members held their landed property separately, the groups as such did have the right to revindicatc property alienated beyond their boundaries. Their members probably kept fairly accurate accounts of their own genealogies and of the relevant kinship relations, much as in other comparable societies. For instance, claiming heritage in Longobard Italy required the knowledgc of one’s kith and kin as far as the seventh antecedent generation (Edictus Rothari of 643 A.D., cf. Beyerle 1962 Cap. 153, pp. 39—40). In earlier times, group coherence along the sibling line, that is, among brothers (and/or sisters) might have prevailed over links between fathers and sons (a similar case from 9th-century Saxony being discussed in Hägermann 1985, 21, 23). This possibility is indicated by the sequence of first three abbots of the Benedictine house of Säzava, rep-resented by the founder, his nephew and, as the last to assume Office, his son (on Säzava cf. now Reichertovä -Blähovd- Dvoräökovä- Hufiäiek 1988, on its first abbots Blähovä 1988,61). The quantification of ~ici toponyms contained in the first volume of G. Friedrich’s CDB shows that in the 1 Ith— 12th Century, approximately one-third to one-half of the population of Bohemia including Moravia lived in residential collectives bearing the ~ici names. Unfortunately, a breakdown of this figure between the “well-born” and commoner lineages(?) cannot be achieved on the present evidence. At least since the end of 12th and especially in the 13th Century, a trend of con-centration of executive powers in the hands of some members of these groups (usually the eldest males) is evident, perhaps with the growth of the size of their property. Together with this, distance of the genealogical link denoted by the ~ici suffix was shortened after 1200. Since that time on, such patronymics added to ordinary personal names refer to fathers of individuals bearing these “double” (“otchestvo’Mype) names.

For studies of early social formations, the Situation and Standing of women is usually of a high information value and it may well be useful to treat the early Bohemian material from this point of view. For the period before 1000 A.D., historical sources are totally absent. For this reason, we have to rely on mere indications of which some have been mentioned already: for early medieval Bohemia, the most important kinship connections were clearly to one’s ancestors and to one’s paternal and maternal uncles (the persona] names BezdSd, Bezstryj and Bezuj, cf. supra). However, other important connections must have been traced along the female descent lines in addition to agnatic links. The Old Czech terms for spouses’ siblings, current until about the incipient 15th Century, namely “devef” (husband’s brother) and “sir” (wife’s brother) must be of early Indo-European origins, as they find exact parallels in Sanskrit and Pali while Greek and Latin lost the terms for wife’s brother (Hocart 1928y now re-printed in Needham 1987, 61 —85 on pp. 73, 76 and 79—80; up-to-date comments and bibliography in: Needham 1987, 8 and 10 n. 38). In these early societies, women probably played the role of transmitters of social Status. Before 1000, women occupied not unimportant positions in the societies both west (Heers 1974, esp. p. 25; Duby 1988, 19— 20) and north (Alodzelewski 1987, 27—28) of Bohemia. On the other hand, the most ancient authentic and more exactly datable text, giving evidence on the Situation of women

in early medieval Bohemia, though illuminating the top echelon of the society of those times (CDB 7: 79, 85 : 5 to 10, year 1078) shows that economically, 1 Ith-century women were denied the right to dispose of landed prop-erty. It gives evidence to the effect that single (unmarried) women were nourished either by their parents or by provi-sions of their deceased husbands, wives living in wedlock were supported by their husbands. The wives had the right to dispose of their dowries, but there are instances when their husbands handled their wives’ dowry property as well. The Situation before 1000 remains unknown but this economic passivity of women was fairly typical for most of the I Ith and 12th Century. In !2th-century Charters there is not a single word on possible inheritance rights of women (e.g. CDB 1:155, 157 : 4—5, years 1142— 1148) and the very first case when a woman disposes of her landed property is datcd 1158—1166 (Prazäk 1958, 150 to 151). Even here, however, the lady in question simply transfers her dowry to her husband without even having been called by name (she identified herseif only as a daught-er of X and spouse of Y). The second half of the 12th Century saw at least a right of the wife to express her consent with landed-property transactions (e.g. CDB 7:400, 416 : 18—21, year 1173?) or approval of the wives’ right to precious objects of movable character and to the household furnishings of the same kind in cases of re-marriages after their first husbands’ deaths (CDB I : 323, 297 :3—6, year 1189). Though the earliest independent transaction con-cerning landed property by a woman is dated 1193 (Ms. Agnes of Potvorov: CDB 7:342 pp. 308—309, cf. also CDBII: 48 pp. 43-44 and CDB II: 113 pp. 107-108), the Blessed Hroznata’s provisions for the case of his death in 1197 were quite traditional: one of his sisters received an estate for Support in her widowhood (but only for such a case) while the other hand to be nourished by the abbot of Hroznata’s Premonstratensian establishment at Teplä (CDB 1:357 pp. 323— 325). It was not until after 1200 that women rose to the Status of independent benefactresses of Church institutions (CDB II: 270 pp. 263—264, year 1225), acquirers of inheritance shares (CDB 77 : 303, 301 : 27—28, year 1227) or gatherers of landed property (CDB V(1: 199 pp. 316-318, year 1259?). It thus seems that while women of the llth—12th Century did retain their role of mediators of social Status, their other func-tions were substantially limited by — if not confined to — the interiors and furnishings of their households.

A task of extraordinary importance is represented by a study of social structures of the lower, “commoner” strata of Contemporary Bohemian society, if we do not feel at ease by listing the terms by which the Charters refer to the rural population groups and trying to interpret them in the historical manner torn apart from other types of evidence. In this connection, a document of some signi-ficance may be seen in emperor Henry IV’s charter of 1086, delimiting the borders of the episcopal see of Prague (CDB 1: 86 pp. 92—95, esp. p. 94, last comments in: Släma 1986, 46) by means of enumeration of the border-land population groups. Against the interpretation of these social bodies as tribal groups, J. Släma rightly points to the facl that some of these groupings were named after castles established by paramounts of the Premysl dynasty and thus not all of them must by necessity be