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 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

MEDIEVAL CENTRAL
EUROPE
 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

MEDIEVAL CENTRAL
EUROPE

Edited by
NADA ZEČEVIĆ and DANIEL ZIEMANN
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
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Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zečević, Nada, editor. | Ziemann, Daniel, editor.
Title: Oxford handbook of medieval Central Europe / Nada Zečević, Daniel Ziemann.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056067 (print) | LCCN 2021056068 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190920715 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190920739 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe, Central—History—To 1500. |
Europe, Central—Civilization. | Civilization, Medieval.
Classification: LCC DAW1046 .O94 2022 (print) | LCC DAW1046 (ebook) |
DDC 943/.01—dc23/eng/20220105
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056067
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056068
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190920715.001.0001
 About the Editors

Nada Zečević teaches the history of the Balkans at Goldsmiths,

University of London, where she also directs the Centre for the Study
of the Balkans. She earned her PhD in Medieval Studies from the
Central European University (CEU), Hungary (2004). Dr. Zečević’s
research focuses on the history of the Balkan peninsula and its
global relations, the historical societies of this region, and
interpretations of its past.
Daniel Ziemann is Associate Professor at the Department of
Medieval Studies at Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. He
is a medieval historian and received his PhD in history from the
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt on the Main in
2002. Prior to his appointment at CEU in 2009, he taught at the
University of Cologne. He researches the political and legal history of
the early and high Middle Ages with a special focus on Southeast
and Central Europe.
 Contents

Contributors
Acknowledgments
Preface
Nada Zečević and Daniel Ziemann
Selected Bibliography

Introduction: “Central Europe”: Perceptions, Definitions, and

Comparisons in a Historiographical Context
Nada Zečević

PART I. LAND, PEOPLE, AND STRUCTURES OF

POWER
1. Geography, Natural Resources, and Environment
András Vadas
2. From Avars and Slavs to the First Medieval Kingdoms in Central
Europe: Population and Settlement, 700–1100
Daniel Ziemann
3. The Central European States: From Monarchy to Ständestaat
Julia Burkhardt
4. Government: Central and Local Administration
János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan
5. Law and the Administration of Justice
János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak
6. Wars, Warfare, and Military Organization
Attila Bárány
 7. Cooperation and Conflict in Diplomacy and War within and
around Central Europe
Gerald Schwedler and Paweł Figurski, with contributions by László
Veszprémy, Emir O. Filipović, and Christian Raffensperger

PART II. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

8. Changing Elites in Medieval Central Europe
Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu
9. Locals and Immigrants in Medieval Central Europe
Stefan Donecker
10. Gender and Family in Medieval Central Europe
Michaela Antonín Malaníková, Witold Brzeziński, and Marija
Mogorović Crljenko
11. Rural Land Management in Medieval Central Europe
Edit Sárosi
12. Cities and Towns in Medieval Central Europe
Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder
13. Mining, Finances, and Commerce in Medieval Central Europe
Grzegorz Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy

PART III. CULTURE AND RELIGION

14. Cultural Landscapes: Education and Literature
Farkas Gábor Kiss and Lucie Doležalová
15. A History of Social Communication in East-Central Europe:
Words, Scripts, and Beyond
Anna Adamska
16. Art and Architecture in Medieval East Central Europe
Béla Zsolt Szakács and Zoë Opačić
17. Contexts of Late Medieval Daily Life
Gerhard Jaritz
 18. Religious Practices (and Confessional Variants) in Medieval
Central Europe
Stanislava Kuzmová
19. The Papacy and the Region, Church Structure, and Clergy
Agata Zielinska and Igor Razum
20. Jews in Medieval Central Europe
Tamás Visi
21. Monasticism in Medieval Central Europe (c. 800–c. 1550)
Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, with contributions by Marek Derwich and
Beatrix Romhányi

PART IV. IMAGES OF THE PAST

22. The Image of East Central Europe in Medieval European
Literature
Levente Seláf
23. Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe
Paweł Gancarczyk
24. The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages: Popular Traditions and
Medievalism
János M. Bak and Gábor Klaniczay

Index
 Contributors

Anna Adamska, Utrecht University, Utrecht

János M. Bak, 1929–2020

Attila Bárány, Debrecen University, Debrecen

Witold Brzeziński, Uniwersytet Kazimierza Wielkiego, Bydgoszcz

Julia Burkhardt, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg

Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, University of Rennes

Marek Derwich, University of Wrocław, Wrocław

Lucie Doležalová, Charles University, Prague

Stefan Donecker, Austrian Academy of Sciences—Institute for

Medieval Research, Vienna

Farkas Gábor Kiss, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Paweł Figurski, University of Warsaw, Warsaw

Emir O. Filipović, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo

Paweł Gancarczyk, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of

Sciences, Warsaw

Gerhard Jaritz, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna

Gábor Klaniczay, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna

Stanislava Kuzmová, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava

Michaela Antonín Malaníková, Palacký University, Olomouc

Suzana Miljan, Institute of Historical and Social Sciences, Croatian

Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb

Marija Mogorović Crljenko, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Pula

Grzegorz Myśliwski, University of Warsaw, Warsaw

Balázs Nagy, Eötvös Loránd University and Central European

University, Budapest/Vienna

Zoë Opačić, Birkbeck College, London

Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu, “1 Decembrie 1918,” University of Alba

Iulia, Alba Iulia

Christian Raffensperger, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH

Igor Razum, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna

Beatrix Romhányi, Gáspár Károli Calvinist University, Budapest

Edit Sárosi, Budapest History Museum, Budapest

Felicitas Schmieder, FernUniversität Hagen, Hagen

Gerald Schwedler, University of Zürich, Zürich

Levente Seláf, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Béla Zsolt Szakács, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba

and Central European University, Budapest/Vienna

Katalin Szende, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna

András Vadas, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

László Veszprémy, Institute of Military History, Budapest

Tamás Visi, Palacký University, Olomouc

Yuriy Zazuliak, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv

Nada Zečević, Goldsmiths University of London, London

Agata Zielinska, University College, London

Daniel Ziemann, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna

 Acknowledgments

“A tale is but half told when only one person tells it,” says a wise
medieval maxim. Our group’s work on this Handbook would never
have been complete without the gracious support of:
Dr. Judith Rasson, Los Angeles, whose meticulous language
scrutiny, experience in editing, and incredible degree of collegial
patience helped us align our thoughts and formats with standard
English usage and our dialects with the standards and style of native
English expression.
Professor Katalin Szende, Medieval Studies Department, Central
European University, Vienna/Budapest, director of the Medieval
Central European Research Network (MECERN), who patiently used
MECERN’s diverse resources to address all our needs for
interdisciplinary expertise and smoothed our outreach to the
members of the network.
The Humanities’ Initiative at Central European University of
Vienna/Budapest, for generously providing the funds to foster
discussion among the volume’s contributors at MECERN’s
conferences in Olomouc and Zagreb (2016 and 2018), and for
supporting the costs of preparing this volume for publication in the
English language.
Csilla Dobos, administrator of the Medieval Studies’ Department at
the Central European University, Vienna/Budapest, for her detailed
and dogged support of this project.
The late Professor János M. Bak, without whose incitement,
encouragement, and scholarly input our work would have been far
less motivated and intellectually rewarding.
Our friends, colleagues, and dear ones, whose love and patience
shielded us from all sorts of discomforts and challenges. We dedicate
this Handbook to those among them whom we sadly lost during our
journey.
 Preface

Several years ago, a group of international medieval scholars (there

must have been more than thirty individuals of various backgrounds
and career stages) had a lively discussion over brown-bag lunches in
the cafeteria of the University of Olomouc (Czech Republic), where
they had gathered after a long session at MECERN’s Second Biennial
Conference (Medieval Central European Research Network). The
topic of their discussion was this collection. The idea for a handbook
had been around for several years, raised intermittently in
discussions at the Medieval Studies Department of Central European
University. These conversations kept returning to the need to
compare the diverse local interpretations of the region’s past and
update the generally vague picture that this this region has in
international, especially English-speaking, literature. Publications of
this scale are usually delineated, structured, and coordinated by a
single editor or a small editorial team; but, in this case, it was the
lively, casual meeting—under the baroque arches of the Olomouc
university’s cafeteria, with its participants of diverse ages, academic
positions, backgrounds, and interests—that established the
conceptual framework for this volume.
Unusual in mainstream humanities circles, this meeting and its
informal modus operandi were, in fact, entirely justified. It was the
only way to gather the initial critical input for such a project, in the
form of a direct exchange of opinions from scholars of remarkable
diversity and dispersion across the world. During the meeting, one
heard a rare mixture of the world’s languages, marked by variable
dynamics and accentuation of international English, the tones and
undertones of which became one common voice after the group
agreed that it did not want to produce a conventional report on the
“glorious accomplishments” of the regional knowledge of the
medieval period, but rather innovative and challenging accounts that
blended critical debates, controversies, and contributors’ personal
views of the field’s current trends and future perspectives. The group
agreed that it also wanted to take a more flexible approach to the
field’s usual “borders.” This is how medieval Central Europe became
larger in this volume than the usually assumed space of its three
“core” medieval kingdoms (Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary),
stretching to the shores of the Baltic, the Adriatic, and the Black Sea,
to accommodate and examine even modern geopolitical
interpretations of the past; and to tie the “usual” medieval timeline
(500–1500 ce) to “the chronology of the space” that extends, when
needed, to the reception and transmission of Late Antiquity and the
Early Modern era, even to the present day. The final major
agreement of the Olomouc cafeteria meeting was to experiment with
authorship and collaborative networking. Instead of leaving it solely
to the editors to decide upon and solicit chapter authors among the
most visible and established scholars (determined by the criteria of
seniority and specialization), the group agreed that the handbook
should facilitate participation from all interested contributors,
regardless of their formal positions within academia. Well aware of
the professional backlash that medievalists meet in today’s
commodifying world, the group was firm in their belief that the
handbook should accommodate important but underrepresented
scholarly voices—junior researchers who are just embarking on their
careers, and also scholars from less privileged parts of Europe who
have little or no access to the international medievalists’ exchanges
and networks; and colleagues from “industry,” who do not formally
belong to academia but still provide prominent signposts and
resources for studying medieval Central Europe.
Over the next few years, this ambition turned into a series of
exciting and fruitful communications. Some materialized into
individually authored (or, better to say, centrally coordinated)
chapters pieced together by many different contributors from all
over the region and the world—almost like a giant puzzle—leading to
some chapters representing larger, individually tailored pieces that
were then scrutinized by interdisciplinary teams. Blending different
disciplinary perspectives and levels of academic and personal
experience, these mixtures yielded tangible and colorful “added
value,” such as new questions and combined disciplinary
perspectives. It took a while to align them with the conventions of
academic publication and the handbook’s original timeline; it also
required a complex approach to the handbook’s standard apparatus
technicus, where even details commonly known to everyone but
represented in a variety of ways— for instance, the names of the
local rulers or bibliographic entries quoted differently in different
local traditions—had to be discussed and formulated according to a
consensus. These details needed to be worked out with meticulous
diligence, with special help from the colleagues whose names are
singled out in our Acknowledgments. The editors hope that dialogue
and collaboration of this kind will continue and inspire new and
innovative opportunities in the field.
From the beginning, the spiritus movens of this Handbook was
János M. Bak (1929–2020), reputed for his endless energy in
shaping medieval studies in Central Europe, especially at the
Department of Medieval Studies’ at the CEU in Budapest, which,
owing to his and his colleagues’ commitment, became a world-
renowned institution in innovative and global studies. To the
international scholarly community, János is best known by his
nickname, The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many
Ways, which he merited for his valuable and daring approaches to
exciting topics such as medieval rulership, legal practices, structures
of the region’s medieval society, folklore, and the uses and abuses of
the past. He meticulously collected, translated, and interpreted
primary sources of narrative and documentary type. Scholars of
Central Europe also know János as a powerful academic (powerful in
the very best sense of the word), who truly lived the region: His
childhood in Budapest’s Újlipótváros in the 1930s, amid the smell of
cakes and the sound of table cutlery coming from the open windows
of his neighborhood; the memory of a teenage boy who avoided the
Holocaust by wandering the familiar streets of Budapest that
shielded him from the notorious Red Arrows militia (on one occasion,
a narrow escape after “Oh, let’s leave him, it is just János”), and the
determination of a young scholar to choose life in exile for more
than thirty years over Soviet tanks and life in fear of their local
puppets. With such personal experience already accumulated in his
youth, what else would János offer as an academic and senior
colleague but brave challenges and daring boundary crossings in
every aspect of the discipline?
János’s Central Europe was a place—perhaps better to say, a
“theme”—where his courage, creativity, and life experience produced
serious scholarship that some colleagues would describe as
“German-style precision” and a “cold-blooded” critical approach that
allowed no mercy for pro forma and artificially forced work. He never
failed to express his opinion openly or prompt the existing state-of-
the-art, just as he never avoided acknowledging his colleagues’
accomplishments. Among all contributors to this Handbook, János,
at ninety-one years of age, was the first to submit his contributions
by the deadline, and he worked on their revisions, fully focused and
committed, even three days before he passed away. Among all our
colleagues, he knew best the potential pitfalls of the protracted,
“asymmetrically” structured dialogue that we adopted in organizing
this volume, but he believed deeply in every participant, especially
the less experienced ones. That we came to the end of this journey
is largely the outcome of his unconditional support, which motivated
all the contributors involved in this project.
The medieval Central Europe residing in János M. Bak and his
scholarly contributions cannot but generate strong and undivided
emotions. Scholarship in the region will continue to rely on his
marvelously conceived, informative, incredibly useful publications,
just as it will evoke his intolerance of scholarship that lacks integrity
or is motivated by dishonesty, arrogance, or rivalry. His students will
continue propagating his lessons in the field, as well as values such
as curiosity, lucidity, and humanity that prioritize the essence, the
pleasure, and the common benefit of learning over form. This
Handbook and its chapters, each in its own way, continue this
legacy.
Nada Zečević
Daniel Ziemann
London–Budapest–Vienna–Cologne
August 2020
 Selected Bibliography

The selection of titles listed here is given for the convenience of the
reader when summarizing the resources used by contributors in this
account of medieval Central Europe. It does not represent, by any
means, a comprehensive list of the topic’s bibliography.

Primary Sources
Archdeacon Thomas of Split/Thomae Archidiaconi Spalatensis. Historia
Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum/History of the Bishops of Salona
and Split. Latin text by Olga Perić. Edited, translated, and annotated by Damir
Karbić, Mirjana Matijević Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney. Central European
Medieval Texts 4. Budapest: CEU Press, 2006.
Bak, János M., ed. Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae/The Laws of the Medieval
Kingdom of Hungary. All Complete Monographs. Online, 2019.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_mono/4/.
Charles IV. Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and His Legend of St. Wenceslas.
Edited by Balázs Nagy and Frank Schaer. Budapest: CEU Press, 2001.
Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae. Edited by Jakov Stipišić
and Miljen Šamšalović. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti,
1967.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus. De administrando imperio. Edited by Gyula
Moravcsik. Translated by R. J. H. Jenkins. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks,
1967.
Cosmas of Prague. Chronica Bohemorum/The Chronicle of the Czechs. Edited and
translated by János M. Bak, Pavlina Rychetrová, et al. Budapest: CEU Press,
2019.
Decreta regni medievalis Hungariae/The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of
Hungary. Edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, Martyn Rady, et
al. 5 vols. Idyllwild, CA–Budapest: Schlacks–Dept. of Medieval. Studies Central
European University, 1989–2007.
Fontes rerum Bohemicarum. 8 vols. Prague: Naklada Nadání F. Palackého, 1871–
1932.
Friedrich, Gustav, ed. Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris regni Bohemiae. Prague:
Wiesner, 1904–1907.
[Gallus Anonymous]. Gesta principum Polonorum/The Deeds of the Princes of the
Poles. Translated and annotated by Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer. Central
European Medieval Texts 4. Budapest: CEU Press, 2003.
Gerard of Csanád. Deliberatio Gerardi Moresanae ecclesiae episcopi Supra
hymnum trium puerorum. Edited by Béla Karácsonyi and László Szegfű. Szeged:
Scriptum, 1999.
The Illuminated Chronicle: Chronicle of the Deeds of the Hungarians from the
Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Codex/Chronica de gestis Hungarorum e codice
picto saec. xiv. Edited and translated by János M. Bak and László Veszprémy.
Central European Medieval Texts 9. Budapest: CEU Press, 2018.
Legenda vetus, acta processus canonizationis et miracula sanctae Margaritae de
Hungaria/The Oldest Legend, Acts of the Canonization Process, and Miracles of
Saint Margaret of Hungary. Edited by Ildiko Csepregi, Gabor Klaniczay, and B.
Péterfi. Translated by Ildiko Csepregi, C. Flanigan, and L. Perraud. Budapest:
CEU Press, 2018.
Joannis Dlugossi Annales seu cronicae incliti regni Poloniae, liber decimus, liber
undecimus, liber duodecimus. Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe,
1985.
Jus regale montanorum: Právo královské horníkuov. Edited by Jaroslav Bílek.
Kutná Hora: Kuttna, 2000.
Kadłubek, Vincentius. Chronica Polonorum. Edited by Marianus Plezia. Cracow:
Secesja, 1994.
Liber vetustissimus Antiquae Civitatis Pragensis 1310–1518. Edited by Hana
Pátková et al. Prague: Archiv hlavního města Prahy & Scriptorium, 2011.
Monumenta Poloniae historica: Pomniki dziejowe Polski. 6 vols. Edited by Wydał A.
Bielowski. Warsaw: Wydawn. Naukove, 1864–1893.
Monumenta Poloniae historica: Series nova. Instytut historii. Warsaw: Państwowe
wyd. Naukowe, 1946–present.
Pfeifer, Guido Christian. Ius Regale Montanorum: Ein Beitrag zur
spätmittelalterlichen Rezeptionsgeschichte des römischen Rechts in
Mitteleuropa. Ebelsbach am Main: Aktiv, 2002.
Sacri canones editandi. Edited by P. Krafl. Brno: Reprocentrum, 2017.
Scriptores rerum hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis arpadianae
gestarum. Vol. 1. Edited by Emericus Szentpétery. Budapest: Typographiae Reg.
Universitatis Litterarum Hungarie, 1938.
Scriptores rerum hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis arpadianae
gestarum. Vol. 2. Edited by Kornél Szovák and László Veszprémy. Budapest:
Nap, 1999.
Sermones de sancto Ladislao rege Hungariae. Edited by Edit Madas. Debrecen:
Debreceni Egyetem, 2004.
Simon of Kéza/Simonis de Kéza. Gesta Hungarorum/The Deeds of the Hungarians.
Translated and edited by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer. Central European
Medieval Texts 1. Budapest: CEU Press, 1999.
Statuty Kazimierza Wielkiego/The Statutes of Casimir the Great. Edited by Oswald
Balzer. Poznań: Nakl. Poznanskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciól Nauk, 1947.
Vitae Sanctorum Aetatis Conversionis Europae Centralis (Saec. X–XI)/Saints of the
Christianization Age of Central Europe (Tenth–Eleventh Centuries). Edited by
Gábor Klaniczay. Translated by Cristian Gaspar and Marina Miladinov. Budapest:
CEU Press, 2013.
Werbőczy, Stephen. The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary
&c./Triparititum opus iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariae &c. Edited and
translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó, and Martyn Rady. Idyllwild, CA;
Budapest: Schlacks; Department of Medieval Studies, CEU, 2005.

Secondary Literature
Adamska, Anna, and Marco Mostert, eds. The Development of Literate Mentalities
in East Central Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004.
Almási, Gábor, and Lav Šubarić, eds. Latin at the Crossroads of Identity. Leiden:
Brill, 2015.
Antonín, Robert. The Ideal Ruler in Medieval Bohemia. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
Armstrong, G., and I. N. Wood, eds. Christianizing Peoples and Converting
Individuals. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000.
Baár, Mónika. Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth
Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Bachrach, Bernard S., and David S. Bachrach. Warfare in Medieval Europe, c.400–
c.1453. London: Routledge, 2017.
Bak, János M., Jörg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet, and Bernd Schneidmüller, eds.
Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–21. Jahrhundert/Uses and
Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th–21st Century/Usages et mesusages du Moyen
Age du XIXeau XXIesiècle. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009.
Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in
Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001.
Berend, Nora, ed. Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy:
Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
Berend, Nora, ed. The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages. Farnham:
Ashgate, 2012.
Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, eds. Central
Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–c. 1300.
 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Bjork, Robert E., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010.
Blanchard, Ian. Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages. Vol. 3,
Continuing Afro-European Supremacy, 1250–1450. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner,
2005.
Borgolte, Michael, and Bernd Schneidmüller, eds. Hybrid Cultures in Medieval
Europe. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010.
Bylina, Stanisław. Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages: Christianity and
Traditional Culture in Central and Eastern Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019.
Castaño, Javier, Talya Fishman, and Ephraim Kanarfogel, eds. Regional Identities
and Cultures of Medieval Jews. London: The Littman Library of Jewish
Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2018.
Classen, Albrecht, ed. East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern
Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World. Berlin: De Gruyter,
2013.
Classen, Albrecht, ed. Handbook of Medieval Culture. Vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter,
2015.
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 INTRODUCTION

“CENTRAL EUROPE”
Perceptions, Definitions, and
Comparisons in a Historiographical
Context
NADA ZEČEVIĆ

If you ask me what is my native country, I answer: I was born in Fiume,

grew up in Belgrade, Budapest, Pressburg [Bratislava], Vienna and Munich,
and I have a Hungarian passport, but I have no fatherland. I am a very
typical mix of old Austria-Hungary: at once Magyar, Croatian, German, and
Czech; my country is Hungary; my mother tongue is German.
(Ödön von Horváth)

Starting a handbook of medieval Central Europe by repeating the

widely known myth of Austro-Hungarian multiethnicity from the turn
of the twentieth century couldn’t be a better introduction to historical
reflections about Central Europe and its medieval past. In the
romantic terms of its own time, this quotation shapes the region,
showing it as a vast portion of the European continent that stretches
from the Alps to the Dniester and from the Baltic to the Adriatic,
marked by a unique, shared historical experience of multiethnic
cohabitation. Once conjoined by the mighty Dual Monarchy, today
this region is centered on the modern states of Hungary, Poland,
Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria, to which one can add
neighboring Germany, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Croatia, Slovenia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, or even
the countries of the Soviet East, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, when
attempting to examine the region’s long-term historical interactions.
Central Europe was never a fixed territory nor was it ever a
formally unified polity. Perceptions and representations of it are
mental constructs, fabricated, reshaped and even changed radically
over time according to various needs. Some would call this space an
imagined realm of many different faces—nostalgic images of the
Habsburg “cauldron of nations,” but also landscapes of survival in an
“ambiguous,” unknown, and unstable zone. As a distinctive mental
projection, Central Europe existed as early as the Middle Ages, when
it was depicted as an obscure territory, blurred and peripheral in
relation to the centers of medieval Europe.1 The phantasmic
anthropological map created by Opicinus de Canistris (1337), for
instance, shows it as the continent’s obscene body part—the lower
back of Europa, presented as a young woman carrying a child in her
womb (the space between today’s Lombardy-Germany), with
apparent genitals (Europe as a gentrix nationum?) positioned around
Venice, and a monster threatening immediately behind her back (see
Figure I.1).2 Another famous anthropological map, Sebastian
Münster’s imperial Europa Regina (1570), places Central Europe on
the lower parts of the queen’s dress, descending from Germany
positioned at her waist (again, with a baby in the queen’s belly), to
Hungaria and Polonia placed where the queen’s reproductive organs
should be, then Sclavonia, Lithuania, and Livonia around the queen’s
knees, and Skythia, Moscowia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Morea (the
Peloponnese) covering her feet (see Figure I.2).
FIGURE I.1. Opicinus de Canistris, Vaticanus latinus 6435—phantasmic
anthropological map. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 6435 77r, 1335–1338.
FIGURE I.2. Munster Europa Regina map, 1590.

When we think of Central Europe today, we usually view it with a

variety of modern geopolitical concepts that started to circulate
increasingly from the nineteenth century. Among them, the basic
“formative” delineation was the view of German imperial
expansionism, which projected a need to advance toward the Baltic
and the Slavic East in order to “restore” the Germans’
“natural”/ancestral life space (Lebensraum; see Figure I.3).
During the events of 1848, when the German question was
actualized, the Austrian bureaucrat Karl Ludwig von Bruck and
German administration scholar Lorenz von Stein used this projection
to coin the term Mitteleuropa, by which they meant a common space
with interlocking economic confederations, all dominated by the
Germans. As its essence was the idea of pan-German unity, the
notion of Mitteleuropa was equally embraced by two German imperial
polities of the time, Prussia and Austro-Hungary. Following their
mutual conflict in 1866, however, this conception eventually branched
into two separate notions, each reflecting different territorial
ambitions. For the Habsburgs, Mitteleuropa meant the zone of the
Großdeutsche Lösung (Greater German Solution) that targeted
multiethnic zones of the Habsburg’s interest in the Danube basin (as
far as today’s Transylvania and the routes toward the Black Sea) and
the Ottoman/post-Ottoman Balkans (hence including Greece and later
Turkey so as to enter the Aegean). Prussia laid a more northern-
oriented claim of Kleindeutsche Lösung (the Small German Solution)
that allowed its Drang nach Osten (Drive toward the East),
colonialism by settlers directed toward the Baltic and territories of the
Russian Empire.3 In validating this essentially colonial view, German
national ideologists turned to the German Romantic national
scholarship that had already started to examine historical themes that
justified the presence of their ancient German “ancestry” in the area
between the Elbe and Saale Rivers (so-called West-Central Europe),
then Pomerania and the Baltic, along the eastward flow of the Oder
and the Danube (designated as East-Central Europe).4 These
interpretations backed the views of the German “restauration” as a
cultural hegemony, proposing germanization as the most powerful
tool for dominating the non-German locals of the realm—various
groups of ethnic Slavs, settled there since the early Middle Ages and
designated as an inferior, wild, and uncivilized race by the European
West since the Enlightenment era.5

FIGURE I.3. The Nazi Lebensraum Map, 1933, as from Deutscher Schulatlas:
Heimatteil Gau Baden. Berlin: Gemeinschaftsverlag Deutscher Schulatlas-Verleger,
1942.

The end of World War I brought some important changes to the

imperial view of Mitteleuropa. In 1915, Friedrich Neuman projected a
utopian and liberal, but still essentially state-centric and hegemonic
perception, seeing the region’s population as Wirtschaftsvolk
(economic people) economically bound to Germany.6 Another
interpretation was essentially revisionist, proposing the use of the
military force as a radical way of “continuing” German medieval
colonization in the East by first eliminating the region’s non-Germanic
inhabitants, eventually leading to the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and
Roma people.7
The post–World War I views of Mitteleuropa also reflected the
geopolitical perceptions of other European and world powers.8 At the
Paris Peace Conference (1919), the Allies of the Entente Coalition, for
instance, prompted the concept of the Heartland (out of which grew
the French view of Europe centrale; see Figure I.4), which had to act
as a “soft” or “gray” buffer zone in order to prevent any new attempt
at German expansion, and, even more importantly in that moment, to
protect the European West from the newly risen communist Soviet
East. In this mission, the Heartland view assigned a special role to
the region’s non-Germanic nations—Poles, Czechs, Slovaks,
Romanians, Hungarians, South Slavs, Bulgarians, Albanians, and
Greeks, whose national countries were newly recognized, significantly
reshaped, or formally confirmed at the Paris Peace Conference.
Perceived as pivots, and sometimes together called a “wedge” in the
region’s eastern section (again, reflecting a view of the region as
East-Central Europe), over time these states were further valued as
an antemurale for any global threat to the West that would come
from the (Far) East.9
FIGURE I.4. Macinder’s Heartland map. (Available from Wikimedia Commons,
licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.)

The Heartland concept prompted local national perceptions, too.

Among them was the notable Polish idea of Intermarium
(Międzymorze, a space between the seas), which proposed a Slavic
federation centered in the newly rising Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, linked in the south with the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes (renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929)
and thus connecting the Baltic with the Adriatic along the lines of the
pan-Slavic unity that had been widely propagated in the region since
the end of the French revolution.10 The Heartland concept eventually
left its mark on later visions of Central Europe, namely, those of the
“Third Europe,” in which East-Central Europe is classified as
Zwischeneuropa—a separate part of European civilization, positioned
between the (Latin/Catholic) West and (Slavic/Orthodox) East.
Among some of most recent interpretations generated by this view,
the EU’s concept of the “New Europe” gathers the countries of the
ex-Soviet bloc that joined the EU between 2005 and 2015 and local
projects promoting regional and transregional protection and
collaboration, such as the Visegrád Group or the Danube initiative,
and even radical ideas based on Huntington’s views of the clash of
civilizations, by which the region’s right-wing regimes or movements
(e.g., the Hungarian prime-minister Viktor Orbán, the Polish
nationalist Law and Justice party, Slovakia’s neo-fascist Kotleba, or
Serbia’s far-right movement Dveri) attempt to justify their countries
as the defense zone of modern Christian Europe.11
Soviet control of Central Europe from 1945 to the 1990s brought
another significant shift in the perception of Central Europe, moving it
toward the sphere of an ideologically stereotypic imagination. With
the Berlin Wall dividing the capitalist West and the socialist East,
Soviet troops stationed in the region, and local communist satellite
regimes, Central Europe’s eastern parts became territorially
disconnected from their western sections, turning into a rimland—a
border area “on the enemy’s side” located “behind” the Iron Curtain,
and commonly perceived as a different, menacing, and backward
“Other.”12 It took almost forty years for the local dissident
intelligentsia—sympathetically received in the West—to challenge this
perception with a perspective on the region’s suppressed Western
identity, “kidnapped” by the communist East (Milan Kundera).13
Reflecting the “inside” critique of the regime after the Hungarian
revolution (1956) and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968),
and sustained by the postmodern thought of the early 1980s, this
view eventually fused diverse assumptions of Polish philosophy, Czech
avant-garde literature, and Hungarian social theory into common
perceptions of the region, seen as an area of “uncontrolled” contacts
and exchange by Leszek Kołakowski, as a pluralist way of “viewing
things” (Weltanschaung) by György Konrád, or a specific “state of
mind” by Czesław Miłosz—all highlighting the region’s history in an
attempt to invent Central Europe—a construct that claims the region’s
“restored geographic centrality,” cultural “westernity,” and the need of
its people to integrate into the EU.14
The framework that directed modern historiographic interpretations
of Central Europe’s past was constructed over two hundred years and
influenced by various political agendas emphasizing the region’s
historical features. Research on medieval times is no exception here,
regardless of how detached it may look from the point of view of the
modern political agenda.15 Justifying the imperial expansionism and
ideas about the German “restoration” in the Slavic East, nineteenth-
century German medievalists studied the northern parts of medieval
Central Europe (the Baltic and Pomerania) as a space closely linked
with their ancestral origin (Jordanes Gothiscandza as a vagina
nationum), valuing with a particular patriotic pride themes such as
the Völkerwanderung (The Great Migration, ad 200–700) or the
German colonization of the East fostered by rulers from Charlemagne
(768–814) and his successors to the Hohestauffen dynasty and the
Teutonic Order.16 The early- and mid-twentieth-century national
historiographies of the region’s non-German states, from their side,
historicized their own nations, stressing—some even affecting
triumphant and nationalist views in our current times17—the historical
processes that made their polities genuinely distinctive from other
parts of medieval Europe, thus grounding the development of their
modern national states and the need to connect within the region. In
this, the Polish historian Oskar Halecki (a World War II émigré to the
United States) was particularly prominent coining the modern phrase
“East-Central Europe” to explain a space that included not just the
region’s core territories but also Finland, Greece, and Turkey at its
eastern borders and the German medieval polities to its west. This
emphasized medieval East-Central Europe as a place “between” two
major juxtapositions, which he saw as key in the region’s history—the
Slavic East and the German West.18 This further evolved into a
concept devised by the Czech scholar Francis Dvornik (himself an
émigré to the United States), who presented this juxtaposition more
as a line that divided Western/Latin culture from an Eastern culture
that was essentially Slavic, but dominated by the universal
Byzantine/Greek Empire.19 The Romanian nationalist historian Nicolae
Iorga took a similar position, as did the Russian noble émigré Georg
A. Ostrogorsky, whose Byzantinist disciples in Belgrade prioritized the
relations of the southeastern Slavic realm with Byzantium, setting the
stage for Dimitri Obolensky’s later proposition of the “Byzantine
Commonwealth,” seen as a Slavic space dominated by the “superior”
Byzantine civilization.20 In Hungary, Jenő Szűcs laid similar stress on
the region as a separate entity of civilization positioned between the
medieval East and West. Importantly, in his view of medieval East-
Central Europe, Szűcs suggested viewing the region as a “connecting
bridge” rather than a line of separation, proposing a focus on various
forms of transmission and exchange that took place between the two
halves of medieval Europe. This stance further influenced his
conclusions about the quick and compressed development of the
region’s core medieval polities, the Kingdoms of Hungary, Poland, and
Bohemia, after the tenth century, but also his assumptions that the
prevailing influences there were those of the medieval European
West, thus basically backing the modern claims to the region’s
“Western” identity.21
Szűcs’s views, no doubt, fitted well the post-Soviet calls for
European integration, and with them came the region’s new
identification as Central Europe, with a quest for re-examining its
medieval past as a whole and comparing its diverse parts. Since
2015, within the region itself, this quest has been promoted by a
comprehensive network of local medievalists (Medieval Central
European Research Network, MECERN) that is acting globally, liaising
with other centers and researchers all over the world interested in
medieval Central Europe. One outcome of this exchange is this
Handbook, initiated at MECERN’s First Biennial Conference in
Budapest in 2014.
Summarizing the main directions of research about medieval
Central Europe from the mid-1990s until today (2021), one has to
note the comparative and global views that gave rise to a perception
of the region’s medieval past as an entity consisting of many different
but interacting (local and global) entities. At its core, this perception
has been affirmed by re-examining medieval borders and their
characteristics that allowed fluctuation, exchange of influences, and
dynamic interactions between the German West and Slavic/Byzantine
East, also integrating Eastern and Southeastern Europe into the
narrative22 as well as other parts of the medieval globe with which
medieval Central Europe communicated in many diverse ways.23
Debates about the formation of medieval Central Europe have revived
scholars’ interest in migrations and some new insights into the
region’s Others, focusing on groups coming from the East such as the
Magyars, Cumans, Mongols, and even local Jews, previously
interpreted as marginal in the context of the region’s national
historiographies, or surveyed largely from the perspective of these
observed communities’ segregation.24 Another important theme that
emerged as a factor of the region’s medieval integration—but also of
conflicts in and about it—was Christianization. There, scholarship took
into account the zones of the region’s interaction with the centers of
medieval Europe’s Christianity, but also its distant peripheries such as
the Nordic North and Orthodox Rus.25 In viewing the region’s
populations, scholars have recently paid more attention to the lower
strata of the elites and commoners; this micro-approach “from below”
has yielded valuable comparable case studies on structures of
authority, power, and collaboration26 as well as the spheres of private
and daily life, common memory, and manifestations of shared
cultures,27 all previously ignored by traditional national
historiographies.28 Applied to more detailed comparisons of feudal
relations, now seen more as multiple loyalties than ideally structured
hierarchies, and also to the nature of landholding and
legal/customary practices,29 the micro-approach has also proved
valuable in discerning some new aspects of human life in the Central
Europe during the Middle Ages, such as the region’s environmental
resources, interactions of its humans with nature, urban life, space-
and power relations,30 local economies, communication and literacy,
and the region’s image as seen in other parts of medieval Europe.31
Encouraged by the recent calls to re-examine their own profession,
the region’s medievalists and their colleagues worldwide who
specialize in medieval Central Europe have compared modern
historiographic interpretations of Central Europe’s medieval past and
their presentalist uses and abuses (“medievalism”),32 generating
advanced ways of integrating their knowledge into responsible
popular education about the region’s common heritage,33 and
facilitating the inclusion of Central Europe into the “all-European (or
even global) view of the past.”34
Yet, despite this increased focus on comparisons and enhanced
medieval connections (including their divergences), as far as the
European/Global West is concerned, medieval Central Europe still
remains a somewhat underesteemed scholarly subject. Far from
specialized centers dealing with the region, old, stereotyped views of
Central Europe still seem to be rooted in international medieval
historiography that projects a common perception of the realm as
incomprehensible and “exotic,” drawing from patchy and fragmented
old knowledge about its history. In the West, these views are often
unclear just because of a lack of knowledge of the regional
languages, which becomes especially apparent when this knowledge
is aligned with some well-illuminated areas of medieval Europe, such
as France or the Mediterranean, with scholars’ detailed focus on Italy
at the center, and “peripheral” zones such as the Iberian peninsula
and the Byzantine East.35 Even in the region itself, knowledge about
medieval Central Europe sometimes tends to be hermetic and self-
isolated, and this is especially seen in the national establishments
that prefer to portray the glories of their nations or the bright
moments of their pasts led by triumphant heroes.36 With this in mind,
the aforementioned First MECERN Biennial Conference in Budapest in
2014 and the subsequent publication of its key papers (2016)
informed international medieval scholarship of diverse stances for
viewing medieval Central Europe as “forgotten,” proposing a new
debate about the fluidity of its borders and taxonomies, and
highlighting the need to address the patches and fragments of
knowledge about the region’s medieval commonalities.37 Another
important contribution to laying the groundwork for this debate was
recently provided by Florin Curta (in 2019), whose two-volume
Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300), although not
specifically taking the stance of a Central European narrative, gave a
comprehensive bibliographic list of field publications, focusing
comparatively on the most remarkable sociopolitical aspects of the
region’s High Middle Ages and proposing a model for studying the
change across the region’s diverse areas that reflected close
interactions with both the East and the West.38
More recently, an attempt to systematize the current
methodological approaches by research trends was made at the
MECERN Biennial conferences in Olomouc (2016) and Zagreb (2018),
where a core group of the authors of this Handbook was formed.
Their aim was to present a summary of discussions in the form of a
reference book that would allow them to demonstrate the guiding
principles of what the current generation of scholars sees as medieval
Central Europe and how it proposes to study this region by using
advanced interdisciplinary methodologies.39 To do this, the
Handbook’s authors mobilized a larger group of contributors, in which
well-established names were paired with their students and junior
scholars—altogether, more than fifty authors and their collaborators
at diverse stages of their careers were put in constant dialogue while
working on their contributions, thus resonating professional voices of
different experiential backgrounds and diverse scholarly cultures. We
believe that the diversity of these synergies will be greatly beneficial
for academic readers worldwide, and also for general global readers,
who increasingly extend their trips to Central Europe, and tend to
seek more focused directions into the region’s medieval past while
they explore heritage or visit off-the-beaten-track sites rarely even
mentioned in commercial guidebooks.
The collaborations initiated at and through MECERN biennial
conferences and other activities of this network are reflected in the
Handbook’s structure. Here, chapter authors and their joint research
groups—some operating as coauthors, some as less formal circles of
collaboration—were invited to take diverse disciplinary and
methodological approaches, address assigned topics in their own
style, use various taxonomies, and express their personal opinions
about the topics’ perspectives. In organizing this group, the primary
aim was not to gather the leading experts in subject fields, as is
usually done, but rather to consciously promote the heterogeneity of
authors in their approaches, regional distribution, and the varieties of
their academic statuses, thus putting into the Handbook a rare
attestation of local scholarly diversity and a unique field dialogue
about the very nature of medievalists’ discipline and profession.
In terms of Central Europe’s spatiality, readers will notice that the
Handbook goes far beyond the borders of the region’s core medieval
monarchies (Hungary-Bohemia-Poland), following, wherever possible,
the lines of its transregional and global connections, thus covering
areas that are usually seen as outside or marginal to Central Europe
—among them, most notably the Balkans, the Rus’ East, Italy, and
Scandinavia (see Figure I.5). To track such a vast and ambiguous
space, the Handbook also adopted a broader chronological
framework. It starts with medieval Central Europe’s “formative
moments,” seen as the points in time when key changes occurred in
the region around the year ad 800, most notably early medieval
migrations, Christianization, and foundation of medieval polities,
ending around the year ad 1500, which is seen as a common period
of change from medieval to early modern contexts, marked by large
transformative processes such as the Ottoman conquest of the
Balkans (1453–1500) and Hungary (1526), Humanism in Italy, and
the (pre)Reformation period.40 Within this time frame, chapter
authors made their own chronologies that reflect the specific
dynamics of their topics, diverting, when necessary, to Late Antiquity
or even modern times to show the long-lasting effects of medieval-
period transmissions and the epoch’s reception.
 Modern physical map of Central Europe and its surroundings. (Available
FIGURE I.5.
from FreeWorldMaps.net.)

The outcome of these approaches is the Handbook’s division into

four main sections. The first, “Land, People, and Structures of Power,”
introduces the key shapes, natural resources, and actors that
participated in the political, social, and cultural interactions in
medieval Central Europe. Chapter 1, by András Vadas, thus deals
comparatively with the specifics of the region’s climate, its
landscapes, and natural resources, surveying how these factors
affected the region’s medieval population. Adding to this outline,
chapter 2, by Daniel Ziemann, introduces medieval people—diverse
groups settled here from the East during the early Middle Ages,
including the Avars and Slavs (sixth to eighth century), their
encounters with the Franks in the West, and later settlers, such as
the Hungarians (ninth to tenth century) and other nomadic groups
that followed during the High Middle Ages. Polities that developed
from these migrations after the tenth century are introduced by Julia
Burkhardt in chapter 3, where she presents examples of political
community and its legitimization during the High Medieval period as
kingdoms or early-modern Ständestaat. Within these polities, chapter
4 by János M. Bak and Suzana Miljan explores administrative
practices, while legal systems and jurisdictions are examined in
chapter 5 by János M. Bak and Yuriy Zazuliak, singling out medieval
laws as important factors of diversity, their relation to
Christianization, and also a variety of structures and practices applied
in legal administration (urban, village, royal, ducal, and so on) and
jurisdiction. As these legal practices frequently led to open conflict,
chapter 6 introduces medieval war and warfare. Here, Attila Bárány
highlights two distinct phases of conflict that dominated the region
during the Middle Ages—the first was characterized by the tribal
military organization of nomadic Hungarian and Slavic migrations,
and the second, by warfare that developed in the period, which
lasted until the Ottoman conquest of Hungary in 1526. In chapter 7,
László Veszprémy also deals with conflicts, but places them into a
broader social perspective, tracing their various forms and methods
of collaborative resolution. Emir O. Filipović reviews the forms of
Christianity and relations its processes formatted in the Slavic
Balkans, while Pawel Figurski discusses dynastic attitudes to the
crown in medieval Poland. Viewing the methods that prompted
conflicts, Gerald Schwedler focuses on approaches to religious
controversies, such as the Hussites, to which Christian Raffensperger
adds the processes of separation, interconnectedness, and othering
in the Slavic East.
How natural resources and contexts of residence and government
affected the region’s social relations is the topic of the Handbook’s
second section, “Society and Economy.” In chapter 8, Cosmin Popa-
Gorjanu takes a deep dive into the nobility of Central Europe—first
reviewing their self-perception and our modern understanding of
what it meant to be noble in medieval Central Europe, then
elaborating the stratification of the region’s aristocracies by their roles
in administration and landholding. In this, he pays special attention to
the lesser nobility—a circle that has often been disregarded in
twentieth-century historiography. Similarly, in chapter 9, Stephen
Donecker challenges old static overviews of the region’s ideal social
order, observing the complex interplay of various migratory relations,
namely, those between migrants and their host societies, as well as
diverse forms of social mobility that did not necessarily reflect the
region’s usual ethnic or social distinctions. Taking the concept of
mobility further into the sphere of the family, chapter 10 by Mihaela
Antonín Malaníková, Witold Brzeziński and Marija Mogorović Crljenko
recounts converging structures and patterns of familial exchange
(marriage), as they were documented in diverse public records across
the region; the authors’ main interest was in the node of marital
relations and social interactions that determined gender and familial
roles, especially those of women, which modern historiographers
have largely underestimated up until recently. From familial
structures, in chapter 11 Edit Sárosi shifts our focus to wider
structural relations in the region’s food production. Showing how
management of rural resources changed to expand the rural
production from the thirteenth century on, she points out the
important transformations in food-production patterns, and new
technologies that made the region comparable to parts of the
European medieval West. From rural landscapes, chapter 12 by
Katalin Szende and Felicitas Schmieder, takes us toward the region’s
urban structures, where, prior to the thirteenth century, they find
Church and princely or royal initiatives to be the key driving forces of
urbanization. They trace subsequent changes, especially apparent in
the eastern parts of Central Europe, in regional and long-distance
trade and production based on settlers who followed ius Theutonicum
—a flexible juridical concept created to accommodate newcomers’
immunities and obligations in areas that were not under the tight
control of the Holy Roman Empire. Chapter 13, authored by Grzegorz
Myśliwski and Balázs Nagy, turns, then, to a more substantial focus
on urban production and commerce. It comparatively addresses the
circumstances that prompted the region’s trade, such as minting,
Another random document with
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“Oh,” with an impatient whirl of his glasses, “the fellow has always as
many excuses as an Irishman!”
“I think you are unjust,” she said, with a flash in her dark eyes. “I
admit that Owen has been extravagant and foolish, but he was not
worse, or half as bad, as many young men in his position. Are you
quite determined? Won’t you give Owen another chance—or even
half a chance?”
“No; his future is now in his own hands, and I stick to what I’ve said,”
he declared, with irritable vehemence. “You came here, my clever
Leila, to talk me over. Oh, you are good at that, but it’s no go this
time! I am honestly giving the boy his only remedy. Let me see,”
sitting down at his bureau, “what is the date? Yes—look here—I
make an entry. I give Owen two years from to-day to work out his
time—to-day is the thirty-first of March.”
“But why not wait until to-morrow, and make it the first of April?”
suggested his niece, with a significant and seductive smile.
“Leila,” he spluttered, “I’m astonished at you! You jeer at me because
I’m not disposed to keep your beloved brother as an ‘objêt de luxe,’
eh?”
“I don’t jeer, Uncle Dick, and I am sorry my tongue was too many for
me; but I can see both sides of the question, and it is hard that, after
indulging Owen as a boy, sending him to Eton, putting him into the
Hussars, and letting him become accustomed to the Service, sport,
and society, you suddenly pull up and throw him out in the world to
sink or swim. What can he do?”
“That is for him to find out, and, since he wouldn’t pull up, I must.”
“Listen to me,” she said, rising and coming closer to him; “supposing
Owen were to give you a promise in writing that he would stick
steadily to one situation for two years, what would you say then?”
“I’d say that the promise would not be worth the paper it was written
on!” he answered, with gruff emphasis. “Give me deeds, not
documents.”
“Oh, so that is your opinion and your last word?”
“It’s my opinion—yes—but as to the last word, of course it’s your
perquisite!” and he chuckled complacently.
Lady Kesters stood for a moment looking steadily at her uncle, and
he as steadily at her. Then she slowly crossed the room and touched
a bell to summon a footman, who presently ushered her out of the
house.
 CHAPTER IV
LEILA’S IDEA

As Lady Kesters motored home in her smart new Rolls-Royce, her

expression was unusually grave; for once Uncle Dick had proved
invulnerable, and she was overpowered with surprise; for her
ladyship was so accustomed “to push the world before her,” to
borrow an Irish expression, that any little resistance affected her in
the nature of a shock.
Her brother was awaiting her in the smoking-room, and as she
entered and threw off her furs, he said—
“So it was no go, Leila! Your embassy was a failure; defeat is written
on your face—ahem—I told you so!”
“Now, Owen, I call this base ingratitude. I’ve wasted my whole
morning fighting for you, I am worsted in the battle, and you receive
me with grins and gibes!”
“You see, I can understand Uncle Dick’s attitude; he is pretty sick of
me, and I don’t blame him; after all, when you come to think of it,
why should he support a healthy, able-bodied duffer simply because
he is his nephew?”
“Worse than that,” amended his sister, “his heir! I can understand his
attitude even better than you, Owen. As a young man he never had
any real fling, and could scarcely afford cabs and clothes or anything
he wanted. He was hampered by a hopelessly extravagant father.”
“And now in his old age he is tormented by a spendthrift nephew.”
“Yes, and I can’t exactly explain; but I grasp the situation. You have
had, what as a young man he never enjoyed—that is to say, a
splendid time—and chiefly at his expense. He must feel just a little
bit sore.”
“No; old Dick is a rattling good sort, and I don’t agree with you, Leila.
It’s not so much the money he grudges, but that he thinks I’ll never
do any good. I’ve no ballast. I’ve got to sally out into the world, like
the hero in a fairy tale, and prove myself!”
“Yes, my dear brother; you practically start to-day, March the 31st,
and do you know that I’ve got an idea,—and from Purdon, of all
people. He is rather smart looking, and might pass for a gentleman,
till he opens his mouth; besides, I happen to know that his mother
lives in Fulham, and keeps a small greengrocer’s shop.”
“Yes, but your idea? You don’t want me to start in that line, do you?”
“No,” with an irrepressible smile; “I want you to become a chauffeur!”
“A chauffeur!” he repeated, subsiding into an adjacent arm-chair;
“but why?”
“But why not?”
“Well, of course, I used to drive a car—and yes—your idea isn’t half
bad; a chauffeur gets about the world for nothing, has fair pay, and,
by all accounts, bar washing the car, a fairly good time.”
“You need not be thinking of a good time, Owen; but put all idea of
amusement out of your head, and make up your mind that, during
the next two years, you will be doing time—as a punishment for your
crimes! Now, to be practical, you must have a certificate, and you
and I will run into the country for the next day or two, and you shall
drive the car; of course you are out of practice, and Purdon shall give
you tips. I suppose you know all about magnetos, carburetters, and
speed? I expect in a week you will qualify and pass, and there you
are!”
“Yes, my lady, in a new black leather suit. I’ll do my best; I see you’ve
fixed it up.”
She nodded assent. He was accustomed to Leila’s fixing up of his
affairs, and never disputed her authority.
“You can take the car out in the morning, and get accustomed to the
traffic. I think you will make an excellent chauffeur, as you have a
strong head and no nerves.”
“Perhaps I may, and I’ve a sort of taste for mechanics. As a kid, you
remember, I was mad to be an engine-driver.”
“Yes; you were always blowing things up, or breaking them down, or
taking them to pieces.”
“I dare say I’ll have something of the breaking down and taking to
pieces in my new career.”
“Only it’s so frightfully risky; you might go in for being an airman—
that’s where you could make money!”
“Yes, with a two to one chance of breaking my neck.”
“Think of ten thousand pounds earned in a few hours! All the same
it’s out of the question, I couldn’t bear the anxiety, it’s too dangerous;
though I see the day coming when airships will displace motors, and
I shall be flying over to Paris to dine and do a theatre.”
“Meanwhile, give me mother earth and a 60 h.p. car! Well, so it’s
settled,” he said, jumping to his feet and tossing the stump of his
cigarette into the fire; “yes, I’ll be a chauffeur all right—but what
about the pay?”
“I expect you start at two guineas a week, with or without clothes,
and find yourself.”
“A hundred a year, and an open-air billet! I say, I shall do splendidly.
Leila, I feel that Uncle Dick’s prize is already in my hand.”
“Don’t be too sure of that! Bear in mind that some situations may not
suit you, that you may not suit them, and be thrown out of
employment.”
“That’s true; it has happened to me twice already—the Army and the
ranch—and I’ve no luck.”
“What do you mean, Owen?”
“I mean that nothing comes my way; other chaps get all they want in
big things, or little. Don’t you know the sort that fall across people
they wish to meet, that get the best corners at a shoot, the best
hands at cards, that win big sweepstakes and lotteries, come in for
fine legacies, and, at a good old age, die very comfortably in their
beds?”
His sister nodded.
“I have one peculiarity. I can’t call it gift, and it’s of no earthly value. I
only wish it was marketable; I’d pass it on like a shot.”
“What is it—second sight?”
“No, that’s all bosh! It’s—it’s—I don’t know how to put it—the being
on the spot when out-of-the-way affairs come off,—sensational
things, accidents, discoveries, deaths. They seem to drop into my
day’s work in an extraordinary way; sometimes I begin to think I’ve
got the Evil Eye!”
“Now that’s nonsense if you like! You have knocked about a good
deal for the last seven years, and naturally seen far more than
people at home.”
“Well, anyhow, I wish this queer sort of fate would change, and
shove me towards something different—a good post.”
“And you believe you’d keep it?”
“Anyway, I’d do my little best. My three weeks as steward were a
breaking-in.”
“But you were acting all the time, Owen—you know you love it! and
you realised that there was a limit to the experience?”
“No, honour bright, I wasn’t playing the fool. I am quick and ready,
and not afraid of work. I say, look here,” and he took his hands out of
his pockets and held them up, the palms towards her.
“Oh, oh, my poor dear boy! they are like—like—leather! Like a
working man’s, only clean!”
“Well, I never was a kid-glove chap, and the reins have hardly been
out of them for twelve months. I’m fairly good with my hands,
although an awful duffer with my head.”
“Just the opposite to me,” declared his sister; “I can scarcely sew a
button on, and I can’t do up a parcel or tie a knot. But to return to our
business. Once you have a certificate, the next thing will be to find
you a situation. You had better begin in some very quiet country
place—a long way from Town and talk—and I will recommend you.”
“You!” and he burst into a loud laugh.
“Oh yes, you may laugh; but who else is there? We do not wish to
invite the world into our family laundry.”
“Thank you, Leila.”
“Don’t be silly! I will give you an excellent character,” she continued
imperturbably, “as a sober, respectable young man, most careful,
obliging, and anxious to please.”
“Well, that sounds all right.”
“And you must really be, as the French advertisements say, ‘un
chauffeur sérieux,’ and promise not to play the fool, and I shall get
you a nice situation that I happen to know of, with two old ladies.”
“O Lord!” he expostulated; “can’t you make it a couple of old
gentlemen? I’d much rather go to them.”
“Yes, no doubt you would,” she answered; “but you cannot pick and
choose, and this place seems the very one for a start. These are the
two Miss Parretts.”
“I say, what a name! Any cats?”
“I believe they are an old French family—de Palairet, and have the
dark eyes and animation of the race,—but they are so long in
England, they have become Parrett.”
“De Palairet is rather a mouthful. And whereabouts do the old birds
nest?”
“In a remote part of Midshire. I came across them when I stayed with
our cousins, the Davenants, down at Westmere; when I was a girl I
went there every summer, but now the family place is sold.”
“Yes, the Davenants are broke. Young Davenant was in the Hussars
with me, and was frightfully hard up.”
“The two Miss Parretts lived in the village of Ottinge—Ottinge-in-the-
Marsh—in a little old red cottage. They had two maids, two cats, and
a sweet garden. The original property was in the neighbourhood, and
the family manor of the Parretts. The father of these old ladies,
Colonel Parrett, married in India, when he was a sub., a planter’s
daughter, simply because he, they say, was dared to make her an
offer—and whatever a Parrett is dared to do—they do.”
“I say, I think I shall like them! I shall dare them to double my salary.”
“The first Mrs. Parrett died and left a baby, your future mistress. Her
father sent her home, and married, years later, an Irish girl, and
again his wife died and left him with two more girls. One married the
village parson, the other lived with her father and sister in the Manor.
After the death of Colonel Parrett, it was found that he had
squandered all his money putting it into follies: the Manor was
mortgaged to the chimneys, the daughters had to turn out, and for
years lived in genteel poverty. Now comes a turn of Fortune’s wheel!
Some distant Parrett relative bequeathed a heap of money to Miss
Parrett, and she and Miss Susan have gone back to the Manor. Bella
Parrett must be well over seventy; Susan is about fifty, has the
youngest heart I ever knew in an elderly body, and is the most
unselfish creature in the world. Miss Parrett is an egotistical old
person, full of pedigree and importance, but always delightfully sweet
and affectionate to me. She looks obstinate and self-willed, and I feel
positive that some one has dared her to buy a motor! I had a letter
from her the other day, asking me to take up the character of a cook;
she mentioned that she was about to purchase a most beautiful
automobile upholstered in green morocco leather,—think of that! and
would soon be looking for a nice, steady, respectable young man as
chauffeur, and”—pointing at her brother with an ivory paper knife
—“here he is!”
“Is he?” he responded doubtfully, “I’m not so sure.”
“Yes. I admit that it will be hideously dull, and I can absolutely
guarantee you against any sensational experiences. It is just a
sleepy little country place, with few big people in the neighbourhood:
no racing, shockingly bad hunting—not that this will affect you—but it
will be an ideal spot for putting in the time. You will never see a soul
you know; I’ll keep you well supplied with books, papers, and news,
and steal down to see you now and then, ‘under the rose.’”
“Don’t, don’t!” he protested, with a laugh, “think of my spotless
character.”
“Yes; but I shall come all the same! The place is notoriously healthy, I
dare say you may get some good fishing, you will hardly have
anything to do—they won’t go out much—of course you’ll pay a boy
to clean the car, and I’ve no doubt that the old ladies will take an
enormous fancy to you and leave you a fortune, and you will be just
as happy as the day is long.”
“Oh, all right. Then, in that case, my dear Sis, since you say there is
a chance of a great fortune and good fishing, you may book me for
the situation by the next post.”
 CHAPTER V
PLANS AND THREATS

When the choice of Owen’s future employment was duly imparted to

his uncle and brother-in-law, the latter received it with approval, the
former with a series of alarming explosions.
“His nephew—his heir—a common chauffeur! Outrageous! Why not
enlist, and be the King’s servant, if livery he must wear?” Then, in a
tone of angry sarcasm, “I see—I see his reason. The fellow will be
gadding round, making believe to himself it’s his own machine; to
many young asses, driving a car is an extraordinary pleasure. Yes,
that’s why he hit on it!” and he slapped his leg with a gesture of
triumph.
“You are wrong, Uncle Richard, it was I who hit on it,” protested the
culprit. “Owen never had an idea of being a chauffeur till I suggested
it.”
“That’s likely enough; his ideas are few and far between. Well, now
look here, Leila, I forbid him to adopt your plan.”
“But, my dear uncle, have you not washed your hands of him for the
next two years?” she demanded, with raised brows. “Do you really
think you are consistent?”
“But a greasy chauffeur, got up in black leather, like a boot——”
“The pay is not bad, it’s a job he can manage, and, after all, you will
allow that Owen must live; or are you going to say, ‘Je n’en vois pas
la necessité’?”
“Umph! I wonder, Leila, where you got that tongue of yours?”
“And,” dismissing the question with an airy gesture, “I know of a nice
quiet place in a country village, with two darling old maiden ladies,
where he will be, so to speak, out at grass, with his shoes off!”
“Oh yes,” he snarled, “I know your quiet, wicked little country village,
with the devil peeping behind the hedges and finding plenty for an
idle young man to do. Villages are pestilential traps, swarming with
pretty girls. Just the place where Owen will fall into the worst scrape
of all—matrimony. He is a good-looking chap; they’ll all be after him!”
“I don’t believe there’s a woman in Ottinge under forty, and I never
saw a more hard-featured lot—never. You know I stayed in the
neighbourhood with the Davenants years ago.”
“Another thing—no one can take Owen for anything but a
gentleman!” and Sir Richard put up his glasses and surveyed his
niece, with an air as much as to say, “There’s a poser!”
“Oh yes. He has only to show his hands, worn with manual labour,
and I’ll tell him to grow his hair long, wear gaudy ties, and hold his
tongue.”
“Well, have your own way! But, as sure as I’m a living sinner, harm
will come of this mad idea; it’s nothing more or less than play-acting.
He’d much better have gone on the stage when he was about it.”
“Unfortunately, there’s one objection,—it is the most precarious of all
professions; for an amateur it would be hard work and no pay. In five
years Owen might, with great luck, be earning thirty shillings a week.
Oh, I’ve thought over no end of plans, I can assure you, Uncle Dick,
and the chauffeur scheme is by far the most promising.”
“Of course you always get the better of me in talk; but I’ve my own
opinion. You and Owen will make a fine hash of his affairs between
you. Bear in mind that I won’t have the Wynyard name made little of
in a stinking garage. He is not to use it, or to let any one know he is a
Wynyard, and that’s flat; and you can tell him that, as sure as he
takes service as Owen Wynyard, I’ll marry—and to that I stick!” and
with this announcement, and a very red face, he snatched up his hat
and departed.
Sir Martin Kesters, on the other hand, saw nothing derogatory in his
brother-in-law’s employment, and warmly applauded the scheme. At
twenty-six Owen should be learning independence; moreover, it was
his wife’s plan, and, in his opinion, everything she said or did was
right. “I think it’s a sound scheme,” he said. “If money is wanted,
Leila, you know where to get it.”
“No, no; Owen has a little, and he must not touch a halfpenny that he
has not earned—it’s in the bond; and he will have nothing to spend
money on down there. I don’t believe there’s a billiard-table or a pack
of cards in the place.”
“The typical hamlet, eh? Half a dozen cottages, a pump, and an idiot
—poor devil!”
“Owen or the idiot?”
“Both. All the same, Leila, I feel sure that, now you’ve taken Owen in
hand, he will come out on top.”
Wynyard fell in with everything, without question or argument, and
cheerfully accepted his sister’s arrangements, with the exception of
the ties. He drew the line at an orange satin with green spots, or
even a blue with scarlet horse-shoes.
No, he declared, nothing would induce him to be seen in them; he
was always a quiet dresser. He could wear a muffler, hold his
tongue, or even drop his h’s if necessary; but he barred making an
object of himself, and suggested that she should offer the discarded
ties as a birthday present to Payne.
“He’d give notice. Payne, in his unprofessional kit, looks like a chief
justice. Well, I won’t insist on the ties, but you must promise to be
very countrified and dense. You know you can take off any one’s way
of talking in the most remarkable way, and do Uncle Richard to the
life!”
“One of my rare accomplishments; and as to being dense, why, it’s
my normal condition.”
“Oh yes, you may joke! But I do hope you won’t let the cat out of the
bag, Owen, or allow any one to suspect that ‘things are not what
they seem!’ I wonder how you will manage in the kitchen and
stables, and if you will be unmasked?”
“Well, I promise to do my best to pick up the local manners and
patois, and, my dear Leila, you appear to forget that for the last year
I’ve lived among a very mixed lot, and got on all right.”
“Got on all right!” she cried. “How can you say so? when you told me
yourself that you had half killed a man! However, as you and I are
confederates in this most risky enterprise, I feel sure you will do your
utmost for my sake. Think of the uproar and scandal if Miss Parrett
were to discover that you were my brother—late of Eton College and
the Red Hussars. Explanation would be impossible; I should be
compelled to flee the country!”
 CHAPTER VI
FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The train which bore Wynyard to his situation was slow, and lingered
affectionately at every station; nevertheless he enjoyed the leisurely
journey. He was glad to be in England once more! His eyes feasted
greedily on the long stretches of quiet, secluded country, nice
hunting fences, venerable villages crowding round a church steeple,
and stately old halls buried in hollows, encompassed by their woods.
The afternoon was well advanced when he saw “Catsfield” on a
large board staring him in the face, and, realising that he had
reached his destination, seized his bag, sprang out, and went in
search of his luggage—a corded tin box of a remarkably vivid yellow.
His sister had insisted upon this, instead of his old battered
portmanteau, as a part of his disguise. A portmanteau, she declared,
would give him away at once! For, no matter how dilapidated and
travel-stained, a portmanteau conferred a certain position upon its
owner!
There were but two people on the platform of the forlorn little station,
which seemed to have no business and no belongings, but had, as it
were, sat down helplessly to rest in the middle of a sweeping plain of
pasture.
Outside the entrance no cabs or vehicles were to be seen, merely an
unpainted spring-cart drawn by a hairy bay mare. In reply to the
traveller’s inquiries, the porter said—
“Oh no, there’s no call for flies here, sir, no work for ’em; the cart was
sent for a man-servant, and he ain’t come. To Ottinge? Yes, sir, he’d
take your luggage, I dessay, and you, too, if you wouldn’t despise
driving with him.”
“I wouldn’t despise driving with any one; but, as I’m rather stiff and
dusty, I’ll walk. You say Ottinge is four miles across the fields and
seven by the road.” “Here,” addressing the driver in the cart, “if you
are going to Ottinge, will you take my bag and box, and I’ll give you a
shilling?”
“All right, master; ’eave ’em in, Pete. Where to, sir?”
“Miss Parrett’s, the Manor;” then, turning to the porter, “can you point
me out the short-cut?”
“Yes, sir, straight over the fields. First you go along this ’ere road to
the left, down a lane, then over the water-meadows and a wooden
bridge—ye can see the spire of Ottinge Church, and if you steer to
that, you can’t go far out. Thank you,” touching his cap in
acknowledgment of sixpence.
As the stranger moved off with an even, swinging stride, the two men
stared after him with a gape of astonishment.
“I’m jiggered if I don’t believe that’s the motor chap after all!” said the
driver; “why, he looks like a regular toff, and talks high. I was bid to
fetch a young man, so I was, but there was no word of a gentleman
—and I know he’s boarding at Sally Hogben’s.”
“It’s a queer start,” agreed the porter; “he’s a likely looking fellow. I
expect he’ll make rare work among the maids!” as his eyes followed
the active figure in tweeds and leather gaiters, till it was lost to sight
round a bend in the road.
“That soort o’ chap won’t be long with them two old women, you may
take your oath. Lor’ bless ye, he’d cut his throat! Why, you haven’t a
good glass o’ beer nor a pretty girl in the parish.”
“I’m none so sure o’ that!” retorted the driver, giving the bay a smack
with the reins, preparatory to starting; “there’s a fair tap at the Drum,
and a couple o’ rare pretty faces in our church.”
“Is that so? I’m not to say busy on Sunday—one down and one up—
and maybe I’ll just step over and have a look at ’em.”
“Eh, ye might go furder and fare worse! Well, I’m off,” and he rattled
away in his clumsy cart, with the gay new box for its only load.
It was about four o’clock on a lovely afternoon in April; the air was
sweet and stimulating, and the newcomer was conscious of a sense
of exhilaration and satisfaction, as he looked across the stretch of
meadows lying in the sunlight.
Wynyard was country-bred, and the familiar sights and sounds
awakened pleasant memories. He noted the bleating of lambs, the
cries of plover, the hedges powdered with thorn, and the patches of
primroses. Everything was so rural and so restful—such a contrast to
the roar of London, the skimming taxis, the hooting and clanking of
motors, and the reek of petrol; he had stepped aside from the glare
and noise into a byway. As he strode along, steering steadily for the
church spire, his spirits rose with every step; he vaulted stiles, leapt
lazy little streams, and, coming to a river, which he crossed by a
rickety wooden bridge, found that he was within measurable distance
of his destination, and paused for a moment to survey it.
The village, which lay under the shelter of some low hills, was long
and straggling; red, hunched-up houses and high-roofed, black
barns had turned their backs on the pasture, and a hoary church,
with a high slated spire and surrounded by a bodyguard of trees,
stood sentry at one end of Ottinge-in-the-Marsh. At the other, and
almost opposite to where he had halted, was an ancient grey manor
house of considerable pretensions, set in creepers and encircled by
yew hedges. A stone-faced, sunk fence and a high wooden gate
separated him from this property, and, as far as he could judge, the
only way he could reach the village was by intruding into the
grounds. He looked up and down and could see nothing but a fence
abutting on the meadows, and, further on, the backyards and
gardens of the villagers. Like the thundering ass he was, he had lost
his way! He tried the wooden gate, found it padlocked, and vaulted
over—a bold trespasser! As he alighted, a little figure, which had
been stooping over a flower-bed, raised itself with a jerk, and he
found himself face to face with a bunchy old lady, trowel in hand.
She wore a short jacket made of Gordon tartan and a knitted hood
with shabby brown strings.
For a moment the two surveyed one another fixedly: she,
recognising that she was confronting a tall, handsome young man of
six or seven-and-twenty; he, that he was gazing at a little woman,
with grey hair worn in loops at either side of a flattish face which was
animated by a pair of quick, suspicious eyes—round and black as
those of a bird.
“There is no right-of-way through these grounds!” she announced, in
a high reedy voice, something like a child’s, but more authoritative;
and as she opened her mouth it was apparent that she was toothless
as a newborn babe.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said the interloper, cap in hand, “but I’m afraid I’ve
missed the footpath and lost my bearings. I want to get into the
village.”
“Well, you’re in the village here,” she answered tartly. “You’ve only to
go down that avenue,” pointing with her trowel; “the Drum is on the
left. I suppose you are come about the fishing?”
“Thank you—no—I’ve nothing to do with fishing.”
Once more he took off his cap. She bowed from her waist as if it was
hinged, and again indicated his direction.
“The Manor?” echoed a yokel, in answer to Wynyard’s question;
“why,” with a grin, “yer just come out o’ it, mister!”
He accordingly retraced his steps down the short drive and rang at
the hall door, which was at the side of the dignified old house, and
over the lintel of which was the date, 1569, in deeply cut figures. A
smart parlour-maid answered the clanging bell, and stared in round-
eyed surprise.
“Can I see Miss Parrett?” he asked; “my name is Owen. I’m the new
chauffeur.”
“The chauffeur!” she repeated, with incredulous emphasis. “Oh!—If
you will just step inside, I’ll let her know;” and, tripping before him
down a long, resounding, flagged passage—which seemingly ran the
length of the house—she ushered him into a low-pitched room, with
heavy oak beams, and mullioned windows facing south, overlooking
the meadows he had recently crossed—a vast, spreading stretch of
flat country outlined by a horizon of woods—possibly those of some
great demesne.
“I’ll tell Miss Parrett,” said the maid, as, with a lingering look at the
new arrival, she closed the door.
The chauffeur awaited an interview for some time, as it took Miss
Parrett at least ten minutes to recover her amazement, and invest
herself with becoming dignity. That man the chauffeur! Why, she had
actually mistaken him for a gentleman; but, of course, in these
socialistic days, the lower orders dressed and talked like their
betters; and she registered a mental vow to keep the creature firmly
in his place. The fact that she had supposed her new chauffeur to be
a visitor who rented the fishing, was an error she never forgave
herself—and the origin of her secret animosity to Wynyard.
The room into which he had been ushered was heavily wainscoted in
oak; the chimneypiece, a most beautiful specimen of carving—but
some ignorant hand had painted the whole with a sickly shade of
pea-green! Various tables and chairs, which had seen better days,
were scattered about; it was not a show apartment, but evidently the
retreat where people did all sorts of odd jobs. A coil of picture wire,
curtain rings, and a pile of chintz patterns, were heaped on the round
centre table, and a stack of wall-papers littered the floor. A snug,
sunny, cheerful sort of den, which would make an A1 smoking-room.
Precisely as the chauffeur arrived at this opinion, the door was flung
open, and Miss Parrett ambled in.
“So you are my new chauffeur!” she began, in a shrill voice, as she
surveyed him with an air of acrid self-assertion.
“Yes, ma’am,” and Owen, as he looked at her, was conscious of a
nascent antagonism.
“Your name, I understand, is Owen. What’s your christian name?”
He coloured violently. What was his christian name?
“St. John,” he answered, after a momentary hesitation. (It was his
second name.) “That is—I mean to say—John.”
“St. John, what affectation! Of course it’s John—plain John. I’ve
engaged you on the recommendation of my friend, Lady Kesters.
She says you are steady, efficient, and strictly sober,” looking him up
and down; “she mentioned you were smart—I suppose she meant
your clothes, eh?”
Wynyard made no reply, but kept his gaze fixed steadily on a crack
in the floor, and the old woman continued—
“Of course Lady Kesters knows you personally?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I hope I shall find you satisfactory and experienced.”
“I hope so, ma’am.”
“And not above your place—ahem!”—clearing her throat—“I have
recently purchased a most beautiful motor, and I engaged you to
drive it, and take great care of it; it is lined with real morocco leather,
and cost, second-hand, five hundred pounds.” As she paused for a
moment to see if he was properly impressed, he repeated his
parrot’s cry of—
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My sister and I propose to use it for paying calls at a distance. You
must drive very slowly and carefully, and keep the car in perfect
order, and spotlessly clean.”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” he assented.
“Your wages will be, from to-day, two guineas a week. You will live in
the village. We have arranged for you to board with a most
respectable woman, and trust you will give her as little trouble as
possible, and we shall expect to see you in church at least once on
Sunday. You may join the Young Men’s Christian Association, and
the choir—and——”
But here he interrupted.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t think there’s anything about church
attendance and singing in our agreement. Sunday, I presume, will be
my day off, and I shall be glad of some exercise.”
“You never mean to tell me you don’t go to church?” she demanded,
fixing him with her little beady eyes; “as to exercise, you will get
plenty of that in the week—doing odd jobs and going messages. We
are only here about six months, and not nearly settled yet.”
“I,” he was about to add, “go to church when I please;” but at this
critical moment the door again opened, and another lady, much
younger than his inquisitor, entered briskly. She had a long thin face,
a kindly expression, and a pair of bright blue eyes which opened to
their widest extent as she looked at Wynyard.
“I heard our new chauffeur had come,” she began, rather
breathlessly.
“My chauffeur, Susan, if you please,” corrected Miss Parrett, “seeing
that I am paying his wages and he is to drive my car.”
Miss Susan coloured faintly, and answered with a nervous laugh—
“Yes, yes, dear, of course—of course.”
“His name is Owen—John Owen—and I have been telling him of his
duties, and how we only require to be driven about the country
quietly—no dashing, no racing, no touring.”
“Yes, my dear sister, that is all very well for you who are nervous; but
I do love motoring, and I hope this young man will take me for miles,
and let me see something of the country. I wish you would come with
us, Bella, won’t you?”
“I don’t require you to invite me to use my own car, Susan,” rejoined
Bella, with crushing dignity. Wynyard gathered that an increase of
riches had not been to the moral advantage of Miss Parrett, and felt
sorry for her snubbed relation; but Susan, a valiant soul, took what
the gods had given her or withheld, with extraordinary philosophy,
was never offended, envious, or out of temper, and recovered from
these humiliations with the elasticity of an indiarubber ball.
“You left London early?” said Miss Parrett, turning to him.
“Yes, ma’am, at nine o’clock.”
Susan started at the sound of his voice; he spoke like a gentleman!