Mllites Novi w otoczeniu Księcia Wołogoskiego Warcisława IV (1309-1326)
Mllites novi around Vartislav (Polish: Warcisław) IV (1290-1326), the Wolgast (Polish: Wołogoski) Duke (1309-1326)

Summary/Abstract: The objective of the article has been to verify whether around Vartislav IV, the Wolgast Duke, appeared new knights and under what circumstances. The significance of that question is essential in the context of research on the migrations of knights in the Middle Ages in West Pomerania. Thomas Kantzow, a 16th-century chronicler indicated that the most important knight families at the close of the Middle Ages, came from their ancestors who had appeared in West Pomeranian under the reign of Barnim I (1233-1278).The question is whether the chronicler was right or not. That is why the knights who had been witnesses in the documents issued by Vartislav IV were distinguished as a separate group: it was a group of 181 knights. 105 of them came from the families whose representatives had already served under the previous duke. Boguslaw IV, Vartislav's father.The other 76 were milites novi; i.e. they constituted a significant number. Yet. a thorough analysis of the circumstances under which the)' appeared around Vartislav IV proves that at that time an inflow of foreign knights into the Wolgast Duchy was nearly stopped.It turned out that almost everybody who had been qualified as a new knight was a witness only in a document issued by the Duke outside the Wolgast Duchy. There were just two cases (Eckhard Buddo and Eckhard Dewitz) who had actually migrated into the Wolgast Duchy.

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