The principal issue that the East Central European states came to face after their entry into medieval Christendom was the relationship to the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy. The former, based on Germany, approached these countries from two standpoints: as an empire that claimed universal dominion, and as the German kingdom whose border marches were expanding eastward seeking to Christianize and control the pagan Polabians (the term comes from Laba or Labe, the Slav name for the River Elbe). The Polabian lands constituted a buffer between Germany and Poland, which also attempted to bring these Slavs under its sway. One of Mieszko’s main political reasons for baptism was to be able to treat with the empire and Germany on a different level from the Polabians.
Indeed, the acceptance of Christianity enabled Mieszko the play the papacy against the empire, at one point even placing his state under the protection of Rome. Although he was obliged at times to recognize the emperor’s suzerainty— which some of his successors also had to do—the Polish rulers never accepted a permanent status of vassal of the emperor. The possibility of an advantageous relationship arose when Emperor Otto III dreamt of recreating a Roman empire based on four pillars: Italy, Gaul, Germany, and Sclavinia (Slavdom) and saw Mieszko’s son and successor Boleslaw I the Brave as the head of the latter. The two rulers met at Gniezno in 1000, where the emperor recognized the independent status of the Polish duke and a separate Polish ecclesiastical organization. The meeting in a sense marked Poland’s entry into the European community as an independent state. But after the untimely death of Otto III, Boleslaw’s objectives of a Slav bloc and the royal crown had to be pursued in opposition to the empire. Boleslaw’s occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, when he invoked his right to the Premyslid succession, led to a major war. A Slav bloc failed to materialize, but Boleslaw assumed the royal title and made his kingdom an important member of medieval Christendom. Incidentally, the borders of his state were fairly similar to those of present-day Poland.
A decade or so after Boleslaw’s death, in the late 1030s, Duke Bretislav of Bohemia attempted to bring Poland under his sway. He failed, and if his objective had been to gain greater independence of the empire, he did not achieve it either. While Polish-Czech conflicts were characteristic for this early period, they do not tell the whole story of their relationship. Crucial was the Czech contribution to the developing Polish culture, as was the role of the former bishop of Prague, subsequently canonized as St Vojtech (Adalbert), in spreading Christianity in Poland and to a lesser extent in Hungary.
Bohemia, unlike Poland, was from the beginning more directly exposed to Germanic pressure. During the turbulent process of state-building, the Premyslid dukes recognized the feudal overlordship of the emperor, a fact that historical maps somewhat inaccurately represent by making Bohemia indistinguishable from the Holy Roman Empire. Prague’s dependence went hardly beyond the duke’s homage and his obligation to provide a few hundred knights for the Italian expeditions. No imperial troops were ever stationed in Bohemia nor were the imperial diets ever held there. The bishops were not princes of the empire, no lands within Bohemia were imperial fiefs, and only the legislation that emanated from Prague was valid.
Still, the association with the empire bound Bohemia more intimately with Germany, allowing it to intervene and influence developments. The price was not only a growing cultural germanization, already mentioned, but also a certain de facto political dependence. The emperor’s bestowal of the kingly title was first ad personam and in compensation for loyal services. It was only at the turn of the twelfth century that Bohemia became permanently a kingdom.
The position of Hungary was very different. Like Poland the state was only fleetingly under the suzerainty of the empire, and it had already become a kingdom in 1000 when Stephen obtained the crown from Rome. Like Mieszko he allegedly placed his country under papal protection. A balancing act between the empire and the papacy, so characteristic for early Poland, was also noticeable in the Hungarian case, but it was compounded by problems that arose from a south-eastern, Byzantine direction. Constantinople was expanding in the Balkans and had designs on Hungary. The ensuing conflicts led to armed clashes, notably over Bosnia and Serbia. Hungarian interests in the region were bound with the above-mentioned union with Croatia. Initiated under St Ladislas it was consummated under Coloman when the Croatian lords recognized in the 1102 pacta conventa the Arpads as their rulers. Hungary’s involvement with policies in the Adriatic caused a rivalry with Venice and complex maneuvers in Rome and Norman Sicily.
With Hungary in the lead, East Central Europe was becoming drawn more intimately in the affairs of Christendom. The Arpads, the Premyslids, and the Piasts were intermarrying with each other and with German, French, and Kievan princes and princesses. When the earlier-mentioned great Investiture Controversy placed the emperor and the pope on opposite sides, Czech rulers generally sided with the former, those of Poland and Hungary with the latter. It was thus an irony of history when King Boleslaw II the Bold, who revived the royal title that had fallen into disuse, found himself in a conflict with bishop Stanislas of Cracow and put him to death in 1079. The tragedy, somewhat reminiscent of the murder of Thomas a Becket under Henry II of England a century later, led to the king’s fall and the eventual canonization of Stanislas, who became the patron saint of Poland.
It was typical for these early centuries that the vicissitudes of Poland, Bohemia, or Hungary and the changing political constellations, were intimately bound with the persons of rulers. Brief stability was followed by strife and breakdown of order, to lead again to recovery. Thus Bohemia declined politically from the strong position it had occupied in the late tenth century, and temporarily lost Moravia. Supporting the emperors in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries the rulers of Bohemia registered some gains, but then also suffered from imperial interference especially under Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Moravia was erected into a margraviate and treated as a direct fief of the emperor. The already noted absence of primogeniture made each succession in the country a conflict between claimants.
This was a particularly acute problem in Poland where the Piasts were numerous. Another Boleslaw (the Wrymouth) sought to regulate the system of succession through the recognition of divergent centers of power in the country. His last will, of 1138, divided Poland among his five sons, the eldest being designated senior and lord over the indivisible province of Cracow. He was also to be the supreme authority with regard to ecclesiastical and external affairs. The period of division thus initiated was characterized by the ever growing number of small political units warring with each other. One may justifiably speak of feudal anarchy, if one remembers the differences with the West, admitting also that local centers could and did perform certain useful functions.
Although Hungary went through a decade of successes, administrative, cultural, and financial, under the reign of Bela III (1172-96), it plunged into domestic strife after his death. The secular lords asserted their power in the counties, nominally as royal officials, but in fact as great landowners in their own right. Historians speak about the beginning of the transformation of the royal counties (komitats), from administrative units based on castles into nobles’ counties enjoying local autonomy.
The Crusades, that great movement of the early Middle Ages, affected East Central Europe to a relatively small degree. Only Hungary witnessed the actual fleeting passage of the First (1096-9) and of the Third Crusade (1189-92) which brought numerous Western knights into contact with the country and led to some new immigration. King Andrew II actually joined the Fifth Crusade in 1218, just as the king of Bohemia, Vladislav II had taken part in the Second in 1147. Only one of the Polish dukes and probably some knights had taken the cross, but this was of marginal significance.
East Central Europe developed economically between the tenth and the thirteenth century but not in any spectacular fashion. Despite considerable natural riches there was relatively little mining. Towns, in which rudimentary artisanship played a minor role, evolved from rural agglomerations, some of them performing specialized services, into centers where goods were exchanged. The presence of Jewish, Muslim, and Greek merchants contributed to an eventual organization of production and supply of capital. Both Hungary and Bohemia were well located with regard to intra-European trade; as for Poland, the early Piasts’ control over Cracow, Wroclaw (Breslau), and some Pomeranian towns laid the foundations for its later involvement in international commerce.
Agriculture was not only more primitive and extensive than in the West, but differed with regard to the organization of great property. In Western Europe the manor had its reserve products worked by serfs. In East Central Europe manorial reserve was rather exceptional and most peasants paid their rent in kind, something typical for France and England only in late medieval times.
In the cultural sphere the region seemed to be absorbing the initial Western stimulus rather than making rapid progress. Still, a steady transformation under the aegis of the church was visible. Religious architecture performed through visual arts a didactic function that was essential in a predominantly illiterate population. Artistic levels of sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, and other art objects were surprisingly high as attested by recent discoveries and archeological finds. The first chronicles written in Latin by clergymen appeared in the twelfth and at the turn of the thirteenth century: the chronicle by Callus (possibly a French monk), that by the Prague canon Kosmas, and the Anonymous chronicle or Gesta Ungarorum. The great church reforms in the West brought to East Central Europe such religious orders as Benedictines and Cistercians, whose role in the spiritual and material progress proved to be most important.
World History
