Page 111 - Changing Living Spaces

The Transformation of the Migratory Strategies of the Rural Population

The release letters examined here do not, unfortunately, document all
cases of migration in the area under study. Serfs of the estate of České
Budějovice were allowed to migrate without permission if the migration
took place within one or more estates of the same overlord. The release
letters preserved in the České Budějovice City Archive only document bi-
directional ‘exchanges’ of serfs – both inwards and outwards – between
the estate of České Budějovice and those surrounding estates that were
owned by other landlords. A compact collection is represented here by the
release letters issued on the occasion of a serf’s marriage. The Catholic
Church was not allowed to conduct a wedding between individuals from
outside the estate of České Budějovice unless they identified themselves
clearly. When an inspection was carried out, it was documented by an an-
notation in the marriage register, which recorded the feudal allegiance
of the couple. It is very unlikely that someone with dubious feudal alle-
giance would have been able to enter into a marriage.

Structure and Use of the Research Database
In the Bohemian context, release letters have not yet been regarded with
great interest. In the past, historians have occasionally drawn attention
to their existence, but have never analysed them using a well-organized
database. This study is the first attempt to undertake such an analysis. It
began by creating a Microsoft Access database which brougt together all
available information about the context of each serf’s release from serf-
dom. First, the dates of the beginning and end of the release procedure
were entered. This was followed by the would-be migrant’s personal infor-
mation: their first name, surname, sex, marital status, and occupation.
The database also included the would-be migrant’s place of origin and
their place of residence after the end of the migration. Individual locali-
ties were entered into web search engines (Google Mapsor Mapy.cz.) This

made it possible to determine the distance which the migrants moved.
The place of origin and the target destination were mostly verifiable when
a serf transferred from one overlord to another. The type of the original
and final settlement – whether it was a town, suburb, village, or manor –
was also entered into the database. When a serf was given his or her free-
dom, only information on the original location was known, so the dis-
tance of migration remained unknown.
Two-thirds of all documented cases were associated with a marriage,
so the data on the migrant could be checked using the marriage registers.
The basic sources here consisted of the parish registers of the St. Nicholas

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