Christian legend

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First page of an excerpt from the Christian legend, mid-12th century

The Christian legend is a medieval source on the history of Bohemia . It depicts the Christianization of the country and the life and death of Saints Ludmilla and Wenceslaus . The legend has long been considered a late medieval forgery. However, researchers now largely agree that it originated at the end of the 10th century.

content

The work is also called Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius (Life and death of St. Wenceslas and his grandmother, St. Ludmilla) after its opening sentence , so it is primarily a legend of saints . In the prologue the author declares his intention to tell the story of the life and martyrdom of the first two saints in the country. In the following ten chapters, however, the work takes on the character of a chronicle . The first chapter deals with the mission of the Slav apostles Cyril and Methodius in Moravia ; the second tells the legend of the Přemyslids ' descent , the appointment of the plowman Přemysl to the prince's throne, and describes the baptism of Prince Bořivoj in Moravia and the subsequent uprising in Bohemia against the new religion. Only in the third and fourth chapters does the author talk about Ludmilla and her death in Tetín . The fifth to seventh chapters are devoted to the life of her grandson Wenceslaus and the fratricide in Stará Boleslav , the eighth to tenth to the miracles that occurred after his death.

The legend of the origin of the Přemyslids appears in Christian for the first time in written records. But the Christian legend is also the first, sometimes the only source for essential facts from early Bohemian history, for example the baptism of princes in Moravia or the unrest and power struggles that accompanied the rise of the Přemyslid dynasty at the beginning of the 10th century. The question of their authenticity is therefore of crucial importance for historical research.

Sources and language

In the prologue the author states that he wants to compare some older, contradicting sources with accounts from eyewitnesses. In fact, traces of older legends can be found in the work. The death of Ludmilla is described according to the oldest surviving legend Fuit in provincia Boemorum , the passages about Wenzel follow the oldest Latin Wenceslas legend Crescente Fide (originated around 975) and the Wenceslas legend of Gumpold of Mantua (around 983). The author may also have sources in Old Church Slavonic sources. However, no written templates are known for large parts of the work. The oral family tradition, which Christian was apparently available to as a presumed member of the ruling royal family, is of extraordinary source value.

Linguistically, the work is mainly influenced by the Bible. The language is closely based on the language of the Vulgate , but the author does not seem to have known the writings of the Roman classics. His style is characterized by a preference for the rhetorical hyperbaton (unusual sentence order) and a rare, "solemn" choice of words. The style is so characteristic that it has repeatedly been used as an argument in the dispute over authenticity.

author

In the prologue the author describes himself as a monk named Christian ( frater solo nomine Christianus ), and he dedicates the work to Bishop Adalbert of Prague , whom he describes as his nephew. A monk named Christian is also mentioned in two Adalbert legends, namely in the legend of Canaparius (around 1000) and in Bruno von Querfurt (1004). This monk is said to have been the son of Duke Boleslav I and headed a diplomatic mission to Rome in 992. Cosmas of Prague finally names the son of the Přemyslid Duke Strachkvas and states that he was born on the day of the death of St. Wenceslaus and was later educated in a Regensburg monastery. The equation of the three people - Christian as the author of legends, Christian as the brother of Boleslav II and Strachkvas - is largely undisputed, despite some uncertainties.

Lore and Research

The Christian legend is preserved in 14 manuscripts and fragments. The oldest extracts date from the 12th century, the oldest complete version can be found in a manuscript that was made in the years 1329–1342. The Bollandists published the first chapter in the Acta Sanctorum in 1668. They considered the story of the Great Moravian Mission to be an independent legend and did not realize that it was only a fragment of a larger work. In 1645 Bohuslav Balbín found a complete manuscript in an archive in the town of Třeboň , which he reprinted in 1677 as part of his history of Bohemia. He gave the legend a high value and dated it to the time in which it reports itself, namely the late 10th century.

Only the scholars of the Enlightenment , who were skeptical of the legends of the saints as historical sources , expressed doubts . The "dispute about the authenticity of Christian" began with Gelasius Dobner . His arguments are preserved in a pamphlet from 1772 and are mainly aimed at the alleged family relationships: A son of Boleslav I could not have written a legend about Wenceslaus in which his own father had to appear as a fratricide. The legend described Dobner as a forgery of the 12th century and attributed it to a chancellor of King Ottokar I. Přemysl . The Augustinian Barefoot Father Athanasius a s. Iosepho ( Eliáš Sandrich ) published a new annotated edition in 1769, which also contained a polemic with Dobner and defended the authenticity. Both scholars were not aware of the second edition of the Bollandists, which appeared in 1760. Constantin Suysken had all the more important Wenceslas legends, from which he selected Christian's work as the “most important and most reliable”.

But since Josef Dobrovský's writing “Bořiwoy's Baptism” from 1803, the Christian legend was completely discredited. Dobrovský mistrusted the report about the Moravian influence in Bohemia. He also believed that the legend could prove the influence of Dalimil and Cosma , which marked the work as a worthless compilation of the 14th century.

Doubts about the influence of Slavic Christianity in Bohemia were only eliminated by the so-called 1st Old Church Slavonic Wenceslas legend, which the Russian scholar Aleksandr Vostokov discovered in 1827, and Wilhelm Wattenbach found a fragment of the Christian legend in 1849, which undoubtedly dates from the 12th century. Rehabilitation began, however, only Josef Pekař with his work "The Wenceslas and Ludmilla Legends and the Authenticity of Christians" from 1903. Václav Novotný appeared as an opponent of Pekař in the 1920s . He saw the work as a commissioned work that was created around 1143 at St. George's Monastery in Prague to promote the cult of Saint Ludmilla. In the years that followed, the overwhelming majority of Czech Medievalists dealt with the question of the source value of the Christian legend. The filiation, i.e. the relationships between the Wenceslas legends, and alleged anachronisms that the legend was accused of, were of particular importance.

The dispute ended for the time being in the 1970s, when Zdeněk Fiala, Christian's last “adversary”, was refuted. Since then, the authenticity of the Christian legend has been widely recognized. Its exact date of origin is still unclear. Its current dating to the years 992-993 remains a largely accepted, but unproven hypothesis.

expenditure

  • Acta Sanctorum Martii II, 24-25, March 9 (1st chapter), 1668.
  • Bohuslav Balbín: Epitome historica rerum bohemicarum I, 10, Prague 1677, pp. 66-90.
  • Constantin Suysken in Acta Sanctorum , September, Volume VII, published 1760, from p. 770 ( digitized version )
  • Athanasius a s. Iosepho: Vita S. Ludmillae et S. Wenceslai ... auctore Christiano monacho , 1769.
  • Josef Emler (ed.): Fontes rerum Bohemicarum I: Vitae Sanctorum et aliorum quorundam pietate insignium. Prague 1873 available online (Cyrillic and Czech). Retrieved January 2, 2017
  • Josef Pekař: Nejstarší kronika česká , Prague 1903.
  • Jaroslav Ludvíkovský: Legenda Christiani. Vita et passio sancti wenceslai et sancte ludmile ave eius . Critical edition and Czech translation. Vyšehrad, Prague 1978. E-text of the Latin edition ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

literature

  • Used literature:
    • Jiří Hošna: Druhý život svatého Václava . ISV, Prague 1997, ISBN 80-85866-27-7
    • David Kalhous: Kristiánova legenda a počátky českého politického smýšlení. Dissertation, Brno 2005. pdf
    • Herman Kølln: The Wenceslas legend of the monk Christian . Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 73, Munksgaard, Copenhagen 1996, ISBN 87-7304-273-0
    • Petr Kubín: Znovu o Kristiána . In: Od knížat ke králům. Sborník u příležitosti 60. narozenin Josefa Žemličky. Lidové Noviny, Prague 2007, pp. 63-71. ISBN 978-80-7106-896-9
    • Jaroslav Ludvíkovský: Epilogue and comments on the text edition from 1978.
    • Dušan Třeštík : Počátky Přemyslovců . Lidové noviny, 1998, ISBN 80-7106-138-7
  • Further reading (chronological):
    • Gelasius Dobner : Wenceslai Hagek a Liboczan Annales Boemorum IV. Prague 1772.
    • Josef Dobrovský : Critical attempts to clean the older Bohemian history of later fictions: Bořiwoy's baptism, At the same time a sample of how one should use old legends for history , Volume 1, Haase u. Widtmann, 1803.
    • Josef Pekař : The Wenceslas and Ludmilla legends and the authenticity of Christian . Prague 1906.
    • Václav Novotný : Český kníže Václav Svatý . Život, památka, úcta. Prague 1929.
    • Václav Chaloupecký : Prameny 10. století Legendy Kristiánovy o sv. Václavu a sv. Ludmile . Prague 1939.
    • Záviš Kalandra : České pohanství . Prague 1947.
    • Rudolf Urbánek: Legenda t. zv. Kristiana ve vývoji předhusitských radically václavských a ludmilských I . Prague 1947.
    • Zdeněk Fiala: Hlavní pramen legendy Kristiánovy , Prague 1974.
    • Oldřich Králík : Kosmova kronika a předchozí tradice . Prague 1976.
    • Dušan Třeštík: Deset tezí o Kristiánově legendě . Folia Historica Bohemica 2, 1980, pp. 7-33.
    • Jan Kalivoda: Historiography or Legend? "Christianus monachus" and his work in the context of Central European literature of the 10th century . In: Contributions to antiquity, volume 141. Munich - Leipzig, KG Saur Verlag 2001. pp. 136–154. E-Text ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
    • David Kalhous. Legenda Christiani and Modern Historiography . Leiden - Boston, Brill 2015. Google Books