Fuit in provincia Boemorum

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Fuit in provincia Boemorum (also called Fuit for short ), in Czech also Utrpení Ludmily mučednice ("The sufferings of the martyr Ludmilla"), is a medieval legend about Saint Ludmilla .

The legend is named after its opening sentence ( Fuit in provincia Boemorum = Once upon a time in the land of Bohemia). In ten short chapters Ludmillas vita et passio (life and death) it describes in a concise and simple Latin : the marriage of the Slavic princely daughter to the Bohemian Duke Bořivoj , the conversion of both to the Christian faith, the rule of Bořivoj and his sons Spytihněv and Vratislav and Ludmilla's conflict with her daughter-in-law Drahomíra . This ended with Ludmilla's flight to Tetín Castle and her murder by Drahomíra's followers Tunna and Gommon. A sequel tells the translatio (transmission) in four more chapters , namely how Ludmilla's grandson Wenzel had his grandmother's bones transferred and what miracles occurred at her grave.

The text was written using the Vita Emmeram , which was probably brought to Prague by monks from the Regensburg Emmeram monastery . It has come down to us in thirty manuscripts, the oldest of which date from the 12th century, but none of the scribes recorded the complete version. The reconstruction of an "original text" comprising 14 chapters was carried out in the 1930s by the historian Václav Chaloupecký . Its edition is still relevant today, but not the compilation. The four chapters of the transfer legend are also treated as separate text under the name Recordatus . They are said to have arisen much later than the beginning of the text. The dating of both parts varies from the middle of the 10th to the middle of the 12th century and depends largely on the relationship between the Fuit legend and the so-called Christian legend and an Old Church Slavonic Synaxar text that was probably created in the Sázava monastery . According to the historian Dušan Třeštík , the Latin "Ludmilla legend" was probably created as early as 975 at the St. George monastery in Prague to promote the cult of the house saint. This lost text is the source for the legend Fuit, for Christian and also for the translation into Old Church Slavonic. However, there are other hypotheses for the connection between the three texts.

In terms of content, the legend Fuit has some details that are missing in the rest of the tradition. It confirms and supplements the information on the baptism of the first Christian Bohemian prince Bořivoj and the political conflicts that accompanied the change of faith and the rise of the Přemyslid dynasty in Bohemia at the beginning of the 10th century. It is therefore given a high value as a historical source.

literature

  • Dušan Třeštík: Počátky Přemyslovců . Nakladatelství lidové noviny, 1998, ISBN 80-7106-138-7 .
  • Václav Chaloupecký: Prameny 10. století Legendy Kristiánovy o sv. Václavu a sv. Ludmile . Prague 1939.

Web links

  • The legend was edited under the title Passio S. Ludmillae by Oswald Holder-Egger in MGH SS 15.1, Hanover 1887, pp. 572-574 ( digitized version )