The administrative structure of Silesia as a determinant of legal and constitutional cohesion (12th–15th century) (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
This collection of articles represents the output of the first stage of research on the history of the region of Silesia, conducted under the patronage of the European Science Foundation as part of the project 'Cuius regio. An analysis of the cohesive and disruptive forces determining the attachment and commitment of (groups of) persons to and cohesion within regions'. Silesia, one of the regions analyzed in the project, is an example of a borderland territory whose historical development was substantially influenced by various cultural traditions. The primary goal of the research on the Silesian history was to determine the factors that led to disintegration and subsequent recreation of the region, for there are arguments indicating that the history of the local community has been-and continues to be-the product of a dynamic process whose course was not determined solely by the factor of its constant existence within the limits demarcated within the 16 th-century Kingdom of Bohemia. We are hopeful that the book will inspire a discussion in the academic community on a new dimension of the social history of Silesia, on issues connected with the development of Europe's regions and on universal mechanisms present in the formation of regional social cohesion.
The book is the 4th volume from of the Cuius Regio series. It comprises articles devoted to the cohesion of Silesia as a region in the years 1918-1945. During this period Silesia was partitioned among three nation-states (Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland). As in all volumes of the series, chapters in the book present research on administrative structures (Kruszewski), economy (Urbaniak), social groups (Przerwa), ethnic and national issues (Strauchold), and regional identity (Linek) as factors and forces both strengthening and weakening regional cohesion. A general outline of the relevant part of the region’s history shows conditions under which deep changes occurred in a relatively short period of time affecting every field of Silesians’ lives.
The formation of Silesia (to 1163). Factors of regional integration
2013
Silesia took shape as a distinct region along with the development of state and church structures under Piast rule. The formation of these structures led to the dissolution of tribal relations. The central indicator of regional identity, the name belonging to the cultural legacy of barbaricum, acquired two new meanings, one territorial by nature and another new, far removed from its original, ideological sense within various traditions, not necessarily all of them Silesian. Cultural interpretation has led the Ślęża mountain, a source of myths and an essential part of both many legends and of the landscape, to undergo a similar transformation. In the period under consideration the influence of a so-called anthroporegional structure reaching back to prehistoric times on the structure of settlement is noticeable. When compared to the tribal era, the period of early state formation of the Piast monarchy saw the increased significance of the Odra river as an axis for the establishment of administration in both the state and Church. The region's integration progressed around its centre, located in Wrocław. The division of the Piast state into various territories after 1138 halted this process. The resulting divisions broke up regions formerly belonging to one diocese, and likely those previously belonging to one province as well. Among the significant issues in the formation of the region during the second half of the 12 th and beginning of the 13 th centuries were the restriction of the meaning of the term "Silesia" to the latter-day Lower Silesia, as well as the definition of its regional identity by territorial authorities to the Silesian titulature, rather than that of Wrocław. This was a reference a naming convention which was as old as the Ślężanie tribe. Silesia as a region thus became an undeniable fact of the social and political life of the fragmented Poland, while the extension of Silesian territory to the upper part of the Odra river occurred only in the 15 th century.
in "The Long Formation of the Region (c. 1000—1526)", ed. P. Wiszewski, Wrocław 2013, pp. 93–128
This article constitutes an attempt at answering the question of whether Silesia, aside from being a distinct historical region, was also a distinct economic region. The author starts with Robert E. Dickinson's theory of economic regions, the basic assumptions of which are shared by contemporary researchers of regional economies. Economic resources, the similar economic policies of Silesian rulers in the 13th and 14th centuries, high levels of urbanization in comparison to neighbouring regions and the centralizing capacity of Wrocław are considered to be the forces which bound together Silesian as an economic region. Factors retarding the economic cohesion of Silesia were analyzed as well. Those included natural disasters, invasions, internal strife, criminal activity along trade routes and a crisis in the mining industry beginning in the middle of the 14th century. Beginning with the final years of the 13th century, Silesia stabilized as an economic region containing Upper Silesia, Lower Silesia and Opava. This was not, however, a perfect cohesion, as Lower Silesia was economically superior to the other regions, which themselves had strong ties to Lesser Poland. Despite that, the crisis that took place from about 1350 until 1450 did not break the economic bonds between these three constituent elements of Silesia. In comparison to every historical and economic region on its borders, Silesia was distinguished by its advanced gold mining industry, the export of a red dyeing agent (marzanna) as well as the highest number of cities with a populations of between 3,000 and 14,000. Further distinct properties of the Silesian economy are noticeable when contrasted with other historical regions.
2013
The contents of this volume may disappoint those readers who would wish to find simple answers to traditional questions about the moment at which the Silesion region came to life and the role played in it by different social groups. The results of research performed by historians prove that these questions are in fact anachronistic. The authors reject the deterministic concept of the region’s evolution from a polycentric community to a monocentric (with Wroclaw as its capital city) unit of state and Church administration. Indeed, phenomena which are typically recognized as elements of this process are highlighted, but attributed different meanings. The picture of the region provided in the course of research is very dynamic. The authors’ aim was not to discover the nature of phenomena taking place within ‘the region’, but rather to determine the true number of the many regions co-existing at the time, to examine the dynamics and factors behind the constantly-changing affiliations of...
Regional identity in Silesia (until 1526)
2013
During the search for factors constituting proof of the existence of a Silesian regional identity in the Late Middle Ages, the author analyzed the process of formation and functioning of common traditions. Among the contributing factors analyzed is the name Śląsk/Silesia and the process through which it entered the collective consciousness. The Piast dynasty was a significant element of this tradition, considering the attempts made at preserving their memory, primarily within historiographical works. Saint Hedwig of Silesia (d. 1243) was of particular significance to this dynasty; her cult changed from one dynastic in nature into regional, as she became the patron saint of Silesia. In Silesian tradition Piotr Wlostowic (d. circa 1151) is another very important figure; his literary and historiographical prowess allowed him to rise to the status of regional hero. The local Church was also significant in the forging of regional identity. The author analyzed the actions it took for the ...
Determinants and catalysts of Silesian regional identity (1526–1740)
2014
The perception of Silesia as something distinct and the formation of emotional bonds with the region, which were based on chronicles from the Middle Ages was further enhanced by humanist thought. Since the end of the 15th century and the beginnings of the 16th due to poetry, historiographical works, geographical description and the first maps, the vision of a region with specified borders, the population of which felt bonded due to shared history, pride of fertile lands and magnificent cities, especially the Capital City of Wroclaw the awareness of Silesia as a homeland, simply of being Silesian grew among the population. Boys from different social groups, taught in the local schools were instructed and moulded all through the Habsburg era. Since the Thirty Years’ War, as a result of the policy of undermining the importance of pan-Silesian institutions, with the demise of the Silesian Piast dynasty and other dynasties laying claim on their duchies, the local awareness grew. Even the...
General accounts of the political history of later medieval Europe have tended to stress the development of discrete, more-or-less coherent units. A typical approach in such accounts is to list the most prominent European kingdoms and principalities, and to characterise the most important trends in their development in terms of that which contributed (however gradually and incompletely) to their consolidation and constituted the vertical ‘lineaments of state power’. This way of thinking about politics has long posed a problem for the German-speaking spaces within the Holy Roman Empire. Given that a path towards increasingly centralised statehood under a monarch or prince is held up as the norm, it is not surprising that – in light of the weakness of the kings of the Romans and the fragmentation of the Imperial political map – German scholars have concluded that ‘das römisch-deutsche Reich den Weg zur modernen Staatlichkeit nicht gefunden [hat]’, and furthermore that ‘in den Territorien weitgehend verwirklicht wurde, was dem Reich als Ganzem versagt blieb, so daß es in Deutschland eher die Territorialherrschaften waren, die den Grundstock für die Ausbildung des modernen “Anstaltsstaates” gelegt haben’. The notion that the Empire’s late medieval political development was shaped by the creation of Territorien – Territorialstaaten, even –emerged in the early modern principalities within the Empire, and has overshadowed the historiography of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ever since. There have been attempts to render this idea of crystallising authority within compartmentalised lordship-territories less anachronistically and less abstractly as socially-grounded Landesherrschaft and Landeshoheit, notably under the influence of Otto Brunner’s concept of autogenic lordship in tradition- and community-derived Länder. The word ‘state’ is thus now avoided, but the historiographical vision of the Empire remains that of a patchwork of evolving political units (Flächenherrschaften) characterised by growing governmental authority. As Ernst Schubert conceded in his recent overview of princely lordship in late medieval Germany, scholarship of the Empire remains in the grip of this model of territorial political power below the level of the crown even though scholars are questioning the meaning and value of the concepts (Territorium, Landesherrschaft, and so on) which underpin it. The Empire as a whole has not been fully abandoned in the search for a political narrative for later medieval Germany. Since Peter Moraw’s 1985 history of the 1250-1490 period the role of the monarchy and the estates have been viewed constructively through the influential paradigm sketched out in that book. According to Moraw’s model, there was a transition from an ‘open constitution’ (offene Verfassung), in which political entities existed side-by-side within the boundaries of an Empire towards which they had no major obligations, to a kind of ‘configured consolidation’ (gestaltete Verdichtung), which was the loose and dualistic but increasingly institutionalised form that the Empire took as a consequence of the interplay of the interests of great dynasties on the Imperial throne on the one hand and the combined efforts of the leading Reichsstände to defend and assert their personal and territorial agendas on the other. This framework is offered as a means of making sense of how ‘die Vielzahl der Machtträger im Reich’ and their ‘freie Kräftespiel’ fed into the shape and dynamic of the Imperial polity as a whole. These conceptualisations of the Empire and its constituent parts have gone a long way towards fashioning a convincing narrative of political developments in the German lands. However, in the south-west of the Empire there was a level of political activity which is very evident in surviving documentary sources, but which the existing models of the unitary Territorial- and Reichsverfassungen and the predominantly vertical links within them do not fully apprehend: the sub-monarchical level of lateral interaction between local elites . Verfassungsgeschichte is good at identifying relationships within a political unit, but not across or between multiple units, especially the kind of fragmentary and protean units which formed fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Oberdeutschland. The lateral interaction amongst such units is exemplified by the numerous alliances, leagues, and Landfrieden undertaken by and between a range of political actors along the length and breadth of the Upper Rhine, including princes, counts, margraves, prince-bishops, abbots, and free and Imperial cities. Other kinds of formal association in the area, such as coinage leagues and multilateral jurisdictional contracts, as well as informal networks spanning multiple polities (between creditors and debtors, relatives in extended noble dynasties, etc.), also point to the mutual entanglement of a variety of political actors and entities across ‘territorial’ boundaries. These essentially horizontal associations appear to have been so widespread and multitudinous that it seems appropriate to explain these activities in terms of an associative political culture in the concerned south-western regions. The aim of this paper will be to demonstrate the existence of this political culture in a particularly challenging period for the Imperial monarchy and for peace and order in the Empire – the reigns of Wenceslas, Rupert of the Palatinate, and Sigismund. It will attempt to do so by sketching out the uniquely intense series of criss-crossing alliances which dominated the political landscape of the Upper Rhine between the 1370s and the 1430s. These alliances, and the lateral relationships which underpinned them, shed some light on a bewilderingly complex series of conflicts – the ‘town wars’ of the 1380s, the feuds of Strasbourg in the 1390s, the anti-Austrian Reichskrieg of the 1410s, and the anti-badisch coalition of the 1420s – which can seem chaotic and inexplicable when viewed solely from the perspective of the individual political entities involved, or from that of a ‘zoomed out’ overview of Imperial history. The paper will seek to substantiate the case for associative political culture further by reference to some other specific examples of lateral interaction, such as knightly societies and trans-jurisdictional mediatory practices. It will also consider how the activities of more or less autonomous regional powers below the level of the crown intersected with the idea and reality of the Empire as a whole and its monarchs. The presence in many alliance treaties, not least royally-sanctioned Landfriedensverträge, of a rhetoric of concern for general peace and order and the honour of the Holy Roman Empire suggests a conscious link between associative activity and the overarching Imperial polity. More concretely, kings could and did attempt to harness associations to their own agendas, particularly those associations with close established customary ties to the crown’s remaining administrative structures, such as the league of ten Imperial cities in the Reichslandvogtei of Alsace (the so-called ‘Décapole alsacienne’). The half-brothers Wenceslas and Sigismund provide an instructive comparison, in that the former’s rigid opposition to most formal associations (notably Städtebünde) left him with far less influence than the latter was able to garner through a policy of careful support for key actors and their allies, although neither could fully direct associative dynamics in the south-western localities. The turbulence in south-west Germany which followed Charles IV’s experiment in hegimoniales Königtum cannot be fully understood without considering how associative activity fits into both regional and crown-level politics. The contention in this paper will thus be that we stand to gain by thinking about sources pertaining to later medieval Germany in a framework other than that of the Verfassungsgeschichte of either a territory or of the Empire as a whole. Instead, a consideration of political structures – discourses, networks, and behavioural patterns as well as formal ties and institutions – could yield new perspectives and resolve apparent difficulties in the Empire’s historical development. The specific case of the later medieval Upper Rhine suggests that some of the prevalent structures of this kind could be characterised as elements of an associative political culture on the basis of the extensive evidence of lateral interaction between poorly hierarchised neighbouring powers. Associative political culture in all its forms offers one possible alternative solution to Moraw’s ‘drängendes Problem’ of ‘die Suche nach dem Gemeinsamen in der deutschen Geschichte innerhalb ihrer ausgeprägten Vielfalt’. This paper will attempt to make it clear that lateral interactions between variegated powers are an important but neglected aspect of the political history of the Empire and perhaps of Europe more generally in the later middle ages.