Sobeslav I.

Soběslav I. (dux) on the dedication sheet of the Horologium Olomucense , 1136.

Soběslav I (* after 1068; † February 14, 1140 in Hostin Hradec ) was a Duke of Bohemia from the Přemyslid family . The youngest son of the first Bohemian king Vratislav II and Swatawa of Poland ruled as the Bohemian duke from 1125 to 1140.

Life

The first reports come from the year 1107, when he went into exile with the overthrown Duke Bořivoj II to the Polish Duke Bolesław III. Wrymouth was chased away. In 1111, however, Soběslav was given the administration of the Saaz (Žatecko) territories . 1113 led to disputes with his brother, the Bohemian duke Vladislav I. 1115 agreed the brothers, and Soběslav was given dominion over Hradec Kralove (Hradec Kralove), also still in 1115 also the areas around Brno (Brněnsko) and Znojmo (Znojmo) . In 1123 disputes between the brothers flared up again. All goods were taken from Soběslav and he had to leave the country again.

A year later his brother fell ill and his mother Svatava called him back. The brothers reached an agreement and Vladislav appointed Soběslav as his successor. Vladislav died in 1125. Soběslav immediately had to fight for the throne against Otto II the black of Moravia , who made claims to the Bohemian throne and the German king Lothar III. from Supplinburg called for help. In 1126 Lothar marched into Bohemia with an army. On February 18, 1126 there was the second battle near Chlumec , in which Soběslav was victorious. Otto the black fell and King Lothar III. was trapped with the rest of his army and forced to negotiate. Soběslav was from Lothar III. feud with Bohemia, and years of rest followed.

The era of Soběslav I was otherwise characterized by a gradual stabilization of Bohemia, which had suffered from repeated clashes within the ruling family in the previous hundred years. Soběslav had castles and fortresses built. Even under his predecessor Vladislav I, Bishop Heinrich Zdik von Olomouc started a wave of founding monasteries of the Premonstratensians and Cistercians . Soběslav ruled with a hard hand, especially against his own family of the Přemyslids , who now branched out and asserted claims to power in the lands. For example, in 1126 he had Břetislav, son of Duke Břetislav II, and in 1128 Konrad Lutold, Duke of Znojmo imprisoned at Dohna Castle . This approach, but also the natural extinction of the Moravian line of the Přemyslids, led to the fact that Bohemia stabilized as a closed rulership in the middle of the 12th century. Although Moravia remained an independent margravate, the margrave was generally occupied by a Prague Přemyslid from this time on. In addition, the influence of the nobility and the empire had grown in the troubled decades before , so that Bohemia under Soběslav I and his successors became a stable and powerful part of the empire with a strong aristocratic class. This development found its expression in the award of the royal dignity to Soběslav's successor Vladislav II. The newly promoted German eastward settlement under Emperor Lothar's reign , which was to last into the 14th century, promoted the peaceful cultural penetration of the Bohemian lands, especially through the establishment of German cities Right.

In the last years of his life, Soběslav tried from the new King Konrad III. to receive the promise that after his death his son Vladislav would be enfeoffed with Bohemia. He received this promise in 1138. But it remained worthless. After Soběslav's death, the strengthened Bohemian nobility chose his nephew Vladislav II as duke.

Soběslav I was married to Adleyta, daughter of the Almusch of Hungary (Almuš Uherský), with whom he had five children. Vladislav, Soběslav II. , Oldřich , Maria , the first marriage to the Austrian margraves Leopold IV. , Son of Leopold III. and in second marriage with the Margrave Hermann III. von Baden was married and Wenzel II .

He contracted a fatal disease in 1139 on his Chvojna farm in Eastern Bohemia and was taken to the Hostin Hradec Castle for Christmas 1139 , where he died on February 14, 1140 on his sick bed.

literature

• Petr summer; Třeštík, Dušan; Žemlička, Josef, et al .: Přemyslovci. Budování českého státu . Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 2009, ISBN 978-80-7106-352-0 , especially pp. 198-200.

Web links

Commons : Sobeslaus I, Duke of Bohemia  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• www.e-stredovek.cz

Remarks

1. ↑ Vratislav Vaníček: Soběslav I. Přemyslovci v kontextu evropských dějin v letech 1092–1140 . Praha: Paseka, 2007, ISBN 978-80-7185-831-7 , pp. 193-194.

predecessor	Office	successor
Vladislav I.	Duke of Bohemia 1125–1140	Vladislav II.