Bohemia and Moravia

In the ninth century two independent and separate units existed, the Great Moravian Christian polity and the pagan gens of the Czechs. Moravia emerged as a political unit sometime after 830. It is traditionally referred to by the name Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus gave it: Great Moravia. Great Moravia collapsed under Magyar assault in 906. From the tenth century a Christian state developed consisting of two lands, Bohemia and Moravia. While nothing at all is known from the written record about the society of Great Moravia prior to the turn of the ninth century, there are numerous reports dealing with Bohemia in ninth-century Frankish annals and chronicles. The inhabitants of Bohemia appear in these sources under the name Bohemani and variations thereon, taken from the name of the country, either the Latin Bohemia or the Germanic Baiahaim. Their own name for themselves, Czechs (of unknown etymology), is first documented in the tenth century. From the point of view of the Empire these Bohemani formed a single political unit on the territory of Bohemia; numerous princes (duces Bohemanorum), however, would often treat on their behalf. This apparently contradictory situation – with a unified ‘tribe’ on the one hand and a number of chiefs on the other – is resolved in the earlier literature by a preference for one of two alternatives