Introduction
This chapter takes upon the conclusions made in Chapter 2 that suggested hierarchical and culture-driven factors to be formative for the thirteenth-century “international” units. It attempts to acknowledge and determine the impact of political culture on how lords shaped their interests, motivations and behaviors while interacting with each other. More specifically, it asks how Władysław Łokietek became an informed player on the “international” stage and strive to demonstrate into what sort of international system Łokietek was born? The logic of this chapter presupposes that surveying the “international” sub-system of the Polish lands and their adjacent neighborhoods in search for lordly routinized practices and patterns of behavior will provide a framework for contextualizing Łokietek’s “international” agenda in Chapter 5 that particularly deals with the origins of the Angevin-Piast marriage of 1320.
In other words, in this chapter I assume that Łokietek learnt to act as lord chiefly by observation, emulation and participation; the process that can be called “socialization to politics”. This socialization implied for Łokietek to acquire certain social roles and culturally-informed needs, principles and values in order to be socially recognized as a member of the ruling elite. Namely, Łokietek was strongly expected to internalize and interact with lordly identity as it inter-subjectively functioned in the society.
Making reference to the concept of lordly identity (as put forward in Chapter 1), the following chapter surveys “international” behaviors of the Piast dukes, their neighbors and their lord-subjects throughout the thirteenth century, in order to provide and document the essential content of what it stood for lordly identity. It is, therefore, not about Łokietek’s personal characteristics and individual traits but about his inter-subjective role that he was most likely to play in the society, if he wanted to retain the elite standing he inherited after his father.
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Ultimately, this chapter argues for essential “otherness” of the thirteenth-century
“international” politics as compared to modern notions and standards. By bringing into the picture the culturally-driven hierarchical ordering principle of the “international” system and by seeking to establish the content of lordly identity, the chapter recognizes the significance of the unique “rules of the game” (as they made sense to the thirteenth-century lords) and tries to establish an interpretative framework for elucidating adequately – that is, more on the well-researched grounds and less on the basis of currently held convictions about how international politics operates – the Angevin-Piast marriage of 1320.
Socialization to Politics
The Waltzian neorealism assumed that the structural anarchy, that is, the absence of a system-wide government, compels international units – independently from their leaders’
characteristics and their internal political system – to pursue self-seeking politics predominantly concerned about relative gains and maximization of power. The lack of effective system-wide authority instills distrust between international agents and hence impedes possible cooperation. As a result, conflict at the international level erupts, in a sense, due to natural causes, that is, the international environment is per force hostile to all its members and does not leave much room for non-threat driven behaviors.
Nevertheless, the analysis carried out in Chapter 2 revealed that the anarchy-hierarchy dichotomy, proposed by Waltz’s model and quite popular with IR scholars of various theoretical denominations, does not suffice to provide well-grounded explanation of the thirteenth-century “international” mechanisms. Leaving aside the medieval sophisticated reflection about power, and judging solely from the vantage point that embraced political practice throughout the century, it became clear that there was no Latin Christendom-wide government (and thus system-level anarchy prevailed) but – at the same time – this anarchical fabric of the “international” system was strongly mitigated by the dominating political culture, which promoted hierarchy; yet in a different form that was not taken by Waltz. This hierarchy was not similar to domestic structures of government that impose functional differentiation by introducing separate agencies to pursue specific goals within the system. This hierarchy was not, therefore, an effect of progressive sophistication of state’s administration, rationally invented and developed by human factor.
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Quite the opposite, the hierarchy that dominated the thirteenth-century
“international” environment was perceived as God-given in the first place, then customary and inherited from the ancestors. This hierarchy was, therefore, far more than a bureaucratic invention; it functioned rather as a cultural context and framework for anarchical (self-seeking and power-building-centered) practices. Hence, the anarchy-hierarchy dichotomy was not enough to elucidate motivations and behaviors of “international” units (lordships); a third
“hybrid” way is needed that will compromise and allow for a mode of coexistence between the anarchical structure that engendered distrust, self-regard, and conflict; and the hierarchical culture that provided building blocks for creating political interests, promoted ways of establishing peace and order, and nurtured ideas necessary to rekindle trust and will to cooperate.
My fundamental assumption for this analysis comes from Waltz’s useful observations about the “three images of international relations”.358 He was right to claim that 1) in order to understand actors behavior on the international level, it is not sufficient to focus on personal characteristics of political leaders and trace their motivations down to the fallen human nature; 2) state’s political system will not provide satisfactory answers and 3) examining the structure of the international environment could deliver interesting insights about why actors behave in a particular manner. On the virtue of my research done so far, however, I do not think that reducing the explanation of “international” mechanisms solely to the influence coming from the international anarchy will genuinely say a few but important things about the thirteenth-century “international” system in Latin Christendom.
Following stricktly this model would allow me to assert that Władysław Łokietek, once he entered into politics, engaged in conflictual and self-regarding power politics by striving to maximize his power and thus secure his and his family’s survival and material welfare (for in anarchical conditions no real alternative of such behaviors exists). Nevertheless, this model significantly limits room for answers how “power”, “security”, “survival”, and hence the political interest as such, could be defined in the thirteenth-century context. By emphasizing anarchical structure of international system, the model reduces non-structural elements and practices that could have impact on actors’ behavior. My assumption is, therefore, that the threesome: 1) human nature; 2) an internal structure of lordship; and 3) the principally
358 Cf. discussion on the realist tradition in Chapter 1.
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anarchical structure of the “international” system did not fully determined Łokietek and Charles I’s agency at the “international” level. There was an important aspect of socialization to politics that played a vital role in shaping their identities and interests as lords.
This chapter, therefore, builds on the constructivist concept of lordly identity359 and enquires what can be identified as these interest-shaping forces. At its outset, I would also presuppose the answer: it was the “contextualized (or routinized) practice”. Behind this vague term hides a conviction that Łokietek learnt arcana of politics by osmosis; in other words, by absorption of what he observed among his peers. I argue that political practices and examples he could witness: principles, means, methods, strategies, and goals, and the entire mindset how to think about “international” matters; they all constituted factors that provided a pool of political choices, suggested algorithms of behavior, and crafted interests and laid foundations for dynastic and political identities.
The scope of my inquiry is chronologically confined to the years before 1300. It was a moment when Łokietek went through a significant turning point in his lordly career. In that year Wenceslas II of Bohemia marched into the Polish lands, suppressed resistance here and there, expelled Łokietek and deprived him of his domains.360 Łokietek’s situation was so desperate that Tomasz Jurek described him as “politically bankrupt”.361 While the Polish duke was seeking refuge in Ruthenia,362 Wenceslas II made himself crowned king of Poland.363 All in all, in 1300 forty-year-old Łokietek364 found himself for the first time in the most disconcerting position of a landless high-born threatened by the power of the Přemyslids and unsure about
359 See relevant part in Chapter 1.
360 Dąbrowski, “Z czasów Łokietka. Studia nad stosunkami polsko-węgierskimi w XIV w. Część I,” 300.
361 Tomasz Jurek, Dziedzic Królestwa Polskiego książę głogowski Henryk (1274-1309) (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Avalon, 2006), 95.
362 As can be argued on the ground that in 1302 Łokietek with the Ruthenians organized an incursion to Little Poland, and there is no reliable evidence about what he precisely did in the years 1300-1302: cf. August Bielowski, ed., “Rocznik Małopolski, 965-1415,” in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. 3 (Lwów: w komisie Księg.
Gubrynowicza i Schmidta, 1878), 186.
363 Tomasz Pietras, “Krwawy wilk z pastorałem”: biskup krakowski Jan zwany Muskatą (Warszawa: Semper, 2001), 54.
364 Kazimierz Jasiński established Łokietek’s date of birth on the year 1260. Cf. Kazimierz Jasiński, Rodowód Piastów małopolskich i kujawskich (Poznań; Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Historyczne, 2001), 117–118. Thus, in 1300 Łokietek was already quite experienced in conducting “international” politics, for as a “young duke”, he was mentioned for the first time in Bolesław the Pious’s charter of August 7, 1273, as a party together with his mother Eufrozyna in a contention against the Teutonic Knights: Ignacy Zakrzewski, ed., Kodeks Dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, vol. 1 (Poznań: Nakł. Bibl. Kórnickiej, 1877), n. 450. His first known charter was issued on May 1, 1275: cf. Alojzy Preissner, “Dokumenty Władysława Łokietka. Chronologiczny spis, regesty i bibliografia edycji,”
Rocznik Biblioteki PAN w Krakowie 11 (1965): 197.
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the future. To balance this picture it is worth mentioning that at same time twelve-year-old365 Charles I made a decisive step into the “international” politics.
Setting the Scene – the Origins of Ducal Lordships in the Polish Lands
In 1138 Duke Bolesław the Wrymouth of Poland divided his lordship into smaller entities and distributed them between his sons. As Uruszczak observed, this division was well justified due to the inefficiency of ducal power over extensive territories and was triggered by claims to rule raised by junior members of the Piast dynasty, and yet was also supported by local lesser lords who looked forward to benefiting from more direct access to a duke.366 Uruszczak asserted that the juniors did not claim neither the state nor its territory (as if – like claims the common concept of the “patrimonial monarchy” that dominates the modern Polish historiography – they owned it according to the property law)367 but merely their right to exercise power.368 In Bisson’s terms the division of 1138, as numerous others earlier and later, occurred due to the juniors’ claims to lordship perceived as the embodiment of high-status and nobility (the powerfulness).
Fragmentation done by Duke Bolesław the Wrymouth was by no means unique in its idea; what was special about it was that it remained irreversible for next approx. hundred-eighty years. Moreover, it initiated a process of division which from one duke of Poland in 1138 led to eight dukes ruling in the Polish lands (only the current power-holders considered) when Władysław Łokietek was born. To him, therefore, the practice of division and existence of local principalities was a primary experience, whereas the concept of the unified Poland was no more than a distant memory.
There was another reason that made Bolesław the Wrymouth’s divide of 1138 exceptional. After having defeated his brother, Bolesław was the only duke of Poland and it could be argued that the hierarchical principle of overlordship appeared natural to him. As a result, not only did he intend to provide each of his sons with a decent lordship but he thought
365 He was born in 1288: Gyula Kristó and Ferenc Makk, Károly Róbert emlékezete (Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó, 1988), 7.
366 Wacław Uruszczak, Historia państwa i prawa polskiego (966-1795) (Warsaw: Oficyna Wolters Kluwer Polska, 2010), 66.
367 Cf. Jacek Matuszewski, “Polska monarchia patrymonialna - opis średniowiecznej rzeczywistości czy produkt dziewiętnastowiecznej historiografii?,” in Król w Polsce XIV i XV wieku, ed. Andrzej Marzec and Maciej Wilamowski (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego “Societas Vistulana,” 2006), 137–53. See also:
Wacław Uruszczak, “Następstwo tronu w księstwie krakowsko-sandomierskim i Królestwie Polskim (1180-1370),” Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne 62, no. 1 (2010): 15–36.
368 Uruszczak, Historia państwa, 66.
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of creating a system which would preserve the prerogatives of his own office. If all sons would only receive their parts, there was no place for a lord named “duke of Poland”. To avoid this end, Bolesław the Wrymouth introduced what is now called the “principate”, that is, he designated the oldest member of his descendants as the overseer of his younger brothers, and equipped him, apart from a hereditary territorial allowance, with the so-called “senioral province” (presumably the central strip of land from Little Poland with Cracow in the south through Cuiavia to Gdańsk-Pomerania in the north) and additional privileges that were to guarantee the meta-unity of Bolesław the Wrymouth’s duchy and to tie up separate lord-dukes to their ancestors’ legacy.369 This principate-system was challenged within a couple of years, when the senior brother was exiled and never again he resumed his office of overseer.
Over next decades the system gradually withered and ultimately failed.370
Bronisław Nowacki, while setting out the social and political context which laid foundations for Przemysł II’s (d. 1296) political actions, asserted:
In the period of provincial disintegration of Poland, and almost from its beginnings, one can observe two distinct yet contradictory tendencies of political development of Poland. The first aimed at deepening and sustaining the state’s divisions by making attempts not to recognize the established rules of the political system of principate. The second tendency, which could be called ‘legalistic’, strove to maintain the political unity of the state by standing firmly at the principate system. This was the reason that in the twelfth and almost entire thirteenth centuries any actions towards unifying lands and provinces of disintegrated Poland were ephemeral. … Main factors were: the lack of interest in unification projects showed by
369 For more details see: Ibid., 57, 66.
370 Sławomir Gawlas, who followed Janusz Bieniak’s research findings, claimed that in 1138 the duchy of Poland was not divided into a number of hereditary principalities and that Bolesław the Wrymouth’s statute was principally aimed at securing better succession mechanisms. Power in the duchy of Poland was considered as the property of the Piast dynasty and the “senior”, the oldest male representative of the ruling family, preserved the highest authority as the grand duke. Gawlas asserted that the “principate” functioned for several decades and pointed that some highest offices remained Poland-wide, for instance the rank of voivode survived until ca. 1180.
Junior dukes ruled in separate provinces but generally consented to the grand duke’s prerogatives. Gawlas’s objections to the initial hereditary status of juniors’ allowances do not affect my argument. The political practice, as Gawlas himself observed, revealed universal ducal agendas to consider their allowances as hereditary in order to provide their sons, that is the new generation of the Piasts, with adequate lordships. What is important in Gawlas’s perspective is yet another evidence that the dynasty claimed its natural right to control and dominate the Polish lands. The matter of the form of this domination (monarchy or poliarchy) was secondary. See: Sławomir Gawlas, O kształt zjednoczonego Królestwa: niemieckie władztwo terytorialne a geneza społecznoustrojowej odrębności Polski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 1996), 78–79.
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the majority of the provincial Piast dukes and similar lack of support of the idea of unification expressed by social forces that had had influence on political matters of the country.371
The political system of principate did not survive long but the idea of overlordship carried out by a senior Piast continued almost to the mid-thirteenth century. Duke Konrad of Mazovia (d. 1247) has been considered by Polish historiography as the last protagonist of the system, for he deliberately crafted his “international” politics in accordance to the system’s fundamental principle that linked the overlordship of a senior member of the Piast dynasty with his rule in the land (province) of Cracow.372
Principal Identity – the Lordship-Imperative
There was, however, another principle among the Piasts that upheld its validity throughout the entire thirteenth century. The principle drew from customary political practice and required that every grown-up and male member of the dynasty was to become a lord by receiving a lordship, that is, a piece of territory to rule. In order to identify this unwritten element of the Polish political system, I analyzed373 the biographies of all Piasts whose dates of birth or death fell into the thirteenth century, and who lived – according to the extant sources – for twelve years or more (the earliest supposed moment of entering adulthood).374 I searched them in order to confirm or discard my intuition that the overwhelming majority of male Piasts that were born or died in the given period managed to establish their lordships.
My criterion for confirmation was quite weak, that is, I put into one box all Piasts who had been ever attested to rule or co-rule in a separate land or province.
The outcome of my analysis was rather telling. There were seventy-five male individuals of the Piast dynasty whose biographies happened to be linked with the thirteenth
371 W okresie rozbicia dzielnicowego w Polsce obserwujemy, niemal od jego początków, dwie wyraźnie przeciwstawne tendencje rozwoju politycznego kraju. Pierwsza zmierzała do pogłębiania i utrwalania podziału państwa, co wyrażało się dążeniami do nierespektowania ustanowionych zasad ustroju pryncypackiego. Druga tendencja, można powiedzieć – legalistyczna, poprzez trwanie na bazie zasad wynikających z ustanowionej zasady pryncypackiej, starała się zachować jedność polityczną państwa. W tym leży przyczyna, że w XII i niemal całym XIII w. działania na rzecz jednoczenia dzielnic rozdrobnionej Polski dawały zaledwie krótkotrwałe rezultaty. … Głównymi czynnikami były: brak większego zainteresowania problemem jednoczenia Polski ze strony większości piastowskich książąt dzielnicowych oraz brak poparcia idei zjednoczeniowych przez siły społeczne mające wpływ na sprawy polityczne kraju [translation mine]: Bronisław Nowacki, Przemysł II: odnowiciel Korony Polskiej:
(1257-1296) (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Avalon, 2007), 19.
372 Ibid., 22.
373 For my analysis I used the data collected here: Jurek, Szczur, and Ożóg, Piastowie.
374 Cf. Walerian Sobociński, “Historia rządów opiekuńczych w Polsce,” Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne 2 (1949): 248–263. See also: Wiszewski, Henryk II Pobożny, 94.
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century and who lived twelve years at least. From their number there were only four known cases (3%) that a Piast did not receive any lordship. Such situation never occurred in Great Poland, Little Poland and among the Piasts of Cuiavia. There were three cases in Silesia (Bolesław, Duke Henry the Bearded’s son, died in 1206/08; Bolko II, Duke Bolko I of Jawor and Świdnica’s son, died in 1300; and Jerzy, Duke Casimir of Bytom and Kozielsk’s son, died between 1327 and 1355) and one in Mazovia (Siemomysł, Duke Konrad of Mazovia’s son, died in 1241). Of this group three Piasts, Bolesław, Bolko II and Siemomysł, had two things in common: 1) they did not live longer than 20 years, and 2) they died while their fathers were still alive. Only Jerzy’s is an exceptional case, because he lived well into adulthood but the extant data about him has been so scarce that almost nothing could be said in regard to his life and deeds.375 In short, three out of four Piasts passed away prematurely and it is possible that by the time of their death their fathers had not yet decided to share with them a part of their own lordship. Such practice that sons had to wait for their father’s death to split his lordship into smaller entities was not unusual. Furthermore, Bolesław and Bolko were first-borns376 and at least in their case it could be argued that should they have lived longer, they would have been granted a proper lordship.
Assuming this perspective would allow for a speculation that only one out of the seventy-five Piasts (0,75%) for some mysterious reason (that is, unrevealed by sources) was deprived of his share in power. There are three other instances, in which the Piasts did not become lord-princes but lord-bishops (Archbishop Władysław of Salzburg, Duke Henry the Pious’s son, died in 1270; and brothers: Archbishop Bolesław of Esztergom, died in 1328, and Bishop Mieszko of Veszprem, died in 1344, who both were sons of Duke Casimir of Bytom).
Although they did not have a share in their ancestral legacy, undoubtedly they exercised another form of lordship.
In the early twelfth century, in his chronicle, Gallus Anonymous used a term “domini naturales” in order to defend and strengthen the dynastic rights of the Piasts to rule over Poland. The term implied that they had overseen the Polish lands since the time immemorial
375 Kazimierz Jasiński, Rodowód Piastów śląskich: Piastowie wrocławscy, legnicko-brzescy, świdniccy, ziębiccy, głogowscy, żagańscy, oleśniccy, opolscy, cieszyńscy i oświęcimscy, ed. Tomasz Jurek (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Avalon, 2007), 532–533.
376 Cf. about Bolko: Jurek, Szczur, and Ożóg, Piastowie, 579. Regarding Bolesław see: Jasiński, Rodowód Piastów śląskich, 99–101.
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and hence their lordship was both customary and reassured by hereditary laws. Besides, Gallus indicated that the dynasty of the Polish lords originated from Piast who had been selected to govern by God.377 In his view, any attempt to strip the natural lords of their power would lead to a disaster.378 Interestingly, Wincenty Kadłubek who wrote his widely-read chronicle in the turn of the thirteenth century did not focus anymore on emphasizing the Piasts’ rights to domination in Poland. Apparently, by his time they were unquestionable;
instead, Wincenty concentrated on setting out principles and norms of good and just rule, and even insisted that moral qualifications came first before inborn privileges.379 Nevertheless, the domination in Poland seemed well imbedded in the society of the Polish lands as the prerogative of the Piasts. As my brief study above showed, nearly all Piasts throughout the entire thirteenth century (and beyond) succeeded to put this general and customary principle into practice.
In the thirteenth century the Piasts were undeniably lords who maintained noble status by birth and custom. Therefore, Łokietek’s fundamental lordly identity, into which he was born, was that of a lord. Judging from aspirations and practices of other members of the dynasty, he could think of himself as predestined to rule and dominate. This innate noble qualification, however, did not automatically guarantee complete satisfaction about the size and scope of his prospective lordship. This was only the matter of his actions and further developments at the “international” stage. An important limitation he could possibly encounter was that his best chances for carving out his own lordship were confined to the Polish lands; the Piasts did not practically have experience in exporting their lordships beyond territories inherited from their forefathers and establishing them in new locations (unlike, for instance, the Angevins, Árpáds, Normans, Plantagenets, and Přemyslids to name a few).
377 Ewa A. Mądrowska, Domini naturales: portrety polskich władców w “Chronicon Polonorum” Mistrza Wincentego (Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2010), 19–20; 67–68. Przemysław Wiszewski explained: It is generally accepted that the phrase “domini naturales” should be identified with the Piasts. It is more difficult to answer the question why the chronicler using the present conjunctive is addressing in this sentence to his readers, among whom would have been those who had “not kept the faith”. … the reader should remember the close relationship between the presence at the head of the community of a member of the dynasty which by the grace of God was in rule, and the wellbeing of the country: Przemysław Wiszewski, Domus Bolezlai: Values and Social Identity in Dynastic Traditions of Medieval Poland (c. 966-1138) (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 220–221.
378 Gallus Anonymus, Kronika polska, ed. Marian Plezia, trans. Roman Grodecki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1965), XLIV–XLV.
379 Mądrowska, Domini naturales, 68.