Acknowledgments
The idea of bringing together a group of medievalists working on rulership in medieval East Central Europe and publishing their chapters in a volume of collective essays originates from a coffee discussion with Florin Curta in the Weston Library in Oxford, UK in 2015. Since then the first results of this project were presented on various occasions. The first venue was the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI in 2017, which hosted the first session entitled Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe. The second round took place during the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, UK in 2019. The editors of this volume organized three sessions and a round table where many of the contributors to this volume presented their up to date research on medieval rulership. We are very grateful to the audience of these sessions who contributed to the discussion with comments and questions. We also appreciate those authors who joined the project later and contributed with their chapters to this volume. We would like to thank Brill for accepting this volume for publication in the East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450 series. Special thanks to Florin Curta, Kate Hammond and Alessandra Giliberto for their support and collaborative spirit. We also appreciate the anonymous reviewer who provided us with valuable comments and suggestions that significantly improved the individual chapters and the book as a whole. Further thanks go to Peter Palm for his excellent maps and to Pascal Weber, who assisted us at the very final stage with the index, and Erik Neunes, who helped Grischa Vercamer as his student assistant with corrections. This project was only possible with the relentless support of our colleagues, friends and family. The greatest gratitude goes to them.
This book is dedicated to Dušan’s son Martin, who has brought him happiness and hope to this uncertain age. It is as well dedicated to Grischa’s wife Monika, who dared to marry him in this uncertain age.