Landed property of the Cistercian houses of Bohemia 1142–1420

Kateřina Charvátová

doi:10.5277/arc130301

Abstract

This is a paper on landed property of Bohemian monasteries of the Cistercian order in the Middle Ages, from their beginnings up to the epoch of the Hussite wars which completely changed the property situation of the Bohemian houses. Between 1142 and 1357, the kingdom of Bohemia saw the foundation of ten abbeys of the white monks. In view of the emergence and development of monastic landholdings, a major role apparently fell to the chronological range of establishment of individual houses in relation to the main phase of medieval landscape-assarting and -cultivation activities. In Bohemia, this process, which substantially changed the landscapes of the duchy and later kingdom, was situated between the last decades of the 12th and the first decades of the 14th century. Foundations of the earliest houses of the Order preceded this upsurge of activities, but most of the Cistercian abbeys constituted, in one way or another, its integral component. Only the very latest house of the white monks emerged after the termination of this intensive settlement process, which, in the course of the “long 13th century”, covered the entire Bohemia. 12th-century donations to Cistercian abbeys show beyond all doubt that in terms of the property transferred to them, they fell short of complying with economic demands of the Order. All the foundations were based not on landholdings cultivated by manual labour of the monastery incumbents, but on the perception of revenues from singular villages. This related even to the earliest foundations of the Order which sprang up in the lifetime of Bernard of Clairvaux. The example of donations to the abbeys shows clearly to what extent the customs and habits of the land hosting the Order establishments infl uenced the material sustenance of the new foundations. Cistercian monks received the same kind of material support as other ecclesiastical institutions of Bohemia, not that enjoyed by the Order houses in western Europe. The 13th century saw a considerable growth of the extent of landed property of all monasteries, surpassing in its scale that of the earlier and later epochs. Though the expansion of particular monastic landholdings continued until the Hussite wars, all regular houses had to cope with an economic crisis beginning in the forties of 14th century, and climaxing at the beginning of 15th century. During the twenties of the 15th century, most of the Cistercian monasteries of Bohemia were conquered by the Hussites and went up in fl ames. The following secularization, acknowledged by king Sigismund mostly in 1420 and 1421, and confi rmed in writing in 1436–1437, deprived the Cistercians of most of their possessions, leasing them but tiny vestiges of their former landholdings.

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