Bohemia and Moravia were two sparsely populated regions in eastern central Europe, inhabited during the period of the crusades mainly by Czechs, with minorities of Germans and Jews. At the beginning of this period, the two regions were ruled by the Premyslid dynasty, whose leading representatives held the titles of dukes of Bohemia and margraves of Moravia. They were vassals of the kings or emperors in Germany and paid tribute to them. They retained great influence on ecclesiastical institutions in their countries, especially the bishoprics of Prague (Cz. Praha) in Bohemia and Olomouc in Moravia. This situation allowed Duke Vratislav II of Bohemia (d. 1092) to aspire to a royal crown under imperial suzerainty, and participation in crusades was helpful in the continuing attempts of his successors to achieve the royal title.
Both Bohemia and Moravia had contacts with the East dating from the ninth and tenth centuries, because trade routes from the West passed through the Bohemian capital, Prague, via Krakôw to Kiev and the Black Sea. Other routes that followed the Danube through Hungary and crossed the Balkans to Constantinople were frequently used by Western pilgrims and crusaders to Jerusalem. The Jewish community at Prague suffered from riots in 1096, when during the First Crusade (1096-1099) the German leader Volkmar and his hordes passed through Bohemia on the way from the Rhineland to Hungary.
From the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries, the population of Bohemia and Moravia grew, especially through German immigration. Compared with other parts of Latin Christendom, however, the overall figures remained low, and as a consequence the participation of Bohemians and Moravians in the crusades was insignificant, as far as numbers are concerned. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify individuals from Bohemia and Moravia who went on crusades, and even in some cases to speculate about their motives. After the First Crusade a few pilgrims are known to have left for Jerusalem, such as Count Vznata in 1122 and the two noblemen Hermann and Lutobor in 1124. Sources from Klosterneuburg in Austria mention a crusader with the typical Czech name Ottokar. Pious nobles evidently adopted the habits of their social equals from other Western countries.
The most important pilgrim to Jerusalem was Henry Zdik, bishop of Olomouc (1126-1150), who went there in 1123 and again in 1137. On both journeys he was accompanied by nobles, clerics, and servants, among them a Count Dluhomil (1123) and Silvester, abbot of the monastery of Sazava (1137). Henry’s books are known to have included a Descriptio Terre Sancte (description of the Holy Land). On his deathbed, the bishop commissioned donations to Jerusalem; Count Groznata, son of Count Hermann, took these gifts to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem in 1152. Henry not only enhanced his reputation for piety through his travels to Jerusalem, but also established many contacts that were extremely helpful when he tried to reform existing religious houses or found new ones. He established Augustin- ian canons in his cathedral in Olomouc that obtained a fragment of the True Cross; the cathedral chapter was later reorganized to follow the rule of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Premonstratensian canons were installed at Litomyšl, where the convent was named after the Mount of Olives, and Cistercians came to Strahov in Prague, where the monastery was called Mount Zion.
When Bernard of Clairvaux was planning the preaching for the Second Crusade (1147-1149), Bishop Henry Zdik was the obvious choice to be entrusted with this mission in eastern central Europe. The Second Crusade significantly increased crusade participation from Bohemia and Moravia.
Duke Vladislav II of Bohemia had been used to collaborating with Henry Zdik against other members of the Premys- lid family. Now he was convinced by Henry that crusading could be an effective way to rally support and to establish his primacy. So Vladislav organized a contingent to accompany his overlord King Conrad III of Germany on the crusade. Although Vladislav himself returned from Constantinople via Kiev and Krakôw along the ancient trade route, some of his retinue continued with Conrad III through Asia Minor; at the battle of Dorylaion in 1147, Vladislav’s marshal Jurik died, and the ducal chancellor Bartholomew was taken prisoner. At Constantinople, Bishop Henry Zdik held talks concerning ecclesiastical differences between Greeks and Latins. Later Pope Eugenius III permitted him and three Moravian princes, cousins of Vladislav, to fight against heathen peoples living on the coasts of the Baltic Sea. Yet neither there nor in the East did these crusading efforts yield immediate advantages for the Premyslids. In order to gain recognition as king of Bohemia in 1158, Vladislav had to provide troops to Frederick I Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, for his campaign against Milan. But Vladislav still felt uneasy about his unfulfilled vow to visit Jerusalem and never gave up his plans to go to the Holy Land. When Raymond, the master of the Hospital, heard of this, he presented Vladislav with the keys of the Hospitaller fortress Krak des Chevaliers.
In the 1160s Vladislav’s brother Henry was a guest of the Hospitaller master Gilbert of Assailly in the Holy Land, as attested by a charter of Henry’s son Henry Bretislav, bishop of Prague (1182-1197). In 1172 Vladislav was forced to abdicate. From this point on, the rival Premyslids who competed for the throne, as well as the nobility of Bohemia and Moravia, favored prestigious crusading plans and crusader institutions such as the military-religious orders as a means of securing ecclesiastical support. Martin, provost of the cathedral chapter of Prague, became a Hospitaller, served several years in the East, and returned with the title preceptor Ungarie, Boemie et omnium aliarum terrarum ob oriente et meridie et septentrione adiacentium (preceptor of Hungary, Bohemia and all adjacent lands to the east, south, and north), having been given the task of organizing support for the kingdom of Jerusalem from eastern central Europe. Martin secured important donations for the Hospitallers from Duke Frederick of Bohemia, the eldest son of the late King Vladislav.
The fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 sparked a new enthusiasm for crusades to the East that lasted for several decades. When Emperor Frederick Barbarossa took the cross at Mainz in 1188, Duke Frederick of Bohemia was present, although he did not ultimately accompany his overlord to the East. Duke Frederick’s successor, Conrad Otto, similarly did not go in person to the Holy Land, unlike some of his relatives and rivals. Among them was Dëpolt II, a nephew of Vladislav II, who died on his return from the Third Crusade (1189-1192) on 9 August 1191, in Italy, where he had joined Emperor Henry VI who was besieging Naples. Henry Bretislav, bishop of Prague and duke of Bohemia, took the cross in 1195, but died at home in 1197. The ruling princes who took crusade vows but did not go, notwithstanding the dangers for their souls, were probably attempting to strengthen their position by exploiting crusade privileges, even though they could not afford to leave Bohemia.
The political situation in Bohemia-Moravia changed in 1197 with the accession of Ottokar I (d. 1230). The new prince profited from internal strife in Germany and was formally recognized as hereditary king of Bohemia by both claimants to the empire, Otto IV and Philip of Swabia, and by Pope Innocent III. His surviving Premyslid rivals were expelled from the kingdom. Bohemia and Moravia were now united under a strong monarchy, supported by German immigrants, townspeople, and churchmen, while the Czech nobles increasingly concentrated their attention on their own estates. Gradually crusading initiatives lost their importance for the internal affairs of the realm.
During the first half of the thirteenth century, both Bohemia and Moravia continued to contribute men and money for crusades in the East, against the Cathars in southern France, and in the eastern Baltic lands. Bishop Daniel of Prague (1197-1214) collected money for the Holy Land; when he died, Pope Innocent III commissioned an investigation. When Ottokar I’s cousin Dëpolt III assembled troops for a crusade, the troops attacked a royal castle instead, and in 1217 Pope Honorius III ordered the bishops of Prague and Olomouc and the provost of Regensburg to intervene on behalf of the king against Dëpolt III’s attack. The monarchy was now clearly too strong to be endangered by magnates under the pretext of a crusade. Yet people from Bohemia and Moravia were still attracted by crusades. In 1250 a dominus Marcualdus suppanus de Boemia (Lord Markwald, the judge, from Bohemia) and thirty-six companions were recorded on a ship at Messina bound to join King Louis IX of France in the Holy Land [Historia diplomatica Friderici II, ed. Jean- Louis-Alphonse Huillard-Bréholles, 6 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1852-1861), vol. 6, book 2: 784-789]. There were even some inhabitants of Bohemia or Moravia who emigrated to the Holy Land, for example the monk Egidius mentioned by the chronicler Gunther of Pairis.
Ottokar I’s grandson Ottokar II (d. 1278) was the last Bohemian ruler to make use of the prestige and enthusiasm that accrued to those who organized crusades. His ultimate aim was probably to secure the German imperial throne. Significantly Ottokar II’s crusades were not directed toward the Holy Land but toward Prussia, where the Teutonic Order was carrying out campaigns of Christianization. From the perspective of Bohemia and Moravia, crusades to Prussia had several advantages: the costs of traveling were lower; Bohemian interests in Poland could be pursued; the friendship of the Teutonic Order could be secured. The most obvious advantage, however, was papal support. As early as 1246, Pope Innocent IV sent an envoy to negotiate with Ottokar about a new crusade. After his accession (1253), Ottokar II led crusades to Prussia in 1254-1255 and again in 1267-1268. His first expedition succeeded in conquering the last heathen parts of the Prussian coast, and the newly constructed stronghold of Konigsberg (literally, “the king’s mountain”) was named in his honor. Ottokar’s second expedition helped to subdue a rebellion among the heathen Prussians and was intended to stabilize his hegemony throughout central Europe. Ottokar’s councillor Bruno, bishop of Olomouc (1245-1281), even vainly hoped that his see would become the archbishopric for Prussia and Livonia.
One of the main results of the crusading movement in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the establishment in Bohemia and Moravia of new religious orders: the Hospitallers, Templars, Teutonic Knights, and Canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Their common purpose was to support and protect pilgrims: they fought for the faith (except for the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre) and cared for the sick (except for the Templars). These orders were given rich houses, important parishes, and large estates in Bohemia and Moravia, whose surpluses they were supposed to transfer to the Holy Land. Usually their early acquisitions were pious donations, either from Premyslid princes or from nobles such as the Bavor family or the Markvartice. All four orders had houses at Prague, the capital of the realm. Southern Moravia was another important center, because after the Third Crusade, when the routes through Hungary, the Balkans, and Asia Minor had become too insecure, men and money from all over eastern central Europe were sent to the Holy Land through this region via Vienna and Venice. Later the great military religious orders began to invest surpluses in Bohemia and Moravia themselves. From the mid-thirteenth century, they no longer relied upon donations but bought estates, colonized lands, erected castles, and even founded towns.
The Hospitallers were evidently established in Bohemia as early as 1169. Favored by King Vladislav and his court at Prague, they acquired a site on the western side of the main bridge over the River Vltava just outside the town walls. More than a dozen houses and commanderies throughout the realm followed. In Bohemia these included Kadan (confiscated by Ottokar II in order to found a town) and the town of Manëtin; the castle of Strakonice (acquired before 1243 from the Bavor family); estates at Horažd’ovice and Picin; and parish churches, tithes, and in some cases hospitals atSwëtla (later called Dub), Mlada Boleslav, and Ploskovice, as well as at Zittau and Hirschfelde on the roads to Lusatia (Lausitz) and Glatz (mod. Klodzko, Poland) on the road to Silesia. In central Moravia, they had hospitals at Staré Brno and later at Kromëriz, estates at Ivanovice (near where the Hospitallers built a castle at Orlovice), Mutënice (Crux), Pribice, Horni Kounice (the last two places initially as dependencies of Mailberg in Austria), and perhaps also Brt- nice. In the north of Moravia they held estates at Hrobniky, from which they moved to the nearby town ofLeobschütz (mod. Glubczyce, Poland), and in 1333 Duke Nicholas of Opava gave them a hospital at his capital of Opava (Ger. Troppau).
The main dependency of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre was the church of St. Peter at the Zderaz in Prague, though they soon acquired other churches and hospitals, especially Nymburk and Trutnov (the latter dependent upon their convent at Neisse in Silesia). Though the other orders did not admit women, at least initially, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre supervised a female convent at Svëtec.
The Teutonic Knights received their first donations from Vladislav Henry, margrave of Moravia (1198-1203). Their possessions soon outnumbered those of the Hospitallers. Outside Prague, the Teutonic Order held the town of Chomu- tov, several parish churches in Repin, Bÿckovice, Bilina, Plzen, Cheb (Ger. Eger, an imperial town pawned to the Bohemian kings), Miletin and Hradec Kralové,Drobovice (to which was added a house and a hospital in the town of Nëmeckÿ Brod), and finally the parish church and a hospital next to the castle and town of Jindrichûv Hradec (Ger. Neuhaus). In Moravia several possessions were centered at Hostëradice, Krumlov, and especially the small town of Neusedlitz (Austerlitz, founded by the order). Parish churches at Opava and at Jagerndorf were donated to the Teutonic Order by the Premyslids. Since Bohemia and especially Moravia were essential for the communication between the Baltic and Mediterranean regions, the Teutonic Order administered its possessions in the two countries through a provincial commander subject directly to the grand master in Prussia.
The Temple, the oldest military religious order, was the last to receive estates in the Czech lands. During the 1230s and later, the Templars obtained houses in Prague itself and in the nearby village of Uhrinëves. In Moravia they were given the castle of Cejkovice and the large estate of Jamolice, where they built the castle of Tempelstejn. Between 1297 and 1308, the Templars colonized newly acquired territories around the River Becva and near Vsetin on the border with Hungary, where they built the castle of Freundsberg. After the dissolution of the order in 1312, only Cejkovice and Tempelstejn passed on to the Hospitallers, whereas the other possessions were taken over by noble families.
Crusading in Bohemia and Moravia during the fifteenth century was primarily concerned with religious wars against the Hussites, a reform movement in the Czech lands that was regarded as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. In the fourteenth century, however, the kings of Bohemia maintained close ties with the Teutonic Order in the Baltic region, mainly because John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia from 1310, and his son, Emperor Charles IV (d. 1378), periodically allied themselves with the Teutonic grand master against Poland. This policy was designed to further Bohemian expansion into Silesia and Lusatia. This expansion had already begun in the thirteenth century, but under Charles IV it culminated in the incorporation of these countries into the Bohemian realm, while even Brandenburg and its Neu- mark (new march) came under Luxembourg rule. This explains the participation of Bohemians and Moravians in the reysen (seasonal campaigns) against the pagan Lithuanians organized by the Teutonic grand master in Prussia, and joined by nobles from all over Europe. Three times (1328-1329, 1336-1337, and 1344-1345) King John himself took part, accompanied by Ulrich von Neuhaus, who commemorated the events with paintings in his palace at Jindrichûv Hradec. On some occasions crusading schemes were fostered in connection with the eastern Mediterranean region, as, for example, when Charles IV received King Peter I of Cyprus at his court in Prague.
The Luxembourg kings, especially Charles IV, leaned heavily on ecclesiastical support against aristocratic opposition. The Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights in Bohemia and Moravia had to cope with economic difficulties, royal interventions, and noble jealousy. Conflicts between Luxembourg princes after Charles IV’s death increased the power of the Czech nobility and boded ill for both crusades financed by papal indulgences and ecclesiastical property in the realm. The Teutonic Order suffered most. King Wenceslas IV came into conflict with its grand master in 1388-1389 when the order in Prussia refused to buy the Neumark of Brandenburg. Burdened by heavy debts in its commanderies and disaster in Prussia after its defeat at Tannenberg, the Teutonic Order was unable to prevent the king from confiscating its Bohemian and Moravian houses in 1411. Only some parishes of the order survived.
During the wars against the Hussites, the alienation of ecclesiastical property continued. Even Roman Catholic kings wooed the magnates with such donations. The Hospitallers survived in their stronghold of Strakonice. Later in the fifteenth century, the orders returned to Prague, though the Czech nobility did not restore many of their former estates. Frequent crusades against the Hussites made any significant contribution to the wars against the Ottoman Turks impossible. The crusade against the Turks was, however, often used as an argument in various negotiations for peace with the Hussites held by King Sigismund and his heirs, by the Council of Basel, and by Pope Pius II. Pope Paul II was not pleased when King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary used the papal crusade against the heretical Bohemian king George of Podëbrad as a pretext to conquer Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia instead of fighting the infidel in the Balkans. Of course some Moravians and even Bohemians participated in expeditions such as that directed by John of Capistrano against Belgrade in 1456. But in general the Hussite problem contributed decisively to the demise of crusading in Bohemia and Moravia at the end of the Middle Ages.