first time probably in the years 1394–8, and again in 1411. However, he
fell out with Grand Duke Witold, and left not only Lithuania but Poland as
well, setting off in 1413 to Italy, where he joined the Camaldolese Order and
became prior of the monastery in Camaldoli.25 He passed on his account of
his missionary activities in Lithuania to Enea Silvio Piccolomini in 1432 or
1433, and the latter included it in his work De Europa.26 Quite possibly, John
continued to maintain contact with the royal court of Kraków by mail. He
became involved in the reform of the Church, especially of the monastic life,
and addressed these subjects in his works. He participated in the Council of
Pavia–Siena, and thereafter of Basel, where he was considered an expert in
the issues related to Bohemia.27 In 1433 he was sent as the council’s envoy to
Władysław Jagiełło, in order to convince the king to send his group of rep-
resentatives to the council, and to cooperate with the council in a resolution
of the Hussite issue, which was under discussion at Basel. The king’s meet-
ing with his former confessor and preacher proved fruitful, since Jagiełło
decided to change his policy towards the council.28 During this visit, John-
Jerome stopped by the Benedictine abbey on Mount Holy Cross (Święty
Krzyż), and issued instructions aimed at the healing of the spiritual life of
this monastery.29
In the 1390s yet another Czech preacher, Nicholas of Miličín, probably
stayed at the court of Hedwig of Anjou. According to Jerzy Wolny, he can be
identified with the person recorded in 1390 as ‘Nicholas, son of Milicz’ in the
accounts of the city of Kraków, and as Nicholas the Czech, a preacher head-
ing towards Prague, in the records for 1397.30 He appeared once more for a
short time in Kraków in 1408, and later returned to Prague. Apart from this,
there are no sources that might establish his relations with Kraków and the
royal court. Nicholas studied at the University of Prague under the supervi-
sion of John Huss, and carried out his academic and preaching activities in
the same city, including, after his return from Kraków (that is, in the years
1401–18), preaching in the Bethlehem Chapel.31 It is thus quite difficult to
define the role played by this preacher in the king’s circle at the beginning of
his career.
Undoubtedly, other learned Czech clergymen were present at the Kraków
royal court at the close of the fourteenth century. John Štěkna, mentioned
above, John Sylwan (Jerome) of Prague, and in all likelihood Nicholas of
Miličín, had an important influence on the life of the royal couple. In his
speech to Czech envoys during the Kraków dispute on Wawel Hill in March
1431, Jagiełło declared that he personally owed a great deal to learned
Czechs, since they had taught him the foundations of the faith at the Kraków
royal court after his acceptance of Christianity.32
After the queen’s death, Władysław Jagiełło continued to appoint con-
fessors and preachers from among learned clergymen, most often from the
Dominican Order. In 1413, in Samogitia, Magister Andrew Wężyk from
Giebułtów, a predicator regius, delivered his evangelising sermons in King
Jagiełło’s presence.33 He joined the Order of Friars Preachers after 1407, hav-
ing completed his studies at Charles University (baccalaureus artium, 1397),
and at the University of Kraków, where he obtained the degree of magister
artium in 1402 and lectured for several years. He edited Aristotle’s Physics
in the form of Buridan’s commentaries. He must have studied theology as
well, since in 1414 he was teaching theology in the Holy Trinity monastery in
Kraków.34 No collection of his sermons is known. At court, he probably held
the post of royal confessor, although no direct sources from the first half of
the fifteenth century explicity furnish such information.35
Before 1417, John Biskupiec, a Dominican friar from Kraków, became
Jagiełło’s confessor. He was affiliated to the University of Kraków for a short
period, having joined it in 1407 in order to complete his theological stud-
ies.36 The period over which he served at the court as the king’s confessor
is unknown. He was a master of theology and had been the regens of the
Dominican studium generale in Kraków since 1410, provincial in the years
1411–17, and finally bishop of Chełm from 1417 until his death in 1452.
Biskupiec could often be found in Jagiełło’s presence, enjoying the king’s
exceptionally favourable opinion – expressed, among others, in the founding
document for the Chełm diocese.37 Biskupiec was trusted by the king until the
last days of his life, and supported the monarch’s policy towards Bohemia.
He belonged to a group of influential Church dignitaries, and was a member
of the ruling elite. In the age of the Council of Basel, around 1442, he wrote
the Tractatus contra sacra concilia, where he defended the pope’s theocratic
authority, and at the same opposed the idea of conciliarism.38
Silvester (Lasota) of Zdziechów from the Rawicz family, after studies at
the faculties of liberal arts and canon law (baccalaureate in 1409), obtained
a doctorate of canon law some time before 1429.39 The period during which
he was affiliated to the University of Kraków is not known. He joined the
royal court in 1427, when, for the first time, he performed the services of a
confessor regis.40 In the following year he was noted, in a document issued by
Jagiełło, as a magister capelle regie, and he used this title in the subsequent
years.41 Silvester’s service at court continued after Jagiełło’s death, since he
became the teacher and confessor of Władysław III Jagiellończyk (magister
et confessor noster devotus). He served the young king not only in Poland
but also in Hungary, which can be learned from the king’s document of 11
November 1440, issued in Buda.42 According to this document, Silvester had
taught the late King Jagiełło faith and morality. Until his death, which took
place some time between 12 November 1441 and 10 January 1442, Silvester
stayed with Władysław Jagiellończyk in Hungary.43 Silvester enjoyed the
great trust and respect of Jagiełło and of his first-born son, yet the latter’s
attempt to place him in the archbishopric of Lwów in 1436 failed. Faced with
opposition from Polish noblemen, and at the request of the king, Silvester had
to renounce this office, despite having been canonically elected to it.44
The absence of detailed studies on the court capella of the first Jagiellons
prevents us from discussing in more detail the services of several intellectu-
als who appear in the sources under the titles capellanus regis or magister
capellae regis. The documents refer to Silvester (Lasota) by the latter title,
and, much earlier, to a doctor of canon law (and a graduate of the university
in Padua), John Śledź of Lubień. John Śledź was identified as the master
of the king’s capella in 1411, having become Jagiełło’s chaplain as early
as 1391.45 In an undated letter, John stated that, from his youth until his old
age, he had served the king; Jerzy Wolny identifies his post of superior of
the court capella with preaching.46 In the years 1422–7, the king’s chaplain
was Nicholas of Błonie, at the time a magister artium graduated from the
University of Kraków, and a student of canon law, in which he obtained a
doctorate around 1427. It is possible that at the same time he delivered ser-
mons at the court, because later on, after his departure from Kraków, he pre-
pared the Sermones de tempore et de sanctis sive Viridarium, written in an
approachable and comprehensible style.47
Already during Jagiełło’s lifetime, another learned man, John Elgot, doc-
tor of canon law and a professor of the University of Kraków, was a member
of the court of Queen Sophia of Holszany. Reliable information concerning
this fact is provided by John Długosz under the year 1431, in his account
of the death of Princess Hedwig and of the public acquittal of Sophia, who
had been charged with poisoning the princess.48 We do not know for how
long afterwards he remained the queen’s confessor, since no source infor-
mation is available on this matter.49 In the subsequent period, Władysław
Jagiełło’s surviving widow was surrounded with learned chaplains, to whom
she entrusted ambitious tasks – including the translation of the Bible from
Czech into Polish, a task peformed by several translators, among them the
queen’s chaplain, Andrew of Jaszowice.50
In the course of Jagiełło’s reign, the royal court also played host to a
group of preachers affiliated to the University of Kraków. During his uni-
versity studies in Kraków, Matthias Hering – a canon regular and abbot of
the Augustinian house in Wrocław between 1416 and 1429, the year of his
death – delivered sermons for the king and his circle.51 In his funeral oration,
Nicholas Tempelfeld mentioned that Matthias fuit serenissimi domini nostri
regis capellanus intimus et orator devotus.52 It is possible that the title of
capellanus intimus also refers to Hering’s services as confessor before the
year 1416. At the turn of the second decade of the fifteenth century, the func-
tion of the royal preacher (regie maiestatis predicator) was performed by a
doctor of canon law, Martin of Holeszow from Bohemia.53 He received his
education in liberal arts at Charles University (baccalaureate in 1398), and,
as an opponent of the Hussites, emigrated to Kraków, probably in the 1420s,
where he continued his studies at the faculty of canon law and joined the
royal court. He obtained the title of doctor of canon law under the academic
supervision of John Elgot, and delivered lectures on canons.54
In the 1420s, sermons at Jagiełło’s court were delivered by Dziersław of
Borzymów (predicator curie nostre), who was also, around 1420, employed
in the Polish chancery.55 He pursued his university studies in Kraków, where
he began his education at the arts faculty in 1408, to become a bachelor two
years later; and where he subsequently studied canon law. He obtained the
baccalaureate of canon law sometime before 1420, and a doctorate ten years
later. He enjoyed the trust of the masters, since he was elected rector of the
University several times, in 1431, 1434–5, and 1438.56 Dziersław’s sermons
have probably not survived into our times.
During King Władysław’s burial ceremonies in the cathedral, on 18 June
1434, a sermon in Polish was delivered by the doctor of canon law, Paul of
Zator, a university professor. We do not know whether he was a court preacher
during the king’s lifetime; however, he did preach in the Wawel cathedral
for 40 years, beginning in 1423. According to John Długosz, at the funeral,
Master Paul listed the monarch’s pious and excellent deeds, moving his audi-
ence to tears.57 At present, his funeral sermon remains undiscovered.58
Physicians and astrologers at the royal court

Medieval royal courts generated incessant demand for experienced phy-
sicians, who sometimes offered a combination of medical knowledge
and astrology. The faculty of medicine at the University of Kraków oper-
ated since 1400, and its first professors included the master of medicine
Thomas, son of Andrew de Amelia, as well as two bachelors, Henry Alman
and Andrew Pyrnycer.59 We know little about physicians practising at the
Wawel Castle at the end of the fourteenth century. In manuscript 805 from
the Jagiellonian Library we find two prognostics, written by an anonymous
astrologer in 1398–9 for the child of Hedwig of Anjou and Władysław
Jagiełło.60 Paleographic analysis of the book of prognostics carried out by
Maria Kowalczyk, and the comparison of this book with the manuscript
copied in 1406 by John de Saccis of Pavia, a doctor of medicine, suggest
that John de Saccis was the author of the horoscopes. In all probability, John
was also the author of prognostics for Elizabeth Bonifacia.61 Until now, this
Italian scholar was believed to have arrived in Kraków only around 1412;
however, it now seems that he was already present in Poland before 1398,
when he served Hedwig and Jagiełło as their court physician.62 The sources
provide no information about any other court physicians serving Hedwig in
the final days of her life.
In 1409 James of Kraków, magister artium and bachelor of medicine,
became King Jagiełło’s physician. He had obtained his education at the turn
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Paris. He served at the Kraków
court until his death (which occurred some time before 31 January 1435),
while simultaneously working in the town.63 From 1415 onward, another
physician, Magister Johannes medicus, had a practice in Kraków. He joined
the royal court, and several years later, in a 1429 judicial record, he is identi-
fied as cirologus domini regis.64 Apart from John, we may list a few other out-
standing physicians recruited from the University of Kraków and employed
at the court. One was the doctor of medicine Nicholas Oszkowski of Dobra,
mentioned among the witnesses, to a document issued by Władysław Jagiełło
in 1433, as medicus noster.65 He had studied philosophy and medicine in
Kraków, received his baccalaureate in 1416, the title of master of liberal arts
three years later, and, finally, a doctorate in medicine under the academic
supervision of John de Saccis, between 1424 and 1427, at which point he was
enlisted as a professor of the University of Kraków.66 Proof of his philosophi-
cal interests can be found in manuscripts 1734 and 2082, and of his astro-
nomical pursuits in manuscript 546, of the Jagiellonian Library.67 However,
we have no precise information concerning his medical practice at court.
Toward the end of Jagiełło’s life, two doctors of medicine, Herman of
Przeworsk and Bernard Hesse, served at the court as physicians. The former
became a doctor of medicine around 1430, at the University of Kraków, and
was undoubtedly a royal physician. This is evident from an (undated) act of
Herman’s ennoblement, preserved in a document of Kraków provenance,
produced some time between the 1430s and the 1440s.68 The document,
issued for Herman of Przeworsk by King Władysław (most likely Jagiełło
rather than Jagiellończyk), described the recipient as:
venerabilis et egregius magister Hermanus doctor medicine curie nostre
medicus fidelis noster dilectus atque commensalis noster ex altitudine
diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei uberrime existit insignitus.69
Herman’s merits in the eyes of Władysław Jagiełło’s court in the final days of
the king’s life must have been considerable. The office of the second physi-
cian was held by Bernard Hesse, Benedict’s brother. Bernard studied medi-
cine under the supervision of John de Saccis, and, upon becoming a doctor in
1433, served the king as a phizicus domini regis.70
The presence at the royal court of two Czechs – the physician Paul Kravař,
who was also a Parisian master of arts and a bachelor of medicine gradu-
ated from Montpellier, and the astrologer Henry, master of arts – deserves
individual treatment. After his studies in France, Master Paul lectured at the
University of Prague for a short period following 1416, and became affili-
ated with the Hussite movement. Around 1421, he arrived in Kraków, where
he served as court physician for ten years. Next, he left for Prussia, and, in
a letter of 1432, complained to the king that he had not been paid for the
last four years of service at the court, having been owed 16 marks for each
year worked. He also pointed out the courtiers’ unfavourable attitude towards
himself.71 He was certainly involved in some suspicious magical practices,
since, when offering Jagiełło his services in establishing peace between the
Teutonic Order, Świdrygiełło (Svitrigailas) and the Kingdom of Poland, he
referred to secret revelations from a certain spirit.72 The king declined this
dubious proposal, and Master Paul returned to Bohemia. In 1433 he set off to
Scotland, where he sought to establish contact with the Lollard movement.
During these attempts, Kravař was captured and burnt at the stake for propa-
gating the Hussite doctrine.73 We do not know whether during his stay at
the Kraków court he revealed his religious views, or attempted to propagate
them in Jagiełło’s circle.
Master Henry the Czech, in astronomica arte tam natura quam doctrina
singulari preditus, appeared at the royal court around 1424 – he was present
at the birth of all the three sons of Władysław Jagiełło and Sophia of Holszany
in the years 1424–7 and wrote prognostics for the children.74 During this time
he certainly enjoyed the confidence of the royal couple. He maintained con-
tacts with the Czech Hussites, who regularly sent him their writings through
messengers. Soon he was accused, twice, of heresy and of magical astrologi-
cal practices. On the first occasion, in 1428, he was acquitted of all charges,
yet, after the interception of a Hussite letter addressed to him, he again faced
an inquisitional trial, and was sentenced not to death, but to life imprison-
ment – a sentence reflecting Queen Sophia’s influence.75 He was freed after
ten years, most likely thanks to the queen’s intercession, but never returned
to the court.76
Although these two Czechs furnished the royal court with medical and
astrological services, they could not openly admit to their Hussite views
in Kraków, because such beliefs were officially repressed by the king, the
state apparatus and the Church authorities. The influence of Paul Kravař and
Henry the Czech on the royal family and its circles in the religious sphere was
hardly all-pervasive.
Court teachers and writers

In the late Middle Ages the ruling houses in European countries tended to
care a great deal about the intellectual, moral and military education of suc-
cessors to the throne. A similar approach can be seen in Poland. In 1421 King
Władysław took the eight-year-old Frederick Hohenzollern to the court to
teach him Polish customs, after arrangements had been made with Margrave
Frederick I of Brandenburg concerning his son’s marriage to Princess
Hedwig.77 At this time, the young Frederick was envisioned, in widely-sup-
ported political plans, as successor to the Polish throne. The king entrusted
the task of educating the margrave’s son to a professor of the University of
Kraków, Elias of Wąwolnica, and to a doctor of theology and knight, Peter
Chełmski. Elias’s role was certainly to attend to the intellectual and moral
education of the future successor to Jagiełło.78 We lack exact source informa-
tion about the curriculum and the books used in Frederick’s instruction.
After the birth of Queen Sophia’s sons, Władysław and Casimir, King
Władysław Jagiełło did not neglect their education. When the monarch was
taken prisoner by his brother Świdrygiełło (Svitrigailas), the noblemen gath-
ered at the Warta convention appointed Master Vincent Kot (a former profes-
sor at the University of Kraków) and the knight Peter Ryterski as preceptors
of the princes.79 Moreover, we know that the teacher of Władysław’s first-
born son was Silvester (Lasota) of Zdziechów, the doctor of canon law men-
tioned earlier. We lack additional precise source information about the way
the princes were taught, or the duration of their education.
The royal court made use of the services of learned men of letters in the
chancery and in diplomacy. After Hedwig of Anjou’s death, an epitaph was
written to the queen’s memory. John Długosz quoted it in the Annales, under
the year 1399,80 though the chronicler did not mention the poem’s author.
Although the epitaph, consisting of 30 elegiac distichs, leaves much to be
desired, it was written by someone from the queen’s close circle.81 It contains
many important details concerning Hedwig’s background, the exact date
(and the hour) of her death, and, finally, her characteristics and achievements
(with the interesting remark Lectores format, quos certis redditibus ornat),
all of which reads consistently with contemporary opinions about Hedwig.
The author emphasised the queen’s humility, prudence and faith, and her
concern for her subjects, for the Church and for learned men. Mieczysław
Gębarowicz hypothesises that the epitaph was written by Peter Wysz, since his
literary talents were noted by Masters Bartholomew of Jasło and Stanisław of
Skarbimierz in their speeches written for the bishop’s assumption of office.82
Wysz’s authorship is quite probable, and the hypothesis has been accepted in
the literature – although we do not know his other works.83
The group of royal writers included the Nicholas of Błonie mentioned
earlier; he wrote two songs of praise on the occasion of the birth of Prince
Władysław (31 October 1424), and later on that of prince Casimir (the
first son by this name was born on 16 May 1426).84 The song devoted to
Władysław, beginning with the words Nitor inclite claredinis, survives in
only one manuscript, with an incomplete musical notation.85 It is an adapta-
tion, or a paraphrase, of a Christmas song with the same incipit, Nitor inclite
claredinis. In the first stanza of the paraphrased praise in the prince’s honour,
Henryk Kowalewicz has discovered an acrostic reading NICOLAUS, which
suggests the authorship of Nicholas of Błonie.86
The author used simple tricks, inserting Queen Sophia in place of the
Virgin Mary, Prince Władysław in place of Jesus, and substituting cuncta
gens Polonica for the original cuncta orthodoxica. Metaphors referring to
the newly-born Jesus Christ were transferred to the prince, who, just like the
Saviour, is the light of the whole nation. Władysław Jagiełło was described
as regificus, largificus and invictissimus. The melody of the song was influ-
enced by Italian and French music.87 A similar style is characteristic of a
cantata written by the same poet in praise of Prince Casimir, beginning with
the words Hystoriographi aciem. It is preserved in the same manuscript,
together with the notation of a melody for three voices composed by Nicholas
of Radom, whose authorship is confirmed by a note below the song.88 The
cantata is very original. Prince Casimir is compared to the progeny of the
Vandals (Vandalorum propages), his father to a hero (yros genitor) and his
mother to Sabah of the South (laresce fecunda Zophia; Saba Austri tu prozel-
ica, voluntate deica).89
Princess Hedwig, deceased on 8 December 1431, was commemorated in
a composition by Adam Świnka, Virginum o iubar, o inclita gloria regni.90
Świnka was the best and the most famous poet at Jagiełło’s court. He also
wrote several sequences in honour of Saint Barbara, Saint Stanisław and
Saint Adalbert, and a breviary hymn about Saint Stanisław. He was praised
by John Długosz in the epitaph for Zawisza the Black.91 Moreover, Adam
Świnka wrote poems about Casimir, Władysław Jagiełło’s third son, and
about his daughter Hedwig.92 Świnka’s works are finely written. They con-
tain numerous reminiscences and borrowings from ancient authors, proving
the poet’s humanistic aspirations and intellectual background. He studied
at the faculty of arts of the University of Kraków from 1411, yet he did not
obtain a degree.93 There is no reliable information concerning his alleged
studies in Italy.94 In the epitaph for Princess Hedwig, he emphasised the wide-
spread grief at her death, most of all her father’s sorrow, and presented all the
necessary elements of a biography – including the princess’s place of burial
in her mother’s tomb.95
In his account of Jagiełło’s death, Długosz mentions that an epitaph com-
memorating the late king was written by Master Gregory of Sanok, and he
quotes its content under the year 1434. The epitaph commences with the words
Hanc tibi nimbiferam quondam, pie sceptriger, odam, and has survived into
our times in three versions.96 In 1434, Gregory of Sanok was merely a bach-
elor of arts of the University of Kraków, not obtaining the title of master until
1439.97 The epitaph was not written with much artistic skill, and reveals no
traces of humanistic influence. The author himself was aware of the imperfec-
tion of its form, since he added, in the closing stanza, Hos tenui coluit Petrides
vomere sulcos, cui Sanok patriam fata dedere suam. The piece contains the
most important elements of the king’s biography, beginning with his birth as
the son of Olgierd, and ending with his death. It deals chiefly with Jagiełło’s
accomplishments on behalf of the Church in Lithuania and Poland, with the
founding of the university, and with victory in the battle of Grunwald.98
Stanisław Ciołek, initially a royal clerk and secretary, and in the years
1423–8 deputy chancellor of the treasury of the Kingdom of Poland, was
yet another court writer during Jagiełło’s reign.99 He studied at Charles
University in Prague, where he obtained the degree of magister artium in
1402.100 He wrote Cracovia civitas, a courtly hymn, in the years 1426–7.101
The first four stanzas of the poem extol Kraków, the following five speak of
the royal family, while the final stanza is a devout request to God for grace and
joy for the homeland. The author devoted as many as three stanzas to Sophia
of Holszany, lavishing praise on her beauty and chastity, as well as on her
court.102 Doubtless he wished to gain favour with the queen and win her sup-
port for his persistent efforts to obtain the bishopric of Poznań. Despite some
imperfections in its poetic form, the hymn remains one of the best pieces of
literary work from Władysław Jagiełło’s time.103 The melody for the hymn
was probably composed by Nicholas of Radom, on the basis of examples
from Italy and Burgundy, but there is much support for the hypothesis that
the composer is unknown.104
In addition to one Marian song, and two sequences in honour of Saint
Stanisław and the Holy Virgin, Stanisław Ciołek became famous as the
author of a political pasquil, a satire on Władysław Jagiełło’s marriage to
Elizabeth Granowska, for which he was dismissed from the royal court, prob-
ably in 1419. However, Ciołek was back in the monarch’s favour soon after
Elizabeth’s death. The satire, beginning with words, Fertur quodam leonem
iugo coniugii, was written in the form of an animal fable.105 It portrays a lion
who has lost his wife and does not wish to remarry. The animals subject to
his authority, fearing that after the lion’s death they will remain without a
successor to the throne, manage to convince their ruler to send a group of
envoys to the eagle, with a proposal of marriage for the eagle’s daughter. The
envoys take an official letter from the council of the animals to the king of the
birds. The mission is successful – the eagle offers his daughter’s hand – but
upon their return the envoys discover that in the meantime the lion has wed
a pig, who had deceived him into marriage. The king loses his good name
among his neighbours, and falls victim to a trick, which causes sorrow among
his subjects. The satire was quite transparent for its contemporaries, as the
symbolic characters of the lion and the pig stood for Jagiełło and Elizabeth
Granowska.106 Yet, for today’s historian, some parts of the fable still remain a
mystery, such as the identity of the eagle and of his daughter.
Stanisław Ciołek’s works demonstrate that royal men of letters were entan-
gled in a variety of political intrigues at the court, and that they often wrote in
the service of the opposition, acting against the monarch’s wishes.
The royal court on Wawel Hill also commissioned other services from
learned men who were not confessors, preachers, chaplains or royal phy-
sicians. For instance, Hedwig of Anjou accumulated an impressive library,
which included the works of the Church Fathers, Saint Bernard and Saint
Ambrose, the Revelations of Saint Bridget and works of other mystics, and
many other works in Polish translation.107 She commissioned the copying
of different works, and one of the copyists was Bartholomew of Jasło. By
order of the queen, in 1394 he copied in Sandomierz some books of the Old
Testament.108 Many more copyists worked for the needs of the court – includ-
ing, among others, a special group of scribes called the cathedrales, who,
among their other functions, carried out royal commissions.109
In the late 1390s, a Dominican friar from Prague, professor of theology
Henry Bitterfeld of Brzeg, inspired by one of Hedwig of Anjou’s closest aides,
Bishop Peter Wysz, wrote a treatise for the queen titled De contemplatione
et vita activa.110 The treatise consists of two main sections, of which the first
is devoted to deliberations on contemplation and the second deals with the
issue of the active life, and has the character of a royal mirror.111 In his pref-
ace to the treatise, directed personally to the queen, the theologian presents a
complete form of Christian life, as a harmonious unity of the conduct of the
two evangelical characters, Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, sym-
bolising, respectively, the contemplative and the active life.112 According to
Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Peter Wysz wanted Bitterfeld’s treatise to direct
Hedwig’s spiritual life along those lines, so that she would not abandon her
public obligations in favour of contemplation and mystic experiences, but
lead both an active and a spiritual life.113 The queen’s death undoubtedly
stopped the learned monk’s work on this treatise.
On the queen’s order, a psalter titled the Psałterz floriański, containing
psalms in Latin, German and Polish, was prepared. The court needed the
psalter to recite the canonical hours together.114 Opinions on its origin differ
among historians. Most favour the hypothesis that the psalter was elaborated
by the canons regular of Saint Augustine in Kłodzko in 1398–9, and com-
pleted in Kraków after 1405, although it is also likely that it was written
entirely by those canons regular after their arrival in Kraków.115 The hypothe-
sis formulated by Ewa Śnieżyńska-Stolot that the main author of the Psałterz
was Bartholomew of Jasło has not won scholarly acclaim.116 The Psałterz
floriański, unfinished during Hedwig’s lifetime, was finally completed for
Anne of Cilly, Jagiełło’s second wife.117
In the years 1384–1434, the court of Hedwig of Anjou and Władysław
Jagiełło was international in character. Polish, Czech and Italian learned men
performed various services for the royal couple. There were 31 of them in
total, half that group professors of the University of Kraków, founded in 1400
by King Władysław. The presence of scholars at the court could be explained
by a specific spiritual and intellectual demand from Hedwig, as well as from
the Lithuanian monarch, who was newly converted to Christianity. They
both surrounded themselves with wise and pious confessors, preachers and
chaplains. Hedwig’s holiness developed among people of deep faith, in the
spirit of the great knowledge and wisdom of those who attended to the king-
dom and to the Church. In the final decade of their joint rule, Hedwig and
Jagiełło’s court attracted scholars on a scale previously unseen in Poland’s
history. After Hedwig’s death, Władysław Jagiełło cultivated the character of
the court in Kraków, continuing to call for the services of intellectuals.
13 Between conciliar thought
and mystical theology
The development of ideas for
church reform by James of
Paradyż (1380/1–1464/5)1
Thomas Wünsch
James of Paradyż (or of Jüterbog), is not exactly an unknown in the Polish
or German history of ideas. Nevertheless, his intellectual biography presents
an unsolved riddle, namely, how it could come about that he, as a concili-
arist and until 1441 theology professor at the University of Kraków, could
become the mystic, moralist and radical monastic reformer who would die
in 1464 at the Carthusian monastery of Erfurt?2 James was one of the first
Cistercians in either Poland or Germany to receive the doctor of theology
degree.3 He engaged himself with the reform of this (his first) order,4 and
also held the office of visitator for Poland. He was among the leading figures
of conciliarism in Poland5 – and, after the eventual breakup of the conciliar
movement, reengaged around 1441 or 1442 with his former area of activity as
a Carthusian in Erfurt – above all with mystical theology (in close proximity to
the devotio moderna),6 with monastic spirituality and with the reform of both
the clergy and the laity.7 His literary productivity remained high, even into the
final phase of his life; the catalogue of his writings includes (depending on the
exact method of quantitative assessment) between 948 and 1499 works.
Here is a good set of qualifications from which a ‘subsequent develop-
ment’ of a conciliarist could ensue. This subsequent development entails the
following thesis. Conciliarism, at least in James’s case, was not a monolith
– a static and exclusive system – but rather itself part of a comprehensive
structure arising from efforts toward reform of the Church. James’s concili-
arism can be viewed as that part of Church reform which is directed toward
the Church’s constitution; while his mysticism, moralism and (Carthusian)
emphasis upon monastic rigour might be that part of the Church reform
which is directed toward the state of the individual believer.10 Viewed from
this perspective, James’s apparent shift from a conciliarist to a mystic does
not in fact constitute a break in his intellectual biography, but only a kind of
reallocation of emphasis within the same paradigm.
But this paradigm should be described as equating reform with innova-
tion. First, it is only when ‘reform’ is understood not merely as a rhetorical
weapon, a cessation of concrete abuses, such as simony or financial excess
on the part of the papacy – nor, on the other hand, ‘merely’ as a constitutional
change of the Church in the period of the reform councils – that, accord-
ing to the view just noted, the meaning of this concept emerges at its full
extent. Reform is nothing other than change in the circumstances as they
are, a change which can occur at all the possible levels of institutional or
individual life. The concept of reform reflects not only the support of late-
medieval intellectuals, from William Durantis to Nicholas of Cusa (and, by
the way, James of Paradyż), but also a method: the concept oscillates between
repair and revolution as the twin vectors of change, moving now backward,
now forward, between the one and the other.
The problem raised by this way of posing the matter is the evidence avail-
able from the sources. In James’s writings during the time spent in Erfurt,
one finds references to Church reform which betray, on the one hand, an
interest in reform in general, and on the other, the preservation of the idea of
council.11 There is, indeed, a substantial inclination toward the conciliarism
of the Kraków years, borne out above all by the content of his Determinatio
Basiliensis of around 1440.12 Here, one clearly observes an emphasis on the
side of moral theology,13 a support, in principle, for the papal monarchy,14
and a change in the direction of the reform movement toward the constitu-
tional dimension: with reform now, once again, flowing from the (papal) top
downward, and no longer from ‘below’, as had been the case since William
Durantis.15 The compliance with conciliar decrees, the calling of the coun-
cils, and the avoidance of arbitrary papal leadership were all at the top of the
reform agenda, and were sought in a manner that was, so to speak, consti-
tutionally neutral. Canonically licit behaviour by the clergy – including the
pope – guaranteed, in the eyes of the Carthusian James, the reform (that is to
say, the ‘healing’)16 of the Church. With respect to political theory, this meant
that instead of taking a position superior to the pope, the council functioned
only as a source of correction. In taking this position, James was clearly dis-
tancing himself from his conciliar theories of about ten years before. The
political and constitutional rebuke of the pope, effected by means of the supe-
riority of the council, now developed into a kind of ‘new interiority’, which
concentrated primarily upon the rebuke of the faithful. These texts – which
show us the ties between James of Paradyż the conciliarist, and James of
Paradyż the mystic (or moralist) – were produced between 1448 and 1455, at
which time James had already belonged to the Carthusian Order for several
years.
On the basis of several new texts, it now seems possible to follow this
development at its turning point.17 These texts, which have until recently
been either completely or partly unedited, provide for us an interface between
James the conciliarist and James the mystic or moralist – between James the
Between conciliar thought and mystical theology 163
Kraków professor and James the Carthusian. Let me place under discussion
three18 sermons, which James delivered in 1441 and 1442 before the syn-
ods of Łęczyca and Piotrków, and in 1441 during a university convocation
in Kraków.19 The interpretation and classification of these texts, unknown
until recently, concern a pivotal question: are there connections between the
Kraków and the Erfurt phases of James’s work? It is remarkable that, at one
moment, James exchanged the life model of a Cistercian, a theologian and a
Kraków professor for the ‘corporate identity’ of a Carthusian (a well-known
identity, expressed in the motto numquam reformata, quia numquam defor-
mata),20 because the conciliar reform movement to which James had substan-
tially contributed would not come to an end for some time. Thus the failure
of conciliarism, its politically-driven demise, and the papal restoration after
the end of the Council of Basel in 1449 (or, rather, the political turning point
of the year 1447) could not have produced a motive for the change in James’s
basic convictions. That change seems to have been an organic development,
not some completely new orientation caused by deep disillusionment. The
basis for this development needs to be investigated in what follows.
* * *
Manuscript 173 of the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków transmits, with-

out identifying its author, a synodal sermon with the incipit Fraternitatem
diligite (citing 1 Peter 2:17). Both the place and the date are given: 1441, in
octava Stanislai (14 May), in Lancicia in sinodo (in Łęczyca, at the synod).21
The context of this sermon’s transmission is significant; since all three of
the sermons to be considered come from this composite manuscript, a short
synopsis of Codex 173 is included here. We have here a manuscript pro-
duced around 1450, containing speeches, sermons, letters and short pieces
of various kinds, which originates for the most part from the Kraków milieu.
The eminent Kraków canonist John Elgot (ca. 1398–1452) is represented
with a series of speeches, above all for graduation ceremonies at Kraków
University’s canon-law division. In addition there are a number of synodal
sermons by theologians, canon lawyers and the future bishop of Kraków,
Thomas of Strzempin (1398–1460). Scattered here and there are a few ser-
mons by Matthew of Kraków and James of Paradyż. Finally, at the end of the
codex are situated short collections of humanist letters and speeches, as well
as documents related to the Council of Basel. The owner of the manuscript
must have been Thomas of Strzempin.22
The older literature (Janocki and Wiśniewski)23 had identified Matthew
of Kraków (who, above all others, should have been present there) as the
author of the sermon delivered at the Synod of Łęczyca (1441). Later
on, in his monumental work about James of Paradyż and the University
of Kraków at the time of the Council of Basel, Jan Fijałek consistently
identifies James as a possible author.24 Although Fijałek is not absolutely con-
clusive on this point, the attribution to James of Paradyż seems permissible:
the background of church politics, the direction of the argumentation and the
choice of cited authorities are very similar to two other sermons which were
undoubtedly written by James. Moreover, James demonstrably took part in
the Synod of Łęczyca as the representative of his abbot, Dominic of Mogiła.
The matter of concern at this provincial synod was to clarify the obedience
of the ecclesiastical province of Gniezno. In 1439, the Council of Basel was
divided concerning the choice of the conciliar pope, Felix V; in May and in
September of 1440, delegations were sent from Basel to Kraków, in order to
procure Polish obedience to the conciliar pope. The Polish king, Władysław
III Warneńczyk, remained neutral (after a brief phase of support for Felix
V, in 1439–40), while the powerful bishop of Kraków, Zbigniew Oleśnicki
was the true political power behind the council. The University of Kraków
finally laid out its definitive treatise concerning the council report of 1440–1,
unambiguously on the side of obedience to the council and to conciliarism.
Just how necessary an agreement was (and this remained evident despite
Łęczyca!) is shown by the January 1442 appearance of John Elgot in Basel,
where he maintained that the jurisdiction of the council was indeed recog-
nised by the diocese of Kraków.25 The Synod of Łęczyca was a top-calibre
assemblage; beside Archbishop Vincent Kot, all the Polish bishops took part
in the synod in person, with only the bishops of Wrocław and Lubusz sending
deputies, as usual. In addition, there appeared representatives from cathedral
and collegiate chapters, as well as from the Orders.
So on to the text. The sermo synodalis of 1441, which we will assume to
have been authored by James of Paradyż, may be broken up into relatively
clearly-divided parts. A significant feature of sermon in its entirety is the fact
that about half the text consists of quotations. The interpretational task is,
therefore, on the one hand, to identify the sources of these quotations, and,
on the other, to evaluate the ‘intervening texts’, that is to say, the author’s
own contribution to theology and Church politics. The first, shorter section
of the sermon, which serves an introductory role (fols. 90rb–1ra), opens (in
direct connection to the motto of the biblical verse Fraternitatem diligite)
with an observation (fols. 90rb–va) about the importance of man’s quest for
unity with God, a unity which has been lost as a result of the Fall. Only
contemplatio can stop the inevitable corruptio of man, and reverse the direc-
tion of development which has led man from a godly dileccio to the culpa.
James here draws support from two authorities: on the one hand, a quota-
tion from Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob, stating that the incarnation
of Christ proceeds through grace (per gratiam reformaret) in connection
with the restoration of man; on the other, a quotation from Augustine’s De
civitate Dei, which illustrates how man, originally situated between beasts
and angels, inexorably passes into the midst of the former (morti adictus
bestialiter viveret), unless Christ’s appearance intervenes. The examples
assembled here are conclusive, and do in fact illustrate the background of
James’s thought – though it must be remembered that the remedy of contem-
plation discerned by James is appropriated neither from Gregory I nor from
Augustine, but stands as the speaker’s own contribution.
The second part of that same, first section (fols. 90va–vb) weaves this idea
of unitas further – indeed, in the direction of the papacy. The inalienable fra-
ternitas of the faithful is also to be preserved within an institutional frame-
work. This framework arises from the fact that Christians are united in a
corporate sense, as membra Christi. In this function is formed the Church, to
which, again principally as his sponsa, Christ himself is espoused until the
end of time. This traditional axiom, drawn from the theory of the corpora-
tion, deserves special notice, because at a time of schism and conciliarism it
carried an especially explosive force. The conciliarists were able to situate
the pope (who, according to a view entrenched since Gregory VII, was situ-
ated above the Church) within the Church, yet over the Church’s corporate
structure – while, with the help of a specific theory of representation, plac-
ing the council above the pope, since the theory of the corporation presented
him as one believer – though, to be sure, one very elevated believer – among
many.
Yet, James of Paradyż does not go that far just here. Indeed, he postulates
– as do the conciliarists – the unity of the faithful under one, single caput
ministeriale, which, things being as they are, can only be the pope. But now,
instead of constructing an opposition between this ‘administrative head’ (a
concept employed by the conciliarists in an entirely downgraded sense)26
and the council, he turns immediately to the well-known Psalms passage
normally used in support of the papal monarchy, Unguentum quod descendit
in barbam Aaron (Ps. 132:2). The conciliarists also had recourse to this verse
(as, for example, did John Elgot of Kraków),27 yet it should be noted they did
so after the superiority of the council was first established, and the subordina-
tion of the papacy to the council formulated. Without this connecting thread,
the plea for unitas sub Petro, delivered here by James (which he supported
with a quotation from a letter by Cyprian) would have to be understood as
contrary to the conciliar ideology.
In a third step, James comes back to the social aspect of the multilateral
relationships among the faithful (fol. 90vb). The view that the unity of the
Church originates, and is maintained, per fraternam dileccionem evidently
refers to a utopia, the structure of which clearly dates from the time before the
Great Schism. It is not by chance that Bernard of Clairvaux also helps here,
with a word from one of his sermons on the Song of Solomon.
The sermon continues on the same level through its second section (fols.
91ra–4rb). This section serves as reinforcement for the line of thought that
fides and caritas must be intertwined in order to guarantee the unity of
the Church. Again, the point of departure here is a corporate model of the
Church, whereby the universal Church is understood as the membra of the
corpus Christi – a subject which is treated exhaustively, now predominantly
in a sequence of quotations from the Church Fathers. In the first place, we
have quotations from the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. There follows
Augustine, occasionally interspersed with Cyprian, Cassiodorus and Gregory
the Great. Here we see a strong preference for a monastic theology, which,
in fact (as practised beforehand by the conciliarists and the Hussites), could
also be used very instrumentally for other purposes, but here was, for the
most part, left by James of Paradyż in its original context. It must be said that
a tendency emerges just here: the argumentation takes on a moralising cast.
This is related to another message, this one a negative: as of the year 1441,
whoever propels the discussion about Church unity onto the track of a moral
lesson, should, on that question, expect from the council absolutely nothing.
This impression is strengthened by the further course of the sermon. After
the aforementioned series of quotations, James turns to his listeners, and
gives an instruction of sorts for a course of action (fols. 92va–3vb). In addition
to the metaphor of the body, the idea of the head of the Church is now once
again taken up. In connection with a passage from Bernard and a quotation
from the Epistle to the Ephesians, James very suddenly formulates a basic
principle of the ecclesiological debate of the first half of the fifteenth century:
Unum caput Ecclesie Cristus, unus vicarius principalis capitis Ihesu Cristi.
From this, he takes up again an old slogan of the papal monarchy, which had
existed since Innocent III: there is only one head of the Church, Christ, and
there is only one representative of Christ, the pope. Thus, the pope is not
a vicarius Petri (as put in Gratian’s Decretum), but a vicarius Christi. By
means of the metaphor of the good shepherd – a metaphor requiring all the
faithful to gather under the leadership of the vicarius – a papalist orientation,
extending from Innocent III to Torquemada, has been put into place. That
the author of this synodal sermon was well aware of the problematics of this
interpretation is shown by the following warning, expressed shortly before-
hand: to follow the one qui non est caput ministeriale sub principali capite
Cristo. This could certainly have referred to the schism that had recently
broken out in Basel.
In considering the necessary actions which might serve the unity and
the brotherhood within the Church, the moral sphere once again became
absolutely central: whoever wishes to bring about unity, should first attain,
by means of unity, a (moral) integrity, in its entirety, within his own self.
Moreover, it is self-evident at this point that the consilia of Bernard of
Clairvaux, or of Gregory the Great, were brought into play here. As a second
step, communication can then follow with the remaining members of the
Church – the Glossa ordinaria, Bernard and Augustine serving as guides
here. In view of these obstacles, it is no wonder that, again, only issues of
morality – that is, mistrust of, or disagreement with, one’s neighbour – stood
in the way of a genuine unity (fols. 93vb–4va). The emphatic encouragement
in the epilogue (fol. 94ra–rb), Confortamini et estote viri fortes! rigorously
develops this idea further, and shows one more time from where James had
arrived at this point: from the perspective of a moralistic treatment of a politi-
cal question.
On the whole, the sermon delivered at the Synod of Łęczyca in 1441 may
be characterised as a stringing together of authorities, an exercise on the basis
of which the author cannot be said to have possessed an especially original
theological mind, reflected either in the overall conception, or in the text
interwoven with the citations. Yet, on the other hand, contemporary accounts
of the council’s events are vague, and the theoretical formulations (the debate
about the corporation, for example) meagre. But it is just this combination
that makes the sermon interesting. The latter preserves, as a residue of the
discussions also carried out in Kraków, a rather particular type of argumenta-
tion, yet it also reconfigures that argumentation into a different kind of coher-
ence. Perhaps the most noticeable example of this is the pope’s function as
the caput ministeriale. In the conciliarist context, a much-recycled notion
limiting the papal plenitudo potestatis is the ministerial, or serving, position
of the pope – a notion which, just here, is deployed differently. Now, the prin-
cipal agent for this ‘inferiority’ is not the council, but exclusively Christ. This
emphasis neatly avoids the great theoretical debate between the adherents
of conciliar and papalist thought; instead, the speaker proceeds at the moral
level, and endeavours to address the faithful as individual persons, in terms
of their concrete life situations. James of Paradyż is neither a conciliarist nor
a papalist; if we may attach a label to him, he is best described as a moralist.
This must not mean, in the least, any kind of opposition or antagonism; yet
we do have here a particular direction, which, in the end, might lead to a mys-
ticism of the kind represented by the devotio moderna, to which James was
attentive during his Erfurt period.
This connection is further reflected in a second document,28 the ser-
mon delivered at a university convocation in Saint Anne’s Church on 23
September, attributed by Fijałek to James of Paradyż (whereas Hain consid-
ers Thomas of Strzempin to have been the author).29 The motto of the sermon,
Spiritu ambulate, is taken from the exhortation in the Letter to the Galatians
(Gal. 5:16): Spiritu ambulate et desideria carnis non perficietis. The sermon
is conspicuously divided into three parts, of which the first, in a reference to
Gregory the Great (Moralia in Iob), contains a warning against an unbridled
giving of oneself to a carnal, fleshly life. The context is clearly stamped by
monasticism, and does not show any new ideas beyond the long-familiar
schema of the vita carnalis versus the vita spiritualis.
The second part draws its substance principally from quotations produced
by the authorities: the Church Fathers – Ambrose and Augustine, Bernard of
Clairvaux; additionally, from time to time, a series of biblical passages come
to the fore. The message remains introductory in its wording – that is to say,
with the support of theological authorities, the individual faithful shall turn
away from that carnal behaviour, and subject their flesh to the spirit. Instead
of that behaviour, one should rouse oneself to a life steered by the spirit, a life
which may be recognised by seven characteristics: 1) lumen, 2) confidencia,
3) amor patrie (with which, in a characteristic kind of specification, are asso-
ciated the love of God and one’s neighbour), 4) rectitudo vie, 5) sobrietas
modestie, 6) vigor persone and 7) decor iusticie (by which is meant the gen-
eral idea of righteousness). References for these norms are drawn from both
the Old and the New Testament.
Following a lengthy philippic against a lifestyle led according to the flesh
(ambulare secundum carnem), the speaker turns to the racio ambulandi, a
topic that merits considerable attention. This is because the basic position
and aim of this spirit-filled life, as preached here, are above all the (spiritual)
renewal and humility of man. Since these imperatives may also belong to the
classical canon of monastic spirituality, the goal of renewal possesses a cer-
tain polyvalence. The listening audience of that time, sensitised as it was by
debates concerning Church reform, could under these circumstances derive
both positive and negative implications from what was said. On the positive
side would have been the references themselves: as with the biblical pas-
sages from Ezechiel (Facite vobis cor novum et spiritum novum, Ez. 18:31),
the Letter to the Romans (In novitate spiritus ambulemus, Rom. 6:4 – with,
however, vitae substituted for spiritus, as originally in the Vulgate), and from
the Letter to the Ephesians (Renovamus spiritu mentis vestre, Eph. 4:23 –
but, again, substituting renovamus for the Vulgate’s renovamini). The area in
which this renewal takes place is relegated entirely to the spiritual and moral
inner life of the faithful. A possible negative implication, on the other hand,
is that this renewal has nothing to do with the external life, let alone with the
structure and constitution of the Church, or, least of all, with politics.
One can ask what, in view of the contemporary situation, the author wished
to communicate to his listeners with a sermon of this kind. To give a brief
framework: the conciliarist position of Kraków University, as redacted in
written form by Thomas of Strzempin, and as based upon the independent
reports by James of Paradyż, John Elgot, Lawrence of Racibórz, and (prob-
ably indirectly) Benedict Hesse, had just at that point been dispatched to the
Council of Basel. Thus, the engagement with conciliar thought by those who
heard James at that university convocation had just attained its zenith – even
if John Elgot was later able to deliver some not insignificant speeches, and if,
toward the end of the 1440s, a circular letter sent from the Kraków academy
to other European universities prompted, one more time, a brief moment of
adherence to conciliarist conviction. How anachronistic, then, to entreat a
public which had just expressed a sensational declaration in favour of the
council (and this during a phase when politically everything was still an open
question), with a sermon which was – from the perspective of its subject
matter – essentially a monastic appeal for inner renewal. How little one must
have felt bound to the biblical framework was demonstrated by the entire
long sequence of conciliarists and their opponents. This, at any rate, could not
have furnished the basis for the slant of this sermon. Thus it now remains to
take note of the faithfulness to the biblical context, and of the moral interpre-
tation – in conjunction with the assumption that a speaker who was entrusted
with the contemporary discussions was, perhaps consciously, intending to
give a sign of some kind. If this were the case, then we have here a deliberate
shift of the reform debate from the external, institutional level to that of the
inner and the personal.
* * *
The sermon attributed by both Fijałek and Hain to James of Paradyż,30 with
the incipit Subiecti estote (this is the third text), significantly illuminates the
thematic reconfiguration noted earlier.31 The subject of this sermon, deliv-
ered before the Synod of Piotrków on 22 April 1442,32 is focused more than
that of any other sermon on the reform and constitutional debates of the
time. With an exhortation from the first Letter of Peter, Subiecti estote omni
humanae creaturae propter Dominum (1 Peter 2:3), the question of hierar-
chy is addressed. For all the ecclesiological reform movements of the late
Middle Ages, from Hussitism through conciliarism to episcopalianism (as
formulated, for example, by John of Segovia), questions of hierarchy are
crucial, especially those concerned with a different conception of the position
of the pope within the Church. This sermon, too, deals, in principle, with the
constitutional level of the hierarchy of the Church, not with the systematic-
theological level of the hierarchy of ordination. James’s sermon turns into a
game played with the constitutional problematic operating within the eccle-
siastical space, a space whose elements are at least mentioned with respect
to each other. However, the solution differs fundamentally from the concep-
tions just noted.
In the first section of the sermon, James stays in the realm of philo-
sophical discussion about subordination, and specific types of subordina-
tion. He sees the fundamental reason why orders of rank are necessary, as
a general proposition, in man’s subordination to his Creator – a relation-
ship which reproduces itself in the subordination to man of all other living
creatures. In this phrase, James builds upon a biblical foundation, and even
more fully upon Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae. Thus, in the course
of the sermon, more fundamental reflections on the concept of subieccio,
and other theological authorities, come into play. Where he discusses the
subordination to God, James has recourse above all to Ambrose, Jerome
and Augustine, as well as to Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux and,
finally, Bonaventura. These citations comprise about three-fourths of the
entire sermon (fols. 148vb–51rb), and emphasise not only the necessity for
subordination (for example, iusticie exigencia, fol. 150va), but also explain
its nature (for example, debet esse perfecta, fol. 151rb) and its usefulness
(utilitas, fol. 150ra). Finally, the speaker turns to a specific form of sub-
ordination, namely the subieccio to the Church and to earthly rule (fols.
151rb–2rb). Since both themes are of considerable significance for the debate
regarding conciliarism and church reform, a closer look is warranted here.
This part rises considerably beyond the material noted above, since it
opens with an entirely new observation. The concern here is no longer the
fundamental philosophical basis and the conceptual differentiation of sub-
ordination, but its temporal dimension. In the background, there stands the
contemporary practical requirement of obedience, which James also clearly
describes:
We are not bound to adhere to obedience and subordination [only] for a

brief period, but for as long as life lasts; and this especially in our case, for
which we have been assembled [in the place] where obedience [obedien-
cia] toward the Church, outside of which no one is saved, is demanded
from us. (Ad subieccionis igitur obedienciam astricti tenemur non per
breve tempus, sed interim, quod vita durat, maxime autem in casu nos-
tro, pro quo congregati existimus, ubi a nobis exigitur obediencia erga
videlicet ecclesiam, extra quam nullus salvatur.)
Here is a perceptible leap into the problematic of the schism which has just
newly broken out – a problematic which was, for the moment, so pressing
that a temporary factional membership was absolutely impossible (non per
breve tempus). James clarifies obedience as an existential matter (quod vita
durat), which finds its expression in the fundamental conceptualisation of
the Church itself: of the Church as a totality (extra quam nullus salvatur),
not merely as a faction. To it alone the believer must subject himself or
herself – an act in which, then, all the forms and dimensions enumerated
by James in the first part of his sermon are naturally carried out. Because
this represents a sweeping spiritual decision, the discussion also proceeds
further along a theological track. Along that track, the principal stops are the
priests, who, as successors to the apostles, wield power over demons. At this
point, the performance of the faithful stands at the centre of attention: what
James requires is, first, a subieccio devota, and second (as part of the former)
a perseverancia constans. In this context, it is immediately noticeable that
the pope plays no role at all. The view that, in accordance with this theory
of succession, it is the priests and not the popes who are clearly identified
with the pontifices as the successores of the apostles, is elucidated below
(see fol. 151vb).
The first point of this section further develops the aspect of the responsi-
bility of the Church in its entirety for the subordination of the faithful. When
James states that subordination is owed to the Church universal, just as the
Church itself is subordinate to Christ (further summoning for this the meta-
phor of the ecclesia as sponsa Christi), he is issuing a clear ecclesiological
message. The valorisation of the Church in its entirety (universalis ecclesia),
and of its immediate relation to Christ, is among the basic foundations of all
the reform movements that distanced themselves from a papalist concept.
First, in response to the events and theories associated with the Council of
Basel, the papalists were forced to take seriously the Church in its entirety
(in the sense of a virtual union of all the faithful), and to bring the Church,
thus understood, into harmony with the pope’s absolute claim to superiority.
The ecclesiastical doctrine of Torquemada – to name one of the most impor-
tant papalists of the period of the later councils and papal restoration – was
designed to bring about this reversal. James’s explanations are, in any case,
centred on the Church universal as a self-sufficient construction; in addition,
the infallibility which he attributes to the Church, as well as the readiness to
defend the Church usque ad sanguinem, demonstrate that here the Church is
imagined mystically as the bride of Christ.
The direction of thought here appears to have conciliarist leanings, yet
immediately turns toward a position friendly to the pope – and furthermore it
does so without mention of the council. The spectre of headlessness, against
which the conciliarists also had to defend themselves, gives occasion for
James to take a position which finally leads to an affirmation of the tradi-
tional papal monarchy. The passage from Deuteronomy (Deut. 17:8–13),
used frequently in conciliarist and papalist discourse, was understood as a
prefiguration of the papacy (not, however, grammatically expressed in the
plural, as a prefiguration of the council).33 Thus, both the faithful and the
priests are to be subordinate to the Church universal and to the pope (univer-
sali ecclesie et summo pontifici vero super Petri cathedram presidenti). This
is especially the case in view of contemporary developments: here, James
has the Basel schism right before his eyes. But James treats the fact that
there are two heads, each claiming a legitimate position of pope, merely with
the diplomatically-phrased advice that one must make a choice by oneself,
especially a choice of the rightful shepherd.
Here the discussion breaks away from subordination to the Church and
to the pope, and turns to a new subject. This is the problem of submission to
worldly power. This could mean that the author was aware of the fact that
the legitimacy of the papacy in the period of the Basel schism could not be
resolved either theologically or by means of political theory, but that a politi-
cal tug-of-war would in the end produce a knock-out. In any case, the discus-
sion begins with a reference to Titus (3:1), where Paul prescribes subjection
to the princes and the powerful of the world; and then it continues – beginning
with Hugh of St.-Victor, Ambrose and Augustine – into well-known waters,
which have as their source oportet Deo magis obedire quam hominibus (Acts
5:29). In an unexpected closing phrase, James begins to speak again about
the current exigency posed by the double papal election, and, finally, does
commit himself – but neither to the one, nor to the other. Equally, two times,
he goes back to the source, which addresses not only the present question of
obedience, but above all the problem of submission in its entirety; that is to
say, at one time, he invokes the text plus debemus scripturis sacris obsequi
quam cuicumque potestati, and then, shortly thereafter: ‘To obey worldly
powers is in every case a danger. It is better to believe the Sacred Scriptures
in that which is necessary for the salvation of the soul.’ (Obsequi igitur po-
testati mundane in huiuscemodi re periculum est. Pocius equidem creden-
dum est scripturis sacris in quibus, quodquod ad salutem necessarium est.)
One could, at this point, scold James of Paradyż for being a fundamentalist,
or so it appears from his dealing with the situation. Still, this affords him the
opportunity to go back to the initial concern of the sermon.
James obviously does not move toward taking a stand in the conflict
between the council (that is to say, the council’s pope) and the pope in Rome.
On this issue he is not willing to commit himself. But he does give two gen-
eral senses of direction, which may prepare the way for an overall solution,
and which may also, as a consequence, encompass the political sphere. With
a few strokes, he sketches out the composition of the Church universal – a
construct which is not identical with the pope. But it is also not to be identi-
fied with the ecumenical council, as the conciliarists had done with the help
of the theory of representation. Secondly, James confirms the old view that
salvation is not related to the worldly instruments of power. Thus, what is
at the centre of attention is not the current, correct (political) decision, but
eternal salvation. But this is to be attained only when – as the final sentence
puts it – submission is undertaken secundum veritatem, and not on some
other basis.
Thus, this sermon of April 1442 could certainly be considered an affront
to other positions, such as those clearly taken by James’s colleagues of the
time – for example, by John Elgot, who, in January of the same year, assured
Pope Felix V in a private audience of the allegiance of the Kraków diocese.34
Also, at least as viewed from the outside, the intellectual milieu of Kraków
University could be considered to have conciliarist sympathies, as shown
by the eloquent praise for the university’s clear stand on the issue of obe-
dience from Stephen de Catis of Navarre (‘so great was the power of the
word in your speech that many in the audience broke out into tears’, he com-
municated in a letter to Nicholas Lasocki on 26 January 1442).35 Just how
necessary was factional participation, and agitation on behalf of one’s own
viewpoint, can be observed by the single-minded insistence on neutrality
maintained by the German princes (after the Acceptation of Mainz, 1439)
and by the Polish kings. The end of this situation, in both polities, ensued
simultaneously. With respect to the Empire, a declaration of obedience could
come about following an adroit piece of curial politicking after 1447, shortly
before the death of Eugene IV (the conclusion of the Concordat of Vienna,
1448). In the case of Poland, Casimir the Jagiellon’s succession to the throne
in 1447 brought about a change from the neutrality of his predecessor to a
position of strict obedience to Rome; and the preference for Basel during the
interregnum reached its end under the de facto reign of Oleśnicki. In 1442,
the die had not yet been cast; but at least the competing council, held (under
obedience to Rome) in Florence, could chalk up a very considerable success,
when, on 4 February 1442, the union of the monophysite-oriented Jacobites
(the Copts) was proclaimed in the bull Cantate Domino.36
Apparently, James was at this time less interested in the political, consti-
tutional and legal side of the problematic related to obedience; this was a
matter of conciliarism. Also, while a good portion of the ideas and metaphors
appearing in this synodal sermon undeniably share, in general terms, a point
of departure with conciliarism, the aim and the conclusion of the argumenta-
tion are entirely different. Situated at the centre of his consideration are not
institutions but the conduct of the faithful (also considered as individuals)
in the current conflict. It is therefore also not surprising that attention to the
reform of institutions shifts towards attention to the reform of individuals.
* * *
These considerations may be summarised as follows. At first glance, the

periods of James of Paradyż’s creative activity appear to be quite sepa-
rate. His Kraków period was nominalistic, directed predominantly toward
reform of the Church in its entirety, and conciliarist. His Erfurt period was
mystical, directed toward a monastic – that is to say, a clerical – reform,
and moralistic. What is of interest here is that, in this, James does not
stand alone. Both Henry of Langenstein (ca. 1340–97) and Jean Gerson
(1363–1429) underwent a comparable, though somewhat earlier, change of
direction. Although, next to Conrad of Gelnhausen, the theologian Henry of
Langenstein was the most important conciliar theorist in the initial phase of
the Great Schism of 1378,37 he later moved into mystical theology, in which
phase his Speculum animae, and other works, were translated into German,
undoubtedly by some Carthusian.38 Jean Gerson, the great ecclesiological
authority before and during the Council of Constance,39 left behind a mul-
titude of mystical writings, some of which also found their way into the
Carthusian conceptual milieu.40 The writings of both theologians were dis-
seminated in Poland.
Reference to these analogies does not, as such, explain anything; it merely
shows that, in his development, James had predecessors. The key to the
understanding of James of Paradyż’s intellectual biography should rest in a
moralistic concept of reform – or, more precisely, in a shift of the meaning of
reform away from the institutional and toward the personal sphere. It is not
necessary here to assess the degree to which conciliarism as a whole can be
understood as reform, but merely to remind ourselves that at the time of the
Council of Basel, reform of the Church in capite et in membris was absolutely
equivalent to the construction of a Church constitution in the conciliarist
sense. The implementation of reform lay solely in the hands of the Council,
which could at the same rest upon superiority over the pope. In that respect,
Andrew of Escobar, Nicholas of Tudeschi and James of Paradyż (and, in a
somewhat restricted manner, Nicholas of Cusa) were of one mind.41
From this kind of faith in an institution (that is to say, in a council), James
removed himself – without, of course, giving up the concept of reform as
such, or of its innovative aspect. The writings of the Erfurt period show
him to be a mystic and moralist, who cared passionately for reform (in the
sense of a renewal) of individual believers and of the clergy as a group. At
this point, it would be appropriate to analyse James’s entire spiritual oeu-
vre of his Erfurt years – something that cannot be undertaken here. I shall
limit myself to a few suggestive remarks.42 In the treatise De triplici genere
hominum (1453),43 the author’s emphasis constantly revolves, openly or
covertly, around the moral basis of the Church; the concern for an emenda-
tio morum, for the vita virtuosa, and for a correctio vitiorum, stands in the
service of a ‘healthy’ Church.44 In addition, a preoccupation with the deeds
and emotions of individual persons is situated right at the centre of James’s
programmatic work De theologia mystica (ca. 1450),45 which sets forth his
anthropological idea that man’s union with God follows, above all, from
the foundation of a moral purification. The liberation of the ratio from the
passiones – an idea for which James puts forward a case in his treatise De
malis huius saeculi (1447),46 in order thereby to achieve a rightful iudicium
and sententia – emphasises the intellectual aspect of his ethical thought.47
Just how far James’s moral theology extends can be seen in works such as
De bona voluntate (1444–7),48 or De cogitationibus et earum qualitate (ca.
1442–50).49 These writings demonstrate how much the will and the thought
of man are interlocked with the moral. It is hardly coincidental that consulted
in these Erfurt writings are, again and again, the same authorities which were
important in the three sermons we have considered: Augustine, Bernard of
Clairvaux and, in addition, Thomas Aquinas.
Therefore, conciliarism and the mystical (that is to say, moral) theology
appear merely as different variants of a single idea of ecclesiastical renewal.
The rhetorical evidence presented above, from the period around 1441–2,
shows us a transitional phase. On the one hand, that evidence reflects a close-
ness to the problematic of ecclesiastical reform in capite et in membris; and
(side by side with references currently topical in the period of the Council of
Basel and of the schism) echoes, in its language, the basic elements of the
conciliarist discussion. But, on the other hand, the constitutional and political
level of discourse is abandoned, and the discourse turns to ethical thought.
The problem of reception of the Basel texts – which was decisive for Nicholas
of Cusa and others, and which could have led to a ‘change of front’ – appar-
ently played no role for James of Paradyż. The Polish conciliarism in the
Kraków University milieu stood under the dominant umbrella of Kraków’s
bishop, Oleśnicki,50 and so a confrontation with this question seems to have
been avoided. Quite possibly, the location of the Kraków conciliarists in a
peripheral region of Poland proved to be an advantage, with real pressure
being applied only in the interior of the country, that is to say, on the part of
the Polish king. A conciliarist such as James of Paradyż, who had distanced
himself from conciliarism, presented an argument that was, in any case, not
grounded in a theory of that reception of Basel texts, but in ethics. The three
sermons presented above are situated precisely in that period of transition
which propelled James from a Cistercian and professor to a Carthusian and
mystic. We have here records of a spiritual development, which, while they
allow us to recognise the earlier conciliarist commitment of the author, at the
same time give an indication of his change into a mystical theologian. From
a reformer of institutions, James had become a reformer of the individual
person.
14 ‘Good king Polish Ladislas . . .’
History and memory of the
short reign of Władysław
Warneńczyk in Hungary
János M. Bak
Among the Jagiellons on the throne of Hungary, the four-year reign of

Władysław Warneńczyk was the shortest. Nevertheless, it contained a few
moments of historical significance in terms of political ideas, and left a little
piece of unique memory for centuries thereafter.
Let me briefly rehearse the story. After the early death of King Albert of
Habsburg (1437–9) in camp, on his way back from an Ottoman campaign, a
significant faction of the Hungarian magnates and nobles decided to invite
the young Władysław to take the throne. Even though the widowed Queen
Elizabeth of Luxemburg managed to have the Holy Crown stolen and her
baby child, Ladislas, crowned king (15 May 1440),1 the pro-Władysław
faction that had brought the young Pole to Hungary decided to disregard
the Habsburg claim. Władysław’s coronation on 17 July 1440 was the first
memorable event in the episode; lacking the traditional regalia, special
arrangements had to be made for the inauguration. Meanwhile open civil
war was waged between the two factions, which ended with the victory of
Władysław’s supporters under the leadership of János Hunyadi and Nicholas
of Újlak/Ilok. The subsequent years were marked by attempts at pacifying the
country and haggling over the policy vis-à-vis the Ottomans, ending finally
in the decision to mount a crusade. That led to the battle at Varna and the death
of the king and his companions.2
I do not intend to discuss the only major, albeit tragic, event of this short
reign, the crusade of Varna and its prehistory. The king’s death had, of course,
significant consequences: Ladislas of Habsburg (called Posthumus) was
finally accepted as king, Hunyadi was made governor in his name, and the
reigns of both Władysław I and Elizabeth became a subject of a legal dam-
natio memoriae.3 Even if the later Habsburg rule of Hungary was not a con-
sequence of this episode,4 it still marked the dynasty’s increased interest in
Hungary and Bohemia.
What I should like here to call to attention are two documents from the
inauguration of Władysław Warneńczyk: the charter of the estates concerning
‘Good king Polish Ladislas . . .’ 177
their right to crown the king of Hungary, and the text of old decrees, con-
tained in a booklet (libellus) that was presented to and approved by the newly
crowned king. To these, I shall add an epilogue about the figure of Władysław
in folklore, a rather rare case of ‘popular memory’ from the Middle Ages.
Semper regum coronatio a regnicolarum voluntate dependet

When the nobility, assembled at the coronation diet, had to face the fact that
the highly venerated crown of the kingdom – ever since the late thirteenth
century referred to as the Holy Crown, and connected to the founder of the
kingdom, Saint Stephen – was missing, they had to make a decision about the
coronation of their elected king.
The charter issued on this occasion5 contains a number of significant pas-
sages on ‘political theory’ (if this is not too fancy a name for the rudimentary
ideas expressed in it). After summarising the events that led to the interreg-
num, the need is emphasised for a suitable and able ruler (ydoneus et habilis
rector), one who could defend a realm surrounded by enemies, especially
infidels. This is followed by the report on the invitation of Władysław (origi-
nally supported by the dowager queen, who was even induced to promise to
marry him), the theft of the crown, and the coronation of the child. The char-
ter emphasises that that coronation lacked the traditional insignia (paramenta
sacra, as well as the sword, sceptre, orb and legatine cross of Saint Stephen)6
and that it was done ‘more to the harm than to the advantage of the kingdom’.
Therefore, the nobility of the realm, assembled in numbers not seen before,
considered (and they now repeat) that the country cannot remain bereft of a
defender of its borders – which are under continuous attack – and that ‘the
crowning of a king always depends on the will of the people of the realm, and
its efficacy and force [virtus] lies in the approval of the same’.
There are at least two significant statements in these passages: the argu-
ment about the necessity of a new ruler; and, even more important, the claim
of the regnicolae to decide about the coronation.
Władysław was the first ruler of the country to have no relationship
whatsoever with the previous dynasty. That his father’s first wife had been
Hedwig/Jadwiga of Anjou is not mentioned anywhere, as it would not have
been of relevance to blood relationships in any event. Both the Anjou and the
Luxemburg kings and queens were related more or less closely (albeit in the
female line or through their spouses) to the founding Árpádian royal house.
True, the estates claimed their right to elect the ruler already in the early
fourteenth century, but the element of heredity was never absent. This time
the basic claim of the new ruler to the throne was his suitability, the secular
version of the ecclesiastical criterion of idoneitas. The external danger, that
of Ottoman advance, was more emphasised than ever before. This was the
age when the notion of Hungary as the antemurale Christianitatis was com-
ing ever more to the fore, and when the southern border had acquired a central
significance in all matters of the kingdom. It was logical that the argument
against a child-king hinged on the military, or (as I have ventured to call it
elsewhere) the ‘passive-crusading’, aspect.7 Of course, the ‘suitability’ of a
ruler strongly underlined the idea of elective monarchy.
More significant is the sentence about the right of the regnicolae8 to legiti-
mise the coronation, that is to say, the rule of the king. The idea was not new,
of course, but it had not been spelled out in so many words before. The claim
to the right ‘to crown’ the king was formulated with respect to the constitutive
ritual, but in essence it meant the right to select the person of the ruler. The
nobility had already insisted on this electoral right in 1308, when the assembly
accepted the Angevin pretender, Charles; Sigismund of Luxemburg was for-
mally elected by a faction of magnates; and Albert of Habsburg (and his wife
Elizabeth of Luxemburg) were also ‘elected’ at the 1437 diet. In essence, this
principle remained valid until the sixteenth century; both Matthias Corvinus
(1458–90) and Władysław II (1490–1516) were ‘elected’ by the diet, as were
the two kings who came to the throne after the Battle of Mohács, Ferdinand of
Habsburg (who, on his part, claimed the throne by inheritance treaty, but both
the Hungarian and the Croatian estates insisted on their right to elect him)
and John Szapolyai. In fact, the estates formally resigned their right of elec-
tion only after the liberation of the country from Ottoman occupation in the
seventeenth century. Hungary might have become a truly elective monarchy,
just as Poland did, had the Ottoman conquest and the country’s division not
stopped the development of an independent kingdom.
Did this claim include the right of the diet (that is, the nobility, for the
towns and the clergy other than the prelates were rarely included) to decide
about the affairs of the realm? In other words, was the ‘bipolarity’ of the clas-
sical Ständestaat postulated in 1440? Not unequivocally so. True, the diet
had already claimed rights to decide about a number of issues in 1437 and
1439, but the fragmentary decrees that have survived from Władysław’s time
do not contain anything about the most important aspect of corporate politi-
cal claim – to approve taxation; that was to come up later. Still, the claim of
the estates to be the only legitimate source of royal power was a significant
statement.
But, as a bottom line: what was the actual significance of this document
and the ideas contained in it for the actual political development of the coun-
try? We, the so-called historians of political thought, are all too happy to read
an interesting, sophisticated or otherwise significant statement in a text. But
whose words are we reading? Surely, those of one of the learned (maybe even
truly erudite) lawyers at the court, or in the entourage of one of the great men.
How much of that was ‘received’ by the politically active groups of society
(that is to say, the prelates, barons and well-to-do nobles)? To be sure, there
is no evidence that after 1400 a noble diet would ever have referred to the
crucial passages of this decision by their forebears. That the charter itself
has survived in only one copy in Poland makes its ‘practical’ political use in
Hungary rather problematic. This question is, however, too general even to
attempt its discussion here.
. . . alia Corona Aurea

After the statement about the right of the regnicolae, the aforementioned
charter continues:
[T]herefore it was decided unanimously . . . that King Władysław should

be crowned with another golden crown of ancient craftsmanship, to be
taken from the head reliquary of the most blessed Stephen, apostolic
king and patron of the realm.
Then there follow long clauses mandating that henceforth the previous crown
(the Holy Crown) be invalid, and that – unless it were possible to regain it
– all force and veneration of the crown be transferred to the present diadem,
coronation with which shall give the new king full royal power and authority,
and so on and so forth.
The lack of the hallowed crown is thus being solved by proclaiming
another diadem, legitimised by the ‘will of the gentlemen of the realm’, in
contrast to the historical and saintly tradition of its stolen counterpart. But
only half-heartedly so: the ‘new’ crown is the one that had adorned the head
reliquary of that holy founder, ‘whose’ crown the queen took with her to
Austria. In a way, the crown chosen by the nobles was also ‘a crown of Saint
Stephen’, albeit not the traditional one. Such an emergency solution was not
the first such event in the history of Hungarian coronations. Already in 1308,
when the (by then already privileged) Holy Crown was in the hands of the
voivode of Transylvania, the papal legate, Cardinal Gentile, had a new crown
made for Charles of Anjou, blessed and legitimised it by the authority of the
supreme pontiff, and had the Angevin crowned with it. He did not resort to the
semi-magical solution of taking a crown of ancient artisanship from a head
reliquary (which, incidentally, may have already existed at that time!),9 but
based the efficacy of the replacement on canon-law justification.10 In 1440,
the estates legitimised the new crown by their own decision – but (as it were,
to be on the safe side) took one that had a kind of sanctity, and which was
received from its previous location on the skull of the saint. (The closest par-
allel to this would be the Crown of Saint Wenceslas, sponsored by Emperor
Charles IV and placed on the reliquary of the founding saint of the Czech
monarchy, and designed to be used by all his successors.)11 That a new ‘tra-
dition’ originated from an emergency situation would not have been unique
in the history of medieval rituals. To name only one example, the effigy of
the English, and later the French, kings after their deaths was first intro-
duced in the fourteenth century – probably because the funeral of Edward
III was delayed for months – but became an integral and elaborate part of
the French ceremonies for centuries.12 However, just as the Gentile crown
was not accepted in Hungary as valid (a fact that the learned cardinal found
rather odd and implicitly inappropriate),13 Władysław’s coronation proved to
be a ‘failure’ as well. Little did it help that his crown was also sanctified by
association with Saint Stephen – the Holy Crown ‘won out’, in the short and
the long run alike. Ladislas Posthumus’s crowning was soon tacitly accepted
as legitimate – in spite of the elaborate anathema pronounced against it by
the 1440 diet – and the ‘Crown of Saint Stephen’ made it all the way to the
coat of arms of the Hungarian Republic, and to its millennial transfer to the
Parliament building in AD 2000.14
exhibuerunt . . . quendam libellum

The other ‘historical’ (or ‘constitutional’, if you will) contribution of the
accession of Władysław Warneńczyk was the coronation decree, issued by
him on 20 July 1440.15 Such decreta had become traditional at least since the
inauguration of Sigismund, and were to become a fixture for centuries. They
usually contained a confirmation of the nobility’s basic right (more or less
based on Andrew II’s Golden Bull of 1222, and its confirmation and expan-
sion by Louis of Anjou), augmented by points based on the actual political
and military constellation.16 The decree of 1440 contained, however, a special
feature. The king’s charter records that after his coronation, he was presented
with a libellus seu registrum containing the Golden Bull, constitutiones per
prelatos et barones ac nobiles regni Hungarie tempore coronationis Andree
regis dicti de Venetiis facte, and Louis’s 1351 decree, which he accepted,
approved and caused to be inserted into the coronation promises and actual
measures. The innovation was, thus, the fact that, in contrast to his predeces-
sors and successors, Władysław confirmed not only the traditional liberties,
but also a document styled the ‘constitutions’ (statutes) of the last Árpádian
king, Andrew III (‘the Venetian’, 1290–1301), which, in fact, was not issued
at Andrew’s coronation,17 but eight years later.18 However, as adumbrated
already in the early nineteenth century,19 this decree was tacitly augmented
by three sections of a clearly different style and format, containing meas-
ures about the administration of justice and the status of peasants.20 For the
historian, the first bonus is that through this transcription, Andrew’s decree
of 1298, and the text added to it, survived and finally landed in the National
Archives. But at the same time, the additions to the 1298 decree have posed
a puzzle for scholars, as they needed to be properly dated and their (actually,
the whole booklet’s) function and purpose established. These questions have
exercised the minds of historians for at least a hundred years.
To make a long story short, Pál Engel, having surveyed the relevant lit-
erature and adding his well-known scepticism and down-to-earth attitude
to ‘historical facts’, compared the references to judges of the royal courts,
to the development of the county administration and to the technical details
of ‘common inquest’ with the practices known from the Angevin and
Luxemburg era. As a result, he established that the additional sections (the
so-called Compilatio) could not have been composed earlier than the late
fourteenth century. He proposed to regard it a decision of the royal council,
dated it to ‘ca. 1400’, and suggested that the additional sections were added
to the late Árpádian decretum precisely for Władysław’s coronation.21 His
doubts and arguments are convincing.22 A few more doubts remain, how-
ever. The inclusion of the 1298 decree may be explained by referring to its
passages strengthening the role of lesser nobility, very much on the agenda
of the mid-fifteenth century.23 However, the Compilatio does not add any-
thing to this political purpose, and in many respects contains less about judi-
cial procedures (or the freedom of tenant peasants to change their lords)
than what had been codified during the century preceding the 1440 corona-
tion.24 Engel’s idea about the purpose – namely, that the author of the booklet
‘wished to present a decision of the royal council as old law’ – is not so con-
vincing either; in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Hungary decisions of the
prelati et barones were not (yet) clearly distinguished from statutes passed
in formal diets. But, perhaps, making a relatively late decision appear as ‘old
law’ made some sense . . .
Still, what is remarkable about the libellus – which, alas, has not come
down to us in the original, but only in its quite faulty and damaged transcrip-
tion within the royal charter – is its existence. Where and how would pre-
cisely these texts, the earliest of which was over 140 years old by 1440, have
survived? Who wrote up the libellus for this very occasion? Engel risked say-
ing (parenthetically) that it may have been John Vitéz of Zredna, the learned
cleric and great supporter of the Hunyadi family.25 But cui prodest? There
is, for example, no evidence that the estates, when demanding that the king
always be accompanied by a set number of councillors (a demand which
achieved some success in the early sixteenth century), would have referred
to 1298; even though copies of Władysław’s charter may have been around
(as the surviving copy suggests), I know of no reference to it in regard to the
issues contained in it or in the ‘Compilation’. True, the young Pole’s early
death, and the subsequent annulment of his charters, could not have been
foreseen in 1440.
Be that as it may, the former existence of this booklet points to some addi-
tional aspects. The booklet may have been entirely a formulary (or a part of
one) – the style of which is rather conspicuous in the Compilatio, beginning
with Notandum est – that could have contained selected old laws.26 Thus the
libellus might have been a rare example of ‘pragmatic literacy’, with roots
in the fourteenth century. Formularies were, as György Bónis has demon-
strated, very important books in medieval Hungary. Those ‘practical law-
yers’ who acquired their skills in the lower and higher courts, and began to
play a significant role in the administration of justice just about the time of
Władysław’s reign, relied mostly on formularies for their legal knowledge.
There are a few older than the libellus,27 but none of them contains laws and
– unfortunately – none contains the text of the Compilatio. Thus the episodic
rule of the hapless Warneńczyk bequeathed to posterity a window, albeit a
problematic one, on fourteenth-century Hungarian law and legal practice.
Epilogue: Lengyel László jó királyunk

The great corpus of Hungarian folk music, edited by Béla Bartók and Zoltán
Kodály, contains a song collected in southern Hungary, sung by children play-
ing a teasing game, well known as ‘bridge play’ in many variants all around
Central Europe. Two groups oppose each other, they exchange challenging
words and then one has to run through a ‘bridge’ (two children holding their
hands above the head of the runners) of the opposing side. The ‘pillars of the
bridge’ try to catch them and cut their line. The song goes like this:
Ki népei vagytok Whose people are you?

Legyel László jó királyunk Our good king is Polish Ladislas!
Az is ellenségünk! He, too, is our enemy!
Micsoda ellenség? What kind of enemy?
Hidam lábát eltöretted, meg se You broke the feet of my bridge
csináltattad and never repaired it
Fenyőfábú migcsinálom, I repair it with pine lumber,
mig is aranyozom. and will also gild it.28
Kodály took this fragment and elaborated it into a famous choral work,29 in
which he added an identification of the opposing sides – not unwarranted, in
view of the history of the Habsburg-dominated centuries – calling the one
‘Magyar people’ and the other ‘German people’. He closed it with an elegiac
last line by ‘the Germans’: Hol vennétek sáraranyat, koldus magyar népe?
(‘Where would you get yellow gold, you beggar Magyar people?’) A ques-
tion quite appropriate in the light of Hungary’s balance of trade and of pay-
ments over the preceding few centuries.
The ‘bridge-play’ itself, and the typical exchanges between the two sides,
may very well go back to medieval times, when bridge-tolls were demanded
by those passing. Or even further, as some suggest, to the mythical memory of
(human) sacrifice at the building of bridges (comparable to the stories about
the walled-in woman at the building of a castle).30 However, as far as I have
been able to establish (without being familiar with the ethnographic mate-
rial),31 this is the only known folksong with such an unequivocal reference to
a medieval king.32 How and when Władysław Warneńczyk became associ-
ated with this kind of ritual confrontation, cannot, of course, be established.33
But, at least among the children of Mohács, he has not been forgotten.
15 University studies and
trivialised pursuits
The place of music in medieval
university education
Nancy van Deusen
Education, in many respects, constitutes cultural determination, so basic are

its underlying assumptions, leading as they do to priorities learned, in most
cases, at such a very early age. For this reason, these educational agendas
are most difficult to examine, especially in an educational culture that is
remote, by virtue of either place or time: what was assumed, what stated,
what learned, for what reason and in what order?1 One is dealing most often
with a silent consensus, based on perhaps centuries of acceptance concerning
skills that were largely intuitively considered to be useful for a given society
in a certain time and place. It is interesting, therefore, to note what histories
of medieval universities record in place of assumed emphases for which little
or no ‘evidence’ in terms of documentation may exist. Statutes, prohibitions,
curricula, or descriptions of events such as crises or conflicts often constitute
pivotal issues within the history of a given university, providing structure for
narrative.2 William Courtenay in a recent study on the fourteenth-century
university in Paris has observed that:
For more than a century, the history of the university of Paris and of
medieval universities in general has been reconstructed largely from
statutory evidence and from the written products of their schools and
convents. This type of documentation initially led historians to focus
their attention on questions of origin, constitutional structure, curricu-
lum, and secondarily on intellectual activities and the conjectured daily
life of students.3
Music as a discipline is an outstanding example of priorities which elude

curricular accounts which in turn correspond to modern expectations. This
has resulted in a situation where, consistently in lists of curricular stud-
ies and descriptions of the disciplines within histories of music, music is
nowhere to be found, and when mentioned at all, the discipline occurs in a
context of performance, reflecting contemporary priorities that have made
University studies and trivialised pursuits 185
the marching band the most salient musical presence on North American
university campuses.4
Augustine, in De Ordine (‘the order that exists among disciplines’), how-
ever, stated that nothing could be understood except through the analogical,
exemplary capacity of music. Roger Bacon, writing in the late thirteenth cen-
tury within the University of Paris milieu, agreed, summarising a millennium
of regard for music as a bridge, or, following Robert Grosseteste, a ‘ministry’
discipline, which, by employing the unseen substances of sound, time and
motion, could exemplify unseen, hence abstract, realities, leading then to an
understanding of such invisible realities as the nature of thought, cognition,
memories and, finally, the nature of God. This point of view remained in
place for many centuries thereafter.
Where then can music be found, and under what conditions? Further, does
music’s place within the system of medieval disciplines also provide a test
situation with which to investigate otherwise perhaps invisible but actual pri-
orities constituting unseen motivating forces more generally within a system
of studies followed at medieval universities? Priorities that seem most evi-
dent tend to be our own, rather those of the medieval world. This study will
attempt to locate both the discipline of music within the educational context
of medieval intellectual life, and its importance as the discipline of exempli-
fication – an importance that continued and was assumed for many centuries.
A case could in fact be made that the dismantling of music as a university
discipline has occurred only in the last, twentieth, century.
If music was seen as a ‘ministry’ discipline, with the ability to make abstrac-
tions plain, what abstractions must one have in mind? It would seem that one
of the first issues must be that of material substance, which could be visible as
well as invisible.5 Both the forest that was patently visible, and full of potential
and possibilities for development, and, for example, the Book of Psalms could
be viewed as visible-invisible repositories, replete with substance for appro-
priation. In the Middle Ages, the Book of Psalms served as a great repository,
a vast and mighty source of possibilities, movements, figures, both of sign and
of thought, contrary positions and reactions resolved into concord, and also of
emotional substance. One began, in terms of disciplinary systematisation, with
material itself, the material of the Psalms, that was available to all. In a sense
this material, as well as that of all the biblical scriptures, together constituted
– like a forest – a dense, even opaque thicket that had to be organised, described
and differentiated.6 One needed tools actually to work with this material sub-
stance, as well as to communicate what one had done; in other words, to bring
together relevant materia-substancia, most often conceptual, hence invisible
(res), with adequate means of communication (vox). One needed to find tools
to work with conceptual material, for thinking, for analysing; and tools, as
well, for expressing oneself, for describing what one had found.
This then is the great medieval educational project: to identify and cul-
tivate the use of these tools, for describing material and its nature, for the
differentiation of material into particular, characteristic, formats (figurae),
that is, individuation, for the process of providing relationship or connection,
and finally for the description of motion and the nature of motion as a com-
ponent of nature – an educational project that unites intellectual culture as a
structural unity from Augustine to Cassiodorus through Robert Grosseteste,
Roger Bacon and Aquinas, as well as Marsilio Ficino.
What tools do we have in mind, and how can these tools be applied? We
find, first of all, the notion of particular things, particular figures with particu-
lar qualities, exhibiting particular gestures. For all of the writers mentioned
here, figura as the translation of the Greek schema, denoting a constructed
characteristic shape, is essential as a tool for describing individuality. For
Augustine, a figura is separate and distinct from the material, such as sound,
for which it stands. Further, by the figura of number, movement could be
understood. Augustine relates this concept of figura to the material and
movement of time, with the obvious, but nevertheless stated, implication that
figurae are significant and significatory. Augustine’s comprehensive views
on this subject, given particularly in De musica, and reinforced in De ordine
– leading then to his treatises on the material qualities and propensities of
the soul – had a great deal of influence, especially on Robert Grosseteste and
Roger Bacon, as we will see. Augustine’s primary thesis is that music is a
discipline that possesses both force and reason – actually contradictory quali-
ties that must be made consonant. Music also combines principle and experi-
ence, discipline and attraction; in short, music teaches by the fact that we are
attracted to it, perceiving it as delicious.7 Music can be seen to be a science
(scientia) because it exemplifies – in its many and diverse tones occurring
within time-lapses, made to come together in a manner of utmost suaveness
– principles of particular, separate but interrelated numbers, within the move-
ment of time. These are principles, as Augustine states, these are inner laws,
so basic that they can then be applied to the unseen, unheard nature of the soul
and of God (treated in Book 4).8
Chalcidius, in his Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus, has an extensive
commentary that by its very nature tends toward an additive rather than a
dialectical process of building up modular self-contained insights, empha-
sises individuation and differentiation within the generality of all materia,
both unseen and seen, addressed by his translation of the Greek hyle as silva.9
From a Greek term meaning ‘everything’, and at the same time nothing that
one could really put one’s finger on namely, hyle, the Latin translation brings
us into the ‘forest’, which could very well be imagined, both for its actual,
concrete, material substance, and for its potential for differentiation in terms
of branches and twigs.10 That twig, stem or branch, virga, stirps or figura, as
a translation of the Greek schema, is indicative of various and diverse differ-
ences (differentiae), figurae together as expressive of motions (modi) as well
as intervals, for example of time. Figurae are also specific to, and indicative
of, disciplines such as arithmetic and geometry, being employed to indicate
single, discrete numbers, numeri, or geometrical diagrams. Numerus, as well
as characterismos and diagramma, are also schemata, and hence figurae. In
short, according to Chalcidius, figurae are constructed for specific purposes,
are fabricated; they are characteristic, hence remain in the memory. Figurae
are indicative, distinctive, and they one by one access and stand for – which
is more than representation – substance. One figura accomplishes all of this,
but many varied and diverse figurae, such as all of the letters of the alphabet,
not only individuate, but show relationships, such as syntax.
Figurae, expressing scores of individual examples, are indispensable for
Cassiodorus within the context of his Psalm Commentaries. Further, impor-
tantly for our discussion, Cassiodorus brings into an equivalent relationship
schema, figura, littera and instrumentum as translations of the same Greek
concept/term, using them interchangeably.11 We read again of the character-
ismos (indicated by SCH in the recent Corpus Christianorum edition), of the
parabola, of paradigma, of figurae dictionis, of erotema, and many others.
For thirteenth-century Robert Grosseteste, figurae indicate by their shape
and recognisable structure, mental, spiritual and physical substance; and the
equivalence he makes among all three is both striking and important.12 Roger
Bacon emphasises figurae such as punctum and linea as indicating an instant
of time, therefore accessing time’s substance within his discussion of the
materiality of time.13 To summarise a primary consideration of these writers:
the concept of figura unites and systematises medieval disciplines, either as
the single figura, or as varied and diverse figurae, all by their diversity illus-
trating what figurae were and what they could accomplish.
Progressing, then, within this discussion of figura, one moved on from
particular figurae to figurae in modis, that is, figurae given continuity, rela-
tionship and motion. From the study of particular litterae or numeri to con-
nected figurae, the study of logic gave one tools to describe relationships
between lines of reasoning, and focused upon connection within written and
spoken communication. One again used figurae14 to explain and delineate
what it was that one had in mind, both as figures of speech and as figures of
thought, such as comparisons, analogies and above all metaphors. Logic’s
parallel study dealt with connection as it occurs in, and can be exemplified
by, geometry, a study that also dealt with very practical matters such as the
measuring and surveying of plots of land, and whether one’s neighbour had
built a fence on his own property or not. Connection, both as abstraction
and as a practical reality, was plain to see in terms of connected lines within
geometric figurae, and the practical reality of pieces of land, in which a
miscalculation or the absence of correct connections could end up in a court
of law. So communication was united with material and measurement in
dealing with a project in common, namely relationship; on the one hand, the
communicational discipline of logic, and on the other, as material and meas-
urement within geometry. One learned both logic and geometry, by means of
figures, both singly and in terms of varied and diverse figures.
Finally, the understanding of motion depended upon figurae in describing
and teaching the motion of thought and word within the discipline of rhetoric,
and the physical movement of heavenly bodies delineated by the figurae used
in astronomy and physics. Rhetoric, as Quintilian in his 12 books of rhetoric
pointed out, depended upon the use of figurae to make points – figurae such
as metaphor and analogy, but also example, ridicule and irony. Rhetoric’s
parallel discipline also dealt with movement, but in terms of material and
measurement within the science of moving physical bodies, employing the
constructed, characteristic figurae of Orion, Cassiopeia and the Plough.
This is a system of studying basic principles of reality, such as particulars,
connections and movement, in pairs, thus bringing the communication neces-
sary for teaching and learning together with the physical realities and certain-
ties of number, connected lines and physical motion. What we have described
was current as a system of education that combined mental tools – dealing
with written letters, numbers, diagrams and drawings, all of which could be
united within the Latin word, figura – and life itself, as it could be observed.
Augustine describes this system in De ordine, as also did Chalcidius in his
commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, and this system of parallel disciplines was,
in turn, a foundation and background for thinking, teaching and learning dur-
ing the Middle Ages. In fact, what we have described would, I believe, have
been completely recognisable well into the twentieth century. In other words,
if the system seems unrecognisable, the lack of familiarity is recent, gradu-
ally taking place within the last 60 or so years.
Those who discuss these connections read like a Who’s Who of late antiq-
uity and the Middle Ages. A short list would include Quintilian, Augustine,
Chalcidius, Cassiodorus, Remigius of Auxerre, Alain de Lille, Philip the
Chancellor, Robert Grosseteste, Robert Kilwardby and Roger Bacon. These
writers had a common persuasion, namely, that music formed a bridge
between communication, on the one hand, and material and measurement
on the other; between communicational disciplines and those that dealt with
the real ‘stuff’, substancia. But life itself, and ‘soulish substance’ was a very
real ‘stuff’.15
There is more to be said. Music, by using the unseen substances of time,
sound and motion, exemplified life – a vital, vivifying potency – as an unseen
yet motivational force. For this reason music was studied in medieval edu-
cation, and continued to be regarded as the ‘analogy discipline’ throughout
the educational system, from childhood primary school to eventual univer-
sity training as the latter emerged during the early years of the thirteenth
century. Music made comprehensible, according to Augustine, realities that
otherwise could be understood only with great difficulty, if at all. ‘Nothing
can be understood, except through music’, wrote Augustine, and it seemed
that throughout the Middle Ages many devoted themselves at least in part to
coming to terms with, and implementing, what Augustine had meant by this
statement. During the middle years of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon
certainly quoted Augustine on the importance and function of music in mak-
ing abstractions plain.16
Music itself, by its very substance – unseen, yet perceptible – made dif-
ficult things plain. Using unseen but nevertheless real material, it demon-
strated the abstraction of invisible reality. By its single or varied and diverse
tones, music presented to the senses the abstraction of particularity. As each
tone occurred in time, connected to the tone that followed, music presented
the abstraction of connection, as well as of effective, reciprocal relationship.
As one tone died away and another took its place, music made dynamism evi-
dent, as well as the intrinsic nature of material containing property, potential
and movement as expression. Hence music was unassailable in its analogical
potency throughout the Middle Ages.
Today, however, there is an empty space where at that time music strongly
resided. A shadow discipline, music is granted lip-service in twentieth-
century histories of the medieval university. If mentioned at all, music is
either trivialised or rendered totally uninteresting to a contemporary reading
audience. There is an impassable gulf between writers’ perception of what
music might be useful for today – chiefly as performance, a medium of enter-
tainment – and the apparent importance of music as a medieval discipline.
Music, which is certainly not the priority of either the editors or authors in,
for example, the large-scale, recently published, multi-volume History of the
University, appears to be an embarrassment. This is a situation that not only
silences music as an analogical component in a complete system – a genuine
community of disciplines – but reveals, as well, an emptiness within the com-
prehension of what was studied, for what reasons, and how this took place.
Music is most commonly listed amongst the ‘mathematical sciences’ of the
quadrivium without further explanation.
Further, when music is mentioned as a faculty in the early modern univer-
sity, no mention is made as to what was actually studied. Music appears to be
regarded today rather as a finishing-school subject, as in this example from
K.A. Schmidt’s turn-of-the-twentieth-century history of education:
From the seventeenth century onwards, the more fashionable universities

which catered to the Grand Tour students employed language, dance,
and music teachers, fencing, and riding masters, military engineers,
and strategists. They were appointed by the university or worked on a
free-lance basis.
In the following passage, the author’s priorities are clear:
There was recreation time from 10 o’clock until half-past, and from
11–12, in which there was private teaching in music, drawing or one of
the modern languages. Lunch was at 12 o’clock. The food was good,
excellent even, on some festive occasions.
This passage occurs following a statement that a chair in music had recently
been given by a donor to the university in question.17 It would seem that if a
chair in music was important enough to gain a donor at this university, the
material taught within this discipline would have merited more serious atten-
tion than recess before lunch.
To continue with more explicit examples of the trivialisation of music as a
discipline in twentieth-century histories of education:
Just as students were subject to moral and ethical norms, so the statutes
and disciplinary regulations within the universities governed the stu-
dents’ free time. There were diatribes against brawls, nightly debauches,
and gang behavior, excessive consumption of alcohol, games of hazard,
dice, chance, cards, and billiards, etc. Masked processions with music
[NB: obviously the reason for the inclusion of this passage under music
in the index], torchlight processions, visits to indecent plays, and dances,
all these and much more were strictly forbidden.18
A further example of how, in a twentieth-century perception of the medieval

and early modern university, the place of music within university disciplines
has been misunderstood, is a description of the endowment of the economist
Sir Thomas Gresham, who established the Royal Exchange, in 1565, and
endowed Gresham College, which opened in London in 1597. The chairs of
the college, all donated by Gresham, included those in astronomy, geometry,
medicine, law, theology, rhetoric and music, all of which, with the blatant
exception of music, are described in detail by the writer of the article. Music,
although one of the seven endowed chairs within this late sixteenth-century
college, constitutes an ‘empty space’, a discipline too trivial to discuss.19
From these quotations, taken largely from the recently-appearing suc-
cessive volumes of A History of the University in Europe, published by
Cambridge University Press, one notices an amazing shift that has gradually
and silently taken place. Rather than merely providing a pleasant diversion
after a hard day at work, reassurance for weary travellers in a huge and hectic
airport, a soothing, relaxing ambience for eating and drinking with friends in
a restaurant, or a presence in an empty house for those who live alone, music
in the Middle Ages and well into what we know as the early modern period
made difficult things plain, and opened people’s eyes to an understanding
of the universe. Music pried open the hard shell – the integumentum – that
concealed truth. No other field of learning shared this distinction, and no one
challenged this capacity of music to make plain the principles of particularity,
individuality, relationship and motivation.
But day in and day out music was actually sung, and also played. Each
time this happened, in churches, courts, schools, by the very nature of music
and language as using sound substance, a coalition was set up between the
figurae of letters in the texts that were at the same time sung, together with
the figurae of music notation. This coalition was especially meaningful to
those who sang, since one learned by experience. So, each day, every day,
the principle of particularity in terms of tone, as well as the individual sound
represented by, for example, the letter e, as well as the connection simultane-
ously, between the sounds that followed, together with tones, made both par-
ticularity and connection plain. Furthermore, as one moved from one sound
and tone to the next, one experienced motion. These students sang particu-
larity, relationship and motion, experiencing these basic principles even as
children in medieval primary schools. This education combined knowledge
with experience, showing how, ultimately, what one knew needed to be com-
municated and put into action. A system of learning could be fully under-
stood because it was applied in conscious ways to life. Music, according to
Augustine, made this possible, since it made comprehensible the relationship
of principle to experience, abstraction to sense perception, intellection to life
itself.
16 Toward a new cultural history
of East Central Europe?
Piotr Górecki and Nancy van Deusen
Celebration redefined
In the opening chapter, we observed that books of essays written to honour
our colleagues do not, in their essence, celebrate. Or, to put this differently,
such books do celebrate, but they do so by performing another, even more
important function. They are really about historiography – the current state
of a field. A single lifetime of distinguished work is in itself a historiographi-
cal event. Some of our colleagues have produced an oeuvre which reflects
and reframes, and sometimes creates, one major subject area. Paul Knoll has
played, and is today continuing to play, precisely that range of roles, with
respect to one such subject area: the cultural history of East Central Europe.
Assessing that range of roles could have been accomplished in several
ways. We, the two editors, could have produced a single historiographical
monograph, centred upon Paul Knoll and East Central Europe – an expanded
variant of what is now the opening chapter written by one of us. Alternatively,
we might have parcelled out the same task among all or some of our colleagues,
and elicited articles whose principal, common subject is the significance of
Paul Knoll’s contribution to everyone’s respective area of specialisation. Or
we could have commissioned from our group of authors articles about some
specified, predetermined sequence of subjects, in a scheme deliberately
designed to reflect and highlight Paul Knoll’s contribution.
We did something different. We asked some of our currently most distin-
guished colleagues, active in a range of academic institutions and cultures,
to present us – and, through us, Paul – with articles on specific subjects of
their own choice, but broadly framed by three large themes which, at least
in our view, encapsulate the main strands of Paul Knoll’s oeuvre, while also
relating to the specialisations of the colleagues solicited. Those themes are:
court, city and culture.1 In our request, we explicitly did not treat these three
themes as a kind of specific prescription, that is to say, as a list of subjects.
Instead, we wished to create a kind of shared intellectual space, or – to mix
Toward a new cultural history of East Central Europe? 193
the metaphor in Richard Hoffmann’s direction, a common catchment-area
– which, based on the work produced by all concerned, we know to exist
between Paul and our authors. Then, with the articles in hand, we planned
to identify, and reflect upon, the thematic affinities visible within that space,
or area. The process here was akin to eliciting testimony – about a common
range of themes, and about one scholar – from a group of colleagues who are
actively engaged with those themes, and with him.
In the resulting essays, the testimonial dimension is sometimes explicit.
Jacek Banaszkiewicz, Grzegorz Myśliwski, Krzysztof Ożóg, Thomas
Wünsch and Nancy van Deusen refer to Paul Knoll by name, by means of spe-
cific citations of his works, or by expressions of intellectual debt.2 Usually,
however, the testimony is implicit, and takes the form of an elaboration of
our core subject – the cultural history of East Central Europe – with special
attention to court, city and culture. The result works as a collective, multilat-
eral engagement: with Paul Knoll’s oeuvre on the one hand, and between our
contributors on the other. To switch metaphors once again, the multilateral
engagement occurs through resonance,3 that is, a recurrence of specific his-
torical problems, subjects, methods, approaches and expository techniques
– elicited by a shared focus upon one historiographical event, the body of
work by a single colleague.
This book: chronology and themes

The editors have placed the articles in sequence according to two criteria:
chronology and subject matter. Generally speaking, contributions concern-
ing the early historical period, or specific subjects that assume historical
importance during that period, appear relatively early in the book, while arti-
cles focused on matters which are, in the same sense, ‘late’, follow later.
Thus, Henryk Samsonowicz immediately follows Piotr Górecki’s introduc-
tory chapter – and in that sense opens the book – in part because he anchors
his explanation of urbanisation, throughout East Central Europe, in the later
western Roman Empire. Florin Curta reassesses the meaning and the reality
of the ‘service settlements’ – the mode of organising human resources which
(though it is historiographically contested) was distinctive of parts of East
Central Europe between the mid-ninth (or the tenth) and the later twelfth cen-
tury. Jacek Banaszkiewicz discusses an image of the good ruler recurrent in
narrations produced between the late tenth and the early twelfth centuries.
On the much later side of things, most of the contributions making up
the second half of the book – by Tomasz Jurek, Bariša Krekić, Grzegorz
Myśliwski, Richard Hoffmann, Stanisław Szczur, Krzysztof Ożóg, Thomas
Wünsch and János Bak – focus, across a wide range of subjects, on the fif-
teenth century, with, however, some variation: Szczur is concerned, entirely,
with the fourteenth century, Krekić is lodged (principally) within the
sixteenth century, while Myśliwski ranges widely across the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in their entirety.
The chronological criterion does not work rigorously – let alone rigidly
– in part because, whenever they begin, our articles vary in the time span they
cover. Though Samsonowicz opens his article with the end of the western
Roman Empire, he continues his story of the urban expansion in Eastern and
East Central Europe all the way into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In contrast, both Curta and Banaszkiewicz start later, but end earlier: Curta, at
least implicitly, with the late-twelfth- and thirteenth-century systemic trans-
formation as a result of which the ‘service settlements’ were dismantled in
favour of other forms of rural exploitation; Banaszkiewicz, with the times
of creation of written texts about the good ruler – of which the latest is the
first decade of the twelfth century, when the Polish chronicler conventionally
known as Gallus wrote his deeds of the Piast dukes of Poland.4 Nora Berend’s
treatment of the use of oaths encompasses, at its outermost chronological
extent, the early tenth to the thirteenth centuries.
Moving toward the later articles, Jerzy Kłoczowski’s analysis of the
Dominicans and their educational system in East Central Europe begins
with a very precise, readily datable moment – the arrival of the Dominicans
at particular destinations in the region, during the second decade of the
thirteenth century5 – and continues for the subsequent two centuries, deep
into the fifteenth. This is one of the reasons for placing Kłoczowski’s article
at a transitional point in the book, between the ‘early’ group, and the entire,
‘late’, second half of the book.
These overlaps in chronology create unexpected, second-level clusters.
One could – against the grain of their intended, overall subjects – read por-
tions of the articles by Myśliwski, Samsonowicz, Berend, Kłoczowski and
Curta as an entrée into the thirteenth century in East Central Europe. Or one
could use the pieces by Samsonowicz, Kłoczowski, Myśliwski and Szczur
to study specific areas of continuity and change over many more centuries
– at the outermost, the fifth to the fifteenth. The same possibilities are raised
by the second criterion for our sequencing these articles: their subject mat-
ter. To be sure, some subjects are chronologically specific – Curta’s ‘serv-
ice settlements’ necessarily belong early in East Central European history,
while the 1444 Varna Crusade, important for Bak, or the Council of Basel,
the backdrop for Wünsch, occurred late – and, to that extent, our two cri-
teria converge. But other subjects – the city, ‘the Church’, long-distance
exchange or trade, the procurement of water, fishing, learning, the courts of
dukes, kings and bishops – are in their essence neither intrinsically ‘early’
nor intrinsically ‘late’, and required from us a non-temporal criterion for the
sequencing.
To that effect, we have arranged those articles which closely overlap in
subject matter into dossiers – that is to say, into groups with a substantially
common, single subject.6 Of the 14 articles, eight comprise two dossiers
of this kind. The contributions by Tomasz Jurek, Bariša Krekić, Grzegorz
Myśliwski and Richard Hoffmann concern the late medieval and early mod-
ern city, examined in a wide variety of its aspects: legal, multi-ethnic, inter-
cultural, spatial and economic. The articles by Stanisław Szczur, Krzysztof
Ożóg, Thomas Wünsch and János Bak all explore the world of learning and
politics: the city, the royal court, the papacy of the Avignon and the conciliar
periods, ecclesiastical reform, political theory and practice. In addition, the
four, historically early, opening articles of the book, by Samsonowicz, Curta,
Berend and Banaszkiewicz, can also be grouped into dossiers of two each
(that is, if two articles may constitute a ‘dossier’). Samsonowicz and Curta
work with two highly concrete, material, resource-generating networks: the
town and the ‘service settlement’, respectively. Berend and Banaszkiewicz
look at phenomena which, while very different from each other, both centre
upon ritual.
These four thematic dossiers leave out the articles by Jerzy Kłoczowski
and Nancy van Deusen. To complicate things further, on some levels the
dossiers overlap in subject matter. Although the articles by Szczur, Ożóg,
Wünsch and Bak are, as we noted, about learning and politics, they situate
those two phenomena above all in cities – that is, in the setting which, from
a different perspective, is the common, defining subject of the contributions
by Jurek, Krekić, Myśliwski and Hoffmann. One city in particular, Kraków,
recurs with a special frequency, especially in the articles by Szczur, Wünsch
and above all Ożóg, but there are other important cities. Wünsch ties the
two phases of his fascinating intellectual biography of one learned person
– James of Paradyż – to two cities, Kraków and Erfurt.7 Jurek’s equally fas-
cinating cases of marriage across the ethno-religious divide occur entirely in
Poznań. The overall implication is that education, along with the phenomena
related to it, happens specifically in an urban network, within which some cit-
ies are especially important – that is to say, central. This insight immediately
provides a thematic home in this book for Jerzy Kłoczowski, who presents
the Dominican studium squarely as an aspect of a large network of cities and
towns.
For Kłoczowski, some cities are especially important. Moreover, their
hierarchy of importance works on several levels of magnitude. In the Piast
principalities, Kraków is preeminent, but shares that position with Wrocław8
– a ranking that (in the Dominican educational context which is Kłoczowski’s
subject) survives the reunification of the Polish kingdom and its political
estrangement from the Silesian Piast duchies. At the level of that even larger
space, the Dominican province of Polonia (in its original territorial extent,
encompassing Bohemia and the Piast duchies in their entirety), Kłoczowski
notes the importance of Prague, as an institutional role model and as a source
of graduates and faculty for Kraków’s educational scene – the Dominican
studia and the ‘secular’ schools, above all the university.9 Within the frame-
works of East Central Europe and of Europe, in their entirety (including,
among other regions, Poland and Bohemia), the most important, central city
is Paris,10 joined in some respects by a handful of other cities which, at differ-
ent times, had comparable status: Oxford and Cambridge early on,11 and, in
the later fourteenth century, Prague.
These connections, in Kłoczowski’s narration, mark out a brilliantly drawn
loop, extending out of, then back into East Central Europe – through a double
focus on a network of places, and on a pattern of collective activity, namely
learning. But there is more. First, Kłoczowski’s attention to Prague and Paris
dovetails with the importance of these two cities as seen from the perspec-
tives of Samsonowicz, Banaszkiewicz, Myśliwski, Hoffmann, Szczur, Ożóg,
Wünsch and van Deusen.12 Second, the kind of large-scale, inter- and intra-
regional European urban network which serves Kłoczowski as a setting for
both the Dominican studia and the universities, also serves as background for
several other subjects which are very different from Kłoczowski’s and from
one another: Samsonowicz’s treatment of trade and urban expansion between
late antiquity and the medieval period; Myśliwski’s reconstruction of one
such dynamic trade network, focused on Venice and Wrocław; Hoffmann’s
tracing of the patterns of procurement, processing, transport and consump-
tion of one highly specialised commodity – a type of dried fish – between the
Baltic region and Kraków; and Szczur’s examination of the presence, and the
activities, of specialised papal collectors throughout East Central Europe,
especially in Poland, during the Avignon period.
The recurrent focus on specific, especially important cities raises other,
more fragmentary, thematic affinities. At one point in his article, Curta devel-
ops some theoretical constructs related to early urbanisation, especially the
central place theory, and its current aftermath.13 Some colleagues focus prin-
cipally upon one city, or relate two cities to one another. Banaszkiewicz’s rit-
ual moment of good kingship, as narrated, occurs in its entirety in Mainz, just
outside the cathedral. Jurek’s entire inquiry is focused on Poznań, though he
does contextualise that city economically and demographically, by compar-
ing it to Kraków.14 Likewise, Krekić is concerned with one city, Dubrovnik,
though he presents that city’s economy – specifically, its demand for water
– in the commercial and geographical context of the Adriatic and the north-
central Mediterranean. Szczur and Wünsch each frame their contributions
as an interplay between two cities: Avignon and Kraków, and Kraków and
Erfurt, respectively. Perhaps the most elaborate inquiry, combining all these
emphases, is Myśliwski’s article: embedded, as was noted earlier, in a major
inter-regional network of cities and towns, all nodes of long-distance trade,
yet structured principally in terms of the interactions between two of them,
Venice and Wrocław, and researched and narrated from the perspective of
the latter.
Court, city and culture

In short, the city emerges as our overarching, arguably the most important,
subject. What about our other two opening themes, culture and court? As
presented here, ‘city’ has a certain concreteness – spatial, material, economic
– within which, or with reference to which, several other phenomena take
place. The other two constructs are more abstract and elusive. We are there-
fore fortunate that, right at the outset of his article, Henryk Samsonowicz
specifies the meaning of ‘culture’ along lines that resonate with the contribu-
tions of his colleagues, and that therefore help structure this book. Culture
– especially a new, or a changing culture – is, for Samsonowicz, explicable in
terms of ‘new forms of collective activity and new ideas’. Leaving aside for
the moment the question of its transition, culture, as understood here, con-
sists of patterns of group activity, and of the cognitive processes, or habits,
related to that activity.
Now, for Samsonowicz, this definition of culture is a by-product of, as
he puts it, ‘defining a “city”’: as a place inhabited by people who routinely
engage in specific patterns of ‘collective activity’, and who experience the
related set of ‘ideas’.15 However, this definition is also a convenient bridge
to a more generalised meaning of ‘culture’, as understood by our contribu-
tors. Thus, Samsonowicz himself points us, sometimes specifically (the
Varangians for example), and elsewhere in more general terms, to a type of
historical protagonist who combined the following qualities: a propensity to
long-distance travel, ranging from temporary, ad hoc journeys, all the way to
permanent resettlement; acquisition, transport and disposition, of movable
goods – by force, purchase, exchange or gift; permanent, or at least long-
term residence in or near one of those ‘centres’ which, by virtue of that fact,
become (by definition) ‘cities’; and (though in Samsonowicz’s article this is
implicit) the experience of ideas, or concepts, specific to the above range of
qualities; ideas which, summing them up, we might place somewhere on the
fluid boundary between bellicosity and entrepreneurship.
Krekić and Myśliwski introduce us, in much closer detail, to specific types
of protagonists who engaged in (some) of those ‘collective activities’, and
who possessed the related ‘ideas’. Though Krekić notes the existence of
merchants in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dubrovnik, his subject is the
procurement of a commodity which, in the nature of things, was difficult
to obtain in large quantities by trade – water – but which instead called for
a different and highly specific set of activities, by a different population:
the city as a community, its civic institutions and its highly-skilled crafts-
people, above all hydraulic engineers. Moreover, in fascinating case studies,
Krekić sketches out intra-urban conflict centred upon that water supply, and
the responses to that conflict, both legislative and judicial. The written traces
of that area of conflict make a fascinating entrée into the ‘ideas’ concerning,
ultimately, this aspect of economic demand, as experienced by the city and
its inhabitants.
Myśliwski paints what is probably the most detailed and textured picture of
another specific population – the merchants, above all those based in the two
cities comprising the organising axis of his research, Wrocław and Venice, but
also their colleagues situated in other places, which in conjunction constituted
far-flung networks, extending ulimately throughout Europe and beyond: in
a southwestern direction, encompassing, among others, Vienna, Prague and
Nuremberg; a northwestern cluster, leading through a group of German cities
to Flanders; an eastern and northeastern group, including Kraków and Lwów
in one direction, Novgorod in another, and, beyond both, the Rus’; and, by
mediation of Venice itself, a far-eastern region, fusing, indirectly, with the
trading centres (and merchant population) of the Middle East and Asia. This
geographical framework positively swarms with specific, named individuals
who specialised in the transfer of dozens of types of commodities, and in the
credit operations related to that transfer.
These three essays powerfully bring out one dimension of culture, in
Samsonowicz’s sense of that word: the presence, and the role, of those groups
and individuals whose ‘collective activity’ (and presumably ‘ideas’) were
related specifically to the procurement, transfer and disposal of goods, in
response to the interplay of supply and demand. We have here a collective
study in commercial culture. The avatars of that culture are also visible,
though from an entirely different perspective, in two other articles: early
in the book, when Curta ponders the possible theoretical alternatives to the
‘service settlement’ as a model for the production and transfer of goods and
other tangible resources during the earlier Middle Ages; and much later, when
Jurek presents his fascinating Jewish and Christian litigants in marriage cases
as active participants in the commercial and financial world of Poznań.
An even larger group of authors – Kłoczowski, Szczur, Ożóg, Wünsch,
Bak and van Deusen – introduce us to the culture of learning. Here, the ‘col-
lective activity’, common to the individual and the collective protagonists
mentioned by all the authors, is the acquisition and propagation, and use, of
several areas of specialised knowledge. When all six articles are considered
in conjunction, the resulting knowledge spans the broad formal curriculum
of medieval learning – the liberal arts, canon and Roman law, theology and
medicine – and several specific applications of that curriculum, above all in
international politics, constitutional theory and practice, historical writing
and music. The authors in this group of essays vary strongly in their emphasis
on these fields, their applications and the contexts in which learning occurred.
Ożóg and van Deusen, for example, both note music, but Ożóg does so rather
marginally, in the context of a number of other learned disciplines and of
music’s presence in the cultural life of the Jagiellonian court,16 whereas van
Deusen is concerned specifically with music, as a discipline both central to
the intellectual system of the Middle Ages, and, in her view, much neglected
by historians today.17 Bak also notes music, but, in contrast to the other two
colleagues, only as a post-medieval, folk echo – a nineteenth-century rec-
ollection of King Władysław Warneńczyk’s death at Varna – not a learned
discipline at all.
Kłoczowski places Dominican learning, and above all theology, in the con-
text of the networks of universities and Dominican studia, and, in the process,
contributes to our understanding of the relationship between those two types
of school, throughout Europe and in Europe’s East and Centre. Ożóg, again,
discusses a broad range of learned subjects present at the Jagiellonian court,
while van Deusen makes her plea for music’s importance in the medieval
curriculum by a close, detailed analysis of that curriculum. Szczur’s por-
trayal of the diplomatic contacts between the Avignon popes and the courts
of Władysław the Short and Casimir the Great positively presupposes the
presence, on both ends and in between, of persons highly skilled in disci-
plines bearing upon international relations and diplomacy, especially canon
and Roman law. Wünsch’s article is perhaps the culmination, in this book, of
the portrayal of learning as a specialised activity – this time individual rather
than ‘collective’, through its detailed case study of James of Paradyż as a
political (especially constitutional) thinker, and a moral theologian, in the
specific context of Church reform.
But the subject of advanced learning, too, overlaps with contributions
written principally about something else. Jurek’s marriage litigants on the
two sides of the Jewish-Christian divide, their advocates and the Poznań
consistory court take us directly into the world of substantive canon law
– including the law regulating marriage and sexual contact, especially across
religious boundaries, and the jurisdiction over that subject matter. As with
Szczur at Avignon, the legal scene, as reconstructed here, both presupposes
and describes a population with access to highly-differentiated, specialised
learning; in this case, notably including one of the litigants, as he invokes his
own (formerly?) Jewish identity in order to invalidate a putative marriage to
his now-unwanted wife. Likewise, jurisdiction, procedure and the implica-
tions of religious difference between litigants are all raised by Berend in the
context of the swearing of oaths, in Hungary, across several ethno-religious
boundaries – between Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans – though in her
treatment the role of learning in the resulting activity is far less visible to the
reader.
In fact, learning, understood as a range of disciplines and of specialised
activities, is so ubiquitous as to rival ‘the city’ as the overarching subject of
this book. But – to return to Samsonowicz’s working definition of culture –
several colleagues further address ‘collective activities’, and related ‘ideas’,
which, while related to our three major issues – court, city and culture – are
really quite distinct, and are not (without a great deal of strain) explicable as
aspects either of a culture of commerce, or of a culture of learning. An area
of ‘collective activity’ addressed by Berend and by Jurek consists of (and
here we borrow Berend’s word) ‘interactions’ between ethnically different
communities. Of course, in their two treatments these ‘interactions’ are very
different. Berend ranges across several centuries and medieval Hungary in
its entirety, while Jurek zooms in on an interval of (depending on how we
assess this) weeks or months, in one city, Poznań. Berend looks at four ethno-
religious groups, while Jurek analyses only two, Jews and Christians. And
yet, we most certainly have here two glimpses of yet another dimension of
culture, ethnic diversity, and (some of) the practices by which that diversity
was experienced, articulated and negotiated.
The articles by Banaszkiewicz, Berend and Bak concern yet another
type of ‘collective activity’, accompanied by related ‘ideas’: ritual. For
Banaszkiewicz, ritual (or, at least, its written representation) is discernible
in those acts whereby the king purposefully delayed his assumption of royal
office, in a deliberate display made before some broader population, which,
in turn, understood the appropriate meaning of the delay and the associated
performance. For Berend, the ritual is the oath, typically performed in a
forensic setting, as part of the acts leading to an agreement or reconciliation.
Bak is concerned with several acts, jointly comprising the vesting of royal
office upon the Hungarian king-elect, especially the use of one especially
important material object, a crown – a crown which, at the time Bak exam-
ines, was, somewhat inconveniently, not the actual Crown of Saint Stephen.
This awkward moment elicits from Bak an entertaining description of the
elaborate group activities meant to endow the substitute with a sacral quality
equivalent to the original.
On the subject of ritual, these three authors take us in somewhat different
directions. Banaszkiewicz is expressly concerned with the problem of repre-
senting ritual acts through texts, and with the inaccessibility of the ‘realities’
to which the texts refer – a problem most sharply raised by Philippe Buc, with
whose position, unless we are mistaken, Banaszkiewicz agrees.18 Although
Banaszkiewicz’s article is not, strictly speaking, about the two texts central
to his article, Wipo or the Polish Anonymous – that is to say, not a textual
study, but a study of one complicated image recurrent in these two (and in
other) texts – the author does take a strong, ironically assertive, position on
the texts’ role in ‘representing’ supposed realities, and so the article is both an
intervention in the debate involving Buc, Gerd Althoff and Geoffrey Koziol,
and in itself a strongly post-modern reading of the issues with which the
debate is concerned.19
Berend and Bak are unperturbed about that subject. For Berend, the oath is
indeed very much a point of access to an area of a past social reality, namely
the patterns of inter-ethnic interaction – this is consistent with the interests
richly developed in her book of 2001, and in her article on the conceptual
problem of the medieval frontier20 – and it is therefore a point of access to
subjects which are indeed ‘theoretical’, but ‘theoretical’ in a very different
sense. Bak, too, fully accepts the ‘reality’ behind the documents recording
the collective endeavours to revalorise one crown – he has no doubt that
such activities had in fact occurred, and failed – and is attentive to the docu-
ments themselves as (intellectually modest) expressions of medieval politi-
cal theory.
Nothing quite like Samsonowicz’s working definition of culture occurs,
anywhere in these essays, for our remaining conceptual lure, the court. We,
the two editors, initially raised this subject in open-ended fashion, and that
is indeed how the court appears in these essays. Quite curiously, the court,
in any sense of that word, appears here not as a differentiated subject, but
as a setting. With the possible exceptions of Banaszkiewicz and Bak, who
examine patterns of activity involving groups of people directly surround-
ing a king, our authors are relatively unconcerned about how courts were
structured, how they worked, who staffed them, and so forth. In this book,
we are light-years away from anything resembling administrative history.
Much the same thing is true regarding courts understood in the more spe-
cialised, forensic sense. Even though Berend, Krekić and Szczur all describe
places where, and parties among which, litigation occurs, and the issues that
were litigated, they are relatively unconcerned with what actually happened
in judicial courts and why. In this regard, Jurek, with his close and sustained
focus on the course of the two trials in the Poznań consistory court, stands
entirely apart in this volume.
Rather than a subject fully in its own right, the court, at least as far as
this book is concerned, is one of the settings where those ‘collective activi-
ties’ which comprise culture take place, and where the related ‘ideas’ are
formulated, expressed and experienced. The other such setting is the city.
Moreover – to close this thematic loop – the two settings are largely co-
extensive, because nearly all our authors situate the court (in any sense of
that word) in the city. The king’s court is almost always found in Kraków; the
pope’s, in Avignon; the court understood in the specifically judicial sense, in
several cities: Poznań, Inowrocław, Warsaw, Várad, Avignon and Constance.
The emergence, and the recurrence throughout this book, of a very specific
space within which culture occurs – the court and the city – is perhaps the
fundamental resonance between the book and the oeuvre produced by Paul
Knoll himself. Let us now look at that resonance more closely, from some
other perspectives.
Paul Knoll and this book

First of all, this book displays one unintentional but fortuitous chronologi-
cal parallel with Paul’s oeuvre. Despite some variations in this pattern, the
articles are strongly bifurcated into two groups: one centred early, principally
in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries; the other situated late, fully or in
substantial part, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The second group
is much larger, and so the book in its entirety takes on an unmistakeably
Jagiellonian cast. That fact can quite properly be viewed as a collective echo
of that second upswing in Poland’s medieval history toward which Paul first
moved during the first decade of his output, and where – again, with impor-
tant exceptions in particular contributions – he has remained ever since.
But this chronological parallel has its limits. Our ‘early’ articles are not
focused on Paul’s earlier upswing of Poland’s medieval history. Kings
Władysław the Short and Casimir the Great – and, with them, the major issues
comprising that earlier upswing, namely political reunification, consolida-
tion or contestation of boundaries, the conflict with the Teutonic Order, the
problem of Silesia, and the related diplomatic, administrative, institutional
and educational activities – do all appear in this book, but in exactly one arti-
cle: Szczur’s. Thus, in contrast to Paul’s own work, there is not a common,
recurring Piast thread to these essays, and so this is indeed a ‘Jagiellonian’
but not a ‘Piast’ volume – even though, thanks to Szczur, the Piasts do make
an important appearance.
Apart from chronology, this book also converges with Paul Knoll’s work
in terms of the specific subjects addressed. To a significant degree, we can
trace out a one-to-one correspondence between the subjects which, at vari-
ous times, Paul has developed in his work, and their counterparts here. In
some cases, this correspondence is very specific. For example, in exactly
one, brief remark, Bak notes that the notion of Hungary as a ‘bulwark of
Christendom’ (antemurale Christianitatis) appears in that country’s domi-
nant political ideology at the time, and in the circumstances which Paul had
described in 1974 concerning Poland: in connection with the recruitment of
Władysław Warneńczyk as a Hungarian king, and with his dramatic death.21
At greater length, Curta reassesses that supposed network of ‘service settle-
ments’ about which Paul wrote in 1989.22 Berend’s and Jurek’s close atten-
tion to inter-ethnic interaction (especially between the Jews and others)
echoes Paul’s treatments of ethnic difference and identity published in 1989
and 1993,23 and his remarks about the Jewish community in Kraków in the
context of King Casimir’s attempts, described in 1968, to situate the original
university in the city’s late-fourteenth-century fabric.24
In other articles, the correspondence is broader and more recurrent.
Samsonowicz, Krekić, Myśliwski and Hoffmann all develop the subject of
the city, specifically in its material, spatial and economic dimensions, as Paul
had done more tersely for Kraków in an article published in 198725 – an arti-
cle which, is in turn, was enriched by the comparative approach taken in all
the essays that comprise the volume (edited by Krekić) where that article
appears, based on a large group of cities: Kiev, Novgorod, Kraków, Moscow,
Buda and Dubrovnik. But by far the broadest, most persistent – we are tempted
to say, the dominant – area of correspondence concerns, not surprisingly, the
huge subject which quite simply defines the core of Paul Knoll’s work: the
conjunction between the royal court, the city of Kraków, its university and the
greater world encompassing (at different times) Avignon, Constance, Basel,
Rome, Prague, Paris, Gdańsk, Wrocław and other places. This huge subject
is especially ubiquitous in the contributions by Kłoczowski, Szczur, Ożóg
and Wünsch, but it recurs elsewhere. Let us especially note here Wünsch’s
intimate interest in Kraków and conciliarism, because of the resonance of
that subject with Paul Knoll’s ongoing work.
Finally, an important subset of the articles resonates with, and develops,
one expository technique which, as was noted in the opening essay, is recur-
rent in Paul’s writings: the individual vignette, or biogram. Kłoczowski,
Krekić, and Szczur identify, respectively, individual Dominican scholars
and provincials, as they teach, supervise and organise; individual citizens
of Dubrovnik, as they maintain, neglect or quarrel over the city’s system of
water procurement; and individual clerics appointed as papal collectors in
the metropolis of Gniezno, and entrusted with multiple incidental capaci-
ties. Myśliwski introduces us to a galaxy of merchants, debtors and creditors,
principals and agents, and to their multiple interrelationships and activities,
centred ultimately upon Wrocław and Venice, but also, as we have seen,
encompassing a far larger inter-urban and inter-regional network.
In the hands of Jurek, Szczur, Ożóg and Wünsch, such references blossom
into fully-fledged biographical portaits very much of a kind Paul Knoll might
have written. Among the large population of clerics whom Szczur identifies
by name, two individuals assume this level of visibility: Gerward, the bishop
of Cuiavia who diplomatically supported Władysław the Short against the
Teutonic Order in the papal court at Avignon;26 and, in much more detail,
Galhard of Carces, the papal collector who played a similar role on behalf of
Władysław’s son, King Casimir.27 Jurek and Ożóg each develop well over a
dozen biographical sketches – of the protagonists and the court personnel in
the two marriage trials, and of a wide variety of learned specialists active at
Hedwig and Jagiełło’s court, respectively. Jurek’s treatment of the identities
and the stories of Jochna and of Nicholas Młynek reminds us that, among
his other specialisations, Jurek is currently one of Poland’s most gifted pro-
sopographers.28 Wünsch moves toward one, individual biogram, as he gives
us James of Paradyż’s spiritual and intellectual biography, weaving into that
biography references to other interesting individuals in Kraków and Erfurt.
Several of the protagonists who appear in these articles are also well-devel-
oped actors throughout Paul’s writings. Thus, in conjuction with Paul’s work,
these essays give us an entrée into a vivid, exceptionally interesting cast of
characters, who collectively embody that encounter of culture, court and city
which we, the two editors, had originally sought to elicit in the original call to
our collaborators. It is that cast of characters, considered as a population, that
points us, at long last, to a very different, we might say the ‘external’, very
big subject of Paul’s work and, simultaneously, of this book: East Central
Europe – especially, in these essays, Poland – within the broader context of
the medieval and early modern world. This context comprises a new cultural
history of this macro-region.
Toward a new cultural history of East Central Europe?

The dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals identified by Paul and by our
authors were actors in that broader world. The point can be made spatially
– for example, by using our articles to map out, with their incidence indi-
cated, the activities throughout an urban network, ranging, at its outermost,
from Kiev and Novgorod to Barcelona. The point can also be made concep-
tually, by noting, among many other possibilities, the myriad of places and
settings described by this book in which Aristotelian thought demonstrably
mattered. This essential bridge between – indeed, the seamless identification
of – say, Poland, Croatia or Hungary, with the medieval and early modern
world in general is perhaps the most fundamental common message of Paul’s
oeuvre and this book. As to the latter, let us add that this message, while very
clear, is implicit. No one among our authors seems compelled to pause to
explain that, and in what sense, the phenomena examined here were interest-
ing, important or simply real, as an aspect of general medieval and early mod-
ern reality – any more than would have been the case if, in 1966, Paul Knoll
had embarked upon the study of Scotland, Normandy, Lombardy, Sicily or
the Île-de-France. This relatively unproblematic, unencumbered approach
to the history of East Central Europe has always been Paul’s trademark, and,
appropriately, it marks our book as well.
And yet, there is a lurking issue here. That issue has been generated by those
seismic changes in the history and the historiography of East Central Europe
with which we opened this book. Paradoxically, the two bursts of interest in
that region in the English-speaking world – the first, approximately, in the
early 1970s, the second beginning about one decade later, and lasting into our
own present – have tended, in that world (and therefore among this book’s
intended audience) to frame Europe’s ‘East’ (or ‘East-Centre’) as essentially
one single unit, comprehensible, at least in principle, in terms of one single
project. Herein lies the paradox. Inclusive interest has translated into a pre-
sumptive sense of global, region-wide difference.
One such project has been the use, as a tool in that comprehension, of
Archibald Lewis’s notion of ‘frontier’ – adapted, modified and refined
considerably since its formulation in 1958, yet, in its intellectual essence,
strongly continuous.29 Another has been a painstaking selection of the new
adjectival label, ‘East Central’, for the relevant macro-region, in explicit
preference to ‘Central’ and to ‘Eastern’ – with their implicit emphasis on
Germany and Russia respectively.30 A third, though it occurs in English, is
directly patterned on scholarship concerning Germany. It entails, as a point
of departure, an importation from German of that gloriously untranslatable
word, Sonderweg, to sum up the essential, primeval distinction of Europe’s
‘East’ in its entirety.31
Alternatively, that project might consist of just the opposite: a quite
deliberate, axiomatic rejection of an essentialised, global difference, and an
inquiry into the realities of particular places in East Central Europe on their
own terms, with the comparative, conceptual, pan-European issues indeed
present, but left more or less implicit – exactly as some of our best colleagues
lodged in Europe’s ‘West’ have done regarding the Mâconnais, the Sénonais,
or the banlieue of Battle Abbey. That last option, we think, was fully avail-
able just about half a century ago, at a time of thematic openness and indeter-
minacy when Paul Knoll became intrigued with one late-medieval kingdom,
city and university. Precisely because of the work by those medievalists, and
of its impact across several generations, that option is once again available
today.32 And yet, because of that intervening legacy – left by a sudden discov-
ery of the heretofore unknown – our paradox remains.
As a result, we, the medievalists who think and write about East Central
Europe in English, are constantly confronting an ongoing, irreducibly tense
intellectual dilemma. Is East Central Europe, in whole and in its parts, inter-
esting because it is presumptively comprehensible in the same terms in which
we understand the European continent in its entirety? Is it analysable in terms
of the same set of concepts – court, city and culture, for example? Is it in some
meaningful sense similar to, or even seamlessly the same as, that even larger
region of which it is a part? Or, is East Central Europe, with its constitu-
ent parts, interesting because it, and they, require us to generate analytical
concepts and categories essentially different from those which help us with
‘Europe’ as a whole – ‘service settlements’, ‘proto-towns’, and the like? Is it,
in some global or perhaps even essential sense, different from the continent
in its entirety, or from those regions of the continent (‘the West’) which work
as Europe’s normative standard?
This choice – between a presumptive essential likeness, or a presumptive
essential difference, as a point of departure for understanding – strikes us as
a crucial issue, perhaps the crucial issue, in the emerging new cultural history
of East Central Europe of which this book is a manifestation. Neither this
book in its entirety, nor the individual articles, answer these questions, or
resolve our paradox. Instead, it, and they, confront the questions from several
perspectives. On the one hand, there is no doubt that our authors – all of them
– fully embrace, and continue, that originating, unapologetic, unencumbered
approach to past reality in this part of Europe which has always been Paul
Knoll’s signature. On the other hand, a recurrent theme of this book, resonat-
ing through many (though not all) the contributions, is indeed the place of
each author’s specific subject, and of the region or locality where that sub-
ject arises, in the broader contemporary world – which (with two important
exceptions, to be noted shortly) means Europe.
This second theme, when addressed at all, is always addressed implicitly.
For instance, no one in this group stakes out his or her subject in terms of one
or more of those those big, unifying conceptual projects noted earlier – such
as the medieval ‘frontier’. Nor, on the other hand, does anyone seem com-
pelled explicitly to reject that kind of approach in favour of an inquiry that
is deliberately localised, and, in a conceptual or empirical sense, somehow
self-contained. Nevertheless, in their substance, the articles do develop the
lurking subject of the peripherality (or otherwise) of Poland, Hungary and
other places, with respect to Europe – in the process specifying what is meant
by the construct ‘Europe’ – but that, too, only implicitly, yet consistently with
a reference to somewhere: Avignon, Paris, Constance, Venice and in other
specific, concrete and distant centres of civilisation.
The theme of peripherality, distance and closeness, is also (but, in this case,
without paradox) a direct outcome of the attentiveness by our colleagues
working in Poland, Germany, Hungary and elsewhere in East Central Europe
itself, to exactly the same seismic changes in history and historiography
which have affected the successive phases of interest in East Central Europe
among North American medievalists. Simply put, the transitions that have
occurred in ‘our’, North American historiography – with Paul Knoll squarely
at their centre – have had an impact ‘over there’, and have, moreover, coin-
cided with a burst of interest, in that same academic world ‘over there’, in an
explicitly comparative and interdisciplinary approach. We should add that,
in its turn, that comparative and interdisciplinary approach, in East Central
Europe, has had its own, very long history – a history brutally interrupted
by the Second World War and Stalinism, but, at least in Polish scholarship,
clearly visible and vibrant once more from the late 1950s onwards.
An excellent example of work in that vein is the participation in 1985
by a very prominent group of Hungarian and Polish economic and social
historians (Henryk Samsonowicz, Antoni Mączak, Laszlo Mákkai, Andrzej
Wyrobisz, Eric Fügedi, Leonid Żytkowicz, István Kiss, Maria Bogucka,
Marian Małowist, Jerzy Topolski, Andrzej Wyczański, Jan Białostocki and
Janusz Tazbir) in a collection of essays elicited largely by the debate between
Immanuel Wallerstein and Robert Brenner – a debate conducted principally in
North America, whose own parameters had been deeply influenced by a long
line of Polish scholars, extending deep into the inter-war period, and most
prominently represented by Jan Rutkowski, Marian Małowist and Witold
Kula.33 It is both symbolic and fitting that one of the two Polish editors of that
1985 collection, Henryk Samsonowicz, opens our own book.34
And so it is not surprising that, as we hoped and intended, the articles
do in fact, reflect and develop this one common, major problem, noted by
colleagues from very different academic cultures. The authors who address
this problem do so on a number of levels, and in terms of a number of crite-
ria. Sometimes the medieval and early modern world really does mean the
world – that is, the then-contemporary known universe, spanning Eurasia and
northern Africa – as Samsonowicz and Myśliwski strive, in their analytical
framework, to establish linkages between the urban network of East Central
Europe and very distant but ultimately very important places and regions
– on this subject, in explicit debt to Janet Abu-Lughod’s model of the later
medieval world system.35
Typically, however, the world-historical level of analysis, suggestive
as it is, yields to comparison and contextualisation on a lower geopolitical
scale, namely Europe. Even in that more localised framework, Samsonowicz
and Myśliwski, again, adopt an unusually broad perspective. Samsonowicz
undertakes his explanation for urbanisation in the Continent’s ‘East’ in terms
of an important, very large-scale absence: of the western Roman Empire of
and its impact, in late antiquity. Myśliwski anchors the specific story of the
very far-flung commercial networks centred on his two cities, Wrocław and
Venice, within the model proposed long ago by Marian Małowist to explain
the permanent divergence between Europe’s ‘West’ and ‘East’, in their
entirety, from the fourteenth century onwards.36
Other colleagues place East Central Europe, or its sub-regions, in a broader
European perspective with reference to lower-level phenomena. This hap-
pens in two ways. Curta and Berend each focus on one aspect of the past
reality which works to distinguish East Central Europe (or, more accurately,
part of it) within the continent as a whole. If, after all the doubts are resolved
by additional archaeological research (as Curta hopes will be the case), those
early-medieval ‘service settlements’ do indeed turn out to have existed in
Poland, Hungary and Bohemia, then we will have pinned down a real, speci-
fiable difference between medieval Europe in general and its ‘East-Centre’
– and, furthermore, a difference within the latter macro-region, because of the
appearance of those ‘settlements’ in those three countries, and not elsewhere.
Berend’s emphasis on the interaction between Christians, Jews, Muslims
and Cumans is specific to East Central Europe, and to one country within
it, because earlier-medieval Hungary is the place where Christians, Jews,
Muslims and Cumans can be found. Of course, viewed from some broader
perspective – for example, with the ‘service settlements’ understood as a
sub-category of a specialised manor, or with those Hungarian four ethnic-
religious groups as an example of inter-ethnic contact – each phenomenon is
comparable to numerous counterparts elsewhere. But the localised variants
are, in their particulars, distinctive.
In contrast, Kłoczowski, Jurek, Szczur, Myśliwski and Samsonowicz all
contextualise East Central Europe with reference to phenomena that are pre-
sumptively similar throughout Europe as a whole. For Samsonowicz and
Myśliwski, those phenomena are urbanisation and trade. It is quite clear that,
say, Samsonowicz’s Varangian trading warrior based in Kiev would have been
at home in an enormous network of other places throughout Europe’s ‘East’,
and the Continent in its entirety; or that those many Venetian merchants and
financiers in Wrocław, or the Wrocław merchants and financiers in Venice,
collectively embodied a single, continent-wide phenomenon: sophisticated,
long-distance economic exchange. For Kłoczowski, Jurek and Szczur, that
phenomenon is something quite different, namely universal Church insti-
tutions, present in, or exerting an impact upon, East Central Europe: the
Dominican province and studium, the episcopal consistory court, and the
papal collector. Of course, such frameworks do not obviate difference: on the
contrary, they highlight it. Myśliwski and Samsonowicz imply a consider-
able variation within their urban and merchant networks, while Kłoczowski,
Jurek and Szczur very explicity note the local, regional and Europe-wide
range in the recruitment, structure and functioning of their respective eccle-
siastical institutions. Nevertheless, these five authors consistently frame that
difference and variety by means of essentially comparable, large-scale phe-
nomena.
These five authors also bridge those large-scale phenomena through one
simple but useful expository technique: beginning their articles by the place-
ment of their subject in the broader perspective of general medieval history.
Szczur begins his article with a mini-essay on the Avignon papacy and on its
financial constraints, possibilities and priorities. Jurek introduces us to the
medieval canon law of marriage, specifically insofar as that law bore upon
the archdiocese of Gniezno, and upon the status of sexual unions among
persons of different religions. Kłoczowski opens his article with a charac-
teristically superb sketch of the Dominican Order, its studia, and their rela-
tionship to other schools, especially universities. Finally, as noted above,
Samsonowicz and Myśliwski begin by situating their urban and merchant
network within two discussions of European economic history – a context
which is further enhanced by Samsonowicz’s brief but vivid invocation of
several theoretical constructs relevant to urbanisation.37
Of our remaining authors – who do not, even implicitly, raise the question
of ‘Europe’ as a part of their context – most present their findings consistently
with that second approach, shared by Kłoczowski, Jurek, Szczur, Myśliwski
and Samsonowicz. Therefore, in its entirety, this book tends to accentuate
similarity or likeness, rather than distinctiveness or difference. From this per-
spective, let us revisit perhaps the most recurrent single protagonist, or actor,
who appears in the articles, namely, the scholar – an actor who is likely to be
learning, teaching and contributing to, and using, a range of disciplines sub-
stantially standardised throughout the Continent, in a range of settings that
is, broadly speaking, similarly standardised – school, city, court, cathedral
chapter, cloister – as (paraphrasing Kłoczowski) Prague becomes like Paris,
and, half a century later, Kraków becomes like Prague.
In addition to various types of protagonists, or actors, some of our authors
report convergence of political ideas. Though he denies them the status of
fully-fledged ‘political thought’, Bak zooms in on some of the political
assumptions apparently held by those important Hungarians who selected
their kings, and who contemplated the awkward question of which crown to
use for that purpose. Banaszkiewicz explores ideas which recur, much earlier
in Europe’s history, in narratives produced over a large number of places and
times in Europe. Implicitly, but quite clearly, we move here toward issues
of medieval European constitutionalism, that it to say, ideas and practices
affecting the balance of power between the ruler and the ruled.
And yet it would be misleading and inaccurate, we think, to suggest that
the fundamental message of our articles, individually or as a book, is some
kind of basic, overarching similarity, or equivalence, or identity, seamlessly
fusing East Central Europe, or some part of it, with the Continent as a whole;
or, more exactly, with its regions to the west, or to the south, which, adapt-
ing Robert Bartlett, we might call Europe’s Frankish and Italian heartlands,
and their long-term successor cultures and polities.38 Lurking behind the pre-
sumptive and the demonstrated common denominators is the subject of the
peripherality of our macro-region and its parts within Europe in its entirety
– or (which is really saying the same thing) the subject of the exact relation-
ship between Europe’s ‘East-Centre’ and its notional ‘core’, or ‘cores’.
We should promptly add that, as it has actually taken shape, this book is not
about that subject. That is to say, we do not have here yet another a collection
of essays about the European ‘frontier’, similar to the volume dedicated to
those subjects by Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay in (once again!) 1989.39
Nor do we have here some other model stressing Europe-wide convergence
across some cultural or political gradient – even though throughout his work,
and again in this book, Jerzy Kłoczowski has amply demonstrated that, in the
course of the medieval and early modern period, such convergence did in fact
occur.40 Nor, on the other hand, is this a book about a permanent state of diver-
sity, or variety, either between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Europe in the Middle
Ages, or within East Central Europe – despite our clear sense, conveyed by
Curta, Berend and Szczur, that ‘service settlements’ (if in fact they existed),
or Jews, Muslims and Cumans interacting, or the collection of Peter’s
Pence, were each specific to East Central Europe, and, furthermore, to one
part of it.
However, an absence of an explicit framing is not the same as an absence
of a real, underlying subject. In fact, Samsonowicz raises the issue of periph-
erality very early in this book, by identifying ‘our’ macro-region (and, by
deduction, its specific dynamics of urbanisation) in terms of the absence of
the Roman Empire in its late classical and early medieval phases. If we posit
(as Samsonowicz implicitly does) the impact of the Roman Empire as one
criterion of full membership in ‘Europe’, then here, right from the start, is one
kind of global peripherality for Europe’s ‘East’ and ‘East-Centre’. In addi-
tion, Samsonowicz develops this subject on a theoretical level, by recourse to
Immanuel Wallerstein’s notion of ‘world-economies’ (économies-mondes)41
– of which some were (and, in a theoretical sense, are) at any one point more
dynamic, more complex, more influential and – though these are, again, not
Samsonowicz’s words – more functional and successful than others.
The insight here is further bolstered from a world-historical perspective,
as Samsonowicz adds that even that initial gold standard for membership
in ‘Europe’, the Roman Empire, ranked low among its own contemporary
‘world-economies’ – such as Byzantium, or the civilisations of East and
South Asia. And so (perhaps as yet another paradox) our book introduces,
early on, a note of civilisational ranking, cultural gradients, and inequality,
differentiating between the world’s macro-regions, all of which produces for
East Central Europe a ruthlessly distant place in the scheme of it all. This
kind of ranking, or distancing, recedes considerably in Samsonowicz’s own
article after its opening pages, and in the book in its entirety. However, the
theme of civilisational distance, within ‘Europe’, remains – albeit, again,
by implication. For example, even though Myśliwski adopts a twin, and in
some sense parallel, focus on Wrocław and Venice, there is simply no ques-
tion about which city was more important – or, to adapt Samsonowicz’s use
of Wallerstein’s concept – which was the centre of one, large, Europe-wide
(or arguably world-wide) économie-monde, and which worked as a bilateral
transit node within that économie-monde. Similarly, for all the intrinsic inter-
est of Dubrovnik, its demand for water, and its citizens and institutions, that
city, as seen by Krekić, was part of a bigger ‘economic world’ centred (again)
upon Venice, and perhaps Naples.
Szczur’s story about the efforts made on Poland’s behalf at Avignon by
Polish diplomats and friendly papal collectors is positively driven by the gra-
dient of papal indifference: the sense, at the court on the Rhône, that Poland’s
problems with the Teutonic Order were a ‘local conflict’, not worthy of a
prompt (if any) remedy – until the conflict’s escalating notoriety, the implica-
tions for a continuous flow Peter’s Pence and other papal revenues, the Poles’
and their friends’ diplomatic skill and persistence, and a gradual but per-
ceptible restoration of regional Piast power together prompted a measure of
action. Jurek’s entire subject hinges on the relationship between the general
norms of European canon law and its meanings and uses in Poland; a rela-
tionship which, he implies, entailed a complicated and protracted process,
which (following Jurek) we might mark out with the 1267 visit by the papal
legate Guido, and, from that occasion, all the way back to the Fourth Lateran
Council, then chronologically forward to the fifteenth-century synodal stat-
utes of Archbishop Nicholas Trąba, and, ultimately, to Poznań.42
Kłoczowski’s tracing of the presence, adaptation and function of one kind
of standardised, pan-European institution, the Dominican studium and prov-
ince, is lodged in, and crucially depends on, the distinction between (if we
may paraphrase him) three zones, encompassing the continent in its entirety:
the provinces comprising the Order’s, and Europe’s, core; the provinces situ-
ated, effectively, beyond Europe altogether; and, in between, the provinces
in – as he again calls it here – the ‘younger’ Europe, which, among other
regions, included the Polish province.43 Kłoczowski carefully describes the
meaning of that differentiation of Europe into zones, by using the studium
as a test case. Although he implies convergence (as he says, in its definitive,
fifteenth-century form the Dominican studium in Poland was ‘normal’ by
the standards of Europe), there is, as with Myśliwski, absolutely no question
that Kłoczowski understands that context, at least in large part, in terms of
proximity to, or distance from, some notional core or centre – except that, in
Kłoczowski’s case, this core or centre is not at all notional, but fully speci-
fied. It is Paris.
We do, therefore, have before us a book that, at least among its other organ-
ising themes, is indeed about frontier and core, difference and convergence,
variety and likeness, and – resulting from all this – about inclusion: historical
inclusion in the medieval and early modern past, conceptual inclusion today.
Now, as Górecki has noted in the opening chapter, inclusion – articulated as
a positive, self-conscious desire for the historian, and as an exhortation to
others – has not been one of Paul Knoll’s rhetorical trademarks. Right from
the beginning, he has not advocated inclusion: he has practised it – by think-
ing and writing about Poland and East Central Europe as a subject important
because, from the perspective of an excellent historian, the past realities to be
discovered there are, above all, profoundly and intensely interesting.
Over the course of several decades, the dynamics of the profession – to
which Paul Knoll has so materially contributed – have shaped that interest
toward the subjects with which we have just now been concerned. This has
happened both in North America and in Europe’s centre. And so we remain,
cheerfully, in that permanent, not readily resolvable, but ultimately creative
tension concerning the best placement of East Central Europe’s history – a
tension which these essays do not resolve, but which they refresh. In this
context, it is notable that, with Nancy van Deusen’s article, the book closes on
an usually strong and explicit plea for inclusion: an inclusion not of Poland
or East Central Europe in our conception of the continent as a whole, but of a
long neglected discipline – music – into our fuller appreciation of that com-
mon, school-, city-, and court-based culture which is this book’s common
subject.
Notes
1 A road well travelled

1 G. Boyce, R. Dean, R. Hunt and B. Lyon, ‘S. Harrison Thomson’, Speculum 51
(1976), 578–80.
2 ‘The face of crisis: Eastern Europe in the 1960s’, Purdue Alumnus 55 (1968),
1–11.
3 P. Freedman and G.M. Spiegel, ‘Medievalisms old and new: the rediscovery of
Alterity in North American medieval studies’, American Historical Review 103
(1998), 677–704; Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R.L.
Benson and G. Constable (Cambridge, MA, 1982); Spiegel, ‘In the mirror’s
eye: the writing of medieval history in North America’, in Spiegel, The Past
as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore,
MD, 1997), pp. 57–80; W.C. Brown and P. Górecki, ‘What conflict means:
the making of medieval conflict studies in the United States, 1970–2000’, in
Conflict in Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture,
ed. Brown and Górecki (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 1–35.
4 I do not mean to direct this comment at any colleague – cited in the preceding
note, elsewhere in this essay, or not cited here; my awareness of the risks
stems from my own historiographical work. For my own portrayal of one
extraordinary instance of an older and a younger scholar – Richard Southern
and Robert Bartlett – see P. Górecki, ‘“Tworzenie Europy” Roberta Bartletta w
kontekście anglosaskich badań historycznych nad początkami i kształtowaniem
się Europy’, in R. Bartlett, Tworzenie Europy. Podbój, kolonizacja i przemiany
kulturowe, 950–1350, trans. G. Waluga (Poznań, 2003), pp. 505–15, at 508–9 (a
historiographical afterword to a translation of Bartlett, The Making of Europe:
Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 [Princeton, NJ,
1993]).
5 Boyce et al., ‘Thomson’, pp. 578–9; S. Harrison Thomson, ‘Learning at the court
of Charles IV’, Speculum 25 (1950), 1–20. For Paul Knoll’s own reflections
on Thomson, see ‘Learning in late Piast Poland’, Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 120 (1976), 136–57, at 157 (n. 135); ‘Foreword’, in
T. Manteuffel, The Formation of the Polish State: The Period of Ducal Rule,
963–1194, trans. and introd. A. Gorski (Detroit, MI, 1982), pp. 7–20, at 8;
‘Economic and political institutions on the Polish–German frontier in the
Middle Ages: action, reaction, interaction’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed.
R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989), pp. 151–74, at 151 (n. 1).
6 A. Lewis, ‘The closing of the medieval frontier’, Speculum 33 (1958), 475–83;
on this subject, and its own intellectual legacy, see R.I. Burns, ‘The significance
of the frontier in the Middle Ages’, in Bartlett and MacKay, Medieval Frontier
Societies, pp. 306–30; and, briefly, Górecki, ‘Tworzenie’, pp. 505–6, 509, 511,
513.
7 E.A.R. Brown, ‘The tyranny of a construct: feudalism and historians of medieval
Europe’, American Historical Review 79 (1974), 1063–88.
8 T.N. Bisson, ‘The “feudal revolution”’, Past and Present 142 (Feb. 1994), 6–42;
S.D. White, ‘Debate: the “feudal revolution”, II’, Past and Present 152 (Aug.
1996), 205–23.
9 For an excellent example, see S.D. White, ‘Tenth-century courts at Mâcon and
the perils of structuralist history: re-reading Burgundian judicial institutions’,
in Brown and Górecki, Conflict, pp. 37–68, in its entirety, with my point
additionally illustrated by n. 2 at pp. 37–8.
10 L.J. Simon, ‘Preface’, in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle
Ages: Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns, S.J., vol.1., ed. Simon (Leiden,
1995), pp. xi–xxvi, at xi–xx; for a survey of the literature on Germany, see
P.J. Geary, Medieval Germany in America, German Historical Institute Annual
Lecture 8 (Washington, DC, 1996).
11 Górecki, ‘Tworzenie’, p. 509.
12 J. Kłoczowski, ‘Oskar Halecki (1891–1973)’, in Nation and History: Polish
Historians from the Enlightenment to the Second World War, ed. P. Brock,
J. Stanley and P. Wróbel (Toronto, 2006), pp. 429–42, at 431, 433, 435–40;
P. Górecki, ‘Medieval “east colonization” in post-war North American and
British historiography’, in Historiographical Approaches to Medieval
Colonization of East Central Europe: A Comparative Analysis against the
Background of Other European Interethnic Colonization Processes in the
Middle Ages, ed. J.M. Piskorski (Boulder, CO, and New York, 2002), pp. 26–61,
at 30–5, 39–42; J. Keep, ‘Professor Peter Brock (1920–2006)’, Slavonic and
East European Review 85 (2007), 322–4.
13 ‘Poland as Antemurale Christianitatis in the late Middle Ages’, Catholic
Historical Review 60 (1974), 381–401; ‘The European context of sixteenth-
century Prussian humanism’, Journal of Baltic Studies 22 (1991), 5–28, at 5–6.
14 ‘Echoes of the New World in the international rivalries of East Central Europe’,
in First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, ed.
F. Chiappelli, M.J.B. Allen and R.L. Benson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA,
1976), pp. 279–84; ‘Polish–German frontier’, especially pp. 152–3, 159–64,
172–3.
15 ‘Echoes’, p. 283; ‘Louis the Great and Casimir of Poland’, in Louis the Great:
King of Hungary and Poland, ed. S.B. Vardy, G. Grosschmid and L.S. Domonkos
(Boulder, CO, 1986), pp. 105–27, at 112–3; ‘Prussian humanism’, pp. 9–13, 17;
‘Poland’, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. H.J. Hildebrand, 4 vols.
(New York, 1996), 3:283–8.
16 ‘Władysław Łokietek and the restoration of the Regnum Poloniae’, Medievalia
et Humanistica 17 (1966), 51–78, at 52; ‘Casimir the Great and the University
of Cracow’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 16 (1968), 232–49, at
232–3; The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe,
1320–1370 (Chicago, IL, 1972), pp. 1–3, 14–15; ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’,
pp. 384–6; ‘The world of the young Copernicus: society, science, and the
university’, in Science and Society: Past, Present, and Future, ed. N.H. Steneck
Notes 215
(Ann Arbor, MI, 1975), pp. 19–44, at 19–20 (with an important qualification at
35, n. 4); ‘Learning’, pp. 136–7; ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’, Polish Review 21
(1982), 3–28, at 5; ‘National consciousness in medieval Poland’, Ethnic Groups
10 (1993), 65–84, at 67–71; ‘Literary production at the University of Cracow
in the fifteenth century’, in The Development of Literate Mentalities in East
Central Europe, ed. A. Adamska and M. Mostert (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 217–46,
at 218.
17 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, pp. 51–2; ‘Casimir the Great and the university’,
pp. 232–3; Rise, p. 14; ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’, p. 385; ‘Learning’, p. 136;
‘Feudal Poland: division and reunion’, Slavic Review 23 (1978), 40–52, at 40.
18 Rise, p. 15; ‘Learning’, p. 137; ‘Feudal Poland’, pp. 43–5, 47–8.
19 ‘The urban development of medieval Poland, with particular reference to
Kraków’, in The Urban Society of Eastern Europe in Premodern Times, ed. B.
Krekić (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1987), pp. 63–136, especially 64–76;
‘Polish–German frontier’; ‘Editors’ introduction: in cooperation with Wojciech
Polak’ (co-authored with F. Schaer), in Gesta Principum Polonorum: The Deeds
of the Princes of the Poles, trans. P. Knoll and F. Schaer, preface T.N. Bisson
(Budapest, 2003), pp. xix–lxv, especially xxiv–xxxiii.
20 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, pp. 52–4, 59–61, and elsewhere.
21 ‘The stabilization of the Polish western frontier under Casimir the Great, 1333–
1370’, Polish Review 12 (1967), 3–29.
22 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, pp. 59–61; Rise, pp. 121–42; ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’,
pp. 387–92; ‘Louis the Great’, pp. 110–4.
23 Rise, pp. 26–7, 56.
24 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, pp. 65, 67; Rise, pp. 37–9.
25 ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’, p. 395; ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 21; ‘The arts
faculty at the University of Cracow at the end of the fifteenth century’, in
The Copernican Achievement, ed. R.S. Westman (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
CA, 1975), pp. 137–64, at 139–40; ‘Jadwiga and education’, Polish Review
44 (1999), 419–31; ‘Saints, studia, and scholarship’, Polish Review 45 (2000),
217–34, at 218, 222–6; Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland: A History
of Collecting and Patronage, ed. L. Winters (New Haven, CT, 2002), pp. 29–43,
at 29–30; ‘Literary Production’, pp. 219–20.
26 ‘Casimir the Great and the university’, p. 234; Rise, pp. 5–6, 233–4; ‘Antemurale
Christianitatis’, p. 395; ‘Learning’, pp. 153–5.
27 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 29; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 152; ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’,
pp. 6–7, 12–14, 18, 22; ‘The University of Cracow and the Conciliar
Movement’, in Rebirth, Reform, and Resilience: Universities in Transition,
1300–1700, ed. J.M. Kittelson and P.J. Transue (Columbus, OH, 1984),
pp. 190–212, at 194, 198, 207–8; ‘National consciousness’, pp. 72, 75–6; ‘Italian
humanism in Poland: the role of the University of Kraków in the fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries’, in Renaissance Culture in Context: Theory and
Practice, ed. J.R. Brink and W.F. Gentrup (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 164–75, at
164; ‘Jadwiga’, p. 232; Leonardo, p. 33; ‘Literary production’, p. 233.
28 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 34; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 149, 155; ‘Prussian humanism’,
pp. 5–6, 16, 19.
29 Rise, p. 6; ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 29–30; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 146, 152; ‘Jan
Długosz and his “Banderia Prutenorum”’, Polish Review 25 (1980), 93–7; ‘Jan
Długosz, 1480–1980’; ‘National consciousness’, pp. 75–7; ‘Jadwiga’, pp. 421,
428.
30 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 22–3, 29; ‘Learning’, pp. 139–43; ‘Literary production’,
pp. 237–40.
31 ‘Saints, studia, and scholarship’.
32 In alphabetical order: Janusz Bieniak, Czesław Deptuła, Aleksander Gieysztor,
Andrzej Feliks Grabski, Roman Heck, Jerzy Kłoczowski, Brygida Kürbis,
Marian Kutzner, Julian Lewański, Henryk Łowmiański, Kazimierz Myśliński,
Stanisław Russocki, Henryk Samsonowicz, Władysław Seńko, Jerzy
Strzelczyk, Stanisław Trawkowski and Aleksandra Witkowska. This group
includes contributors to, and editors of, two books of essays, jointly reviewed
here: Polska dzielnicowa i zjednoczona. Państwo – społeczeństwo – kultura, ed.
A. Gieysztor (Warsaw, 1972), and Polska w okresie rozdrobnienia feudalnego,
ed. H. Łowmiański (Wrocław, 1973).
33 ‘Feudal Poland’, pp. 50–1, nn. 33–5.
34 ‘Banderia Prutenorum’ and ‘In search of the Battle of Grunwald’, Polish
Review 28 (1983), 67–76, reviewing, respectively, S. Ekdahl, Die ‘Banderia
Prutenorum’ des Jan Długosz. Eine Quelle zur Schlacht bei Tannenberg
1410 (Göttingen, 1976), and Ekdahl, Die Schlacht bei Tannenberg 1410.
Quellenkritische Untersuchungen, vol. 1: Einführung und Quellenlage
(Berlin, 1982).
35 Spannungen und Widersprüche. Gedenkschrift für František Graus, ed.
S. Burghartz et al. (Sigmaringen, 1992); František Graus – člověk a historik.
Sbornik z pracovního semináře Výzkumnégo centra pro dějiny vědy konanégo
10. prosince 2002, Práce z dějin vědy 8, ed. Z. Beneš, B. Jiroušek and A. Kostlán
(Prague, 2004); P. Horská, ‘Prolegomena k živopisu Františka Grause’, Soudobé
Dějiny 12 (2005), 774–7; Cultus et cognitio. Studia z dziejów średniowiecznej
kultury – Aleksandrowi Gieysztorowi w czterdziestolecie pracy naukowej, ed.
S.K. Kuczyński et al. (Warsaw, 1976); Kultura średniowieczna i staropolska.
Studia ofiarowane Aleksandrowi Gieysztorowi w pięćdziesięciolecie pracy
naukowej, ed. D. Gawinowa (Warsaw, 1991); R. Jarocki, Opowieść o Alekandrze
Gieysztorze (Warsaw, 2001); Historiae peritus. Księga Jubileuszowa Profesora
Jerzego Kłoczowskiego – Część 2, ed. H. Gapski (Lublin, 1998), pp. 25–105,
186–213, 287–302.
36 Manteuffel, Formation.
37 ‘Foreword’, pp. 12–16, 20; see Wieki średnie. Medium Aevum. Prace ofiarowane
Tadeuszowi Manteufflowi w 60 rocznicę urodzin, ed. A. Gieysztor, M.H. Serejski
and S. Trawkowski (Warsaw, 1962).
38 ‘Foreword’, pp. 10–13.
39 Ibid, pp. 7–10.
40 The editors owe special thanks to János Bak for describing Paul’s involvement
with the CEU, in a personal communication.
41 Karoli IV imperatoris Romanorum vita ab eo seipso conscripta et hystoria nova
de sancto Wenceslao martyre: Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and His
Legend of St. Wenceslas, ed. B. Nagy and F. Schaer, introd. F. Seibt (Budapest,
2001); Gesta Principum Polonorum (n. 19 above).
42 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, p. 51; ‘Casimir the Great and the university’, p. 233.
43 ‘Władysław Łokietek’; ‘Polish Western Frontier’; ‘Casimir the Great and the
university’; Rise.
44 ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’; ‘Young Copernicus’; ‘Arts faculty’.
45 ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’, pp. 382–6.
46 ‘Learning’.
Notes 217
47 ‘Casimir the Great and the university’.
48 Ibid, pp. 233–5; among the earlier articles, see ‘Władysław Łokietek’,
pp. 56–8, 64, 78; ‘Polish western frontier’, pp. 9–15, 20–3, 25–6, 28.
49 ‘Casimir the Great and the university’, pp. 235–7.
50 Ibid, pp. 238–49.
51 Ibid, pp. 238–41, 248.
52 Ibid, pp. 239–46.
53 Ibid, pp. 246–8.
54 Ibid, pp. 240–1, 243–6, 247–8.
55 ‘The Papacy at Avignon and university foundations’, in The Church in a Changing
Society: Conflict, Reconciliation or Adjustment? Proceedings of the CIHEC
Conference in Uppsala, August 17–21, 1977 (Uppsala, 1978), pp. 192–6.
56 Ibid, pp. 193–5.
57 ‘Prussian humanism’, pp. 6–15, 17–20.
58 ‘Italian humanism in Poland’.
59 ‘Louis the Great’.
60 ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’; ‘Jadwiga’.
61 Nn. 24–9 above.
62 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 22–5, 26–7, 29–34; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 139, 145–9,
150, 152–5.
63 ‘Young Copernicus’, in its entirety; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 140–3, and, for impact on
particular scholars, the entire remainder.
64 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 22; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 145, n. 20.
65 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 21; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 139–40 (n. 5); ‘Learning’,
pp. 145–6.
66 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 22; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 146–7; ‘Literary production’,
p. 222.
67 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 23–4; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 147, nn. 25, 27; ‘Literary
production’, p. 222, n. 23.
68 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 22; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 144–5.
69 ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 145–6.
70 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 24; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 147–9 (n. 29), 150 (n. 38);
‘Literary production’, pp. 223–4 (n. 25), 229.
71 ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 150–1; ‘Literary production’, pp. 226, 240–1.
72 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 24–5; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 148–9 (n. 30); ‘Literary
Production’, pp. 224–5 (n. 27).
73 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 27–8; ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’,
pp. 194–7; ‘National consciousness’, pp. 72–4; ‘Literary production’, pp. 232–3
(nn. 49–50).
74 ‘Jadwiga’, pp. 426–7, 430; ‘Saints, studia, and scholarship’, p. 224; ‘Literary
production’, pp. 231–2.
75 ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’, pp. 5–6; ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’,
pp. 201–2; ‘Jadwiga’, p. 431; ‘Saints, studia, and scholarship’, p. 233.
76 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 28; ‘Jadwiga’, p. 426.
77 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 30–1; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 36; Leonardo, p. 35; ‘Italian
humanism in Poland’, pp. 165–6.
78 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 31; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 152–4; Leonardo, p. 35; ‘Italian
humanism in Poland’, pp. 166–7.
79 ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’, pp. 201–3, 206–7; ‘Literary production’,
pp. 240, 242–4.
80 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 32–3; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 142–3; ‘Literary production’,
p. 221.
81 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 33–4; ‘National consciousness’, p. 74; ‘Jadwiga’,
pp. 424–6, 429; ‘Literary production’, pp. 234–5.
pp. 221–5.
pp. 226–7.
84 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 25–7; ‘Arts faculty’, p. 143, 149–50, 155; ‘Literary
85 ‘Young Copernicus’, p. 31, 33–4; ‘National consciousness’, p. 74; ‘Jadwiga’,
p. 429; ‘Literary production’, pp. 230–4.
86 ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 27–8, 31; ‘National consciousness’, pp. 72, 74;
‘Jadwiga’, p. 426; ‘Literary production’, pp. 231–3, 236–45.
87 ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’, pp. 382–6; ‘Polish–German frontier’, pp. 151–3,
155–8, 160–4; ‘National consciousness’, pp. 67–71.
88 ‘Casimir the Great and the university’, pp. 238–41, 248; ‘Young Copernicus’,
p. 20; ‘Arts faculty’, pp. 140–2; ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’, pp. 17–19; ‘Urban
development’, pp. 67–9, 74–7, 79–90, 93–4, 100–6; ‘Jadwiga’, pp. 427–9.
89 ‘Poland’, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J.R. Strayer, 13 vols. (New York,
1982–89), 9:716–31; ‘Poland’, Encyclopedia; Leonardo, pp. 29–43.
90 Nn. 30–3 above.
91 N. 39 above.
92 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, pp. 64–6, 67–8; ‘Polish western frontier’, pp. 7, 12–13,
19–20; ‘Casimir the Great and the university’, pp. 237, 240–3, 245; ‘Antemurale
Christianitatis’, pp. 387, 392–4; ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 27–8; ‘Learning’, pp.
144–5; ‘Papacy at Avignon’, pp. 193–5; ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’, pp. 11–13;
‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’; ‘Jadwiga’, pp. 424–5; ‘Saints, studia,
and scholarship’, pp. 231–4; ‘Literary production’, pp. 219, 231–3, 236–45.
93 ‘Papacy at Avignon’; ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’; ‘Literary
94 ‘Władysław Łokietek’, pp. 59–61, 64–6, 67–8, 71–4, 77; ‘Polish western
frontier’, pp. 4–6, 9–15, 18, 21–2, 25–7; ‘Casimir the Great and the university’,
p. 35; ‘Young Copernicus’, pp. 27–8; ‘Learning’, pp. 138–9; ‘Feudal Poland’,
p. 45; ‘Banderia Prutenorum’; ‘Jan Długosz, 1480–1980’, pp. 4, 8–9, 14–15,
20; ‘Battle of Grunwald’; ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’, pp. 191–8;
‘National consciousness’, pp. 70–3; ‘Literary production’, pp. 217–8, 237.
95 ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’, pp. 204–5; ‘Literary production’,
pp. 231–2.
96 ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’, pp. 198–205.
97 Ibid, pp. 201–3; ‘Literary production’, pp. 240, 242–4.
98 ‘Cracow and the Conciliar Movement’, pp. 204–5.
99 ‘Literary production’, pp. 231–3, 239.
100 H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd ed., Oxford, 1994), pp. 123, 128–36.
101 ‘Foreword’, pp. 7–9.
102 A recent example is The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350,
ed. R.F. Berkhofer III, A. Cooper and A. Kosto (Aldershot, 2005), a tribute to
Thomas N. Bisson.
103 J. Kłoczowski, Młodsza Europa. Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia w kręgu
cywilizacji chrześcijańskiej średniowiecza (Warsaw, 1998), on which metaphor
Notes 219
and its significance see Górecki, ‘Tworzenie’, pp. 511–14; Górecki, ‘A View
from a Distance’, Law and History Review 21 (2003), 367–76, at 369–70.
104 ‘Foreword’, p. 9.
105 On that early spike of interest, see Górecki, ‘East colonization’, pp. 32–3,
43–52; Górecki, ‘Tworzenie’, pp. 510–1.
106 R.C. Hoffmann, Land, Liberties, and Lordship in a Late Medieval Countryside:
Agrarian Structures and Change in the Duchy of Wrocław (Philadelphia, PA,
1989).
107 Bartlett and MacKay, Medieval Frontier Societies.
108 ‘Polish–German Frontier’.
109 Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, ed. D. Abulafia and N. Berend
(Aldershot, 2002); Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis: Frontiers in Late
Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. F. Curta (Turnhout, 2005).
110 ‘Feudal Poland’; ‘Poland’, Dictionary, pp. 716–23; ‘Urban development’,
pp. 65–76, 78–89; ‘Polish–German frontier’, pp. 153–68.
111 ‘Poland’, Encyclopedia; Leonardo, pp. 31–3, 36–9, 43.
112 ‘Poland’, Dictionary, pp. 717–21; ‘Urban development’, pp. 67–8; ‘Polish–
German frontier’, pp. 153, 158–9, 166–7.
113 ‘Poland’, Dictionary, pp. 721–2; ‘Urban development’, pp. 66–9, 78–89;
‘Polish–German frontier’, p. 153.
114 ‘Urban development’, pp. 70–3; ‘Polish–German frontier’, p. 153, n. 5.
115 ‘Polish–German frontier’, pp. 154–5, 158.
116 Ibid, pp. 155–8.
2 The city and the trade route in the early Middle Ages
1 Out of an extensive literature on this subject, the following are a few especially
important positions: M. Lombard, ‘L’évolution urbaine pendant le Haut Moyen
Age’, Annales E.S.C. 12 (1957), pp. 7, 26; Studien zu den Anfängen des
europaeischen Städtewesens, ed. V.E. Maschke and J. Sydow (Sigmaringen,
1975), pp. 12ff.; Frühgeschichte der europäeischen Stadt, ed. V.H. Brackmann
and J. Herrmann (Berlin, 1991), pp. 3, 137ff.; L. Leciejewicz, Miasta Słowian
północnopołabskich (Wrocław, 1968), p. 18; E. Ennen, Die europäische Stadt
des Mittelalters (Göttingen, 1972), pp. 23ff.
2 Isidore of Seville, ‘Historia Gothorum, Wandalorum, Sueborum’, MGH Auct.
ant., vol. 11 (Berlin, 1894), p. 298.
3 W. Hensel, Archeologia o początkach miast słowiańskich (Wrocław, 1963),
p. 10; J. Hines, ‘North-Sea trade and the proto-urban sequence’, in Origins of
Medieval Towns in Temperate Europe (Archaeologia Polona 32 [1994]), p. 7.
4 See n. 3, and L. Leciejewicz, Nowa postać świata. Narodziny średniowiecznej
cywilizacji europejskiej (Wrocław, 2000), p. 444.
5 Out of the very rich literature on this subject, let me cite, by way of example:
Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, A.D.
1–1300 (Copenhagen, 1997), passim; Die Skandinavier und Europa 800–
1200 (Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 26–7 [1994–5]), pp. 57, 73;
J. Callmer, Urbanization in Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, c. A.D. 700–1100
(Copenhagen, 1960), pp. 3ff.; Society and Trade in the Baltic during the Viking
Age, ed. V.S.-O. Lindquist and B. Radke, Acta Visbyensia 7 (Visby, 1985); K.
Randsborg, ‘Les activites internationales des Vikings. Raids ou commerce?’
Annales E.S.C. 36 (1981) 862; Der Handel der Karoliner- und Wikingerzeit, ed.
K. Duewel, H. Jahnkuhn, H. Siems and D. Timpe (Göttingen, 1987); W. Duczko,
Viking Rus’: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe
(Leiden, 2004); H. Jahnkuhn, Die Wikingerzüge und kulturellen Strömungen
im Ostseegebiet während des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1970), p. 1;
K. Heller, Die Normannen in Osteuropa (Berlin, 1993), especially p. 91.
6 This construct, coined by I. Wallerstein in ‘The West, capitalism and the modern
world-system’, Review F. Braudel Center 15 (1992), p. 561, is also discussed by
J.L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1200–
1350 (New York 1989). Compare F. Braudel, Les structures du quotidien. Le
possible et l’impossible (Paris 1979), p. 387.
7 H. Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris, 1937); on this subject, compare
R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of
Europe (London, 1983), p. 169.
8 H. Samsonowicz, ‘Więzi społeczne we wczesnym średniowieczu polskim’,
Społeczeństwo Polski średniowiecznej 10 (2004), 61ff.
9 The following summary is based on toll schedules compiled between the
tenth and the mid-thirteenth centuries, as follows: Raffelstetten: Codex
diplomaticus Regni Bohemiae, vol. 1, ed. G. Friedrich (Prague, 1904), no. 31;
Pomnichów: Zbiór ogólny przywilejów i spominków mazowieckich, ed. J.K.
Kochanowski (Warsaw, 1919), no. 88; Oleśno: Kodeks Dyplomatyczny Śląska,
ed. K. Maleczyński and A. Skowrońska, vol. 3 (Wrocław, 1964), no. 309; Trier:
Historia Trevirensis diplomatica et pragmatica, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1750), no. 249;
Koblenz: Mittelrheinisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 2 (Koblenz, 1856), no. 242;
Gdańsk: Pommerellsches Urkundenbuch, ed. M. Perlbach (Danzig, 1881), no.
33; Szczecin: Codex Pomeraniae Diplomaticus, vol. 1, no 481. This information
is supplemented by the story about the attempt to move the residence of the
prince of the Rus’ to Pereiaslavets; privilege for the merchants of Regensburg;
and information conveyed by Arab writers: Poviest’ vremennykh let, ed.
F. Sielicki (Wrocław, 1968), p. 259; V. Vasileskii, ‘Drevnaia torgovla’, Archiv
für Kunde der österrechischen Geschichtsquellen 10 (1853), 87; Źródła arabskie
do dziejów Słowiańszczyzny, ed. T. Lewicki, vol. 1 (Wrocław 1956), especially
p. 69, the account of Ibrahim ibn-Ya’qub.
10 Zbiór ogólny przywilejów, no. 88.
11 M.P. Lesnikov, Der hansische Pelzhandel zu Beginn des 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin,
1961), p. 219; A.A. Khoronkevich, Torgovla Velikogo Novgoroda s Pribal’tikoi i
zapadnoi Evropoi v XIV–XV vekakh (Moscow, 1963), pp. 45ff.
12 D. Kattinger, ‘Tyska och gotländska köpmänhandel po Novgorod och i England
under 1100–1200-tallet’, Gotläntsk Arkiv 64 (1992), 131; H. Samsonowicz,
Późne średniowiecze miast nadbałtyckich (Warsaw, 1968), p. 20.
13 H. Samsonowicz, ‘Le commerce de drap aux foires de Pologne et des pays
limitrophes du XIVe au XVIe siècles’, in Produzione, commercio e consumo dei
panni di lana (Florence, 1976), p. 613.
14 See P. Urbańczyk’s research project concerning the mission of Saint Adalbert,
supported by the Foundation for Polish Science (Fundacja Nauki Polskiej).
15 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. G. Moravcsik
(Budapest, 1949), pp. 33ff.
16 See n. 20 below, and the account of Ibrahim ibn-Ya’qub, n. 9.
17 Hansisches Urkundenbuch, ed. K. Koehbaum, vol. 3 (Halle, 1876), no. 532–3.
18 H. Samsonowicz, ‘Szlak bałtycko-czarnomorski w XIII–XIV wieku’, in
Balticum, ed. Z.H. Nowak (Toruń, 1992), p. 286.
Notes 221
19 Primary Chronicle, p. 259.
20 T. Lewicki, ‘Znaczenie handlowe Drohiczyna nad Bugiem we wczesnym
średniowieczu i zagadkowe plomby ołowiane znalezione w tej miejscowości’,
Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej 2 (1956), 289.
21 See the reference to ibn-Ya’qub in n. 9 above.
22 Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed.
B. Schmeidler, MGH S.S. rer. Germ., vol. 2 (Hanover, 1917), bk. 1, ch. 60, and
bk. 2, ch. 22.
23 Snorre Sturlason, Heimskringla, ed. F. Jonson (Copenhagen, 1909), p. 564.
24 Ibn-Hurdadbeh, ‘O Słowianach wschodnich’, in Lewicki, Źródła, p. 75.
25 G.v.d. Ropp, Kaufmannsleben zur Zeit der Hanse (Leipzig, 1907), p. 27.
26 See n. 20 above.
27 Grossmähren und die Anfänge der tschechoslowakische Staatlichkeit, ed. J.
Poulik and B. Chropovsky (Prague, 1986); Leciejewicz, Nowa postać świata, p.
289; Velka Morava mezi východem a zapadem (Brno, 2001).
3 The archaeology of early medieval service settlements in Eastern Europe

1 In that sense, the phrase is the equivalent of what is known in the English-
language archaeological literature as a ‘subservient’, ‘subordinate’ or ‘attendant’
settlement. See C. Loveluck, ‘Rural settlement hierarchy in the age of
Charlemagne’, in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. J. Story (Manchester,
2005), pp. 230–58.
2 R. Grodecki, ‘Książęca włość trzebnicka na tle organizacji majątków książęcych
w Polsce XII w.’, Kwartalnik Historyczny 26–7 (1912–4), 7–8, 10. Grodecki’s
position was criticised by Kazimierz Tymieniecki, who insisted instead that
service settlements existed long before the emergence of the ducal or royal
estates (that is, before the rise of the Piast state) and that their existence may be
explained by economic, not political factors. See K. Tymieniecki, ‘Organizacja
rzemiosła polskiego a geneza miast polskich’, Studia wczesnośredniowieczne 3
(1955), 9–86.
3 K. Buczek, Książęca ludność służebna w Polsce wczesnofeudalnej (Wrocław,
1958).
4 J. Stanislav, ‘Za slovenského sociálneho miestopisu’, Jazykovedný sborník 5
(1951), 58–95; P. Ratkoš, ‘Velkomoravské obdobie v slovenských dejinách’,
Historický Časopis 6 (1958), 3–31. Others pushed the service settlements even far-
ther into the past, arguing for a pre-Moravian, Avar-age origin. See R. Krajčović,
‘Počiatky feudalizmu u nás vo svetle jazykových faktov’, Historický Časopis
4 (1956), 232–3, and Krajčović, ‘Z historickej typológie služobnych osadných
nazvov v Podunajsku’, in O počiatkoch slovenských dejín. Sbornik materiálov, ed.
P. Ratkoš (Bratislava, 1965), pp. 205–52.
5 M. Kučera, ‘K problému ranostredovekej služobníckej organizácie na
Slovensku’, Historický Časopis 12 (1964), 552–71; Kučera, ‘Anmerkungen zur
Dienstorganisation in frühmittelalterlichen Ungarn’, Zborník Filozofickej fakulty
Univerzity Komenského – Historica 21 (1970), 113–27, especially p. 136.
6 B. Krzemieńska and D. Třeštík, ‘Služebná organizace v raně středověkých
Čechách’, Československý Časopis Historický 12 (1964), 628; E. Dąbrowska,
‘Elementy słowiańskie w organizacji służebnej wczesnofeudalnych Węgier’, in
Cultus et cognitio. Studia z dziejow średniowiecznej kultury, ed. A. Gieysztor
and S.K. Kuczyński (Warsaw, 1976), pp. 107–14; K. Modzelewski, Chłopi
w monarchii wczesnopiastowskiej (Wrocław, 1987), pp. 99–106. See also
D. Třeštík and B. Krzemieńska, ‘Zur Problematik der Dienstleute im frühmittel-
alterlichen Böhmen’, in Siedlung und Verfassung Böhmens in der Frühzeit, ed.
F. Graus and H. Ludat (Wiesbaden, 1967), pp. 70–98, especially p. 91: ‘Man sieht
also, daß die Dienstorganisation auf die Staatsbildungen beschränkt ist, die man
als “mitteleuropäisch” bezeichnen konnte.’ For an early critique of this idea, see
F. Graus, ‘Böhmen im 9. bis 11. Jahrhundert (Von der “Stammesgesellschaft”
zum mittelalterlichen “Staat”)’, in Gli Slavi occidentali e meridionali nell’alto
medioevo, vol. 1 (Spoleto, 1983), pp. 195–6. To my knowledge, the first scholar
to link East Central European service settlements to Carolingian models was
László Erdélyi, in ‘Szent István-kori bencések hatása a fold-és kertművelésre
meg az iparra’, in Emlékkönyv Szent István király halálának kilencszázadik
évfordulóján, ed. J. Séredi, vol. 1 (Budapest, 1938), pp. 479–91.
7 K. Modzelewski, ‘La division autarchique du travail à l’échelle d’un état: l’orga-
nisation “ministériale” en Pologne médiévale’, Annales E.S.C. 19 (1964), 1125–
38, especially p. 1127. See also Modzelewski, Organizacja gospodarcza państwa
piastowskiego X–XIII wiek (Wrocław, 1975), p. 6.
8 L.P. Słupecki, ‘Osady służebne pod Sandomierzem i Zawichostem’, Kwartalnik
Historii Kultury Materialnej 40 (1992), 153–66. For Sandomierz as provincial
capital, see A. Buko, ‘Origins of towns in Southern Poland: the example of medi-
eval Sandomierz’, Archaeologia Polona 32 (1994), 171–84. Buko endorsed
Słupecki’s conclusions in his ‘Wczesnośredniowieczna aglomeracja sandomier-
ska. Początki i podstawy rozwoju’, in Centrum i zaplecze we wczesnośrednio-
wiecznej Europie środkowej, ed. S. Moździoch (Wrocław, 1999), pp. 197–206.
9 Modzelewski, ‘La division autarchique’, p. 1128.
10 P. Górecki, ‘Viator to Ascriptitius: rural economy, lordship and the origins of
serfdom in medieval Poland’, Slavic Review 42 (1983), 27.
11 M. Biddle, Nonsuch Palace: The Material Culture of a Noble Restoration
Household (Oxford, 2003).
12 For Poland, see the pertinent remarks of P. Urbańczyk, ‘Early state formation in
East Central Europe’, in East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle
Ages, ed. F. Curta (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005), pp. 139–42.
13 D. Třeštík, ‘Bohemia’s iron year’, in Europe Around the Year 1000, ed.
P. Urbańczyk (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 427–50; J. Strzelczyk, ‘Bohemia and Poland:
two examples of successful Western Slavonic state-formation’, in The New
Cambridge Medieval History, ed. T. Reuter, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 514–
35; Gy. Kristó, Histoire de l’Hongrie médiévale (Rennes, 2000); Kristó, Early
Tranylvania (895–1324) (Budapest, 2003).
14 For the creation of regional centres of power as accompanied by the re-settling
of population groups, see P.M. Barford, The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in
Early Medieval Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY, 2001), p. 266; Barford, ‘Silent cen-
turies: the society and economy of the northwestern Slavs’, in Curta, East Central
and Eastern Europe, p. 83. See also Z. Kurnatowska, ‘Centrum a zaplecze. Model
wielkopolski’, in Moździoch, Centrum i zaplecze, p. 55.
15 H. Ludat, Die ostdeutsche Kietze (Bernburg, 1936); W. Fritze, ‘Zur Frage der
Kietzsiedlungen’, Jahrbuch der Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 12
(1963), 286–90; J.M. Piskorski, ‘Brandenburskie Kietze (chyże) – instytucja
pochodzenia słowiańskiego czy “produkt” władzy askańskiej?’ Przegląd
Historyczny 79 (1988), 301–29.
16 B. Krüger, Die Kietzsiedlungen im nördlichen Mitteleuropa. Beiträge der
Notes 223
Archäologie zu ihrer Altersbestimmung und Wesensdeutung (Berlin, 1962).
For how irrelevant the archaeological evidence is for solving the problem of
the specifically Slavic character of the Kietzsiedlungen, see Sebastian Brather,
‘“Germanische”, “slawische” und “deutsche” Sachkultur des Mittelalters. Probleme
ethnischer Interpretation’, Ethnographisch-archäologische Zeitschrift 37 (1996),
207–8. For the lack of archaeological research on service settlements in Poland,
see A. Buko, Archeologia Polski wczesnośredniowiecznej (Warsaw, 2005), pp.
301, 303. In Bohemia, the only service settlement so far excavated was subordi-
nated to the Benedictine abbey of Sázava; see P. Sommer, ‘Eine Dienstsiedlung
des Benediktiner-Klosters in Sázava’, in Hausbau und Raumstruktur früher Städte
in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. H.-J. Brachmann and J. Klápšte (Prague, 1996), 142–7.
17 Krzemieńska and Třeštík, ‘Zur Problematik der Dienstleute’, p. 74.
18 The archaeological literature on Pliska is enormous and grows exponentially
by the day. For Pliska as the first capital of medieval Bulgaria, see R. Rashev,
‘Pliska: the first capital of Bulgaria’, in Ancient Bulgaria: Papers Presented to the
International Symposium on the Ancient History and Archaeology of Bulgaria,
University of Nottingham, 1981, ed. A.G. Poulter (Nottingham, 1983), pp. 255–
67. Despite the large volume of finds and a complicated stratigraphy, there is
still no synthesis of the excavation results. For a quick orientation, see however
R. Rashev and Ia. Dimitrov, Pliska. 100 godini arkheologicheski razkopki (Shumen,
1999). Conspicuously absent from that book is a chapter on the rural settlements in
the hinterland of Pliska. For the results of recent field surveys, see T. Balabanov,
‘Novootkriti rannosrednovekovni selishta v okolnostite na Pliska’, Problemi na
prabălgarskata istoriia i kultura 1 (1989), 275–90.
19 J. Henning, ‘Vom Herrschaftszentrum zur städtischen Großsiedlung mit agra-
rischer Komponente. Archäologische Nachweise der Landwirtschaft aus dem
frühmittelalterlichen Pliska,’ Pliska-Preslav 8 (2000), 78: the inhabitants of the
tenth- to eleventh-century rural settlements excavated in the Outer Town area sup-
plied food to the inhabitants of the rural manors found to the north-east and east of
the Inner Town. Such settlements must therefore have been ‘Dienstsiedlungen’.
See also Henning, ‘Ways of life in Eastern and Western Europe during the early
Middle Ages: which way was “normal”?’ in Curta, East Central and Eastern
Europe, p. 43.
20 Ibid, p. 47.
21 Ibid, p. 43, n. 12, rejecting the chronology of the settlement at Părvomaiska
cheshma advanced by Balabanov in ‘Novootkriti rannosrednovekovni selishta’,
pp. 281–2.
22 F. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge,
2006), pp. 177–8, 218–20 (for a description of Preslav).
23 Henning, ‘Ways of life’, p. 56, fig. 1.2; P. Petrova, ‘Kăm văprosa za istoriko-
arkheologicheskata topografiia na Vănshniia grad na Pliska po danni na aerome-
toda’, Pliska-Preslav 5 (1992), 69–70, specifically p. 69, fig. 7, and p. 70, fig.
10.
24 P. Georgiev, ‘Ranosrednovekovnoto selishte v raiona na Goliamata bazilika v
Pliska’, Pliska-Preslav 2 (1981), 190–7; Georgiev, ‘Periodizatsiia i khronologiia
na zhivota i stroitelstvoto v raiona na Goliamata Bazilika v Pliska’, in Zwischen
Byzanz und Abendland. Pliska, der östliche Balkanraum und Europa im Spiegel
der Frühmittelalterarchäologie, ed. J. Henning (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), p. 57;
R. Vasilev, ‘Novi danni za rannosrednovekovnoto selishte v raiona na Goliamoto
bazilika v Pliska’, Pliska-Preslav 7 (1995), 27–33.
25 S. Mikhailov, ‘Arkheologicheski materiali ot Pliska’, Izvestiia na
Arkheologicheskiia Institut 20 (1955), 49–181; Mikhailov, ‘Razkopki v Pliska
prez 1959–1961 g.’, Izvestiia na Arkheologicheskiia Institut 26 (1963), 5–46. See
also Mikhailov and A. Milchev, ‘Razkopki v Pliska prez 1955 g.’, Izvestiia na
Arkheologicheskiia Institut 22 (1959), 263–90.
26 R. Vasilev, ‘Rannosrednovekovni selishta VIII–X v. v raiona na Pliska’, in Vtori
mezhdunaroden kongres po bălgaristika, Sofiia, 23 mai–3 iuni 1986 g. Section 6:
Bălgarskite zemi v drevnostta Bălgariia prez srednovekovieto, ed. Kh. Khristov
et al. (Sofia, 1987), p. 401.
27 S. Stanilov, Ia. Dimitrov and I. Iankulov, ‘Prouchvane na selishteto, iugo-
iztochno ot Vătreshniia grad na Pliska’, Problemi na prabălgarskata istoriia i
kultura 2 (1991), 124–37; Stanilov and Dimitrov, ‘Ranniat tip zhilishcha v seli-
shteto iugoiztochno ot Vătreshniia grad na Pliska’, in Henning, Zwischen Byzanz
und Abendland, pp. 41–6. The settlement has been coin-dated to the reign of
Nicephorus I (802–11), but the stratigraphical (and, as a consequence, chrono-
logical) relationship between houses and palisades remains unclear.
28 P. Georgiev, ‘Selishtnata struktura na Aboba-Pliska’, Arkheologiia 41 (2000),
16–30.
29 P. Georgiev, ‘Vodosnabdiavane i kanalizatsiia v dvorcoviia centăr na Pliska’,
Pliska-Preslav 5 (1992), 77–104; S. Vaklinov and M. Vaklinova, ‘Goliamoto
vodokhranilishte na Pliska (Razkopki na Stancho Vaklinov prez 1961 g.)’,
Pliska-Preslav 6 (1993), 5–21.
30 L. Doncheva-Petkova, ‘Peshti za dobivane na zheliazo krai zapadnata krepostna
stena na Pliska’, Pliska-Preslav 7 (1995), 40. See also Doncheva-Petkova, ‘Za
metalodobiva i metaloobrabotvaneto v Pliska’, Arkheologiia 22 (1980), 27–36.
31 L. Doncheva-Petkova and Z. Zlatinova, ‘Stăklarska rabotilnica krai zapadnata
krepostna stena v Pliska’, Arkheologiia 20 (1978), 37–48; K.H. Wedepohl, ‘Die
Glasherstellung im 8./9. Jahrhundert am Asar-dere in Pliska im Vergleich mit
karolingischen Glas des Frankenreiches’, in Henning, Zwischen Byzanz und
Abendland, pp. 93–4.
32 Henning, ‘Ways of life’, p. 44.
33 P. Ettel, ‘Karlburg, ein frühmittelalterlicher Zentralort und Handelsplatz am
Main, Süddeutschland’, in Schutz des Kulturerbes unter Wasser. Veränderungen
europäischer Lebenskultur durch Fluss- und Seehandel. Beiträge zum
internationalen Kongress für Unterwasserarchäologie (IKUWA 99), 18.–21.
Februar 1999 in Sassnitz auf Rügen, ed. H. von Schmettow (Lübstorf, 2000),
pp. 213–20.
34 P. Donat, Gebesee, Klosterhof und königliche Reisestation des 10.–12.
Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1999).
35 A. Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 73–6 (textiles)
and 76–9 (metalworking); H. Steuer, ‘The beginnings of urban economies
among the Saxons’, in The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the
Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. D.H. Green and F. Siegmund
(Woodbridge, 2003), p. 175.
36 M. Federici-Schenardi and R. Fellner, ‘L’habitat rural du Haut Moyen Age de
Develier-Courtételle (Jura, Suisse)’, in Rural Settlements in Medieval Europe:
Papers of the ‘Medieval Europe Brugge 1997’ Conference 11, ed. G. de Boe and
F. Verhaeghe (Zellik, 1997), p. 125.
37 Loveluck, ‘Rural settlement hierarchy’, p. 236.
38 Stanilov and Dimitrov, ‘Ranniat tip zhilishcha’, p. 42. This is in sharp contrast to
Notes 225
the late tenth- and early eleventh-century settlement excavated near the northern
gate of the Inner Town, which produced 22 houses and five silos, all grouped
at a distance from house 19. See T. Balabanov, ‘Zhilishcha pokrai severnata i
iztochnata krepostna stena v Pliska’, Pliska-Preslav 5 (1992), 156.
39 See for example Z. Văzharova, Srednovekovnoto selishte s. Garvăn, Silistrenski
okrăg (VI–XI v.) (Sofia, 1986). The phrase ‘central place’ is used here in the sense
established by the central place theory, derived by economic geographers for the
spatial analysis of retail distribution among centres in a market economy. The cen-
tral-place model had a number of applications in archaeology, but has currently
been abandoned in favour of more sophisticated models. For a brief description,
see C.L. Crumley, ‘Three locational models: an epistemological assessment of
anthropology and archaeology’, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory
2 (1979), 151–7. For an East European application, see S. Moździoch, ‘Miejsca
centralne Polski wczesnopiastowskiej. Organizacja przestrzeni we wczesnym
średniowieczu jako źródło poznania systemu społeczno-gospodarczego’, in
Moździoch, Centrum i zaplecze, pp. 21–51.
40 Kurnatowska, in ‘Centrum a zaplecze’, p. 55, uses Pohansko as an analogy for
service settlements surrounding the regional centres of power of the early Piast
polity in Poland.
41 Fortification: B. Dostál, Břeclav-Pohansko. Velkomoravský velmožsky dvorec
(Brno, 1975). Cemeteries: F. Kalousek, Břeclav-Pohansko I. Velkomoravské
pohrebište u kostela (Brno, 1971); J. Vignatiová, ‘Břeclav-Pohansko-jihozá-
padní předhradi (vyzkum 1960–1962). Kostrové hroby’, Sborník prací filo-
zofické Fakulty Brnenské Univerzity. Rada archeologicko-klasická 26–7
(1977–8), 135–54. For the interpretation of the site, see J. Vignatiová, ‘Zum
Stand der Erforschung des Burgwalls Břeclav-Pohansko’, in Frühmittelalterliche
Machtzentren in Mitteleuropa. Mehrjährige Grabungen und ihre Auswertung.
Symposion Mikulčice, 5.–9. September 1994, ed. Č. Staňa and L. Poláček (Brno,
1996), pp. 261–6; J. Macháček, ‘Rane středověké Pohansko u Břeclavi. Munitio,
palatium, nebo emporium moravských panovníku?’ Archeologické Rozhledy 57
(2005), 100–38.
42 B. Dostál, ‘Ein handwerkliches Areal des 9. Jhs. in Břeclav-Pohansko (Mähren)’,
in Actes du XIIe Congrès international d’études préhistoriques et protohistoriques.
Bratislava, 1–7 septembre 1991, vol. 4, ed. J. Pavuj (Bratislava, 1993), pp. 220–5.
43 E. Opravil, ‘Archäobotanische Funde aus dem Burgwall Pohansko bei Břeclav’,
in Studien zum Burgwall von Mikulčice, ed. L. Poláček, vol. 4 (Brno, 2000),
pp. 165–9.
44 B. Dostál, ‘Vývoj obydlí, sídlišt’ a sídlištní struktury a jižní Morave v dobe
slovanské (6.–10. století)’, in Vývoj obydlí, sídlišt’ a sídlištní struktury a jižní
Morave. XVI Mikulovské sympozium, 1986 (Prague, 1987), p. 24.
45 J. Macháček and M. Kučera, ‘GIS and the excavation of the early medieval
centre in Pohansko, Czech Republic’, in Enter the Past: The E-way into the
Four Dimensions of Cultural Heritage. CAA 2003. Computer Applications and
Quantitative Methods in Archaeology – Proceedings of the 31st Conference,
Vienna, Austria, April 2003 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 246–9. See also P. Dresler and
J. Macháček, ‘The hinterland of an early medieval centre at Pohansko near
Břeclav’, in Das wirtschaftliche Hinterland der frühmittelalterlichen Zentren.
Internationale Tagungen in Mikulčice VI, ed. L. Poláček (Brno, forthcoming). I
am grateful to Jiří Macháček for permission to see the manuscript of this paper
before its publication.
46 B. Kavánová and P. Vitula, ‘Břeclav-Poštorná, pohřebište a sídlište střední doby
hradištní’, in Pravěké a slovanské osídlení Moravy. Sborník k 80. narozeninám
Josefa Poulíka, ed. V. Nekuda (Brno, 1990), pp. 327–52; J. Macháček, ‘Zpráva o
archeologickém výzkumu Břeclav-Líbivá 1995–1998’, in Konference Pohansko
1999. 40 let od zahájení výzkumu slovanského hradiska Břeclav-Pohansko.
Břeclav-Pohansko 3–4. VI. 1999, ed. Z. Měřínský (Brno, 2001), pp. 39–62.
47 P. Ettel, ‘Karlburg – Entwicklung eines königlich-bischöflichen Zentralortes
am Main mit Burg und Talsiedlung vom 7. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert’, Château
Gaillard 18 (1998), 83.
48 Die ‘Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum’ und der Brief des Erzbischofs
Theotmar von Salzburg, ed. F. Lošek (Hanover, 1997), p. 122. For ninth-cen-
tury Zalavár, see A.Cs. Sós, ‘Archäologische Beiträge zur Frage der Gestaltung
der Zentrale des Pribina-Besitzes’, Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum
Hungaricae 17 (1965), 87–93; Sós, ‘Zalavár-Mosaburg, das befestigte Herrschafts-
und Kulturzentrum des 9. Jahrhunderts in Pannonien’, Kirilo-metodievski stu-
dii 4 (1987), 148–59. See also B.M. Szőke, ‘The Carolingian civitas Mosapurc
(Zalavár)’, in Europe’s Centre Around A.D. 1000, ed. A. Wieczorek and H.-M.
Hinz (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 140–2. For Pribina, see P. Štih, ‘Priwina: slawischer
Fürst oder fränkischer Graf?’ in Ethnogenese und Überlieferung. Ausgewandte
Methode der Frühmittelalterforschung, ed. K. Brunner and B. Merta (Vienna and
Munich, 1994), pp. 209–22. For the date of Louis the German’s grant, see E.J.
Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German,
817–876 (Ithaca, NY, 2006), p. 85, n. 135.
49 L. Vándor, ‘Die Siedlungen des 7.–8. Jahrhunderts im südlichen Teil des
Kisbalatons (Klein-Plattensee)’, in Interaktionen der mitteleuropäischen Slawen
und anderer Ethnika im 6.–10. Jahrhundert. Symposium Nové Vozokany 3.–7.
Oktober 1983, ed. P. Šalkovský (Nitra, 1984), pp. 273–4.
50 B.M. Szőke, ‘Karolingerzeitliche Gräberfelder I–II von Garabonc-Ofalu’,
Antaeus 21 (1992), 158.
51 R. Müller, ‘Karoling udvarház és temetője Zalaszabar-Borjuállás szigetről’,
in Honfoglalás és régészet (A honfoglalásrol sok szemmel I.), ed. L. Kovács
(Budapest, 1994), pp. 91–8.
52 N.I. Petrov, ‘Ladoga, Ryurik’s Stronghold, and Novgorod: fortifications and
power in early medieval Russia’, in Curta, East Central and Eastern Europe,
pp. 121–35.
53 E.N. Nosov, ‘Ein Herrschaftsgebiet entsteht. Die Vorgeschichte der nördlichen
Rus’ und Novgorods’, in Novgorod. Das mittelalterliche Zentrum und sein
Umland im Norden Rußlands, ed. M. Müller-Wille, V.L. Ianin, and E.A. Rybina
(Neumünster, 2001), p. 30, fig. 12.
54 S.N. Orlov, ‘Slavianskoe poselenie na beregu r. Prost’ okolo Novgoroda’,
Sovetskaia Arkheologiia 2 (1972), 127–38.
55 A. Alsleben, ‘Angebot und Nachfrage. Frühmittelalterliche Nahrungswirtschaft
im Umland von Novgorod’, in Müller-Wille, Ianin and Rybina, Novgorod,
pp. 361, 363–4, 367.
56 Nosov, ‘Ein Herrschaftsgebiet entsteht’, pp. 36–40; N.I. Petrov, ‘O kharaktere
kontaktov etnosotsial’nykh grupp naseleniia Povolkhoviia i Priil’men’ia v
kontse I tys. n. e. Klad khoziaistvennykh orudii na gorodishche Kholopy
Gorodok’, in Kul’turnye vzaimodeistviia v usloviiakh kontaktnykh zon. Tezisy
konferentsii molodykh uchenykh Sankt-Peterburga i SNG, ed. V.N. Masson and
D.G. Savvinov (St. Petersburg, 1997), pp. 62–4.
Notes 227
57 Nosov, ‘Ein Herrschaftsgebiet entsteht’, p. 30.
58 Ibid, pp. 32, 34.
59 There is an increasing body of literature about archaeology in Communist Eastern
Europe. For generalising from the Polish case, see P.M. Barford, ‘Paradigms
lost: Polish archaeology and post-war politics’, Archaeologia Polona 31 (1993),
257–70; S. Tabaczyński, ‘A future for the Marxist paradigm in Central European
archaeology? The Polish case’, In Whither Archaeology? Papers in Honour
of Evžen Neustupný, ed. M. Kuna and N. Venclová (Prague, 1995), pp. 69–81;
Tabaczyński, ‘From the history of Eastern and Western archaeological thought:
an introduction to discussion’, in Archäologien Europas. Geschichte, Methoden
und Theorien, ed. P.F. Biehl, A. Gramsch and A. Marciniak (Münster, 2000),
pp. 67–76.
60 See, for example, V. Goncharov, ‘Posad i sil’s’ki poselennia kolo Raykovets’kogo
gorodyshcha’, Arkheologichni pam‘iatky URSR 1 (1949), 31–46. The approach
remains popular with many archaeologists in post-Communist Eastern Europe.
See B.O. Timoshchuk, ‘O sotsial’ne sushchnost Bol’shogo Borshevskogo goro-
dishcha’, in Arkheologiia i istoriia iugo-vostoka Drevnei Rusi (materialy nauch-
noi konferentsii), ed. A.Z. Vinnikov, A.D. Priakhin and M.D. Tsybin (Voronezh,
1993), pp. 61–4; J. Bubeník, ‘Zur Problematik der befestigten Siedlungen des
älteren Frühmittelalters (7./8.–9. Jahrhundert) in Böhmen’, in Život v archeolo-
gii středověku. Sborník příspěvku venovaných Miroslavu Richterovi a Zdenku
Smetánkovi, ed. J. Kubková et al. (Prague, 1997), pp. 93–100.
61 Loveluck, ‘Rural settlement hierarchy’, p. 255. A good illustration of a different
focus of research is the non-royal, elite settlement at Petegem (Flanders). Much
attention has been paid to the large rectangular hall with tiled roof and ancillary
buildings, as well as to the adjacent church with rectangular nave and square
apse. By contrast, it is only assumed that the site had subservient settlements
nearby, and none of them have been excavated. See D. Callebaut, ‘Résidences
fortifiées et centres administratifs dans la vallée de l’Escaut (IXe–XIe siècle)’,
in Archéologie des villes dans le Nord-Ouest de l’Europe (VIIe–XIIIe siècle).
Actes du IVe Congrès International d’Archéologie Médiévale, ed. P. Demolon,
H. Galinié, and F. Verhaeghe (Douai, 1994), pp. 95–7.
62 For the Carolingian origin of East-European service settlements, see above, n. 6.
For recourse to East-European archaeology for illustrating historical conclusions
pertaining to West European phenomena, see A. Verhulst, The Rise of Cities in
North-West Europe (Cambridge and Paris, 1999), p. 117.
63 For Pliska during the late tenth and eleventh century, see L. Doncheva-Petkova,
‘Pliska i neinata istoriia’, in Părvoprestolna Pliska. 100 godini arkheologicheski
prouchvaniia, ed. J. Henning and L. Doncheva-Petkova (Frankfurt am Main and
Sofia, 1999), pp. 7–17; Doncheva-Petkova, ‘Pliska i pechenezite’, Pliska-Preslav
9 (2003), 244–58.
4 Oath-taking in Hungary
1 For an overview, see J. Spurr, ‘A profane history of early modern oaths’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series 11 (2001), 37–63;
despite the title, this article also treats medieval evidence; R. Bartlett, Trial
by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1986), pp. 30–2;
Le serment, ed. R. Verdier, vol. 1: Signes et fonctions, and vol. 2: Théories et
devenir (Paris, 1991) contains many relevant articles for the medieval period, as
well as overview articles on various aspects of the oath.
2 The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around
the Year 1000, ed. T. Head and R. Landes (Ithaca, NY, 1992), offers multiple
examples; S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted
(Oxford, 1994), p. 19; a reinterpretation of the oath of fidelity: F.L. Cheyette,
‘Some reflections on violence, reconciliation and the “feudal revolution”’, in
Conflict in Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture,
ed. W.C. Brown and P. Górecki (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 243–64, at 259–63;
Reynolds, ‘Afterthoughts on Fiefs and Vassals’, Haskins Society Journal 9
(1997), 1–15.
3 S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300 (2nd ed.,
Oxford, 1997), pp. 25–6, 33; numerous cases in Brown and Górecki, Conflict
in Medieval Europe, pp. 131, 154, 158, 167–8, 172, 185, 209. Overview on
perjury in law: H. Hattenhauer, ‘Der gefälschte Eid’, in Fälschungen im
Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
München 16–19 September 1986, vol. 2: Gefälschte Rechtstexte der bestrafte
Fälscher, MGH Schriften, 33.2 (Hanover, 1988), pp. 661–89.
4 J.A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London, 1995, repr. 1996), pp. 131–2.
5 E.g. oath with peers: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 133.
6 Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, pp. 135–6.
7 J.-C. Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris, 1990), pp.
16–17, 62, 98–100; also F. Billacois, ‘Le corps jureur. Pour une phénoménologie
historique des gestes du serment’, in Verdier, Le serment, 1:93–101.
8 R.J. Hexter, Equivocal Oaths and Ordeals in Medieval Literature (Cambridge,
MA, 1975); Hattenhauer, ‘Der gefälschte Eid’, pp. 667–71, on successful cases
of deceit in literature; Schmitt, La raison des gestes, p. 323, on the punishment
of such an action in hagiography.
9 Spurr, ‘Profane history’.
10 E.g. E. Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe
(Oxford, 2000), pp. 34, 46, 75, 84–6, 90, 105–7, 159; A. Vauchez, ‘Le refus du
serment chez les hérétiques médiévaux’, in Verdier, Le serment, 2:257–63.
11 Spurr, ‘Profane history’, p. 38.
12 Schmitt, La raison des gestes, pp. 16–17, 62, 98–100; The Settlement of
Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge,
1986), passim, on the uses and forms of oaths; J. Gaudemet, ‘Le serment dans
le droit canonique médiéval’, in Verdier, Le serment, 2:63–75, on canonical
regulations.
13 H. Göckenjan, ‘Eskü és szerződés az altaji népeknél’, in Honfoglalás és
Néprajz, ed. L. Kovács and A. Paládi-Kovács (Budapest, 1997), pp. 333–45,
lists examples from the seventh century on.
14 S.C. Rowell, ‘A pagan’s word: Lithuanian diplomatic procedure 1200–1385’,
Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992), 145–60, at 147–8.
15 For both: M. Stein-Wilkeshuis, ‘Scandinavians swearing oaths in tenth-century
Russia: pagans and Christians’, Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002),
155–68.
16 Rowell, ‘A pagan’s word’, pp. 148–9.
17 Ibid, pp. 153–5.
18 Ibid, pp. 151–2.
19 Göckenjan, ‘Eskü és szerződés’, p. 336.
20 J.V.A. Fine, Jr., The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to
Notes 229
the Late Twelfth Century (Ann Arbor, MI, 1983, repr. 2000), p. 106; Göckenjan,
‘Eskü és szerződés’, pp. 336–7.
21 Stein-Wilkeshuis, ‘Scandinavians swearing oaths’; J. Shepard, ‘Rus’’, in
Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy, ed. N. Berend (Cambridge,
2007), pp. 369–416, at 375–7. Text in English translation: The Russian Primary
Chronicle: Laurentian Text, trans. S. Hazzard Cross and O.P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor
(Cambridge, MA, 1953), p. 77. I thank Jonathan Shepard for the reference to the
primary source.
22 J. Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford,
1988, new ed. 1996), p. 99.
23 A. Metcalf, Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily: Arabic Speakers and the
End of Islam (London, 2003), p. 37.
24 E.g. J. Boswell, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown
of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven, CT, 1977), p. 122; Y. Baer,
A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia and Jerusalem,
1992), 1:88, 117, 148.
25 For an overview on oaths in Hungarian litigation, see I. Hajnik, A magyar
bírósági szervezet és perjog az Árpád- és a vegyes-házi királyok alatt (Budapest,
1899), pp. 276–341.
26 For a full analysis, see N. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims
and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge, 2001).
27 ‘In his autem nuptiis X Comanorum convenerunt iurantes super canem gladio
bipartitum iuxta eorum consuetudinem, quod terram Hungarorum tamquam
regis fideles contra Thartaros et barbaras nationes obtinebunt.’ H. Marczali,
Magyar Történelmi Tár (1878), p. 376; compare, with with some variations, G.
Istványi, ‘XIII. századi följegyzés IV. Bélának 1246-ban a tatárokhoz küldött
követségéről’, Századok 72 (1938), 270–2; Berend, At the Gate of Christendom,
pp. 98–9.
28 D. Sinor, ‘Taking an oath over a dog cut in two’, in Altaic Religious Beliefs
and Practices: Proceedings of the 33rd Meeting of the Permanent International
Altaistic Conference, Budapest June 24–29, 1990, ed. G. Bethlenfalvy et
al. (Budapest, 1992), pp. 301–5; P.B. Golden, ‘The dogs of the medieval
Quïpčaqs’, in Varia Eurasiatica. Festschrift für Professor András Róna-Tas
(Szeged, 1991), pp. 45–55; P.B. Golden, ‘Wolves, dogs and Quipčaq religion’,
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 50 (1997), 87–97, repr. in
Golden, Nomads and their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe: Turks, Khazars
and Quipchaqs (Aldershot, 2003), chap. XIV; Göckenjan, ‘Eskü és szerződés’,
pp. 338–9; Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, p. 99.
29 A. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta Historica Hungariam Sacram Illustrantia, vol.
1: 1216–1352 (Rome, 1859), pp. 339–41, at 340, no. 556.
30 J. Ziegler, ‘Reflections on the Jewry oath in the Middle Ages’, in Christianity
and Judaism, ed. D. Wood, Studies in Church History 29 (Oxford, 1992),
pp. 209–20; Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, p. 80.
31 ‘Das Judenprivilegium Bélas IV vom Jahre 1251’, ed. A. Büchler, in Jubilee
Volume in Honour of Prof. Bernhard Heller on the Occasion of his Seventieth
Birthday, ed. A. Scheiber (Budapest, 1941), pp. 139–46, at 143; cf. M.T. Clanchy,
From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (2nd ed., Oxford, 1993),
p. 139, on Jews taking an oath on their roll (super rotulum suum).
32 A. Scheiber, ‘Recent additions to the medieval history of Hungarian Jewry’,
Historia Judaica 14 (1952), 145–58, at 154; E. Winkler, ‘A zsidó eskü
Magyarországon’, Magyar Zsidó Szemle 44 (1927), 29–47; Werbőczy István
Hármaskönyve (Budapest, 1897, repr. Pécs, 1989), p. 420, part 3, title 36;
Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, p. 80.
33 Az időrendbe szedett váradi tüzesvaspróbalajstrom (Regestrum Varadinense),
ed. J. Karácsonyi and S. Borovszky (Budapest, 1903), pp. 203, 229, 276;
Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, pp. 96–7.
34 Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, pp. 53–4, discusses Jews and draws the
conclusion that such a Christian sacral proof would be meaningless in relation
to non-Christians.
35 On oath-helpers, see Davies and Fouracre, Settlement of Disputes, p. 220.
36 The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary 1000–1301, ed. and trans.
J.M. Bak, Gy. Bónis and J.R. Sweeney, The Laws of Hungary, series 1, vol. 1
(Bakersfield, CA, 1989), p. 5, ch. 17.
37 Hajnik, A magyar bírósági szervezet, pp. 322–8.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid, pp. 328–41.
40 Az esztergomi főegyháznak okmánytára (Codex diplomaticus primatialis
ecclesiae Strigoniensis), ed. F. Knauz, 2 vols. (Esztergom, 1863–6), vol. 2: Az
esztergomi főkáptalan okmánytára, pp. 44–5, no. 59.
41 M. Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (Houndmills, 2000),
p. 48; Hajnik, A magyar bírósági szervezet, pp. 334–5.
42 Monumenta Ecclesiae Strigoniensis, ed. F. Knauz, 3 vols. (Esztergom, 1874–
1924), 2:233, no. 212.
43 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus ac civilis, ed. Gy. Fejér, 11 vols.
(Buda, 1829–44), vol. 4, pt. 2, pp. 299–303, at 302 (1255).
44 Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 8, pt. 6, pp. 180–1 (1341).
45 At least during the fourteenth century, when explicit evidence appears: Fejér,
Codex diplomaticus, vol. 9, pt. 2, pp. 343–55, at 352 (1354), and vol. 9, pt. 4,
pp. 269–85, at 279 (1370).
46 Árpádkori új okmánytár (Codex diplomaticus Arpadianus continuatus), ed.
G. Wenzel, 12 vols. (Pest, 1860–74, repr. Pápa, 2001–3), 3:34–6, no. 27.
47 Wenzel, Árpádkori új okmánytár, 1:306–7, no. 187.
48 Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, p. 339.
49 Ibid, pp. 341–4, no. 557, at p. 342. The oath is mentioned, but without detailed
analysis, in L. Rácz, ‘Rulers’ oaths in the Kingdom of Hungary and in the
Principality of Transylvania’, in Verdier, Le serment, 1:425–37, at 425, 432.
50 Gy. Pauler, A magyar nemzet története az Árpádok korában, 2 vols. (2nd ed.,
Budapest, 1899, repr. Szeged, 1984), 2:365.
51 Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, p. 340.
52 Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 10, pt. 1, pp. 463–6, at 464 (1388), and similarly
(manus suas ad pectus ponendo) Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 9, pt. 4,
pp. 269–85, at 280 (1370). This was the usual practice in medieval Europe from
the thirteenth century on: Billacois, ‘Le corps jureur’, p. 95.
53 Rácz, ‘Rulers’ oaths in the Kingdom of Hungary’; E. Bartoniek, ‘A koronázási
eskü fejlődése 1526-ig’, Századok 51 (1917), 5–44; Bartoniek, ‘A magyar
királlyáavatáshoz’, Századok 57–8 (1923–4), 247–304, at 256–67.
54 Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevi Hungariae, vol. 4, ed. I. Boronkai and K. Szovák
(Budapest, 1993), p. 80, s.v. fides.
Notes 231
5 Conrad II’s Theatrum Rituale
1 See J. Barrow, ‘Playing by the rules: conflict management in the tenth and
the eleventh century’ (review article), Early Medieval Europe 12 (2002), 391,
396; P. Buc, ‘Text and ritual in ninth-century political culture: Rome, 864’, in
Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. G. Althoff,
J. Fried and P.J. Geary (Cambridge, 2002), p. 138, n. 50; Buc, ‘Nach 754.
Warum weniger die Handelnden selbst als eher die Chronisten das politische
Ritual erzeugten – und warum es niemandem auf die wahre Geschichte ankam’,
in Die Macht des Königs. Herrschaft in Europa von Frühmittelalter bis in die
Neuzeit, ed. B. Jussen (Munich, 2005), pp. 35ff.
2 See, among others, whole strings of such examples in Formen und Funktionen
öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter, ed. G. Althoff, Vorträge und
Forschungen 51 (Sigmaringen, 2001). For a different view, see H. Kamp,
‘Tugend, Macht und Ritual. Politisches Verhalten beim Saxo Grammaticus’,
in Zeichen – Rituale – Werte, ed. G. Althoff and C. Witthöft (Münster, 2004),
pp. 179–200.
3 H.K. Schulze, Königsherrschaft und Königsmythos. Herrscher und Volk im
politischen Denken des Hochmittelalters – Festschrift für Berent Schwineköper
zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Patze (Sigmaringen, 1983), pp. 177–
86; Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II imperatoris, ed. H. Bresslau, MGH SS, vol. 61
(Hanover, 1915, repr. 1993), pp. 26–7, ch. 5.
4 See, among others, W. Trillmich, Kaiser Konrad II und seine Zeit, ed. (from the
author’s manuscript) O. Bardong (Bonn, 1991), p. 153; F.R. Erkens, Konrad II.
Herrschaft und Reich des ersten Salierkaisers (Regensburg, 1998), pp. 45–6; H.
Wolfram, Konrad II, 990–1039. Kaiser dreier Reiche (Munich, 2000), pp. 66ff;
G. Althoff, ‘Demonstration und Inszenierung. Spielregeln der Kommunikation in
mittelalterlicher Öffentlichkeit’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 27 (1993), 27–50,
repr. in Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter. Kommunikation in Frieden
und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997), pp. 233ff; Althoff, ‘The variability of rituals in the
Middle Ages’, in Althoff et al, Medieval Concepts, pp. 77ff.; Althoff, Die Macht
der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2003), pp. 88 ff;
Althoff, ‘Herrschaftsausübung durch symbolisches Handeln oder: Möglichkeiten
und Grenzen der Herrschaft durch Zeichen’, in Comunicare e significare nell’alto
medioevo – Spoleto, 15–20 April 2004, Atti delle settimane 52 (Spoleto, 2005),
vol. 1, pp. 376–7; H. Keller, ‘Die Idee der Gerechtigkeit und Praxis königlicher
Rechtswahrung im Reich der Ottonen’, in La giustizia nell’alto medioevo, secoli
IX–XI – Spoleto, 11–17 April 1996, Atti delle settimane 44 (Spoleto 1997),
pp. 125–6; L. Körntgen, Königsherrschaft und Gottes Gnade. Zu Kontext und
Funktion sakraler Vorstellungen in Historiographie und Bildzeugnissen der
ottonisch frühsalischen Zeit (Berlin, 2001), p. 144.
5 Schulze, Königsherrschaft, p. 180. In the ‘pre-ritual’ period of the historiography,
this event also drew the attention of E. Kleinschmidt, Herrscherdarstellung.
Zur Disposition mittelalterlichen Aussageverhaltens, untersucht an Texten über
Rudolf I. von Habsburg (Bern, 1974), p. 47, where he concluded: ‘Der Bericht
. . . stellt den Interpreten vor das Problem, inwieweit hier ein typologisch-
mimetisches Realhandeln Konrads oder eine fictionale Stilisierung im Umkreis
topischen Darstellungsverhaltens durch den Autor Wipo vorliegt, oder ob beide
Aspekte ineinander übergehen. Eine Entscheidung sicherer Art dürfte darüber
nicht möglich sein.’ Cf. Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale, p. 88.
6 This point has been noted by W. Berschin, in Biographie und Epochenstil im
lateinischen Mittelalter, vol. 4, pt. 1 (Stuttgart, 1999), p. 185.
7 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, p. 27.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid, and chap. 3, the beginning: ‘Peracta electione, regem sequi Moguntiam,
ut ibi sacratissimam unctionem acciperet, cum maxima alacritate omnes
properabant.’ Compare the translation by W. Trillmilch, ‘Gesta Chuonradi II
imp.’, in Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der hamburgischen
Kirche und Reiches (Berlin, 1961), p. 547: ‘Nach Abschluss der Wahlhandlung
hatten es alle eilig, den König in hoher Freude nach Mainz zu geleiten.’ Haste
on the part of the ruler-elect’s entourage is conveyed even more explicitly by the
following translation: ‘Nach der Wahl machten sich alle in grösster Eile auf, um
dem König nach Mainz zu folgen’ (Wolfram, Konrad II, p. 66).
10 ‘The world which is represented – or referred to – by a text is . . . a social
construct, and not the actual face of (that “truthful”, meta-human) reality; it is a
deceptive image, a mirage created by rhetorical devices and by the conventions
of language.’ R. Nycz, ‘Słowo wstępne’, in Dekonstrukcja w badaniach
literackich (wybór tekstów), ed. Nycz (Gdańsk, 2000), p. 10. The author is here
discussing a basic assumption of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction theory.
11 In The Variability of Rituals (p. 78), Althoff observes that ‘For an unknown
reason, the rituals of pleading for mercy, justice, and forgiveness were added
to the ceremony of coronation . . . We think that this is precisely why these
rituals were placed right here: in order to create a “high tension” between the
protagonist’s most pressing priority of the moment, and his obligation.’
12 R. Collins, Charlemagne (London, 1998), p. 144.
13 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. E.S. Firchow (Stuttgart, 1994), p. 52, ch. 28.
14 1 Kings 10:22.
15 For these examples, see Collins, Charlemagne, p. 144; J. Banaszkiewicz,
‘Königliche Karrieren von Hirten, Gärtner und Pflügern. Zu einem
mittelalterlichen Erzählschema vom Erwerb der Königsherrschaft (die Sagen
von Johannes Agnus, Přemysl, Ine, Wamba und Dagobert)’, Saeculum 3–4
(1982), 269–74.
16 Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, ed. E. Tremp, MGH SS rer. Germ.,
vol. 64 (Hanover, 1995), pp. 188ff, chs. 8–13; E. Tremp, Studien zu den Gesta
Hludowici imperatoris des Trierer Chorbischofs Thegan (Hanover, 1988),
passim.
17 Eine Parteischrift, in the words of E. Tremp, ‘Thegan und Astronomus, die
beiden Geschichtsschreiber Ludwigs des Frommen’, in Charlemagne’s Heir:
New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. P. Godman and
R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), p. 693; J. Nelson, ‘History-writing at the courts of
Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald’, in Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter,
ed. A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter (Vienna, 1994), p. 438: ‘Thegan’s subject-
matter was absolutely topical, and aimed at a court constituency’. See also
L. Hageneier, Jenseits der Topik. Die karolingische Herrscherbiographie
(Husum, 2004), p. 154.
18 M. Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s will: politics and the imperial succession’, English
Historical Review 112 (1997), 837ff, 850ff; E. Boshof, ‘Untersuchungen
zur Armenfürsorge im fränkischen Reich des 9. Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für
Kulturgeschichte 2 (1976), 265ff, 299ff.
19 J. Semmler, ‘Renovatio Regni Francorum. Die Herrschaft Ludwigs des
Notes 233
Frommen in Frankreich, 814–829/30’, in Godman and Collins, Charlemagne’s
Heir, pp. 125ff; Semmler, ‘Jussit . . . princeps renovare . . . praecepta.
Zur Verfassungsrechtliche Einordnung der Hochstifte und Abteien in die
karolingische Reichskirche’, Studia Anselmiana 85 (1982), 97ff.
20 Thegan, Gesta Hludowici, pp. 192, 194, ch. 13; G. Schmitz, ‘The capitulary
legislation of Louis the Pious’, in Godman and Collins, Charlemagne’s Heir,
pp. 432 (n. 11), 433; E. Boshof, Ludwig der Fromme (Darmstadt, 1996),
pp. 113–15.
21 Thegan, Gesta Hludowici, p. 192, chap. 13: ‘[S]i alicui aliqua iniustitia
perpetrata fuisset, et si aliquem invenissent [legati Hludowici], qui hec dicere
voluisset et cum verissimis testibus hoc comprobare potuisset, statim cum eis in
praesentiam eius venire praecepit’ (gloss added).
22 Thegan, Gesta Hludowici, pp. 194, 195 (n. 70); Boshof, Ludwig, p. 114.
23 C. Svetoni Tranquilli, De vita caesarum libri VIII, in Opera, vol. 1, ed. M. Ihm
(Leipzig, 1908), p. 306, Divus Vespasianus, ch. 21: ‘[D]ein perlectis epistulis
officiorumque omnium breviariis, amicos admittebat, ac dum salutabatur, et
calciabat ipse se et amiciebat.’ A. Demandt, Das Privatleben der römischen
Kaiser (Munich, 1996), chs. 3a and 2o, 2s; M. Staesche, Das Privatleben der
römischen Kaiser in der Spätantike. Studien zu Personen- und Kulturgeschichte
der späten Kaiserzeit (Bern, 1998), pp. 28–9.
24 Einhard, Vita Karoli, p. 48, chap. 24: ‘Cum calciaretur et amiciretur, non tantum
amicos admitebat, verum etiam, si comes palatii litem aliquam esse diceret, quae
sine eius iussu definiri non posset, statim litigantes introducere iussit et, velut
pro tribunali sederet, lite cognita sententiam dixit’. On modelling a protagonist’s
appearance and behaviour in biography in conformity to an ‘overarching
pattern’, see W. Berschin, ‘Personenbeschreibung in der Biographie des frühen
Mittelalters’, in Scharer and Scheibelreiter, Historiographie, pp. 186–93;
Tremp, Studien, pp. 55–63; Collins, Charlemagne, p. 1. See also H. Beumann,
‘Topos und Gedankengefüge bei Einhard’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 3 (1951),
337–50; Hageneier, Jenseits der Topik, p. 121, n. 617. The last of these authors
– in the context of an interesting inquiry into the intertextual references and
the borrowings used by medieval intellectuals to construct an image of reality
– nevertheless does not go beneath the surface of the quotations/statements,
and (as in the case of our motif) does not interest himself in the mechanics of
the story, that is to say, in the anthropological and social message that story
conveys. And those mechanics themselves, and that message, can (while fully
retaining their identity) be expressed by a variety of set-design schemes (or
realisations).
25 It is worth recalling the occasion when Otto I decides to approach Udalric,
who had come to the chamber door of the royal chamber too early, uno pede
calciato et alio adhuc incalciato (Gerhardi Vita Uodalrici, I, 21, on which see
also below, n. 26) – a detail which is intended to show us that, for the emperor,
humility and respect for the holy man were ultimately more important than was
concern with imperial majesty and with the appropriate, official image. Putting
on shoes by the ruler as a sign of entrance into a public role, performed by virtue
of office, appears also in the passage titled Casus s. Galli, by Ekkehard IV (ed.
H.F. Haefele, in Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters,
vol. 10 [Darmstadt, 1960], chs. 131–3, pp. 254–6), where the statement Interea
pater ad calciandum in caminatam ivit puts an end to the joking and bantering
between Otto I and the monks of St. Gallen, who, in order to present their
request, had entered the emperor’s zone of private time and private space, with
the permission of the young king. In the royal chamber, among close associates,
Otto I continues for a while (specifically, until the moment when he gets
dressed, and summons petitioners) to behave like an ordinary member of the
household, not imperiously. Afterwards, he acts consistently within ‘the rite’.
Compare this move by Otto I, as he returns from matins into the royal chamber
dressed in ordinary household clothing in order to put on his ceremonial dress,
to a similar action by another protagonist, Charlemagne: Expletis vero ymnis
matutinalibus ad caminatam reversus, imperialibus vestimentis pro tempore
ornabatur (Notkeri Balbuli Gesta Karoli Magni, ed. H.F. Haefele, MGH SS
rer. Germ., N.S., vol. 12 [Munich, 1980], p. 42, bk. 1, ch. 31). The act of putting
on one shoe – a phenomenon called ‘monosandalism’ – has been explained,
in anthropological terms, with reference to the idea of ritual mutilation, and
of a suspension between two worlds – of culture and of nature; of the word
and of the otherworldly – in a state of ‘transitional’ chaos. See A. Brelich,
‘Les monosandales’, La nouvelle Clio 7–9 (1955–7), 469–84; P. Vidal-Naquet,
Le chasseur noir. Formes de pensée et formes de société dans le monde grec
(Paris, 1983), pp. 101–2, 116–17; P. MacCana, ‘The topos of the single sandal
in Irish tradition’, Celtica 10 (1979), 160–6.
26 Gerhard von Augsburg, Vita s. Uodalrici. Die älteste Lebensbeschreibung des
heiligen Ulrich, ed. W. Berschin and A. Häse (Heidelberg, 1993), p. 304, bk. 1, ch.
26: repausationi lectuli se non commendavit ante horam vespertinam, sed super
sedile suum calciatus consedit. See Berschin, Biographie, pp. 128–48, specifically
p. 138; E. Karpf, Herrscherlegitimation und Reichsbegriff in der ottonischen
Geschichtsschreibung des 10. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 105–14.
27 Einhard, Vita Karoli, pp. 47–8, ch. 24.
28 T.N. Bisson, ‘On not eating Polish bread in vain: resonance and conjuncture in
the Deeds of the Princes of Poland (1109–1113)’, Viator 29 (1998), 275–89; Z.
Dalewski, ‘Ritual im Text. Gallus Anonymus und die dynastischen Konflikte
im Polen des früheren Mittelalters’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 38 (2004),
135–51; Gesta Principum Polonorum: The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles,
trans. and annot. P.W. Knoll and F. Schaer (Budapest, 2003).
29 Galli Anonymi Cronica et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum, ed. K.
Maleczyński, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, series nova, vol. 2 (Kraków,
1952), p. 27, bk. 1, ch. 9.
30 Sicque diligenter rem pauperis, ut alicuius magni principis pertractabat;
personam in iudicio non servabat; Galli Anonymi Cronica, p. 27, bk. 1, ch. 9.
31 The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, by an Anonymous Monk of Whitby, ed.,
trans. and annot. B. Colgrave (Lawrence, KS, 1968), p. 128, ch. 29, pp. 161–3,
and editor’s introduction, pp. 45–54, 59ff. See also S. Settis, ‘Roma fuori di
Roma. Periferie della memoria’, in Roma nell’alto medioevo, vol. 2 – Atti delle
Settimane 48 (Spoleto, 2001), pp. 1006ff.
32 Dante Alighièri, La divina commèdia, ed. L. Polacco and G. Vandèlli (Milan,
1924), p. 175, Purg. X – cornice 1a: Supèrbia, vv. 76–93.
33 Dante, La divina commèdia, p. 175, v. 39: giustizia vuòle e pietà mi ritène.
34 Cosmae Pragensis Chronica Boemorum, ed. B. Bretholz, MGH SS rer. Germ.,
N.S., vol. 2 (Berlin, 1955), p. 109, bk. 2, ch. 17. In a new set-design and situational
layout, it is Robert Bruce who takes the test of a good ruler, during the period
when he is fighting in Ireland. According to John Barbour, the lamentations of a
woman cause Bruce, in the face of an approaching foe, to halt the retreat of his
Notes 235
troops. Having learnt that the lamenting voice belonged to a poor laundress who
was just beginning to go into labour, he does not abandon her – as she was afraid
he would do – but orders that a tent be put up, in which the delivery then takes
place. It is not until the baby is born that the retreat resumes; J. Barbour, The
Bruce, or the Book of the Most Excellent and Noble Prince Robert de Bruce,
King of Scots, ed. W.W. Skeat (London, 1877, repr. 1968), vol. 2, pp. 389–90,
bk. 16, vv. 270–88. See G.W.S. Barrow, Robert the Bruce and the Community of
the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2005), p. 342.
35 Chronica Boemorum, p. 109, bk. 2, ch. 17: pater clericorum et defensor
viduarum.
36 See D. Třeštik, Kosmova kronika. Studie k počátkům českého dějepisectvi a
politického myšleni (Prague, 1968), p. 164.
37 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi, p. 27: Abundantius erat in rege studium miserationis
quam desiderium consecrationis.
38 Ibid, p. 23.
39 Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, p. 128: unius ad eum voce vidue misercorditer
mollitus.
40 Galli Anonymi Cronica, p. 27, bk. 1, ch. 9: Habebat etiam preterea quiddam
iustitie magnum et humilitatis insigne.
41 H. Keller, ‘Das Bildnis Kaiser Heinrichs im Regensburger Evangeliar aus
Montecassino (Bibl. Vat., Ottob. lat. 74). Zugleich ein Beitrag zu Wipos
“Tetralogus”’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 30 (1996), 177ff, 189ff, 192–3.
42 Ibid, pp. 196–7; J. Fried, ‘Tugend und Heiligkeit. Beobachtungen und
Überlegungen zu den Herrscherbildern Heinrichs III. in Echternachter
Handschriften’, in Mittelalter. Annäherung an eine fremde Zeit, ed. W. Hartmann
(Regensburg, 1993), pp. 52–4.
43 Ibid, p. 63; Keller, ‘Das Bildnis’, pp. 192–3.
44 And beyond. On 18 November 1804, the Polish scholar and politician Stanisław
Staszic witnessed a scene in Paris which he described as follows (Dziennik
podróży 1789–1805, ed. C. Leśniewski [Kraków, 1931], p. 406): ‘The emperor
appeared to the people, among his guards, cavalry, and infantry, with his artillery
roaming about, under the name “the Great Parade”. In this whole display, I
noticed in the emperor a deep understanding of people, a great skill for winning
them over. He listened to requests in the midst of his troops. Galloping on a
white Turkish horse, he stopped abruptly whenever anyone made a request to
him. Reading the request, then talking to the petitioner, attracted to the emperor
the attention of thousands . . . The following, I thought, caused the admiration
of all, although it offended me: the fact that the citizens and the women must
struggle through the armies, the soldiers, and the horses, to reach an official
with a plea for the justice or the help they deserved.’ The trope of Trajan and the
widow was expressed in pictorial form by Delacroix, inspired by the passage
in Dante; Thomas Mann evoked it in his novel, Der Erwählte; while in 2005,
Donald Tusk, the (as it turned out) unsuccessful candidate for president of
Poland, deployed a similar exemplum in a campaign advertisement (see The
Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, n. 122, p. 162, Dio Cassius’s story about
Emperor Hadrian in haste, and the woman who had a request for the emperor) to
attack a rival who, at one time in the campaign, scolded a simple man attempting
abruptly to push his way toward this rival.
45 See H. Zaremska, Banici w średniowiecznej Europie (Warsaw, 1993), pp. 121–
2, for interesting examples of convicts making their way to the ruler during his
ceremonial entrance into Kraków, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and
for further literature of the subject.
46 See P. Buc, Dangereux rituel. De l’histoire médiévale aux sciences sociales
(Paris, 2003), p. 10.
6 The Dominican Order and the beginnings of higher education in the Polish
Lands
1 Le scuole degli ordini mendicanti (secoli XIII–XIV), 11–14 ottobre 1976 (Todi,
1978), with an introduction by Girolamo Arnaldi, organiser of the meeting.
2 J. Verger, ‘Studia et universités’, in Le scuole, pp. 175ff. Since the end of the
nineteenth century, historians of the Dominican Order have strongly underscored
the connections between the Order and the world of the universities; see above
all the superb article by P. Mandonnet, ‘La crise scolaire au début du XIIIe siècle
et la fondation de l’ordre des Frères prêcheurs’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique
15 (1914), 34–49. An English survey of the history of universities employs a
distinctive description of the Dominican school system as ‘a kind of distributed
university’; F.M. Powicke, Ways of Medieval Life and Thought (Boston, MA,
1951), p. 186. See also the classic work, H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in
the Middle Ages, new edition, ed. F.M. Powicke and A.B. Emden, 3 vols. (Oxford,
1936). Recently, see M. Asztalos, ‘The faculty of theology’, in A History of the
University in Europe, gen. ed. W. Rüegg, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages,
ed. H. de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 409–41, at 414 (her section on
‘The mendicants and the theological faculties: symbiosis and conflict’).
3 J. Verger, L’essor des universités au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1998).
4 A good summary of slightly older but fundamental research is A. Duval, ‘L’étude
dans la législation religieuse de saint Dominique’, in Mélanges offerts à M. D.
Chenu (Paris, 1967), pp. 211–47; see also F. Müller OP, ‘Saint Dominique et
les origines de l’Ordre des Prêcheurs dans l’historiographe du XXe siècle’, in
Mémoire dominicaine (Paris, 1994), pp. 23ff; W.A. Hinnebusch, The History of
the Dominican Order, vol. 2: Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York,
1973); M.M. Mulchahey, ‘First the Bar is Bent in Study’: Dominican Education
before 1350 (Toronto, 1998); J. Kłoczowski, Wspólnoty zakonne w tworzącej
się Europie (Poznań, 2003). In the conclusion of her analysis of the connections
between Dominican and strictly university studia, Mulchahey captures the subject
with a happy formula: ‘In the first place, in many instances the Dominicans were
at the universities, but not of the universities’ (‘First the Bar’, p. 352).
5 J. Kłoczowski, ‘Zakon Braci Kaznodziejów w Polsce, 1222–1972. Zarys
dziejów’, in Studia nad historią dominikanów w Polsce, 1222–1972, ed.
Kłoczowski (Warsaw, 1975), pp. 19ff, together with the appended atlas and
basic bibliography. I introduced the issues concerning the studia in all the
mendicant orders of East Central Europe at the Todi conference noted above;
see Kłoczowski, ‘Europa Centro-Orientale’, in Le scuole, pp. 127–49. See
also Kłoczowski, ‘Dominikanie w środkowo-wschodniej Europie i ich kultura
intelektualna oraz pastoralna w wiekach średnich’, in Dominikanie w środkowej
Europie w XIII–XV wieku. Aktywność duszpasterska i kultura intelektualna, ed.
Kłoczowski and J.A. Spież (Poznań, 2002), pp. 153–72.
6 Concerning the conventual school, see Hinnebusch, History, pp. 20ff. See
also the penetrating remarks by L.E. Boyle OP, ‘Notes on the education of
the Fratres Communes in the Dominican Order in the thirteenth century’, in
Notes 237
Xenia Medii Aevi historiam illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaepelli (Rome, 1978),
pp. 249–67. According to the author, during the thirteenth century conventual
schools furnished 90 per cent of Dominican priests with a full education, and
retained intellectual care over them until the end of their active lives. Hence also
the exceptional level of attention – well reflected, among others, in the acts of
the general chapter – to providing all convents with lectors, a task which was
sometimes difficult to accomplish.
7 Verger, L’essor, pp. 112ff; C. Ribaucourt, ‘Francia centro-settentrionale’, in Le
scuole, pp. 73ff. For a brief summary of the research concerning the mendicant
studia, see K. Elm, ‘Das Studienwesen der Bettelorden’, in Kłoczowski and
Spież, Dominikanie, pp. 139–52, along with the basic literature. Verger, L’essor,
p. 32, notes that the mendicant, especially Dominican, educational legislation
has survived much more frequently than did university legislation, whence
its great significance. Overall, with respect to theological training, ‘les studia
réguliers, intégrés ou non à des universités, ont sans doute joué au XIIIe siècle
un rôle supérieur à celui des universités stricto sensu’ (Verger, L’essor, p. 34).
8 G. Barone, ‘Les couvents des mendiants, des collèges déguisés? Observations
sur les liens entre les Écoles des Ordres Mendiants et les collèges (XIIIe–XIVe
s.)’, in Vocabulaire des collèges universitaires (XIIIe–XIVe siècles), ed. O. Wijers
(Brepols, 1993), pp. 149–57; see Verger, L’essor, pp. 60–2, and A. Gieysztor,
‘Management and resources’, in History of the University in Europe, vol. 1,
pp. 108–43, at 116–19.
9 Verger, L’essor, pp. 98ff; Asztalos, ‘Faculty’, pp. 914ff.
10 Ibid, pp. 433ff.
11 G. Leff, ‘The Trivium and the three philosophies’, in History of the University,
pp. 307–36, at 322.
12 For an attempt to present the Dominican ‘doctrine’ (Thomism above all) in its
entirety, see Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, pp. 117ff. For a general synthesis of
the innovations in scholasticism, see F. Alessio, ‘Scholastique’, in Dictionnaire
raisonnée de l’Occident médiéval, ed. J. Le Goff and J.-C. Schmitt (Paris, 1999),
pp. 1039–55.
13 Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, pp. 7–9, with the footnotes; Verger, L’essor, pp.
114ff; Acta capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, vol. 1, ed. B.M.
Reichert (Rome, 1898), pp. 99–100.
14 There is much material concerning the curriculum of Dominican schools, and
their evolution during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the collection Le
scuole; see especially G. Barone, ‘La legislazione sugli “studia” dei Predicatori
e dei Minori’ (pp. 205–47), and A. Maierzi, ‘Tecniche di insegnamento’ (pp.
305–52). A good introduction to the subject in its entirety is M.M. Mulchahey,
‘The Dominican studium system and the universities in Europe in the thirteenth
century: a relationship redefined’, in Manuels, programmes de cours et
techniques d’enseignement dans les universités médiévales (Louvain, 1994),
pp. 277–324.
15 C. Douais, Essai sur l’organisation des études dans l’ordre des Frères prêcheurs
au treizième at au quatorzième siècle (1216–1342). Première province de
Provence, province de Toulouse (Paris and Toulouse, 1884); M. d’Alatri,
‘Italia’, in Le scuole, pp. 49–72; Acta capitulum provincialium provinciae
Romanae (1243–1344), ed. T. Kapelli and A. Dondaine (Rome, 1941), in the
series Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica.
16 Le scuole, p. 322.
17 In addition to the works cited above, see the proceedings from the session held
at Prato in 1996, Le vocabulaire des écoles des Mendiants au Moyen Âge, ed.
M.C. Pacheco (Turnhout, 1999), especially the conclusions by J. Verger.
18 Regarding England, we have valuable sources other than chapter registers; see
J. Cannon, ‘Inghilterra’, in Le scuole, pp. 93–126; M. O’Carroll SND, ‘The
educational organisation of the Dominicans in England and Wales, 1221: a
multidisciplinary approach’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 50 (1980), 23–
62.
19 For a good analysis based on the English province see O’Carroll, ‘Educational
organisation’; but this division was a principle of the Order in its entirety, on
which see Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, p. 19. For the division of the Polish
province into districts (here called the contratae), see Kłoczowski, ‘Zakon
Braci’, p. 45, and the atlas.
20 O’Carroll, ‘Educational organisation’, p. 28.
21 The fundamental evidence is presented by P. Kielar OP, ‘Studia nad kulturą
szkolną i intelektualną dominikanów prowincji polskiej w średniowieczu’, in
Kłoczowski, Studia nad historią, vol. 1, pp. 273ff.
22 Acta capitulorum, p. 109; Kielar, ‘Studia’, p. 275.
23 d’Alatri, ‘Italia’, p. 54.
24 Verger, L’essor, pp. 114ff. For the changes in approach to biblical texts, crucial
for theological formation, see G. Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible en
Occident médiéval, XIIe–XIVe siècles (Paris, 1999). On Humbert of Romans, see
M.H. Vicaire, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 7 (Paris, 1969), pp. 1108–16.
25 We can find confirmation of the role of lectors, among other places, in a
very valuable source – still not adequately used – the Zbiór formuł Zakonu
Dominikańskiego prowincji polskiej z lat 1338–1411, submitted to the printer
by O.J. Woroniecki OP, introduced and ed. X.J. Fijałek, Archiwum Komisji
Historycznej 12.2 (Kraków, 1938).
26 R.J. Loenertz, ‘Une ancienne chronique des provinciaux dominicains de
Pologne’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 21 (1951), 13–16. Though the
earliest lector in Kraków, from 1222–3 onward, was Henry of Moravia (Kielar,
‘Studia’, p. 272), the organisation of the lectors, within a framework of the
emerging province, was obviously supervised by Gerard, in his capacity of
provincial, over many years (1225–33), according to the model of the University
of Paris with which he was directly familiar.
27 Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, pp. 29ff. According to the author, ‘the scholastic
organisation and lectures in a provincial house of theology were similar in many
respects to those of the studium generale’ (pp. 30–1). He is inclined to assess the
role of these schools very highly: ‘the provincial schools provided a professional
and advanced education for thousands of friars’ (p. 32). One ought to bear in
mind the significance of this type of assessment of the main theological centres
in the provinces for the debates concerning their transformation into the so-
called ‘general studia’. See below, in the text and at n. 30.
28 In 1257 Pope Alexander IV allowed the Dominican generals to nominate well-
prepared theologians to teach this subject in Dominican schools; Hinnebusch,
History, vol. 2, p. 10.
29 On the position of Silesian monasteries within the province, see J. Kłoczowski,
Dominikanie polscy na Śląsku w XIII–XIV wieku (Lublin, 1956), pp. 171ff.
30 Acta Capitulorum, vol. 1, pp. 314, 320; Kłoczowski, Dominikanie, pp. 224ff;
Kielar, Studia, pp. 335–6. The earliest resolution to establish studia generalia
Notes 239
in the provinces was adopted earlier, in 1282, but, consistent with the Order’s
legislative practice, acquired legal force only after three successive resolutions
of the general chapter, adopted in 1302, 1303 and 1304. See also the studies
by my prematurely deceased student, Jerzy Bartłomiej Korolec, of revered
memory, who presented his master’s thesis, ‘Organizacja szkolnictwa zakonu
dominikanów w Polsce od początku XIII do końca XIV wieku’, in my seminar
held in 1956. He continued working on these matters until the end of his life.
The final version of his work, J.B. Korolec, ‘Studium generale dominikanów
klasztoru Świętej Trójcy w Krakowie’, in Kłoczowski and Spież, Dominikanie,
pp. 173–86, appeared posthumously. From among his earlier works, see Korolec,
‘Studium generalne w Krakowie. Prawne warunki istnienia’, Materiały i Studia
Zakładu Historii Filozofii Starożytnej i Średniowiecznej 4.A (1965), 108–25.
31 J. Kadlec, ‘Řeholni generalni studia při Karlově universitě v době předhusitské’,
Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 7.2
(1966), 66–108; Š.M. Filip OP and R.T. Černusak OP, ‘Master Nicolaus Biceps
OP and the relations between the Dominican Studium Generale of St. Clement
in Prague and the Prague University’, in Kłoczowski and Spież, Dominikanie,
pp. 187–200.
32 Le scuole, p. 182.
33 For a penetrating analysis, see Mulchahey, ‘Dominican studium system’,
pp. 278ff, to whom my treatment below of the individual studia generalia is
indebted. For the different formulations of the construct itself, see G. Ermini,
‘Concetto di “studium generale”’, Archivio Giuridico 128 (1942), 3–24.
34 The studium in Cambridge was recognised as a studium generale by the general
of the Order in 1314, and by the general chapter in 1320; O’Carroll, ‘Educational
organisation’, pp. 48–9.
35 Acta capitulorum, vol. 2, ed. A. Frühwirth (Rome, 1899), p. 99.
36 Ibid, pp. 143, 151, 156.
37 Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, pp. 63ff; Verger, ‘Studia’, pp. 192ff. An image of
a rapid expansion of a university network, usually with theology departments,
is offered by Verger, ‘Patterns’, in History of the University, pp. 35–74, at 55ff;
see also the list of the universities and the maps showing their distribution, at pp.
62–4, 68–77.
38 Mulchahey, ‘Dominican studium system’, p. 296.
39 Verger, ‘Studia’, pp. 193–4.
40 Ibid, p. 194.
41 Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, p. 64; G.M. Löhr, Die Kölner Dominikanerschule
vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Freiburg, 1946); for the studia in the
German province, see the important work by I.W. Frank, Hausstudium und
Universitätsstudium der Wiener Dominikaner bis 1500 (Vienna, 1968).
42 The attempt in 1383 by the general of the Order, Raymond of Capua, to create
– or, strictly speaking, renew – a Dominican studium generale closely tied to the
University of Prague failed to achieve the desired results; his aims had been very
ambitious, in that they envisioned creating in Prague a studium equal in rank to
Paris; V.J. Koudelka OP, ‘Raimund von Capua und Böhmen’, Archivum Fratrum
Praedicatorum 30 (1960), 209ff; Frank, Hausstudium, pp. 72ff. Near the end of
the fourteenth century, the Dominicans created a rather formidable intellectual
milieu in Prague, and their role requires deeper study. An outstanding figure
was Professor Bitterfeld, from the Polish province; Koudelka, ‘Heinrich von
Bitterfeld († c. 1405), Professor an der Universität Prag’, Archivum Fratrum
Praedicatorum 23 (1953), 5–65. What deserves careful analysis are the diverse
(as it appears) polemics by the Dominicans (and to what degree, we may ask, by
other mendicants?) directed towards the increasingly radical tendencies which
later became a foundation for the different factions of the Hussite movement; and
towards, for example, the increasingly prevalent influences of the via moderna
school, represented (among others) by Matthew of Kraków, who was very
distinguished in the renewal of the University of Kraków. See, among others,
F. Šmahel, Husitska revoluce, vol. 2 (Prague, 1993), pp. 184–5; A. Petitova-
Bénoliel, L’église à Prague sous la dynastie des Luxembourg (1310–1419)
(Hilversum, 1996), pp. 176–7; S. Świeżawski, Dzieje filozofii europejskiej w XV
wieku (Warsaw, 1974), pp. 350ff, but also concerning the school of Dominican
thought elsewhere, pp. 188ff for example.
43 Z. Kozłowska-Budkowa, ‘Odnowienie Jagiellońskiego Uniwersytetu
Krakowskiego (1390–1414)’, in Dzieje Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego w latach
1364–1764, vol. 1, ed. K. Lepszy (Kraków, 1964), pp. 37–89; M. Markowski,
Dzieje wydziału teologii Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego w latach 1397–1525
(Kraków, 1996), is inclined to accept a larger role for the Dominicans, especially
Bitterfeld, in the creation of the Kraków department – a rather doubtful view,
requiring futher research; see K. Kaczmarek, ‘Głos w dyskusji nad początkami
studium generalnego dominikanów w Krakowie’, Nasza Przeszłość 91 (1999),
77–100, at 98.
44 Hinnebusch, History, vol. 2, p. 64.
45 Ibid, pp. 58ff; and see pp. 44ff. concerning the conditions of study by ‘foreign’
Dominican students, and the difficulties they encountered in Paris and
England.
46 Ibid, p. 68. Master Dominic of Pecciola compiled a chronicle of the monastery
situated in Pisa. In it, he wrote that masters of theology might be encountered
only in Paris, and that, when he entered the monastery around 1347, there were
only three of them in Italy.
47 Ibid, p. 68.
48 Ibid, pp. 64ff.
49 Ibid, pp. 69–70 – see the vivid evidence assembled by Hinnebusch.
50 P. Kielar OP, ‘Powstanie dominikańskiego studium generalnego w Krakowie’,
in Kłoczowski, Studia nad historią, vol. 1, p. 348.
51 Kielar, ‘Magister Franciszek Oczko – dominikanin’, pp. 357ff.
52 Kaczmarek, ‘Głos’.
53 Kłoczowski, Dominikanie, p. 226, where (following the valuable eighteenth-
century manuscript treatment by Wawrzyniec (Laurentius) Teleżyński, De rebus
Provinciae Poloniae s. Hyacynthi Ordinis Praedicatorum [Kórnik Library,
ms. 93 I.F 93], p. 253), I cite a passage, unknown in current editions, of the
resolution by the Dominican general chapter held in Freiburg in 1419:
Hoc anno, cum capitulum generale Friburgi sub RPM Generali Leonardo
celebraret, in eo iam studium generale Cracoviae agnoscebatur et institutus
est regens P. Joannes Frankenstiensis S. T. Bacalaureus . . . ad sententias F.
Hermanus Wusserabo, ad legendam Biblia F. Andreas Pregang . . .
Very modest excerpts of the acts of the 1419 chapter (the first after the end of
the Great Schism), appear in the Acta Capitulorum, vol. 3, p. 160; see also R.P.
Mortier, Histoire des Maîtres Généraux de l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, vol.
Notes 241
4 (Paris, 1909), p. 126. An important argument in support of the establishment
of a studium generale in Kraków in 1419 is the publication of the heretofore
unknown acts of the general chapter held in Genoa in 1413, with an extensive
list of studia generalia throughout almost the entire Order, including Poland. No
Kraków studium appears on this list, nor does one appear on the fragmentary
lists dating from the previous years; Acta capituli generalis celebrati Genuae
anno 1413, ed. S.L. Frote OP, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 26 (1956),
291–313.
54 J. Fijałek, ‘Dwaj dominikanie krakowscy: Jan Biskupiec i Jan Falkenberg’, in
Księga pamiątkowa ku czci Oswalda Balzera, vol. 1 (Lwów, 1925), pp. 271–
348; Kłoczowski, Dominikanie, pp. 191ff.
55 Kielar, ‘Studia’, p. 340.
56 See n. 42, above.
57 A fact noted long ago by J. Fijałek, Studia do dziejów uniwersytetu krakowskiego
i jego wydziału teologicznego w XV wieku, Rozprawy Akademii Umiejętności,
Wydział Filologiczny 29 (Kraków, 1899), pp. 112ff:
We cannot perceive . . . any particular connection between the university and
the Preaching Order. . . . Indeed, attendance by the Dominicans . . . is, even in
comparison with that by the Franciscans, extremely low, virtually nil; the sons
of Saint Dominic continue to obtain an education in their own quarters.
The sharp polemic at the beginning of the fifteenth century between the university
and the Kraków Dominicans was noted many years ago by Zofia Budkowa; see
the text of a sermon cited in Kłoczowski, Dominikanie, pp. 233–4. The urgency
of further research is especially pronounced here.
58 J. Kłoczowski, ‘Studia w polskiej prowincji dominikańskiej za prowincjalatu
Jakuba z Bydgoszczy (1447–1478)’, in Europa – Słowiańszczyzna – Polska.
Studia ku uczczeniu prof. K. Tymienieckiego (Poznań, 1970), pp. 47ff;
Kłoczowski, ‘Studium generalne dominikanów w Krakowie w XV wieku’,
Roczniki Filozoficzne 27 (1979), 239–43.
59 M. Rechowicz, ‘Początki i rozwój kultury scholastycznej (do końca XIV
wieku)’, in Dzieje teologii katolickiej w Polsce, ed. M. Rechowicz, vol. 1
(Lublin, 1974), pp. 59ff, thinks that the Sentences were a subject of lectures in
Gniezno or in Kraków ‘since at least the fourteenth century’. K. Stopka, Szkoły
katedralne metropolii gnieźnieńskiej w średniowieczu. Studia nad kształceniem
kleru polskiego w wiekach średnich (Kraków, 1994), notes with emphasis that
‘cathedral schools were grammar and liturgical schools rather than schools of
theology’ (p. 169). Gradually, ‘during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
lectorates of theology and canon law were established not only in the capital of
the province, but also in other episcopal sees’ (p. 180).
60 J. Kłoczowski, ‘Bracia Mniejsi w Polsce średniowiecznej’, in Zakony
franciszkańskie w Polsce, ed. J. Kłoczowski, vol. 1 (Lublin, 1983), pp. 47, 50.
7 Matrimonium sub fide Judaica contractum

1 Deut. 7:3–4:
neque sociabis cum eis coniugia, filiam tuam non dabis filio eius nec filiam illius
accipies filio tuo, quia seducet filium tuum, ne sequatur me ut magis serviat diis
alienis.
2 Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 11, col. 1052, vol. 12, col. 168.
3 J. Freisen, Geschichte des kanonischen Eherechts bis zum Verfall der
Glossenliteratur (2nd ed., Paderborn, 1893), pp. 635–43.
4 H.G. Gruber, Christliches Eheverständnis im 15. Jahrhundert (Regensburg,
1989), pp. 116–20.
5 J. Freisen, Geschichte, p. 642; see also Raymund of Peñaforte, Summa de
poenitentia et matrimonio cum glossis Joannis de Friburgo (Rome, 1603, repr.
Farnborough, 1967), p. 547:
Aut fidelis contrahit cum infideli, Iudaeo scilicet, pagano vel haeretico, aut
fideles inter se et postea labitur alter eorum in haeresim. In primo casu nullum
est matrimonium, sponsalia tamen potest fidelis cum infideli contrahere sub
conditione, ut infidelis convertatur ad fidem.
6 J. Freisen, Geschichte, p. 642: ‘Sponsalia tamen contrahere possunt sub tali

conditione, ut infidelis convertatur ad fidem’ (Tancred of Bologna, ca. 1210–
13).
7 Schlesisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 4, ed. W. Irgang (Cologne and Vienna, 1988),
no. 5, ch. 10, pp. 12–14; Kodeks dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, vol. 1 (Poznań,
1877), no. 423. See T. Silnicki, ‘Kardynał legat Gwido, jego synod wrocławski
w roku 1267 i statuty tego synodu’, in Silnicki, Z dziejów Kościoła w Polsce.
Studia i szkice historyczne (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 321–79, at 363–4, 374–6.
8 This connection is explicitly reflected by a note recording travel around Poland
– perhaps indeed written by someone associated with Legate Guido – which
survived in one of the curial formularies, and where the author reports with
outrage the widespread practice in that country of Jews hiring Christian
nursemaids, whom their employers subsequently forced into cohabitation;
Monumenta Poloniae Vaticana, vol. 3, ed. J. Ptaśnik (Kraków, 1914), n. 515.
9 Statuty synodalne wieluńsko-kaliskie Mikołaja Trąby z r. 1420, ed. J. Fijałek and
A. Vetulani (Kraków, 1915–20, 1951), pp. 91–3.
10 M. Toch, Die Juden im mittelalterlichen Reich (Munich, 2003), pp. 42–3;
Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 3 (1984–6), col. 1646. It is quite notable that the
substantial entry ‘Mixed marriage’ in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 12, cols.
164–9, almost entirely concerns the modern period.
11 P. Dąbkowski, Prawo prywatne polskie (Lwów, 1910), 1:149.
12 In researching the present article, I have systematically examined volumes 9–18
of the series Acta causarum consistorii, situated in the Archdiocesan Archive in
Poznań (hereafter cited as AC, followed by the signature number of the book),
and volumes 8–12 of the series of the Poznań land law books situated in the
State Archive (hereafter cited as Poznań Z, followed by the signature number of
the book).
13 For a summary of the current state of knowledge about the city, see Dzieje
Poznania, ed. J. Topolski, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Warsaw and Poznań, 1988).
14 Concerning the Jews of Poznań, see L. Koczy, ‘Studia nad dziejami
gospodarczymi Żydów poznańskich przed połową wieku XVII’, in Kronika
Miasta Poznania, vol. 12 (1934), no. 3, pp. 257–99, and vol. 13 (1935), no. 1,
pp. 47–63, nos. 2–3, pp. 171–231; S. Nożyński, ‘Żydzi poznańscy w XV wieku’,
ibid, vol. 10 (1932), no. 1, pp. 88–99, nos. 2–3, pp. 249–63; J. Rudzińska, ‘Żydzi
w późnośredniowiecznym Poznaniu’, in Civitas Posnaniensis. Studia z dziejów
średniowiecznego Poznania (Poznań, 2005), pp. 345–60. For basic information,
see the Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 13, cols. 946–51.
Notes 243
15 M. Horn, ‘Najstarszy rejestr osiedli żydowskich w Polsce z 1507 r.’, Biuletyn
Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 3.91 (1974), 12.
16 AC 12, fol. 47v:
In causa Hedwigis mulieris de Poznania cum Johanne novo christiano de ibidem

mulier oblata citacione petivit Johannem sibi in maritum qui adhuc existens in
fide Judayca ut sepius per annum integrum proxime preteritum in celario ipsius
Hedwigis fidem suam matrimonialem dedit hiis [verbis], ‘Ita me Deus adiuvat
quod volo baptisari in fidem christianam et volo te michi ducere in uxorem et
promitto tibi fidem meam matrimonialem.’ Ex adverso Johannes contestatus est
litem negative addiciens quod si aliquis contractus fuit inter ipsum Johannem
et Hedwigim ille tunc fuit perfidus et nullum vigorem habens ex eo quia in fide
Judaica. Et dominus auditis proposicione et responsione parcium dixit se velle
deliberare super eo si mulier debebit probare contractum an non ad feriam
secundam post Conductum Pasce.
On the margin is inserted the following text, in a contemporary hand: ‘alias

petivit impsum compelli ad consumandum matrimonium in facie Ecclesie per
verba de presenti contractum’.
17 Ibid, fol. 52v–3:
In causa Hedwigis mulieris de Poznania cum Johanne novo christiano de

ibidem m. Mathias Crispus nomine mulieris ad peticionem primam verbo
adiecit quomodo idem Jo. lotus fonte baptismati matrimonium in fide Judayca
contractum per verba de presenti ratificavit et resumpsit copula carnalis
subsequente. Ex adverso Johannes contestatus est litem negative. Et dominus
interloquendo super prima peticione mulieris admisit mulierem et probandum
et presertim addicionem secundam.
18 Ibid, fol. 55v: ‘mgr Mathias Crispus nomine mulieris . . . induxit duas testes
citatas a quibus dominus officialis de dicenda veritate recepit solita iuramenta
et examen eorum commisit’, and fol. 58: ‘mgr Mathias Crispus nomine mulieris
. . . induxit duos testes citatos a quibus’, etc.
19 Ibid, fol. 68v (4 May 1431): ‘In causa Hedwigis mulieris de Poznania cum
Johanne novo christiano de ibidem m. Mathias nomine mulieris replicavit
generaliter verbo contra excepciones pro parte adversa oblatas . . .’ and fol. 73v
(14 May 1431): ‘In causa Hedwigis mulieris de Poznania cum Johanne novo
christiano de ibidem . . . dominus locum tenens conclusit in causa cum potestate
solita in presencia mgri Mathie procuratoris mulieris’.
20 Ibid, fol. 77v–8:
In causa Hedwigis mulieris de Poznania cum Johanne novo christiano de

ibidem . . . dominus ad peticionem parcium suam tulit diffinitivam sentenciam
in scriptis pro Johanne absolvens eundem Johannem ab impeticione mulieris
et mox ibidem mgr Crispus nomine mulieris protestatus est de gravamine et
appellando alias verbo ab ipsa sentencia ad sanctam sedem metropolliticam
Gneznensem appellavit et ap[p]elaciones petivit quas sibi dominus reverenciales
decrevit . . .
The Gniezno officialis’s 1431 court book has not survived.

21 See W. Abraham, Zawarcie małżeństwa w pierwotnem prawie polskiem (Lwów,
1925); P. Hamperek, ‘Sprawy małżeńskie w oficjalacie okręgowym w Lublinie
w XV w.’, Roczniki Teologiczno-Kanoniczne 17 (1970), 33ff.
22 H.G. Gruber, Christliches Eheverständnis, pp. 108–15.
23 Słownik łaciny średniowiecznej w Polsce. Lexicon mediae et infimae Latinitatis
Polonorum, vol. 2 (Wrocław, 1959–67), col. 302.
24 Stadtbuch von Posen, ed. A. Warschauer (Posen, 1892), p. 207, no. 577.
25 This son is certainly John of Kalisz, who subsequently appears together with
his mother (Akta radzieckie poznańskie, ed. K. Kaczmarczyk, 3 vols. [Poznań,
1925–48], vol. 1, no. 277), in all likelihood identical with John, son of John
Kokundorf, documented in the years 1442–6 (Poznań, Archiwum Państwowe,
M. Poznań, vol. 1.291, fol. 87 and vol. 1.293, fol. 33). Thus, Margaret’s
first husband was John Kokundorf; for this family, see Słownik historyczno-
geograficzny województwa poznańskiego w średniowieczu, 4 parts (Wrocław,
1982–Poznań, 2003), pt. 2, p. 248.
26 In 1444, Peter Morlin was called a wheelwright (rotifex); Akta radzieckie, vol.
1, no. 270. The Morlins’ modest position is attested by the slight incidence of
their appearances in the city books.
27 AC 16, fol. 202:
In causa Johannis novi christiani de Poznania cum Margaretha uxore sua

dominus officialis mandavit ipsis partibus sil[enciose] matrimonialiter
commanere, obmissis omnibus displicensiis et rancoribus inter eos quomodolibet
exortis ut unius alteri in vitam non machinabitur ex mox ibidem Johannes tacto
ymagine crucifixi iuravit quod non affliget Margaretham inordinate nec eadem
in membris aliquibus mutilabit neque eam occidet, et similiter ipsa Margaretha
non intoxicabit Johannem ita quod non parabit sibi toxicum in cibo vel in potu
sub penis excommunicacionum et carceris, presentibus . . .
28 Akta radzieckie, vol. 1, no. 277.

29 Poznań, Archiwum Państwowe, M. Poznań, vol. 1.291, fol. 114v: ‘Margaretha
Kukundorfowa per tutorem suum legittimum Petrum Morlin resignavit unam
marcam census . . .’
30 The difficulties of cultural integration faced by Jews who converted to baptism
are a well-known phenomenon; M. Toch, Die Juden, pp. 124–5.
31 AC 12, fol. 44:
Ibidem magister Nico[laus] Mlinek procurator et maritus Jochne Judee de

Poznania asserens ipsam Jochnam citatam ad hodiernam diem ad instanciam
nobilis Gregorii de Golcz petivit ipsam Jochnam absolvi ab instancia termini
quod dominus ab[solvi]t si in quantum est terminus, et nobilem expensis quoad
presentem terminum condempnavit.
32 For example, a group of Jews from Głogów was represented in the Poznań
consistory court by a Master Christopher; Acta capitulorum nec non iudiciorum
ecclesiasticorum selecta, ed. B. Ulanowski, vol. 2 (Kraków, 1901), no. 981.
33 Advocates of the consistory court, based on the example of Gniezno, are the subject
of A. Gąsiorowski, ‘Circumspecti et illuminati viri. Adwokaci gnieźnieńscy
początków XV wieku’, in Mente et litteris. O kulturze i społeczeństwie wieków
średnich, ed. H. Chłopocka (Poznań, 1984), pp. 247–52.
Notes 245
34 Słownik łaciny średniowiecznej, vol. 6 (1985–92), col. 138–9.
35 Ibid, col. 800–3.
36 The form of the entrance of the surname, de Golcz, raises the possibility that
we are dealing here with the well-known German knightly family, von Goltz
of Neumark. However, this Gregory certainly originated from the Great
Polish village of Golcz (today Gulcz) near Czarnków; Słownik historyczno-
geograficzny województwa poznańskiego, pt. 1, p. 518.
37 Poznań Z 10 (fols. 2v, 10v), 11, 163. The sum recorded in that last entry is perhaps
unreliable, since earlier on we find that Gregory owed 18 marks; see n. 54.
38 Poznań, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne, Constitutiones procuratorum, vol. 2, fol.
91. Regrettably, I have not been able to find in this court book the act of Nicholas
Młynek’s appointment as Jochna’s representative.
39 AC 12, fol. 65v: ‘In causa nobilis Gregorii de Golcz cum Jochna Judea de
Poznania Stadnik nomine nobilis . . . obtulit libellum convencionalem cuius
Mlynek copiam petivit . . . et terminum ad dandum contra sibi assignari . . .’;
ibid, fol. 73:
In causa nobilis Gregorii de Golcz cum Jochna Judea de Poznania Stadnik

nomine nobilis petivit responderi libello olim per eum pro parte nobilis oblato,
ex adverso Mlynek nomine Judee allegavit litis pendenciam in iudicio seculari
inter easdem personas, Stadnyk replicante quod petivit usuram que non est
de foro seculari et dominus deliberatus interloqueretur. Item Mlynek dixit
adhuc non esse respondendum ex eo quia ipsa Judea fuit citata ad diem Lune
septimam mensis Marcii ad respondendum eidem libello in quo termino ipse
Mlynek nomine Judee comparuit parte adversa non comparente et petivit se
absolvi ab instanciam termini et condempnari nobilem in expensis quoad illum
terminum super quibus dominus deliberatus interloquetur.
40 Poznań Z 11, fol. 20:
Item veniens nobilis Gregorius de Golcz coram iudicio dimisit Jochnam Judeam
a citiacione spirituali prout ipsam citaverat ad ius spirituale, sed debet venire
cum eadem Jochna super dominum capitaneum aut pallatinum seu pallatini
locum tenentem et ipsi quodquod inter se ipsos iuberent, hec parte ex utraque
tenere deberent videlicet pro usura et omnibus causis. Super hoc adiudicatum
solvit.
41 See the Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 9 (1999), col. 341–5. Although the Polish
statutes of 1267 and 1420 (see above, nn. 7, 9), based here on the constitutions
of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), imposed sanctions on ‘immoderate’ usury,
they threatened the Jews merely with boycott by the Christians.
42 For example, the same Nicholas Młynek represented the village advocate of
Mileszyna Górka who had summoned the peasant Andrew of Chwalęcice de
pravitate usuraria, while in 1460 James Sepieński sued the children of Nicholas
of Błock – from whom he had borrowed money – for usury; Acta capitulorum,
vol. 2, nos. 1055, 1293.
43 For example, AC 10, fol. 181v, 216; AC 11, fol. 26v; AC 12, fol. 26v; AC 19, fol.
162 (‘Sloma nomine uxoris . . . petivit se absolvi a sentenciis exommunicacionis
super usurariam pravitatem’), 221. See also the intervention of Pope Boniface
IX, who, in 1392, instructed the officialis of Kraków to examine the complaint
by Clement of Kurów against the Jew Lewko concering an excessive level of
usury; Bullarium Poloniae, vol. 3, ed. I. Sułkowska-Kuraś and S. Kuraś (Rome
and Lublin, 1988), no. 312.
44 Poznań, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne, Constitutiones procuratorum, vol. 2, fol.
59 (10 Oct. 1427), 76v (3 Dec. 1427); Acta Capitulorum, vol. 2, no. 1004–6,
1023, 1031, 1092.
45 Kodeks dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, vol. 5, ed. F. Piekosiński (Poznań, 1908),
no. 500: mgr Nicolaus Mlinek de Margolino, as witness of the officialis’s
document (22 Aug. 1429); AC 10, fol. 142: Nicolaus Mlinek de Margolino.
46 AC 16, fol. 49 (27 Feb. 1432): ‘In causa mgri N. Mlinek procuratoris causarum
consistorii Poznaniensis . . . super instrumento publico per ipsum Mlinek de manu
sua confecto, pro quo instrumento mgr Mlinek petivit unam sexagenam . . .’
47 AC 17, fol. 52 (31 Jan. 1433: ‘In causa mgri Nicolai Mlinek procuratoris
causarum consistorii Poznaniensis et Barbare uxoris sue legittime olim bone
recordacionis mgri Cristofori procuratoris consistorii predicti filie’), 53v, 54v, 62,
176v (7 Sep. 1433: ‘sex marcas annui census . . . de censibus per bone memorie
Cristoferum patrem Barbare emptis et comparatis’); Akta radzieckie, vol. 1, no.
111 (‘olim bone memorie magister Cristopherus pater dicte Barbare’).
48 In the sources known to me, Christopher appears as a consistory-court
advocate in the years 1404–29 (Acta capitulorum, vol. 2, nos. 936, 1014), and
he definitely died before 3 January 1431 (AC 14, fol. 75). He originated from
Miłosław (Kodeks dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, vol. 7, ed. A. Gąsiorowski and
R. Walczak [Warsaw and Poznań, 1985], no. 518). He was also a cathedral vicar
(30 May 1412; ibid, no. 697a), and he even exchanged his vicarage for the
parish church in Białężyn (12 April 1421; Bullarium Poloniae, vol. 4, ed. S.
Kuraś, I. Sułkowska-Kuraś and H. Wajs [Rome and Lublin, 1992], no. 803).
Despite having occupied the vicarage and the parish, he may not have taken
higher orders, which enabled him to marry and to beget legitimate offspring.
Nicholas Młynek must have known Christopher well, since he often replaced
him in court (AC 9, fol. 201; AC 12, fol. 166; AC 14, fol. 75; Constitutiones
procuratorum, vol. 2, fol. 76v).
49 Akta radzieckie, vol. 1, nos. 102, 108, 111, 198; Gniezno, Archiwum
Archidiecezjalne, ACons. C 1, fol. 43–4 (23 Dec. 1440: an appellate verdict by
the officialis of Gniezno, granting Nicholas Paduch rent from a garden in the
suburb which Nicholas Młynek had refused to pay).
50 Akta radzieckie, vol. 1, no. 250.
51 Stadtbuch von Posen, pp. 164–5, no. 471 (19 May 1427: ‘perfida Jochna filia
Manlini Magni’); see n. 58.
52 See n. 63.
53 See nn. 58, 65, 68–9.
54 Poznań Z. 9, fol. 130v (11 Dec. 1427): ‘Item venientes nobiles Gregorius de
Golcz tamquam principalis debitor et Nicolaus de Wargowo prout fideiussor . . .
recognoverunt octodecim marcas latorum grossorum Pragensium Jochne Judee
Posnaniensi . . .’
55 Poznań Z 9, fol. 62–62v, 74v, 86v, 106; Poznań Z 10, fol. 94–94v, 195.
56 Poznań Z 9, fol. 7, 31, 67, 115v, 122; Poznań Z 10, fol. 80v, 83v, 163, 195;
Poznań Z 11, fol. 31v, 54, 63, 79v; Poznań Z 12, fol. 62v, 138, 139v.
57 Poznań Z 12, fol. 148, 160v, 183; Poznań Z 13, fol. 53v, 64v.
58 Poznań Z 12, fol. 226 (10 [?] May 1434): ‘Item venientes Pessak maritus olym
Jochne Judee et Mallin pater eiusdem Jochne, Judei de Poznania . . .’
Notes 247
59 Jochna, Abraham’s widow: Poznań Z. 8, fol. 105v, 107; Jochna’s other cases
with Andrew Krupa and Nicholas of Chomęcice: Poznań Z 8, fol. 78v, 87, 98v;
Poznań Z 9, fol. 99v, 106; Poznań Z 11, fol. 76, 128; Manlin the Old: Poznań Z
8, fol. 58; Poznań Z 9, fol. 7, 12, 99v, 106, 114, 122, 131.
60 Stadtbuch von Posen, pp. 135–6 (no. 393), 142 (no. 412).
61 See L. Koczy, Studia, pp. 275–6, who, however, incorrectly indentifies Manlin
the Old as Manlin the Red; they are certainly two different people, for which
see AC 14, fol. 66v (21 March 1431): ‘a Iudeis Iczak et Ruffo Mandlyn et alio
Antiquo Mandlyn’. Manlin the Old was also called ‘the Fat’ (Poznań Z 12,
fol. 195: ‘Manlin Magnus’ in the preamble, ‘Manlin Pinguis’ in the text of
the entry; AC 19, fol. 224v: ‘Manlin Tlusti’). Manlin the Old’s daughters also
included Sława (married to Isaac), and Rosa (perhaps identical to the wife of the
subsequently well-known Salomon–Słoma); see the entries concerning the joint
transactions made by this sibling group, cited in n. 64. The wife of Manlin the
Old who appears on 9 September 1428 is Racha (Poznań Z 10, fol. 83v).
62 Concerning this Abraham, see L. Koczy, Studia, p. 175. At the same time, two
other Abrahams also lived in Poznań: the son of Muszko the Rich (Die ältesten
großpolnischen Grodbücher, ed. J. Lekszycki, vol. 1 [Leipzig, 1887], no. 936,
1758), perhaps identical to the son of Muszko of Pyzdry (1407–9: Poznań Z 3,
fol. 2, 66v, 95v, 102: ‘Abraham Judeus Muszconis de Pysdri nunc in Poznania
morans’), and also perhaps the son of a man, or of a woman, named Jordan
(Die ältesten großpolnischen Grodbücher, vol. 1, nos. 963, 2099, 2101, 2208,
2331). The identification of Abraham, Jochna’s husband, as Aaron’s son seems
to be confirmed by the fact that, in 1332, Isaac the Old son of Aaron, together
with Isaac son of Manlin (that is to say, Jochna’s brother) transferred to Jochna
the debts due to them from Bartosz Chomęcki – which looks like a family
transaction (Poznań Z 11, fol. 112).
63 The entry of 11 January 1426 (Stadtbuch von Posen, pp. 154–5, no. 447: ‘Jochna
mit eren kindern Abrahomes erem manne’), which quite possibly concerns
the no longer living Abraham, is unclear. Jochna is explicitly called a widow
on 7 May 1426 (Poznań Z 8, fol. 105v, 107). See also Kodeks dyplomatyczny
Wielkopolski, vol. 9, ed. A. Gąsiorowski and T. Jasiński (Poznań, 1990), no.
1139 (7 Oct. 1427), and Poznań Z 10, fol. 80v (9 Sep. 1428).
64 Poznań Z 9, fol. 93v (25 June 1427: the court bailiff places ‘Judeos Poznanienses
videlicet Rosam, Jochnam et Iczak’ into possession of the goods of Lawrence
Jeż in Nowy Dwór), 101 (July 1427: ‘Rosa, Jochna et Hyczak Judeus dederunt
terminum sedendi in domo strenuo Laurencio Gesz de Nowy Dwor ab hunc
ad quatuor septimanas, ita tamen quod ipsis in domorum edificiis et in aliis
rebus dampnificare non debet, piscatores vero pisces domino cedentes dictis
Judeis debeant assignare . . .’), 116 (22 Oct. 1427: Lawrence Jeż pays a
penalty ‘quia non exivit de heredidate et domo’); Poznań Z 10, fol. 13 (10 Feb.
1428: ‘Iczak, Jochna, Rosa, Slawa Judei Poznanienses statuerunt tutorem et
procuratorem nobilem Stanislaum Slap de Palandze in Nowi Dwor et Sady
ipsorum acquisicionis et eciam domini decreverunt quod dominus Chwalantha
de Lubycz burgrabius Pozanniensis eosdem Judeos unacum Slap a violencia
et in dictis bonis aquisitis similiter defensare debet et tueri’), 29–29v (9 March
1428: Jeż pays off part of the debt, but in order to extinguish the remainder, the
Jewish lenders are to draw the revenues from Nowy Dwór and Sady).
65 Stadtbuch von Posen, p. 194, no. 538 (24 Jan. 1431): ‘her Pessak der Jude und
Jochne seyne hawsfraw’.
66 Poznań Z 12, fol. 138, 139v; the entries appear to refer to 16 February 1434.
67 Ibid, fol. 148 (‘dedimus sibi ad inligandum ipsam et Peschak cum pueris suis,
videlicet Jochne, olim in hereditate Gorzewo’), 148v (‘domina Gorzewska . . .
eisdem Judeis videlicet Peszakoni et pueris Jochne plus noscere non debet’).
68 Ibid, fol. 191v: ‘Item veniens Pessak Judeus ex parte sui et filiorum suorum et
Jochne defuncte . . .’
69 Ibid, fol. 190: ‘Item veniens Peschak et Muschcka privignus Peschak filius
Jochne . . .’ Muszka appeared jointly with Jochna as early as 6 January 1430
(Poznań Z 11, fol. 39v). Concerning the children by Abraham, see the entry cited
in n. 63. The existence of children by Pessach is documented by the entry cited
in n. 68.
70 Akta radzieckie, vol. 1, no. 120 (2 July 1438); Poznań, Archiwum Państwowe,
M. Poznań, 1.129, fol. 81 (25 Oct. 1448: ‘Jude Pyeszak’).
71 Poznań Z 10, fol. 152v–3v (4 Jan. 1429), 162v–3v (6 Jan. 1429), 171–3, 176v–7 (3
Feb. 1429), 185v, 191v, 195 (1 March 1429); Poznań Z 11, fol. 3v (4 April 1429),
28v, 30–1v, 33 (4 Jan. 1430).
72 Concerning the sixteenth century, this perspective has been forcefully
presented long ago by L. Koczy, Studia, p. 258; see also T. Jurek, ‘Żydzi w
późnośredniowiecznym Kaliszu’, Rocznik Kaliski 24 (1992–3), 29–53.
8 Notes on the Provision of Water for the City of Dubrovnik in the Fifteenth
and Sixteenth Centuries
I wish to thank Mrs. Nan Lewis of Los Angeles for kindly editing my English
text.
1 Liber statutorum civitatis Ragusii, ed. and trans. (into Croatian) A. Šoljić, Z.
Šundrica and I. Veselić (Dubrovnik, 2002), bk. 5, ch. 41, and bk. 7, ch. 62. See
S. Ćirković, ‘Iz dubrovačke svakodnevnice XV stoleća’, in Lauree Bartholomeo
Krekich septuagenario oblatae (Belgrade, 2004), p. 4.
2 R. Jeremić and J. Tadić, Prilozi za istoriju zdravstvene kulture starog Dubrovnika,
vol. 1 (Belgrade, 1938), pp. 36–8.
3 For the development of textile production in Dubrovnik, see D. Dinić-Knežević,
Tkanine u privredi srednjovekovnog Dubrovnika (Belgrade, 1982).
4 Jeremić and Tadić, Prilozi, vol. 1, pp. 39–43. The cost of the aqueduct
amounted to at least 12,000 and perhaps even 15,000 golden ducats; ibid, p.
39. A very interesting description of the building of the aqueduct can be found
in the work of Philippus de Diversis de Quartigianis, from Lucca, who was
the principal of the first high school in Dubrovnik, from 1431 until probably
1441, and left a fascinating description of the city. See Filip de Diversis, Opis
slavnoga grada Dubrovnika, ed. and trans. (into Croatian) Z. Janeković-Römer
(Zagreb, 2004), pp. 59–61, 152–4. See also L. Beritić, ‘Dubrovački vodovod’,
Anali Historijskog instituta Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti
u Dubrovniku 8–9 (1960–1), 99–116; R. Seferović and M. Stojan, ‘Čudo
vode (prolegomena za renesansni vodovod u Dubrovniku)’, Anali Zavoda za
povijesne znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Dubrovniku 44
(2006), 95–137.
5 In 1453 five additional springs were found, and connected with the aqueduct:
Liber viridis, ed. B. Nedeljković (Belgrade, 1984), ch. 438; Jeremić and Tadić,
Prilozi, vol. 1, pp. 44–5.
6 Liber viridis, ch. 341; Jeremić and Tadić, Prilozi, vol. 1, p. 43.
Notes 249
7 Državni arhiv u Dubrovniku (hereafter DAD), Consilium minus, xxi, p. 72.
8 Ibid, pp. 32, 71v.
9 Ibid, pp. 61v, 63.
10 Ibid, p. 72v.
11 Ibid, p. 78v.
12 Ibid, pp. 90, 107.
13 Ibid, Diversa notariae, lxiv, p. 128v.
14 Ibid, lxv, p. 15.
15 For a detailed description of the building of Onofrio’s big fountain see R.N.
Klemenčič, ‘Dubrovniška velika fontana’, Zbornik za umetnostno zgodovino, n.
s. 39 (2003), 57–91. I am very grateful to Dr. Nella Lonza, Scientific Researcher
in the Historical Institute of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in
Dubrovnik, for providing me with a photocopy of this article.
16 DAD, Diversa notariae, lxiv, p. 134. The mason’s salary was to be 30 hyperpers.
At this time, one Venetian ducat was worth three Ragusan hyperpers.
17 The masons were to
fodere et terrenum fossionis eorum expensis asportare . . . dando ipsam cisternam
longam brachiis sex cum dimidio intra muros et largam brachiis quatuor intra
muros, et altam brachiis quatuor, bene involtatam et bene carazatam et cum
canalibus quantum est longa domus supra viam, et cum cantullis per quos de
dictis canalibus aqua vadat in dictam cisternam . . . et cum pozali in orio dicte
domus. (ibid, lxv, p. 63v)
18 This contract was particularly long and detailed: ibid, pp. 62v–3. Another cistern
more greco, 1487, at ibid, lxvii, 75.
19 DAD, Consilium minus, xxi, p. 180v.
20 This document has been published in its entirety by Ćirković, ‘Iz dubrovačke
svakodnevnice’, pp. 17–19.
21 DAD, Diversa notariae, lxvii, p. 144v.
22 Consilium rogatorum, xxv, p. 175v. I am most grateful to Dr. Relja Seferović,
Research Assistant in the Historical Institute of the Croatian Academy of
Sciences and Arts in Dubrovnik, for finding and copying this document for me.
23 DAD, Diversa notariae, lxvii, p. 155v. The man, Pethar Zofredouich, was
supposed to bring
trabes centum brachiorum decem de morello minori trabium quas ipse Pethar
promisit ser Marino And. de Ragnina, et trabes quinquaginta de passis quattuor
de bono morello . . . ad trabes quattuor pro singulo ducato, et tabulas [lacuna]
de xernouiza de sega maiori ad ducatos novem pro singulo centenario.
Petar received from the aforementioned ser Marino fifty ducats in rationem
presentis mercati.
24 DAD, Consilium minus, xxi, pp. 141v, 147v, 165v, 230. Ser Clemens was ordered
in July 1481 ‘to remove all the dirt that was caused by the work performed under
the roof [of his house] near the courtyard of the cistern’ (ibid, p. 232).
25 Ibid, p. 236.
26 Ibid, iv, p. 41.
27 Ibid, xxxi, pp. 179v, 180v.
28 Ibid, p. 203.
29 Ibid, p. 206v.
30 The fountain was to be built in casale nobilium de Gradis sub Prichiput, and the
other one nearby (ibid, pp. 210, 212v, 225).
31 Ibid, xxxi, pp. 109v, 114.
32 Ibid, pp. 292–292v.
33 Consilium rogatorum, lviii, pp. 179–179v.
34 DAD, Consilium minus, xxxvi, p. 94.
35 Ibid, xliv, p. 128v.
36 Jeremić and Tadić, Prilozi, vol. 3 (Belgrade, 1940), pp. 27–9.
37 See B. Krekić, ‘Dubrovnik’s struggle against fires (13th–15th centuries)’, in B.
Krekić, Dubrovnik: A Mediterranean Urban Society, 1300–1600 (Aldershot,
1997), ch. VI.
9 Venice and Wrocław in the later Middle Ages

1 F. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (London and Baltimore, MD, 1973), p.
79; J. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–
1350 (New York and Oxford, 1989), pp. 33–6, 353–9.
2 On the dissolution, see Abu-Lughod, European Hegemony, pp. 359–60. On
the beginnings of the economic recovery in Europe, see G. Duby, ‘Medieval
agriculture, 900–1500’, in The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol.
1: The Middle Ages, ed. C.M. Cipolla (London, 1972), p. 215; M. Małowist,
Wschód a Zachód Europy w XIII–XVI wieku. Konfrontacja struktur społeczno-
gospodarczych (Warsaw, 1973), p. 376.
3 Małowist, Wschód, p. 27; H. Samsonowicz, ‘L’économie de l’Europe du Centre-
Est du haut Moyen Âge au XVIe siècle’, in Histoire de l’Europe du Centre-Est,
ed. N. Aleksiun et al. (Paris, 2004), pp. 635–41.
4 L.B. Robbert, ‘Venice and the crusades’, in A History of the Crusades, gen. ed.
K.M. Setton, vol. 5, ed. N.P. Zacour and H.W. Hazard (Madison, WI, 1985), pp.
416, 418, 451. See also the remarks by Lane, Venice, p. 43.
5 Lane, Venice, pp. 200–1, 238; F. Braudel, Civilisation matérielle et capitalisme,
vol. 3: Le temps du monde (Paris, 1979), pp. 95–101; D. Quirini-Popławska,
Urbs populosissima, opulentissima, liberalissima. Mit czy rzeczywistość
późnośredniowiecznej Wenecji? (Kraków, 1997), pp. 133, 231.
6 J.C. Russell, Medieval Regions and Their Cities (Bloomington, IN, 1972), pp.
64–5. Compare the remarks by Lane, who offers the slightly higher aggregate
figure of about 120,000 before the Black Death, a level reattained around the
year 1500; Lane, Venice, pp. 18–19. Similarly D. Calabi, who estimates the
city’s population in 1509 at around 110,000; Dalabi, ‘Gli stranieri e la città’, in
Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, ed. A. Tenenti and
U. Tucci, vol. 5 (Rome, 1996), p. 919.
7 C. Buśko and M. Kaczmarek, ‘Wrocław od pradziejów do połowy XIII wieku’,
in Historia Wrocławia od pradziejów do końca czasów habsburskich, ed. C.
Buśko, M. Goliński, M. Kaczmarek and L. Ziątkowski, vol. 1 (Wrocław, 2001),
pp. 9–93, at 85. On German law in the Polish lands and Central Europe, see
recently M. Bogucka and H. Samsonowicz, Dzieje miast i mieszczaństwa w
Polsce przedrozbiorowej (Wrocław, 1986), pp. 45–88; P. Górecki, Economy,
Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland (1100–1250) (New York, 1992), pp.
193–284; A. Körmendy, Melioratio terrae. Vergleichende Untersuchungen
über die Siedlungsbewegung im östlichen Mitteleuropa im 13.–14. Jahrhundert
(Poznań, 1995), passim; S. Gawlas, O kształt zjednoczonego Królestwa.
Notes 251
Niemieckie władztwo terytorialne a geneza społecznoustrojowej odrębności
Polski (Warsaw, 1996), pp. 26–37, 88–90.
8 H. Weczerka, ‘Die Südostbeziehungen der Hanse’, in Die Hanse und der deutsche
Osten, ed. N. Angermann (Lüneburg, 1982), p. 119; M. Młynarska-Kaletynowa,
Wrocław w XII–XIII wieku. Przemiany społeczne i osadnicze (Wrocław, 1986),
p. 43. On the significance of the Odra in this period, see W. Kehn, Der Handel
im Oderraum im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Cologne and Graz, 1968), pp. 198–9,
202. For examples in the sources of the import of fish and salt from Pomerania
to Silesia, see, among others, M. Scholz-Babisch and H. Wendt, Quellen zur
schlesischen Handelsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Breslau, 1940), pp. 44–6 (no. 51), 48
(no. 55); A. Grodek, ‘Handel odrzański w rozwoju historycznym’, in Monografia
Odry, ed. A. Grodek, M. Kiełczewska-Zaleska and A. Zierhoffer (Poznań,
1948), p. 385; R. Stelmach, ‘Zasób dokumentowy Archiwum Państwowego we
Wrocławiu’, in Średniowiecze polskie i powszechne, vol. 2, ed. I. Panic and J.
Sperka (Katowice, 2002), p. 209.
9 Scholz-Babisch and Wendt, Quellen, pp. 23 (nos. 31, 1176), 65–6 (nos. 74,
1225); K. Maleczyński and W. Hołubowicz, Historia Śląska, vol. 1, pt. 1
(Wrocław, 1960), p. 306. For doubts concerning the presence of Thuringian
merchants in Wrocław, see M. Goliński, Podstawy gospodarcze mieszczaństwa
wrocławskiego w XIII wieku (Wrocław, 1991), p. 48.
10 Małowist, Wschód, p. 139; Samsonowicz, ‘L’économie’, p. 629.
11 Samsonowicz, ‘L’économie’, p. 635.
12 K. Maleczyński, ‘Dzieje Wrocławia od czasów najdawniejszych do roku 1618’,
in Dzieje Wrocławia do roku 1807, ed. W. Długoborski, J. Gierowski and K.
Maleczyński (Warsaw, 1958), p. 194.
13 Wrocław merchants served the papal emissary, Giovanni di Piano di Carpini, as
guides to Kiev:
Insuper testes sunt mercatores Wratislavie qui usque in Kioviam venerunt
nobiscum [et] sciverunt quod nos manus intravimus Tartarorum; et multi alii
mercatores, tam de Polonia quam de Austria, qui venerunt in Kioviam postquam
ad Tartaros ieramus. Sunt et testes mercatores de Constantinopoli qui per
Tartaros in Rusciam venerunt, et erant in Kiovia cum de terra reversi sumus
Tartarorum. Nomina autem mercatorum illorum sunt hec: Michael genuensis
et Bartholomeus, Manuel veneticus, Iacobus Renerius Acre, Nicholaus pisanus,
isti sunt maiores; alii minores sunt: Marchus, Henricus, Iohannes, Vasius,
iterum Henricus Bonadies, Petrus Paschiani. Alii plures fuerunt, sed eorum
nomina nescimus. (G. di Piano di Carpini, Historia Mongalorum, ed. E. Menestò
[Spoleto, 1987], ch. 51, p. 332)
For the hypothesis that the expression ‘merchants from Austria’ in all likelihood
refers to merchants from Regensburg, see G. Myśliwski, ‘Związki gospodarcze
Wrocławia z miastami południowych Niemiec i Szwajcarii (XIII–XV w.)’,
Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych 55 (2005), 129–31.
14 Abu-Lughod, European Hegemony, pp. 154, 158.
15 Scholz-Babisch and Wendt, Quellen, p. 164.
16 The fullest range of possibilities was presented by M. Goliński, in whose view
the wine
probably originated in northeastern Italy, in territories situated in the sphere of
influence of Venice. According to one explanation of the name for this wine,
the name derives from Rivallo, near Prosecco, close to Trieste. According to
another, it refers to Rivoli near Verona, or to Bozen in Tyrol . . . It is, however,
worth noting that the best-known Rivoli is situated near Turin, and thus to the
west of the aforenoted region. (Podstawy, p. 47)
17 Nürnberger Urkundenbuch, vol. 1, part 2, ed. Stadtrat zu Nürnberg (Nuremberg,

1952), p. 277, no. 447:
[O]b di in der stat ze Chamb iht chauffent oder verchauffent, die geben niht . . .
Daz reht habent auch, daz [den] Regenspurgern ist verschriben, di purger von
Nuernberch unde von Bretzlach und in den selben steten habent auch Chamber
daz selb reht.
18 H. Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig und die deutsch-
venetianischen Handelsbeziehungen, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1887, repr. Aalen, 1968),
p. 47.
19 For the trade route through Munich, see Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, p. 94.
20 A. Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich,
1983), pp. 128–9.
21 ‘Item Davidi de Wratislavia pro pellibus et pelliciis variis datis dominis
lb. 18½ venetorum pro argenti marcis 37 boni Wiennensis ponderis . . . ’
(‘Auszüge aus Amtrechnungen, Hauptrechnungen der Friscobaldigeselleschaft
und Tiroler Kaufleute’, in F. Bastian, Oberdeutsche Kaufleute in den älteren
Tiroler Raitbüchern [1288–1370]. Rechnungen und Rechnungsauszüge samt
Einleitungen und Kaufmannsregister [Munich, 1931, repr. Aalen 1971], no. 73
[1299], pp. 76–7).
22 ‘Auszüge’, nos. 80–1 (1300), p. 78.
23 Lane, Venice, pp. 61, 186.
24 H. Ammann, ‘Zur Geschichte der wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen
Oberdeutschland und dem deutschen Nordosten im Mittelalter’, Schlesische
Geschichtsblätter (1927), no. 3, p. 53.
25 Urkundliche Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte ober- und niederösterreichischer
Städte, Märkte und Dörfer, ed. G. Winter (Innsbruck, 1877), no. 2 (ca. 1310), p.
57:
Ist er aver Prage oder von Brezzla . . . und fürt ainen wagen vol geladen mit
vechem verch, es sein chürsen oder palge, der geit ie von dem rad dez wagens
ein vїrdung silber, daz ist von ainem wagen mir vїr scheiben ain markch silber.
[I]ist aver daz er minner furt, so schol man nicht nach den redern dez wagens
nehmen, man schol halt bescheidenleich und darnach und ez geacht wїrt, von
im nehmen.
For the meaning of the expression vechs verch, see p. 57, n. 1.
26 Ammann, ‘Zur Geschichte’, p. 53.
27 J. Ptaśnik, Kultura włoska wieków średnich w Polsce (2nd ed., Warsaw, 1959),
p. 142.
28 H. Wendt, Schlesien und der Orient. Ein geschichtlicher Überblick (Breslau,
1916), p. 33.
29 On the story of Silesia’s incorporation into the Kindgom of Bohemia, see
Maleczyński and Hołubowicz, Historia Śląska, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 544–59; P.W.
Knoll, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe,
1320–1370 (Chicago, IL, 1972), pp. 59–62, 96–7.
30 Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, vol. 2, p. 80.
Notes 253
31 Breslauer Urkundenbuch (hereafter BUB), vol. 1, ed. G. Korn (Breslau, 1870),
no. 122 (1327), p. 112 (§§ 16–17). The 1327 tariff has been treated, among
others, by Maleczyński, Dzieje, pp. 121–2, and Kehn, Der Handel, pp. 79–80.
32 BUB, pp. 112–13. For the wine referred to as welsch, see R. Sprandel, Von
Malvasia bis Kötschenbroda. Die Weinsorten auf den spätmittelalterlichen
Märtken Deutschlands (Stuttgart, 1998), pp. 27–8.
33 Maleczyński, Dzieje, p. 121; see BUB, vol. 1, no. 123 (1327), pp. 114–15.
34 C. Grünhagen, ‘Schlesien am Ausgang des Mittelalters’, Zeitschrift für
Geschichte und Althertum Schlesiens 18 (1884), 39. See the remarks by M.
Małowist, who considered supply from Venice to be the most important even for
the lands of the Kingdom of Poland, despite the fact that that kingdom contained
Lwów, with its strong ties to Genoa’s colonies on the Black Sea: Małowist, ‘Les
routes du commerce et les marchandises du Levant dans la vie de la Pologne au
bas Moyen Age et au début de l’époque moderne’, in Mediterraneo e Oceano
Indiano. Atti del VI Colloquio di Storia Maritima (Venice, 1962), p. 175.
35 On the Flemish contacts of Wrocław’s inhabitants, see M. Małowist, ‘Le
développement des rapports économiques entre la Flandre, la Pologne et les pays
limitrophes du XIIIe au XIVe siècle’, Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire
10 (1931), 1020–1; compare Hansisches Urkundenbuch (hereafter HUB), vol.
3, ed. K. Höhlbaum (Halle, 1882–6), pp. 419–20 (n. 1). On contacts between
Wrocław and the Black Sea, see Ł. Charewiczowa, Handel średniowiecznego
Lwowa (Lwów, 1925) pp. 31–2, 37; Kehn, Der Handel, pp. 44, 69; M. Balard,
‘Gênes et la mer Noire’, Revue Historique 270 (1983), 52–3; Samsonowicz,
‘L’économie’, p. 635.
36 M. Lexer, Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1872, repr.
1974), p. 742, s.v. gast.
37 On the ties with Kraków in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see S.
Kutrzeba, Handel Krakowa w wiekach średnich na tle stosunków handlowych
Polski (Kraków, 1902), pp. 72–3; on the importation of southern commodities
through Toruń, see S. Weymann, Cła i drogi handlowe w Polsce piastowskiej
(Poznań, 1938), pp. 101, 121; on the possible role of southern German merchants,
see Myśliwski, ‘Związki’, p. 136.
38 Maleczyński, Dzieje, p. 130.
40 Wendt, Schlesien, p. 44.
41 Archiwum Państwowe we Wrocławiu (hereafter APWr), Dokumenty miasta
Wrocławia (hereafter DmWr), no. 767 (1389):
[D]ie Burger und kauflute von Bresslaw und andere unse undertanen wie das sie
die von Wyen und andere von Osteriche an der Straze von Behem gen Venedigen
und an andern iren sachen und kauffmanschafte hindern und gehindert haben
...
See T. Mayer, Der auswärtige Handel des Herzogtums Österreich im Mittelalter

(Innsbruck, 1909), p. 33.
42 APWr, DmWr, no. 767 (1389):
[I]st unsre meynunng ernstlichen und wollen nicht gestatten das keine kauflute
von Wyenn und von Osterich mit kheinerley kaufmanschaft . . . gen Behem Polan
oder sust in andere unsere lande noch von Behem Polan oder andern unsern
landen gen Wyenn oder Osterich hin und herwider czihen oder varen sullen und
ouch das dieselben von Wyenn und von Osterich in unsern landen keynerley
kaufmanschaft mit kauffen oder vorkauffen treiben sullen uncz den unsern von
Bresslau und andern unsern undertanen die Strasse gen Venedien ungehindert
durch der Herzogen von Osterich lande offen werden.
43 APWr, DmWr, no. 770 (1388); see Ptaśnik, Kultura, p. 128.

44 Grünhagen, ‘Schlesien’, p. 39.
45 Mayer, Der auswärtige Handel, p. 33; K. Fajkmajer, ‘Die Streitigkeiten zwischen
den böhmischen und den Wiener Kaufleuten am Ende des XIV. Jahrhunderts’,
Mittheilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtforschung 31 (1910),
no. 3, 442 (see p. 444 for Fajkmajer’s remarks about the dating of this document,
which are more exact than Mayer’s).
46 Fajkmajer, ‘Die Streitigkeiten’, p. 443:
Item die purgar von Prag, von Bressla und aus andern steten des chunikreichs
von Behaim mugem mit irem gelt und mit irem wechsel reiten die strass ueber
Zeyrekch oder welich ander strass sy wellen durich des herczogen lannd ze
Oesterreich ungehindert und ungevaerlich.
47 The earliest attempt to assemble a list of the Venetians whose names appear in
the town books of Wrocław was A. Schultz, ‘Topographie Breslaus im 14. und
15. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens 10 (1871),
no. 2, 245–6.
48 A. Hoffmann, ‘Unmittelbarer Verkehr zwischen Schlesien und Venedig’,
Schlesische Geschichtsblätter (1926), no. 1, 39–40.
49 See H. Pruckner, ‘Der Prozess eines Breslauer Kaufmanns gegen einen Passauer
Bürger und dessen Auswirkungen’, in Passauer Studien. Festschrift für Bischof
Dr. Simon Konrad Landersdorfer OSB zum 50. Jahrestage seiner Priesterweihe
(Passau, 1953), pp. 257–72.
51 Regesta imperii, vol. 11, pt. 1 (1410–24), ed. W. Altmann (Innsbruck, 1896), p.
17 (no. 254, [1412]).
52 ‘Mittheilungen aus Breslauer Signaturbüchern’, ed. O. Stobbe, in Zeitschrift für
Geschichte und Althertum Schlesiens 7 (1866), no. 2, 344–5 (1421) (hereafter
MitthSign–3); see Ptaśnik, Kultura, p. 78. On Ricci, see K. Wutke, Schlesiens
Bergbau und Hüttenwesen. Urkunden 1136–1528 (Codex Diplomaticus
Silesiae, vol. 20) (Breslau 1900), p. 87; Ptaśnik, Kultura, pp. 36–8, 76–82;
G. Székely, ‘Wallons et Italiens en Europe Centrale aux XIe–XVIe siècles’,
Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestensis 6 (1964), 36–7, 56; A. Sapori,
‘Gli Italiani in Polonia fino a tutto il Quattrocento’, in Sapori, Studi di storia
economica, vol. 3 (Florence, 1967), pp. 156, 159.
53 W. Stieda, Hansisch-venetianische Handelsbeziehungen im 15. Jahrhundert
(Rostock, 1894), pp. 24, 34.
54 H. Klein, ‘Kaiser Sigismunds Handelssperre gegen Venedig und die Salzburger
Alpenstraße’, in Aus Verfassungs- und Landesgeschichte. Festschrift zum 70.
Geburtstag von Theodor Mayer dargebracht von seinen Freunden und Schülern,
vol. 2 (Constance and Lindau, 1955), p. 323.
55 APWr, Zbiór Klosego (hereafter ZbKlosego), vol. 48, fol. 19v–22. On Beringer,
see: Wendt, Schlesien, pp. 45–6; G. Pfeiffer, Das Breslauer Patriziat im
Notes 255
Mittelalter (Breslau, 1929), p. 166; Kehn, Der Handel, p. 92; W. von Stromer,
‘Nürnberg-Breslauer Wirtschaftsbeziehungen im Spätmittelalter’, Jahrbuch für
fränkische Landesforschung 34–5 (1974–5), 1091.
56 M. Štefánik, Obchodná vojna král’a Žigmunda proti Benátkam (Bratislava,
2004), pp. 43–51.
57 APWr, ZbKlosego, fol. 19v, pp. 21–2.
58 W. von Stromer, ‘Landmacht gegen Seemacht. Kaiser Sigismunds
Kontinentalsperre gegen Venedig (1412–1433)’, Zeitschrift für Historische
Forschung 22 (1995), no. 2, 181, 185. The rise in the importance of Nuremberg
merchants as mediators between their colleagues from Wrocław and Venice was
noted long ago by Wendt, Schlesien, p. 45.
59 See for example APWr, Libri excessuum et signaturarum (hereafter Lib.exc.
sign), vols. 23, p. 58 (1421); 24, p. 52 (1423).
60 Lib.exc.sign, vol. 24, pp. 50, 52, 62 (1422).
61 Wendt, Schlesien, pp. 50–1; Maleczyński, Dzieje, p. 238. See also, for example,
APWr, DmWr, no. 2535 (1440); Lib.exc.sign, vols. 36, p. 111 (1446 ); 41, p. 3
(1456).
62 APWr, Akta miasta Wrocławia (hereafter AmWr), Liber Magnus (hereafter
LMag), fol. 24v (1397); Lib.exc.sign, vol. 14, p. 40 (1403); MitthSign–3, pp.
344–5 (1421); Lib.exc.sign, vols. 24, p. 50 (1422); 34, p. 206 (1443); 43, p. 226
(1444).
63 In 1466, a certain Johannes Kinar de Wratislavia sold unspecified merchandise
in Lwów to the Venetian (mercator de Venecys), Pietro Veluti. In addition,
this Wrocław merchant was obliged to pay the Italian the toll assessed on the
transport of that merchandise (‘Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istoricheskii arkhiv
Ukrainy m. L’viv’, Acta officii consularis, no. 258 [1466], p. 118). This is
because Veluti possessed the Lwów toll in tenure, in order to collect on the
city’s debt to himself.
64 Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, vol. 2, p. 72 (the data in Venetian sources); see also
the data drawn from Wrocław sources, in APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 55, p. 95
(1478); DmWr, no. 6064 (1489).
65 Grünhagen, ‘Schlesien’, p. 39; Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, vol. 2, pp. 191–2.
66 See J. Drabina, Kontakty Wrocławia z Rzymem w latach 1409–1517 (Wrocław,
1981), p. 190.
67 H. Kellenbenz, ‘Die Wirtschaft in Deutschland, Italien und Frankreich im 14.
Jahrhundert, insbesondere ihre verkehrwirtschaftlichen Verflechtungen’, in Der
deutsche Territorialstaat im 14. Jahrhundert, vol. 1, ed. H. Patze (Sigmaringen,
1970), p. 207; Calabi, Gli stranieri, p. 915.
68 See APWr, DmWr, no. 6064 (1489), containing a notice about soap (venedische
Seiffe).
70 APWr, AmWr, LMag, p. 46 (1407). We might similarly interpret the 1489
regulation concerning trading in (among other goods) Oriental and Mediterranean
commodities, although, apart from Venetian soap, we cannot be certain whether
the remaining exotic merchandise was also imported from Venice (APWr,
DmWr, no. 6064). For the terminology pertaining to commodities from Venice
in Passau, see R. Loibl, ‘Die Stadt im späten Mittelalter. Wirtschaftskraft und
Verfassungsstreit’, in Geschichte der Stadt Passau, ed. E. Boshof, W. Hartinger,
M. Lanzzinner, K. Möseneder and H. Wolff (Regensburg, 1999), p. 105.
71 Wendt, Schlesien, pp. 50–1.
72 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 7, p. 3 (1394).
74 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 41, p. 89 (1456). Contrary to what might seem its
obvious meaning, German historians have variously interpreted the phrase
as ‘merchandise worth a penny’; see B. Kuske and M. Scholz-Babisch,
‘Oberdeutscher Handel mit dem deutschen und polnischen Osten nach
Geschäftsbriefen von 1444’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens
64 (1930), 63; Kuske, ‘“Köln”. Zur Geltung der Stadt, ihrer Waren und Massstäbe
in älterer Zeit (12.–18. Jahrhundert)’, in Kuske, Köln, der Rhein und das Reich.
Beiträge aus fünf Jahrzenhten wirtschaftgeschichtlicher Forschung (Cologne
and Graz, 1956), p. 153; W. von Stromer, Die Nürnberger Handelsgesellschaft
Gruber–Podmer–Stromer im 15. Jahrhundert (Nuremberg, 1963), p. 77–8.
75 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, p. 21 (1419); Lib.exc.sign, vol. 41, pp. 3, 90 (1456).
76 MitthSign, ed. O. Stobbe, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens,
6 (1865), no. 2 (hereafter MitthSign–1), p. 339; APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, p.
21 (1419). On the properties of saffron, see W. von Stromer, ‘Wirtschaft unter
den Luxemburgen’, in Nürnberg. Geschichte einer europäischen Stadt, ed. G.
Pfeiffer (Munich, 1971), p. 96.
77 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 21, 21v (1419).
78 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 21v (1419).
80 APWr, DmWr, no. 6064 (1489).
81 See APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vols. 22, p. 23 (1418); 41, p. 89 (1456). See P.
Eschenloer, Historia Wratislaviensis et que post mortem regis Ladislai sub
electo Georgio de Podiebrat Bohemorum rege illi acciderant prospera et
adversa (Scriptores Rerum Silesiacarum, vol. 7), ed. H. Markgraf (Breslau,
1872), p. 115 (1466). Compare the later, German version of the chronicle, where
the Venetian merchandise is described with the expression an venedischen
pfennwerten (P. Eschenloer, Geschichte der Stadt Breslau, ed. G. Roth [Munich
and Berlin, 2003], vol. 1, p. 528), a phrase I interpret to mean ‘craft products’
(see above).
82 Concerning the extracts, made by the Wrocław historian and archivist
Samuel B. Klose, see L. Harc, Samuel Beniamin Klose (1730–1798). Studium
historiograficzno-źródłoznawcze (Wrocław, 2002), pp. 127–30.
83 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 21.
84 Stieda, Hansisch-venetianische Handelsbeziehungen, p. 103.
85 As a basis for these calculations, I use the lesser Venetian pound, equal to 301
grams; see R.E. Zupko, Italian Weights and Measures from the Middle Ages
to the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 130; see also the weight
of a Venentian ounce, of which twelve constituted one pound, p. 175. Other
merchants purchased similar quantities of saffron – over 3.5 centners, that is,
about 190 kilograms; see MitthSign–1, p. 340 (1394).
86 H. van der Wee, ‘Structural changes in European long-distance trade, and
particularly in the re-export trade from south to north (1350–1750),’ in The
Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World
(1350–1750), ed. J.D. Tracy (Cambridge, 1990), p. 26.
87 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 41, p. 90.
88 Z. Pach, ‘Levantine trade routes and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages,’ in
Le XVe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques à Bucarest (Bucharest,
1980), vol. 2, p. 225.
Notes 257
89 See the Études anversoises. Documents sur le commerce international à
Anvers (1488 –1514) (hereafter Ét.anv), vol. 2, Certificats 1488–1510, ed. R.
Doehaerd (Paris, 1962), nos. 660, p. 98 (1492) and 1008, p. 148 (1494), where
there is a note of importation by the Wrocław merchants of the droech goet,
an expression understood to mean ‘spices’, ‘medications’ or ‘dyestuffs’; for
these explanations, see Ét.anv, vol. 3, p. 361. On the contacts between Antwerp
and the Polish lands (including Silesia, which was Czech at this time), see
H. Samsonowicz, ‘Relations commerciales polono-italiennes dans le bas
Moyen Age’, in Studi in memoria di Federigo Melis, vol. 2 (Rome, 1978), pp.
289–91.
90 On supplies by merchants from Regensburg, see Das Runtingerbuch (1383–
1407) und verwandtes Material zum Regensburger-Südostdeutschen Handel
und Münzwesen, vol. 2, ed. F. Bastian (Regensburg, 1935), p. 148 (1404);
APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 23, p. 99 (1420); for import of pepper by a merchant
from Passau, see Myśliwski, ‘Związki’, p. 146. The price of pepper in Venice
fell considerably at that time; Lane, Venice, p. 288.
91 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 21v.
93 Italia mercatoria apud Polonos saeculo XV ineunte (hereafter IMer.), ed. J.
Ptaśnik (Rome, 1910), no. 50, p. 34 (1428).
94 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 21v. For a description of baldechin and
bukeschin, see W. Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, vol. 2
(Stuttgart, 1879, repr. Hildesheim and New York, 1971), pp. 686–7, 692.
95 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 7, p. 3 (1394).
96 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 21v.
98 Scholz-Babisch, ‘Oberdeutscher Handel’, pp. 64, 66. On Brazil-wood, brought
from India through Jerusalem and Egypt, see Lane, Venice, p. 298.
99 For lapis lazuli, see Heyd, Geschichte, pp. 582–3.
100 Ptaśnik, Kultura, pp. 36–7.
101 Ibid, pp. 132–51.
102 IMer, no. 50, p. 34 (1428).
103 Wendt, Schlesien, p. 7; H. Samsonowicz, ‘Handel Litwy z Zachodem w XV
wieku’, Przegląd Historyczny 90 (1999), 454.
104 IMer, no 50, p. 34 (1428). I take one stone to equal twelve kilograms, following
T. Goerlitz, Verfassung, Verwaltung und Recht der Stadt Breslau, vol. 1
(Würzburg, 1962), pp. 73, 78.
105 Kuske and Scholz-Babisch, ‘Oberdeutscher Handel’, p. 63. J. Ptaśnik thought
that cochineal dye was imported from the Rus’: Kultura, p. 134. However,
another region of its origins is worth considering. L. Koczy has cited examples
of its production in Masovia, within the estates of the archbishops of Gniezno:
Handel Poznania do połowy wieku XVI (Poznań, 1930), p. 354. To be sure,
his remarks rest upon evidence from the 1540s; yet it appears that cochineal
dye had been procured in Masovia much earlier. Production of this commodity
required merely a traditional, herbal culture, and a demand beyond Masovia’s
boundaries. Both conditions were in place by the end of the Middle Ages;
thus in this period Masovian cochineal dye was probably traded over long
distances.
106 See Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, vol. 1, no 412, p. 227 (1437), for transport of
cochineal dye there by merchants from Nuremberg.
107 Grünhagen, ‘Schlesien’, p. 41. For copper mining in Silesia (which was not very
well-developed), see K. Maleczyński, ‘Aus der Geschichte des schlesischen
Bergbaus in der Epoche des Feudalismus’, in Beiträge zur Geschichge
Schlesiens, ed. E. Maleczyńska (Berlin, 1958), pp. 244–5.
108 U. Tucci, ‘Monete e banche nel secolo del ducato d’oro’, in Storia di Venezia
dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, ed. A. Tenenti and U. Tucci, vol. 5
(Rome, 1996), p. 765.
109 Małowist, ‘Le développement’, pp. 1020–1.
110 For gold mining in Silesia, see Grünhagen, ‘Schlesien’, pp. 37–8 (Złoty
Stok/Reichenstein); K. Peter, ‘Die Goldbergwerke bei Zuckmantel und
Freiwaldau’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens 19 (1885),
35–62; M. Gumowski, ‘Moneta na Śląsku do końca XIV w.’, Historja Śląska
od najdawniejszych czasów do roku 1400, vol. 3, ed. W. Semkowicz (Kraków,
1936), pp. 710–11. For silver mining, see Peter, ‘Die Goldbergwerke’, passim;
Maleczyński, ‘Aus der Geschichte’, pp. 240–2.
111 Peter, ‘Die Goldbergwerke’, p. 47.
112 Tucci, Monete, p. 754.
113 On the transit of precious metals from Hungary through Vienna, see Mayer,
Der auswärtige Handel, p. 20, and MitthSign–3, p. 355 (1424).
114 APWr, ZbKlosego, vol. 48, fol. 20v (1415); Lib.exc.sign, vol. 26, pp. 46–7
(1427).
115 Lane, Venice, p. 61; on later import of silver into Venice, see Tucci, Monete, p.
765.
116 BUB, no. 286, pp. 237–8. On Kutná Hora, see J. Janáček, ‘L’argent tchèque et
la Méditerranée (XIVe et XVe siècles)’, in Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand
Braudel, ed. B. Tenenti, vol. 1 (Toulouse, 1973), pp. 247–9, 255.
117 Pruckner, ‘Der Prozess’, passim; Loibl, Die Stadt, p. 125; Myśliwski, ‘Związki’,
pp. 138–9.
118 APWr, AmWr, LMag, fol. 24 (1397).
120 Ibid, vols. 43, p. 78 (1461); 44, p. 81 (1463).
121 If we thought that this name referred to a Byzantine coinage (the hyperperon, for
which see N.J.G. Pounds, An Economic History of Medieval Europe [2nd ed.,
London, 1994], p. 117), then one person would be the equivalent of over three
ducats: D. Quirini-Popławska, Włoski handel czarnomorskimi niewolnikami w
późnym średniowieczu (Kraków, 2002), p. 126.
122 According to F. Friedensburg, one Hungarian florin was the equivalent
of 24 Prague groats in the years 1400–30, 26 in 1432–3, and 28 from 1434
onward; Schlesiens Münzgeschichte im Mittelalter, pt. 2: Münzgeschichte und
Münzbeschreibung (Codex diplomaticus Silesiae, vol. 13 [Breslau 1888], p.
67). Because, in this author’s opinion, a mark of a Polish unit of account (that
is, consisting of 48 groats – for which see Schlesiens Münzgeschichte, p. 52)
dominated in Silesia throughout the entire Middle Ages, we can easily assess
the fact that one mark was equal in value to two Hungarian florins during the
early period, 1.85 florins in 1432–3, and 1.71 florins from 1434 onward. This
value, during the third and latest period, was accepted by L. Petry, Die Popplau.
Eine schlesische Kaufmannsfamilie des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Breslau,
1935), p. 92.
123 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 30, p. 150 (1436). Similarly, the two instances
concerning the obligations by a Toruń–Poznań–Legnica-based venture, where
Notes 259
the sources refer at one point to a debt of 399 ducats, and at another to a debt
in the same amount of florins, appear to support the one-to-one equivalence of
these two currencies; see APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 24, pp. 53–4.
124 Until 1491, the latter loaned the inhabitants of Wrocław about 2,500 Hungarian
florins, i.e. about 1390 marks of Prague groats; Myśliwski, ‘Związki’, p. 152.
125 Samsonowicz, ‘L’économie’, p. 627.
126 The prices here follow Stieda, Hansisch-venetianische Handelsbeziehungen,
pp. 95–6, 98, 103. Because the Venetian pound weighed 0.301 kilograms,
the local centner must have weighed 30.1 kilograms; see also Zupko, Italian
Weights, p. 130.
127 In 1432, a house with a lot situated in the Wrocław market square was worth
as much as 600 marks (MitthSign, ed. O. Stobbe, Zeitschrift für Geschichte
und Althertum Schlesiens 9 [1868], nos. 1, 178 [1446] [hereafter MitthSign–6];
compare APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 36, p. 60 [1446]; p. 203 [1447]). However,
in the same space it was also possible to acquire a house, probably without a
lot, for as little as 370 marks (APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 36, p. 203 [1447]). The
castle in Cisów (Zeisberg), near Wałbrzych, elicited a payment of 500 marks
(APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 32, p. 105 [1438]). The price of one bale (postaw)
of high-quality woollen cloth from Brussels oscillated between 16 and 18
marks (MitthSign–1, p. 340 [1394]; Lib.exc.sign, vol. 20, p. 16 [1414]; vol. 28,
p. 103 [1431]). One stone (that is, twelve kilograms) of pepper cost slightly
below seven marks in 1420 (Lib.exc.sign, vol. 23, p. 99). For the price of lead,
which was 26 Prague groats for one centner (i.e. fifty kilograms; see Goerlitz,
Verfassung, pp. 73, 78) in 1411, see MitthSign–1, p. 349. Hungarian copper
cost six florins per centner in 1440 (MitthSign, ed. O. Stobbe, Zeitschrift für
Geschichte Schlesiens, 8 [1867], no. 2, p. 448).
128 He was a member of the town council continuously from 1406 to 1437, and, in
1423, the town treasurer; R. Stein, Der Rat und die Ratsgeschlechter des alten
Breslau (Würzburg, 1962), p. 141.
129 The repayment of a sum this large progressed with difficulty, despite the support
offered to the creditors by the doge, and the distribution of the payment over
17 years; APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 33, p. 110 (1440); DmWr, no. 2582 (1441).
According to R. Stein, at this time the first person to be pressured for repayment
of the debt was Hans’s son and Johannes Banke’s heir: Stein, Der Rat, p. 142.
At a certain point, in 1441, the Venetian Senate prohibited the acceptance of
Wrocław merchandise unless Banke paid off his debt, which was assessed at
ca. 4,000 ducats (an assessment that either included the interest accrued, or that
was rounded off on the high side, so as to underline this debtor’s unreliability);
Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, vol. 1, p. 239, no. 434. The available sources do not
mention repayment of the debt. However, we cannot rule out a repayment by
Banke in Venice, which would not be recorded in the Wrocław sources.
130 For the position of Niklas and Hans Banke, see Stein, Der Rat, pp. 141–3
(Niklas, Johannes’s brother and councillor in 1417, and Hans, Johannes’s son
and chancellor of the duchy of Wrocław).
131 Stein, Der Rat, pp. 126 (concerning Stronechen), 147–8.
132 APWr, respectively vols. 17, p. 116 (1410); 14, p. 40 (1403); 19, p. 28 (1412).
Bernardo de Musto was demanding repayment of the debt from Jenitz, with
support from the doge, Michele Steno, as early as 1410; APWr, DmWr, no.
1200.
133 See APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 14, p. 40 (1403).
134 See Stein, Der Rat, pp. 126 (concerning Gurteler), 153 (concerning Beda).
135 Stein, Der Rat, p. 100, concerning the Dumlose kindred.
137 [N]obilem virum Ser Bartholomeum Paruta . . . (Archivio di Stato in Venezia,
Giudizi di Petizione: Sentenze e Giustizia [hereafter AStVen, GPet:SentGiust],
vol. 15, fol. 12v, 1408); ‘von wegen Jeronimi Parutha und seinen brudern
Seidenere und ouch Burger in Venedien’ (APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 30, pp. 147–
8 [1435]).
138 In a Venetian source, Francesco Amadi is described as Ser (ASt.Ven, GPet:
SentGiust, vol. 16, fol. 52v [1408]; vol. 17, fol. 78 [1409]).
139 R.C. Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public
Debt, 1200–1500 (Baltimore, MD, 1997), pp. 582, 586. Priolli loaned 120
florins to Niklas Banke (APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 17, p. 122 [1410 – the year
of repayment]), and his relatives, Niccolo and Giacomo, loaned an unspecified
sum to Johannes Banke (APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 33, p. 110 [1440]). For the
activities of Giacomo Priulli, see Mueller, Money Market, p. 104.
140 Ibid, pp. 583, 586 (the end of the bank’s activities in 1450). For the Zane
brothers, see APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 33, p. 110 (1440).
141 For these kindreds in general, see Y. Renouard, Les hommes d’affaires italiens
du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1949), p. 230; Lane, Venice, pp. 35, 43, 52, 139, 143,
193–4.
142 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 24, p. 63 (1422). For Andrea Barbarigo, see Mueller,
Money Market, pp. 526ff, 583.
143 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 18, fol. 51v (1411). For the Loredano family,
particularly Lorenzo Loredano, who was especially active in the first half of
the fifteenth century, see Mueller, Money Market, pp. 527, 540.
144 For example, APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vols. 24, p. 62 (1422); 26, p. 56 (1427). For
the Contarini kindred, see Mueller, Money Market, pp. 582–3.
145 APWr, DmWr, nos. 1200 (1410); 2535 (1440); 2578 (1441).
146 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vols. 24, p. 52 (1423); 26, p. 56 (1427); 30, p. 150
(1436).
147 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vols. 23, pp. 58 (1421), 62 (1422); 24, pp. 48 (1422), 50–2,
62–3, 68 (1422).
148 PWr, LMag, fol. 24 (1397).
149 Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco, vol. 1, p. 239, no. 434.
150 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 41, p. 90 (1456). On this institution, which enjoyed
a broad competence related to trade and to credit operations, see A. da Mosto,
L’archivio di Stato di Venezia. Indice generale storico, descrittivo ed analitico,
vol. 1 (Rome, 1937), p. 99.
152 Fajkmajer, ‘Die Streitigkeiten’, p. 443.
154 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 26, p. 46 (1427); MitthSign–6, 169 (1444); Lib.exc.
sign, vols. 35, p. 194 (1445); 37, p. 116 (1448).
155 MitthSign, ed. O. Stobbe, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Althertum Schlesiens
8 (1866), no. 1, 156 (1433); APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 41, p. 90 (1456).
156 K. Kopiński, ‘Mieszczanin Dawid Rosenfeld w dyplomatycznej i gospodarczej
służbie zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach w pierwszej połowie XV w.’, Zapiski
Historyczne 56 (2001), 49 (the author, however, does not include Strosberg in
this partnership, although he does, accurately, associate him with Rosenfeld
Notes 261
and with another partnership of which Rosenfeld was a member, established
jointly with Falbrecht and Morser of Gdańsk); see APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 22,
pp. 23, 27 (1418).
157 Archiv der Stadt Salzburg, Sendbriefe der Stadt Salzburg, vol. 1, no. 26 (1419).
For a description and assessment of this collection, see H. Dopsch, ‘Die
wirtschaftliche Entwicklung’, in Geschichte Salzburgs. Stadt und Land, vol. 1,
pt. 2, ed. H. Dopsch (Salzburg, 1983), p. 758.
159 See, respectively, APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vols. 22, p. 126 (1419); 23, p. 62 (1422);
24, p. 62 (1423); MitthSign–1, p. 342 (1399).
160 Kopiński, ‘Mieszczanin’, p. 49.
161 APWr, Lib.exc.sign, vol. 15, p. 65 (1404). Concerning Bicharani and his
economic and political role, see Ptaśnik, Kultura, pp. 71–5; von Stromer,
‘Nürnberg-Breslauer Wirtschaftsbeziehungen’, p. 1087 (also concerning
Kamerer), 1092; von Stromer, ‘Landmacht’, pp. 164, 166.
10 Strekfusz
1 What follows was presented in a different form to the Thirteenth Meeting of the
Fish Remains Working Group (ICAZ-FRWG), Basel, Switzerland, 4–9 October
2005. Collegial suggestions there, especially from Daniel Makowiecki and Dirk
Heinrich, helped improve the author’s understanding, while leaving him solely
responsible for any remaining errors and omissions.
2 As no fish were eaten from Sunday to Tuesday or on Thursday, it came to only 17
per cent of the weekly food bill. Data from Rachunki dworu króla Władysława
Jagiełły i królowej Jadwigi z lat 1388 do 1420, ed. F. Piekosiński, Monumenta
medii aevi historica res gestas Poloniae illustrantia, vol. 15 (Kraków, 1896), p.
310. These accounts always quantified strekfusz in units of 60 (sexagena).
3 Ibid, p. 22.
4 Ibid, passim. Although Piekosiński’s index is plainly flawed, its entries number
52 for ‘salt fish’, 46 for ‘dried fish’, 37 for eel, etc. With only nine references,
herring (aleces) is grossly under-indexed.
5 Acknowledging only some of the written Polish sources explored here and
below, Maria Dembińska recognised strekfusz early on not as a fish species but
a type of product analogous to stockfish. She remained, however, ambiguous as
to its origins: in her path-breaking original Konsumpcja żywnościowa w Polsce
średniowiecznej (Wrocław, 1963), p. 57, it seems to be another form of cod; the
abridged revision done with W.W. Weaver, Food and Drink in Medieval Poland:
Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past, trans. M. Thomas (Philadelphia, 1999), p.
100, proposes pike. But more than just the Polish verbal evidence is needed to test
these suggestions and interpret the results.
6 R.C. Hoffmann, ‘Carp, cods, connections: new fisheries in the medieval European
economy and environment’, in Animals in Human Histories: The Mirror of
Nature and Culture, ed. M.J. Henninger-Voss (Rochester, NY, 2002), pp. 19–32;
Hoffmann, ‘Frontier foods for late medieval consumers: culture, economy, ecol-
ogy’, Environment and History 7 (2001), 149–50. Assertions about medieval cod
fisheries in M. Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
(Toronto and New York, 1997), pp. 17–51 and passim, should be consumed with
much salt.
7 Najstarsze księgi i rachunki miasta Krakowa od r. 1300 do 1400, ed. F. Piekosiński
and J. Szujski (Monumenta medii aevi historica res gestas Poloniae ilustrantia,
vol. 4 [Kraków, 1877–8]), 2:225–88. As is common in medieval account-books,
the amount paid was rarely accompanied by the size or quantity of the fish; when
city officials do record this information, strekfusz were bought by the sexagena.
8 Kodeks dyplomatyczny miasta Krakowa (1257–1506), ed. F. Piekosiński, 2
vols., Monumenta medii aevi historica res gesta Poloniae illustrantia, vols. 5, 7
(Kraków, 1879, 1882), no. 336, p. 459.
9 Prawa, przywileje i statuta miasta Krakowa (1507–1795). Leges, privilegia et sta-
tuta civitatis Cracoviensis (1507–1795), ed. F. Piekosiński and S. Krzyżanowski,
vol. 1: 1507–1586, Acta historica res gestas Poloniae illustrantia ab anno 1507
usque ad annum 1795, vol. 8 (Kraków, 1885), no. 326, pp. 420–2.
10 F.W. Carter, Trade and Urban Development in Poland: An Economic Geography
of Kraków, from its Origins to 1795 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 134–9, 252–4.
11 ‘Higiena wedle Tomasza z Wrocławia’, ed. J. Burchardt, Studia Copernicana 36
(1997), 80.
12 Das Regimen Sanitatis Konrads von Eichstätt: Quellen, Texte, Wirkungs-
geschichte, ed. C. Hagenmeyer, Sudhoffs Archiv Beihefte 35 (Stuttgart, 1995),
pp. 99–101, 211, 245, with wider context and examples in M.W. Adamson,
Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in Regimen Sanitatis Literature from 800
to 1400 (Frankfurt and New York, 1995), pp. 142–9, 180–90, and passim, and L.
Thorndike, ‘Three tracts on food in Basel manuscripts’, Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 8 (1940), 361–4.
13 Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus. Romae 1555, ed. J.
Granlund (Copenhagen, 1972), bk. 20, ch. 9, p. 705, on pike in particular, and
chs. 26–7, pp. 722–3, on fresh and preserved fishes in general; trans. in Olaus
Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus – Romae 1555: Description of
the Northern Peoples – Rome 1555, trans. P. Fisher and H. Higgens, 3 vols.,
Hakluyt Society, 2nd series, nos. 182, 187–8 (London, 1996–2002), pp. 1039 and
1058–60 respectively.
14 Preussisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 1, pt. 2, no. 317, p. 216. For discussion of these
fisheries see J. Muhl, ‘Fischerei und Störfang im Danziger Gebiet’, Mitteilungen
des westpreussischen Geschichtsvereins 30.4 (1931), 69–84; W. Łęga, Obraz
gospodarczy Pomorza Gdańskiego w XII i XIII wieku (Poznań, 1949), pp. 33–5;
H.A. Willam, ‘Die Fischerei des Deutschen Ordens in Preussen bis zu Dietrich von
Altenburg’, Jahrbuch der Albertus-Universität zu Königsberg/Pr. 11 (1961), 104; J.
Filuk, ‘Biologiczno-rybacka charakterystyka ichtiofauny Zalewu Wiślanego na tle
badań paleoichtiologicznych, historycznych i współczesnych’, Pomerania Antiqua
2 (1968), 146–50; K. Dąbrowski, Rozwój wielkiej własności ziemskiej klasztoru
cysterek w Żarnowcu od XIII do XVI wieku (Gdańsk, 1970), pp. 44–6; Dąbrowski,
Opactwo cystersów w Oliwie od XII do XVI wieku (Gdańsk, 1975), p. 51; G. Kisch,
Das Fischereirecht im Deutschordensgebiete. Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte,
2nd (rev.) ed., Forschungen und Quellen zur Rechts- und Sozialgeschichte des
Deutschordenlandes 3 (Sigmaringen, 1978), pp. 172–3 [original ed. 1932].
15 See, for instance, J. Rostafiński, Średniowieczna historia naturalna w Polsce.
Symbola ad historia naturalis medii aevi, Munera saecularis universitatis
Cracoviensis 7–8 (Kraków, 1900), pp. 399, 402.
16 Das Marienburger Tresslerbuch der Jahre 1399–1409, ed. E. Joachim
(Königsberg, 1896, repr. Bremerhaven, 1973), pp. 117, 174, 188, 316, 582, with
general remarks by A. Seligo, ‘Zur Geschichte der Fischerei in Westpreussen’,
Mitteilungen des westpreussischen Fischereivereins 14 (1902), 22.
Notes 263
17 Das grosse Ämterbuch des Deutschen Ordens, ed. W. Ziesemer (Danzig, 1921,
repr. Wiesbaden, 1968).
18 Seligo, ‘Zur Geschichte’, p. 27. As noted above, the same applied in Polish
sources.
19 Die Deutschordens-Ballei Böhmen in ihren Rechnungsbüchern 1382–1411, ed. J.
Hemmerle, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens 22 (Bonn,
1967), pp. 64, 80, 100, 112, 134.
20 Codex diplomaticus Prussicus, ed. J. Voigt (Königsberg, 1836), vol. 3, p.
171; compare B. Benecke, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Fischerei in Ost- und
Westpreussen’, Altpreussisch Monatsschrift 17 (1880), 171, and Seligo, ‘Zur
Geschichte’, pp. 40–1.
21 PrUB, vol. 2, pt. 2, no. 617, p. 409 (compare Willam, ‘Fischerei’, p. 134).
22 The author welcomes any additional references, earlier or not.
23 J. Sarnowsky, Die Wirtschaftsführung des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen
(1382–1454), Veröffentlichungen aus den Archiven Preussischer Kulturbesitz 34
(Cologne, 1993), pp. 130–1, 819–20. This product was not, however, bought for
early sixteenth-century inmates of the Wrocław Holy Spirit hospital, who had to
make do with herring; see M. Słoń, ‘Pięćset lat temu na szpitalnym stole’, Mówią
Wieki 40.7 (1997), 46–9.
24 Simon Grünau, Preussische Chronik, ed. M. Perlbach (Leipzig, 1875), pp. 46–7.
The lack of strekfusz on the market at Nuremberg (see the 1501 listing of fishes
there by Kunz Hass in E. Schmauderer, ‘Studien zur Geschichte der Lebens
mittelwissenschaft’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
62 [1975], 260–1), despite that town’s intimate trading relations with Prague,
Wrocław and other eastern centres, probably sets the southwestern limits of its
distribution somewhere along the Bohemian border.
25 For general information about preserving fish, see C.L. Cutting, Fish Saving: A
History of Fish Processing from Ancient to Modern Times (London, 1955), or his
brief summary, ‘Historical Aspects of Fish’, in Fish as Food, ed. G. Borgstrom,
vol. 2: Nutrition, Sanitation, and Utilization (New York, 1962), pp. 1–28.
26 For a clear summary of archaeozoological signatures for sites producing or con-
suming dried cod, see S. Perdikaris, ‘Scaly heads and tales: detecting commer-
cialization in early fisheries’, Archaeofauna 5 (1996), 25–30; J.H. Barrett, ‘Fish
trade in Norse Orkney and Caithness: a zooarchaeological approach’, Antiquity 71
(1997), 616–38; J.H. Barrett, R.A. Nicholson and R. Cerón-Carrasco, ‘Archaeo-
ichthyological evidence for long-term socioeconomic trends in Northern Scotland
3500 BC to AD 1500’, Journal of Archaeological Science 26.4 (1999), 370–4.
Other processes and other types of fishes have analogous features.
27 Z. Bukowski, ‘Uwagi o konserwacji ryb u Słowian w świetle materiałów archeo-
logicznych i etnograficznych’, Studia z dziejów gospodarstwa wiejskiego 9.3
(1967), 67–79; N. Storå, ‘Barrels and bundles of herring’, in Food and Drink
and Travelling Accessories: Essays in Honour of Gösta Berg, ed. A. Fenton and
J. Myrdal (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 80–3. Compare drying fish from medieval
Alpine waters, as reported in U. Amacher, Zürcher Fischerei im Spätmittelalter,
Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich 63 (Zürich, 1996), p. 110.
28 Bukowski, ‘Uwagi o konserwacji’, pp. 49–61.
29 ‘Taphonomy’ refers to the processes intervening between the death of an organ-
ism and the archaeological recovery of its remains.
30 I. B. Enghoff, ‘Fishing in the Baltic region from the 5th century BC to the 16th
century AD: evidence from fish bones’, Archaeofauna 8 (1999), 58–9, 61;
L. Jonsson, ‘Finska gäddor och Bergenfisk ett försök att belysa Uppsalas fiskim-
port under medeltid och yngre Vasatid’, in Från Östra Aros till Uppsala. En sam-
ling uppsatser kring det medeltida Uppsala, ed. N. Cnattingius and T. Neréus,
Uppsala stads historia 7 (Uppsala, 1986), pp. 122–39.
31 S. Sten, ‘Trading with fish in medieval Sweden: some examples from archaeolog-
ical bone finds’, Archaeofauna 4 (1995), 65–9; Enghoff, ‘Fishing in the Baltic’,
p. 61.
32 N. Friberg, Stockholm i bottniska farvatten: Stockholms bottniska handelsfält
under senmedel tiden och Gustav Vasa (Uppsala, 1983), pp. 196–9.
33 As translated in Magnus, Historia . . . Description, 1:99–100. Original Latin in
Magnus, Historia, bk. 2, ch. 6, pp. 65–6.
34 Dried fish in colligatis fasciculis (ibid, bk. 20, ch. 1–2, pp. 697–9, and trans.
p. 1032) and pike so abundant they fed not only northerners ‘sed etiam lat-
ius sale, solecque siccati nauigiis, velut lignorum magnae strues, in amplam
Germaniam vendendi exportentur’ (ibid, bk. 20, chs. 8–9, pp. 704–5, and trans.
p. 1039).
35 D. Heinrich, ‘Untersuchungen an mittelalterlichen Fischresten aus Schleswig:
Ausgrabung Schild 1971–1975’, Ausgrabungen in Schleswig. Berichte und
Studien, vol. 6 (Neumünster, 1987); Enghoff, ‘Fishing in the Baltic’, p. 75;
Enghoff, ‘Fishing in the southern North Sea region from the 1st to the 16th cen-
tury AD: evidence from fish bones’, Archaeofauna 9 (2000), 127.
36 M. Iwaszkiewicz, ‘Szczątki ryb z zamku krzyżackiego w Małej Nieszawce (woj.
toruńskie)’, Roczniki Akademii Rolniczej w Poznaniu – Archaeozoologia 16
(1991), 3–5; D. Makowiecki, ‘Catalogue of subfossil fish remains from Poland’,
Archaeofauna 9 (2000), 143; Makowiecki, Historia ryb i rybołówstwa w holo-
cenie na Niżu Polskim w świetle badań archeoichtiologicznych (Poznań, 2003),
pp. 125–7, 136–7. Enghoff, ‘Fishing in the Baltic’, pp. 68, 70, is an inaccurate
history of this site.
37 I am unconvinced that the pike remains from Mścięcino, a ninth- to eleventh-
century fortified site near Szczecin on the Odra estuary, signify any special
preservation methods as suggested by Enghoff (‘Fishing in the southern North
Sea region’, p. 127). Pike remains, all head bones, number but ten of the 690
identified remains, so ranking ninth of the ten taxa identified. The site was not
sieved, so little can be inferred from the absence of vertebrae. See Z. Chełkowski,
‘Szczątki ryb w materiale wykopaliskowym z osady wszesnośredniowiecznej
Szczecin–Mścięcino’, Materiały Zachodniopomorskie 5 (1959), 165–86. Most
recently Z. Chełkowski and J. Filipiak, ‘Cognitive potential of bone remains of
fish from archaeological excavations on the banks of the Odra River estuary’,
Archeozoologia 21 (2003), 37–48, does not engage this issue.
38 M. Iwaszkiewicz, ‘Szczątki ryb z wykopalisk opactwa Benedyktynów w Lubinie,
woj. Leszczyńskie’, Archaeozoologia 15 (1991), 3–8; Makowiecki, ‘Historia
ryb’, pp. 125–30, 132; D. Makowiecki, ‘Some aspects of studies on the evolu-
tion of fish faunas and fishing in prehistoric and historic times in Poland’, in
The Holocene History of the European Vertebrate Fauna: Modern Aspects of
Research, ed. N. Benecke (Rahden/Westf., 1999), fig. 6.
39 Since the progressive twentieth-century commercial collapse in the Laurentian
Great Lakes of North America of populations and fisheries of lake whitefish
(Coregonus clupeaformis), ‘lake trout’ (a charr, Salvelinus namaycush), walleye
(Stizostedion vitreum) and yellow perch (Perca flavescens), markets in the central
and eastern United States and in Canada have largely been supplied from the large
Notes 265
lakes of northwestern Canada (Winnipeg, Athabaska and Great Slave), although
all four species survive in the consuming region and are caught and eaten by
native communities, sport fishermen and their families.
40 D. Makowiecki, ‘About the history of fishing and its development in prehistoric
and mediaeval times in Poland’, in Beiträge zum Oder-Projekt, vol. 5 (Berlin,
1998), p. 120; Makowiecki, ‘Some aspects, p. 172; Makowiecki, ‘Catalogue’.
41 Hoffmann, ‘Frontier foods’.
11 Papal collectors and state power in Central Europe during the fourteenth
century
1 J. Favier, Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1978), pp. 499–500.
2 J.P. Kirsch, ‘L’administration des finances pontificales au XIVe siècle’, Revue
d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 1 (1900), 274–96.
3 G. Mollat, La collation des bénéfices ecclésiastiques sous les Papes d’Avignon
(Paris 1921), p. 85; L. Caillet, La papauté d’Avignon et l’Église de France. La
politique beneficiale du pape Jean XXII en France (1316–1334) (Paris, 1975),
p. 213.
4 Bullarium Poloniae, ed. I. Sułkowska-Kuraś and S. Kuraś (hereafter BP), vol. 1
(Rome, 1982), no. 1075; C. Schuchard, Die papstlischen Kollektoren im späten
Mittelalter (Tübingen, 2000), pp. 25ff.
5 B. Guillemain, La cour pontificale d’Avignon (Paris, 1962), pp. 278–304.
6 G. Mollat and C. Samaran, La fiscalité pontificale en France au XIVe siecle
(Paris, 1905), pp. 179–97.
7 E. Mornet, ‘Per nives de nocte. Un nonce pontificale dans les royaumes
nordiques au XIVe siècle’, in Milieux naturels, espaces sociaux. Études offertes
à Robert Delort (Paris, 1997), pp. 591–60.
8 B. Barbiche, ‘Les “diplomates” pontificaux du moyen âge tardif à la première
modernité’, in Offices et papauté (XIVe–XVIe siècle). Charges, hommes, destins,
ed. A. Jamme and O. Poncet (Rome, 2005), pp. 361–2 .
9 BP, vol. 1, nos. 1047, 1075.
10 J. Bieniak, ‘Zjednoczenie państwa polskiego’, in Polska dzielnicowa i
zjednoczona. Państwo – społeczeństwo – kultura, ed. A. Gieysztor (Warsaw,
1972), pp. 202–78.
11 B. Nowacki, Czeskie roszczenia do korony w Polsce w latach 1290–1335
(Poznań, 1987), pp. 55–61, 96–9, 103–8.
12 T. Gromnicki, Świętopietrze w Polsce (Kraków, 1908), pp. 45–6.
13 Monumenta Poloniae Vaticana, ed. J. Ptaśnik (hereafter MPV), vol. 1 (Kraków,
1913), no. 53; BP, vol. 1, no. 1047.
14 S. Szczur, Annaty papieskie w Polsce w XIV wieku (Kraków, 1997), p. 121.
15 BP, vol. 1, nos. 1060–1, 1081.
16 MPV, vol. 1, no. 72.
17 See BP, vol. 1, nos. 1284, 1291–2, 1751.
18 A. Wojtkowski, Tezy i argumenty polskie w sporach terytorialnych z Krzyżakami
(Olsztyn, 1968), pp. 9–10.
19 K. Tymieniecki, ‘Studia nad XIV wiekiem. Proces polsko-krzyżacki z lat 1320–
1321’, Przegląd Historyczny 21 (1919), 87ff.
20 Vetera Monumenta Poloniae et Lithuaniae gentiumque finitinarum historiam
illustrantia, ed. A. Theiner, 4 vols. (Rome, 1860–4) (hereafter VMPL), vol. 1,
no. 231.
21 H. Chłopocka, ‘Losy wyroku wydanego w 1321 roku na procesie polsko-
krzyżackim w Inowrocławiu’, Roczniki Historyczne 31 (1965), 153–80.
22 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 447–8.
23 Ibid, vol. 1, no. 448.
24 H. Paszkiewicz, ‘Ze studiów nad polityką krzyżacką Kazimierza Wielkiego’,
Przegląd Historyczny 25 (1925), 187.
25 J. Tęgowski, ‘Kanclerz kujawski Jarosław Bogoria i jego stosunki z Galhardem
de Carceribus’, in Personae – colligationes – facta, ed. J. Bieniak (Toruń, 1991),
pp. 39–49.
26 S. Szczur, ‘Początki działalności Galharda z Carces’, in Bieniak, Personae,
pp. 33–8.
27 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 470.
28 Paszkiewicz, ‘Ze studiów’, p. 188.
29 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 475–6.
30 Paszkiewicz, ‘Ze studiów’, pp. 190–1; Z. Kaczmarczyk, Kazimierz Wielki
(Warsaw, 1949), p. 37; J. Wyrozumski, Kazimierz Wielki (Wrocław, 1982), p.
16.
31 Paszkiewicz, ‘Ze studiów’, p. 195.
32 Preussisches Urkundenbuch (hereafter PUB), vol. 2 (1309–35), ed. M. Hein and
E. Maschke (Königsberg, 1939), no. 860.
33 S. Szczur, ‘Zjazd wyszehradzki z 1335 roku’, Studia Historyczne 35 (1992), 5.
34 H. Chłopocka, ‘Galhard de Carceribus i jego rola w sporze polsko-krzyżackim
w XIV wieku’, in Europa – Słowiańszczyzna – Polska. Studia ku uczczeniu
profesora Kazimierza Tymienieckiego, ed. C. Łuczak (Poznań, 1970), p. 141.
35 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 506.
36 Szczur, ‘Zjazd’, pp. 7–8.
37 See J. Leniek, ‘Kongres wyszehradzki w roku 1335’, Przewodnik Naukowy i
Literacki 12 (1884), 247–71.
38 PUB, vol. 3, no. 64.
39 H. Chłopocka, Procesy Polski z Zakonem krzyżackim w XIV wieku (Poznań,
1967), p. 31.
40 PUB, vol. 3, no. 104.
41 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 519, p. 393.
42 S. Szczur, ‘Traktat pokojowy Kazimierza wielkiego z Zakonem krzyżackim z
1343 r.’, Zapiski Historyczne 56 (1991), 30.
43 E. Mornet, ‘Le chanoine Pierre Gervasis, nonce et collecteur pontifical. Jalons
pour une biographie’, in Campagnes médiévales – l’homme et son espace.
Études offertes à Robert Fossier, ed. E. Mornet (Paris, 1995), pp. 565–77.
44 PUB, vol. 3, no. 345; Chłopocka, Procesy, p. 33.
45 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 544.
46 Ibid, vol. 1, no. 568.
47 Ibid, vol. 1, no. 581.
48 PUB, vol. 3, no. 377.
49 Gromnicki, Świętopietrze, pp. 45ff; E. Maschke, Der Peterspfennig in Polen
und dem Deutschen Osten (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 124ff.
50 Monumenta Poloniae Historica, 3:286.
51 BP, vol. 1, no. 1047.
52 Gromnicki, Świętopietrze, p. 116.
53 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 328.
54 PUB, vol. 3, no. 223; Gromnicki, Świętopietrze, pp. 120–1.
Notes 267
55 Urkundenbuch des Bistums Culm, ed. C.P. Woelky (Danzig, 1887), no. 228.
57 See VPML, vol. 1, no. 519:
Item in diocesi Kaminensi que notorie est infra antiquos limites regni Poloniae.
Quia ibi filius Bavari dominatur et . . . episcopus ibidem est Theutonicus igitur
omnia iura camere totaliter indebite denegantur nam nec clerus aliquid solvit
de decima supradicta et populares censum solvere indebite contradicunt, nec
clerus nec populus interdictum curant observare.

59 W. Maydorn, ‘Der Peterspfennig in Schlesien bis Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts’,
Zeitschrift des Vereins für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens 17 (1872), 54–
5.
61 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 519.
62 Vetera Monumenta Historica Hungariam Sacram illustrantia, ed. A. Theiner, 2
vols. (Rome, 1859–60), vol. 1, no. 910.
63 MPV, vol. 1, no. 174.
64 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 546.
65 S. Szczur, ‘Okoliczności zrzeczenia się Śląska przez Kazimierza Wielkiego’,
Studia Historyczne 30 (1987), 519–35.
66 Vita Caroli IV, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, vol. 3, p. 362.
67 Gromnicki, Świętopietrze, p. 111, n. 1.
68 Monumenta Vatricana res gestas Bohemicas illustrantia. Tomus prodromus, ed.
Z. Hledicova (Prague, 2003), nos. 190, 195, 204.
69 Monumenta Vaticana historiam Regni Hungariae illustrantia, vol. 1 (Budapest,
1884), pp. xxvii–iii.
70 N. Housley, The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305–1378 (Oxford, 1986),
pp. 65–74.
71 VMPL, vol. 1, no. 605; MPV, vol. 1, no. 214.
72 Ibid, vol. 2, no. 97.
73 S. Gawęda, ‘Polityka fiskalna Kazimierza Wielkiego wobec kurii papieskiej’,
Studia Historyczne 13 (1970), 369.
74 MPV, vol. 1, no. 211.
75 Ibid, vol. 2, nos. 97–8.
76 Ibid, vol. 2, no. 232.
77 Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, ed. A. Theiner,
vol. 2 (Rome, 1860), no. 263.
78 MPV, vol. 2, no. 232; Gawęda, ‘Polityka’, pp. 369–70.
12 University masters at the royal court of Hedwig of Anjou and Władysław

Jagiełło
1 H. Kręt, Dwór królewski Jadwigi i Jagiełły (Kraków, 1987); K. Ożóg, ‘Polityka
i kultura odnowionego Królestwa Polskiego (koniec XIII–XV w.) w badaniach
historycznych’, in Pytania o średniowiecze. Potrzeby i perspektywy badawcze
polskiej mediewistyki, ed. W. Fałkowski (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 30–8.
2 J. Wolny, ‘Kaznodziejstwo’, in Dzieje teologii katolickiej w Polsce, vol.
1, Średniowiecze (Lublin, 1974), pp. 289–92; U. Borkowska, ‘Królewscy
spowiednicy’, in Ludzie – Kościół – wierzenia. Studia z dziejów kultury i
społeczeństwa Europy Środkowej (średniowiecze – wczesna epoka nowożytna),
ed. W. Iwańczak (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 173–87; K. Ożóg, ‘Intellektuelle im Dienst
der Staaten Ostmitteleuropas. Vergleichende Betrachtungen’, in Die ‘Blüte’ der
Staaten des östlichen Europa im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. M. Löwener (Wiesbaden,
2004), pp. 235–55.
3 P.W. Knoll, ‘Jadwiga and education’, Polish Review 44 (1999), 419–31; K.
Stopka, ‘The Jagiellonian foundation of Cracow University’, Quaestiones
Medii Aevi Novae 8 (2003), 49–66; K. Ożóg, Uczeni w monarchii Jadwigi
Andegaweńskiej i Władysława Jagiełły (1384–1434) (Kraków, 2004), pp. 24–
45.
4 Borkowska, ‘Królewscy spowiednicy’, pp. 173–87.
5 P. Kielar, ‘Itinerarium S. Thomae Jana Sartorisa’, Studia Theologica Varsaviensia
7.2 (1969), 272–6; Kielar, ‘Studia nad kulturą szkolną i intelektualną domi-
nikanów prowincji polskiej w średniowieczu’, in Studia nad historią
dominikanów w Polsce 1222–1972, ed. J. Kłoczowski, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1975),
pp. 326–7, 485–6.
6 W. Abraham, ‘Biskupstwa łacińskie w Mołdawii w wiekach XIV i XV’,
Kwartalnik Historyczny 16 (1902), 183–4; T.M. Trajdos, Kościół katolicki na
ziemiach ruskich Korony i Litwy za panowania Władysława II Jagiełły (1386–
1434), vol. 1 (Wrocław, 1983), pp. 149–50; P. Czaplewski, ‘Tytularny episkopat
w Polsce średniowiecznej’, Roczniki Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół
Nauk 43 (1915), 74–6.
7 A. Fastnach, Catalogus diplomatum Bibliothecae Instituti Ossoliniani.
Supplementum I (Wrocław, 1951), no. 322, pp. 11–12; Abraham, ‘Biskupstwa
łacińskie’, pp. 183–4; M. Derwich, Benedyktyński klasztor św. Krzyża na Łysej
Górze w średniowieczu (Warsaw and Wrocław, 1992), pp. 441–2.
8 Borkowska, ‘Królewscy spowiednicy’, p. 185; T.M. Trajdos, Kościół katolicki,
pp. 149–50.
9 B. Chmielowska, ‘Przywilej fundacyjny Kolegium królowej Jadwigi przy
Uniwersytecie Karola w Pradze’, in Dzieło Jadwigi i Jagiełły. W sześćsetlecie
chrztu Litwy i jej związków z Polską, ed. W. Biliński (Warsaw, 1989), p. 276;
Borkowska, ‘Królewscy spowiednicy’, p. 185; M. Markowski, Dzieje Wydziału
Teologii Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego w latach 1397–1525 (Kraków, 1996), pp.
105–6.
10 Z. Siemiątkowska, ‘Jan Sczekna’, Materiały i Studia Zakładu Historii
Filozofii Starożytnej i Średniowiecznej 5 (1965), 34–61; J. Tříška, Repertorium
biographicum Universitatis Pragensis praehussiticae 1348–1409 (Prague,
1981), p. 314; Markowski, Dzieje Wydziału Teologii, pp. 105–6.
11 Siemiątkowska, ‘Jan Sczekna’, pp. 36–40, 54, 66–7; M. Kowalczyk, ‘Postylla
de tempore w rękopisie B 13 Biblioteki oo. Paulinów w Krakowie na Skałce’,
Studia Claromontana 7 (1987), 7–34.
12 Formularz Jerzego, ed. K. Górski (Toruń, 1950), no. 4, p. 5; M. Gębarowicz,
Psałterz floriański i jego geneza (Wrocław, 1965), pp. 64–5.
13 J. Wolny, ‘Zagadnienie formacji duchowej królowej Jadwigi’, in Biliński,
Dzieło Jadwigi i Jagiełły, p. 118.
14 J. Wolny and R.M. Zawadzki, ‘Królowa Jadwiga w tradycji kaznodziejskiej
XV wieku’, Analecta Cracoviensia 7 (1975), 20–30, 76–9; B. Chmielowska,
‘Stanisława ze Skarbimierza rozmyślania o umieraniu królowej Jadwigi’, in
Biliński, Dzieło Jadwigi i Jagiełły, pp. 282–90; R.M. Zawadzki, Spuścizna
Notes 269
pisarska Stanisława ze Skarbimierza. Studium źródłoznawcze (Kraków, 1979),
pp. 82–3, 86.
15 A. Sachetnik, ‘Prośba świętej Jadwigi królowej o pierwszy odpust jubileuszowy
w Polsce’, in Biliński, Dzieło Jadwigi i Jagiełły, pp. 253–65.
16 Stanislai de Scarbimiria Sermones super ‘Gloria in excelsis’, ed. R.M. Zawadzki
(Warsaw, 1978); S. Wielgus, ‘Krytyczna edycja traktatu “De indulgentiis”
Stanisława ze Skarbimierza’, Acta Mediaevalia 3 (1978), 5–39; Zawadzki,
Spuścizna pisarska Stanisława ze Skarbimierza, pp. 71–2, 74–5, 110–12.
17 Ożóg, Uczeni, pp. 34–6.
18 Wolny, ‘Kaznodziejstwo’, p. 290; Tříška, Repertorium, p. 193; J. Zathey,
‘Hieronim Jan Silvanus z Pragi’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 9:507–9; W.P.
Hyland, ‘John-Jerome of Prague: portrait of a fifteenth-century Camaldolese’,
American Benedictine Review 46 (1995), 308–34.
19 Biblioteka Kapituły Metropolitalnej w Krakowie, ms. 150, p. 239; Hyland,
‘John-Jerome of Prague’, p. 319.
20 Joannis de Segovia Historia gestorum generalis synodi Basiliensis, ed. R. Beer
and E. Birk, in Monumenta conciliorum generalium saeculi decimi quinti.
Concilium Basiliense Scriptorum, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1873), p. 352; Hyland, ‘John-
Jerome of Prague’, p. 319.
21 Markowski, Dzieje Wydziału Teologii, pp. 107–8.
22 Hyland, ‘John-Jerome of Prague’, pp. 319, 331.
23 Ioannis Dlugossii Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae, liber decimus
et undecimus 1406–1412, ed. D. Turkowska, C. Baczkowski and F. Sikora
(Warsaw, 1997), p. 56.
24 Zbiór dokumentów małopolskich, ed. I. Sułkowska-Kuraś and S. Kuraś, vol. 6,
Dokumenty króla Władysława Jagiełły z lat 1386–1417 (Wrocław, 1974), no.
1724; Zbiór dokumentów katedry i diecezji krakowskiej, vol. 1: 1063–1417, ed.
S. Kuraś (Lublin, 1965), nos. 186–7.
25 Zathey, ‘Hieronim Jan Silvanus z Pragi’, pp. 507–9.
26 Aeneae Silvii De Europa, in Aeneae Silvii postea Pii II papae Opera geographica
et historica (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1707), p. 275; I. Zarębski, Stosunki Eneasza
Sylwiusza Piccolominiego z Polską i Polakami (Kraków, 1939), pp. 83–4.
27 Hyland, ‘John-Jerome of Prague’, pp. 320–34; Hyland, ‘John-Jerome of
Prague and Monastic Reform in the Fifteenth-Century’, American Benedictine
Review 47 (1996), 60–98; C. Caby, De l’érémitisme rural au monachisme
urbain. Les camaldules en Italie à la fin du Moyen Âge (Rome, 1999), pp.
667–75.
28 Ożóg, Uczeni, pp. 286–7.
29 Derwich, Benedyktyński klasztor, pp. 445–7.
30 Najstarsze księgi i rachunki miasta Krakowa od roku 1300–1400, ed. F.
Piekosiński and J. Szujski (Kraków, 1878), pp. 229, 254, 280; J. Wolny, ‘Mikołaj
z Miliczyna’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 21:126.
31 Wolny, ‘Mikołaj z Miliczyna’, p. 126; Tříška, Repertorium, p. 407.
32 Ioannis Dlugossii Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae, liber undecimus
et duodecimus 1431–1444, ed. D. Turkowska and L. Korczak (Warsaw, 2001),
pp. 19–20.
1413–1430, ed. D. Turkowska and S.A. Sroka (Warsaw, 2000), pp. 24–5;
J. Fijałek, Studia do dziejów Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego i jego Wydziału
Teologicznego w XV wieku (Kraków, 1898), pp. 113–14.
34 Ożóg, Uczeni, pp. 47, 69–70; M. Markowski, Burydanizm w Polsce w
okresie przedkopernikańskim. Studium z historii filozofii i nauk ścisłych na
Uniwersytecie Krakowskim w XV wieku (Wrocław, 1971), pp. 120–1, 153–6,
374–5; M. Zdanek, Szkoły i studia dominikanów krakowskich w średniowieczu
(Warsaw, 2005), pp. 112–13, 123, 166.
35 G. Głuch, ‘Dominikańscy spowiednicy i kaznodzieje Jagiellonów’, in
Dominikanie w środkowej Europie w XIII–XV wieku. Aktywność duszpasterska
i kultura intelektualna, ed. J. Kłoczowski and J.A. Spież (Poznań, 2002), p. 247;
Borkowska, ‘Królewscy spowiednicy’, p. 186.
36 Zbiór dokumentów małopolskich, vol. 6, no. 1819; J. Sawicki, ‘Jan Biskupiec
biskup chełmski (1377–1452)’, Nasza Przeszłość 4 (1948), 112–18; Borkowska,
‘Królewscy spowiednicy’, p. 186; Głuch, ‘Dominikańscy spowiednicy’, pp.
246–7.
37 Zbiór dokumentów małopolskich, vol. VI, no. 1819; Sawicki, ‘Jan Biskupiec’,
pp. 103–24; Zdanek, Szkoły, pp. 110–11, 128–31, 166.
38 Ożóg, Uczeni, pp. 71–2; Zdanek, Szkoły, pp. 128–31.
39 Metrica Universitatis Cracoviensis a. 1400–1508. Bibliotheca Jagellonica cod.
258, ed. A. Gąsiorowski, T. Jurek and I. Skierska, vol. 1 (Kraków, 2004), p.
58; Liber promotionum facultatis artium in Universitate Cracoviensi saeculi
decimi quinti, ed. A. Gąsiorowski, with collaboration of T. Jurek, I. Skierska
and V. Swoboda (Kraków, 2000), p. 12; J. Wroniszewski, Ród Rawiczów.
Współrodowcy Warszowiców i Grotowiców (Toruń, 1994), p. 64.
40 Zbiór dokumentów małopolskich, vol. 7, no. 2009; Wroniszewski, Ród
Rawiczów, pp. 64–6; Borkowska, ‘Królewscy spowiednicy’, p. 186.
41 Kodeks dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, ed. A. Gąsiorowski and T. Jasiński, vol. 9,
Dokumenty z lat 1426–1443 (Warsaw and Poznań, 1990), no. 1171; Bullarium
Poloniae litteras apostolicas aliasque monumenta Poloniae Vaticana continens,
vol. 5: 1431–1449, ed. I. Sułkowska-Kuraś and S. Kuraś (Rome and Lublin,
1995), no. 1023.
42 Zbiór dokumentów małopolskich, vol. 8, no. 2280.
43 Wroniszewski, Ród Rawiczów, pp. 65–6.
et duodecimus 1431–1444, pp. 167–9; Wroniszewski, Ród Rawiczów, p. 64.
et undecimus 1406–1412, p. 186; Kodeks dyplomatyczny Małopolski, ed.
F. Piekosiński, vol. 4: 1386–1450 (Kraków, 1905), no. 1014; I. Sułkowska-
Kurasiowa, Dokumenty królewskie i ich funkcja w państwie polskim za
Andegawenów i pierwszych Jagiellonów 1370–1444 (Warsaw, 1977), p. 229;
Ożóg, ‘Polityka i kultura’, pp. 18–19.
46 J. Wolny, ‘Kaznodziejstwo’, p. 290.
47 M. Zwiercan, ‘Mikołaj z Błonia’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 21:102–3; M.
Zahajkiewicz, Tractatus sacerdotalis Mikołaja z Błonia na tle teologii przełomu
XIV i XV wieku (Lublin, 1979), pp. 15–31.
et duodecimus 1431–1444, p. 50; K. Niemczyńska, ‘Jan Elgot. Życie i
twórczość’, Przegląd Tomistyczny 5 (1992), 9–14.
49 Niemczyńska, ‘Jan Elgot’, pp. 9–38.
50 Biblia Szaroszpatacka. Podobizna kodeksu Biblioteki Ref. Gimnazjum
w Szaroszpataku, ed. L. Bernacki (Kraków, 1930); Biblia królowej Zofii
(szaroszpatacka) wraz ze staroczeskim przekładem Biblii, ed. S. Urbańczyk and
Notes 271
V. Kyas (Wrocław, 1965–71); M. Kossowska, Biblia w języku polskim, vol. 1
(Poznań, 1968), pp. 62–76; S. Wielgus, Średniowieczna literatura biblijna w
języku polskim (Lublin, 1993), pp. 12–15.
51 A. Pobóg-Lenartowicz, Kanonicy regularni na Śląsku. Życie konwentów w
śląskich klasztorach kanonikow regularnych w średniowieczu (Opole, 1999),
passim.
52 Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, ms. I Q 381, fol. 14–15; M.
Kowalczyk, Krakowskie mowy uniwersyteckie z pierwszej połowy XV wieku
(Wrocław, 1970), pp. 125–6, 134.
53 Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, ms. 2513, fol. 362v: Sermo magistri Martini
regie maiestatis predicatoris; J. Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża i Uniwersytet
Krakowski w dobie soboru bazylejskiego, vol. 1 (Kraków, 1900), pp. 192–3;
Kowalczyk, Krakowskie mowy uniwersyteckie, p. 22; Wolny, ‘Kaznodziejstwo’,
p. 290.
54 Kowalczyk, Krakowskie mowy uniwersyteckie, pp. 22, 24, 98, 109–10, 170
(no. 122), 178 (no. 164); Tříška, Repertorium, p. 352; P. Spunar, Repertorium
auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem
conditam illustrans, vol. 2 (Wrocław and Prague, 1995), pp. 191–2.
55 Codex epistolaris Vitoldi Magni ducis Lithuaniae 1376–1430, ed. A. Prochaska,
(Kraków, 1882), p. 1064, no. 36; Codex diplomaticus Universitatis Studii
Generalis Cracoviensis, ed. I.Ż. Pauli (Kraków, 1870), p. i, no. 63; Fijałek,
Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 1:182–3; J. Krzyżaniakowa, Kancelaria królewska
Władysława Jagiełły. Studium z dziejów kultury politycznej w XV wieku, 2 vols.
(Poznań 1972–9), 2:88.
56 Metrica, 1:liv, 156, 167, 180; Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 1:182–91.
et duodecimus 1431–1444, pp. 118–19; K. Morawski, Historia Uniwersytetu
Jagiellońskiego. Wieki średnie i Odrodzenie, vol. 1 (Kraków, 1900), p. 290; J.
Wolny, ‘Paweł z Zatora’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 25:401–3.
58 M. Kowalczyk, ‘Kazania żałobne z kodeksu 2367’, Acta Mediaevalia 15 (2002),
380.
59 Metrica, pp. 26–7; Z. Kozłowska-Budkowa, ‘Odnowienie jagiellońskie
Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego (1390–1414)’, in Dzieje Uniwersytetu
Jagiellońskiego w latach 1364–1764, ed. K. Lepszy, vol. 1 (Kraków, 1964),
pp. 60–1.
60 Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, ms. 805, fol. 414v–15r; Catalogus
manuscriptorum medii aevi latinorum qui in Bibliotheca Jagellonica asservantur,
vol. VI, numeros continens inde a 772 usque ad 1190, ed. M. Kowalczyk et
al. (Kraków, 1996), p. 185; L.A. Birkenmajer, ‘Krakowskie tablice syzygiów
dla r. 1379 i 1380. Przyczynek do dziejów astronomii w Polsce XIV wieku’,
Rozprawy Wydziału Matematyczno-Przyrodniczego Akademii Umiejętności,
21 (1891), 265–6; M. Markowski, ‘Kształtowanie się krakowskiej szkoły
astronomicznej’, in Historia stronomii w Polsce, vol. 1, ed. E. Rybka (Wrocław,
1975), p. 59.
61 Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, ms. 805, fol. 414v–15r, and ms. 846;
Kowalczyk, Catalogus, pp. 185, 363–4; Kowalczyk, ‘Przywilej nobilitacji dla
doktora medycyny Hermana z Przeworska’, Studia Mediewistyczne 29 (1992),
157.
62 A. Birkenmajer, ‘Jan de Saccis’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 10:473–5;
Kowalczyk, ‘Przywilej nobilitacji’, p. 157.
63 A. Gieysztor, ‘Mistrzowie polscy uniwersytetu paryskiego w XIV i XV wieku’,
in Wieki średnie – Medium Aevum. Prace ofiarowane Tadeuszowi Manteufflowi
w 60 rocznicę urodzin, ed. A. Gieysztor, M.H. Serejski and S. Trawkowski
(Warsaw, 1962), pp. 221–2; A. Strzelecka, ‘Jakub z Krakowa’, Polski Słownik
Biograficzny, 10:359.
64 Starodawne Prawa Polskiego Pomniki, vol. 2, ed. A.Z. Helcel (Kraków, 1870),
no. 2276; J. Fijałek, Polonia apud Italos scholastica saeculum XV (Kraków,
1900), p. 81.
65 Akta grodzkie i ziemskie z czasów Rzeczypospolitej, vol. 2, ed. X. Liske (Lwów,
1868), no. 58.
66 Metrica, 1:32; Fijałek, Polonia, pp. 81–2; M. Kowalczyk, ‘Lekarz krakowski
Jan z Dobrej’, Studia Mediewistyczne 34–5 (2000), 260–1.
67 W. Wisłocki, Katalog rękopisów Biblioteki Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2
vols. (Kraków, 1877–81), pp. 417–18, 505; Catalogus manuscriptorum medii
aevi latinorum qui in Bibliotheca Jagellonica asservantur, vol. III, numeros
continens inde a 445 usque ad 563, ed. M. Kowalczyk et al. (Wrocław, 1984),
pp. 307–15.
68 Kraków, Biblioteka Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności–Polskiej Akademii
Nauk, ms. 7534, fol. 42r–v; Kowalczyk, ‘Przywilej nobilitacji’, pp. 157–8;
Kowalczyk, ‘Lekarz krakowski Jan z Dobrej’, p. 261; A. Birkenmajer, ‘Herman
z Przeworska’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 9:461–2.
69 M. Kowalczyk, ‘Przywilej nobilitacji’, p. 157.
70 Starodawne Prawa Polskiego Pomniki, vol. 2, no. 2496; A. Birkenmajer, ‘Hesse
Bernard’, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 9:486–7; B. Wyrozumska, Kancelaria
miasta Krakowa w średniowieczu (Kraków, 1995), p. 122.
71 Codex epistolaris saeculi decimi quinti, ed. A. Lewicki, vol. 3 (Kraków, 1894),
app. no. 9, pp. 513–14; F. Šmahel, Husitská revoluce, vol. 4 (Prague, 1993),
pp. 120, 197; P. Kras, Husyci w piętnastowiecznej Polsce (Lublin, 1998),
p. 57.
72 Codex epistolaris saeculi decimi quinti, appendix, no. 9, pp. 513–14.
73 Šmahel, Husitská revoluce, 4:120, 197; Kras, Husyci, p. 57.
1413–1430, p. 229; Markowski, Kształtowanie się krakowskiej szkoły
astronomicznej, p. 85; A. Birkenmajer, ‘Sprawa magistra Henryka Czecha’,
Collectanea Theologica 17 (1936), 207–24.
75 Ibid; Kras, Husyci, pp. 57, 277.
76 M. Kowalczyk, ‘Przyczynki do biografii Henryka Czecha i Marcina z Żurawicy’,
Biuletyn Biblioteki Jagiellońskiej 21 (1971), 87–8.
77 S. Gawęda, ‘Próba osadzenia Fryderyka Hohenzollerna na tronie polskim
a sprawa pomorska’, in Mediaevalia. W 50 rocznicę pracy naukowej Jana
Dąbrowskiego (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 185–90, 193.
1413–1430, p. 164; H. Barycz, ‘Eliasz z Wąwolnicy’, Polski Słownik
Biograficzny, 6:232–3; M. Świerczyńska, ‘Teolodzy krakowscy w pierwszej
połowie XV wieku’ (PhD dissertation, Kraków, 2001), pp. 63–4.
1413–1430, p. 328.
80 Ibid, pp. 234–5.
81 T. Sinko, ‘Historia poezji łacińskiej humanistycznej w Polsce’, in Encyklopedia
Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, vol. 21 (Kraków, 1918), p. 123; Gębarowicz,
Notes 273
Psałterz floriański, pp. 56–7; T. Michałowska, Średniowiecze (Warsaw, 1995),
pp. 692–5.
82 M. Gębarowicz, Psałterz floriański, pp. 56–9; L. Seńko, Piotr Wysz z Radolina
i jego dzieło ‘Speculum aureum’ (Warsaw, 1996), pp. 267–8, 274–5.
83 Seńko, Piotr Wysz, p. 254.
84 J. Tęgowski, Pierwsze pokolenia Giedyminowiczów (Poznań and Wrocław,
1999), pp. 136, 138.
85 Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, ms. III 8054, fol. 180v–1r; R. Gansiniec, ‘Liryka
Stanisława Ciołka’, Roczniki Historyczne 23 (1957), 166–9; H. Kowalewicz,
‘Twórczość liryczna Stanisława Ciołka’, Eos 65 (1977), 160–1; Michałowska,
Średniowiecze, pp. 685–9.
86 Kowalewicz, ‘Twórczość liryczna Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 152–3, 160–1;
Kowalewicz, ‘Poezja polsko-łacińska XV wieku’, in Sztuka i ideologia XV
wieku, ed. P. Skubiszewski (Warsaw, 1978), p. 237.
87 M. Szczepańska, ‘Muzyczne opracowanie tekstów Stanisława Ciołka’, Roczniki
Historyczne 23 (1957), 177–82; Michałowska, Średniowiecze, pp. 685, 687,
689; K. Morawska, Średniowiecze, vol. 2: 1320–1500 (Warsaw, 1998), pp.
240–1, 252–4.
88 Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, ms. III 8054, f. 174v–5r; Gansiniec, ‘Liryka
Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 166–9; Kowalewicz, ‘Twórczość liryczna Stanisława
Ciołka’, pp. 152–53; Szczepańska, ‘Muzyczne opracowanie tekstów’, pp.
177–82; Michałowska, Średniowiecze, pp. 686–9; Morawska, Średniowiecze,
2:240–1, 260–1; M. Perz, ‘O muzyce w Polsce na przełomie XIV i XV wieku’,
in Polska około roku 1400. Państwo, społeczeństwo, kultura, ed. W. Fałkowski
(Warsaw, 2001), pp. 186–7.
89 Gansiniec, ‘Liryka Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 168–9; Kowalewicz, ‘Twórczość
liryczna Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 161–2.
90 Adami Porcarii Epitaphium Zavissi Nigri et Hedvigis Wladislai Jagellonis filiae,
ed. C. Weyssenhoff, Bibliotheca Latina medii et recentioris aevi 2 (Warsaw,
1961), pp. 37–40; Michałowska, Średniowiecze, pp. 658, 692–7; Kowalewicz,
‘Poezja polsko-łacińska XV wieku’, p. 236.
91 Adami Porcarii Epitaphium, pp. 29–32; Ioannis Dlugossii Annales seu Cronicae
incliti Regni Poloniae, liber undecimus 1413–1430, p. 239; C. Weyssenhoff,
‘Praefatio’, in Adami Porcarii Epitaphium, pp. 7–14; B. Możejko, Ród Świnków
na pograniczu polsko-krzyżackim w średniowieczu (Gdańsk, 1998), pp. 217–21.
92 C. Weyssenhoff, ‘Praefatio’, pp. 9–10; Kowalewicz, ‘Poezja polsko-łacińska
XV wieku’, p. 236; J. Nowak-Dłużewski, Okolicznościowa poezja polityczna w
Polsce. Średniowiecze (Warsaw, 1963), p. 71.
93 Metrica, 1:75.
94 Sułkowska-Kurasiowa, Dokumenty, pp. 261–2; Możejko, Ród Świnków, pp.
217–23; M. Czyżak, Kapituła katedralna w Gnieźnie w świetle metryki z lat
1408–1448 (Poznań, 2003), p. 312.
95 Adami Porcarii Epitaphium, pp. 37–40; C. Weyssenhoff, ‘Praefatio’, pp. 12–21;
Nowak-Dłużewski, Okolicznościowa poezja, p. 71.
96 Grzegorz z Sanoka, Epitafium Jagiełły, ed. C. Ochał-Pirożyńska, Eos 51 (1961),
327–45.
97 Liber promotionum, pp. 28, 32; I. Zarębski, ‘Grzegorz z Sanoka’, Polski Słownik
Biograficzny, 9:86–9.
98 Grzegorz z Sanoka, Epitafium Jagiełły, pp. 327–45; Nowak-Dłużewski,
Okolicznościowa poezja, pp. 71–2.
99 Z. Kowalska, Stanisław Ciołek (+1437), podkanclerzy królewski, biskup
poznański, poeta dworski (Kraków, 1993), pp. 25–54.
100 Kowalska, Stanisław Ciołek, pp. 21–5.
101 T. Tyc, Z dziejów kultury w Polsce średniowiecznej (Poznań, 1924), pp. 50–
3, 69–70; Gansiniec, ‘Liryka Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 158–64; Kowalewicz,
‘Twórczość liryczna Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 155–6, Kowalska, Stanisław
Ciołek, pp. 138–9; Michałowska, Średniowiecze, pp. 680–5; Morawska,
Średniowiecze, 2:240–1, 252–4; Perz, ‘O muzyce’, pp. 186–7.
102 Kowalewicz, ‘Twórczość liryczna Stanisława Ciołka’, pp. 155–6.
103 Nowak-Dłużewski, Okolicznościowa poezja, pp. 61–2; Kowalska, Stanisław
Ciołek, pp. 63–71.
104 Kowalska, Stanisław Ciołek, pp. 138–9; Morawska, Średniowiecze, 2:252–4.
105 Codex epistolaris saeculi decimi quinti, ed. A. Sokołowski and J. Szujski, vol.
1, pt. 1 (Kraków, 1876), no. 53, pp. 47–53; Tyc, Z dziejów kultury, pp. 35–41;
Nowak-Dłużewski, Okolicznościowa poezja, pp. 56–61; Kowalska, Stanisław
Ciołek, pp. 135–7.
106 Codex epistolaris saeculi decimi quinti, vol. 1, pt. 1, no. 53, pp. 47–53; Nowak-
Dłużewski, Okolicznościowa poezja, p. 61; Kowalska, Stanisław Ciołek, p.
136.
1370–1405, ed. D. Turkowska and S. Perzanowski (Warsaw, 1985), p. 232;
J. Łoś, ‘Biblioteka polska królowej Jadwigi’, Przewodnik Bibliograficzny
6 (1926), 257–8; E. Potkowski, Książka rękopiśmienna w kulturze Polski
średniowiecznej (Warsaw, 1984), pp. 201–2.
108 Rachunki królewskie z lat 1393–1395 i 1412. Rachunki podrzęctwa
krakowskiego. Rachunki stacji nowosądeckiej, ed. H. Wajs (Warsaw, 1993), p.
44; M. Kowalczyk, ‘Odnowienie Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego w świetle mów
Bartłomieja z Jasła’, Małopolskie Studia Historyczne 6 (1964), fasc. 3–4, p. 24;
B. Miodońska, Małopolskie malarstwo książkowe 1320–1540 (Warsaw, 1993),
p. 58.
109 E. Potkowski, ‘Katedralisi na dworze królowej Jadwigi’, Miscellanea Historico-
Archivistica 1 (1985), 225–41; B. Miodońska, Małopolskie malarstwo
książkowe, pp. 57–9.
110 Henricus Bitterfeld de Brega OP, Tractatus de vita contemplativa et activa, ed.
B. Mazur, L. Seńko and R. Tatarzyński, intro. C. Marciniak (Warsaw, 2003),
pp. 3–179.
111 Gębarowicz, Psałterz floriański, pp. 86–112.
112 Henricus Bitterfeld de Brega OP, Tractatus, pp. 3–6.
113 M. Gębarowicz, Psałterz floriański, pp. 115–16.
114 Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie, ms. III 8002; Psałterz floriański, ed. L.
Bernacki (Lwów, 1939); Gębarowicz, Psałterz floriański, pp. 148–222; E.
Śnieżyńska-Stolot, Tajemnice dekoracji Psałterza floriańskiego. Z dziejów
średniowiecznej koncepcji uniwersum (Warsaw, 1992), pp. 7–15.
115 Gębarowicz, Psałterz floriański, pp. 148–222; K. Łatak, Kanonicy regularni
laterańscy na Kazimierzu w Krakowie do końca XVI wieku (Ełk, 1999),
pp. 250–1.
116 Śnieżyńska-Stolot, Tajemnice, pp. 88–9.
117 Gębarowicz, Psałterz floriański, pp. 194–5.
Notes 275
13 Between conciliar thought and mystical theology
1 This paper reflects my first acquaintance with Professor Paul Knoll, who presided
as session chair when an earlier version was presented at the International
Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 15 July 1999. I owe thanks to Dr.
Matthias Kaup of Constance for help in outlining the basic structure of the
text.
2 For the current state of scholarship, see especially J. Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z
Paradyża i Uniwersytet Krakowski w okresie soboru bazylejskiego, 2 vols.
(Kraków, 1900); D. Mertens, Iacob Carthusiensis. Untersuchungen zur Rezeption
der Werke des Kartäusers James of Paradyż (1381–1465). Veröffentlichungen
des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 50 and Studien zur Germania Sacra 13
(Göttingen, 1976); S. Porębski, Jakub z Paradyża. Poglądy i teksty (Warsaw,
1994); J. Stoś, Mistrz Jakub z Paradyża i devotio moderna (Warsaw, 1997); T.
Wünsch, Konziliarismus und Polen. Personen, Politik und Programme aus Polen
zur Verfassungsfrage der Kirche in der Zeit der mittelalterlichen Reformkonzilien
(Paderborn, 1998), especially pp. 82–4. New texts from James’s Erfurt period are
now presented in Jakub z Paradyża, Sermones de sanctis etc., ed. S. Porębski;
De sanctificatione sabbati circa molendina etc., ed. J. Stoś, Textus et studia
historiam theologiae in Polonia excultae spectantia 29 (Warsaw, 2004).
3 For his biography see the review article by D. Mertens, ‘Jakob von Paradies’,
in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 4 (1983), pp.
478–87. On his doctorate (1432), see now also K. Ożóg, Uczeni w monarchii
Jadwigi Andegaweńskiej i Władysława Jagiełły (1384–1434) (Kraków, 2004),
p. 60. It should be remembered that James had already emerged as a theologian
earlier – roughly speaking, at the discussion between the members of the
University of Kraków and the Hussite representatives from Prague which took
place in Kraków in 1431; see Ożóg, Uczeni, p. 305.
4 See especially Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 1:82–153.
5 Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 1:154–440.
6 The affinity with the devotio moderna movement has been recently and
persuasively discussed by Stoś, Mistrz Jakub z Paradyża, especially pp. 66–
105. A new basis for the discussion of this issue has now been offered through
the work of W. Bielak, Devotio moderna w polskich traktatach duszpasterskich
powstałych do połowy XV wieku (Lublin, 2002).
7 See especially Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 2:61–163.
8 L. Meier, Die Werke des Erfurter Kartäusers Jakob von Jüterbog in ihrer
handschriftlichen Überlieferung (Münster, 1955).
9 S. Dobrzanowski, ‘Jakub z Paradyża’, Słownik Polskich Teologów, vol. 2 (1982),
pp. 109–19.
10 See also Stoś, Mistrz Jakub z Paradyża, especially pp. 40–65.
11 See Porębski, Jakub z Paradyża, pp. 46–53; Wünsch, Konziliarismus und Polen,
pp. 363–8.
12 Concerning the conciliarism of James of Paradyż, see most recently Wünsch,
Konziliarismus und Polen, passim. In addition to the Determinatio Basiliensis
(edited by Henryk Anzulewicz, in Polskie traktaty koncyliarystyczne z połowy
XV wieku, Textus et Studia historiam theologiae in Polonia excultae spectantia
23 [Warsaw, 1987], pp. 83–115), one should take into consideration the influence
of the University of Kraków on the common report: Thomas of Strzempin,
‘Determinatio Basiliensis seu Tractatus communis universitatis Cracoviensis
(ca. 1440–1)’, ed. W. Bucichowski, in Polskie traktaty koncyliarystyczne z
połowy XV wieku, Textus et studia historiam theologiae in Polonia excultae
spectantia 23 (Warsaw 1987), pp. 167–230 (now in a corrected edition by Z.
Włodek, in Scripta manent. Textus ad theologiam spectantes in Universitate
Cracoviensi saeculo XV conscripti [Kraków, 2000], pp. 229–92).
13 See James of Paradyż, De statu et officio ecclesiasticarum personarum (1448),
in J.M.F. Lydius, M. Wesseli Gansfortii . . . Opera omnia (Amsterdam, 1617),
pp. 33–62.
14 See James of Paradyż, Avisamentum ad papam pro reformatione ecclesiae
(1449), in Wybór tekstów dotyczących reformy kościoła, ed. S. Porębski, Textus
et studia historiam theologiae in Polonia excultae spectantia 6 (Warsaw, 1978),
pp. 9–17.
15 See James of Paradyż, De septem statibus ecclesiae (1449), ed. Porębski (Textus
et studia 6, 1978), pp.19–47, as well as James of Paradyż, Speculum aureum
institutionum ad beneficia ecclesiastica et sacramenta (1455), Hs. ÖNB Wien,
Sign. 4225, fol. 76r–88v (and others); a partial edition in Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z
Paradyża, 2:252–7.
16 On the use of medical metaphor, see especially James of Paradyż, De septem
statibus ecclesiae, pp. 35–8.
17 Hints are to be found in the relevant chapters of Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża,
2:1–60, pp. 87–115; see also Stoś, Mistrz Jakub z Paradyża, pp. 40–4.
18 There would be four if one also included the anonymously-transmitted synodal
sermon Spiritus veritatis (BJ 173, fol. 86v–90r), regarding which a case for
James of Paradyż’s authorship could likewise be made. I thank Professor Roman
Zawadzki of Kraków for his confirmation regarding this conjecture.
19 On the ‘transitional period’ of 1441–2, see Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża,
2:1–60. On the genre itself, see the collection of M. Kowalczyk, Krakowskie
mowy uniwersyteckie z pierwszej połowy XV wieku (Wrocław, 1970).
20 See H. Rüthing, ‘Die Kartäuser und die spätmittelalterlichen Ordensreformen’,
in Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen
Ordenswesen, ed. K. Elm, Berliner Historische Studien 14 (Berlin, 1989), pp.
35–58 (with additional literature).
21 James of Paradyż, Sermo 1441 in octava Stanislai in Lancicia in sinodo, BJ 173
fol. 90rb–4rb (Fraternitatem diligite).
22 Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum medii aevi latinorum qui in bibliotheca
Jagellonica Cracoviae asservantur, vol. 1, ed. Z. Włodek et al. (Wrocław, 1980)
(hereafter Catalogus BJ), pp. 164–86.
23 Ibid, p. 170.
24 See Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 2:22–5, 177.
25 See Elgot, Codex epist. 2 (1891), no. 282–3.
26 See T. Wünsch, ‘Minister, executor, caput civile. Der Papst im Kirchenverständnis
der Konziliaristen’, in Geist, Gesellschaft, Kirche im 13.–16. Jh., ed. F. Šmahel,
Colloquia mediaevalia Pragensia 1 (Prague, 1999), pp. 53–79.
27 See Elgot, Codex epist. 2 (1891), no. 282.
28 James of Paradyż, Sermo 1441 in Cracovia in missa Universitatis, BJ 173 fol.
144vb–8vb (Spiritu ambulate).
29 See Catalogus BJ, p. 172; Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 2:45–9.
30 Catalogus BJ, p. 172.
31 James of Paradyż, (Sermo) 1442 in Pyotrkow in sinodo, BJ 173 fol. 148vb–52rb
(Subiecti estote).
Notes 277
32 See Fijałek, Mistrz Jakób z Paradyża, 2:53–6.
33 See most recently H.J. Sieben, ‘Dtn. 17,8–13 als Beitrag des Alten Testaments
zur Theologie des Konzils’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 18 (1986), 1–8.
34 Codex epist. 2 (1891), no. 283.
35 Codex epist. 1.1 (1876), no. 118.
36 See U. Proch, ‘Die Unionskonzilien von Lyon (1274) und Florenz (1438–
1445)’, in Geschichte der Konzilien. Vom Nicaenum bis zum Vaticanum II, ed.
G. Alberigo (Düsseldorf, 1993), pp. 292–329, at 323.
37 See here, among others, A. Kneer, Die Entstehung der konziliaren Theorie. Zur
Geschichte des Schismas und der kirchenpolitischen Schriftsteller Konrad von
Gelnhausen (gest. 1390) und Heinrich von Langenstein (gest. 1397) (Rome,
1893); G. Kreuzer, Heinrich von Langenstein. Studien zur Biographie und zu
den Schismatraktaten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Epistola pacis
und der Epistola concilii pacis, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der
Geschichte NF 6 (Paderborn, 1987). Recently, see F. Oakley, The Conciliarist
Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870 (Oxford, 2003),
especially pp. 20ff.
38 See T. Hohmann and G. Kreuzer, ‘Heinrich von Langenstein’, in Die deutsche
Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 3 (1981), col. 771 (with
additional literature).
39 See here, among others, J.B. Morrall, Gerson and the Great Schism (Manchester,
1960); L.B. Pascoe, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform, Studies in
Medieval and Reformation Thought 7 (Leiden, 1973); Pascoe, ‘Jean Gerson:
mysticism, conciliarism, and reform’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum
6 (1974), 135–53; Z. Kałuża, ‘Le chancelier Gerson et Jerôme de Prague’,
Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 51 (1984), 81–126;
D. Taber, ‘The theologian and the schism: a study of the political thought of Jean
Gerson (1363–1429)’ (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1985); C. Burger,
Aedificatio, Fructus, Utilitas. Johannes Gerson als Professor der Theologie
und Kanzler der Universität Paris, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 70
(Tübingen, 1986).
40 See H. Kraume, ‘Gerson, Johannes’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters.
Verfasserlexikon, vol. 2 (1980), col. 1272 (with additional literature). Regarding
Gerson’s influences upon James of Paradyż, see Porębski, Jakub z Paradyża,
and Stoś, Mistrz Jakub z Paradyża.
41 See here, among others, Wünsch, Konziliarismus und Polen, especially sections
3.2.3 (on the theory of representation) and 3.3.1 (on the new application of the
plenitudo potestatis).
42 On the subject of ethics in James’s mystical writings, see Porębski, Jakub z
Paradyża, pp. 63–6; J. Misiurek, Historia i teologia polskiej duchowości
katolickiej, vol. 1: W. X–XVIII (Lublin, 1994), pp. 38–41.
43 James of Paradyż, De triplici genere hominum, in Stoś, Mistrz Jakub z Paradyża,
pp. 114–76. On the contents, see the same work, passim.
44 See James of Paradyż, De triplici genere hominum, ch. 8, in Stoś, Mistrz Jakub
z Paradyża, p. 138.
45 James of Paradyż, De theologia mystica, in Opuscula inedita, ed. S. Porębski,
Textus et studia historiam theologiae in Polonia excultae spectantia 5 (Warsaw,
1978), pp. 251–312. On the classification in terms of the history of ideas, see
above all (apart from Porębski’s introductory remarks) K. Górski, ‘“Teologia
mistyczna” Jakuba z Paradyża’, Roczniki Filozoficzne 27 (1979), 217–30.
46 James of Paradyż, De malis huius saeculi, ed. S. Porębski (Textus et studia 6,
1976), pp. 106–273. On the contents, see the editor’s introductory remarks,
and, further, B. Geremek, ‘Geografia i apokalipsa. Pojęcie Europy u Jakuba z
Paradyża’, in Mente et litteris. O kulturze i społeczeństwie wieków średnich, ed.
H. Chłopocka and B. Kürbis (Poznań, 1984), pp. 253–61.
47 See James of Paradyż, De malis huius saeculi, p. 111.
48 James of Paradyż, De bona voluntate, in Porębski, Jakub z Paradyża, pp. 139–
97. See the introduction to this edition, pp. 136ff.
49 James of Paradyż, De cogitationibus et earum qualitate, ed. Porębski (Textus
et studia 5, 1978), pp. 144–74. On the contents, see S. Porębski, ‘Contribution
à l’étude de Jacques de Paradyż’, Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum 21
(1975), 115–43, at 115–20.
50 About him, see recently J. Nikodem, Zbigniew Oleśnicki w historiografii
polskiej (Kraków, 2001); M. Koczerska, Zbigniew Oleśnicki i kościół krakowski
w czasach jego pontyfikatu 1423–1455 (Warsaw, 2004).
14 ‘Good king Polish Ladislas . . .’

1 The theft of the crown by Queen Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting and the child-
coronation is well documented by the lady’s Denkwürdigkeiten; see The
Memoirs of Helene Kottaner, 1439–40, trans. M.B. Williamson (Woodbridge,
1998). She does not mention that all other regalia (see below) were missing at
that coronation, although she very thoroughly lists the legal conditions of a valid
crowning: the right crown, the right place (Alba Regia) and the right coronator
(the archbishop of Esztergom).
2 The general history of these years is now summarised in P. Engel, The Realm
of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526, trans. P. Pálosfalvi,
English ed. A. Ayton (London, 2001), pp. 278–97; see also Engel, ‘János
Hunyadi: the decisive years of his career, 1440–1444’, in From Hunyadi to
Rákóczi: War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary, ed.
J.M. Bak and B.K. Király (Boulder, CO, 1982), pp. 103–24.
3 In Werbőczy’s Tripartitum of 1514–17, the authoritative summary of medieval
Hungarian law, pt. 2, titles 13–34 list the decrees, charters and donations of the
two rulers among invalid documents. See S. Werbőczy, The Customary Law of
the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary: A Work in Three Parts – Tripartitum opus
iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariae, in Decreta Regni Mediaevalis
Hungariae [‘The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary’] [henceforth
DRMH], ed. J.M. Bak, P. Banyó and M. Rady (Idyllwild, CA, and Budapest,
2005), vol. 5, p. 257.
4 Ladislas Posthumus died young and childless in 1458, and was followed by
Hunyadi’s son, Matthias (1458–90). The Habsburg succession to the Hungarian
(and Czech) throne was based essentially on the treaties of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries; see J.M. Bak, Königtum und Stände in Ungarn im
14.–16. Jahrhundert, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa
6 (Wiesbaden, 1973), pp. 68–9 (with other literature).
5 The original is in the Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Warsaw; photocopy in
the Hungarian State Archives, Budapest, Df. 98.438; last printed (based on the
latter) in Bak, Königtum, pp. 141–3.
6 On these, see É. Kovács and Z. Lovag, The Hungarian Crown and Other Regalia
(Budapest, 1980). It is not clear whether these were not in the same casket from
Notes 279
which the Kottanerin stole the crown, or were merely too much to be smuggled
out easily and hence remained in the castle of Visegrád.
7 See J.M. Bak, ‘Hungary and crusading in the fifteenth century’, in Crusading
in the Fifteenth Century: Message and Impact, ed. N. Housley (Basingstoke,
2004), pp. 116–27.
8 The term regnicola (literally, ‘inhabitant of the realm’) was used, at least from
the mid-fifteenth century onwards, for the politically enfranchised nobility. In
the DRMH, we translated it as ‘gentleman of the realm’. It seems that the last
time this word was intended to include lesser freemen and peasants was in a
document relating to the 1437 uprising in Transylvania.
9 Alas, we know nothing about this reliquary, but it could have been similar
to those of Saint Ladislas from the late fourteenth century, of which one is
now in the cathedral treasury of Győr (for an image, see at <http://mek.oszk.
hu/01900/01954/html.index814.html>), and the other, uncrowned, from Trenčín
(later Esztergom) is in the Hungarian National Museum, for which see at <www.
hungart.hu/magyar/zmisc/faragvan/14_sz/1300-50/herma.html>.
10 On this see Bak, Königtum, pp. 17–20.
11 On crowns and reliquaries, see P.E. Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und
Staatsymbolik. Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum sechzehnten
Jahrhundert, Schriften der MGH 13.3, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1956), pp. 872–83,
886–95; K. Otawsky, Die Sankt Wenzelskrone im Prager Domschatz und die
Frage der Kunstauffasung am Hofe Karls IV, Europäische Hochschulschriften
28.142 (Bern, 1992), pp. 25–68. None of the crowns discussed in these studies
seem ever to have been used for an inauguration.
12 See E.H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political
Theology (Princeton, NJ, 1957), pp. 420–31.
13 His words about the scandalum that emerged among the Hungarians because
of the ‘wrong’ crown clearly imply disapproval of the disregard for the learned,
canon-legal and papal sanctions, in contrast to ‘magical’ beliefs in the Holy
Crown (quasi in ea sit ius regium constitutus); see Bak, Königtum, p. 21, and for
greater detail, J. Deér, Die heilige Krone Ungarns, Österreichische Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften 91 (Graz
and Vienna, 1966), pp. 220–4.
14 See L. Péter, ‘The Holy Crown of Hungary: visible and invisible’, Slavonic and
East European Review 81 (2003), 448–80.
15 DRMH, 2:89–93.
16 Ibid, 2:21–3 (Sigismund), 81–7 (Albert, without the Golden Bull); see also
A. Kubinyi, ‘Die Wahlkapitulationen Wladislaws II. in Ungarn (1490)’, in
Herrschaftsverträge, Wahlkapitulationen, Fundamentalgesetze, ed. R. Vierhaus
(Göttingen, 1977), pp. 140–62.
17 For which see 1 September 1290, DRMH, 1:42–5.
18 5 August 1298: ibid, 1:46–51. The date of this undated decree has been
convincingly established by scholars based on internal evidence: ibid, p. 114.
19 E.g. by its first editor, M.G. Kovachich, Supplementum ad vestigia comitiorum
. . . (Pest, 1789–1801), 1:144–5, then challenged by G. Bartal, Commentariorum
ad historiam Hungariae . . . libri XV (Pozsony, 1847), pp. 208–10. For additional
literature, see F. Dőry, Gy. Bónis and V. Bácskai, Decreta regni Hungariae:
Gesetze und Verodnungen Ungarns, 1301–1457 (Budapest, 1976), pp. 387–8.
20 Printed as ‘Compilatio c. 1300’, DRMH, 1:71–5 (also in Decreta, as above, pp.
389–96).
21 Originally written for a Festschrift, it is now more easily accessible as P. Engel,
‘Az “1300 körüli” tanácsi határozat keletkezéséhez’, in Engel, Honor, vár,
ispánság. Válogatott tanulmányok, ed. E. Csukovits (Budapest, 2003), pp. 638–
48.
22 Actually, while preparing DRMH, vol. 1, we had some doubts ourselves, but
bowed to the expertise of the late Gy. Bónis. It is conspicuous in our annotations
(DRMH, 1:134–8) that we went to considerable lengths to explain away the
inconsistencies.
23 See J.M. Bak, ‘Hungary: crown and estates’, in The New Cambridge Medieval
History, vol. 7: C. 1415–c. 1500, ed. C. Allmand (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 707–
26. This aspect of the booklet’s content has been extensively discussed in the
relevant literature. It was, indeed, issued during the short-lived ‘corporatist
episode’ (as József Gerics called it) of the late thirteenth century.
24 Alas, the untimely death of my friend Engel in 2003 (see the commemorative
words in my review of his Realm of St Stephen, English Historical Review 119
[2004], 127–8) precludes asking him these questions, to which he may have had
some clever replies.
25 Engel risked suggesting (in passing) that John Vitéz of Zredna (ca. 1400–72), a
humanist, a supporter of the Hunyadi family and by that time a member of the
chancery, may have been the compiler. Why not?
26 The laws of the first three centuries of the kingdom rarely survived in medieval
copies, most of them (almost all those issued between 1000 and 1222) only in
sixteenth-century codices; see DRMH, 1:lvi–lvii. Still, the opening words of
the Compilatio do not fit well with Engel’s proposition about a decision of the
council.
27 See Gy. Bónis, Középkori jogunk elemei (Budapest, 1972), pp. 143–287.
28 Magyar Népzene Tára, vol. 1: Gyermekjátékok, ed. G. Kerényi (Budapest, 1951),
no. 428, p. 801. Some 30 variants (with only a few hinting at the Polish king)
are listed and discussed in A. Kiss, ‘A Lengyel-László játékok’, in Emlékkönyv
Kodály Zoltán 70. születésnapjára, ed. B. Szabolcsi and D. Bartha (Budapest,
1953), pp. 373ff.
29 See Z. Kodály, Chöre für Kinder- und Frauenstimmen (13th ed., Budapest,
2005), pp. 140–7.
30 See, for example, the ballad of ‘Kőműves Kelemenné’, in N.A.M. Leader,
Hungarian Classical Ballads and Their Folklore (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 19–
44.
31 For guidance in this field, I am indebted to Professor Emeritus Tamás Hofer.
32 The editor of the Magyar Népzene Tára suggests that the ‘Polish Ladislas’ may
refer to Saint Ladislas, who indeed grew up in Poland (and, according to the
author of the Gesta principum Polonorum, ‘had almost become a Pole in his
ways and life’ [bk. 2, ch. 27]), but there is no evidence that he would have been
called ‘a Pole’ in Hungary (except in one mention by an anonymous monk, see
Kiss, ‘A Lengyel-László játékok’, p. 375); see above all I. Mészáros, ‘Népi
gyermekjátékaink “Lengyel” László királya’, Ethnográfia – Népélet 74 (1963),
272–8.
33 It may be interesting to note that a Slovak (and a similar Ruthenian) ‘bridge-
play’ begins with the line Poslala nás královná (‘The queen sent us [to build a
bridge]’), which it has been suggested refers to Queen Elizabeth of Luxemburg
– the opponent of Władysław I! – whose faithful captain in Upper Hungary,
Jiskra, kept most of what is now Slovakia on the Habsburg side. Thus researchers
Notes 281
have dated that version in the same decade as the one on the Polish Ladislas, and
probably remembering the confrontation’s other side; cf. J. Melich, ‘Adalékok
a magyarországi hídjátékokról’, Ethnográfia – Népélet 50 (1939), 90–111, at
96–7, also with extensive references to early, eighteenth-century, records of the
Slavic text. Alas, there are also Hungarian versions referring to ‘a queen’, so this
little historical speculation stands on weak foundations. Still – è ben trovato.
15 University studies and trivialised pursuits

1 Paul Knoll has, throughout his distinguished career as teacher, writer and
lecturer, continued to bring up salient issues regarding university education
and the structure of the university in Central Europe; hence the topic of this
contribution to a volume of essays in his honour. Amos Funkenstein, in his
Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth
Century (Princeton, NJ, 1996), states that both connections and separations
between areas of learning may be the aspect that is least comprehensible to
another educational civilisation, separated by geography or time. He notes
(p. 6) that:
the barriers separating various scientific disciplines were fundamental to the
peripatetic program of systematic knowledge. Within the Aristotelian and
Scholastic tradition, it was forbidden to transplant methods and models from
one area of knowledge to another, because it would lead to a category-mistake.
This point is particularly important for an understanding of what textbooks and
anthologies within disciplines were to accomplish, and of what one could expect
from them – often not what is expected of textbooks used today in contemporary
university education.
2 One reads, as well, general statements such as the following:
A university must be judged by its studies, and successive chapters show that
Oxford has always thought of itself as a teaching university with a responsibility
to instruct its undergraduates in accepted doctrines rather than speculative
opinion. (The Illustrated History of Oxford University, ed. J. Prest [Oxford,
1993], p. vii)
3 See W.J. Courtenay, Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1999), p. xi, noting further that:
Once the early stages of development had taken place, the institutional structure
of each university was thought to be set, and descriptions of those structures
were presumably as applicable to the late fourteenth century as they were to the
early thirteenth.
Courtenay contests this view (rightly, I believe), arguing that change in emphasis
and in curricula was of much importance, although that change is difficult to
track.
4 See The Illustrated History of Oxford University, p. 226, caption to a caricature
of Sir Hugh Allen, Heather Professor of Music from 1918 to 1946:
Enjoyed a special reputation as the energetic and authoritarian conductor of the
Bach Choir, regarding his performing duties as professor as more important
than [his] musicological research work.
5 Chalcidius’s translation of Plato’s Timaeus makes this equivalence clear,
including as he does both seen and unseen materia-substancia within the term
silva. Chalcidius’s copious commentary notes how important this translation of
silva for the Greek hyle was. See Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque
instructus, ed. J.H. Waszink, Plato latinus 4, ed. R. Klibansky (London and
Leiden, 1975), pp. 61.6, 145.4, 259.5, 286.14, 325.22; hyle-silva does not refer
particularly or exclusively to ‘stuff’ that can be seen, heard, noticed, described
and moulded in some way, but is, more importantly, invisible yet substantial
materia-substancia. See also the translator’s commentary, pp. lxxvii–lxxxiv, and
N. van Deusen, ‘In and out of a Latin forest: the Timaeus Latinus, its concept
of silva, and music as a discipline in the Middle Ages’, Musica Disciplina
(forthcoming).
6 In fact, the description of the biblical scriptures as a ‘thicket’ is a topos.
7 Augustine, De musica, bk. 1, ch. 1, on the special exemplary capacities of music:
‘Sonorum certar dimensiones observare non ad grammaticam spectat, sed ad
musicam.’ Augustine, writing from the standpoint that grammar and music both
use the material of sound, states that ‘dimensions’ that are certain and clear are
related to modus and tempus, since music employs sound together with time.
Within modus resides significance (figura) or rather, diverse significances:
‘praeter id quod significatio diverso est, nihil tibi videtur sonus distari.’ In
the second chapter, then, Augustine poses the question that would become the
standard opening question of those treatises that dealt with the discipline of
music as an analogical discipline: ‘Musica quid sit, modulari quid sit.’ Augustine
continues:
[M]usica est scientia bene modulandi . . . si mihi liqueret quid sit ipsa modulatio
. . . sed quid video modulari a modo esse dictum, cum in omnibus benefactis
modus servandus sit, et multa etiam in canendo ac saltando quamvis delectent.
See N. van Deusen, articles on Augustine’s De musica, on his De rhetorica, and
on ‘Music, rhythm’ in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A.D.
Fitzgerald OSA (Grand Rapids, MI, 1999).
8 De musica, bk. 1, ch. 4:
Scientia cur in musica definitione ponitur . . . nam et numerosus est et suavissimus
ille cantus, et, nisi fallor, tempori congruit . . . qui sensu quodam ducti bene
canunt, hoc est numerose id faciunt ac suaviter, quamvis interrogati de ipsis
numeris, vel de intervallis acutarum graviumque vocem . . .
See also Patrologiae cursus completus . . . series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols.
(Paris, 1844–65), vol. 32. Rhetoric also brings training, practice and experience
together with principle, but does not involve the diversity of sounds that ‘stroke
the ear’, that is to say, are delectable. See Quintilian, Art of Rhetoric, trans. H.E.
Butler, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA, repr. 1958), bk. 6, 2 (II, pp. 423ff.).
9 Chalcidius, Timaeus, p. xxi (editor’s introduction): ‘[Q]uia, ut Plato exposuit
in 32 c 6-8, silvam continet omnem, ut nihil extra eum relictum sit. . .’; see
Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 1.
10 In this context, the term differentia is, and will continue to be, very significant;
cf. Timaeus, preface, p. xxii: ‘silvam, altera individuam substantiam idem
esse dicit quod animam incorporalem, dividuam idem quod animam stirpeam’
(cc. 29–31); differentia: ‘De differentiis inter singulas animas existentibus’
(cc. 208–11); interval: intervalla (p. xxii); discretion of time: ‘interpretans de
Notes 283
aevi temporisque discretione agit’ (p. xxiii [cc. 105–7]). The great, unlimited,
inchoate silva can be differentiated into individual figurae, that is to say,
figuratis; cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, A4, 985b14. See also Quintilian, x.iii.l7:
Diversum est huic eorum vitium, qui primo decurrere per materiam stilo quam
velocissimo volunt et sequentis calorem atque impetum ex tempore scribunt;
hanc sylvam vocant. Repetunt deinde et componunt quae effuderant; sed
verba emendantur et numeri, manet in rebus temere congestis quae fuit levitas.
Protinus ergo adhibere curam rectius erit atque ab initio sic opus ducere, ut
caelandum, non ex integro fabricandum sit. (emphasis added)
Apparently unaware of the importance of the Latin silva, the translator of the
Loeb edition renders silva as ‘rough copy’. Here an important equivalence has
been established, namely silva = natura = substancia = materia.
11 Magni Aurelii Cassiodori, Expositio psalmorum, 2 vols., ed. M. Adriaen, Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina 97–8 (Turnhout, 1958), who writes in his preface
‘[U]t et claritas litterae senioribus oculis se pulchrius aperiret . . .’ (p. 4), and
goes on to give scores of litterae-figurae throughout his commentaries on the
Psalms, legitimising this collection of figurae by stating (p. 20):
In libris quippe quos appellavit de modis locutionum diversa schemata

saecularium litterarum inveniri probavit in litteris sacris; alios autem proprios
modos in divinis eloquiis esse declaravit, quos grammatici sive rhetores
nullatenus attigerunt.
Further, an instrument is also a figura; instrumentum can be considered as
another translation for the Greek schema (p. 11, quoting Jerome):
Psalterium est, ut Hieronymus ait, in modum ∆ deltae litterae formati ligni
sonora concavitas, obesum ventrum in superioribus habens, ubi chordarum
fila religata disciplinabiliter plectro percussa, suavissimam dicuntur reddere
cantilenam.
A Psalm is also a music instrument: ‘(Quid sit psalmus.) Psalmus est, cum ex
ipso solo instrumento musico, id est psalterio, modulatio quaedam dulcis et
canora profunditur’ (p. 12). ‘Suaveness’ as well as dulcis, used here, constitute
important, obviously related, qualifications. Cassiodorus has, furthermore,
much to say about music as a discipline. Cantus, pleasing the ears, instructs the
mind:
Cantus, qui aures oblectat et animas instruit . . . Quam mirabilis autem ex
ipsis profluit suavitas ad canendum. Dulcisonum organum humanis vocibus
aemulantur, tubarum sonitus grandiloquis clamoribus reddunt, vocalem
citharam viventium chordarum permixtione componunt, et quidquid ante
instrumentis musicis videbatur agi, nunc probatur per rationales substantias
explicari. (p. 5)
12 See N. van Deusen, ‘Grosseteste’s concept of Figura and its application to music
notation’, in van Deusen, Theology and Music at the Early University: The
Case of Robert Grosseteste and Anonymous, vol. 4 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 76–98.
Cf. also R.W. Hunt, ‘Manuscripts containing the indexing symbols of Robert
Grosseteste’, Bodleian Library Record, 4:241–55, and M.A. and R.H. Rouse,
‘The development of research tools in the thirteenth century’, in Authentic
Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts in Manuscripts (Notre Dame, IN,
1991), pp. 232ff.
13 Cf. Roger Bacon on figurae within measure, especially of duration, limits of
quantity, time as instant, as indicated by a point or line: ‘ut ab instanti fit tempus,
et a puncto fit linea. Sed ordinaliter fit tempus ab aevo, id est post aevum quia
aevum est mensura priori tempore.’ Measure itself exists before time. See S.H.
Thomson, ‘An unnoticed treatise by Roger Bacon on time and motion’, Isis
27 (1937), 219–29; N. van Deusen, ‘Roger Bacon on music’, in Roger Bacon
and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. J. Hackett (Leiden, 1997), pp.
223–41.
14 Quintilian as well as Cassiodorus classify them, singly, and in comparison to
one another.
15 Again, it is necessary here to point to the equivalence established by Chalcidius
between silva as seen and unseen, discussed above.
16 Cf. van Deusen, ‘Roger Bacon on music’, especially pp. 224–7. We bring the
discussion to its medieval exemplification, to be seen in Paris (National Library,
fonds latin, ms 1118), as a series of figurae, illustrating the principle of figura
itself as well as figurae in modis, that is, figurae that indicate and communicate
ways of moving as well as of understanding. The series begins with the ‘kingly
figura’. Notice that throughout the series, motion is accentuated by means of
the figurae of music instruments, colours, gestures, all coming together in the
last of this series, in which dance movement, too, comes to the fore. The figurae
appear to contain, as well as to communicate, internal, emotional substance, in
terms of facial expressions, of limp, hanging, red hands, and of instruments. It is
important to keep in mind that instruments were also designated as figurae in the
Middle Ages. All these illustrations are given here, since each separately makes
the point of what a figura consisted of, as well as all together as the medieval
topos of varied and diverse figurae or charactere variarae.
17 Cf. K.A. Schmidt, Geschichte der Erziehung, vol. 14 (Stuttgart, 1902), translated
and quoted in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2: Universities in
Early Modern Europe, ed. H. de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 175,
341. If one reviews other significant, more recent, histories of education and
the early university, such as R. Martin OP, ‘Travaux récents à la faculté des arts
aux XIIIe–XIVe siècles’, Revue d’histoire ecclesiastique 31 (1935), 359–68,
and especially H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed.
F.M. Powicke and A.B. Emden, 3 vols. (2nd ed., Oxford, 1936), the result is
the same: as a discipline, music is ignored, trivialised and misunderstood. See
also G. Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries (New York, 1968); Manuels, programmes de cours et techniques
d’enseignment dans les universités médiévales, ed. J. Hamesse (Louvain,
1994). P. Glorieux, Répertoire des maîtres en théologie de Paris au XIIIe siècle,
2 vols. (Paris, 1933), drawing upon P. Féret, La Faculté de théologie de Paris
et ses docteurs les plus célèbres. Moyen-Age, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–7), gives
useful biographical details for many masters at the early university of Paris
who, though considered by Glorieux to be masters of theology, wrote treatises
on music.
18 A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages,
ed. H. de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge, 1992) pp. 343ff. It is significant that
not one of the chapter authors, or members of the editorial board, has shown
Notes 285
published interest in music, let alone advanced a career in musicology. This
is also true of the Cambridge History of the Middle Ages: all the contributors
write, predictably, and as they should, from their own disciplinary point of
view. Since music is neither their priority nor expertise, it is simply ignored, or
mentioned in passing with bland, insubstantial statements from the secondary
literature. For example, North, in the three paragraphs concerning music within
his contribution to volume 1 of A History of the University in Europe, writes
that Boethius was important, that music treatises began with the monochord,
and that the plan of music study was obscure at Oxford. There is very little here
to remain in the mind in terms of a pungent, shaped concept of why one would
continue to offer degrees in music, for example in Salamanca, well into the
fifteenth century.
19 See the index of A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, listing ‘music’
at pp. 9, 169, 175, 323 (no mention of music here), 383 (also no mention of
music), 341, 352, 466, 506, 522 – compared with 31 substantial entries for
mathematics, five additional entries for arithmetic, seven for mathematicians,
and one discussion of the teaching of mathematics.
16 Toward a new cultural history of East Central Europe?

1 The pleasantly alliterative conjunction of these words may have made, and
nearly did make, a good title for this book, but that would have been to trespass
on a very different (and superb) book concerning our part of Europe: T. DaCosta
Kaufman, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe,
1450–1800 (Chicago, 1995).
2 Pp. 234 (n. 28), 252 (n. 29), 268 (n. 3), 275 (n. 1), 281 (n. 1).
3 For the notion of ‘resonance’, we are indebted to T.N. Bisson, ‘On not eating
Polish bread in vain: resonance and conjuncture in the Deeds of the Princes of
Poland (1109–1113)’, Viator 29 (1998), 275–89.
4 Although as an afterthought, and surely with much irony, Banaszkiewicz notes
the resonances of the eleventh-century image of good rulership as recently as in
the 2005 Polish presidential campaign: p. 253, n. 44.
5 For Poland, this moment is crisply datable at 1220, 1222 or 1225, with the
activities of Saint Hyacinth Odrowąż and the founding group of Dominicans;
see J. Kłoczowski, ‘Dominicans in the Polish province in the Middle Ages’, in
The Christian Community of Medieval Poland: Anthologies, ed. Kłoczowski,
Polish Historical Library 2 (Wrocław, 1981), pp. 73–118, at 73–6.
6 Because not all the articles can be grouped in this way, we did not wish to
separate such groups more formally, as titled parts of the book.
7 Pp. 162–4, 167–9, 173–5.
8 P. 73.
9 Pp. 66, 74, 76, 79.
10 Pp. 66–77, 80.
11 Pp. 64, 66, 73, 75, 77.
12 Pp. 26–7, 61, 104–5, 110–13, 141, 147–8, 150–1, 153, 155, 158, 184, 263
(n. 24), 275 (n. 3).
13 P. 225, n. 39.
14 P. 84, n. 15.
15 P. 22.
16 Pp. 157–8, 160.
17 The plea is made throughout van Deusen’s article, culminating at the end (pp.
190–1).
18 P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social
Scientific Theory (Princeton, NJ, 2001), which Banaszkiewicz cites in its
French version, published two years later; citations of Buc at pp. 231 (n. 1), 236
(n. 46).
19 Pp. 50–1, 54, 58–9, 232 (nn. 10–11).
20 N. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval
Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge, 2001); Berend, ‘Hungary, “The Gate of
Christendom”’, in Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, ed. D. Abulafia
and N. Berend (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 195–216.
21 Pp. 177–8; P. Knoll, ‘Poland as Antemurale Christianitatis in the late Middle
Ages’, Catholic Historical Review 60 (1974), 381–401.
22 Knoll, ‘Economic and political institutions on the Polish–German frontier in the
Middle Ages: action, reaction, interaction’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed.
R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989), pp. 151–74, at 155–8.
23 Knoll, ‘Polish–German frontier’, pp. 151–3, 155–8, 160–4; ‘National
consciousness in medieval Poland’, Ethnic Groups 10 (1993), 65–84, at
67–71.
24 Knoll, ‘Casimir the Great and the University of Cracow’, Jahrbücher für
Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 16 (1968), 232–49, at 244.
25 Knoll, ‘The urban development of medieval Poland, with particular reference
to Kraków’, in The Urban Society of Eastern Europe in Premodern Times, ed.
B. Krekić (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1987), pp. 63–136.
26 P. 131.
27 Pp. 132–5, 138, 140–2, 144.
28 Pp. 90–2; see T. Jurek, Obce rycerstwo na Śląsku do połowy XIV wieku
(2nd ed., Poznań, 1998), and the review by P. Górecki, Speculum 76 (2001),
1059–62.
29 P. Górecki, ‘“Tworzenie Europy” Roberta Bartletta w kontekście anglosaskich
badań historycznych nad początkami i kształtowaniem się Europy’, in R.
Bartlett, Tworzenie Europy. Podbój, kolonizacja i przemiany kulturowe, 950–
1350, trans. G. Waluga (Poznań, 2003), pp. 505–15, at 514.
30 Knoll, ‘Literary production at the University of Cracow in the fifteenth
century’, in The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe,
ed. A. Adamska and M. Mostert, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 9
(Turnhout, 2004), pp. 217–46, at 217, n. 2; J.W. Sedlar, East Central Europe
in the Middle Ages, 1000–1500 (Seattle, WA, 1994), pp. vii–xvi; T. Garton
Ash, ‘Does Central Europe exist?’, New York Review of Books, vol. 33, no. 15
(1986), 45–53.
31 J. Henning, ‘Ways of life in Eastern and Western Europe during the early
Middle Ages: which way was “normal”?’, in East Central and Eastern Europe
in the Early Middle Ages, ed. F. Curta (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005), pp. 41–59, at 41,
48 (n. 1).
32 Among the recent works which, while fully immersed in general medieval
historiography, inquire into particular places within East Central Europe on terms
specific to those places, we would note S.C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A
Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345 (Cambridge, 1994), and
L. Wolverton, Hastening toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval
Czech Lands (Philadelphia, PA, 2001).
Notes 287
33 East-Central Europe in Transition: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth
Century, ed. A. Mączak, H. Samsonowicz and P. Burke (Cambridge and Paris,
1985); on that legacy and its impact, see P. Górecki, ‘Poland: to the 18th
century’, in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, ed. K. Boyd,
2 vols. (London, 1999), 2:929–34, at 930; and on its inter-war dimensions,
J. Topolski, O nowy model historii. Jan Rutkowski (1886–1949) (Warsaw,
1986).
34 We would like to note, with sadness, the death in 2003 of the collection’s other
Polish editor, Antoni Mączak, himself very much a member of that extraordinary
group and generation of scholars.
35 Pp. 21–2, 100, 220 (n. 6), 250 (n. 1); J.L. Abu-Lughod, Before the European
Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York, 1989).
36 Pp. 100, 250 (nn. 2–3); M. Małowist, Wschód a Zachód Europy w XIII–XVI
wieku. Konfrontacja struktur społeczno-gospodarczych (Warsaw, 1973). For
Małowist’s contributions in English, French and German, see the bibliography
in Mączak, Samsonowicz and Burke, East-Central Europe, pp. 193–4.
37 Pp. 21–2, 25.
38 The idea being adopted here is Robert Bartlett’s portrayal of medieval Europe’s
essential core as Frankish Europe: Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest,
Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton, NJ, 1993).
39 Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989).
40 Pp. 218–19, n. 103; J. Kłoczowski, Europa słowiańska w XIV–XV wieku (Warsaw,
1984); and, among an enormous output in which he has used the presence of
monks and nuns as a criterion of that convergence, see Kłoczowski, ‘Cystersi w
Europie Środkowowschodniej wieków średnich’, in Cystersi w społeczeństwie
Europy Środkowej, ed. A.M. Wyrwa and J. Dobosz (Poznań, 2000), pp. 27–53.
41 Pp. 21, 220 (n. 6).
42 Pp. 83, 242 (n. 8).
43 P. 71, a clear allusion to Kłoczowski, Młodsza Europa. Europa Środkowo-
Wschodnia w kręgu cywilizacji chrześcijańskiej średniowiecza (Warsaw, 1998),
on which see p. 16.
Index
Aachen 55 Arabs 22, 24, 26, 118, 220

Abraham, W. 244, 268 archaeology 28, 31–4, 36–40, 117, 120–3,
Abulafia, D. 219, 286 207–8, 221, 223, 225, 227, 263
Abu-Lughod, J.L. 207, 220, 250–1, 287 Aristotle 13, 67–70, 80, 151, 204, 281–3
Adalbert (saint) 157, 220 Arnald of Caussinh 144–5
Adam of Bremen 27, 220 Árpáds, Árpádian dynasty 128, 177,
Adamska, A. 215, 286 180–1
Adriatic Sea 94, 99, 103, 106, 109, arts (curriculum) 13, 64, 67–72, 80,
113–14, 196 151, 153, 155, 157–8, 198; see also
Africa 27, 207 learning
Alan of Lille 188 Asia 21, 23–4, 101–3, 113, 198, 210, 214,
Alba Regia 278 255
Albert the Bear 32 Askanians, Askanian dynasty 32
Albert the Great 67, 72, 80 Astronomy 13, 154, 188, 190; astrology,
Albert of Habsburg (king of astrologers 147, 153–6
Hungary) 176, 178, 279 Asztalos, M. 236–7
Albrecht III (duke of Austria) 104 Atlantic (ocean) 121–2
Alexander IV (pope) 238 Augustine of Hippo 67, 164–8, 170, 172,
Alps 25, 102, 263 175, 185–6, 188–9, 191
Althoff, G. 201, 231 Austria 102, 104–5, 108, 113, 179, 251,
Ambrose of Milan 159, 168, 170, 172 253–4
Amman, H. 102, 252 Avars 44, 221
Andrew II (king of Hungary) 48, 180 Avignon 14, 126, 131, 133, 146, 196,
Andrew III (king of Hungary) 180 206; papacy 6, 11–12, 125, 130, 134,
Andrew of Verola 131, 133, 137 137–8, 142, 144–6, 195, 199, 201,
Angevins, Angevin dynasty 128, 178–9, 203, 208, 211
181
animals 23, 36–7, 43–4, 47, 95, 158, 165; Bak, J.M. 193–5, 198–202, 209, 216, 230,
cattle 23, 25, 35, 47, 124; horses 23, 278–80
27, 61, 235 Balabanov, T. 223, 225
Anne of Cilli (queen of Poland) 116, Balkans 94, 99
148–50, 160 Baltic Sea 22–4, 26, 120–3, 136;
Antwerp 107, 257 region 23–4, 100–1, 115, 118, 122,
aqueducts 94–5, 97–9, 248 136, 196; commerce 24, 115
Index 289
Banaszkiewicz, J. 193–6, 200–1, 209, Bolesław I the Brave (duke and king of
232, 285–6 Poland) 10, 18, 58–60
banks, bankers, banking 91, 102, 112–13, Bolesław III the Wrymouth (duke of
260; Frescobaldi bank 102 Poland) 58
baptism 44–5, 84–7, 116, 124, 244 Bologna 12, 66, 75–7, 132, 147;
Barbour, J. 234–5 university of 12, 76–7, 147
Barcelona 70, 75, 204 Bonaventura (saint) 67, 80, 170
Barford, P.M. 222, 227 Boniface VIII (pope) 128
Bartholomew of Jasło 13, 157, 159 Boniface IX (pope) 149, 245
Bartlett, R.J. 17, 209–10, 213–14, 219, Bónis, Gy. 182, 230, 279–80
227–8, 230, 286–7 books 11–13, 62, 84, 88–90, 92–3, 118,
Basel, Council of 14–15, 149–51, 162–4, 156, 177, 180–2, 240, 242–5, 254,
166, 168, 171–5, 194, 203, 261 262, 280; court books 84–5, 88–93,
Bastian, F. 102, 252, 257 243, 245; manuscripts 118, 154, 157,
Bavaria 101–2, 108; Bavarians 23 163, 240; booklet (libellus) 177,
Béla IV (king of Hungary) 46, 48 180–2, 245, 280
Benedict XII (pope) 133–6, 138, 141–2, Borkowska, U. 267–8, 270
145 Boshof, E. 232–3, 255
Benedict Hesse 13, 154–5, 168 Bothnia (gulf) 120–1, 123–4
Benson, R.L. 213–14 boundary 6, 47, 57, 76, 102, 129, 136–7,
Berend, N. 194–5, 199–202, 207–8, 210, 177, 202
219, 229–30, 286 Boyce, G. 1, 213
Bernard of Clairvaux 159, 165–8, 170, 175 Bozen/Bolzano 102, 252
Bernhard, J.W. 4 Brabant 23, 100
Berschin, W. 232–4 Brandenburg 32, 156
Bethlehem Chapel 148, 151 Braudel, F. 220, 250
Białostocki, J. 207 Brenner, R. 207
Bible 42–4, 46, 48–9, 67–8, 71, 73, Brown, E.A.R. 3, 8, 214
82, 153, 159–60, 164–5, 168–70, Brown, W.C. 213–14, 228
172, 185–6, 238, 282–3; Jewish Bruges 22, 106, 109
scripture 46 Brussels 111, 259
Bieniak, J. 216, 265–6 Brzeg 78, 114, 159
Biliński, W. 268–9 Buc, P. 200–1, 231, 236, 286
Billacois, F. 228, 230 Buczek, K. 30, 221
biogram, biography 7, 9, 11–13, 50, 57, Buda 107, 152, 203; Budapest 9
63, 158, 174, 195, 203–4, 233, 284 Bug (river) 24, 26
Birka 27, 121 Buko, A. 222–3
Birkenmajer, L.A. 271–2 Bulgaria 28, 32–5, 44, 223; rulers of 32,
Bisson, T.N. 3, 214–15, 234, 285 34, 44
Black Death 100, 250 Burns, R.I. 4, 214
Black Sea 22, 26, 103, 253 Byzantium 21–2, 26, 28, 43–4, 100, 210,
Bogucka, M. 17, 207, 250 258
Bohemia 1, 27, 30, 32, 70–1, 74, 101,
103–5, 113, 119, 128–9, 133–4, 139, Cambridge, university of 64, 66, 73, 75,
141–3, 150–1, 153, 155, 179–80, 77, 190, 196, 239
196, 208, 223, 252–3, 257, 263, camera (papal office) 126–8, 131,
278; kingdom of 101, 103–4, 129, 133, 144–5; camerarius (papal
179–80, 252, 278 official) 126, 144
290 Index
Carinthia 104, 106 78, 84, 94–9, 101, 103, 105–6, 113,
Casimir the Great (king of Poland) 5–6, 117, 119, 123, 130, 141, 150–1, 158,
10–12, 14, 19, 131–6, 140–2, 144–6, 192–205, 207, 209–12, 222–3, 242,
148–9, 199, 202–3 244, 248, 255, 262; ‘Asiatic’ 25;
Casimir Jagiellończyk (king of Poland– authorities 95–9, 110, 117, 262;
Lithuania) 156–7, 173 city-state 99, 105; see also town
Cassiodorus 166, 186–8, 283–4 Clement V (pope) 125, 130, 141
castle 11, 23, 61, 111, 117, 121, 132, 141, Clement VI (pope) 126, 142, 144
148, 154, 183, 259, 279; see also cloth 23–5, 34, 103, 108, 111, 259;
Wawel Hill production of 34, 108; see also wool
Central European University 9, 216 coin 27, 84, 89, 95–8, 107–12, 116, 119,
centres 21–22, 24, 26–8, 31–6, 38–9, 133, 135, 144–5, 224, 245–6, 248–9,
100, 109, 114, 123, 196–8, 206, 211, 252, 256, 258–9; ducat 107–8, 110,
222, 225, 238, 263; urban 22, 24, 28, 112, 248–9, 258–9; mark 89, 109–
114, 123, 263; commercial 28, 109, 11, 116, 119, 133, 135, 245–6, 252,
197–8; of consumption 31, 33, 35; of 258–9; florin 84, 110–12, 144–5,
production 34, 109; of power 31–2, 258–9; groat 95, 108, 110, 112, 258–
34, 38, 222, 225; ‘central places’ 35– 9; hyperperon 95–8, 249, 258
6, 38, 196, 225; see also theory collector (papal official) 126–41, 143–6,
Chalcidius 186–8, 282, 284 196, 203, 208, 211
Charles IV (king of Bohemia, emperor) 3, collectory (papal administrative
9, 104, 109–10, 179 unit) 126–30, 144–6
Charles of Anjou 178–9 college, collegium 66, 79, 81, 148, 190
Charles the Great/Charlemagne Collins, R. 54, 232–3
(emperor) 21, 26, 54–7, 234 Cologne 66, 75, 77
Charles Robert (king of Hungary) 134, commerce 20–9, 34, 101–2, 105, 109,
143 111, 113, 120–1, 123, 198, 200, 207
Champagne 23–4; fairs of 24 Communism 38, 227
chancery (papal) 127, 131; (royal) 147, conciliarism 14–15, 151, 161–71, 173–5,
153, 156, 280 195, 203, 275
charters 31, 47–8, 119, 176–7, 179–81, confession 65; confessors 147–53,
278; see also privileges 159–60
Chełmno 119, 136–8; diocese 137–8 conflict (legal, political) 14, 47, 79, 85,
China 27, 100 87–9, 91, 97, 108, 130–42, 145, 172,
Chłopocka, H. 244, 266, 277 184, 198, 202, 211
Christendom 10, 13, 23, 43–4, 66–7, 69, Conrad II (king of Germany, emperor) 50,
79–80, 123–4, 128 52–5, 57–9, 62–3
Christians 43–6, 82–4, 89–90, 93, 165, Constance 14–15, 201, 203, 206, 275;
198–200, 208, 230, 242, 244–5 Council of 14–15, 174
Christianisation 21, 24, 33, 46, 160; see Constantine Porphyrogenitus 25, 220
also conversion Constantinople 20, 40
church (building) 27–8, 47, 52, 55, 61, 85, consumption (economic) 28, 31–2,
95–6, 167, 191, 227 34–35, 37–8, 40, 111, 117, 119–22,
Church Fathers 159, 166–7 124, 196, 261
Ćirkowić, S. 248–9 contrata/natio (mendicant administrative
citizens, townspeople 25, 90, 95, 105, unit) 69–70, 238
113–14, 144, 198, 203, 211 conversion 46, 82–3, 88, 92, 151, 160,
city 6–7, 11, 13–14, 20, 22–7, 69, 75, 244
Index 291
coronation 48, 53, 147, 176–81, 209, 232, d’Alatri, M. 237–8
278; decree 180 de Ridder-Symoens, H. 236, 284
Cosmas of Prague 61, 234–5 Dean, R. 1, 213
council, ecclesiastical 14–15, 162, 164–7, debt 89, 91, 105–7, 110–13, 144–5, 203,
169, 171–3, 245; royal 147, 181, 247, 255, 259
280; see Basel, Constance, Fourth demand (economic) 22, 30, 32, 101, 103,
Lateran Council, Florence, Pavia, 107–8, 123–4, 153, 196, 198, 211,
reform, synod, Vienne 257
court (as a political milieu), in Denmark 74, 76; Danes 27
general 191–3, 197, 200–2, 204–5, Derwich, M. 268–9
209; royal 3, 6, 11, 14, 30, 51, Dimitrov, Ia. 223–4
116–17, 123–4, 135, 138, 140, 142, diplomacy 11, 14, 99, 127, 132–4, 136,
147–60, 178, 194–5, 199, 201, 203– 142, 147, 156, 199, 202–3, 211;
4; queen’s 147, 150, 152, 158–60; ambassador 142
ducal 30, 194; episcopal 14, 194; Dnieper (river) 22
papal (curia) 126, 129–30, 132–3, documents 48, 106, 113, 134, 142, 145,
135, 145, 173, 201, 203, 211, 242 150, 152, 154, 163, 167, 176–8, 180,
court (judicial), in general 46–7, 188; 201, 246, 254, 278; see also charters,
royal 47, 54, 57–9, 181–2, 201; letters, privileges
episcopal (consistory) 84–5, 86–90, Dominic (saint) 65
92–3, 199, 201, 208, 244, 246–7; Dominicans, Dominican Order 64–80,
ducal 61; urban 26, 87; noble 84, 148, 151, 159, 194–6, 199, 203,
89, 93; papal 130–1, 134–6 208–9, 211, 236–41, 285; general
Courtenay, W.J. 184, 281 chapter 67–8, 70–2, 74–6, 78–9,
crafts, craft production 20, 28, 30, 34–5, 237, 239–41; legislation 65, 73–4,
107, 256; craft workshops 28, 34–5 237, 239, 241; see also province,
craftspeople 30, 32, 35, 87–8, 95 school, studium
credit 84, 91, 106–7, 110–14, 143–4, 198, Donat, P. 34, 224
203, 247, 259–60 Doncheva-Petkova, L. 224, 227
Croatia 97, 178, 204 Dorpat 24
crown 53, 55, 128–9, 136, 176–7, Dubrovnik 94–5, 97–9, 196, 203, 211,
179–80, 200–1, 209, 278–9; of 248; Republic of 98–9
Saint Wenceslas 128, 179; of Saint dukes, duchies 9, 17, 19, 30, 43, 61, 100,
Stephen/Holy Crown 176–7, 179– 104, 118, 128–9, 131, 136–7, 139–
80, 200, 279 40, 142, 150, 194–6; Piast dukes 9,
crusade 10, 44, 144, 176, 178, 194; Varna 19, 128–9, 131, 139–40, 194–5;
crusade 10, 176, 194 Lithuanian dukes 43, 116, 118, 150;
Cuiavia 128, 132, 203 Silesian duchies 137, 139, 142
Cumans 45–6, 48, 208, 210, 229 Dvornik, F. 4
Curta, F. 19, 193–6, 198, 202, 207–8, 210, dynasty 6, 12, 32, 58, 63, 128, 137–8,
219, 222–3, 226, 286 142, 156, 176–7; see also Angevins,
Czech Republic 35; Czechoslovakia 1 Árpáds, Askanians, Habsburg,
Czechs (people) 155–6, 160 Jagiellons, Luxemburg, Piasts,
Přemyslids, Salians, Wittelsbach
Dalmatia 98
Dante Aligheri 60–1, 234–5 Egypt 100, 257
Danube (river) 22, 26 Einhard 55–7, 232–4
Davies, W. 228, 230 Elbląg 24, 119
292 Index
Elizabeth of Luxemburg (queen of ‘younger’ 16, 71, 211; ‘new’ 23,
Hungary) 176, 178, 278, 280 210; Frankish 287
Elizabeth of Pilica/Granowska (queen of exchange 21–4, 27, 35, 101, 110, 113,
Poland–Lithuania) 148, 158–9 194, 197, 208; mediums of 27; bills
Elizabeth Łokietkówna (queen of of 105, 113; see also trade
Hungary) 134, 145 export 23, 26, 108–9, 119, 124
Elm, K. 237, 276
empire, Roman 20–1, 29, 55–7, Fajkmajer, K. 254, 260
193–4, 207, 210; Carolingian 28, Fałkowski, W. 267, 273
39; medieval (Germany and Felix V (pope) 164, 173
Bohemia) 77, 102, 105–6, 139, 173, Ferdinand of Habsburg (king of
233; see also Byzantium Hungary) 178
Enea Silvio Piccolomini 150 Fijałek, J. 164, 167, 169, 241–2, 269,
Engel, P. 17, 181, 278, 280 271–2, 275–7
Enghoff, I.B. 263–4 Finnic peoples 120
England 3–4, 31, 55, 71, 74–5, 77, 118, fish 24, 26, 116–24, 196, 251, 261–4;
180, 238, 240 bream 120–3; brined 118, 121;
entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship 102–3, cod 117, 119–22, 261, 263;
108, 112, 114, 197; see also dried 116–17, 119, 120–3, 196,
partnership 261, 263–4; eel 116, 118, 120, 261;
Erfurt 34, 80, 161–3, 167, 173–5, 195–6, fresh 118, 122, 262; herring 24, 26,
204, 275; university of 80 117, 119–20, 261, 263; pike 117–23,
estates (manors) 26, 30–1, 33–7, 39–40, 261, 264; preserved 118, 262;
116, 119, 208, 221, 223, 257 salmon 117–18, 120–1; salted 116,
Esztergom 279; church of 47; archbishop 118–19, 261; stockfish 117, 119–22,
of 278 261; strekfusz 116–24, 261–3;
ethnicity, ethnic difference 82, 141, 195, sturgeon 117–18, 122; see also meat
199–203, 208 fisheries 118–19, 122, 124, 264;
Ettel, P. 224, 226 fishermen 119–20
Eugene IV (pope) 173 Flanders 22–3, 100, 198, 227, 253
Europe 1, 3–5, 7–8, 12, 16–19, 21–3, Florence 12, 69, 75, 102, 105, 108, 173;
25–7, 30–2, 34–5, 39–40, 42, 44, 46, university of 12; Council of 173
48, 64, 66, 71, 79–80, 100–2, 106–7, food, foodstuffs 23, 28, 32, 36, 57, 94,
109–11, 113–14, 117–23, 128–30, 99, 103, 117, 123, 223, 261; fruit 26,
134, 143, 182, 192–4, 196, 198–9, 103, 108, 117; honey 23–4, 27;
204–12, 222, 225, 227, 230, 236, 250, meat 23, 25, 36, 116–8, 123–4;
281, 286–7; East Central 1, 4–5, 7–9, whale/porpoise meat 117; see also
12, 16–19, 30–1, 35, 102, 119–20, fish, salt, spices
123, 169, 192–4, 196, 204–10, forest 23–4, 108, 114; forest
212, 222, 236, 287; Central 30, 34, economy 108, 114
100–1, 106, 110–11, 113–14, 118, fortifications 30, 32, 36–8, 98, 225, 264
128–30, 134, 143, 182, 199, 205, Fouracre, P. 228, 230
222, 281; Eastern 4, 16–17, 21, Fourth Lateran Council 211, 245
25–6, 32, 34, 39–40, 101, 117–8, France 3–4, 23, 71, 77, 101, 118, 129,
120, 122, 194, 199, 205, 207–8, 210, 143, 180, 204
225, 227; Western 12, 23, 30, 32, Francis de Molinio (papal delegate) 130
34, 39, 100–1, 106–7, 109, 205, 207, Franciscans, Franciscan Order 65, 74,
227; northern 22, 25, 117, 120, 123; 80–1, 241
Index 293
Franconia 108 archbishop of 129, 132–3, 136, 211,
Frederick I (margrave of 257
Brandenburg) 156 Göckenjan, H. 228–9
Frederick Hohenzollern 156 Godman, P. 232–3
Freed, J.B. 4 Goerlitz, T. 257, 259
Fried, J. 231, 235 Golden Bull of 1222, 48, 180, 279
frontier 3, 6, 17–19, 101, 124, 128, Goldingen 119
177, 201, 205–6, 210–11, 263, Górecki, P. 193, 211, 213–14, 219, 222,
267; of Europe 3, 17, 205, 228, 250, 286–7
209–11; of Poland 6, 18, 267; Gorski, A. 9, 213
Polish-German 18–19; German- Górski, K. 268, 277
Czech 101; of Hungary 177, 201; of grain 23, 36, 38, 103, 122, 124;
Bohemia 263; see also boundary barley 38; farro 38; rice 103;
Fügedi, E. 17, 207 rye 38; spelt 38; wheat 36, 38
fur 23–4, 27, 102–3, 106, 108, 114, 252 grammar 67–8, 282
Gratian (canonist) 82, 166
Gabriel de Fabriano 129, 139 Graus, F. 8, 222
Galhard of Carces 131–5, 138, 140–2, Great Bulgar 22
144, 203 Great Poland 25, 70, 84, 90, 100, 245
Galich–Vladimir 144 ‘Great Migrations,’ 20
Gallus the Anonymous 9, 58–60, 194, Greece 71, 74; Greeks 22, 26–8
200, 234–5, 280 Gregory of Sanok 13, 158, 273
Gansiniec, R. 273–4 Gregory the Great 60, 164–7, 170
Gąsiorowski, A. 244, 246–7, 270 Gresham, T. 190
Gawęda, S. 267, 272 Grodecki, R. 30, 221
Gawlas, S. 250–1 Gromnicki, T. 265–7
Gdańsk 24, 119, 122, 130–1, 138, 203, Gruber, H.G. 242, 244
220, 261 Grünhagen, C. 104, 109, 253–5, 258
Geary, P.J. 4, 214, 231 Grunwald/Tannenberg 8, 119, 158
Gębarowicz, M. 157, 159, 268, 272–4 Guido (papal legate) 83, 211, 242
Gediminas (grand duke of Lithuania) 43
Genoa 103, 241, 253 Habsburg dynasty 176, 178, 182, 278,
Gentile (cardinal, papal legate) 179–80 280
Georgiev, P. 223–4 Hageneier, L. 232–3
Geremek, B. 17, 278 Hajnik, I. 229–30
Gerard (provincial of Poland) 72, 238 Halecki, O. 4
Gerhard of Augsburg 57, 234 Hansa 24, 26–7
Germans 24, 79, 140–1, 182, 245, 267 Harrison Thomson, S. 1, 3, 9, 213
Germany 4, 8, 25, 31, 71, 76–7, 84, 101– Hart, H.L.A. 16, 218
3, 109, 129, 161, 173, 198, 205–6, Haskins, C.H. 2
239, 253, 264; German princes 173; Hedwig (Poznań woman) 84–8, 243
see also Austria, Bavaria, Franconia, Hedwig (duchess and queen of
Thuringia Poland) 132
Gerward (bishop of Cuiavia) 7, 131, 203 Hedwig (princess of Poland–
Gieysztor, A. 8, 17, 216, 221, 237, 265, Lithuania) 156–8
272 Hedwig of Anjou (queen of Poland) 5, 7,
Gniezno 26, 241; archiocese of 83, 85, 12, 116, 147–51, 154, 156–7, 159–60,
136, 138–9, 163, 203, 208, 241, 243; 177, 204
294 Index
Heinrich, D. 261, 264 Iberian Peninsula 4, 44
Henning, J. 32–4, 223–4, 227, 286 Ibrahim ibn-Ya’qub 26–7, 220–1
Henry III (emperor) 62 Iceland 117, 120
Henry of Głogów (duke of Silesia) 139 import 94, 101, 103–4, 107–9, 114, 121,
Henry of Langenstein 173–4 123, 251, 253, 257–8
Henry of Moravia 238 India 100, 257
Henry Bitterfeld 159, 239–40, 274 indulgence (papal) 149
herbs, herbal economy 97, 114, 257 industry 24, 34–6, 39–40, 109
heresy 42, 155, 242 Innocent III (pope) 166
Herman of Przeworsk 154–5 Innocent V (pope) 67
hides (leather) 23–4, 27 Innocent VI (pope) 144
Hinnebusch, W.A. 236–40 Inowrocław 134–5, 201
historiography 1–4, 15–17, 30–3, 39, investment 25, 27, 111
83, 93, 101, 109, 133, 161, 192–3, Isidore of Seville 20, 219
199, 204–7, 211–14, 227, 231, 236, Italians 101, 106, 114, 160
256, 280, 286–7; medieval 2–3, Italy 4, 23, 27, 68, 71, 76, 100–4, 108,
205–6, 286; North American 2–4, 150, 154, 158, 209, 251–2
16–17, 205–7, 212, 214; British 3,
17, 205; Polish 3, 30, 32–3, 39, 83, Jagiellonian Library/Biblioteka
161, 206–7, 212, 227; Czech 30, Jagiellońska 154, 163
32–3, 39; German 3, 31, 161, Jagiellons, Jagiellon dynasty 5, 7, 10, 12,
256; Hungarian 207, 280; and 14, 19, 84, 117, 147, 176, 199, 202
Marxism 39, 206–7, 227 James (papal legate) 48
hoards, hoarding 38, 111 James of Paradyż/Jüterbog 13, 15, 161–
Hoffmann, A. 105, 110, 254 75, 195, 199, 204, 275–8
Hoffmann, R.C. 17, 193, 195–6, 203, 219, János Hunyadi (regent of Hungary) 176,
261, 265 278
Hołubowicz, W. 251–2 Jarosław of Bogoria (archbishop of
Holy Land 71, 74, 76, 82 Gniezno) 132–3
Housley, N. 267, 279 Jean Gerson 173–4, 277
Hugh of St.-Victor 172 Jeremić, R. 248, 250
humanism 12, 119, 157–8, 163 Jerome (saint) 170
Humbert of Romans 72, 238 Jerusalem 44, 257; Latin Kingdom of 44
Hungarians 182, 209, 229, 279 Jews 27, 43–6, 49, 82–5, 87–90, 92–3,
Hungary 12, 27, 30, 32, 37, 43–9, 198–200, 202–3, 208, 210, 229–30,
71, 101, 105, 109, 111, 117, 128, 242–7; discrimination against 46,
130, 133–5, 141, 143, 146, 152, 83, 88, 92, 244; Jewish scripture 46
176–82, 199–200, 202, 204, 206, Jochna (Jewish woman from Poznań)
208–9, 258–9, 278–80; as a concept 88–92, 204, 244–5, 247–8
(antemurale Christianitatis) 178, Jodok (margrave of Moravia) 104–5
202; kingdom of 45, 47, 105, 109, Jogaila 5; see Władysław Jagiełło
146, 152, 176–9, 278–80; Hungarian Johann Banke (Wrocław merchant and
Republic 180 wholesaler) 108, 111–13, 259–60
Hunt, R. 1, 213 John (Jewish man from Poznań) 84, 86–8,
hunting 21, 28, 116 243–4
Hunyadi (family) 181, 280 John XXII (pope) 125, 129, 131, 133,
Hussites 150, 153, 155–6, 169, 240, 275 136–9, 143, 145
Hyacinth Odrowąż (saint) 285 John XXIII (antipope) 79
Index 295
John of Luxemburg (king of 84, 101, 103–5, 109, 114, 127, 129,
Bohemia) 129, 134, 139, 141–2 137, 141, 143, 145–7, 155, 158,
John of Segovia 149, 169 160, 177–9, 195, 205, 252–3, 267,
John Agnus (bishop of Maastricht) 55 279–80; see also Bohemia, Hungary,
John Długosz 7–8, 12, 15, 150, 152–3, Poland
156–8 Kiss, I. 207
John Elgot 13, 152–3, 163–5, 168–9, 173, Kłoczowski, J. 8, 16–17, 194–6, 198–9,
276 203, 208–11, 214, 216, 218–19,
John Radlica (bishop of Kraków) 148–9 236–41, 268, 270, 285, 287
John Štěkna 148–9, 151 Knoll, P.W. 1–13, 15–19, 192–3, 202–6,
John Sylwan/John-Jerome 149–51 211–13, 215–16, 234, 252, 268, 275,
John Szapolyai (king of Hungary) 178 281, 286
John Vitéz of Zredna 181, 280 Koczy, L. 242, 247–8, 257
Jonsson, L. 121, 264 Königsberg 118–19
Judenburg 103, 105 Kopiński, K. 260–1
judge 47, 54, 56–60, 131, 135–6, 181; Kovács, L. 226, 228
papal 131, 135–6, 181; see also Kowalczyk, M. 154, 268, 271–2, 274, 276
officialis Kowalewicz, H. 157, 273–4
Jurek, T. 193, 195, 198–204, 208–9, 211, Koziol, G. 201
248, 270, 286 Kozłowska-Budkowa, Z. 240–1, 271
Kraków 7, 10–14, 16, 19, 73–4, 77–9, 84,
Kaczmarczyk, K. 244, 266 103, 114, 116–8, 123–4, 128, 132–3,
Kamień 137–8, 267 136, 138–40, 142, 144, 147–52, 154,
Karlburg 34, 36, 39–40 156–8, 160–5, 167–9, 173, 175, 195–
Kehn, W. 251–2, 255 6, 198, 201, 203–4, 209, 236, 238,
Keller, H. 62, 231, 235 240–1, 245, 253, 275–6; university
Kestutis (duke of Lithuania) 43 of 7, 10–15, 19, 77–9, 147–54, 156–8,
Khazars 22 160–1, 163–4, 167–9, 173, 175, 196,
Kielar, P. 78, 238, 240–1, 268 203, 205, 240–1, 275; foundation/
Kiev 10, 22, 26, 28, 30, 101, 203–4, 208, renewal of 11, 19, 147–9, 158, 160,
251 240; bishop of 11, 14, 136, 148, 157,
kings 6, 14, 26, 30–1, 41, 44–9, 51–60, 163–4, 175; see also Wawel Hill
62–3, 79, 104–5, 116, 124–5, 129–30, Krekić, B. 193–8, 201, 203, 211, 215,
132–6, 139–45, 147, 151–3, 155–6, 250, 286
158–60, 164, 173, 175–83, 193–4, Kristó, Gy. 31, 222
196, 199–202, 209, 232–5, 278, Krzemieńska, B. 221–3
284; of Poland 26, 58, 79, 129–30, Kučera, M. 221, 225
132–6, 139, 141–2, 144–5, 147, 152, Kuczyński, S.K. 216, 221
164, 173, 175, 182, 202, 235, 280; Kula, W. 17, 207
of Poland–Lithuania 116, 160, 164, Kuraś, S. 246, 265, 269–70
173, 175, 182; of Hungary 45–9, Kürbis, B. 17, 216, 278
105, 133–4, 143, 152, 176–82, 200, Kurnatowska, Z. 222, 225
202, 209, 278; of Germany 51, Kuske, B. 256–7
62–3, 233–4; of Bohemia 104–5, Kutná Hora 109–10, 258
129, 133–4, 139–43; Frankish 54–7;
of France 125, 143, 180; of Ladislas IV (king of Hungary) 47–8
England 180 Ladislas of Habsburg/Posthumus (king of
kingdom 5–7, 10, 18, 45, 47, 56, 58, 79, Hungary) 176, 180, 278
296 Index
Lane, F. 250, 252, 257–8 Leff, G. 237, 284
language 27, 44, 66, 68, 87, 114, 117–8, Legnica 114, 258
120, 153, 159–60, 174, 186–8, Leipzig 15
190, 205, 229, 232, 248, 256, 261, Leo V (Byzantine emperor) 44
281–3; Croatian 248; Czech, 153; Leo VI (Byzantine emperor) 43
English 66, 205, 229; Frankish 27; Leopold (duke of Carinthia) 104
German 87, 120, 160, 174, 205, letters (documents) 56, 106, 128, 130–2,
256; Greek 27, 186–7, 282–3; 135, 139–40, 149, 152, 159, 163, 169,
Italian 114; Latin 27, 68, 118, 160, 173, 233
186, 188, 283; Polish 117, 153, Lewicki, T. 220–1
159–60, 261; Slavic 27, 281 Lewis of Bavaria (emperor) 138
law, 13, 15, 19, 42–3, 45, 47, 52, 57, 59, Lewis, A. 3, 205
64, 82, 85–9, 92, 100, 117, 127, 130, Linz 105, 109
133, 135–6, 140, 151, 153, 156, 162– literature, literary production 14, 42, 50,
3, 166, 173, 178–82, 187–8, 195, 59–60, 157–9
198–9, 208, 211, 228, 230, 241, 245, Lithuania 10, 43, 84, 108, 116, 118,
250, 278–80; canon 13, 15, 82–3, 144, 150, 158, 160; Lithuanian
87–9, 92, 127, 140, 151–3, 156, 162– College 148; see also Samogitia
3, 166, 179, 198–9, 208, 211, 228, Livonia 43
241, 245, 279; Roman 13, 42, 198–9; Loibl, R. 255, 258
Jewish 82; German 100, 250; Lombard, M. 219
Hungarian 278, 280; legislation 47, Lombardy 71, 204
73, 82–3, 86, 94, 117, 162, 178, London 190
180–1, 184, 198, 237, 239, 241, 245, lordship 19, 36, 42, 52, 56, 58–9, 61, 181
278–9; learning in 88, 135, 163, Louis the German (king of the East
178, 182, 187–8; litigation 43–4, 46, Franks) 37, 226
97, 108, 110, 138, 140, 142, 198–9, Louis of Anjou/the Great (king of Hungary
201, 229, 245–6; legal process/ and Poland) 12, 43, 145, 180
procedure 42–3, 56, 59, 85–6, 89– Louis the Pious (emperor) 55–6, 233
90, 127, 130, 135–6, 181, 199, 201; Loveluck, C. 221, 224, 227
see also judge, ordeal Lübeck 22, 24
Lea, H.C. 2 Lubusz 138, 164
learning, education 6–8, 10–15, 19, Lund 118, 121
64–6, 80, 88, 90, 132, 135, 148–9, Luxemburg dynasty 105, 128–9, 141–3,
151–4, 156–8, 160, 178, 181–2, 176–8, 181, 280
184–91, 194–6, 198–200, 202, 204, Lwów 26, 103, 106, 152, 198, 253, 255;
209, 237–8, 240–1, 281, 284–5; archdiocese of 152
curriculum 65–8, 70, 72–3, 80, Lyon, B. 1, 213
156, 184, 188–9, 198–9, 209, 237,
281; trivium, 68; quadrivium 189; Macháček, J. 36, 225–6
logic 67–70, 187–8; literacy 182, MacKay, A. 17, 210, 213–14, 219, 286–7
188; see also arts, grammar, law, Mączak, A. 207, 287
mathematics, medicine, music, Magdeburg 79, 100
philosophy, rhetoric, theory Main (river) 34
Leciejewicz, L. 219, 221 Mainz 51–3, 62–3, 173, 196;
lectors 65–6, 68–9, 71–3, 75, 148, 237–8, cathedral 51, 53, 62–3, 196
241 Makkai, L. 207
Łęczyca, synod of 163–4, 167 Makowiecki, D. 261, 264–5
Index 297
Maleczyński, K. 220, 234, 251–3, 255, 255, 257; of Venice 101, 106, 111,
258 198, 208, 255; of Nuremberg 111,
Małowist, M. 207, 250–1, 253, 258, 287 114, 255, 257; of Regensburg 220,
Manteuffel, T. 9, 16–17, 213, 216 251, 257; Czech 103, 113;
Marienburg 118 German 24, 253; Hanseatic 26,
market, markets 21–2, 24, 103, 106, 109, 120; Thuringian 251; Austrian 251;
111, 117, 119, 123–4, 225, 259, 263– of Passau 257; of Prague 113;
4; market square 111, 259; market Jewish 27; of Florence 108
economy 225 metals 21, 23, 26–8, 34–5, 101,
Markowski, M. 240, 268–72 109–11, 114, 144, 224, 252, 258–9;
marriage 45, 82–8, 92, 116, 147, 158–9, copper 109, 111, 258–9; gold 23,
195, 198–9, 204, 204, 229, 242–3, 26, 103, 107, 109–10, 144, 258;
246–7; mixed 83, 86–8; in facie iron 35; lead 23, 27, 111, 259;
ecclesiae 84–6, 242; per verba 85–6 silver 23, 27, 109–10, 252, 258;
Marsilio Ficino 186 steel 35; tin 23, 26; metalwork 34–
Masovia 25–6, 70, 109, 124, 128, 257 5, 224; smelting 34–5
master (magister) 68–9, 73–4, 77–8, 90, Michael Banke (Wrocław merchant) 105,
148–9, 151–5, 157–8, 240, 244, 284; 107, 111–12
master-general 72, 78 Michałowska, T. 273–4
mathematics 13, 187, 189, 285; Mieszko I (duke of Poland) 18
arithmetic 187, 285; geometry 187, mining 109, 258
190 minerals 21, 108–10; see also metals
Matthew (bishop of Cuiavia) 133 mints, minting 109, 114
Matthew of Kraków 163, 240 mission 150
Matthias Corvinus (king of Hungary) 178, mobility (geographic) 22, 27–8;
278 (social) 22
Mayer, T. 253–4, 258 Mohammad 17
measures 104, 107–9, 111, 187–8, 256, Modzelewski, K. 17, 30, 221–2
259; of weight: 104, 107, 256, Mohács 178, 183; battle of 178
259 (centner), 107–8, 256, 259 monasteries 39, 47, 49, 60, 62, 66–70,
(pound) 108–9, 257, 259 (stone); of 72–4, 80–1, 95–8, 122, 148, 150–1,
land surface 187–8 161, 168–9, 173, 223, 233, 237–8,
Medici (family) 105 240; Augustinian 77, 153, 160;
medicine (commodity) 107–8, 257; Benedictine 47, 49, 77, 122, 148,
(discipline) 118, 153–6, 190, 198, 150, 223; Camaldolese 150;
276; see also physicians Carthusian 161–3, 174–5;
Mediterranean, region 22, 26, 94, 100, Cistercian 148, 161, 163, 175; see also
102–3, 105, 196, 255; Sea 196 Dominicans, Franciscans, mendicants
Meissen 136 money 22, 27, 87, 105, 142–4, 245; see
Memel/Klaipeda 118 also coin
mendicants, mendicant orders 64–5, Mongols 45, 101; Mongol empire 101;
67, 77–81, 236–7, 240; see also see also Tartars
Dominicans, Franciscans Montpellier 66, 69, 75, 147, 155
merchandise 25, 27, 102, 106, 255–6, 259 Morava (river) 36
merchants 22, 24–9, 43, 101, 103–11, Moravia 28, 30, 32, 35–6, 103–4, 129,
113–15, 117, 119–20, 197–8, 203, 142, 221; Great Moravian State 28
208–9, 220, 251, 253, 255, 257–8; of Morawska, K. 273–4
Wrocław 101–11, 113–15, 198, 208, Mornet, E. 265–6
298 Index
Moscow 203 oath 42–9, 85, 87, 194, 199–201, 227–30;
Mostert, M. 215, 286 oath-taker 43, 49; oath-helpers 47,
Moździoch, S. 222, 225 230; Jewish 46, 229
Mulchahey, M.M. 236–7, 239 Odra/Oder (river) 22, 103, 106, 251, 264
Munich 102, 252 office, officials 7, 31, 54–5, 56–7, 59,
music 157–8, 182–6, 188–91, 199, 212, 63, 89, 95, 97–9, 112–3, 116–7, 122,
281–5 125–8, 130–2, 135, 143, 146, 158,
Muslims 21, 43–7, 49, 199, 208, 210; 161, 179, 200, 245, 259, 262, 280; see
Islam, 21 also camera, camerarius, chancery,
Myśliwski, G. 193–8, 203, 207–11, 251, collector, judge
253, 257–9 officialis (episcopal judge) 85–7, 89–90,
mystics, mysticism 159, 161–2, 167, 243–6
173–5 Olaus Magnus 118, 121–2, 124, 262, 264
Olgierd/Algirdas (grand prince of
Naples 69, 76, 211 Lithuania) 158
Netherlands 23, 25, 103 Olomouc, diocese of 143
networks, of settlement 20–22, 195, 202; Omurtag (ruler of Bulgaria) 44
urban 22, 195–8, 203–4, 207–9; ordeal 42, 46–7, 49
economic 25–8, 28, 117, 124, 195–6, Otto I the Great (emperor) 233
203, 207–9; of schools 66–7, 69–70, Ottomans, Ottoman Empire 99, 176–8
72, 74, 76, 195–6, 199, 239 Oxford, university of 64, 66, 73, 75, 77,
Neumark 145 196, 281, 285
Neva (river) 22 Ożóg, K. 193, 195–6, 198–9, 203–4,
Nicholas III (pope) 48 267–70, 275
Nicholas of Cusa 162, 174–5
Nicholas of Miličin 150–1 Padua 12, 77, 147; university of 12, 147
Nicholas of Tudeschi 174 ‘pagans,’ 33, 43–6, 144, 199, 242
Nicholas of Úljak/Ilok 176 palaces, palatial compounds 30, 32, 34–6,
Nicholas Copernicus 7, 10, 13 39–40, 55, 117
Nicholas Lasocki 13 Paris 15, 64–77, 80, 147, 154–5, 184–5,
Nicholas Młynek 88–90, 92, 204, 244–6 196, 203, 206, 209, 211, 238–40, 284;
Nicholas Stobner 13 university of 15, 64–8, 70–4, 76–7,
Nicholas Trąba (archbishop of 80, 147, 184–5, 238, 240, 284
Gniezno) 79, 83, 211 partnership (commercial) 112–14, 258,
‘nobility,’ nobles 19, 47, 149, 152, 154, 260–1
156, 176–81, 244–6, 279 Passau 103, 106, 110, 255, 257
nomads 21, 43–5 patricians 95–7, 99, 112
Normandy 204 Patze, H. 231, 255
North America 2–4, 8–9, 16, 185, 206–7, Pavia 14, 150, 154; Pavia-Siena, council
212, 264–5 of 150
North Sea 23 peace 42, 44, 48, 101, 113, 131–6,
Norway 27, 117, 119–20 155; Peace of God 42; pax
Nosov, E.N. 226–7 mongolica 101; truce 131–3
Nottker the Stammerer 234 peasants 30, 32, 36, 39–40, 52, 58–9, 95,
Novgorod 24, 38, 108, 198, 203–4 180–1, 279
Nowak-Dłużewski, J. 273–4 Pécs 12
Nuremberg 106, 111, 114, 198, 255, 257, Pereiaslavets 26, 220
263 perjury 42, 44, 47, 228
Index 299
Peter of Auvergne 131, 137, 140 66–7, 75, 78, 106, 125–45, 149, 151,
Peter Lombard 67–8 162–7, 169, 171–4, 179, 195–6, 199,
Peter Wysz (bishop of Kraków) 148–9, 201, 203, 208, 211, 251, 279; papal
157, 159 legates 45, 48, 83, 128, 130, 132,
Peter’s Pence 129, 132, 136–42, 210–11 179, 211; papal monarchy 162, 165–
Pfeiffer, G. 254, 256 6; see also Avignon, conciliarism,
Philip (papal legate) 45, 48 courts
Philip IV the Fair (king of France) 130 Porębski, S. 275–8
philosophy 13, 67–71, 148, 154, 169 pottery 32–4, 36
physicians 118, 147, 153–5, 159 Powicke, F.M. 236, 284
Piasts, Piast dynasty 5–7, 9–10, 14, Poznań 26, 84, 87–92, 114, 158, 195,
18–19, 31, 58, 128, 137, 139–40, 145, 198–201, 211, 242, 244, 246, 258;
194–6, 202, 211, 221, 225 diocese of 158
Piotrków, synod of 163, 169 Prague 3, 12, 26–7, 61, 66, 76–77, 79,
Pirenne, H. 21, 28, 220 100, 104–6, 113, 141, 147–50, 155,
Pisa 240 158–9, 196, 198, 203, 209, 239, 252,
Piskorski, J.M. 214, 222 263, 275; university of 12, 66, 74,
place names 30–2, 39–40 76–77, 79, 147–51, 153, 155, 158,
Plato 186, 188, 282 239; castle 61
Pliska 32–5, 39–40, 223, 227 Prato 238
Plzeň 119 preaching 65, 70, 151–2; preachers 147–
poetry 157–8 51, 153, 159–60
Pohansko 35–8, 40, 225 Premonstratensians 149–50
Polak, W. 9, 215 Přemyslids, Přemyslid dynasty 61, 128
Poland 5–14, 16, 18–19, 25–6, 30–2, Preslav 33, 40
58, 65, 70–2, 74, 76, 78–81, 83–4, Pribina (duke of Great Moravia) 37, 226
100–1, 103, 109, 114, 116–7, 121–4, prices 96, 102, 107–8, 111, 257, 259; see
128–37, 139, 141–7, 149–50, 152, also coin
154–6, 158, 161, 173–5, 178–9, priests 53, 56, 81, 85, 171
194–6, 202, 204, 206, 208, 211–12, privileges (documents) 45–6, 64, 66,
222–3, 225, 235, 241–2, 253, 257, 74–5, 78, 104, 109–10, 113, 127, 220
261, 263, 267, 280, 285; as a concept prosopography 204
(Polonia) 137, 141, 195; kingdom Provence 68, 71
of 5–7, 10–11, 18, 31, 58, 79, 84, province (mendicant) 65–72, 74–6, 78–
109, 114, 129, 137, 141, 143, 145–6, 80, 195–6, 211, 238–9; of Poland 65,
150, 152, 155, 158, 160, 195, 205, 69–72, 74–6, 78–80, 195–6, 208, 211,
253, 267; see also Cuiavia, Great 238–9; of Bohemia 70, 74, 76; of
Poland, Masovia, Piasts, Pomerania, Hungary 71, 74, 76; of Germany 71,
province, Silesia 239; of Lower Germany 79; of
Poles 14, 116, 118, 121, 141, 157, Saxony 79; in Italy 68–9, 71, 75–6;
160, 176, 181, 211, 280; gens in France 68, 69, 71, 75
Polonica 157 province (metropolitan diocese) 127–8,
Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in 164; see also Gniezno
America 9 provincial (mendicant) 69, 71–2, 151,
Polotsk 43 203, 238
Pomerania 70, 100, 128–31, 137–8, 251 Pruckner, H. 254, 258
Pomnichów 25–6, 220 Prussia 12, 70, 103, 119, 121, 123–4, 155
pope, papacy 6, 11, 14, 45, 48, 54, 56, 64, Ptaśnik, J. 252, 254, 257, 261, 265
300 Index
punishment 47, 55, 83, 95, 98, 127, 43–4, 101–2, 144, 198, 205, 220,
137, 139–40, 142, 155, 228, 247; 251, 257, 280; Ruthenians 116, 280;
ecclesiastical 127, 137, 139–40, 142, Galich–Vladimir Rus’ 144
144, 180; excommunication 90, 127, Rutkowski, J. 207
144, 180
Pyrenees 25 Salians, Salian dynasty 51, 53, 63
salt 11, 23–5, 98, 114, 120, 251, 261; salt
queen 147, 149–60, 176–7, 179, 278, mine 11, 114; saltwater springs 24;
280–1; see also court salt-works 98
Quintilian 188, 282, 284 Salzburg 105, 114
Quirini-Popławska, D. 250, 258 Samogitia 151
Qur’an (Koran) 44 Samsonowicz, H. 17, 111, 193–8, 200–1,
203, 207–10, 216, 220, 250–1, 253,
Rady, M. 230, 278 257, 259, 287
Raffelstetten 23, 220 Sandomierz 31, 40, 159, 222
Rashdall, H. 236, 284 Saxony 79; Saxons 27
Raymund of Peñaforte 242 Scandinavia 23, 74, 76, 127
reform (ecclesiastical) 150, 161–3, 168– Schaer, F. 9, 215–16, 234
71, 173–4, 195, 199 Scharer, A. 232–3
Regensburg 62, 101–3, 220, 251, 257 Scheibelreiter, G. 232–3
relics 43, 47, 49; reliquary 179, 279 schism 14–15, 76, 165–6, 170–2, 175,
rent 87, 90, 95, 110–11, 246 240; Great Schism 14–15, 76, 165,
representation (textual) 54, 63, 200–1, 240
232 Schleswig 122
revenues 11, 28, 87, 125–6, 129–31, Schmidt, K.A. 189, 284
136–45, 210–11, 267; see also Peter’s Schmitt, J.C. 42, 228, 237
Pence, taxes scholasticism 67–8, 71, 80, 237, 280
rhetoric 13, 52–5, 59–61, 68, 161–2, 175, Scholz-Babisch, M. 108, 251, 256–7
188, 190, 211–12, 232, 282 schools 6, 11, 13, 64–70, 72–5, 80–1, 118,
Rhine (river) 23 148, 184, 189, 191, 196, 199, 209,
Rhineland 24 212, 236–41, 248; conventual 66,
Rhône (river) 125, 211 68, 70, 72, 74, 80–1, 148, 184, 237;
Riga 24, 130 grammar 68, 241; cathedral 81, 241;
ritual 44–6, 50, 52–3, 55, 57, 63, 85, 178, collegiate 81; school system 65–6,
180, 195–6, 200, 231–2, 234, 236 72–5, 78, 189, 236; degrees in 66,
Riurik (prince of the Rus’) 38; 69, 73–4, 77–8, 148–56, 158, 161,
Riurik’s Stonghold (Riurikovo 275, 285; see also lectors, studium,
Gorodishche) 38–40 university
Robert of Saint-Victor 82 Schulze, H.K. 51, 231
Robert Bruce 234 Scotland 155, 204
Robert Grosseteste 185–8 Seferović, R. 248–9
Robert Sorbon 66 Seligo, A. 119, 262–3
Roger Bacon 185–9, 284 Semmering Pass 103
Rome 69, 71, 76, 121, 172–3, 193–4, 203 Semmler, J. 232–3
Rowell, S.C. 228, 286 Seńko, W. 216, 273–4
Rudolph IV (duke of Austria) 104 Serejski, M.H. 216, 272
Rügen 22 sermon 149–53, 163–70, 172–3, 175,
Russia, the Rus’ 21, 24, 26–8, 30, 37, 276
Index 301
‘service settlements,’ 19, 30–5, 37, 39– Stanisław of Skalbmierz/Skarbimierz 13,
41, 193–5, 198, 202, 206, 208, 210, 148–9, 157
221–3, 225, 227 state, state-building 10, 14, 19, 21,
servitude, unfreedom 30–2, 37, 40, 56; 24, 28, 30–1, 41, 44, 53, 99, 105,
servants, servile population 27–8, 129–30, 137, 143–5, 156, 221–2;
30–2, 57; slaves 23–5, 27, 30 Carolingian 21, 28, 222; Great
settlement 19–21, 25, 31–3, 35–41, 44–5, Moravian 28; Hungarian 30;
83, 221–5, 227; hierarchy of 35, 37, Piast 31, 221; Slavic 28; city-
40, 221, 227; rural 32–3, 37–9, 223; state 99, 105; see also kingdom
Kietze/Kietzesiedlungen 31–2, 223; Stein, R. 259–60
see also ‘service settlements’ Stein-Wilkeshuis, M. 228–9
Seville 20 steppe 23, 33, 44–5
sex, sexual contact 83, 86, 88, 199, 208–9 Stephen I (king of Hungary, saint) 47,
ships 23, 25, 27, 94, 99; boats 94 177, 179, 200
Sicily 44, 76, 204 Stephen V (king of Hungary) 48
Sigismund of Luxemburg (king of Stephen Werbőczy 278
Hungary and Bohemia) 105, 178, Stieda, W. 111, 254, 256, 259
180, 279 Stockholm 121
Silesia 70, 78, 100, 102–5, 108–9, Stoś, J. 275–7
113–14, 119, 128–9, 137, 139–42, Strzegom 105, 110
195, 202, 238, 251–2, 257–8 Strzelczyk, J. 31, 216, 222
Silvester/Lasota of Zdziechów 151–2, students 68–9, 73, 75, 148, 184, 189,
156 240
Simon Grünau 119–20, 124, 263 studium 64–71, 73–9, 148, 195–6,
Simonsfeld, H. 252–3, 255, 257, 259–60 199, 208–9, 211, 236–41; studium
Slavs 21, 23, 26–8, 30–1, 120, 223; generale 66, 73–9, 148, 151,
Polabian/Elbe 21, 30; eastern 27–8; 238–41; studium particulare 68, 73
western 27; Balto-Slavs 120 Styria 105
Slovakia 101, 280 Suchodolski, S. 17
Šmahel, F. 240, 272, 276 Sudeto-Carpathian economic zone 101,
Śnieżyńska-Stolot, E. 160, 274 114–15, 117
Snorre Sturlason 221 Suetonius 56, 233
Sophia of Holszany (queen of Sułkowska-Kuraś, I. 246, 265, 269–70,
Poland–Lithuania) 148, 152–3, 273
155–8 supply (economic) 22, 102, 106, 108–9,
Soviet bloc 2 198, 253
Spain 4, 27, 71, 129 Sviatoslav (prince of the Rus’) 26, 43
spices 23, 103, 106–8, 111, 114, 117, Švitrigaila (duke of Lithuania) 116,
256–7, 259; pepper 23, 103, 107, 155–6
111, 114, 117, 257, 259; saffron 23, Sweden 118, 121–3
103, 107, 114, 256; ginger 23, 103, Świdnica 114, 148
107, 111 Switzerland 35, 108, 261
Spież, J.A. 236–7, 239, 270 synod (ecclesiastical) 82–2, 162, 166,
Spitignev (duke of Bohemia) 61 173, 211, 276; see also Łęczyca,
Spurr, J. 227–8 Piotrków
Stalin, J. 2; Stalinism 207 Szczecin 24, 220, 264
Stanisław (bishop of Kraków, saint) Szczur, S. 193–6, 198–9, 201–3, 208–11,
157–8 265–7
302 Index
Tadić, J. 248, 250 tolls 22–6, 101–5, 109–10, 183, 220, 253,
Tancred of Bologna 242 255
Tartars 45, 101, 229, 251; see also tools 36, 38, 44; axes 38; plows 38;
Mongols scythes 38; sickles 38
taxes, taxation 84, 128, 136, 143, 178 Topolski, J. 207, 242, 287
Tazbir, J. 207 topos, commonplace 43, 55, 233–4, 282,
Tęgowski, J. 266, 273 284
Teleżyński, W. 78, 240 Torah 44, 46
Templars 130 Torquemada 166, 171
Teutonic Order 6, 14, 26, 103, 114, Toruń 26, 103, 114, 122, 253, 258
118–19, 122, 128–38, 155, 202–3, Toulouse 12, 68–9, 75–6
211; grand master of 118–19, 132, town 6, 11, 18–21, 26–9, 63, 83–4, 90, 98,
134, 137 100–2, 104–6, 108, 110–14, 123–4,
textiles 23, 26, 94, 99, 103, 106–9, 112, 154, 178, 194–7, 204, 206–10, 254,
224, 248, 257; baldechin 107–8, 259, 263; geography of 11, 28, 111,
257; brocade 23, 26, 103, 108; 195, 203; expansion of 21, 194, 196,
cotton 107, 111; silk 103, 107, 112; 207–8, 210; town council 104, 106,
production 94, 99, 109, 112, 248 111–14, 259; proto-town 20, 206;
Thegan (bishop of Trier) 55–6, 232–3 see also city
theology 13, 15, 64–5, 67–81, 148–51, trade 24–6, 84, 43, 94, 103–6, 108, 113,
156, 161–4, 166–72, 174–5, 117, 119–22, 124, 194, 196–8, 208,
190, 198–9, 237–41, 275, 284; 255, 260, 263; long-distance 24–6,
mystical 161, 174–5; moral 162, 124, 194, 197, 208; trade route 22–3,
166–7, 173–5, 199; devotio 25–6, 102–3, 105–6, 109, 252; trade
moderna 161, 167, 275: via war 105–6
moderna 240 Trajan (emperor) 60–2, 235
theory 13, 162, 164–9, 172–8, 195–6, Transylvania 101, 179, 279
198–9, 201–2, 209–10, 225, 232, Trawkowski, S. 216, 272
237, 277, 280; political 13, 162, 164, treasurer (papal official) 132; treasury
172, 176–8, 195, 201–2, 209, 277, (royal) 143, 158
280; of the corporation 165, 167, treaties 43–4, 105, 113, 132, 134–5, 178;
178, 280; of representation 165, peace treaty 132, 134–5
172, 201, 277; ecclesiological 166, Tremp, E. 232–3
169, 171; constitutional 199, Třeštík, D. 17, 31, 221–3, 235
209; postmodern 201, 232; of Trieste 251
urbanisation 196, 209–10; central Trillmich, W. 231–2
place theory 196, 225; see also Tříška, J. 268–9
conciliarism Truso 22, 25
Thomas of Strzempin 163, 167–8, 275–6 Turin 252
Thomas Aquinas 67, 72, 80, 148, 170, Turkowska, D. 269, 274
174, 186, 237 Turks 100; see also Ottomans
throne 53, 55, 57–8, 128, 156, 159, Tymieniecki, K. 221, 265
176–8, 278
Thuringia 251 Ubbaiadh Allah ibn-Hurdadbeh 27, 221
tithe 126, 129, 141, 143–44, 267; Udalric (bishop of Augsburg) 57, 233
papal 126, 129, 144; Vienne 143 Ukraine 23
Toch, M. 242, 244 university 1–3, 7, 10–13, 15, 64–5,
Todi 64, 236 69–70, 72–7, 79–81, 90, 147–55,
Index 303
157–8, 160–1, 163–4, 167–9, Volga (river) 22
173, 175, 184–5, 189–90, 196, Volkhov (river) 38
199, 205, 209, 236–41, 275, 281, von Stromer, W. 105, 255–6
284–5; North American 2–3, 185; Vytautas (grand duke of Lithuania) 118,
of Erfurt 15, 80; of Leipzig 15; 150
of Montpellier 147, 155; of
Padua 12, 147; of Pécs 12; of Wajs, H. 246, 274
Toulouse 12, 75; of Vienna 12, 15; Wallerstein, I. 207, 210, 220
and mendicants 64–5, 69–70, 72, Wamba (Visigothic king) 55
74–5, 77, 79–81, 236, 239; see also war, warfare 2, 4, 28–31, 36–8, 40, 44,
Bologna, Cambridge, Jagiellonian 60–2, 131, 144, 158, 176, 178, 207–8,
Library, Kraków, Oxford, Prague 235, 287; warriors 36, 38, 208;
Uppsala 121–2 army 60–1, 178, 235; weapons 26,
Urban V (pope) 144 36–7, 43–4; Second World War 2, 4,
Urbańczyk, P. 220, 222 207, 287
usury 84, 89–91, 245 Warsaw 9, 16, 26, 136, 201
water 22, 25, 33–4, 40, 44, 94–9, 119–20,
Václav II (king of Bohemia) 143 194, 196–8, 203, 211, 248, 263
van Deusen, N. 193, 195–6, 198–9, 212, Wawel Hill 11, 117, 135, 148, 151, 153–4,
282–4, 286 159
Vandals 157 wax 23–4, 27
Várad 46, 201 Weber, M. 25
Varangians 21, 25–6, 28, 197, 208 Wenceslas (king of Bohemia, saint) 179–
Varna 10, 176, 194, 199 80
Vasilev, R. 223–4 Wenceslas IV (king of Bohemia) 104
Venetians 101, 114, 254 Wendt, H. 103, 106, 113, 251–7, 260–1
Venice 99–111, 113–15, 196–8, 203, White, S.D. 3, 214
206–8, 210–11, 251, 253, 255, 259– widows 52–3, 56, 59–60, 62, 88, 91,
60; Republic of 100, 104–6, 109, 152–3, 235, 247
113–14; doge of 104, 106, 113, 259 Wielgus, S. 269, 271
Verdier, R. 227–8, 230 Wieliczka 11
Verhaeghe, F. 224, 227 Willam, H.A. 262–3
Verger, J. 64, 236–9 William Durantis 162
Verlhust, A. 224, 227 wine 26, 101–2, 103–4, 106, 108, 251–2;
Verona 252 vineyards 102
Vespasian (emperor) 56 Wipo 51–9, 62–3, 200, 231–2, 235
Vienna 12, 15, 103, 109, 173, 198, 254, Wittelsbach dynasty 138
258; university of 12, 15; Concordat Władysław II (king of Hungary) 178
of 173 Władysław the Short (duke and king of
Vienne 141, 143; Council of 141 Poland) 10–11, 18, 128–31, 136,
Vikings 21–22, 24; see also Varangians 145–6, 199, 202–3
villages 19, 30–1, 34–5, 38–40, 55, 98, Władysław Jagiełło (king of Poland–
245; hamlets 39 Lithuania) 5, 116, 118, 147–60, 204
Vilnius 148 Władysław Warneńczyk/Jagiellończyk
Vincent Kot (archbishop of Gniezno) 164 (king of Poland–Lithuania and
Visegrád 134, 141, 279 Hungary) 10, 152, 154, 156–7, 164,
Vistula (river) 22, 26, 122, 124, 128 176–7, 179–83, 199, 202, 280–1
Vitebsk 43 Włocławek 137
304 Index
Wolfram, H. 231–2 see also merchants
Wolin 22, 27 Wünsch, T. 193–6, 198–9, 203–4,
Wolny, J. 149–50, 152, 267–71 275–7
women 45, 52–3, 55–6, 58–62, 83–7, Wyczański, A. 207
90–3, 96–7, 116, 147–50, 152–60, Wyrobisz, A. 207
176–7, 179, 182, 199, 234–5, 242–4,
247–8, 278, 280–1 Zalavár 37, 40, 226
wool 107–8, 111, 259 Zarębski, I. 269, 273
workshops 33–5, 39; see also crafts Zawadzki, R.M. 268–9, 276
world (as a historical subject) 5, 204, Zbigniew Oleśnicki (bishop of
206–7, 210–11 Kraków) 164, 173, 175
Wrocław 17, 73, 100–15, 119, 129, Zeiring 105, 113
137, 139–42, 153, 164, 195–8, 203, Zlate Gory/Zuckmantel 109
207–8, 210, 251–7, 259, 263; duchy Złoty Stok/Reichenstein 258
of 17, 112, 259; diocese of 137, Zupko, R.E. 256, 259
140–2; bishop of 139, 141, 164; Żytkowicz, L. 207

Oath-Taking in Hungary, Central and Eastern Europe

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Oath-Taking in Hungary, Central and Eastern Europe

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Oath-Taking in Hungary, Central and Eastern Europe

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Central and Eastern Europe

in the Middle Ages

Edited by Piotr Górecki and

TAURIS ACADEMIC STUDIES

In the United States of America and Canada distributed by

Copyright © 2009 Piotr S. Górecki and Nancy van Deusen

The right of Piotr S. Górecki and Nancy van Deusen to be identified as

ISBN: 978 1 84511 851 8

Library of Congress catalog card: available

Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press

1 A road well travelled: Culture, politics and learning in the

3 The archaeology of early medieval service settlements in

4 Oath-taking in Hungary: A window on medieval social

5 Conrad II’s theatrum rituale: Wipo on the earliest deeds

6 The Dominican Order and the beginnings of higher

7 Matrimonium sub fide Judaica contractum: Were mixed

9 Venice and Wrocław in the later Middle Ages 100

10 Strekfusz: A fish dish links Jagiellonian Kraków to

11 Papal collectors and state power in Central Europe during

12 University masters at the royal court of Hedwig of Anjou

13 Between conciliar thought and mystical theology:

14 ‘Good king Polish Ladislas . . .’: History and memory

15 University studies and trivialised pursuits: The place of

16 Toward a new cultural history of East Central Europe? 192

János M. BAK is Professor Emeritus of the Department Medieval Studies,

Paul Knoll’s work: the transitions

The setting, revisited

‘Service settlement’ is a favourite phrase of several Polish and Czech medie-

We are becoming increasingly familiar with the organisation of the schools

This list of provinces seems to encompass territories heretofore relatively

Water had an extraordinary importance in the life of Dubrovnik, even more

In a much later systematic discussion of northern fishes, Magnus stressed the

Confessors, preachers and chaplains

Physicians and astrologers at the royal court

Court teachers and writers

Manuscript 173 of the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków transmits, with-

We are not bound to adhere to obedience and subordination [only] for a

These considerations may be summarised as follows. At first glance, the

Among the Jagiellons on the throne of Hungary, the four-year reign of

Semper regum coronatio a regnicolarum voluntate dependet

. . . alia Corona Aurea

[T]herefore it was decided unanimously . . . that King Władysław should

exhibuerunt . . . quendam libellum

Epilogue: Lengyel László jó királyunk

Ki népei vagytok Whose people are you?

Education, in many respects, constitutes cultural determination, so basic are

Music as a discipline is an outstanding example of priorities which elude

From the seventeenth century onwards, the more fashionable universities

In the following passage, the author’s priorities are clear:

A further example of how, in a twentieth-century perception of the medieval

This book: chronology and themes

Court, city and culture

Paul Knoll and this book

Toward a new cultural history of East Central Europe?

1 A road well travelled

3 The archaeology of early medieval service settlements in Eastern Europe

7 Matrimonium sub fide Judaica contractum

6 J. Freisen, Geschichte, p. 642: ‘Sponsalia tamen contrahere possunt sub tali

In causa Hedwigis mulieris de Poznania cum Johanne novo christiano de ibidem