The Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia (895–1306)

In 895 the prince of Bohemia made an accord with Arnulf, the German king who had attacked Moravia, and thereby warded off the danger of invasion. The domain over which the house of Přemysl ruled from Prague was in the early 10th century the largest political unit in Bohemia. Hostile tribal chieftains controlled the eastern and northeastern districts, but the extent of their power is not known. The most powerful of them, the Slavníks residing at Libice, remained defiant until the end of the 10th century.

At first Bohemia maintained close relations with neighbouring Bavaria. Both countries were threatened for several decades by the Magyars and by the rise in Germany of the Saxon dynasty, which began with Henry I (the Fowler) in 918 and reached its climax with the imperial coronation of Otto I in Rome in 962. (This coronation marked the restitution of the Holy Roman Empire, with which Bohemia was linked thereafter for many centuries.)

Bohemia’s orientation toward the Saxon dynasty began in the 920s under Wenceslas I (Czech: Václav), the grandson of the Czech prince Bořivoj. It was symbolized by the dedication of a stone church at the Prague castle to a Saxon saint, Vitus. Both Slavic and Latin legends praise Wenceslas and his grandmother St. Ludmila as fervent Christian believers but tell little about his political activities. After Wenceslas was murdered in 929 or 935—according to legend, by his younger brother and successor, Boleslav I—the prince became regarded as the patron saint of Bohemia. The legends present the murder as an outburst against Wenceslas’s devotion to the new faith, but the conspiracy probably had a strong political motivation—namely, the payment of annual tribute to the king of Germany.

Boleslav I attempted, unsuccessfully, to loosen the ties Wenceslas had made with the Saxon dynasty. Like his brother, however, he reigned as a Christian prince; his daughter married Prince Mieszko I of Poland and helped to spread Christianity in that country. His son and successor, Boleslav II, used his friendly relations with the pope and the emperor to enhance his prestige. He attached new territories east of Bohemia to his father’s annexations. In 973 a bishopric for the entire principality was founded in Prague. Bohemia was thus taken off the Bavarian metropolitan jurisdiction and subordinated to the geographically distant archbishop of Mainz. The first bishop of Prague, Thietmar, was from the Saxon land but knew the Slavic language. He was succeeded in 982 by Adalbert (Vojtěch), a member of the Slavník family, the second most powerful princely clan in the land. In 995 Boleslav II moved against the Slavníks and slaughtered the whole clan. Adalbert survived because he had gone abroad to spread Christianity. (In Hungary he baptized the country’s future patron saint, King Stephen I, but in 997, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, he was killed by heathens.)

Struggles among the descendants of Boleslav II plagued Bohemia for the first three decades of the 11th century and considerably reduced its power. Most of the territories that had been attached to the country in the 10th century were lost. Bohemia’s fortunes improved when Prince Břetislav I, a grandson of Boleslav II, led a successful expedition into Moravia; he conquered only a minor portion of the former Great Moravia, but it was large enough to constitute a province, and it was linked from then on with Bohemia.

The ambitions of Břetislav, who was enthroned in 1034, ran higher, and he invaded Poland in 1039—with only temporary success. Incurring the indignation of the German king Henry III, he was forced to evacuate the conquered territory and to make an oath of fealty (1041). In the latter part of his reign, Břetislav cooperated with Henry III (who was crowned Holy Roman emperor in 1046), thus protecting his domain against armed intervention. Břetislav’s submission marked the end of Bohemian attempts to break out from the hegemony of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.

The entire territory of Bohemia and Moravia was regarded as a patrimony of the house of Přemysl, and no emperor attempted to put a foreign prince of his own choice on the throne. But the ruling family grew large, and after Břetislav’s death (1055) it became entangled in competition for primacy. For about 150 years the course of public life in Bohemia was largely determined by dissensions among the adult princes, some of whom ruled in portions of Moravia under Prague’s suzerainty. The emperor and the feudal lords exploited the conflicts to promote their selfish interests. A key problem was the absence of any strict law of succession; the principle of seniority usually clashed with the reigning prince’s desire to secure the throne for his oldest son.

The territory’s minor obligations toward the emperors were a handicap under weak princes or when the male members of the ruling family were at odds, but a strong prince could turn friendly relations with the empire to his advantage. Břetislav’s second son, Vratislav II (ruled 1061–92), as a compensation for services rendered, obtained from Emperor Henry IV the title of king of Bohemia (1085). Another ruler, Vladislav I, became the “supreme cupbearer” to the emperor (1114), one of the highest court offices, which entitled him to participate as one of seven electors in choosing the head of the Holy Roman Empire. Vladislav II (ruled 1140–73) participated in the campaigns of Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) in Italy. He was named king and crowned by the emperor at Milan in 1158.

Active participation in imperial policies and military campaigns reduced markedly the Czechs’ isolation, caused by Bohemia’s geographic position. Other contacts were made with foreign merchants and with clerics who came from abroad or who were traveling from Bohemia to Rome and to famous shrines. By the early 11th century the Latin rite prevailed. Cosmas of Prague, who recorded in his chronicle the history of Bohemia to 1125, was an ardent supporter of the Latin liturgy. Western orientation of the hierarchy and of the monastic orders was documented by the prevalence of Romanesque architecture, of which notable examples could be found in Prague and in the residences of the ruling family. In social stratification and in economy, the country reached such a degree of consolidation that it withstood, without serious damage, the political struggles that ravaged it in the late 12th century.

Frederick I helped to foment the discord among Přemysl’s descendants during this era. In 1182 he reduced the dependence of Moravia on the Prague princes and subordinated that province to his imperial authority. In 1187 he exempted the Prague bishop, a member of the Přemysl family, from the jurisdiction of the ruling prince and made the bishopric an imperial fief. These decisions had no lasting significance, however, and the Přemysl patrimony survived. The period of trials closed with Frederick’s death (1190).

Subsequently, frequent changes on the imperial throne lessened the danger of intervention. During the same period the Přemysl family was reduced to one branch, so the problem of succession lost its pressing importance. In 1198 the Bohemian duke Přemysl Otakar I received the title of king of Bohemia for himself and his descendants from one of the competitors for the imperial crown. A solemn confirmation occurred in 1212, when Frederick II (crowned emperor in 1220) issued a charter known as the Golden Bull of Sicily, which regulated the relationship between Bohemia and the empire. The Bohemian king’s obligations were reduced to a minimum, but, as elector, he ranked first among the four secular members of the college of electors.

Under Otakar I and his successors, Bohemia moved from depression to political prominence and economic prosperity. The clergy gained independence from secular lords in 1221. The landowning class, made up of wealthy barons and less-propertied squires, claimed freedom in administering its domains and a more active role in public affairs. In the early 13th century the population of Bohemia and Moravia increased noticeably through immigration from overpopulated areas in Germany.

Many of the German-speaking newcomers, especially miners, were encouraged by the king to establish new boroughs, endowed with royal privileges under the more advanced German city laws of the period. The newly founded royal town of Kutná Hora (German: Kuttenberg), for example, soon grew into the second city of Bohemia, and its royal mint supplied the kingdom’s treasury with silver coins. Bohemia’s urban settlers, called burghers, enjoyed valuable privileges, especially the use of German city law. Considered free citizens, the burghers paid taxes to the king but handled their own affairs in matters of criminal and property law as well as defense. In the future they would form the nucleus of the third estate (one of the three traditional political orders; the barons and the lesser nobility constituted the first two, respectively). In addition to the townsfolk, German farmers settled in the border districts of the kingdom. German immigration continued under Otakar I’s successor, Wenceslas I (ruled 1230–53), and reached its peak under Otakar II (ruled 1253–78). Bishop Bruno of Olomouc, in cooperation with the latter king, promoted the colonization of large tracts of land in northern Moravia. (A similar pattern of colonization occurred in the Slovak lands, where mining towns such as Banská Štiavnica and Kremnica prospered.)

Otakar II, whom Dante described in his Divine Comedy as one of the great Christian rulers, was a strong and capable king who obtained possession of Austrian lands through marriage, and in 1260 he was invited by the nobility of Steiermark (Styria) to become their overlord. Personal bravery and financial resources facilitated his penetration into other Alpine provinces. Before his opponents could combine forces to check his advance, Otakar had exercised influence in Kärnten (Carinthia) as well as in some territories along the Adriatic coast. By then, Otakar, known throughout Europe as the “king of iron and gold,” aspired to the imperial crown as well.

Otakar’s expansion aroused the hostility of the kings of Hungary, but even more dangerous was Count Rudolf of Habsburg, who, following his election as King Rudolf I of Germany in 1273, claimed the Austrian lands as vacant fiefs of the empire. War ensued and ended in Otakar’s defeat in 1276. Otakar was unwilling to accept the loss of Austria as final and began a new campaign. Not only Rudolf’s army but also Hungarian troops moved against the Czech forces, and a group of noblemen, most of them from southern Bohemia, sided with the enemy. Otakar was too weak to resist the unexpected coalition against him, and, on Aug. 26, 1278, at Dürnkrut, Austria, he lost both the battle and his life. (In the same period Hungary underwent its own disintegration, and strong feudal warlords ruled over its different parts. Most of Slovakia was then controlled by the mighty Matúš Čak, lord of Trenčín.)

Otakar’s only son, Wenceslas II (ruled 1278–1305), was too young to take control immediately. During the period following Otakar’s death (remembered as the “evil years”), Wenceslas was a mere puppet in the hands of ambitious lords, but in 1290 he emancipated himself from the tutelage and ruled with more success than had his father. The country was slowly recovering from both political and economic depression, and it again played an active role in international relations. Instead of resorting to wars, Wenceslas engaged in negotiations and soon achieved success in Upper Silesia. This was a prelude to his penetration into Poland, which culminated in 1300 with his coronation as its king. Diplomatic dexterity and enormous wealth quickly enhanced Wenceslas’s prestige. In 1301 he was considered a candidate for the vacant throne of Hungary, but instead he recommended his son Wenceslas, who ruled Hungary until 1304. Wenceslas II’s acquisitions, however, were lost soon after his death; his son, as King Wenceslas III, took over Bohemia but was assassinated on his way to Poland (1306). Thus ended the long rule of the Přemyslid dynasty by the male line.