Jan Andrle: Saints and Their Patronages in Czech Catholic Prayer Books Edited between ca. 1650 and 1750 |
| The paper deals with the theme of popular religion of the Early Modern Czech ethnic group and intends to investigate it through the medium of prayer books. This approach was chosen because prayer books represent the most commonly disseminated type of Early Modern religious literature; a prayer book was often the only book of its owner and prayers were habitually read aloud to a group of listeners, thanks to which their content was accessible to illiterate people as well. The goal of the paper is to investigate, describe and analyse various types of patronages attributed to saints mentioned in Catholic lay comprehensive prayer books printed in the Czech language between the end of the Thirty Years’ War (i.e., the Peace of Westphalia, which led to legal exclusivity of the Roman Catholic confession in Bohemia and Moravia), and the beginnings of state censorship (intended to support Enlightenment ideas). The term comprehensive prayer book refers to such a type of book which provided texts for all (or at least the majority of) the fundamental rituals of the Catholic layman (morning and evening prayers, prayers for the mass, confession and communion) and was not devoted to a single topic (Ars moriendi for example) or one saint only. In selected prayer books of this type, we identify patron saints (i.e., the saints with attributed particular patronages) and divide them into groups according to several criteria connected to 1) the personality of the saint (ancient, medieval, and Early Modern saints; domestic vs. foreign saints; male vs. female saints; lay saints vs. members of clergy), 2) the type of patronage(s) (pertaining to profane – typically medical or social – or spiritual matters, individual or public interests, patronage for something or against something etc.), 3) the frequency of their occurrence in the books, and 4) the type of connection between the saint and the patronage (i.e., the motivation for the attribution of a particular patronage to the saint, e.g. the circumstances of their death, a miracle or another motive from their legend, the existence and type of preserved relics, the circumstances of their canonization, etc.).
Bibliography Peter Burke, Popular culture in Early Modern Europe, New York – Hagerstown – San Francisco – London 1978. |
| Jan Andrle (1977) is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He specializes in religious history (with special emphasis on popular religion) and historical (European) ethnology, in both cases focusing on the pre-modern period. He participates in the long-term research project of the Inventory of the 17th and 18th Century Manuscripts from the Museum Collections in Bohemia. Additionally, he is interested in cultural history and cultural studies. |
Hana Bočková: John Sarkander, the ‘Moravian Twin’ of John Nepomucene |
| The literary reflection of John Sarkander’s life (1576‒‒1620) contributing significantly to his hagiographic image, appears in two waves triggered by external stimuli – confessional and political conflicts during the Baroque period. The first wave of interest is triggered by the circumstances of Sarkander’s violent death connected to the Bohemian Revolt. At that time, the Olomouc reverend Jan Scintilla writes his report about the interrogation leading to Sarkander’s death; an Olomouc burgher writes about these events in his diary and the Polish priest Fabian Birkowski writes his sermon Głos krwie ‘The Voice of Blood’ (1628). The second wave stretches from the last third of the 17th century to the first third of the 18th century. It is characterized by the effort to form Sarkander’s hagiographic image, using the impulses from the concurrent efforts for beatification – and then canonization – of John Nepomucene. Sarkander is viewed as a Moravian follower of John Nepomucene, like him, a guardian of the seal of confession. Thus, there is the Latin elogium in verse by Jiří Protivín from Žalkovice, and, more importantly, Sarkander’s biography written by Ondřej E. Schwarz and published by Jan Jiří Středovský under the title Rubinus Moraviae ‘The Moravian Ruby’ (1712). Sarkander’s motif is promoted in sermons (for example, by V. B. Jestřábský, J. F. Pacher), but the strongest Sarkander’s promoter is certainly Bohumír Hynek Bilovský. In 1703, Bilovský published the collection of Latin odes Stella nova, later transformed into Zodiacus solaris gloriae (1712), in which he placed the martyr into the stellar space even more openly; there is also a Latin rhythmic prose Zodiacus Sarcandri from Skoczov (1712). However, Bilovský’s most significant work is the legend in verse Ecclesiasticus Cherub, Církevní Cherubín ‘The Ecclesiastic Cherub’ from 1703. Jan Jakub Dukát and his text Phoenix moravicus (1725) conclude the second wave of interest in the saint-to-be; yet the widest community of recipients knew Sarkander from hymns circulated as broadside sheets. Thus, Sarkander’s hagiography appeared in various stylistic registers of contemporary literary production and in many genres. The aim of the paper is to examine the role these texts play in building the cult of a ‘new saint’ – a specific Moravian counterpart of John Nepomucene, in a way.
Bibliography Sources Bohumír Hynek Bilovský – Josef Vašica (ed.), Církevní Cherubín anebo slavný, a stálý v ohni, a mukách víry a svaté spovědi zástupce Jan Sarkander, Olomouc 1933. Literature Jiří Fiala, Starší literární ztvárnění martyria sv. Jana Sarkandera, Česká literatura 49, 2001, č. 6, s. 572– 593. |
| Hana Bočková works at the Department of Czech Literature and Library Studies of the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. She is interested in the history of older Czech literature and she specializes in the Early Modern literature. |
Iveta Coufalová: “Der ist eher vor einen Heiligen zu achten als Johanes Nepomuzenus…” Bohemian Patron Saints between Catholicism and Protestantism – Saxony and the Reconversion of the House of Wettin (1721/6‒1751/6) |
| John Nepomucene is traditionally seen as one of the Czech (and Bavarian) patron saints and also as the (Catholic) patron of ship owners, swordsmen, millers, clergy, honour and confessional secret. The paper presents his role in a seemingly different context.
At the beginning of the 1750s, the construction of the Dresden Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (or Catholic Church of the Royal Court of Saxony) was completed. It was initiated at the instigation of August III, the Elector of Saxony and the King of Poland. This late Baroque church would not be remarkable in principle if it were not built in the city which was the administrative centre of the ‘birthplace of the Protestantism’. For our reasons, the temple is interesting especially because there are 78 statues of saints on the roof, among them also some of the patron saints of Bohemia: St. Procopius, St. Wenceslaus and – St John Nepomucene to whom also one of the chapels was dedicated. How come that this ‘young’/’recent’ martyr (beatified 1721, canonized 1729) became one of the representatives of the communicated return (through reconversion) of the Wettin House to the ‘true church’ (pietas saxonica)? We need to go back to the 1720s when John Nepomucene was an object of ‘positional dragging’ between Catholics and Lutherans – at least in the Saxonic (mostly protestant) community, nearby the border with the Czech Lands (where he came from). Special attention will be paid to the events of 1726: Lutheran preacher Hermann Joachim Hahn was murdered at the end of May in Dresden. The restless situation (the nominal leader of the Corpus Evangelicorum, Elector Augustus the Strong converted to Catholicism in 1697 and later he announced a conversion of his son and successor) culminated: the murderer was a convert. Immediately after, the radicalization of the atmosphere deepened due to the funeral sermon held by Ernst Valentin Löscher, the Dresden superintendent. In it, he compared Hahn to Hus – and also to Nepomucene. The paper focuses on the perception of Catholic patron saints in the Lutheran context in the given period; that is, during the time when Protestant believers felt threatened primarily by conversions to Catholicism, when the anti-Jesuit campaign reached its peak in Saxony. We also concentrate on the Protestant perception of martyrdom – did John Nepomucene become a tool of transcultural or transconfessional mobility? Bibliography Sources Das wohl-redende Blut eines unschuldig getödteten Abels, Wurde am 6. Junii 1726. in der Frauen-Kirche zu Dreßden in einer geistreichen Leich-Predigt … Herrn, M. Hermann Joachim Hahnen, Wohl-verdientem und treu-fleißigem Archi-Diacono bey der Creutz-Kirche in Dreßden, zu Ehren und seligem Nachruhm vorgestellet, Dresden 1726. Literature Iveta Coufalová, „… doch kamen Sie so jämerlich ums Leben…“ Posmrtné setkání dvou kazatelů: Jan Hus a Herrmann Joachim Hahn (Husův ohlas v Sasku v první polovině 18. století), in: Eva Doležalová (ed.), Hus – husitství – tradice – Praha. Od reality k mýtu a zpátky, Praha [2018] (expected). |
| Iveta Coufalová is a historian (Institute of History, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc). She is mainly interested in the confessional issues of (Protestant) Europe in the 17th and 18th century. She completed her dissertation on ‘A Monarch and (his) confession’ in which she deals with crises of Protestantism, Augustus the Strong and Saxony. She is a co-applicant of the grant project ‘Making the Convertite. Verbal and Visual Representation of Conversion in Early Modern Period’. She is also interested in public history and she is an editor-in-chief of the magazine Dějiny a současnost. |
Ivana Čornejová: St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Patron of Women in Childbirth |
| St. Ignatius of Loyola is undoubtedly one of the well-known saints. He is famous as the founder of the Society of Jesus, an order whose merits are still (stubbornly) concealed behind a widespread negative reputation. He was a man of solid morals, originally a vigorous soldier, later an equally vigorous organizer of the ecclesial community committed to spreading true faith all over the world. But he also recognized the strength education can have. As the saint, he is known as the healer of the sick and wounded, what is less known, however, is his patronage for the women in childbirth. For an ease of birth, one could recourse not only to paintings of St. Ignatius, but also to the miraculous water of St. Ignatius. The paper should clarify where this ‘competence’ (i.e., to help a woman in labour) comes from and how it spread in the Christian world and got intertwined with artefacts bordering on superstition.
To find the origin of the patronage is not easy. Ever since the beatification and canonization process it is under dispute – even in the internal sources of the Order – whether Ignatius should be seen as a ‘miracle-maker’. It is known that Ignatius during his life did not overly relate to women, but – especially right before the Pope approved the Jesuit Order, and in the early 1540s – there were many female adherents who even sought to start a women’s order. In general, Ignatius is not a typical saint, to whom women would turn their prayers and search for his favour. Ignatius of Loyola, however, was a great and enthusiastic worshiper of an extraordinary woman: the Virgin Mary – the Mother of God. To her sacred image at the monastery in Montserrat, Barcelona, he laid his military armour during his conversion, and the lovely Madonna looked down at him over his work desk at Il Gesù college in Rome. He venerated the Mother of God throughout his whole life. Thus, it can be hypothesized that it was this intimate (or even passionate) relationship the saint had with the Virgin Mary that became an incentive for his patronage over maternity in general as well as helping during the childbirth. Bibliography Petronilla Čemus – Richard Čemus, edd., Bohemia Jesuitica 1556-2006, I-II, Praha 2010. |
| Ivana Čornejová is a long-time researcher at the Institute of the History and Archive of Charles University in Prague. She is involved in the doctoral program at the History and History Didactics Department of the Faculty of Education, Charles University in Prague. She is interested in the ecclesiastical history and history of education, especially from 16th to 18th century. She is the author of a number of studies and books; she collaborated on the preparation of the four-volume Dějiny Univerzity Karlovy ‘History of the Charles University’, and wrote the monograph Tovaryšstvo Ježíšovo. Jezuité v Čechách ‘The Society of Jesus. Jesuits in Bohemia’. |
Jan Dušek: St. Procopius in Historiographical Texts of the 16th Century |
| The paper is dedicated to St. Procopius, the famous Czech patron, as he is represented in the Latin and Czech texts of the 16th century. The patron is studied in the light of the material from Kronika česká ‘The Bohemian Chronicle’ by Bohuslav Bílejovský, published in 1537; in Kronika o založení země české ‘The Chronicle of Foundation of the Czech Lands’ by Martin Kuthen, published in 1539; in Kronika česká ‘The Bohemian Chronicle’ by Václav Hájek of Libočany, published in 1541; and, finally, in Historiae regni Bohemiae ‘The history of Czech Kingdom’ written by Jan Dubravius and published in 1552. In the analysis of these texts, we focus on the patron’s approach towards worldly life and to his posthumous legacy.
The content of The Bohemian Chronicle was obviously influenced by Bílejovský’s Utraquist stance. In the book, Bílejovský mentions St. Procopius three times. The first reference recounts how St. Procopius met the duke Oldřich of Bohemia at a hunt; the second explains how the German abbot – the head of the Sázava Monastery during the reign of Spytihněv of Bohemia – got expulsed from the monastery. Finally, the patron is mentioned in relation to the enemies of the Czech language during the church service. In comparison with Bílejovský, the chronicle of Kuthen states only the year of patron’s death, as he discusses the reign of Břetislav of Bohemia. The most detailed information is given in Hájek’s chronicle: Not only does he mention the place of St. Procopius birth, but also his career as a priest and monk and even the early history of the Sázava Monastery. The year 1035 is important from the Sázava Monastery’s perspective, as Hájek has it: during a hectic building activity, the duke Břetislav makes a donation to the monastery and, as a part of the deal, he appoints Procopius as the abbot of Sázava. St. Procopius is mentioned once more, later on, in relation to Břetislav’s campaign to Poland (1039). Hájek also writes about the patron’s death in 1053 and his canonization in 1205. Furthermore, the saint (of course) gets to play his posthumous role when he appears to dreaming people in 1213 and 1260. The last mention of Procopius is in the year 1321 in the connection to two miracles at the Sázava Monastery. In Dubravius’ work, we read about the saint in the chapter dedicated to Oldřich and his son Břetislav. St. Procopius’ origins, his education, his activity at the monastery of Břevnov and Sázava are mentioned – and so is a miracle that happened while St. Procopius stayed at the Břevnov monastery. Bibliography Sources Bohuslav Bílejovský – Ota Halama (ed.), Bohuslava Bílejovského Kronika česká, Praha 2011. Literature František Michálek Bartoš, Souboj dvou kronik, in: František Michálek Bartoš, Knihy a zápasy, Praha 1948, s. 111–117. |
| Jan Dušek received his Master degrees in Czech language and Latin studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He works at the Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and he is a Ph.D. student of Czech language at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He focuses on the development of Czech language and Old Czech literature with special regard to St. Procopius. |
Alena A. Fidlerová: Discursive Strategies in Prayers to and of Patron Saints in Czech Early Modern Prayer Books |
| The goal of the paper is to identify and describe discursive strategies used in different types of prayers addressed to patron saints (or ascribed to patron saints), included in selected printed and manuscript Czech language prayer books of the 18th and early 19th century. Most of these books comprise either a section devoted to saints (including, in some cases, not only prayers or prayer cycles, but also litanies, worships for individual weekdays or vespers), or at least several prayers to selected saints. In the paper, we combine the methodology of philology and book history; we focus primarily on the interpretation of the texts themselves, but we base our conclusions also on prayer books as material objects and on religious practices envisaged by their authors. First, we describe the positioning of prayers connected to patron saints in each book (whether they are gathered in a special section, or interspersed among other prayers, whether they form a prayer cycle, whether they are accompanied by other text types), their (typo)graphic layout (the size and colour of the script(s) used, illustrations), and their envisaged use in religious practice, if described in their accompanying explanatory texts (when, where and how they should be recited). The main focus is on the analysis of the content, composition and style of typical examples of these prayers and classifying them according to several criteria, most importantly according to textual strategies their authors use 1) to associate the prayer with the saint (addressing the saint directly, or addressing God with the help of the intercession of the saint; mentioning the name of the saint in the prayer itself, in the heading, or in the accompanying text etc.), and 2) to assure the reader about the power and effects of the prayer. This second aspect is usually addressed in the headings or in the accompanying explanatory texts (included in some, but not all of these books), which often provide information about the (alleged) origin of the prayer, its effects and power, and the recommended way of its recitation.
Bibliography Peter Burke, Popular culture in Early Modern Europe, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, 1978. |
| Alena A. Fidlerová (1969) works at the Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. She specializes in the history of Czech language, history of orthography, history of linguistics, and history of rhetoric and stylistics, focusing on the Early Modern period and the first half of the 19th century. Additionally, she concentrates on the history of the book, with special emphasis on the Early Modern manuscript culture. |
Krisztina Frauhammer: Female Patron Saints as Identification Models
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| The use of examples and identification models is an important means in education and shaping social norms. Through them an external forum holds up ideals before the masses. The Church is one such an external forum; primarily through its canonized saints, it supports behaviour models that can serve as examples for its believers to follow. They stress virtues in the lives and qualities of the saints held up as models can serve as a guide through the quandaries of daily life. Taking this as my starting point for my lecture, I would like to show which female patron saints the Hungarian Catholic Church held up as an example at the turn of the 19th and 20th century to construct the female model it considered to be ideal. Who became models and patrons of female life situations? And what episodes, ideals and moral qualities did it stress in their life histories? The sources used for my investigation were prayer books published specifically for women and young girls in the period, spiritual reading matter and biographical works in a Catholic spirit (E. Bougard: Life of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, Saint Monica). The choice of this period is justified by the spread of secular mentality that can be observed at that time. The Church had to cope not only with the challenge of the ideals of the Enlightenment but also with the fact that religious-social control no longer worked in the same way. The newly organized social groups formed their own values and shaped identities and life-worlds independent of religion. The Christian family became one of the foundations for the solution of social issues. Women, especially mothers, were given a major task in this process. Among others St. Monica, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Anne, the principal patron saints of mothers, women and families were held up as examples for them in their tasks.
Bibliography Clarissa Atkinson, Your Servant, My Mother. The Figure of Saint Monica in the Ideology of Christian Motherhood, in: C. Atkinson, C. Buchanan, M. Miles (ed.), Immaculate and Powerful: The Female Image and Reality, England, 1987, s. 139–172. |
| Krisztina Frauhammer is an ethnographer at the MTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture, Szeged (Hungary). She specializes in ethnography, folklore, social and cultural anthropology, history and sociology of religion, history of religious women, various manifestations of vernacular religious practice, and prayers and spirituality. |
Adriana Grešová: ‘The Zither of Saints’, or ‘De Cultu Sanctorum’ in Lutheran Hymnody |
| There is a widespread belief that Lutheranism has strictly denied (and keeps the denial up today) anything connected to the saints. It is true that the modern Lutheran theology does not pay much attention to the theme, as witnessed by – for instance – textbooks of dogmatic theology; H. G. Pöhlmann, for instance, in his textbook does not even raise the subject. Neither is the cult of saints prominent in today’s Lutheran worship. However, this was not the case in the 16th and 17th century in the Lutheran tradition. The article XXI. of the Augsburg Confession from 1530 is entitled ‘De Cultu Sanctorum’ ‘Of the Worship of the Saints’ and it’s attitude towards the issue is rather conciliatory. In the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, we read: ‘Our Faith recognizes the cult of Saints’ (XXI, 4). Even in the first Lutheran hymnals from our area, there are traces of such a view. The three Lutheran confessions from the Spiš and Šariš region (1549, 1559, 1568) – the bases for the legalization of the Lutheran Church and their religious practice in Hungary – followed the Augsburg Confession. The first printed hymnal for Slovak Lutherans in Hungary is Cithara Sanctorum ‘The Zither of Saints’ (1636) by Juraj Tranovský. The repertoire of the hymnal is rather varied, both from the confessional and national point of view. It follows the practice common at the territory of Upper Hungary, but it also includes the repertoire from Bohemia and Moravia. The hymnal is regarded as a pillar of Lutheran orthodoxy in Hungary. Approximately a tenth of the repertoire is of a Catholic origin, the hymns, however, underwent a thorough theological review by the assembler (cf. the song Zdrawa genž sy pozdrawena ‘Hail Thou saluted’, which we find as Ay Panna gest pozdravená ‘Oh, Virgin was saluted’ in Cithara Sanctorum). There are also Tranovský’s own songs about Mary, and even angels, Apostles and martyrs. It is rather common in the 16th and 17th century: Lutheran hymnals and other musical pieces thematised the saints. Marian themes were popular, Magnificat in particular. This repertoire, however, became less and less common later on. Martin Luther anticipated this trend in the 16th century when he wrote in the Smalacald Articles (1537): ‘If now such idolatrous honour were withdrawn from angels and departed saints, the remaining honour would be without harm and would quickly be forgotten.’ (II, 28)
Bibliography Zdenka Bokeszová-Hanáková, Hudba v díle Třanovského, Praha 1937. |
| Adriana Grešová (1991) is a doctoral student at the Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava. She is interested in the (older) history of church music in Slovakia. She focuses on Lutheran music in the 16th and 17th century with a special emphasis on hymnology. Currently, she studies Tranovsky’s hymnal Cithara Sanctorum (1636). |
Orsolya Gyöngyössy: Saint John Nepomucene Statues on the Hungarian South-Plain Today |
| After the liberation from the 150 years long Turkish rule (1686) the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary began to renew the parishes and strengthen the network of religious institutions with great efforts. As part of the Habsburg Empire, ‘imperial saints’, such as St. Joseph or St. John Nepomucene came to the front to support re-catholicization.
Jesuit priests prepared the cult of St. John Nepomucene in Hungary after the Czech religious wars in the 17th century. As a result of the conscious and effective propagation, St. John Nepomucene became a well-graced saint in the 18th century Hungary. On the South-Plain, where the livelihood of the population highly depended on the rivers, the settlement’s first open-air statues were dedicated mainly to St. John Nepomucene. The intensity of the worship eased during the 19th century, but the traditional forms of piety survived until the First World War. Even though it was natural elements (e.g., acid rain) that started the decay of the statues, vandal actions during the war (and afterwards, in the decades of socialism) extended the damage. The rehabilitation of the St. John Nepomucene remembrances began after the political changes in 1989. Artists offered free material and work; local councils endeavoured to recover the historical remembrances. In the 2000s the process gained new strength and several statues were renovated or even newly erected. The promoter associations (i.e., touristic leagues), the various motivations, the chosen place, the design and the implementation (or style) of churching feasts awoke questions: how do the St. John Nepomucene statues serve as roots to the past and objects of representation? When and how did the statues lose their original significance and were transformed into cultural heritages? Is it indeed possible to reconcile the new layers like tourism and national-identity with the religious quality? Is it possible to see the existing society needs behind the spectacular projects as an impulse ‘from above’? In my paper I intend to draft the background stories of the newly erected or renovated St. John Nepomucene statues on the Hungarian South-Plain. The analysis will involve the fields of religious tourism, studies on secularization and religious festivalization. Bibliography Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Chicago 1980. |
| Orsolya Gyöngyössy is a Ph.D. researcher at the MTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture (Szeged, Hungary). The main focus of her enquiry is on the social role of the lower clergy and lay assistants, the veneration of saints, sacred visions, funeral orations, burial customs and religious confraternities. Her main publications include I give my last farewell, my final words, the Funeral Valedictions of Dezső Knapek, Csanytelek (2010); Parish and Society. The Social Role of the Roman Catholic Lower Clergy and Lay Assistants in Csongrád in the Second Half of the 19th Century (2014). |
Jakub Ivánek: The Cult of Saints and Pilgrimage Songs in Moravia and Austrian Silesia from the 17th to the Mid-19th Century |
| Moravia and Czech (formerly Austrian) Silesia are interwoven with a relatively dense network of pilgrimage sites, most of which are Marian. Also Moravian pilgrimages – once they went beyond the boundaries of the historical land in the Early Modern period and 19th century – led often to places associated with the Virgin Mary (Mariazell, Częstochowa, Šaštín, Marianka). This is also reflected in the pilgrimage songs circulated as broadside sheets in this period: the main source of our research.
Even though the cult of saints concerned a considerably lower number of pilgrimage places, the songs connected to these places are well preserved in the Moravian region. The very existence of a pilgrimage site in Moravia dedicated to a saint can be perceived as symptomatic. But there were also pilgrimages to saints from Moravia across the border. Some pilgrimage sites reflect a local tradition of veneration of saints (protectors from diseases such as St. Roch or St. Valentine, patrons of specific professions like St. Barbara, but also generally popular St. Anna, respect for whom might be seen as a link to the predominant Marian element). There are also pilgrim songs related to the history of a saint’s cult, but often such a pilgrimage leads to another historical country (the grave of St. John Nepomucene in Prague), or the veneration of them is mediated by Marian piety (St. Cyril and Methodius, St. John Sarkander). From the new saints of the first half of the 19th century, we find only St. Philomena, revered in Koclířov; texts of her cult are, however, of a very different character. The surprising absence of specific songs dedicated to a particular pilgrimage site can be explained by the existence of universal pilgrim songs reflecting the element of pilgrimage and referring to the saint without concretizing the place (the advantage, then, is that these songs could be used in a wider variety of contexts). Here and there, the affiliation of such texts to a particular location can be traced based on the place of publication, certain textual elements or the place where the texts were discovered. In comparison with the pilgrimage songs about saints from Bohemia, in Moravia, we clearly see a significant absence of songs to the patron saints of Bohemia and Moravia (respect for whom is rather strong in the Czech Lands); in Moravia, we speculate, the veneration of these saints is most likely replaced by the Marian cult. Bibliography Václav Burian, Ohlasy historie poutního místa Lutrštéku u Němčan (okr. Vyškov) v kramářských písňových textech, Vlastivědný věstník moravský 44, 1992, s. 464–478. |
| Jakub Ivánek is a researcher at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava (at the Regional Studies Centre and at the Department of Czech Literature and Literary Criticism). His professional interest is directed towards Czech Baroque literature, especially hymnography, and he also works on the reflection of the concept of ‘spa’ as presented by promotional texts from the Early Modern period and up to the 19th century. Besides literature, he is interested in the culture of the region of Northern Moravia and Czech Silesia; he documents works of art (the so called monumental realizations) for architecture and public space from the second half of the 20th century. |
Marie Janečková: St. Procopius and his Image Created by Baroque Preachers |
| St. Procopius, the spiritual protector of the Czech Lands, lived in the early Christian period at the turn of the 10th and 11th century. From the layman, he became a priest, then a monk, hermit and founder of the Slavonic Benedictine monastery in Sázava. He became the first abbot of the monastery; prince Břetislav I and Prague bishop Šebíř (Severus) introduced him into the office in 1035. He was first mentioned in a legend written in Old Church Slavonic; there, and also in other legends, he is described as a kind father and a diligent teacher. After his death in 1053, a legend spread about the miracles that took place after prayers at his grave. Thus, he became people’s advocate in heaven. Soon, supposedly in 1204, he was canonized and became the patron saint of the Kingdom of Bohemia. His life and deeds have been literally rendered since the Middle Ages, and he was still a literary hero after the Hussite wars, in the 16th, 17th, but also in the 18th and 19th century. Especially since the mid-17th century, Benedictine monks took care of St. Procopius’s legacy, as the monastery in Sázava became their property again.
The Baroque period celebrated St. Procopius several times, starting with the legends, such as Bridel’s Sláva svatoprokopská ‘The Glory of St. Procopius’ (1662), and in the 18th century, he was celebrated in festive sermons. Based on two conceptual sermons by two different preachers, we show different modes of the presentation of St. Procopius. Both authors were knowledgeable on the hagiographic literature on St. Procopius, older as well as contemporary. The first, Karel Račín (about 1660‒1711), in his sermon Na den svatého Prokopa vyznavače Božího a patrona českého ‘[Sermon] on the Day of St. Procopius, Follower of God and the Patron of the Czech Lands’ chose to contemplate on the spiritual and moral qualities of St. Procopius, with a take-home lesson for listeners. The second, Ondřej Jakub František de Waldt (1683‒1752), was most intrigued by the exorcist story. Thus, in his first sermon Na den svatého Prokopa opata ‘On the day of St. Procopius, the Abbot’; he depicts – in an impressively dramatic way – the fight against devils embodying the most outrageous human sins. In front of the audience, De Waldt put these fictional devil characters to trial, and St. Procopius is seen as the one who can rectify the injustice. In the paper, we examine the structure of the concept in both sermons and evaluate their composition and the use of stylistic and rhetorical means. Bibliography Sources Karel Račín, Sněm nebeský svatých a světic Božích. To jest: Sváteční kázání dlé římsko-českého kalendáře… Vytištěný v Starém Městě pražském 1712. Literature Václav Chaloupecký, Středověké legendy prokopské: jejich historický rozbor a texty, Praha 1953. |
| Marie Janečková works at the Institute of Czech Studies of the Faculty of Arts, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. She is interested in the development of the Czech language, the historical grammar and word-formation. In recent years, she worked on the spoken and written Czech of the Baroque period, especially on the morphological, lexical and word-formation phenomena, which confirm the continuity of the still under-researched development of Czech. |
Václav Kapsa: The Novena to St. Teresa of Ávila as a Music Event and Related Works by Prague Composers of the 1720s |
| In 1721, the Carmelite nuns in Prague introduced a novena to St. Teresa of Ávila. The nine days of worship began on 7th October, with a Holy Mass and Vespers with music (‘Musicalisches Ambt’, ‘Musicalische Vesper’) on the first and last days, Holy Mass with music on Sunday, and, finally, a litany (‘Musicalische Lytaney’) with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament every day in the afternoon. The worship organized by the contemplative order was deliberately targeted on the wide public and might be also viewed as a specific music event.
The collection of nine litanies to St. Teresa with nine antiphons from the Divine Office to the Saint preserved in Budapest was obviously intended for the novena. The anonymous manuscript is a torso consisting of just two parts (Soprano and Basso). According to the library records, the manuscript comes from the Carmelites in Győr. However, its today’s shape does not contain any clues that could help us to determine its provenance. The watermark of the paper suggests possible origin in the Wiener Neustadt: there also was a convent of Carmelite nuns there. Other incidences of compositions contained in the collection clearly point to the composer Joseph Brentner (1689–1742) working in Prague in the 1720s. Another Prague composer Anton Reichenauer (ca. 1694–1730) wrote music to the same texts, which were in general only seldom set to figural music. Finally, another set of similar compositions written in the mid-18th century by Johann Adam Scheibl survived in Prague: festive music for the accompaniment of the novena to St. Teresa clearly had a certain tradition in Prague. The compositions by Brentner and Reichenauer were written in close succession. The resemblances in the music settings of the same texts imply that Reichenauer knew the pieces by Brentner, and the differences between the two settings distinctly uncover continuous style changes in Prague of that time. Both composers also strived to re-use the music for other occasions, so the music sources documenting this practice illustrate the creative strategies of their authors. Research into the music written by local composers for the novena to St. Teresa opens a hitherto unnoticed chapter in the Prague music history and is also a contribution to the traditional topic of the influence of the Carmelite mysticism in Bohemian Baroque. Bibliography Sources Johann Joseph Ignaz Brentner – Václav Kapsa (ed.), Offertoria solenniora (Academus Edition 6), Praha 2017. Literature Raimund Bruderhofer, OCD, Kirchenfeste der Linzer Karmeliten in der Barockzeit, in: Wilhelm Rausch (ed.), 300 Jahre Karmeliten in Linz, Linz 1974, s. 63–129. |
| Václav Kapsa received his Ph.D. from Charles University in Prague, and is currently a research fellow in the Department of Music History of the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. His main research interests and his publications focus on the 18th-century music in the Czech Lands with emphasis on the music by Prague composers and musicians in the service of the Bohemian aristocracy. |
Jana Kolářová: Saints and Patrons in the Latin Poetry of Jiří Barthold Pontanus and Textual Strategy of Formation and Consolidation of Their Cult in the Early Modern History |
| Spiritual poetry of Jiří Barthold Pontanus of Breitenberg, a significant literary figure of the period preceding the battle of White Mountain (1620), forms a large part of his extensive work. In the course of his life, Pontanus repeatedly returned to this genre of poetry in order to transform certain themes and subjects. Thematically, Pontanus’ poetry was influenced by his intense identification with the Catholic confession and with the idea of the Czech Lands forming a part of the Habsburg Empire. Reverence for the Holy Virgin and for the saints – including not only the key patrons of Bohemia (St. Wenceslaus, St. Ludmila, St. Adalbert, St. Vitus, St. Procopius) but also the saints that were not canonized at that point (Blessed Mlada, Zdislava, Agnes, and others) – is dominant in Pontanus’ works. In his spiritual poetry, he particularly adorns Blessed Hroznata, the founder of the Premonstratensian monastery in Teplá, and St. Ivan (Pontanus wrote about his life both in Czech and in Latin). Pontanus focused on the cult of St. John Nepomucene with a great interest. Writing on the lives of the above nameted saints, Pontanus used older legends in order to create Early Modern hagiographies. His efforts were not random: he followed his spiritual and literary purposes. As a respected clerical and literary authority, Pontanus strived for the reinforcement of the cult of saints, especially those that had not been canonized yet. In doing so, he tried to emphasize the long tradition of the saints’ cults and he always reminded his readers of the connection between a particular saint and an influential aristocratic family. He also used many other strategies. Our treatise tries to characterize the role Jiří Barthold Pontanus’ hagiographic works played in the formation of the reverence for the saints in the Early Modern history. In many cases, it was Pontanus who had petrified the images of the Czech Catholic patrons and not yet canonized saints in the form that was later adopted by the Baroque historiography and developed further.
Bibliography Sources Georgius Bartholdus Pontanus a Breitenberk, Bohemia pia… Vědecká knihovna Olomouc, II 17.683. Literature Ivana Čornejová (ed.), Úloha církevních řádů při pobělohorské rekatolizaci, Praha – Dolní Břežany 2003. |
| Jana Kolářová graduated in the Czech language and literature and Classical philology at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc. She got her Ph.D. in the History of the Czech literature in the Department of Czech Studies, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc in 2002. She is now affiliated with the very department and she teaches the Old Czech literature (and courses linked to the topic). She is interested in Humanistic Latin literature, especially poetry. |
Tereza Kolmačková: Votive Offerings at Marian Pilgrimage Sites |
| The votive offerings were a very common and widespread practice in the Early Modern period and involved all social groups: poor as well as rich and powerful, laity as well as clergy. In the paper, I focus on the Czech Lands with the focus on the Jesuit pilgrimage site Svatá Hora near Příbram in the 17th century (but examples from other areas and periods are used as well). There are hardly any votive offerings preserved in the Czech Lands, however, we can find written evidence in miracle books from various pilgrimage sites and, also, in Jesuit Litterae Annuae. As the form of the objects seems to be quite stable over the time and space – changing thus very little form the 17th century to present day and from Germany to Mexico – we can use the preserved objects from other areas (mainly from Bavaria) as quite a reliable source of comparative material, especially when matched with the textual evidence.
Votive offerings appear in many different forms; the most common are painted pictures, models of parts of the body, candles and jewellery. They were usually offered after the Virgin Mary (or another saint) had performed a miracle as an expression of gratitude for the received help. I suggest that votive offerings have a strong performative character: not only do they represent the existing relationship and gratitude, but they are also means of creating and maintaining the relationship and communication with the Virgin Mary (or another saint). The evidence also suggests that already the promise of a votive offering could have had the power to persuade the Virgin Mary to perform a miracle. The whole process thus resembles a business exchange: the devotee can buy the miracle when offering something in return (although, naturally, this is far from the official explanation and the Church authorities tried to suppress this belief). At the same time, votive offerings were used to communicate the experience of miracles with other pilgrims as well as to show social status and wealth. Bibliography Annuae literae provinciae Boemiae Societatis Jesu 1658, NK ČR, XXIII.C.105/3. |
| Tereza Kolmačková is a master student of Religious studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and a researcher at the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In her research, she focuses on Marian piety and pilgrimage in the Czech Lands during the Early Modern period. |
Alena Kotšmídová: St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, in the French, German and Czech Versions of the Novel about Peter of Provence and the Fair Maguelonne |
| The anonymous novel about Peter of Provence and the fair Maguelonne was probably written in the first half of the 15th century, in (what is today) France. In 1527, Veit Warbeck, a Lutheran clergyman, diplomat and the tutor of Prince John Frederick of Saxony, translated the work into German. The Czech translation dates perhaps from as early as 1565 but the oldest known complete copy dates from 1780. The protection of a patron saint is not the main theme of the work and as a matter of fact, no saint plays an active role in the text. Nevertheless, St. Peter is the patron saint of the main hero. Moreover, thanks to these translations, the novel penetrated different cultural and theological milieus, which influenced the depiction of the saint. We begin our paper with a survey of the way St. Peter is represented in the French version of the novel from 1453. Just as the whole story of the love and the sufferings of the French knight and the Neapolitan princess is secular, so, too, is the way St. Peter is presented, the more so since the protector and his protégé are sometimes linked in a surprisingly intimate way. They are linked not only by their name, but – and above all – through a network of metaphors and allusions, which require that the reader pays (a certain degree of) attention to seize the metaphors. While the narrator mentions St. Peter in the connection with the prayers made by other characters, the saint is invoked directly only exceptionally. An important place in the text is dedicated to the church of St. Peter in Maguelone, which – according to the novel – was founded by Maguelonne and to which the narrator seems to be linked. All in all, we can speak less of invocation of St. Peter – and more of talk about him. Furthermore, we show the way Warbeck proceeded, with relatively numerous references to the keeper of the keys of the Kingdom, motivated both by his interest in providing an exact translation and by his desire to support Luther’s reforming thoughts – this, in turn, emphasized the intimate relationship between the believer and God Himself. Therefore, it is not surprising that Warbeck somewhat minimized references to the saint while, at the same time, he tried not to impoverish the literary depth of the text. Finally, we devote our attention to the position of St. Peter in the Czech translation. Despite being anchored in a popular Catholic environment, the importance of the saint decreased even more. Rather than a deliberate suppression of St. Peter’s role as a patron saint, we suppose that the temporal and geographic distance from the original novel – together with the limited references to St. Peter taken over from the German text – meant that the memory of the church of St. Peter in Maguelone (as a formerly important bishopric) simply faded away, and just the story of the two lovers was left behind.
Bibliography Johannes Bolte (ed.), Die schöne Magelone, aus dem Franzözischen übersetzt von Veit Warbeck, 1527, Weimar 1894. |
| Alena Kotšmídová is a doctoral student at the University of Burgundy in Dijon and at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Her thesis is devoted to the French novel about Peter of Provence and the fair Maguelonne and to its German and Czech translations. More generally, she is interested in intertextual relations in French literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. |
Tomáš Krejčík: Holy Patrons out of Wax |
| The seal of an institution or a person was an important part of communication. This is particularly true of the seals of church institutions and their high officials. These seals are a manifestation of medieval universalism: the images on the seal were understandable throughout the Christian world. Seals of cardinals were particularly helpful in spreading the iconographic patterns.
In the Czech state, we find the first ecclesiastical seals in the 12th century. They became much more widespread in the following century; the range of iconographic images was expanded, too. During the reign of Charles IV, political and cultural relations with other European countries deepened, and the art and craftsmanship of Czech ecclesiastic seals reached its height. The Hussite revolution ended this period abruptly and the art of ecclesiastic seals raised again only once the Renaissance art got into the Czech Lands. The function a seal had as part of administrative dealings began to decay – and this decay has also been reflected in the design and craftsmanship of seal stamps. The paper focuses on three issues. The first one concerns the transformation of the (arch)bishop seals in the Czech state at the turn of the 14th and 15th century, when the traditional iconography has changed and for a certain period, the traditional pontifical motives on seals were replaced by hagiographic ones. We interpret the replacement of the figure of the possessor with an image of a saint as an expression of a deepening of religious sentiment. The second issue concerns the changes in the iconography of the seals of convents and orders’ superiors at the beginning of the Early Modern period. At that time, the peak of their prosperity (i.e., the Middle Ages) was past. We point out that their iconography yielded to heraldic unification since the 17th century. This is the time the personalized coats of arms were created, in which religious motives played an important role. Finally, the results of the studies concerning seals of parish authorities and their representatives are summarized. These represent a little-known area of sigillography. Their motives often draw on traditional patterns but, interestingly, also present certain new themes. Bibliography Martina Bolom-Kotari, Pečeti hradiských premonstrátů v pozdním středověku a raném novověku, Červený Kostelec 2015. |
| Tomáš Krejčík graduated from the Auxiliary historical sciences and archive studies in Brno; he is affiliated with the University of Ostrava and Masaryk University in Brno. He is interested in heraldry, sigillography and numismatics. |
Anna Lanceva: Early Russian Edition of Service to St. Wenceslaus: The Structure and Composition |
| The cult of the holy prince Wenceslaus was widely spread in Russia in the Middle Ages (in the end of the 10th to early 11th century) due to the development of close relations between the Sázava Monastery and the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. During this time, Czech manuscripts appeared in Rus and among them, the corpus of hagiography and hymnography monuments dedicated to St. Wenceslaus stands out. The spread of the St. Wenceslaus’ cult in the medieval Rus was greatly influenced by the local veneration of the first Russian princes Boris and Gleb, murdered by their brother Svyatopolk.
The Old Slavonic service to St. Wenceslaus is preserved in the Russian manuscript edition of the Novgorod Menaion of 1095–1096 for the October 11th. Once we analyse the structure of the service, its compositional features are revealed. The liturgical peculiarities of the Eastern rite shine through the text: especially the use of the Studios Statute used in the Rus from the 10th–14th century. The text of the service is not notated, the chants are sung like the “Podoben” (samples of chants contained in the collection ‘Typographical Statute and Kondakar of the 10th–14th century’). Regarding the origin of the service, there are conflicting views held by both Russian and Czech researchers. The cult of the Czech saint realizes the intercultural communication between the Czech Lands and the Ancient Rus within the frame of Pax Slavia Orthodoxa. St. Wenceslaus’ hagiography influenced the emergence of the Ancient Rus hagiography as a model for writing legends, dedicated to the first Russian saints Boris and Gleb, whose cult was incorporated into the Western Christianity. A hymnography of St. Wenceslaus as exemplified by the analysed service from the Novgorod Menaion is a historical and cultural artefact, indicating a special veneration of St. Wenceslaus in Rus. The image of the Czech saint, assimilated by the Russian medieval culture, was not forgotten in the era of secular reforms in Russia: it entered the Menologion of St. Dmitry Rostovsky of the 17th century. Bibliography Bonju Angelov, Iz starata blgarska, ruska i srbska literature, Sofija 1967. |
| Anna Lanceva is a linguist, culturologist and teacher in the Latin language department of Russian National Research Medical University named after N. I. Pirogov. |
Jan Malura: The Polemics on the Cult of Saints by Havel Phaeton Žalanský Written before the Battle of White Mountain (1620) |
| Havel Phaeton Žalanský (1567–1621) was an extraordinarily prolific writer of the first two decades of the 17th century, and in the years 1606‒1620 he published some thirty Czech written texts that can be categorized predominantly as sermons and devotional, educational and moral treatises. An important part of his written work, influenced by Calvinism, is dedicated to polemical, strongly anti-Catholic texts. Havel Phaeton very often argued against the cult of saints and veneration of paintings connected with it. In his extensive work O poctě Boží nejpřednější ‘On The Most Honourable Adoration of God’ (1614), he explains the effect and necessity of the right Christian prayer: it is to be the invocation of God in three Persons, of the Creator – not of things created or even dead. It should not be directed to angels, saints, pictures, engravings, crucifixes, etc., because these are – just like prayers for the dead – merely superstitious idolatry. In connection with the criticism of saints, Havel Phaeton very sharply contradicts the Catholic concept of privileged holy places; he considers pilgrimages and pilgrim sites to be superstitions and sources of vices. He offers similar statements in other books of his – often influenced by eschatology. In his text O sedmi ranách Božích těžkých a velikých ‘On Seven Plagues of God, Great and Grave’ (1620), the war is considered God’s most severe punishment and its main cause is seen in “Catholic idolatry”.
We can also reconstruct Havel Phaeton’s concept of holiness and martyrdom from his works. In its core, there are Biblical figures such as John the Baptist or the Prophet Elias on the one hand, and ‘martyrs for the truth’ on the other. He talks about the latter in a series of six large, so-called historical sermons on Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague; he preached them between 1611–1619 in the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague; later on, they were published (in an expanded form) under the title Spisové o mučedlnících českých ‘Writings on the Czech Martyrs’ (1619). He places both Hus and Jerome at the same level as the first Christian martyrs, but he also discusses other persecuted historical figures (e. g. Socrates, persecuted non-Catholics in France, the Netherlands and England, etc.). He portrays Hus and Jerome as prophets who stand against the beast (i.e. the Antichrist) and as the followers of St. Cyril and Methodius. To venerate any and all such martyrs, one should not indulge in “idolatrous invocation” (altar paintings, pilgrimages etc.), but rather pay the martyrs a respectful thought with the reflection on their exceptional character. The paper attempts to interpret Havel Phaeton’s attitudes in the wider context of the contemporary discussions about the cult of saints and paintings. It also discusses the literary strategies of the author’s polemical writings (the use of rhetorical means of persuasion). Bibliography Hana Bočková, Jan Hus v textech dvou autorů z počátku 17. století, in: Daniel Soukup – Matouš Jaluška (edd.), Jan Hus, husitství a husitské války a jejich dopad na českou kulturu. V. kongres světové literárněvědné bohemistiky, Praha 2016, s. 91–101. |
| Jan Malura (1971) works at the Department of Czech Literature and Literary Criticism at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava. He is interested in hymnography, devotional literature of the Early Modern period, representation of space in literature; and he is also an editor. Together with Pavel Kosek, he has prepared the editions of three works of Baroque literature. He is a co-author of the Lexicon of Czech Literature, he published two monographs Písně pobělohorských exulantů ‘Songs of the Post-White-Mountain Exile’ and Meditace a modlitba v literatuře raného novověku ‘Meditation and Prayer in the Early Modern Literature’. |
Jindřich Marek: Medieval Utraquist Sermons on Czech Saints |
| The aim of this paper is to examine all Utraquist sermons about the Czech saints preserved in medieval sermon collections. Given their similarity, also Jan Hus’ sermons were included in the research. Since there is a relatively large number of relevant texts, we first had to perform a quantitative evaluation. While Jan Hus is the author of more than thirty sermons on the Czech saints, all the other Utraquists authored around 130 sermons in a period of approximately one hundred years. With 23 sermons, Jacob of Mies is the most prolific author. Within the research, we evaluate which Czech saints were preferred in the sermon collections and which pericopes were used in sermons on the feast day of the saint. The results are then visualized as a network of links between the author of the sermon and the feast of the saint (and/or the pericope used in the sermon), and also between the feast of the saint and the pericope. It turned out that the most preferred saints (i.e., the texts to whom are preserved in a great number, and in these texts, the pericopes were used regularly) are St. Wenceslaus, St. Procopius and St. Vitus, followed by St. Ludmila and the Five Brothers. For the first three of them, we can safely assume – in addition to a regular pericope – also a relatively unchanging image of the saint, as it has been previously shown from the research of the sermons on St. Wenceslaus’ day. In this case, it was Jacob’s sermon that became a model for the other Utraquist sermons. It is likely that we will detect a similar influence of Jacob’s sermons also at the sermons to St. Procopius and St. Vitus, given that Jacob considered them – alongside with St. Wenceslaus – to be the most important Czech saints. On the contrary, there are just a few of Utraquist sermons on St. Adalbert and, moreover, in some cases, these sermons were designated jointly for the feasts of St. Adalbert and St. George. In the case of St. Sigismund, the pericope is rather unstable, and often a pericope corresponding to a pending feast of the temporal cycle was chosen for the feast of the saint. In the appendix, the complete list of sermons will be published, as well as the visualization, and detailed views on selected authors and saints.
Bibliography Sources Jan Hus – Václav Flajšhans (ed.), Sermones de sanctis I–II, Praha 1907–1908. Literature George Ferzoco, Sermon literatures concerning late medieval saints, in: Beverly Mayne Kienzle et al. (edd.), Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons, Louvain-La-Neuve 1996, s. 103–125. |
| Jindřich Marek worked at the Department of Manuscripts of the National Library of the Czech Republic between 2003 and 2016; now he works at the Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He is interested in the late medieval book culture. He is the author of a monograph on sermons of Jacob of Mies (2011), the catalogue of medieval manuscripts of the National Library (2016, with Michal Dragoun) and the biography of Václav Koranda the younger (2017). |
František Martínek: Translations of Legenda o svaté Kateřině ‘Legend of St. Catherine’ into the modern Czech |
| The paper presents and evaluates several actual answers to questions every textual criticism and editing praxis approach need to solve when presenting a medieval text to the present-day public. The concrete text in hand is an important medieval Czech written legend.
The Old Czech Legend of St. Catherine, patron of scholars, was first published in a new edition after its discovery in the 19th century (Pečírka – Erben, eds., 1861) and the last time in 2016 (Petrů, ed. – Pelán, 2016).[1] In addition, it was translated into the new Czech[2] four times and the translations became the basis of theoretical reflections of translation studies. Pelán’s translation was – rightly – highlighted, while it is still recognized that “the original text with purposefully chosen comments […] still remains the essential way of publishing old texts, even for general education and popularization” (Kolár, 1985; p. 359); in addition, there is a verse analysis of this translation (Dobiáš, 1996). The other translations were not left unattended, either: Hrabák’s translation strongly attempting to make the language archaic (and heavily criticized already by Vašica, 1941/1942) and Bednář’s more poetic translation.[3] On the general level, the paper aims to revive the debate on the meaning of translating Old Czech texts into new Czech. It seems that the conclusions of the debate so far are somewhat rigid and repeated rather mechanically (Pavera, 2004); we propose to take into consideration the changing ways of reception of works of art in the contemporary world[4] and to employ the inspiration stemming from new work on the translation of older Czech texts into the new Czech (e.g., Kosák – Flaišman, 2010). In such a debate, it may be good to draw attention to the problematic decisions behind some of Pelán’s translation principles and solutions he offered for some partial problems, and, in contrast, to re-evaluate the rather harsh judgments on the translations of Pelán’s predecessors. While we mention the particulars concerning the sound realization of verse, verse semantics, morphological and lexical textual means, as well as substitutions of certain textual means of the original, we mainly want to discuss the general possibilities of evaluating the translation of the Old Czech text in the context of today’s reception of the work and we determine the hierarchy of individual evaluating criteria. Bibliography Sources Kamil Bednář, Legenda o svaté Kateřině, Praha 1958 [přebásnění do nové češtiny]. Literature Dalibor Dobiáš, Legenda o sv. Kateřině a její překlad do nové češtiny, in: Jitka Bednářová – Dalibor Dobiáš (edd.), Šnykerikyk. Miroslavu Červenkovi k pětašedesátinám studenti FF UK Praha, Brno 1996, s. 14–22. [1] The edition published by E. Petrů is based on the edition of V. Vážný (1959). |
| František Martínek (1982) worked at the Department of Language Development of the Institute of the Czech Language of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic focusing on the vocabulary of the Old and Middle Czech and textual criticism. Since 2010, he is affiliated with the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and concentrates on the history of Czech, German-Czech language contact and he is involved in the publication of Karel Havlíček’s Korespondence ‘Correspondence’. |
Cyril Tomáš Matějec: “To Express a New Thing in an Ancient Style” – Classical Reminiscences in an Early Modern Epic Poem on St. John Nepomucene |
| The story of St. John Nepomucene as a martyr who refused to break the seal of confession became the theme of many sermons, hymns, and dramas in the Baroque period. It is less known that a relatively extensive Latin epic poem (divided into eight books with more than five thousand verses) was created on the basis of John Nepomucene’s story as well. It was published in 1773 in the printing office of the Society of Jesus in Prague under the title Nepomuceneidos libri VIII., without the author’s name. Similarly to Latin dramas on the same theme, also this poem is most probably linked to the Jesuit secondary education. And again similarly to the dramas, it also combines the legendary motives (drawn from Balbín’s legend about St. John Nepomucene) with numerous elements taken from the repertoire of neo-Latin school poetics, based on classical ancient authors. Already the preface to the 1773 edition characterizes the composition as a successful combination of religious, hagiographic content with the Virgil-type (or, more precisely, as Homer-Virgil) form; the reader will learn ‘how the illustrious style of the Iliad or the Aeneid can also be adapted to the sacred themes’ (‘quam scite Iliados aut Aeneidos cothurnus rebus quoque sacris accommodari possit’). The Virgil-like character of the composition is also reported by its early reviewer F. F. Procházka (‘auctor Virgilium proxime accessit’).
Our contribution follows these earlier observations and focuses on the partial question: how does the author of the Nepomuceneid use one of the most characteristic practices of the ancient epic – a detailed description of a visual work of art. The classic examples are the description of Achilles’ shield in Homer’s Iliad (Book XVIII, verses 478‒607) and the description of Aeneas’ shield in Virgil’s Aeneid (Book VIII, verses 626‒731). The author of the Nepomuceneid (with a clear reference to these works) describes the decoration of the carriage the allegorical figure Fidelity (Religio) prepares for the hero (Book I, verses 355‒450); these examples are also an inspiration for the description of embroidery the queen Johanna makes when trying to dispel her fears (Book VII, verses 55‒117). The latter example refers to another classical model: the description of the embroidery that Ovid depicts presenting the competition between the weaver Arachne and the goddess Athena (Metamorphoses, Book VI, verses 70‒128). Like their classic models, the descriptions in the Nepomuceneid are not only decorative; they play a significant role in the motivic and thematic structure of the composition. Bibliography Bohuslav Balbín, De B. Ioanne Nepomuceno, in: Acta Sanctorum, Antwerpen 1680, s. 667–680. |
| Cyril Tomáš Matějec (1975), member of the Premonstratensian Order, teaches at the Catholic Theological Faculty, Charles University in Prague, and focuses on the study of Early Modern Czech and Latin literature. |
Ilona Matejko-Peterka: Under Holy Protection: Patron Saints and Local Religiousness in Silesia as Reflected in Medieval and Modern Coins |
| The aim of this paper is to analyse the depiction of patron saints or their attributes as they appear in the iconography of medieval and modern Silesian coinage. The analysis of these motifs is conducted both in terms of their symbolic content and the functions they fulfil. We try to determine possible reasons for placing individual saints on particular coin dies. In doing so, we find out links to certain localities or mints in Silesia; this, then, helps us to evaluate their role in the religious practices in the local society. We also pay attention to the changes in the way the saints are depicted during the period of our interest. Furthermore, we provide comparison of selected motifs of patron saints found on Silesian coins with their representations on mintages from other areas – and also on different kinds of objects, such as, for example, seals.
Among the wide range of saints included in the iconography of medieval and modern Silesian coins is St. Hedwig – the patron saint of the entire historical Silesia – the primary object of our analysis. Her cult was widespread and active in this area. It found its reflection in the numismatics of many Silesian princes, especially those of the Legnica-Brzeg and Świdnica branches, for whom the representation of this saint was a very common iconographic motif. St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist were also of great importance in the folk piety in Silesia. As a result, their figures (or attributes) became characteristic, especially for the coinage of the Bishops of Wroclaw. St. Wenceslaus also played an important role in Silesia. His cult was manifested, among other things, in the iconography of coins that originated from the Wroclaw city mint. In addition to the aforementioned patron saints, we also refer to a number of other saints: St. Nicholas, whose image adorns the coins of the Cieszyn Piasts; St. Christopher and St. James, whose figures decorate the mintages of the Rosenbergs as well as of the Munsterberg-Oelsnitz and Württemberg-Oelsnitz princes. Based on the research, it can be stated that the motifs of patron saints (or their attributes) occupied a prominent place in the iconography of medieval and modern Silesian coins. The habit of placing them on these artefacts was justified in terms of the symbolism attributed to them and the functions they fulfilled. Not only did they become an effective instrument of non-verbal, yet understandable communication, but also an effective means of understanding the devotion of the local society. Bibliography Stanisław Araszczuk, Kult św. Jadwigi na Śląsku w świetle przedtrydenckich wrocławskich ksiąg liturgicznych, Opole 1995. |
| Ilona Matejko-Peterka is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Historical Sciences of the Silesian University in Opava, Curator of the Numismatic Cabinet of the Silesian Provincial Museum, with a focus on Czech history of the Early Modern period and auxiliary historical sciences, especially numismatics, sphragistics and heraldry. She graduated in History and Philosophy at the University of Zielona Gora in Poland (Uniwersytet Zielonogórski). |
László Mód: Patron Saints of Wine in Transition (Hungarian Examples) |
| In Hungary, as in other wine-producing countries great variety of rituals and feasts are connected to wine. Some of them are closely linked to the Catholic religious practice: during the long growing and maturing period, a plant is exposed to various devastating weather conditions. The wine growers deemed the patron saints especially popular protectors of their wine. Some of the patron saints are associated with weather (e.g., Urban, Donatus) while others became the patrons of production and harvest (e.g. Martin). Their cult spread in Hungary in the Middle Ages and further strengthened in the 18th century with strong support from the Church and aristocracy. While the protective function of the wine saints has been relegated to the background and the beliefs associated with them have disappeared, the wine-growing communities still organize feasts to the patron saints and in many cases, these have become tourist attractions. The paper tries to analyse the changes in the cult nowadays and identifies the special organizations (wine orders) that play an important role in the renewal of the cult. The paper would like to focus on the material aspects of the recent religious practices connected to the patron saints. The modern wine brotherhoods spread from France to the other wine-growing regions of Europe. Some of the communities have followed the Catholic religious practice in their name choices, linking the membership to the cult of a well-known patron saint (St. Vincent, St. Urban, St. Donatus, St. Martin). In many Hungarian wine-regions, local festivals and wine feasts are built on traditions related to the past traditions of wine growing. Typically, the festivities are linked to the cult of a wine-protecting patron saint and the connection is to be analysed and interpreted in the context of modern wine culture. St. Urban and St. Donatus are especially popular: in recent decades, these saints had their statutes erected to honour them – in settlements where their cult did not previously exist.
Bibliography Zsigmond Csoma, Magyar történeti borkalendárium örök időkre [Hungarian Historical Wine Calendar for All Times], Budapest,2004. |
| László Mód is an assistant professor at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Szeged. His main specialization resides in history and ethnography of wine-production and museology. He also serves as a secretary of SIEF place-lore and space-lore working group, the member of the Acta Ethnographica Hungarica editorial board. |
Ladislav Nekvapil: A Tyrolean Saint in the Heart of Bohemia. The Unique Cult of St. Romedius of Thaur |
| The paper attempts to explain the preconditions of the implementation (and the subsequent expansion) of the cult of St. Romedius of Thaur to Eastern Bohemia. The saint, traditionally associated with South Tyrol, was used for the purposes of family representation of the Thun family in the Eastern Bohemian estate of Choltice in the second half of the 17th century. The counts Thun, who have derived their ancient origins from the saint, have taken advantage of a number of resources to popularize the cult of St. Romedius in the contemporary society, ranging from rural peasants to the highest nobility. This is evident, for example, from the increasing frequency of the name Romedius used in christenings, since the end of the 17th century not only in the territory of the Choltice dominion, but all the way within the (then) Chrudim district. An important role in the spreading of the cult of the Tyrolean saint was played by a strong connection between Count Romedius Konstantin Thun and the members of the Premonstratensian Order, undoubtedly important co-creators of the religious life of the Choltice dominion and the wider neighbourhood at the turn of the 17th and 18th century. The Premonstratensians from Choltice were the authors of significant – yet, rarely reflected – period prints, which, among other things, illuminate the existence of the cult of St. Romedius in the Czech Lands. In addition to the eulogizing Latin writings of the first chaplain of the castle in Choltice, Premonstratensian Amand Friedenfels (1644‒1705), published in the 1690s and glorifying the founder of the castle chapel Count Romedius Konstantin and his family, St. Romedius and the building itself, we also find the extensive Czech print Hwězdička Růžencowá, ‘The Star of the Rosary’ by another Premonstratensian, Jan Hubatius from Kotnov (1660‒1726), a book the Czech historiography has not explored yet. However, its content is an extremely valuable document describing the life of a Rosary confraternity associated with the castle chapel of St. Romedius in Choltice. Moreover, the book is also evidence of the form of veneration of St. Romedius in the region.
Thanks to various evidence – and with the support of other written and iconographic sources – it is thus possible to follow the vestiges of the cult of a Tyrolean saint in Eastern Bohemia despite the fact that Choltice are the only place within the Czech Lands with a religious building dedicated to Romedius of Thaur. Bibliography Amandus Friedenfels, Gloriosus Sanctus Romedius ex Comitibus de Thaur, Praha 1699. |
| Ladislav Nekvapil works as a specialist at the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Pardubice, and an external collaborator and postgraduate student at the Institute of Historical Sciences of Faculty of Arts, University of Pardubice. He specializes in religious and social history in Early Modern period, with a special emphasis on rural regions. He is also interested in the culture of writing, numismatics and regional history. |
Tomáš Slavický: Early Modern Reception of the Chant Hospodine pomiluj ny ‘Lord, Have Mercy on Us’ and Its Ties to the Cult of the Patron Saints of Bohemia |
| The oldest monument of the Czech literature and music is the chant Hospodine pomiluj ny ’Lord, Have Mercy on Us’ – known as ‘The Chant of St. Adalbert’ from the 13th to the beginning of the 20th century. It has long served as a generally known memorial prayer and an indulgence chant; later on it was considered the bearer of historical consciousness and of the (early forms of) state and national identity. After the long-disputed hypothesis of an Old Church Slavonic origin of the text has been confirmed and after the origin of the melody has been placed within the Western type of litany, we can investigate the long tradition of the chant in its continuity. The paper focuses on the previously neglected period of the Early Modern times. The first attempt to re-acknowledge the chant appeared during re-catholicization period: the history of the chant was accentuated, hand in hand with re-presenting and revival of its old functions (memorial, pleading, indulgence). Another return, coupled with interest in its orally transferred versions, can be traced back to the period of Romantic historicism and National Revival. At the end of the 19th century, the first generation of Czech hymnologists (linked to the Cyrillic reform) got strongly interested in the history of the chant as a national monument. Their interpretation was presented in the representative musical works (J. Vrchlický – A. Dvořák: Svatá Ludmila ‘St. Ludmila’ 1886). The criticism of this concept by Z. Nejedlý, connected to the contemporary disputes about the interpretation of the Czech history, denied that the chant is so ancient. The restitution of the oldest melody and its spread among the general public was granted once Dobroslav Orel published the chant in his Český kancionál ‘Czech Hymnal’, 1921; here, he justified the long tradition of the chant and placed it in the context of the European development of popular spiritual singing. The long-term reception of the chant is also related to several types of legends, on the intervention of the patron saints of Bohemia during various wars and misfortunes in the Czech Lands on the one hand, and on St. Adalbert as the patron saint of the Czech singing on the other.
Bibliography Matěj Benedikt Bolelucký, Rosa Boëmica sive Vita sancti Woytiechi agnomine Adalberti Pragensis episcopi […], Praha 1668. |
| Tomáš Slavický has been a member of the Department of Music History of the Institute of Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic since 1996. He is primarily interested in the musical history of the Czech Lands and interdisciplinary hymnology. |
Kateřina Smyčková: Why didn’t Podiven Become a Patron Saint of Bohemia |
| The paper focuses on the literary image of Blessed Podiven, the servant of St. Wenceslaus. It follows the development of this character from the first documents in the 10th century until the end of the 18th century; be it in legends, chronicles, hymns, sermons and (selectively) also in iconographic sources. The transformations of the Podiven’s story make a perfect starting point for research on the criteria placed on a saint in the (Early) Middle Ages, after the Council of Trent and in the Enlightenment. The source we rely most on is Kristiánova legenda ‘Kristián’s Legend’ (probably the end of the 10th century) which introduces Podiven as the servant of St. Wenceslaus (and fervent follower in his Master’s devotion and good deeds), and his further escapades including his flee to Germany after St. Wenceslaus’ death, his return and killing of one of Wenceslaus’ murderers, and, finally, how he was hanged by Boleslaus’ soldiers. Other medieval sources omit the motif of Podiven’s revenge, and present him as an innocent follower of Wenceslaus’ martyrdom. During 14th to 17th century, the legend is expanded of other episodes. For instance, many authors used the motif of Podiven walking in the footsteps of St. Wenceslaus, which warmed him in the snow, as an example of faithful following. In the period after the Council of Trent, we detect risen interest in patron saints of Bohemia, and that included the less known, non-canonized patrons as well. This interest is also manifested in the cult of Bl. Podiven. In the middle of the 17th century, Bl. Podiven was – along with other patron saints of Bohemia – included in the legend of the Palladium of the Czech Lands; thus, for the authors of Baroque legends, he was, above all, an admirer of the Virgin Mary. It was only Bohuslav Balbín who in the fourth volume of his Miscellanea (Bohemia sancta, 1682) printed the rediscovered ‘Kristián’s Legend’ and thus returned the motif of revenge and murder to Podiven’s story. As a murderer and avenger, however, Podiven became a very problematic type of saint; thus, throughout the 18th century, the hagiographers adhered to a milder version of the legend. Balbín’s version was taken over only by Joseph Schiffner (Historisch-chronologische Lebensbeschreibungen Böhmischer Landespatronen, 1801) and other writers of the 19th century. In their versions, however, Podiven does not appear as a saint, but as an ordinary historical figure of early Czech history.
Bibliography Sources Kašpar Arsenius z Radbuzy, Pobožná knížka o blahoslavené Panně Maryji, Praha 1629. Literature Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, Symbolický rozměr poutě do Staré Boleslavi, Český časopis historický 95, 1997, s. 585–620. |
| Kateřina Smyčková works at the Department of Czech Literature and Literary Criticism at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava, and at the Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. She is interested in the Czech literature of the 17th and 18th century, the Early Modern hymnography and the manuscript culture. |
Jan Stejskal: Second Life of Missionaries from the Island of Pereo. St. Five Brothers († 1003) in Czech, Polish and Italian Tradition |
| The St. Five Brothers probably belong to the least known Czech patrons. The lives of the Five Brothers used to be perceived in the Czech ambience confusingly (if at all), and always in connection with the life of St. Adalbert. The Five Brothers were called “Benedict with the Brothers”, “Boleslav Brothers”, “Christinus with the Brothers”, or even “St. Adalbert’s companions”. Almost forgotten figure of Olomouc former patron St. Christinus, whose relic is still preserved in the Olomouc cathedral of St. Wenceslaus, prove the former expansion of the cult of the Five Brothers in the Czech Lands.
The beginning of the cult of the Five Brothers in the Czech Lands can be connected with the campaign the Bohemian duke Břetislav led against Poland in 1039. The relics of the murdered hermits (Five Brothers) were transported to Prague as the spoils of war. Only later, their relics were placed in Stará Boleslav in Bohemia, near the former grave of St. Wenceslaus and from that place – according to the practice common at the time – distributed to other churches. St. Christinus’ skull found its place in Olomouc cathedral, probably during its construction in the 12th century. The aim of the paper is not to debate the mission of the Five Brothers from Italy to Poland (on the request of their spiritual leader St. Romuald), but rather to analyse the tradition within the lives of saints and another narrative source. It is an interesting mixture of the tradition of the foundation of the first Benedictine monastery in Břevnov (in Prague) with the tradition of the Romualdine mission to Poland. It seems that the violent and early transfer of the relics from Poland to Bohemia prevented the formation of an independent Polish tradition. That tradition later fully adopted the Czech version… However, the crucial part of the paper lies in the Baroque era, in the moment of the growing interest of Italian monastic historians, who could not believe their eyes reading the Czech or Polish sources connected with the Five Brothers, having available accurate, or (at least) much older Italian sources. It seems, that the ‘Central European story’ of lives of the Five Brothers was different from the Italian one. The purpose of the paper is to define the various strategies of creating the cult of the Five Brothers in different territories and to characterize its autonomous development and its final synthesis – that, as it appears, came (probably) too late. Bibliography Nora Berend (ed.), Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–1200, Cambridge 2007. |
| Jan Stejskal (1970) got M.A. in Medieval Studies from Central European University in Budapest and Ph.D. from Palacký University in Olomouc. He worked at the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in Prague as an archivist and information analyst and later as a researcher at the Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University in Prague. He spent four semesters in Italy as the American Academy Fellow (in Rome) and as the Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies Fellow (in Florence). He also received the Fellowship of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar. He teaches history and historiography as the associate professor at the Palacký University in Olomouc. His fields of interest are history of religion, especially Christian missions. He published books on medieval religious exile, on historical contacts between Central and Southern Europe and essays on intertextuality in late medieval Europe. He also published his translations and editions of Renaissance Latin texts. |
Marie Škarpová: Sláva svatoprokopská ‘The Glory of St. Procopius’ by Fridrich Bridel – the Legend of the Patron Saint as Historia Sacra |
| Unlike medieval hagiography, hagiography of the Early Modern period does not belong among the most frequent research topics of (Czech) literary history. At the same time, a large number of hagiographical sources have been preserved from the 17th century in the Czech Lands, allowing to study, among other things, interesting Early Modern modifications of the traditional Christian genre of legend.
In the paper, we offer a genre analysis of the Bridel’s text Sláva svatoprokopská ‘The Glory of St. Procopius’ about a Czech hermit, the founder of the Benedictine Sázava Monastery and the patron saint of Bohemia from the first half of the 11th century. We concentrate on the following texts: the first Czech edition from 1662, the German translation Lob des heiligen Procopii from 1666 (translated, most likely, by Daniel Ildefons Nigrin, a monk at the Benedictine Sázava Monastery), the posthumous second Czech edition from 1689 (supplemented by an excerpt from the book of miracles), and, finally, the third substantially expanded edition under the title Jiskra slávy svatoprokopské ‘The Spark of Glory of St. Procopius’ from 1699. The text is far from being just a legend about St. Procopius, it is also a historiographical account of the beginnings of Czech Christianity, the foundation of the first monasteries in Bohemia and the history of the Sázava Monastery; it is also a legend of St. Benedict of Nursia, and an essay on the history of the Benedictine Order. At the same time, the text is also an apology of the Christian hermitage as well as the monastic life and the Catholic conception of the ministerial priesthood, and many others. Last but not least, the text also constructs – in the hidden controversy with the contemporary concept of Bohemia as the cradle of the European reformation or as a traditional heretical country – an idea of the eternal Catholicism of the Czechs. In this paper, we focus not only on the analysis of the relationship between the hagiographic and historiographic narrative of this text on St. Procopius and the relationship of the text and its pictorial supplement (part of Jiskra slávy svatoprokopské ‘The Spark of Glory of St. Procopius’ is a cycle of narrative paintings from St. Procopius’ life), but also on the analysis of the apologetic and polemic strategies in the text. We also point out the importance of the monastic community as a crucial actor in production and publication of texts in Early Modern Bohemia and the importance of Bridel’s work for the propagation of the Sázava Monastery as the central site of the cult of St. Procopius. Bibliography Sources [Anonym], Jiskra slávy svatoprokopské, v veliké pustině řícenin kláštera Sazavského přes dvě stě let skrytá…, Praha 1699.[Anonym], Glorreiches Andencken Des Groſſen Welt=Wunderthäters SANCT PROCOPII…, Prag 1753. F[ridrich] B[ridel], Sláva svatoprokopská, z rozličných autorův, jako jsou Pontanus a Breitenberg, Hájek, Paprocký a jiní sebraná …, Praha 1662. F[ridrich] B[ridel], Sláva svatoprokopská, z rozličných autorův, jako jsou Pontanus Breitenberg, Hájek, Paprocký a jiní, sebraná …, Litomyšl 1689. Hugo Fabricius, Požehnaná památka velikého světa divotvorce svatýho Prokopa…, Praha 1753. [Daniel Ildefons Nigrin], Lob Des Heiligen PROCOPII…, Prag 1666. Valentin Weidner, Vita S. Procopij Abbatis Conf[essoris] Ordinis S. Benedicti, Patroni Regni Boh[emic]ae, potissimum ex Bohemice impressa A[nn]o 1699 …, Ms. 1727, Vlastivědné muzeum a galerie v České Lípě, Sign. RK–A–2. Literature Dieter R. Bauer – Klaus Herbers – Gabriela Signori (edd.), Patriotische Heilige. Beiträge zur Konstruktion religiöser und politischer Identitäten in der Vormoderne, Stuttgart 2007. |
| Marie Škarpová (1977) works at the Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University in Prague. She is interested in the history of Czech literature from 16th to 18th century, Czech hymnography and editing of Czech hymnals. Currently, she is the principal investigator in a grant on hagiography in the Early Modern period in the Czech Lands. She is the author of the monograph „Mezi Čechy, k pobožnému zpívání náchylnými…“ Šteyerův Kancionál český, kanonizace hymnografické paměti a utváření české katolické identity ‘ ‘Among the Czechs, Prone to Pious Singing…’ Šteyer’s Czech Hymnal, Canonization of Hymnographic Memory and Formation of the Czech Catholic Identity’ (2015). |
Markéta Špačková: The Cave of St. Ivan and Its Visitors in the Period of Romanticism |
| St. Ivan was very popular in the Czech Lands during the 19th century; his character was particularly popular in the poetry of Romanticism of the 19th century.
The most important and most famous Czech Romantic writer Karel Hynek Mácha devoted his first published poem Svatý Ivan ‘St. Ivan’ to him. Marie Čacká (a 19th-century female writer) supposedly visited the cave where Ivan is believed to have lived in the Early Middle Ages, near the village Svatý Jan pod Skalou in the central part of the Czech Lands (Bohemia). The place inspired her to write a poem (known today). Mácha himself also visited the place – according to personal memories of his schoolmates, who joined him on the trip from Prague to Karlštejn and Svatý Jan pod Skalou. This place connected with Ivan’s legend and often visited in the 19th century is nothing but a cave in a big white rock in the middle of the woods. The place, however, became so popular that it sometimes got over-crowded. Again according to the memories of Mácha’s friends, there was no food left for them in the pub near the cave (the pub was simply eaten out). The very same memories mention a police investigation: after their return to Prague, the students were questioned about the songs they had been singing during the trip. After the visit to Svatý Jan pod Skalou, Mácha got inspired and wrote a poem on St. Ivan. He was then asked to read the poem in the class – and given its success among his schoolmates, Josef Bojislav Pichl (the future husband of Marie Čacká) recommended the poem to be published and he offered his help as an editor. Jan from Hvězda created his Romantic poem based on the text of the original legend. We should not forget František Alexander Rokos’ poem Ivan. The poem is Rokos’ own fictional story about St. Ivan, the Teacher. According to Rokos’ words, it was the early European Romantic writers (e.g. John Milton) who inspired him to write the poem and to use historical fiction to show the rise of Christianity at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Bibliography Marie Čacká, Písně Marie Čacké, Praha 1882. |
| Markéta Špačková studied Czech language and Literature and Cultural studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. Then she continued in her doctoral research focused on the Czech literature of the 19th century. During doctoral studies she taught seminars Jan Neruda for foreigners and Czech literature of the 19th century. |
Pavel Štěpánek: The Renovation of the Pilgrim Route to Santiago de Compostela from Bohemia (Czech Lands) |
| The rise of Spain to the position of the world’s great power after the discovery of America was accompanied by the foundation and reformation of standing religious orders by Spaniards; they moved to the Kingdom of Bohemia, too. The new orders introduced and imposed the cult of new saints (or they revived ancient devotions). This situation was also helped by the election of the king Ferdinand I Habsburg, born and educated in Spain, as the king of Bohemia. Between these orders, there were – after all – Jesuits, Hospitallers of St. John of God, Piarists, Carmelites (with their cult of Divine Child Jesus) and the Benedictines of Montserrat. With them, the cults of St. Ignace, St. Francis Xavier, St. Joseph Calasanz, St. Isidro, St. Teresa, etc. were introduced to the Czech Lands. By that time, the medieval pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela was renovated. The network of churches consecrated to St. Jacques – generally of Romanesque foundation and semi-destroyed by the Hussite rebellions in the 15th century and weakened by the Reformation – was renovated in the Baroque period by reconstructions of the existing patrocinium. Moreover, new churches were constructed, so that the pilgrim who was directed to Santiago de Compostela (the centre of the veneration of the Apostle James, Spanish national saint) was guided and oriented by the churches of his name. However, should it so happen that the pilgrim’s desire to travel to the saint’s tomb in such a distant country was practically impossible to fulfil, the so-called compensative solutions were sometimes adopted; the pilgrims were, for instance, sent to a hill not far from their habitual residence near the community of Ivančice (Moravia), to a little church that became a ‘little Compostela’ for them – as we know from an old song in the hymn book that says: “For us it is impossible to pilgrim to Spain because of the enormous distance, but we desire to visit you devoutly, asking you to be our depute in this Pilgrimage from where we do not return anymore”. Today, in the 21st century, we observe a renovation of the pilgrimage of Catholics, Protestants, and atheists, who have written many books describing their experiences from the Great Tour.
Bibliography Pavel Štěpánek (ed.), Sv. František Xaverský a jezuitská kultura v českých zemích, Olomouc 2014. |
| Pavel Štěpánek (1942), the commander of the Order of the Queen Isabel the Catholic (Spain, 2006). He is an active emeritus professor of the Palacký University in Olomouc. He is a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of St. Ferdinand at Madrid, He is a former diplomat, historian of art, author of 25 books. He specializes in the art of the Ibero-American world. |
Sarah Tiboni – Eleonora Rava: Rose of Viterbo: Birth and Development of a Patronage |
| The aim of this paper is to investigate the Rose of Viterbo: a lay penitent who lived in the first half of the 13th century. We critically examine the evolution of the cult from its beginning till today. After the death of the Rose in 1252, the bishop and the Commune of Viterbo asked the pope to investigate her sainthood. The pope Innocenzo IV (Innocent IV.) announced the process; however, none of the procedural documents is preserved. In 1456, the pope Callisto III (Callixstus III.) announced a new process to inscribe Rose in the Catalogue of the Saints. But even though the process took place in Viterbo in the spring 1457, it has never reached a conclusion. Nevertheless, in 1512 the Commune of Viterbo established an official annual procession in honour of St. Rose. At the end of the 17th century, the so-called ‘Saint Rose’s Machine’ was built. At the beginning it was but a small canopy; nowadays, it is a tower 30 meters tall carried around the city by 100 men. This transport on shoulders is the most popular cultural and devotional event in honour of St. Rose and in 2014, it has been recognized as the ‘intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’ by UNESCO. This spectacular event is a symbolic re-enactment of the transfer of Rose’s mortal remains, as it happened in 1258: from the church of Santa Maria in Poggio – in which she was buried – to the church of Santa Maria of the Order of Saint Damian that (in the following decades) has become a sanctuary dedicated to her. The St. Rose’s case study is of great interest to many: thanks to the rich and different types of unpublished sources (e.g., Vitae, Process of canonization, relics, ex-voto, etc.), it is possible to evaluate the impact of this figure on the Viterbo’s identity both at the level of civil and ecclesiastical institutions – and that of common people.
Bibliography Sources Viterbo, Archivio del monastero di Santa Rosa, Fondo Diplomatico, Vita I, s. d. Literature Giuseppe Abate, S. Rosa da Viterbo, terziaria francescana (1233–1251). Fonti storiche della vita e loro revisione critica, Miscellanea francescana 52, 1952, s. 113–278. |
| Sarah Tiboni is currently a board member of the Centro Studi Santa Rosa da Viterbo (Viterbo, Italy), a non-profit organization created to study the historical archive of St. Rose of Viterbo and to evaluate archival studies in general. She is an Honorary Associate in the Meanings Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Europe 1100–1800, conducting a research project entitled Emotions and Miracles: an Italian Eighteenth-Century Notary Source at the University of Western Australia. The focus of this research is the study of the devotional emotions in the miracles. After graduating in Archival Studies at the University of Pisa, she received a diploma from the Archival School of Florence State Archive and she gained her formation from the National Training School on Editing Historical Documentary Sources at the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo (Rome). In 2016, she completed her Ph.D. in Archival Studies from the University of Siena. She works as an archivist in Italian archives. Her main research interest is in the Italian historical and archival studies and on editing of documentary sources. She is also interested in abandoned childhood, ancient hospitals and Italian cultural heritage.
Eleonora Rava is currently a board member of the Centro Studi Santa Rosa da Viterbo (Viterbo, Italy), a non-profit organisation created to study the historical archive of St. Rose of Viterbo and to evaluate archival studies in general. She is a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow at the University of St. Andrews working on recluses in Medieval Italy. After graduating in History at the University of Pisa and specializing in Medieval and Franciscan Studies at the Scuola di Studi Medievali e Francescani of the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome, she focused on editing medieval sources, attending the National Historical School on Editing Documentary Sources at the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo (Rome) and obtaining her Ph.D. in Textual Sciences at the University of Siena. Her main fields of research are: editing of sources; notaries, wills and testaments; voluntary urban reclusion in late medieval Italy. In 2016, she published the monograph: Volens in testamento vivere. Testamenti a Pisa (1240-1320), Roma, Istituto Storico Italiano del Medioevo, 2016 (Italia Sacra n.s.2). |
Miroslav Vepřek: Saints in the Czech Church Slavonic Culture in the 10th and 11th Century |
| The Church Slavonic texts of Czech origin (from the 10th and 11th century) provide two kinds of a testimony of cults of saints in the Early middle ages. The first is displayed through hagiographic monuments dedicated to the concrete saint directly. Not surprisingly, especially the ‘domestic’ Czech saints can be included into this group – St. Wenceslaus, St. Ludmila, perhaps St. Procopius; there are, however, also other legends from the period – Life of St. Vitus, Legend of St. Anastasia and Life of St. Benedict. The Czech origin of the other legends is uncertain; it concerns Life of St. Stephen the Pope, Martyrdom of St. Apollinary and Life of St. George. The second kind of the testimony comprises patron saints included in several prayers as intercessors; dozens of saints, for example, can be found in the Prayer to the Holy Trinity (a product of the final period of the Czech Church Slavonic culture form the late 11th century). In this prayer, we can see that the cult of saints was spreading swiftly – even the latest martyrs were included, as Benedict, Knut and Alban tortured to death in 1086 in Ostende.
The Czech Church Slavonic literature also mediated the spread of cults of various saints to other Slavonic areas. It so happened with the Czech saints – Wenceslaus and Ludmila. For example, there is a written Canon of St. Wenceslaus in the Byzantine liturgy, and Wenceslaus’ cult is documented even in the manuscript of Minei 1095–1097 from Russia. In the opposite direction, the cult of Russian martyrs St. Boris and Gleb was rather swiftly adopted in the Sázava Monastery. Among the saints connected with the Czech Church Slavonic culture, Gregory the Great assumes a rather special position. He is the author (alleged or real) of several Latin texts that were translated into Church Slavonic in the period. St. Gregory the Great can be thus considered as one of the most influential personalities for the Czech Church Slavonic literature. Bibliography František Čajka, Církevněslovanská legenda o svaté Anastázii. Praha 2011. |
| Miroslav Vepřek (Palacký University in Olomouc, Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech Studies) is a Czech linguist and philologist specialized in the Church Slavonic language and literature and diachronic (Slavonic) linguistics. |
Eva Veselovská: Female Saints in Medieval Liturgical Tradition in Esztergom. A Musical Legacy of Medieval Musical Manuscripts from Slovakia |
| Medieval hymns celebrating the feasts of female saints can be divided into two major groups. The first group includes the repertoire of the mass liturgy, which, as a rule, is located in the Proprium de sanctis part of the missals or graduals (or the so called Sequentiale). The second, much more varied group consists of a repertoire of hymns that are part of the liturgy of the hours (breviaries, antiphonaries, psalters).
Ritus of Esztergom is documented by manuscripts from the late Middle Ages, especially from the 15th century, a smaller part from the 12th–14th century. The codices we have from the Middle Ages contain more or less domestic liturgical tradition, some of them show foreign influences. The central liturgy of the Esztergom rite is preserved – in an extremely precise form – especially in the manuscripts with music notation from Bratislava (Bratislava Missal I EC Lad. 3, the State Archive in Bratislava, Bratislava Antiphonaries I‒IV). The Spiš codices show the Esztergom rite in a specific version (Spiš Antiphonary Mss. No. 2, Spiš Graduale by Juraj from Kežmarok Mss. No. 1, the Spiš Chapter). Other Spiš manuscripts – preserved now in Budapest and Alba Julia – contain a number of specific features typical of Spiš (the library Batthyaneum Alba Julia: Breviary R. II. 46, Breviary R. III. 94, Breviary R II. 102, Diurnale R. II. 125; Budapest: Breviary 63. 74. I. C Hungarian National Museum, Breviary 63. 84. C Hungarian National Museum). Among the feasts of medieval female saints, the most prominent was the liturgical celebration of the various feasts of the Virgin Mary. Among those feasts, then, the most important feasts were Purificatio BMV (2. 2.), Annuntiatio BMV (25. 3.), Visitatio BMV (usually 2. 7.), BMV de Nive (5. 8.), Assumptio BMV (15. 8.), Nativitas BMV (8. 9.), Praesentatio BMV (21. 11.) and Conceptio BMV (8. 12). Besides them, within the Esztergom Proprium de sanctis the most important are those female saints, to whom a mass form accompanied by music notation is dedicated, or those for whom a specific liturgy of the hours have been created. In the extant manuscripts from Slovakia, the most distinguished are the following female saints: St. Agnes, St. Agatha, St. Cecilia, St. Lucia, St. Margaret, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Ursula, St. Catherine, St. Dorothea, St. Anne and St. Elizabeth. Bibliography Carl Maria Dreves, Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi. V. Historiae Rhytmicae, Leipzig 1889. |
| Eva Veselovská is a scientific researcher at the Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She is interested in the field of historical musicology, and she focuses on the history of medieval musical culture in the Central Europe (medieval notation). She collaborates in synthetic (VEGA), regional (APVV), interfiled (EU structural funds), international (Notated Sources from Medieval Europe / Medieval Hungary: Transregional Research and Online Database Building) as well as worldwide projects (Mittelalterliche Musikhandschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek ÖEAW-FWF, UNESCO). The results of her scientific activities are published as analytical and synthetic studies and monographs (Stredoveké pramene cirkevnej hudby na Slovensku, Edition: Catalogus fragmentorum cum notis musicis medii aevi in Slovacia /I-IV/). She is the head of the database Cantus Planus in Slovacia / Slovak Early Music Database (http://cantus.sk). |
Miloš Zapletal: Cult of Saints, the Composition and Its Composer: Křížkovský’s Cantata to Saint Cyril and Methodius and Its Contemporary Reception |
| The cantata Svatý Cyril a Metoděj ‘St. Cyril and Methodius’ by Pavel Křížkovský (libreto by František Sušil) on a melody of a Moravian folk song is one of the most significant pieces not only in Křížkovský’s work, but also one of the most important musical pieces of Moravian music before Janáček. The first version of the cantata is from 1850, its final version, for voice parts with a piano and brass harmony, is from 1861, and it was performed in Brno the same year. A monk, regenschori, composer and chorus leader Pavel Křížkovský (1820–1883) was the most significant figure of the Czech Brno music culture from the 1850s to the early 1870s. The cantata to St. Cyril and Methodius fascinates us first and foremost through the intersection of at least three cults (both secular and profane) that formed an integral part of the Czech culture in Moravia in the last third of the 19th century: the cult of St. Cyril and Methodius, the cult of Pavel Křížkovský and the cult of the composition itself. The first cult culminated – and the other two were born – during the celebration of the thousand’s anniversary of the arrival of the two apostles which took place in Brno in 1863, and during which the Křížkovský’s cantata was premiered. In the following years, the cantata’s popularity grew even stronger in Brno and Moravia. The paper deals with the reception of the cantata ‘St. Cyril and Methodius’ in the 1860s and up to the 1890s, focusing on the functions it had in the Moravian – Old Czech society (in many aspects, still in the grips of the National Revival movement) and its culture. Concretely, we try to answer the following questions: (1) In what way did the main Moravian – Old Czech institutions (the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, the daily newspaper Moravská orlice ‘Moravian Eagle’, and the choirs Svatopluk and Beseda brněnská ‘Beseda of Brno’) affect the reception of the composition – and its author? (2) How did this reception relate to the Cyril and Methodius cult and to the respective ideology (a specifically Moravian synthesis of Catholicism and nationalism)? (3) What was the role Křížkovský’s pupil Leoš Janáček played in the formation of the cult of the composition and its composer?
Bibliography Emil Axman, Morava v české hudbě XIX. století, Praha 1920. |
| Miloš Zapletal (1987) has been working at the Department of Music History of the Institute of Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic since 2015. In 2017, he defended his dissertation Vybrané problémy janáčkovské recepce ‘Selected Problems of the Janáček Reception’. He co-authored seven collective monographs and several studies on the history of Czech music culture in the years 1870–1939, musical semiotics, theory of film music and methodology of musicology. |
Svorad Zavarský: Oddo Koptik’s Thalleidos libri duo (1744): On the Way from Magna Hungariae Domina to Patrona totius Slovachiae |
| After 1711, when a long period of confessional, political, and military tumults in the Kingdom of Hungary was finally over, a fresh wave of enthusiasm found eloquent expression in the Neo-Latin literary production of the country. In this context, the promotion of Marian devotion can be identified as one of the primary vehicles of social renewal.
The cult of the Virgin Mary as the Patroness of the Kingdom (Regnum Marianum) was, in the early 18th century, closely associated with Mariatál (today part of Marianka), an ancient place of pilgrimage near Bratislava administered by the Order of St. Paul the First Hermit. Considered to be the most famous place in all Hungary (M. Belius, Notitia Hungariae 2.2, 262‒7), Mariatál attracted devotees from all ranks of society: they came to seek grace before the miraculous statue of the Virgin and Child of high medieval origin, often hoping to obtain healing at the Holy well located at a short distance from the pilgrimage church. This place, its past and present, as well as the beauty of its artistic artefacts and natural scenery, became the subject matter of the work Thalleidos libri duo composed during Oddo Koptik’s two weeks’ time at Mariatál, and published in Sopron in 1744. Oddo Koptik OSB (1692‒1755) was born in Klatovy in Southern Bohemia. Koptik’s work consists of paraphrases in verse (paraphrasis poetica) of historical sources, which are then referred to and extensively quoted at the end of each paraphrase respectively (exegesis historica). The aim of this paper is to explore, and consider (in its historical context) the mid-18th-century ideology of the Virgin Mary of Mariatál as captured in Koptik’s Thalleis. Two years after the appearance of the Thalleidos libri duo, in 1746, Gerardus Jankovich published his Novum sidus Hungariae dealing with the origins of and the miraculous healings connected with the 16th-century statue of the Sorrowful Mother of Šaštín which had recently risen in importance on the religious horizon of the Hungarian Kingdom. Both places, Šaštín and Mariatál, were linked by being administered by the Order of St. Paul the First Hermit, and they both were situated in South-Western Slovakia, the cradle of the Early Modern national movement of Slovaks. Since the official promulgation of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows as the Chief Patroness of Slovakia is indissolubly associated with Šaštín, we may attempt to view the 18th-century image of the Virgin Mary of Mariatál as a part of the historical process leading to that promulgation. Indeed, from Mary healing the afflicted it is a short step to the one afflicted herself. Bibliography Stephan Beissel, Geschichte der Verehrung Marias im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Freiburg im Breisgau 1910. |
| Svorad Zavarský (1977) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ján Stanislav Institute of Slavistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. His scholarly interests cover the Neo-Latin language and literature of Slovakia, with a particular focus on the works of Jesuit polymath Martinus Szent-Ivany (1633–1705). He is currently the chief investigator of the research project entitled Nexus Slavorum Latini (2016–2019). |
Gökçe Zeynep Guzey: The Meeting Point of Beliefs and Rituals: The House of the Virgin Mary |
| The Virgin Mary is one of the religious figures that many religions respect and believe in throughout the world. She encountered many extraordinary situations both during and after the birth of Jesus, and played an active role in the spread of Christianity despite all the difficulties. Her effort continued after the death of Jesus. There are two legends of where Mary lived until her death. The first view is that Mary continued to live in Jerusalem. The other has it that Mary came to Ephesus with St. John and died there.
In various historical sources it is claimed that the Virgin Mary and St. John came to Ephesus in order to escape the pressures of Jerusalem and worked there to spread the Christianity. And yet, there is no grave of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus. Despite this, priests and Christian researchers identified the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus in the late 19th century, at least according to Catherine Emmerich’s book ‘The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary’. This house, which was restored in the 20th century, still protects the Holy place statue for Christians. Both Christians and Muslims (hundreds of thousands of them) visit the House of the Virgin Mary every year. This house, where various rituals are performed, as lighting candles, drinking and bathing in healing water, or unlocking, is the destination to all people who want to wish and pray. In this paper, we examine religious and magical practices and their functions in the House of the Virgin Mary, where beliefs and rituals meet. By taking advantage of participative observation and interview methods, we identify and analyse the information, beliefs, and practices of the people who come to the House of the Virgin Mary. Bibliography Heather Abraham, The Shrine of Our Lady of Ephesus: A Study of The Personas of Mary As Lived Religion” Ma Thesis 2008. |
| Gökçe Zeynep Guzey is a research assistant in Ege University in İzmir, Turkey. She is affiliated with the Department of Turkish Language and Literature, her field of study is folklore with folklore and religion as her main scholarly interests. She works on her dissertation ‘Folkloric Practices which are Performed in Holy Visiting Places in İzmir’. She is interested in the practices Islam and Christianity held in Holy places. |
