“International” System and the Origins of the Angevin-Piast Dynastic Alliance

384 Pages·2014·3.63 MB·English

by  Wojtek Kozłowski

DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2014.02

Doctoral Dissertation

The Thirteenth-Century “International” System and the Origins
of the Angevin-Piast Dynastic Alliance
By Wojciech Kozłowski

Supervisor: Balázs Nagy

Submitted to the Medieval Studies Department, and
the Doctoral School of History
Central European University, Budapest

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval Studies,
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Budapest
2014
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Table of Content

Preface ............................................................................................................................................................ 5
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 10
General Remarks ....................................................................................................................................... 10
A Brief Overview of the Dissertation ......................................................................................................... 12
Sources and Argument-Building ................................................................................................................ 13
Chapter 1. Theorizing “International” Relations in the Late Middle Ages ................................................... 21
Why to Theorize? ...................................................................................................................................... 21
An Overview of Theorizing Attempts ........................................................................................................ 24
Determining Fundamental Theoretical Concepts ..................................................................................... 34
Lordship ................................................................................................................................................. 34
Constructing the Concept .................................................................................................................. 37
Definition and Characteristics ........................................................................................................... 48
International System and the Realist Tradition in IR Theories .............................................................. 51
Anarchy – A Confusing Concept ............................................................................................................ 56
Lordly Identity – Constructivist Approach in IR Theories ...................................................................... 60
Establishing identities ........................................................................................................................ 61
Definition ........................................................................................................................................... 64
Lordly Identity and Lords’ Political Interests ..................................................................................... 67
Concluding Remarks .......................................................................................................................... 70
Chapter 2. The Structure of the “International” System in the Thirteenth-Century Latin Christendom ...... 72
Introduction............................................................................................................................................... 72
The Thirteenth-Century “International” System – Anarchy or Hierarchy? ............................................... 73
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C Conclusion - the Hybrid “International” System ..................................................................................... 105
Hierarchical component ...................................................................................................................... 106
Anarchical component ........................................................................................................................ 114
Hierarchy and Anarchy in Interplay ..................................................................................................... 117
Chapter 3. Determining Lordly Identity – Władysław Łokietek’s Case (1260-1300) ................................... 121
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 121
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Socialization to Politics ........................................................................................................................ 122
Setting the Scene – the Origins of Ducal Lordships in the Polish Lands .............................................. 125
Principal Identity – the Lordship-Imperative ........................................................................................... 127
Łokietek’s lordship-building ................................................................................................................ 130
Exiled dukes in the thirteenth-century Polish lands ............................................................................ 133
Type Sub-Identity - Noble Family Leader ................................................................................................ 136
Type 1 – fathers vs. sons ..................................................................................................................... 138
Type 2 – fatherly uncles vs. nephews .................................................................................................. 138
Type 3 – brothers vs. brothers ............................................................................................................ 140
Type 4 – intra-Piast controversies ....................................................................................................... 151
Conflicts over Cracow ...................................................................................................................... 155
Antagonisms between Great Poland and Silesia ............................................................................. 165
Other intra-Piast conflicts ............................................................................................................... 173
Intra-Silesian conflicts ..................................................................................................................... 188
Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 195
Role Sub-Identity – Title-Seeker .............................................................................................................. 202
Logic of Lordship-seeking Conflicts in the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary after the Mongol
Invasion ............................................................................................................................................... 203
Within the Polish lands ........................................................................................................................ 212
Lordship-appearances in the vicinity of the Polish lands .................................................................... 226
Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 248
Collective Sub-Identity – Member of Christian society ........................................................................... 250
Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 258
Conclusion – Władysław Łokietek’s Lordly Identity ................................................................................ 259
n Chapter 4. Determining Lordly Identity – Charles I of Anjou in Comparative Perspective (1300-1310) .... 263
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D The Succession Crisis in the Kingdom of Hungary ................................................................................... 264
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The Power-Winning Strategies of Charles I ............................................................................................. 277
The power-winning strategies of Wenceslas III ...................................................................................... 281
Money Matters ........................................................................................................................................ 285
Non-material Dimensions of Power ........................................................................................................ 286
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 292
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Chapter 5. The Origins of Angevin-Piast Dynastic Marriage of 1320 .......................................................... 295
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 295
The Angevin-Piast Marriage in the Source Material ............................................................................... 298
The Context and Origins of the Angevin-Piast Alliance in Scholarly Literature ....................................... 305
German perspective ............................................................................................................................ 305
Czech perspective ................................................................................................................................ 309
Slovak perspective ............................................................................................................................... 311
Hungarian perspective ........................................................................................................................ 314
Polish perspective ............................................................................................................................... 320
Summary ............................................................................................................................................. 327
Searching for the Angevin-Piast Alliance................................................................................................. 331
A Brief Recapitulation .......................................................................................................................... 332
Władysław Łokietek’s agenda ............................................................................................................. 335
Charles I of Anjou’s agenda ................................................................................................................. 348
Concluding Remarks – the Origins of the Angevin-Piast Marriage ..................................................... 361
Conclusions.............................................................................................................................................. 365
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................. 370
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 374
Primary Sources ....................................................................................................................................... 374
Secondary Literature ............................................................................................................................... 376

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PREFACE
The central question of this study is what inspired Charles I and Władysław Łokietek to
establish a dynastic marriage in 1320 and in what context it happened. This inquiry is strongly
interconnected with an additional interest in whether and how the “international”
environment, in which both figures formed and strove to achieve their goals and objectives,
can be characterized. The research objectives are achieved by developing and employing
theoretical perspective, drawn from International Relations (IR) theories, to historical material
in order to generate well substantiated interpretation of the causes and context of the
Angevin-Piast marriage of 1320.
This study was essentially born out of dissatisfaction with the breadth and scope of
modern accounts about medieval political history. While coming to CEU, first for the MA and
then for PhD program, my intention was to re-think the Angevin-Piast relations in the
fourteenth century in order to render a refreshed interpretation of the succession that
happened in 1370. In that year, after King Kazimierz the Great of Poland had died, another
king, Louis the Great of Hungary, got fairly smoothly into his shoes. My original research
problem was to reexamine how and why the inter-dynastic relations developed into the
direction that resulted in a short period of dual Hungarian-Polish monarchy (1370-1382).
It was clear that meaningful reconsideration of the succession of 1370 would require
another look at the marriage contract that was made in 1320 and which involved Charles I of
Hungary and Elisabeth, a daughter of King Władysław Łokietek of Poland. Apparently, it was
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Władysław Łokietek found themselves fighting the Přemyslids in order to establish their
lordships in Hungary and Poland respectively.
It was less obvious, however, how far before the year 1300 my study should reach. On
the one hand, there was no sense in pursuing the Angevin-Piast relations preceding the
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Angevin very arrival to Central Europe. On the other hand, it was difficult to ignore rather
intensive political and military ties between the Árpáds and some of the Piast dukes that
rapidly developed during the reign of Béla IV and continued towards the end of the thirteenth
century. Although there was not much chance to identify preliminary succession treaties
between those two dynasties before 1300, it still remained an open question, to what extent
the brotherhood-in-arms and tradition of close “international” cooperation (especially with
the dukes of Cracow) could have its impact on Charles I and Łokietek’s political calculations,
when they decided to strike a marriage contract.
As I mentioned earlier, this study was inspired by deficiencies and shortages of
standard political histories of the late medieval Central Europe. Initially, there was only a
hunch that I had been nurturing since my first MA in history, which had grappled with the
notion of “political role” of Grand Duke Witold of Lithuania in the kingdom of Poland ruled by
Władysław Jagiełło (1386-1434). While reading a growing number of political histories, I came
to realize that this traditional genre of writing history was becoming more and more
demanding from those who wanted to go beyond an erudite accumulation of names, places,
persons, facts, and dates. There was a sense of frustration when my own writing boiled down
to compiling accounts and interpretations of previous historians. Without knowing, I longed
for an interdisciplinary approach and thus, I turned to Political Science for inspiration,
conceptual frameworks, and terminologies. My hope was that borrowing strategies of
thinking about politics from another field would actually inform my own inquiry. I only had to
find ways to deal with an apt reservation, raised by numerous senior colleagues, that Political
Science was never designed to understand medieval politics. In their opinion, comprehending
the past was a task left for historians who were better educated to walk through the thick
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for a long time practically did not problematize medieval politics but explained its phenomena
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As a result, I spent quite a time in search for alternative approaches to medieval
political history. In particular, I was increasingly concerned about ways of linking modern
reflection about international politics with the realities lurking from the medieval source
material. In one of my earliest attempts to make sense of the “international” developments
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in Central Europe in the turn of the fourteenth century,1 I discussed a notion of “succession
crisis”, expressed my findings regarding how medieval political history had been done, and
put forward some blurred intuitions about the validity of employing Political Science to
unraveling the complexities of Central European “international” politics. The following
observations still appear relevant here:
As recent examinations of historiography have shown, political history is regaining its
place in scholarship. However, it is more inclined to study the rituals and symbols of
government,2 or examine political culture, elite networks and the interplay of political power
and social influence in various localities.3 Such approaches shed a great deal of light on
“traditional” political history and equip a historian with far broader understanding of medieval
political realities. Throughout the twentieth century, parallel to changes in the field of history,
Political Science and its derivative discipline, International Relations, gradually evolved.
Theoretical analyses of governments, political institutions and international bodies, along with
reflection on political systems, their features, motivations, and agents, created a set of models
and an entire intellectual “toolbox” that claimed to describe the workings of modern politics
successfully.4 …
Politics in the Middle Ages has already received generic characteristics. Decades of
research have marked and outlined several features that are described in juxtaposition with
national states, a natural environment for European historians of the previous two centuries.
From the perspective of well-organized, bureaucratic, and powerful states, medieval societies,
who were primarily organized around concepts of kinship,5 looked very stateless and anarchic.
I agree with Rees Davies, who speaks about “cut-out and oversimplified models of medieval
on society often presented as a precursor of the modern world.”6 Such a patronizing attitude
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political organization. This, consciously or unconsciously, was a prejudiced approach that
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1 Wojciech Kozłowski, “Developing the Concept of ‘Succession Crisis’: New Questions to Social and Political
Circumstances of Łokietek’s Rise to Power,” Studia Mediaevalia Bohemica 3 (2011): 231–48.
2 Susan Reynolds, “The Historiography of the Medieval State,” in Companion to Historiography, ed. Michael
Bentley (London; New York: Routledge, 1997), 113.
3 Rees Davies, “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?,” Journal of Historical Sociology 16, no. 2 (June
2003): 282.
4 Kozłowski, “Developing,” 232.
5 Rhys Jones, “Mann and Men in a Medieval State: The Geographies of Power in the Middle Ages,” Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 24, no. 1 (1999): 65.
6 Davies, “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?,” 280.
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assumed there was only one way development.7 Founded in an evolutionary setting, it put a
major emphasis on pointing out the lacks and prematurity of medieval society or measured its
political life through lenses of modern criteria.8 The “absence description” prevailed over the
more “contextually based” approach. Thus, popular notions evolved about “feudal anarchy,”
the apparent weakness of effective “public” power, the prominence of “universal bodies” (the
empire and the papacy), and the absence of coercive power or lack of ideas of sovereignty.9.10
During my ongoing investigations for approaches that would help me to avoid making
assumptions about Łokietek or Charles I’s motivations in their politics by looking at their
actions through the lenses that I had grown up with due to observing contemporary
international relations, I encountered the so-called New Political History. While learning more
about the outcomes of the research carried out within the framework of the New Political
History, I got reassured how much political culture was influential in shaping practices and
mechanisms of medieval “international” politics. Issues of honor and prestige and methods of
resolving conflicts by means of ritualized performances emerged as critical elements of how
the political system in the Middle Ages functioned.
However, I came to understand that particular findings about the practicalities of the
“international” politics required one more step forward to be made. Namely, I began thinking
whether a more structured picture of the medieval “international” system could be provided,
that is, whether the combination of factual knowledge and of deepening comprehension of
the particular political culture would suffice to render a form of an explanatory theory of
medieval international relations. In other words, I was fascinated by an idea that one could
search for patterns, mechanisms, and structures that would apply to behaviors of medieval
n “international” actors for most of the time and in the most cases.
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7 Cf. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton
Studies in Culture/power/history (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2000), 7.
8 Davies, “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?,” 281.
9 Piotr Górecki, “The Early Piasts Imagined: New Work in the Political History of Early Medieval Poland,” The
Mediaeval Journal 1 (2011): 82.
10 Kozłowski, “Developing,” 234.
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As it was stated above, this study was born out of dissatisfaction with existing accounts
on Central European “international” politics in the turn of the fourteenth century. Hence, its
primary aim was to provide a meaningful analysis of this period that would – to my best efforts
– amend for deficiencies existing in scholarly literature. Those shortcomings were less related
to limited utilization of the extant source material, which provided historians with
accumulated data on facts and events. It was the method of interpretation that required
reconsideration by taking advantage of existing scholarship about medieval political culture
and by discovering ways of merging it with thinking characteristic to International Relations
(IR) theories.

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INTRODUCTION
General Remarks
How to make sense of the late medieval “international” politics? Is the still upholding
stereotype in historical IR valid, when it claims that before the middle of the seventeenth
century there was no international system that could be meaningfully investigated with IR
methods? More specifically, is it possible to theorize political phenomena that occurred in the
thirteenth and fourteenth century in Central Europe and beyond, and avoid being accused
with anachronism? Would such theorizing equip historian with new explanatory powers? Is
there any scientific value in starting a conversation between a historian of medieval
“international” politics and an IR theorist, fundamentally focused on contemporary global
affairs? In other words, how an IR theorist would respond to the world of international politics
as depicted by various medieval source material? Or, perhaps, medieval political history is an
already conceptually exhausted and harvested field with very little issues left after the
reapers?
These are the underlying questions that have been guiding and inspiring my scholarly
work throughout my PhD program. My research can be approached from two perspectives. In
terms of its content, this is a “transnational” (a debated term in case of medieval society),
comparative “international” politics, grappling with complexities of dynastic relations in the
kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In
terms of concepts and methods, however, this is a pioneering attempt to utilize and adapt
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Polish and Slovak) that so far only occasionally have been brought together; 3) the skillful
command of IR theoretical traditions, paradigms and debates corresponding with profound
and well-established knowledge about medieval political culture and its substantial
“otherness” in relation to modern sensibilities. The interdisciplinary underpinnings of my
project are particularly challenging, because bridging IR scholarship (developed and
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