Prelude on stronghold, castle and monastery. A Central Poland exemplum

Abstract

Historic Central Poland, i.e. the region located between the proper Greater Poland to the west and Mazovia to the east, between Kuyavia to the north and Lesser Poland to the south, because of its small surface and ambiguous ‘transitory nature’ can be regarded as a good training ground for research on the Middle Ages. For the historian the present Central Poland there are old lands, duchies, and then Łęczyca and Sieradz voivodeships; sometimes there was also included semi-autonomous Wieluń Land. Already in the late Middle Ages it was the most easterly and southerly portion of the Greater Poland Province. The area of our interest was also located in a specific geographical context, i.e. on the border of two great landscape zones: the northern – lowland, where Łęczyca Land was, and the southern – the upland, which occupied half of Sieradz Land and whole Wieluń Land. This brief presentation of the relationship between strongholds, castles, monasteries and towns of Central Poland from the tribal period to the state of the last Piast encourages generalizations, especially in terms of observed chronological continuation and discontinuation, as well as the relationships between individual types of settlement structures. The cultural landscape determined initially by tribal and then by Piast strongholds outlined a net of important places, with remaining outside the classification, genuinely central cathedral Łęczyca. A clear swing brought initially the conquest of Central Paland by ‘Polanie’, and then formation of a network of castellany centres, delimiting regional political and settlement centres. The functioning of them has been affected by the transformation of the 13th century, and they finally disappeared in the 14th century, when in place of several such strongholds the state castles were built. This transformation generally determined the image of centres and other settlement structures in the region, perceptible up to the end of the Republic of Nobles. Starting from the mid-13th century began to enter to this network defence and residential seats of fortified manor house nature, which location was marked by the distribution of large land property centres, and not only by knight estates. Also in the 13th century widespread and the role of the most important settlement and market centres was somehow duplicated by towns incorporations. These were formed based on both proto-urban pre-incorporation structures, as wells as they had village origins or even were located in greenfield. Such apparently distant settlement categories – town and feudal estate with fortified manor house of the owner – in practice were not s. unfamiliar. The ideal of the late medieval feudal lord was in fact possessing a territorially compact estate with several villages, in the centre of which was the manor house and church, while potentially most profitable action was incorporation of such a village. This structure ensured security, faster than in rural areas turnover, and eventually it satisfied the need for own ancestral cemetery, which role in the earlier phases of the Middle Ages played family monastic foundations.