The article is devoted to the ways of determining the directions in the texts from the Czechlands written between the 12th and 14th centuries and focuses on an analysis of two types of texts of different character and purpose - chronicles and charters. It first describes the symbolic meaning of the cardinal directions in medieval culture and traces its reflection in the texts from the Czech milieu. It follows the loss of the symbolic meaning of the cardinal directions in the later period and vulgarisation of the usage of their titles, which is manifested in the function of the descriptions of detailed situations dealing with everyday life. The author further deals with the other ways of marking certain directions, the most natural of which is perhaps marking according to the right and left hands. and Tomáš Klimek.
The article analyses Czech-Byzantine contacts in the 1160s. The author focuses on a reconstruction of the mainly diplomatic confrontation in Hungary, capped by a peaceful dynastic marriage. From the perspective of the history of everydayness, however, the most distinctive is the figure of the Moravian Boguta, "A Roman who knew Czech", mentioned in both basic sources. Those are the treatises of the canon of Prague Vincentius and an official in Constantinople John Kinnamos. The comparison presented of the two leads to a closer specification of the chronology of the Bohemian campaign of 1164. Kinnamos´s little known text in Czech historiography moreover offers an interesting view of the Byzantines on Bohemia and Vladislaus II. and Martin Šorm.