Royal governments

Abstract

Reconstructing the history of the practical aspects of royal government in the three medieval states of East Central Europe—Bohemia, Hungary and Poland—before 1300 is a challenging task, marred by important obstacles. The first is that the very political situation in each of the above-mentioned states was very different from the others. While there was much stability in Hungary, despite some dynastic quarrels in the second half of the 11th and in the 12th centuries, royal governments were far from stable in Bohemia and in Poland during that same period. In Bohemia, the royal government was a discontinuous and late phenomenon, largely dependent upon the decisions of the German emperors. In spite of the coronations of Vratislav II (king from 1085 to 1092), Vladislav II (king from 1158 to 1172) and Přemysl Otakar I (king from 1203 to 1230), Bohemia became a hereditary kingdom only in 1212, with the promulgation of the Golden Bull of Sicily by Frederick II. 1 In the case of Poland, besides discontinuity in royal government, the kingdom was divided into several duchies from 1138 to 1295. The five known Polish kings are either long before (Bolesław Chrobry from 1000 to 1025 or just in 1025; Mieszko II from 1025 to 1031; and Bolesław II from 1076 to 1079) or after that (Przemysł II from June 1295 to February 1296 and Wenceslas II, King of Bohemia and Poland from 1300 to 1305). The second important impediment is the nature of the sources, which are rare before the 12th century. There are of course differences in that respect as well: while the problem is quite serious for Poland and Bohemia, for which there are very few written sources before 1100, in Hungary, at least, laws exist, in addition to a short “mirror of princes” entitled Admonitions and attributed to a foreign clerk writing on behalf of King Stephen I for his son Emeric. 2