Kunigunde of Bohemia (Abbess)
Kunigunde of Bohemia - Czech: Kunhuta Přemyslovna (* January 1265 , † November 27, 1321 ) was the first-born daughter of the Bohemian King Přemysl Otakar II and the Kunigunde von Halitsch . She was involved in her father's marriage policy as a child, but entered the monastery at an early age. Between 1291 and 1302 she interrupted her spiritual career to enter into a political marriage and become Duchess of Mazovia . After her return, she served as abbess the George Monastery in Prague Castle .
Childhood at the royal court
The birth of Kunigunde was a significant event in the Kingdom of Bohemia . Her father married Margarete von Babenberg, who was around 30 years older than her, in 1252 to secure his claim to the Babenberg hereditary lands of Austria and Styria . The marriage remained childless and his illegitimate descendants had no right to the Bohemian throne. In 1261 Přemysl Otakar II finally broke the connection. When his second wife Kunigunde finally gave birth to the first legitimate child in 1265, the king had the girl baptized by three bishops - that of Prague , that of Olomouc and that of Bamberg - and invited all Bohemian, Moravian and Austrian gentlemen to be baptized. He asked the Roman-German King Richard of Cornwall for a privilege for her to inherit the crown lands. This document, comparable to the Austrian Privilegium minus , is mentioned in the contemporary historical work “Chronicon Aulae Regiae” . It has not been preserved. As the future husband and king, the father chose the Staufer Prince Friedrich from the family of the Margraves of Meissen . The engagement, like Kunigundes status as heiress of the kingdom, lasted until the birth of her brother Wenceslaus in 1271.
Agnes Monastery
When Kunigunde was betrothed for the second time at the age of eleven, her father's empire had collapsed. Přemysl Otakar II rejected the election of Rudolf I of Habsburg as the new Roman-German king in 1273 and had been under imperial ban since 1275 . The loss of his most important allies and a nobility revolt in Bohemia eventually forced him to negotiate peace. In 1276 he lost all countries except Bohemia and Moravia , and he had to promise two children to Rudolf: Kunigunde was to marry Rudolf's son Hartmann , and heir to the throne, Wenzel, was to join one of Rudolf's daughters. The pact did not last : a year later, Kunigunde joined the Poor Clares in Agnes Monastery in Prague . It is unclear whether the engagement had previously been dissolved; also whether she went to the monastery of her own volition or on the orders of her father. She spent the years of privation with the Poor Clares after Přemysl Otakar's death, when Bohemia came under the rule of the Brandenburg Margrave Otto and his troops. She supported her great aunt Agnes in running the monastery and in caring for the sick and needy during a great famine in 1280–1281. After Agnes' death in 1282 she took over the office of abbess.
Mazovia
Kunigunde's spiritual career was interrupted by her brother Wenceslaus II. His foreign policy ambitions were directed primarily towards Poland . At the end of the 1280s he had begun to expand his influence in the fragmented country. In 1291 he had already made an alliance with the Dukes of Opole and took over the rule of Krakow . In order to gain further allies, he offered the Piast prince Boleslaw II , ruler of Płock and heir to the throne of the Duchy of Mazovia , the hand of his only available relatives. Against the will of Bishop Tobias von Bechin , Kunigunde left the Poor Clare Monastery and married Boleslaw. The high-ranking Bohemian bride bore him two children: Eufrozina of Mazovia (1292–1328 / 9) and Wacław of Płock (1293–1336). When Boleslaw took over the rule in Mazovia in 1294, she received the title of duchess . Apparently, however, she didn't attach much importance to it. On documents she referred to herself as the daughter of the Bohemian king, only then did the Mazovian duke title follow.
Kunigunde was not welcome in the Polish partial duchy, the marriage broke up and the alliance between the Bohemian king and the Duke of Mazovia lasted only a few years. In the power struggles after the death of King Przemysław II in 1296, Boleslaw sided with Wenceslas opponents. He did not recognize Wenceslas' coronation as Polish king in 1300. The dynastic connection was therefore worthless.
George Monastery
In 1302 Kunigunde received papal permission to divorce, left the court and her family in Mazovia and returned to Prague on July 22nd. She is said to have taken only one daughter named Perchta, whose existence is not beyond doubt. She did not return to the Poor Clares. On September 19th she was consecrated abbess of the Benedictine Sisters of St. George in Prague Castle . In order to secure adequate care for the Přemyslid daughter, the previous abbess Sophie had to give up her office - an approach that was definitely within the traditional framework. St. George was the oldest monastery in Bohemia, founded around 976 by the princely daughter Mlada and always remained under the direct influence of the princely house. On the one hand, this restricted the religious house's room for maneuver and, on the other hand, the Benedictine nuns had a solid economic base. Kunigunde had the house granted a number of privileges and further expanded its outstanding position as a cultural and educational institution. She held the office of abbess until her death in 1321. Her niece Elisabeth , daughter of the last male Přemyslid, often sought refuge in the Georgskloster and was shortlisted as her successor, but then decided to marry John of Bohemia . Kunigunde was the last member of the ruling house to head the Georgskloster.
The most productive phase of the monastic scriptorium falls during the time of their work . The workshop was created under her predecessor Sophie, but Kunigunde had the existing books revised and commissioned new manuscripts on a large scale. Some of them, with Kunigunde's personal notices of ownership, have survived to this day and are kept in the Czech National Library. The choice of themes testifies to the abbess's closeness to contemporary mysticism and the Beguine's movement. The most outstanding work she had made is a lavishly decorated and illuminated devotional book , intended for her personal use. The Kunigunden Passional was created between 1312 and 1321 with the participation of the Dominican and later inquisitor Kolda von Colditz . The influence of Master Eckhart , who worked as vicar general in Prague from 1307 to 1311 and was Kolda's direct superior, can also be felt in the work . The Passional contains six texts on the Passion of Christ - parables, sermons and poems - and 26 illustrations with theater scenes. The dedication sheet shows the client as the princess and bride of Christ, who is crowned by two angels. Kunigunde probably never saw the complete book - it was probably only finished after her death. Her successors continued to produce illuminated manuscripts until the Hussite Wars . The Passional itself has been one of the National Cultural Monuments of the Czech Republic since 2005 .
Prayer of the Kunigunde
In one of the manuscripts ( National Library Prague, VII G 17 d) that belonged to the abbess, there is one of the oldest evidence of Czech literature , the so-called prayer of the Kunigunde ( Kunhutina modlitba ).
| First verse | translation | |
|---|---|---|
|
Vítaj, Kráľu všemohúcí, |
Greetings, King, almighty, |
The prayer consists of 38 stanzas of four eight-syllable verses each. The Monoreim testifies to eloquent poetry that also contains neologisms . The digraph notation already indicates the existence of the Czech sound Ř .
Used literature
- Kateřina Charvátová: Václav II - Král český a polský . Nakladatelství Vyšehrad, Prague 2007, ISBN 978-80-7021-841-9 .
- Božena Kopičková: Eliška Přemyslovna . Vyšehrad 2008. Excerpt (pdf)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Modlitba Kunhutina Institute for Czech language at the AVCR
- ↑ Dušan Šlosar: "Early vernacular development: Czech", in: Die Slavischen Sprachen Berlin 2014, p. 1394
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kunigunde of Bohemia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Duchess of Mazovia, abbess in Prague |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 1265 |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 27, 1321 |