ABSTRACT
M ention has been made of the Orang !lofh OJlen, the prolonged and multi-phased eastward expansion of German people, authority and culture. Since the nineteenth cenrury there has been a strong tendency to view the history of Germany's eastern neighbours in these terms-indeed to see the whole history of the region as oncor the relationship between 'Germans' and 'Slavs', Both German and pan-Slavic nationalists contributed to this dualistic and conRictual approach, and just as its flaws---and above all the political dangers inherent in it-were becoming evident, it was succeeded by an equally insidious variant, fostered by the ideological division of late twentieth-century Europe into two power-blocks. The notions of'\'(lestern' and 'Eastern' Europe have a long, unhappy, mutating pedigree. Yet it would be impossible to exaggerate the inadequacy of this approach from the medieval viewpoint. To assume any SOrt of homogeneity in the area of what is geographically considered Europe that is populated by Slavic peoples-from the Baltic to the Adriatic and the Black Sea, from Prague ro the Urals (not to mention the non-Slavic peoples, such as the Hungarians and Albanians, enclosed in that area)-would be as outrageous as to assume it for the area from Iceland to Sicily. or from Lisbon to Berlin. The historical outlook which tends to see 'Eastern Europe' as 'Slav' Europe' is characteristic of an outlook in which race is emphasised as an historical facror. Moreover, historians have shown how complex the ethnic terms 'Germanic' and 'Slavic' actually are, and have sometimes come close to rejecting their use altogether as more pernicious than useful. I
The term 'East Central Europe', as used here, has come into common currency in the last 20 years, partly to reflect growing dissatisfaction with the old dichotomy, and partly to reflect the older truth that culturally 'Central' Europe, including the Germanic and even the north Italian lands, had a great deal in common, not only from the long hegemony of the Habsburgs but from still fu rther back in time. 'East Central Europe' is used here to denote the westernmOSt band of those linguistically non-Ger manic territories to the eaSt or south·east of the German-speaking world,
which from the Second World War to the collapse of communism found themselves on the east side of the famous 'Iron Curtain'.2 Yet there are other hismrical reasons fo r studying these lands together, and particularly for examining their medieval history in comparative light. As will be seen below, they have a number of features and circumstances in common. The most important of these was that by the later Middle Ages they both shared with their western neighbours a full membership of the Roman Catholic obedience and at the same time were in the special position of being on the borders of that obedience. Which of these £WO features was [he more significant is impossible to saYi both have to be taken fully into account. Of those inclined to typologise and draw lines on maps-and this is still often an ethnocentric exercise-an increasing number now stress that in many ways the line between Western and Eastern Christianity (with, later on, Islam on the 'Eastern' side as well) has been culturally more fundamental than that between 'German' and 'Slav', or its approximate twentieth-century counterpart, the Iron Curtain. As far as the late l\1..iddle Ages are concerned, no such borders were yet fixed. 'East Central Europe' was a huge space in transition. At the beginning of our period it was still subject m eastward (Germanic) expansion; by the end it was in retreat in the face of Ottoman Turkish aggrandisation, as has been seen in Chapter 14. In between there were many opportunities fo r the formation of states, and for social, economic and cultural development, which the rulers of the different regions took up in often similar (though not identical) ways, and sometimes in co-operation rather than conflict. The results included, fo r a time, immense territorial agglomerations, dwarfing anything in the 'west', but also participating fuUy in 'western' cultural and economic life.
