Ratiboř

Without knowing it, we may be treading on the foundations of houses that our ancestors built centuries ago. Their houses have disappeared and their inhabitants have moved away. Centuries have covered the remains of the houses with oblivion and today we find no trace of them. Nevertheless, some written references from ancient documents remind us of their existence. In the past, our village was adjacent to a small village called Dvorce.

The oldest written mention of Ratiboř is in the charter of Václav III, by which he founded a monastery. In this document from 1306, only a stream is mentioned under the name Ratibořka, but it is likely that this name was derived from the name of a small village that already existed at that time. Settlement around the Ratibořka stream was most likely once very sparse. Finally, the foundation charter of the monastery of Thronus Regis makes no mention of other villages in our area. The monks of the Cistercian order tended to seek solitude. They placed great emphasis on manual labour and self-sufficiency. Their motto was the Latin Ora et labora (the Rule of St. Benedict, translated as Pray and Work).

The left bank of the Vsetín Bečva River, which at that time included the Ratiboř valley and the surroundings of the town of Pržna, was in the possession of the estate of the vladyks of Pržna.
Pržno first appears in written sources in 1372, and in 1505 it is mentioned as a town. Pržno was still mentioned as a town after 1750 and the town seal was still in use in 1856.

Pržna's heyday must be dated before 1516. The cadastral map from 1829 shows that the square in Pržna had a regular rectangular plan. This layout was disturbed only later, when the square was built up with groups of houses and a school. It was this square that formed the area where the markets were held. It was a marketplace of its own, where at one time the subjects of the Pržensko manor or estate sold the results of their work in the fields or in their crafts.

The noble family of the Knights of Pržna lived in Pržna and came from there. Therefore, it is evident that there must have been a fortress in Pržna where this knightly family resided. The fortress probably stood on a hill above the Paléskový brook. To this day, this place is called "In the Zeman's Court".
Vladyka Hanuš is first mentioned in 1385 (as a Latin miles, i.e. knight, soldier) and his person is also connected with the mention of Przno. In 1415, the fortress in Lešná is also mentioned for the first time as the property of Hanuš of Pržna. He, the knight Hanuš, probably owned the entire valley of the Ratibořka River in the middle of the 15th century, probably including the now extinct village of Dvorce. The name itself may be related to the name of a larger building called "dvorec". Dvorce could have referred to a place with several larger buildings.

Later, around the 15th century, the settlement of Dvorce begins to appear in written sources. Interestingly, only references to the end of the extinct village of Dvorce remain, and we still use the name of the site "Dvorca" in the forest cover at the lower end of our village. Why Dvorce disappeared remains a mystery.

The most written mentions of the deserted village of Dvorce and Ratibor are in the so-called Zemské plates in Olomouc. Land records are the predecessor of land registers. By entering the property in the land records, the property became the hereditary property of the family. All the provisions of the provincial assemblies, in fact the laws of the time, were recorded in the land records. They were kept from the beginning of the 14th century and ended in 1642. Today the originals are stored in the Moravian Provincial Archive in Brno.

In 1504, the provincial records, XVI. in the land registers, book 1505, only Ratiboř is mentioned... "Jan Kuna of Kunstát na Rožnově to Dorota of Zástřizl, his wife, owns the fortress and the town of Vsetín with the myth, the town of Pržno, the village of Jablunku, the village of Rúščku, the village of Kateřinice, the village of Hoščákov, the village of Johanová, the village of Dolní Rokytnice, the village of Horní Rokytnice, the village of Liptál, the village of Austí, the village of Hovězí, the village of Jesenka, the village of Seninka, the village of Ratiboř with all their full rights"... the village of Dvorce is not mentioned at all.

It is interesting, however, that in 1505 the deserted village of Dvorce between Ratiboř and Pržno is already mentioned. In the Land Records, Book XVI, it is mentioned... Peter, Count of St. George and Pezinok etc., John, Smil, Sigismund, William, Henry, Kunóm of Kunstát, brothers of his own... furthermore, towns and villages are listed and in addition... "and the following deserted villages: Bobrek, Huslná, Těškovice, Mikulková, Semetín, Ščrkov, Dvorce"...

On 25 June 1535, the Diet of Olomouc met. The deposit of Rožnov is recorded in the XXIVth book of Jan of Lipý. It again mentions the deserted village of Dvorce.

As early as 1548, in the so-called "Deposit of goods from Vsetín" by Jan of Pernštejn, the deserted village of Dvorce is mentioned again, apart from the surrounding villages. In Book XXV we learn that "... Jan of Pernštejn and his coats of arms to his father, Mr. Jan, Bishop of Olomouc, Přemek of Víckov... the fortress and town of Vsetín, the town of Pržno, the village of Johanov..., the village of Hošťálková, the village of Ratiboř, the village of Kateřinice, the village of Jablunkuov, the village of Rouščku, the village of Jasenice with church registers... and the deserted villages of Bobrek, Svojanuov, Husinné, Teshkovice Mikulkuov, Semetín, Ščerbkov, Dvorce, with the roles of ploughmen and non-ploughmen, with flour mills and grist mills, with mills, with salaries, fees... I put in the land taxes for their property..."

However, the name Dvorce was preserved in the old maps. In the map of 1878 the German name Dworza is transcribed into Dworca. Today the site is wooded and is located above the Old Road from the Ratiboř sawmill to the Bečva River. Before the afforestation there were meadows here and the boundaries that separated the meadows are still visible in the wooded terrain.

Another place of the extinct village of Dvorce could have been the U Malinů pasture, which is adjacent to Pržno. The small valley was inhabited a few decades ago and the remains of the meadows separating the fields or meadows are visible in this area. There were also water sources (a well at the Malinů pasture, the source of the stream flowing into Červený and the source of the stream continuing through Sojný to Bečva). However, due to the nature of the wooden buildings of the time, it is very difficult to find evidence of the specific location of the vanished village. Another inhabited place was the Red valley, which also offered good living conditions. On military maps from 1876, three houses were plotted in Červeny.

We also have to distinguish between large and small villages in the period from about the 15th to the 19th century. A large village in eastern Moravia at that time had approximately 20 to 30 houses. Small villages had approximately 4 to 6 houses (homesteads). This could also be the case of the extinct Dvorce. On average, 7-8 people lived in each house. The average age in the 16th century was around 30 years. However, people did not all die at this age, of course, because the average age was reduced by high infant mortality. However, if a child survived the first years of life, there was a high probability that he or she would live to a "high" age. As late as the 18th century, an age of around 50 was considered old age.
After the 15th century, the settlement of Ratiboř was concentrated around the fojtstvo and then gradually along the Ratibořka stream. The site of the rectory is now a Community Centre and the Pizzeria and Burger Grill U Ogarů.

We can only assume that the inhabitants of the small village of Dvorce left the site of "U Malinů" and descended down to the Ratibořka river, where they settled and became Ratibořský. It is also quite possible that they may have merged with the neighbouring Pržno. What was the real cause of the disappearance of Dvorce and other villages in the Vsetín region? That remains a mystery to us.

Stanislav Haša

Sources

[1] Author's collective. Partisan village Ratiboř, MNV Ratiboř, Ratiboř 1980
[2] Thronus Regis. NS Forgotten Fates: panel 1. Ratiboř Municipality, c2020
[3] MATĚJEK, F. (ed.). Moravian Land Plates. Volume II of the Olomouc series 1480-1566. Brno, 1948. Available at: sources.cms.flu.cas.cz
[4] MATĚJEK, F. (ed.). Moravian Land Plates. III. vol. series of Olomouc 1567-1642. Brno, 1953.
[5] HRUBÝ, František. Brno: Zemská správa moravskoslezská], 1931. ISBN 80-86181-16-2. Available from: www.digitalniknihovna.cz
[6] Moravian Provincial Archive Brno. Zemské desky olomoucké, book XVI, XXIV, XXV.
[7] Hrady.cz, Pržno. Available from: www.hrady.cz
[8] HOSÁK, Ladislav and Rudolf ŠRÁMEK. Place names in Moravia and Silesia. Second supplemented edition. Brno: Ivo Sperát, 2020. ISBN 978-80-87542-32-3.
[9] JURÁŇ Josef et al. Ratiboř Wallachian village. Ratiboř, 2006.
[10] FROLEC, Václav. Village building culture between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. Available from: digilib.phil.muni.cz
[11] HRUBAN Robert. Historical maps of Moravia. Available from: moravske-karpaty.cz
[12] Hláska, Newsletter of the August Sedláček Club. Prague. Vol. XXVII, No. 1: Regional Archive Třebíč, 2016.
[13] Municipality of Pržno: Available at: www.prznouvsetina.cz. [cited 2023-12-10].
[14] KAROLA, David. That the Wallachians came from Romania? More like a fairy tale. Available at: zlinsky.denik.cz
[15] Map documents prepared by Ondřej Haša.
[16] Photos and drone photos: Oldřich Matula.