The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome: The History of the Legend and Its Legacy, or, How the Translator of the Vulgate Became an Apostle of the Slavs 9781501757921

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The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

THE SLAVIC LETTERS OF

ST. EROME

The History of the Legend and Its Legacy, or, How the Translator of the Vulgate Became an Apostle of the Slavs Julia Verkholantsev N I U P R E S S I DeKalb, IL

©

2014 by Northern Illinois University Press

Published by the Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, Illinois 60115

All Rights Reserved Design by Shaun Allshouse

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Verkholantsev, Julia, author. The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome : the history of the legend and its legacy, or, How the translator of the Vulgate became an apostle of the Slavs I Julia Verkholantsev. pages : illustrations, maps ; em Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87580-485-9 (cloth: alk. paper)-ISBN 978-1-60909-158-3 (electronic) 1. Jerome, Saint, -419 or 420. 2. Christian saints, Slavic-Europe, Eastern. 3. Glagolitic alphabetHistory. 4. Liturgical language-History. 5. Catholic Church-Liturgy. 6. Europe, EasternChurch history. 7. Jerome, Saint, -419 or 420-Cult--Europe, Eastern. 8. Bible-Versions. I. Title. BR1720.J5V476 2014 270.2092--dc23 2014017240

Contents

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments

ix

PROLOGUE 3 1. ORIGINS: EnigmaticApostolate The "Mission''

11

11

"And every tongue shall confess to God" 14 The Alphabet 16 The Liturgy 18 The Controversy 19 The Slavonic Rite in Bohemia 26 The Slavonic Rite in Poland?

28

The Bifurcation of Slavic Writing: Glagolitic and Cyrillic 32

2. CROATIA: Empowering Myth 34 The Arrival of the Slavonic Rite in Croatia 34 The Roman Slavonic Rite of the Glagolite Clergy 36 Sts. Cyril and Methodius as Slavic Apostles in Croatia 45 Cyril and Methodius in Historical Sources 50 The Legend Is Created: Sources 53 The Legend Is Created: Historical Setting 58 "Letters alone in books renew the past" 60

3. BOHEMIA: Imperial Aspirations

63

The Roman Slavonic Rite in Prague 63 "Monasterium Sancti Hieronymi Slavorum Ordinis Benedicti" 70 Patron Saints of the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome 72 The Slavic Theme in Charles's Representation of Bohemia's Sacred History 76 The Theology of the Slavonic Monastery's Murals 86 Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin Letters at the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome 90 St. Jerome's Slavic Alphabet, the nobilis lingua Slauonica, and the Czech Bible 101 The Cult of St. Jerome in Bohemia beyond the Slavonic Monastery 106 St. Jerome in Literary Sources of Bohemian Provenance 108 Implications of St. Jerome's Recognition as a Slav in Bohemia

114

4. SILESIA: A Provincial Exploit

116

The Slavonic Monastery 117 Hypotheses 119

5. POLAND: In Prague's Footsteps

124

The Slavonic Monastery of the Holy Cross at Kleparz: Sources and Evidence 125 The Cult of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Poland? Hypothesis and Evidence 128 Catholic Mission to the Orthodox Rus'? Hypothesis and Evidence 131 The Roman Slavonic Rite as Memorial to Slavic Christianity 140 Jadwiga-Patron of the Monastery 142 The Czech Trend

144

The Slavic Vernacular 148 Decline 150 St. Jerome as a Slavic Apostle 153 Conclusion

EPILOGUE

156

158

The Denouement, Part 1 159 St. Jerome as a Slav in Bohemia 161 The Denouement, Part 2 164 St. Jerome as a Slav in Poland

165

The Vernacular Affair 168 "Refutatur Error Multorum"

172

Notes 175 Bibliography 229 Index of Names and Subjects 253 Index of Pimary Sources 259

Illustrations

MAPS 1. Central and southern Europe 2. Prague ca. 1380s

10

70

FIGURES 1. Croatian (Angular) Glagolitic alphabet

7

2. Codex Assemanianus (11th c.), Vatican Library (Cod. Vat. Slav. 3), fol. 106v, fragment

13

3. First Vrbnik Breviary (late 13th c. or early 14th c.), Vrbnik Parish Archive, fol. 168, fragment 43 4. Alphabet of Aethicus. Pseudo-Jerome,Aethicus Ister's Cosmographia 5. Alphabet of Aethicus. Rabanus Maurus, De inventione linguarum

56 56

6. Gallery in a cloister of the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome in Prague

88

7. Codex Gigas (1200-1230), National (Royal) Library of Sweden (A 148), fol. 1v

92

8. Glagolitic (Alphabetum Sklauorum) and Cyrillic (Alphabetum Rutenorum) alphabets, Codex Gigas, fol. 1v, fragment 93 9. Czech colophon, The Slavonic Gospel of Reims, Bibliotheque de Reims (MS 255), leaves 61-62 97-98 10. St. Procopius in an illuminated initial, The Slavonic Gospel of Reims,

Bibliotheque de Reims (MS 255), leaf 25

102

11. St. Jerome in an illuminated initial, The Slavonic Gospel of Reims, Bibliotheque de Reims (MS 255), leaf 37 103 12. Czech Glagolitic (Hlaholska, Vysebrodska) Bible (1416), National Library of the Czech Republic (XVII A 1), fol. 200, fragment I 06

Acknowledgments

In the conception and writing of this study, I am first and foremost indebted to the work of many philologists and cultural historians whose ideas informed and inspired my research. I owe particular gratitude to the late Ludmila Pacnerova, for her lifetime of work on the Czech Glagolitic manuscripts and for her generous and kind support of my own project in its early stages. And it was John V. A. Fine's witty article "The Slavic Saint Jerome: An Entertainment" that made me want to learn more about the origin and reception of this myth. With gratitude I would like to acknowledge the assistance of various institutions and individuals without whom I would not have been able to complete this book. Thanks to the generous aid of the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, I was given the time and means to conduct research, write, and publish my work. I give my heartfelt thanks to all those who assisted me in this process: to Andrew R. Corin, David Goldfrank, Lenka Jirouskova, Paul W. Knoll, Roland Marti, and William Veder for reading partial or whole drafts of the manuscript, and offering their astute comments, criticisms, and words of encouragement; to Vaclav Cermak, Rita Copeland, Florin Curta, Michael W. Herren, Milada Homolkova, David Kalhous, Pawel Kras, Jiti Matl, David Mengel, Balazs Nagy, Zoe Opacic, Jan Patez, Olga Strakhov, Anatolii Turilov, and Jiti Zurek for sharing their research and materials with me and providing valuable bibliographic and archival data; to Samuel Beckelhymer, Kevin Brownlee, Lenka Jirouskova, and Jamilya Nazyrova for advising on the translation of a number of intricate Latin passages (the responsibility for the final choices is, of course, mine alone); to Chelsea Pomponio for proofreading the manuscript and making valuable stylistic improvements; and to Daniel Huffman, an expert cartographer, for turning my design ideas into two very fine and stylish maps. I am most grateful to the excellent publishing team of the Northern Illinois University Press, who have made the process of publication smooth and enjoyable: to Roy R. Robson, the editor of the Orthodox Christianity Studies, for engaging me with the press; to Amy Farranto, the acquisitions editor, for her kind and patient

Acknowledgments

guidance through the process of manuscript preparation; to Marlyn Miller for her thoughtful copyediting; and to Susan Bean, the managing editor, and Shaun Allshouse, the design and production manager, for their excellent work and willingness to put up with my special requests. With particular appreciation I recognize the generous financial assistance of my horne institution, the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, which allowed for the realization of the customized design features of this book. Some of the subject matter of this book, if not the exact text, has appeared in print in the following publications: '"Littera specialis ... a beato Jeronimo': How Did Sts. Cyril and Methodius Lose Recognition as Inventors of the Glagolitic Letters to St. Jerome?;' Ricerche slavistiche 54 (2010): 225-63; "St. Jerome, Apostle to the Slavs, and the Roman Slavonic Rite;' Speculum 87 (2012): 37-61; and "St. Jerome as a Slavic Apostle in Luxemburg Bohemia;' Viator 44 (2013): 251-86. I am most grateful to anonymous reviewers at these journals for their insightful comments. The research and writing of this book took several years, during which many colleagues, friends, and family members showed me their support and kindness in many big and little ways, scholarly and mundane. I would like to acknowledge here how much this has meant to me. Lastly, I would not have been able to complete the book without my husband and backstage proofreader, Lazlo Beh.

Note on Reference and Terminology Throughout the book I have used the transliteration system of the Library of Congress for Cyrillic. Exceptions were made for citations in Old Church Slavonic that are given in original Cyrillic script. Czech Glagolitic is transliterated in Czech with a few additional, and generally accepted, characters. All other languages appear in original orthography. Those who write about Slavic medieval history in English well know the challenge of rendering names of historical figures and locations. These cause heated scholarly debates and sometimes even sharp nationalistic criticisms. Being aware of the various implications of my choices, I decided to use commonly accepted Anglicized names where possible, especially for territories with a multilingual population (e.g., John Hus and not Jan Hus, John of

X

Acknowledgments

Neumarkt and not Jan of Sti·eda, Petrarch and not Petrarca). In several cases I used names in original languages because they seem to have gained common English usage (e.g., Jadwiga and not Hedwig, Wladyslaw Jagiello and not Ladislaus). I decided to leave less well-known names in their original languages (e.g.,Andrij ofNovi Vinodolski) for easier identification. Another difficult decision had to be made about the representation of primary sources. I decided to include extensive citations from primary sources, which are not easily available, in the hope that readers might find in these not only explanations of my conclusions but also helpful resources for further inquiry. Many tough stylistic and syntactical choices had to be made to translate often ambiguous and convoluted late Latin passages. I tried to keep the style as true to the original as reasonable; for example, I translated pleonastic phrases. All English translations of primary sources are made by the author unless otherwise acknowledged. The main part of this book was written prior to the spring of 2012. Since then, several important studies have appeared in print or are forthcoming. Among these are Katefina Kubinovas Emauzsky cyklus, which provides an excellent context for my own conclusions, and Olga Strakhov's long-needed study of the history and liturgical content of the Slavonic Gospel of Reims. While these and other most recent publications are referenced in my book, it was unfortunately too late to discuss the material they present in a more meaningful way. On a number of occasions, my Glagolitic adventure has led me to historiographic questions that remain an object of scholarly dispute or that are insufficiently studied. While I have tried to maintain a balanced approach, in some cases my discussion takes on a polemical tone. Yet, I hope that this book is viewed not so much as an effort to solve specific problems in historiography as a desire to bring attention to an important chapter in the history of ideas, which is as thought-provoking as it is simply amusing. Philadelphia 30 September 2013 (St. Jerome's Day)

xi

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Prologue

A

mong the Christian saints, St. Jerome has always occupied a special place as a translator and exegete of the Bible, whose labors brought the faithful closer to God. He has therefore been deservedly honored by the learned as one of the most prominent church fathers of the Latinity. 1 The end of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw a particular flourishing of popular admiration for Jerome, first in Italy and then in the rest of Catholic Europe. In a decretal of 20 September 1295, Pope Boniface VIII confirmed the titles of"doctor" and "father" for four of the greatest figures of the Latin Church-Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome. In this document, he ordered the faithful to celebrate these prominent confessor saints for their remarkable work, which, "fed by streams of heavenly grace, solves scriptural puzzles, unties knots, explains obscurities, and resolves doubts:' 2 It is in this capacity that St. Jerome is usually depicted in iconography and is referenced as an authority on the written word. The origin of the remarkable outbreak of popular devotion to St. Jerome at the end of the thirteenth century may be traced to the ecclesiastical circle of the Papal Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore and is related to the discovery of Jerome's relics and their translation from Bethlehem to Rome. The Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore, also known as St. Maria ad Praesepem (St. Mary of the Crib) already housed a relic of the Holy Crib from the Cave of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which was moved there after Palestine had fallen to the Arabs in the seventh century. A document, written in the 1290s and titled Translatio corporis beati Hieronymi (The Translation of

Jerome receives the title of doctor

translation of Jerome's relics from Bethlehem to Rome

Translatio corporis beati Hieronymi

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

St. Maria Maggiore

Vita et Transitus Sancti Hieronymi

the Remains of St. Jerome), tells the story of how Jerome, who had allegedly been buried at the entrance to the Cave of the Nativity, appeared in the dream of a monk and ordered him to exhume his remains and rebury them in St. Maria Maggiore, next to the Holy Crib. In the dream, Jerome explained that he desired to leave Bethlehem, occupied by the infidels, and to return to Rome. 3 Jerome's intervention in the fate of his remains as described in this document was intended to explain the sudden appearance of the relics in Rome and to provide legitimacy to the clergy's claim to the rightful ownership of these relics. The transfer of Jerome's relics to St. Maria Maggiore signified distinction for the clergy of the Basilica and the display of God's blessing of the Roman see and its people. 4 The acquisition of St. Jerome's relics was just the beginning. The narrative that propelled the cult of St. Jerome to prominence most likely emerged from the same circle of St. Maria Maggiore at the beginning of the fourteenth century and is connected with the Dominican Order. The composition, often referred to as the Vita et Transitus Sancti Hieronymi (The Life and Passage of St. Jerome), consisted of three hagiographical epistles on St. Jerome that

were passed off as autographs of renowned church fathers. 5 The "Epistula de Morte Sancti Hieronymi ad Damasum" ("The Letter to Damasus on the Death of Saint Jerome") is ascribed to St. Eusebius of Cremona, Jerome's disciple and friend. In this letter addressed to Damasus, the bishop of Portus, and to Theodosius, a Roman senator, Pseudo-Eusebius describes the last hours and the holy death of Jerome, which were accompanied by illuminated angels. The second letter, the "Epistula de Magnificentiis Sancti Hieronymi ad Cyrillum" ("The Letter to St. Cyril on the Magnificence of Saint Jerome"), is ascribed to St. Augustine and is addressed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem. It acknowledges St. Jerome's superiority and relates how, immediately after Jerome's death, St. Augustine received instruction from Jerome's soul concerning the Trinity, the hierarchies of angels, and other important theological questions. The third letter, the "Epistula de Miraculis Sancti Hieronymi ad Augustinum" ("The Letter to Augustine on the Miracles of Saint Jerome"), is a reply of Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Augustine, in which he gives an account of his own vision of the progress of Jerome's soul, escorted by a bright host of angels, from Bethlehem to heaven. At the end of the letter there is an account of Jerome's burial. Pseudo-Cyril relates that Jerome appeared to him in a dream and communicated his wish to be buried not in a prepared marble sarcophagus, but in the bare ground at the entrance to the 4

Prologue

Cave of the Nativity. In the same dream Jerome predicted that his remains would be moved to Rome after the city of Jerusalem fell to the infidels. Such testimonies of Jerome's extraordinary virtues and powers characterized him as a principal Christian saint and glorified those who became heirs to Jerome's scholarship, teachings, and spiritual heritage. Another development in the popular veneration of St. Jerome occurred when Giovanni d'Andrea (ca. 1270-1348), a lay intellectual and one of the greatest canonists of his time, became an ardent admirer of the saint's virtues and merits. 6 Andrea was a professor of law at the University of Bologna and his devotion introduced a humanistic emphasis on Jerome's significance as a scholar and an exegete. He insisted that the existing veneration of Jerome was inadequate to the saint's role in the Christian community, since it was through his words and interpretation of the Bible that Christians were enlightened. Andrea's efforts to correct the lack of reverence for St. Jerome were unmatched by any other devotee: he urged parents to name their sons Jerome (Girolamo) and monks to take Jerome as their monastic names, and he even signed his name with the addition of"di San Girolamo:' He collected and distributed relics, founded and dedicated churches and chapels to his patron saint, and by commissioning numerous paintings managed to establish what became the iconographic canon of representation of St. Jerome as sitting in a chair in a red cardinal hat with a tame lion at his feet. Andrea also commissioned a cycle of pictures from Jerome's life to be painted on the facade of his house in Bologna along with explanatory verses. Additionally, he composed poems, prayers and orations in praise of Jerome, and compiled a book entitled Hieronymianus or De laudibus sancti Hieronymi (In Praise of St. Jerome, between 1334 and 1347), in which he collected profuse biographical material from the earlier lives, testimonies in praise of Jerome, fragments of Jerome's own writings, and accounts of his miracles. Much of the material in his work was drawn from the three apocryphal letters of Eusebius, Augustine, and Cyril. From Italy, the devotion to St. Jerome spread to other European lands and Jerome's works acquired wide esteem among intellectuals. The Renaissance image of St. Jerome was that of a "superhuman miracle worker, the object of a magnetic cult, and the focus of a powerful surge of reverence, ascetic spirituality, and superstition:'7 Jerome was endowed with all possible virtues and was believed to possess extraordinary powers to help people in distress and protect them from misfortune. His most common titles in the 5

Giovanni d'Andrea

Hieronymianus

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Jerome is recognized as a creator of a Slavic alphabet

Chapter l

Church were confessor and doctor gloriosus, while accounts of his intercessions and miracles circulated among lay folk. For learned men, however, Jerome had always been, first and foremost, an exemplary scholar renowned for his knowledge of the Holy Scripture and his theological insight. It is for this reason that in the middle of the thirteenth century his qualifications as a biblical translator were claimed in a remarkable way. A native of Dalmatia, Jerome became recognized for allegedly translating the liturgical books of the Croatian clergy in Dalmatian monasteries into Church Slavonic and for having supplied them with their special Slavic letters that for a long time were known as "Hieronymian" (littera Hieronymiana) but in modern scholarship received the name of Glagolitic (fig. 1). The source of the legend is in Jerome's own testimony about his birthplace-the city of Strido(n) on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia-the land where local "barbarians" drink sabaia, a kind of alcoholic beverage made of grain and water. 8 The exact location of the city of Stridon, which was destroyed by the Goths, has initiated a lot of controversy in subsequent centuries but nevertheless remains one of the unsolved problems of historical geography. While the spread of devotion to St. Jerome brought by Renaissance learning has received proper scholarly attention, the story of his lesser-known career as a Slavic apostle and "a Glagolite;' which has unfolded among the Slavs in the Western Church, remains largely untold. 9 In the following chapters, I undertake to tell this story, which not only reveals how the Slavonic rite and "Hieronymian" letters became accepted in Latinate Europe and how the tradition itself spread from the Balkans to Bohemia, Silesia, and Poland, but also casts the religious and cultural history of this region in a new and refreshing context, highlighting the richly diverse flavor of Europe's late middle ages and emerging humanism. In his newly acquired role as a Slavic apostle, St. Jerome intruded into the domain of the true inventors of the Slavic letters and the Slavonic liturgy-Sts. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, Byzantine missionaries to Great Moravia in the early 860s. 10 In chapter 1 of this book, therefore, I analyze the extensive-but far from conclusive-research on the origins of the Slavic (Glagolitic and Cyrillic) letters and liturgy. I focus on the theological, political, cultural, and linguistic aspects that framed the emergence of the Slavic literary tradition and made Slavic letters one of the key components of Slavic religious, cultural, and national identities. For the sake of terminological clarity in this book, I use the term "Slavonic" to refer to the ecclesiastical language and tradition that developed from 6

Prologue

Figure 1. Croatian (Angular) Glagolitic alphabet

7

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapters 4 & 5

the Old Church Slavonic language introduced among the Slavs by Cyril and Methodius, while I use the term "Slavic" to indicate ethnic attribution. After Cyril's and Methodius's deaths, their followers brought the Glagolitic letters and liturgy to other Slavs, including the Croats. While the Slavonic rite and the Glagolitic letters were banned from all Slavic lands within Roman and Frankish jurisdictions, in the Roman province of Dalmatia it remained in use as late as the eighteenth century. In chapter 2, I examine the historical and ecclesiological aspects of the Slavonic rite of the Croatian Glagolites that made it a unique phenomenon in the Western Church. Scrutiny of the information about the role of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in the establishment of the Slavonic rite that was available to the Glagolites prior to the mid-thirteenth century leads to hypotheses of why the Glagolites accepted St. Jerome as a patron of their letters. As a result of Jerome's auspices, the Slavonic language gained the unique privilege in the Roman Church of being the only language other than Latin, Greek, and Hebrew fit for celebrating God, lending itself to the construction of narratives about the distinguished historical mission of the Slavs. The Croats, however, were not the only Catholic Slavs to appreciate Jerome's Roman Slavonic rite. The concept of Jerome's apostolate among the Slavs found especially warm reception at the court of the Holy Roman emperor and king of Bohemia, Charles IV. In 1348, Charles founded and dedicated a monastery to St. Jerome, to which he invited the Benedictine Glagolites from Dalmatia to observe the Slavonic rite. The role that this monastery played in Charles's political showmanship is examined in chapter 3, along with its impact on the Slavonic and Czech literary culture in Bohemia and the emergence of the first Czech translation of the complete Bible. Charles's "Slavic project" was so successful that it provided the model for the foundation of two filial monasteries in Silesia ( 1380) and Poland (1390). There are more questions than answers regarding the purpose of these two satellite hubs of Slavonic rite and their role in local religious life. In chapters 4 and 5, I examine the available evidence and analyze the historical circumstances behind the foundation of these Slavonic monasteries, which served as a living monument to the Slavic tongue's distinction by Divine Grace and, consequently, of its parity with Latin. The theory of Jerome's apostolate among the Slavs, however, did not survive the scrutiny of nineteenth-century philology, and the translator of the Vulgate was thus toppled from the honorary po8

Prologue

dium of Slavic cultural history, where Cyril and Methodius remain to this day. Scholars today generally agree that Jerome could not be a Slav and did not introduce writing to the Slavs, but his reputation as a Slavic apostle nevertheless endures in folk historiography and occasionally even resurfaces in academic literature. 11 The charm of this legend is indeed irresistible: its originality and elegance, and its compelling potential, appealed to the late medieval and humanistic mind, which was predisposed to mythologize the origins of writing. These qualities have also fascinated and inspired the author of these lines and have motivated the writing of the following study.

9

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Map 1. Central and southern Europe

f

1 Origins Enigmatic Apostolate

In una fide nil officit sanctae ecclesiae consuetudo diversa. (Where faith is one, difference in custom does no harm to the Holy Church.) -Gregory the Great, Registrum Epistularum 1.41 Kor;t~a

)!(e, KeM 11 KOTOpb!e 6yKBbl nepsee 11306peTeHbl, 0 TOM

Me)!(;t~y

yqeHbiM11

pacnpR HeOKOH'IeHHaR. (When, by whom, and which letters were invented first is a matter of an ongoing feud among scholars.) -V. N. Tatishchev, The History of Russia 1.1

T

The "Mission''

he Croatian Glagolite tradition dates back to the very beginning of Slavic writing, which remains more a matter of legend than of established fact. The origins of the two Slavic alphabetsGlagolitic and Cyrillic-seem to have provoked more scholarly research and debate than any other subject in Slavic medieval studies, and yet there remains great uncertainty. The main difficulty in resolving the questions of which alphabet appeared first and who invented it lies in the very limited data and the scarcity of unambiguous documented information. Although all scenarios that have been suggested rely on various degrees of speculation, most scholars agree that the letters now called Glagolitic were created by the Byzantine scholar and philosopher Constantine-CyriP for the purpose of the Christian mission to establish the Slavonic liturgy in Great Moravia, which he undertook with his elder brother Methodius in the early 860s. It is also generally agreed that after Cyril's death in 869, Methodius, in his capacity as archbishop,

St. Cyril creates the Glagolitic alphabet

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Byzantine mission in Great Moravia

Rostislav asks Emperor Michael III for a teacher & a bishop

continued to disseminate the Slavonic liturgy among the Slavs. 2 The word "mission;' although an accepted term in relation to the embassy of Cyril and Methodius, is somewhat misleading. By the 860s, having received Christianity from the Bavarian missionaries of Passau in the course of the ninth century, Moravia was already considered a Christian territory. 3 Therefore, the task of the holy brothers was delicate, going beyond mere evangelization. Interpreting available sources, historians reconstruct this affair in the following way. The Moravian ruler Rostislav (846-870), weary of Frankish supervision, sought ways to make his church (and state) more independent. Not long before 863, he turned first to Rome and then to Constantinople with a request for a bishop and teacher for his land, someone capable of instructing Moravians about the Christian faith in their own language. 4 Indeed, several previous attempts at the introduction of institutional Christianity in these territories had limited success. Governed by foreign bishops, the Christian church did not become fully incorporated into the state structure and possibly failed to attract many followers among the local Slavic population. 5 Rostislav felt a need to establish a local diocese and educate the local clergy. The rendition of Rostislav's letter to the Byzantine emperor Michael III in chapter 5 of the Life of Methodius reflects this concern: We have prospered through God's grace, and many Christian teachers have come to us from among the Italians, Greeks and Germans, teaching us in various ways. But the Slavs are a simple people, and have no one to instruct us in the truth, and explain wisely. Therefore, 0 kind lord, send the type of man who will direct us to the whole truth. 6

Cyril & Methodius

While the pope does not seem to have acted on Rostislav's request, the Byzantine emperor evidently appreciated the chance to spread his influence to lands already claimed by Western clergy. The choice of the emperor's ambassadors demonstrates the importance of the Moravian mission to Byzantium. Both Cyril and Methodius were experienced missionaries and celebrated holy men. Cyril (ca. 826-869), a teacher of philosophy (didaskalos) at the patriarchal academy, was one of the most distinguished scholars in Byzantium at that time. His brother Methodius (ca. 815884), formerly a governor of a Slavic province (theme), spent several years at a monastery on Asia Minor's Mount Olympus as a monk before he was appointed abbot of the Monastery Polykhron

12

Origins

shortly before the mission to Great Moravia. 7 Both brothers had previously been entrusted with imperial Christian missions and, most important, both were proficient in a Slavic dialect spoken in their native city of Thessaloniki. The brothers used their native East South Slavic dialect as the foundation for making Slavic translations of the liturgical and selected biblical books necessary for ministering and conducting services. In this important task, they were most likely helped by their disciples and assistants. In order to record these translations, Cyril devised a special script, which rendered the sounds of the Slavic tongue. A number of Slavic manuscripts dating from the tenth to twelfth centuries are thought to represent these original translations, made by Cyril, Methodius, and their followers for the Moravian mission (fig. 2). The language of these translations is usually termed "Old Church Slavonic:'8 The later regional varieties of this language, which developed in the literary production of diverse

Old Church Slavonic language & biblical translations

8, ...

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Figure 2. Codex Assemanianus (11th c.), Vatican Library (Cod. Vat. Slav. 3), fol. 106v, fragment

13

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~A\ 't.3~c8 · ·A3v&89GD2 BfCt~ ·~··

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The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Slavic peoples who continued the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition, are considered to be variants (also called "recensions" or "types") of Church Slavonic (e.g., the Croatian variant of Church Slavonic).9

Romans 14:11

equality of languages in the Pentecostal gift of tongues

Prologue: "People without books are naked:'

''And every tongue shall confess to God" 10 Thus, the key part of the Moravian project, unlike other evangelizing undertakings among the Slavs, was the introduction of the complete liturgy and biblical texts in a native tongue. Theologically speaking, the Moravian mission was conducted in the spirit of the Eastern patristic belief in the Pentecostal abrogation of Babel, identifying the emergence of the Slavonic liturgy and writing with the gift of tongues. 11 The right of understanding the word of God in a native language was associated with the feast of the universal Church commemorating the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in the shape of"tongues as of fire;' 50 days after the Resurrection of Christ, on the Jewish holiday called Shavu'ot (The Festival of Weeks) or Pentecost in Greek: "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance:' 12 The appearance of the Slavonic liturgy and books was, therefore, regarded as a fulfillment of the Pentecostal gift of tongues, which removed the divine curse of the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel. The equality of languages in the eyes of God, presented in the New Testament and advocated by the early church fathers, was a theological premise. 13 The creators of the Slavonic rite claimed that the Lord's message should be comprehensible and accurately understood. The Prologue (also known as Proglas), a poetic introduction to the Church Slavonic translation of the Gospels, most commonly ascribed to Constantine of Preslav, a disciple of Methodius, eloquently expresses the ideological foundations of the Byzantine mission in Moravia: [... ] so that you, whose mind is not yet enlightened, hearing the Word [preached] in a foreign language, take it for the call of a copper bell. St. Paul, teaching, said this: "As I offer my prayer to God, I would rather utter five words which everyone will comprehend,

14

Origins

than a thousand words no one will understand:' [... ] People without books are naked, possessing no armor to fight against the enemy of our souls, ready for the imprisonment of the eternal sorrows. 14

Unlike Western missionaries, whose aggressive preaching and foreign Latin rituals forced the Slavic converts to keep their distance, the Greeks offered accessible instruction in the nuances of the Christian doctrine, coupled with the Byzantine cultural authority and sophistication, and-importantly-a vernacular riteY The most significant source, apart from Cyril's and Methodius's vitae, that views the invention of the Slavic alphabet as divinely inspired was written in Bulgaria at the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century. This treatise is often ascribed to the monk Khrabr after its title, On the Letters of Monk Khrabr (cKA3AHH€ ~ nHChM€H€X'h 4P""~PH3hU.A XPASpA). 16 Written originally in Glagolitic as an apologia of Slavic writing, it analyzes Cyril's invention of the Slavonic alphabet vis-a-vis Greek grammatical thought. The author refers to Cyril's holiness and to divine Providence to argue the sacred origin of the Slavonic letters:

On the Letters of Monk Khrabr

But then the lover of man, God, [... ] having pitied the Slavic race, sent them Constantine the Philosopher, who was named Cyril, a man righteous and sincere. [... ] But the Slavic Scriptures, Constantine alone, named Cyril, both made the letters and translated the Scriptures in a few years [... ] Therefore, the Slavic letters are holier and more venerable, for a holy man has made them, while the Greek were made by the heathen Hellenes. 17

The author not only considers the new Slavic script holy because it was created by a holy man and inspired by a divine spirit, but also juxtaposes it to the Greek, which smacks of controversy. While little is known about the ideological and historical context of this treatise, it is usually viewed as an apologia of the Glagolitic letters against those Bulgarian literati who favored using the Greek (proto-Cyrillic) letters that they had been using"without order" (bez ustroia, or bez ustroeniia) before Cyril's invention: "Having been baptised, however, with the letters of Romans and Greeks they [i.e., the Slavs] struggled to write Slavic speech without order:' 18

15

Slavic alphabet is holy

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

The Alphabet origin of Glagolitic

origin of Cyrillic

The graphic foundation of the Glagolitic alphabet, which is believed to be Cyril's invention, has not been definitively determined and remains an object of heated debate. It has been proposed, for example, that the captivating and mystic shapes of the Glagolitic letters were inspired by the Christian symbolism of the cross (Christ), circle (the infinity and supremacy of God), and triangle (the Holy Trinity). 19 The Glagolitic alphabet has also been linked to Greek minuscule and cursive scripts; zodiacal, medical, chemical, and shorthand signs; Merovingian Latin; Hebrew, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and Coptic letters; and Germanic runes. 20 Yet while at times one can see a certain degree of resemblance between individual Glagolitic letters and those of other alphabets, no single system of writing can be genetically connected to Glagolitic. Drawing numerous examples from the history of new alphabets, Dmitro Cyzevs'kyj has convincingly argued that new systems of writing may display superficial similarity without any genetic relationship to existing systems. 21 Alternatively, several theories date Slavic writing to the period before Cyril and Methodius. For example, Wilhelm Lettenbauer, developing Michael Hocij's thesis, has argued that the Glagolitic alphabet developed in the eighth century from the Merovingian Latin cursive used among the Slovenes in the territories of !stria and Venice. 22 The evidence of the Legend of Saloniki and the stylistic similarity of the Glagolitic letters to other missionary alphabets inspired the hypothesis that the Glagolitic alphabet was invented or discovered by the seventh-century missionary-Monophysite Cyril of Cappadocia. 23 The Croatian scholar Marko Japundzic has argued that the Slavic Glagolitic liturgy and writing originated in Croatia at the time of its conversion at the end of the seventh and early eighth centuries. 24 However, none of the attempts to date the Glagolitic alphabet before the Cyrillo-Methodian mission have been widely accepted. 25 The prevailing view on the emergence of the Cyrillic alphabet is that it arose from the Byzantine Greek uncial alphabet in Bulgaria in the late ninth to early tenth century, following the CyrilloMethodian mission. Horace Lunt has offered another explanation, suggesting that Cyril created both Cyrillic and Glagolitic. Lunt has hypothesized that before Cyril arrived in Moravia, he created a special writing system to note Slavic sounds based on

16

Origins

Greek letters-what is now known as Cyrillic or "Constantinic;' as Lunt terms it. However, in Moravia, having met with great resistance from the Frankish Latinate clergy on account of its "Greekness;' he devised new-Glagolitic-letters for the already established system, different from either Latin or Greek writing. 26 Although merely a speculation, Lunt's hypothesis addresses some important questions that usually puzzle scholars of early Slavic writing. It explains the existence of two competing systems of Slavic writing at a time when the emergence of even one Slavic alphabet would have been an extraordinary event. If the Cyrillic letters were not devised by Cyril but developed from the Greek in Bulgaria by Cyril's and Methodius's disciples (Clement?), why was the invention of Cyrillic ascribed to Cyril? Lunt's hypothesis accounts for the belief in the Bulgarian religious historiography that Cyril is the creator of Cyrillic. Moreover, the fact that in the Slavic territories under Roman and Frankish jurisdiction (i.e., Slovenia, Croatia, and Bohemia) we find the use of Glagolitic and in the Slavic territories under Byzantine jurisdiction we find Cyrillic, suggests that Lunt's hypothesis is consistent with historical circumstances. There were no Latinate clergy in Bulgaria to find the use of Cyrillic in Slavic Scriptures offensive. This also explains why Croatian monks used Glagolitic and not Cyrillic, as did Bulgarians, Bosnians, and Serbs. However, Lunt's assumption does not take into consideration particular semiotic sensibilities that existed in the classical and medieval periods concerning the relationship between alphabets and the languages they represent. According to the principles of ninth-century graphic culture, the Greek alphabet was reserved for Greek, just as the Roman alphabet was the property of Latin. 27 As a Greek scholar, Cyril should have respected this tradition, especially because all missionary alphabets were usually invented from scratch. 28 If a new Church Slavonic ecclesiastical tradition was to compete with these languages, it had to acquire a distinct alphabet, one that would exist in its own right. Indeed, none of the sources describing the creation of the Slavic letters by Cyril mentions his intention of using the Greek letters. Bulgarian literati, on the other hand, had no scruples regarding the use of the Greek letters, which they had been previously using "without order:' Lunt is convinced that the treatise On the Letters was directed precisely against such improper use of the Greek letters. Were Cyril also the author of Cyrillic, his deed would not have been as sacred as

17

semiotics of medieval writing

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

claimed. Like other hypotheses about the beginnings of the early Slavic letters, this is an informed deduction. However, Lunt's hypothesis that Cyril most likely did not apply and disseminate Cyrillic himself is consistent with Andrzej Poppe's observation that in pre-sixteenth-century documents and devotional texts Cyril is more often referred to as Constantine than as Cyril and that the Cyrillic alphabet is not known as "Cyrillic" (i.e., an alphabet named in honor of Cyril) until several centuries after his death, suggesting that the attribution of the Greek-based Slavic alphabet to Cyril is of a later date. 29 Regardless of whether Cyril is or is not a creator of the Cyrillic alphabet, the association of Cyrillic letters with his name became so entrenched that on the majority of icons depicting the Slavic apostles the scroll in his hand shows Cyrillic characters. 3° Conversely, the link between Cyril's philological pursuits in Moravia and the emergence of Glagolitic had been obscured.

The Liturgy

Liturgy of St. Peter

Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

There is an ongoing dispute in scholarship about the number and identity of texts that Cyril and Methodius, and later Methodius and his assistants and disciples, translated and used. 31 By studying the oldest preserved liturgical texts, scholars have tried to determine which type of rite and liturgy, Eastern or Western, the missionaries choseY For example, Josef Vasica pointed to the Liturgy of St. Peter as the original model that Cyril and Methodius used for the Slavonic liturgy. 33 In this Greek version of the Roman Mass that contained a number of Byzantine elements, he saw a compromise between the Byzantine and Roman liturgies. Vasica's assumptions were favorably received by Dmitro Cyzevs'kyj, cautiously approached by Antonin Dostal and Vojtech Tkadlcik, and challenged by Josef LaurenCik, until FrantiSek Mares found another copy of the Liturgy of St. Peter and convincingly contested its dating, placing its origin in a Slavonic Athonite monastery at the end of the fourteenth century. 34 The subsequent discovery at the St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai of two eleventh-century Glagolitic manuscripts that have parallels to other early Glagolitic texts (the Kiev and Vienna Folia) allowed scholars to trace the original Slavonic liturgy to the Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. 35 Most likely, the brothers complemented this Byzantine formula by

18

Origins

translating from Latin liturgical texts that were already known in Moravia. Whether Cyril and Methodius used one or the other formula as a base for their Slavonic liturgy, many scholars agree that the resulting rite combined both Byzantine and Roman (Frankish) elements. 36 Although the question of which biblical texts were translated into Old Church Slavonic during the Cyrillo-Methodian mission remains open, it has been established that the original Slavonic translations were most likely made from both Greek and Latin versions of the Bible. 37 The mention of the "Slavonic books" (knigy sloven'skyf) and "Slavonic Gospel" (sloven'skoie evangeliie) in the hagiographic accounts of Cyril and Methodius's mission in Moravia, and the reference to the "Holy Gospel and readings from the New and Old Testaments" (sacrum evangelium vellectiones divinas novi et veteris testamenti) in the papal letter, suggest that at least some necessary readings for the Slavonic liturgy had already been translated by the end of the 870s. 38 It is unknown how much of the original Slavonic translations survived the devastation of the Slavonic rite in Great Moravia in 886, when Wiching, the Frankish bishop of Nitra, succeeded in undermining the Slavonic clergy in the eyes of Pope Stephen V (885-891). After Stephen officially prohibited the Slavonic rite in Moravia and Wiching received full support of Prince Svatopluk (871-894) to restore the Latin rite, the Slavonic clergy were expelled from the country and found refuge in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bohemia, and Croatia.

biblical translations

The Controversy The main consideration that made first Cyril and then Methodius insist on the Slavonic liturgy was most likely practical and not ideological. They believed that only by educating and ordaining local clergy could they create a lasting Christian tradition in Moravia. The linguistic aspect of the Byzantine mission, however, stood in contrast with the established practice of the Frankish Church, which then claimed jurisdiction over the Moravians, and created uncertainty about the orthodoxy of the new Slavonic liturgy. The Frankish clergy had been apprehensive of the vernacular liturgy from its very beginning and continually challenged it. As early as 867, Cyril and Methodius traveled to Rome to obtain the Roman

19

Frankish Church vis-avis the Slavonic rite

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Hadrian II approves liturgy in Slavonic

John III forbids, then approves, liturgy in Slavonic

Stephen V forbids liturgy in Slavonic

Life of Constantine & "the trilingual heresy"

curia's approval of the Slavonic liturgy and ordination for their disciples. At that time, Pope Hadrian II blessed the Slavonic books, and the liturgy in Slavonic was celebrated at the Papal Basilica of St. Peter and other churches. 39 Subsequently, popes alternately forbade and allowed the use of the Slavonic liturgy depending on the state of affairs in their rivalries with Constantinople and the Frankish Church for the Slavic flock in central and southern Europe.40 When Pope John VIII forbade the Slavonic liturgy in 879, Methodius again traveled to Rome to validate the legitimacy of the Slavonic liturgy, which the pope, having had a change of heart, reconfirmed in his bulla of 880. Following the death of Methodius, in 885, Pope Stephen V once again forbade the Slavonic liturgy, allowing the vernacular only in sermons and clarifications of the biblical textsY Methodius's death became a turning point for the Slavonic rite in Moravia. Unchecked by the authoritative personality of Methodius, the Frankish clergy, supported by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities, eradicated Slavonic from the communal worship in Moravia and restored the exclusive use of the Latin liturgy. Attested historical sources do not answer all the questions historians might have about the Cyrillo-Methodian mission, but from what is known about the turmoil around the Slavonic liturgy in Moravia and Pannonia at the end of the ninth century it becomes clear that the new liturgy in a local language was as much a political tool as it was a religious ritual. Why did the Slavonic letters' legitimacy become such a point of contention at the end of the ninth century? Did Christian doctrine view the establishment of a new liturgical language as heresy? Or was its legitimacy a question of politics rather than dogma? The Life of Constantine, a devotional account of St. ConstantineCyril's life that relates the details about the Cyrillo-Methodian mission, records objections made by the Frankish and Latin clergy against the Slavonic liturgy first in Moravia and later in Venice. As befits the genre of the vita, the opposition to the Slavonic liturgy is ascribed to the devil's instigation: The Devil, not bearing this good, entered into his devices and began to arouse many, saying to them: God is not worshiped by this. For if this pleased Him would He not have established it so that from the very beginning [the Slavs] would worship God by writing their own language with letters? 42 But he chose only three languages: Hebrew, Greek, and

20

Origins

Latin, which are appropriate for giving glory to God. And so spoke the Latin and Frankish archpriests, priests, and their disciplesY

In 867 in Venice, where, according to a hypothesis advanced by a number of scholars, Cyril and Methodius arrived to seek the Grado Patriarch's official approval of their mission, 44 Cyril is reproached for the lack of authority of his new writings: When he [i.e., Constantine] was in Venice, the Latin bishops, priests, and monks gathered against him like ravens against a falcon. And they advanced the trilingual heresy, saying: "Tell us, 0 man, how is it that you now teach books [letters] that you yourself created for the Slavs, which none else have invented before, neither the Apostle, nor the pope of Rome, nor Gregory the Theologian, nor Jerome, nor Augustine? We know of only three languages worthy of praising God in books, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin:'45

The Church Slavonic word that indicates Cyril's creation is hnigy, "the books, writings, Holy Scripture, letters:' Traditionally, translators of the Life of Constantine use the meaning"the letters" to match it with the translation of the Church Slavonic pismeny, "the letters;' in the passage describing the Frankish clergy's allegations quoted above. 46 However, there is a reason why the Latin clergy in Venice should also have been concerned with Cyril's invention of the hnigy in its primary meaning-"the books, the Scriptures:' Indeed, the controversy was not so much over the Slavonic letters per se, but rather over their application, that is, that they were used not simply for catechization and preaching but that the new letters were used to translate holy canonical books into a language in which no previous authoritative Christian Father had written. The Latin clergy themselves recorded texts in Slavic using the Latin letters. But these were sermons, prayers, and confessional formulae utilized for catechetical purposes, not for canonical booksY Therefore, the concern about the "Slavic letters" addresses the issue of using a language different from Latin, whereas the concern about the "Slavic books" addresses the use of theologically problematic liturgical books that contain texts from the Scriptures. In this way, one can see different aspects of anxiety that the Slavonic letters aroused among the Frankish and Latin clergy: the Frankish clergy were disturbed by the competition created by the Slavic clergy and their new letters, whereas the Venice Synodal clergy

21

books & letters

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Was "trilinguism" a doctrine?

John 19:20

language of liturgy vs. language of the Bible

could have been seriously alarmed by the potential doctrinal unorthodoxy and inaccuracy of the newly translated liturgical and biblical books. Cyril's dispute in Venice with the Frankish and Latin clergy is described in the sources as a controversy with "heretical trilinguists;' in which Cyril refutes the idea that only three languages may be used in worship. The idea of the three sacred languages is a welldocumented concept. It appears in the Gospel of John (19:20), which says that Pilate placed a sign saying"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek over the crucified Christ. It is not clear, however, whether this idea evolved into a doctrine. To oppose a popular view that takes the vita's account at face value, Francis Thomson has argued that there was no doctrine of "three liturgical languages" either in the Western or in the Eastern churches. 48 He proposes a distinction between the idea of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as the three sacred languages (as a symbolic trinitas linguarum) and the doctrine prescribing the use of only Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in the liturgy. Thomson's arguments are as follows. Only Slavic sources refer to the controversy over the Slavonic rite as a dispute of St. Cyril with trilinguists-Pilatists. Moreover, in the sources, this is not a self-identifying term, as it is Constantine who calls them "trilinguists:' While all Latin sources acknowledge the opposition to liturgical innovation by the papacy, nowhere in the Latin sources is a mention of trilinguism in liturgy recorded. With no reference to the Cyrillo-Methodian mission, "trilinguism" seems to be a Byzantine definition of one of the errors of the Western Church found in especially compiled catalogues of Latin errors. However, this "error" did not seem to concern the language of liturgy. Furthermore, Thomson argues that there never existed a doctrine of"three liturgical languages;' but that the idea of three sacred languages was inspired by the presence of the Greek and Hebrew words in the Latin Mass, constituting a symbol of trinitas linguarum. This symbolic unity of three sacred languages in one Mass is not tantamount to a doctrine of liturgical trilinguism, given that nobody celebrated the Divine Office in Hebrew or Greek in the Western Roman and Frankish Empires. Thomson also maintains that Isidore of Seville and others before and after him, who called these languages sacred, only referred to Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as languages of the Bible and advocated the knowledge of these languages for accurate interpretation. Importantly, during the first

22

Origins

centuries of Christianity, the Roman Church was eager to elevate Latin, which was not a language of the original Holy Scriptures, to the same status as Greek and Hebrew. Finally, Thomson points out, both Roman and Byzantine ecclesiastical authorities insisted that their subjects use Latin and Greek languages respectively in the services. However, this was primarily due to considerations of religious unity and cultural homogeneity in imperial provinces. It should be noted that the argument that the Slavic language does not belong among the three sacred languages is made only by the Frankish and Latin clergy in Moravia and Venice and is not supported by the Byzantine patriarch and the Apostolic Pontiff in Rome. From the Byzantine perspective, there seemed to be no doctrinal concern about creating a new alphabet for the Slavs. According to the Life of Constantine, when Emperor Michael charged Constantine with a mission to the Slavs, the latter responded that he would accept the commission if the Slavs had their own letters. The lack ofliteracy among the Slavs (whether in Greek or in Slavic) seemed to trouble Byzantine emperors for generations: Michael replied that his father and grandfather had been looking in vain for the Slavic letters and now he thought that the time had come to create them. 49 Roman popes, too, sanctioned the Slavonic liturgy several times. When Cyril and Methodius arrived in Rome in the winter of 868, Pope Hadrian II blessed the Slavonic books, ordered the Slavonic liturgy to be celebrated in principal Roman churches, and ordained Cyril and Methodius's disciples, as well as Methodius himself, as priests. 50 Again, in 880, Pope John VIII, after having questioned Methodius on the tenets of his faith, bestowed on him all duties and privileges of the archbishop of Moravia. John's letter to Prince Svatopluk of Moravia demonstrates that considerations of Methodius's adherence to the teachings of the Roman Church were his primary concern: Accordingly, we questioned this Methodius, your venerable archbishop, in the presence of our brother bishops, whether he adheres to the creed of faith [fidei symbolum] in the orthodox way and during the sacred liturgical rites sings as is held by the Holy Roman Church and as was announced and established by holy six universal councils of holy fathers according to the evangelical authority of our Lord Christ. He thus declared that he believes and sings [the Psalms] according to the evangelical and apostolic teaching, as the Holy Roman Church teaches and as

23

Byzantine perspective

perspective of Rome

John VIII commends Methodius to Svatopluk

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome was established by the fathers. Moreover, we, having learned that he is orthodox and useful in all ecclesiastical teachings and matters send him back to you again to govern God's church. 5 1

Noteworthy in this passage is the mention of the fidei symbolum, which refers to a later doctrinal dispute between the Western and Eastern Churches over the addition of the word jilioque to the Nicene Creed. 52 Apparently, Methodius's loyalty to the Apostolic See so much pleased the pope that in his letter he expressed his warmest approval of Methodius, referring to him as confrater noster (our brother) and reverentissimus (most venerable) and lavishing on him the highest praise. The letter clearly shows that the pope did not consider the use of Slavonic in the liturgy to be a breach of doctrine; on the contrary, he thought that a Slavic translation following the Latin liturgy (Latin being necessary"for the greater glorification") was desirable and faithful to the teachings of the Bible:

Psalm 116:1

question of orthodoxy

Finally, we rightly commend the Slavonic writing, invented by a certain Constantine the Philosopher so that God's praise may duly sound in it, and we decree that in this language the glory and acts of our Lord Christ be interpreted. Indeed, by sacred authority we exhort to praise God not only in three but in all languages, as is taught saying: Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples! 53 [ ••• ] And nothing in the faith or doctrine inhibits either to sing masses or to read the Holy Gospel or divine lectures from New and Old Testaments in this Slavonic language, [if they are] well translated and interpreted, or to sing all other offices of the hour: for He who made the three principal languages, that is, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, also created all others for His praise and glory. Still we decree that in all churches of your land the Gospel be read in Latin for the greater glorification and afterward preached in Slavic translation for the ears of those who do not understand Latin words, as it seems to be done in some churches. 54

Indeed, the use of the Slavic language per se was not the central issue. Teaching in the vernacular, in the form of preaching, was a long-established practice of Roman and Frankish missionaries. However, the theological differences between the Eastern and Western Churches, such as the dispute on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, had already become a matter of serious disagreement. These were expressed in the liturgical and biblical texts that

24

Origins

Methodius and his followers disseminated in Slavonic. The linguistic barrier, which did not allow for easy investigation of the translated texts used by the Slavs in religious rites, caused understandable uneasiness in Rome and among the Frankish clergy. This is why, from the very beginning of the Moravian mission, the leaders of the Slavonic rite were repeatedly summoned to Rome to testify personally (and, most likely, in Latin) to their doctrinal orthodoxy and allegiance to the Roman curia. Even Pope Stephen V, who appeared to be a severe critic of Methodius's leadership of the Moravian Church, was apparently ready to negotiate with Methodius's successor. In the letter of instruction that Stephen V addressed to his legates to Moravia, Bishop Dominic and Presbyters John and Stephen, in which he accuses Methodius of self-government and charges his messengers to eradicate the Slavonic rite in Moravia, he indicates that he could prove more lenient, were Methodius's successor to come directly to Rome and profess his creed: "By our apostolic authority forbid the successor, whom Methodius against the decisions of all Holy Fathers himself dared to ordain, to perform his service until he comes to us and explains his position personally [literally, 'in live voice'] :•ss However, Methodius's successor, Gorazd, never went to Rome to defend his faith. Instead, the proponents of the Slavonic rite were forced to leave Moravia, and some of them were even imprisoned and sold at the slave market in Venice. Despite this crisis, the Slavonic rite did not die but soon flourished again in Bulgaria, where Cyril and Methodius's disciples received cordial welcome. If the creation of the new alphabet and the establishment of the liturgy in a new tongue was not a doctrinal issue (or at least one not clearly defined), then the case of the Slavonic liturgy depended largely on politics. 56 Cyril, and after Cyril's death, Methodius, skillfully negotiated with the authorities and traveled to Rome and Constantinople when it was necessary, expanding the corpus of Slavonic translations and training clergy. The role of Methodius was especially decisive in the expansion and preservation of the Slavonic liturgy. His contribution to the cause of disseminating the Slavonic liturgy was invaluable during the years subsequent to Cyril's death, and his remarkable diplomatic skills allowed the Slavonic liturgy to take deep root and persevere through the years to come despite numerous obstacles. 57 One of the paradoxes of the Cyrilla-Methodian mission is that, although the mission itself failed, its impact on Slavic civilization

25

Stephen V summons the successor to Methodius

Methodius's role in the expansion of the Slavonic liturgy

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

was immense. 58 The Slavonic rite first introduced by the holy brothers in Moravia came to be a powerful tool in the cause of Christian conversions and led to the creation of the Slavic national churches. Driven by the practical purpose of expanding Christianity by all possible means, Cyril and Methodius created an idiosyncratic ecclesiastic culture that formed a link between the Eastern and Western Christian traditions.

The Slavonic Rite in Bohemia end of the Slavonic rite in Moravia

Legenda Christiani

Borivoj & Ludmila are baptized by Methodius

Wenceslas I

The Slavonic rite disappeared from Great Moravia in 885, when Gorazd failed to take Methodius's place and was overthrown by his rival Wiching. The Slavic clergy were chased away and sold into slavery. Many of them managed to escape to Bulgaria, where they developed new centers of Slavonic literary and religious culture. It is also believed that some of them found refuge in Bohemia under the protection of the Premyslid rulers who, according to legend, were baptized in 884 in Great Moravia by St. Methodius. The introduction of Christianity in Bohemia is documented in a number of sources, most of them belonging to hagiographicalliterature. 59 The earliest attested local source that talks about the Slavonic liturgy, the Moravian mission, and its impact on Bohemia is the late tenth-century composition, Legenda Christiani, named for its author Brother Christianus, a monk who is believed to be a member of the Premyslid family. 60 This text, fully titled the Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius (The Life and Passion of St. Wenceslas and His Grandmother St. Ludmila), attributes the conversion of the Premyslid Prince Borivoj (872-889) and his wife Ludmila (874-921) to the bishop of Moravia, St. Methodius. According to the legend, when Borivoj attended a feast of the Moravian ruler Rostislav, he was not allowed to sit together with the Christian princes at the table but instead made to join Rostislav's heathen subjects on the floor. Feeling compassion for Botivoj, Bishop Methodius convinced him to accept baptism. Following Botivoj's example, his wife Ludmila also became ChristianY The legend thus traces the origin of Bohemian Christianity and polity to Great Moravia and gives full credit to the Slavic apostles, and not to the Bavarian Church. The rooting of Christianity in Bohemia is connected to the rule of Botivoj and Ludmila's grandson, Wenceslas (Czech Vaclav, 923

26

Origins

or 924-929 or 935), whose tragic death at the hands of his brother Boleslav later elevated him to the status of patron saint of Bohemia and the Ptemyslid dynasty. 62 Despite his fratricide, Boleslav I (935-972) greatly contributed to the strengthening of Bohemia as a Christian state. Moreover, he negotiated the baptism of the Polish prince Mieszko, to whom he gave his daughter Dubravka in marriage in 966. Above all, Boleslav strove for the establishment of Bohemia's own bishopric, which was not established until after his death, in 973, under the authority of the archbishop of Mainz. 63 With church organization overseen by the Frankish clergy and Rome, evidence of the Slavonic rite's survival in Bohemia during the two centuries following the Cyrillo-Methodian mission is not abundant, but it is, nevertheless, definite. Unfortunately, disciplinary boundaries dividing historians and philologists have once more led to debates between the two scholarly factions regarding this question. The cause of this disagreement is a lack of direct information about the Slavonic rite in historical sources; most evidence comes from the analysis of literary sources and linguistic data. As a result, historians look cautiously upon the question of the Slavonic rite in Ptemyslid Bohemia, while philologists speak confidently about its survival until the end of the eleventh century. There is no doubt that the Slavonic tradition existed in Ptemyslid Bohemia, but whether its coexistence with the Latin rite was peaceful, and whether or not it was continuous and widespread, is a subject of dispute among scholars. 64 The Slavic names of priests who found refuge in Bohemia after the collapse of Great Moravia in 906 suggest that they may have observed the Slavonic rite and some of the customs of the Moravian Church. 65 While little is known about specific locations and communities where the Slavonic rite might have been observed in Bohemia, a number of sources identify the Sazava Benedictine Monastery as a hub for the liturgy in Slavic. It was founded in 1032 by its distinguished abbot St. Procopius (ca. 970/980-1053, canonized in 1204), who is also believed to have instituted there the Benedictine rule. 66 The tenure of the Slavonic rite at the Sazava Monastery, however, was short. Initially under the generous patronage of Prince Oldtich (1012-1034) and Bfetislav I (1035-1055), the Slavonic monks were expelled from the monastery by Spytihnev II (1055-1061), but then were brought back byVratislav II (10611092). However, after the Schism of 1054 and the reforms of Pope Gregory the Great (1073-1085), the position of the Slavonic rite,

27

Boleslav I

historians & philologists disagree about the Slavonic rite in Bohemia

Sazava Monastery

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

linguistic data

which represented a link with the Eastern Church, was vulnerable in Bohemia. In 1079, Pope Gregory denied Vratislav's request to authorize the liturgy in Slavonic. In 1096, Vratislav's successor, Btetislav II (1092-1100), forced the monks observing the Slavonic rite out of the Sazava Monastery and handed it over to the Latinate Benedictines of Btevnov. Linguists and philologists have done substantial work to identify those literary texts from the Moravian and Ptemyslid periods that were written in the Czech variety of Church Slavonic. 67 These scholars dispute the opinion of historians that the Slavonic rite was imported to the Sazava Monastery from abroad, arguing that the linguistic analysis of these Slavonic texts reveals no linguistic mediation, such as that found, for example, in the Rus' manuscripts that were imported to Rus' from Bulgaria and which therefore retain visible South Slavic linguistic traits. On the contrary, these texts show consistent West Slavic (Czech) linguistic features characteristic of Moravia and Bohemia, and their content embodies the syncretism of Eastern and Western ecclesiastical elements. 68

The Slavonic Rite in Poland?

debate over the Slavonic rite in Poland

The question of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission in the territories of Poland draws from the same legendary well of information as that of the Slavonic rite in Bohemia and Great Moravia. There are two main interrelated questions: one concerns the spread and influence of the Slavonic liturgy in Poland, and the other concerns the existence of an institutionalized church organization with a Slavic or Latin hierarchy. A spirited and voluminous scholarly debate has developed into two diametrically opposite trends in Polish historiography, which is even more polarized than that in Czech historiography, albeit not by discipline. Scholars advocating for the early existence of the Slavonic liturgy in Poland generally offer three hypotheses: ( 1) it arrived as part of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission in southern Poland (Poland Minor) at the end of the ninth century, (2) it was brought to southern Poland and Silesia from Bohemia during the tenth century, and (3) it was received after 966 from Bohemia, along with the official Christianization. They refer to a number of historical sources and archeological finds with a generous dose of free interpretation, blaming later Latinization for intentionally obscuring the beginnings of the Slavonic rite or bish-

28

Origins

opric in Poland. Still, there are many scholars who remain unconvinced and dismiss all hypotheses that the arrival of the Slavonic rite in Poland was a consequence of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission. The scale of the debate is colossal and a detailed analysis of the evidence brought up by both sides is beyond the scope of this study. 69 For the sake of our inquiry we note here only the central issues in this debate. In the absence of explicit records, the advocates of the Slavonic rite refer to a number of indirect facts and sources that may be interpreted as indications of the Slavonic rite's existence in Poland?0 The primary piece of evidence, which encourages scholars to hypothesize about the baptism of Poland Minor during the Moravian mission, comes from chapter 11 of the Life of Methodius (the Pannonian Legend), in which Methodius, demonstrating his gift of prophesy, predicts that an evil pagan prince from the Vistula River will soon be baptized:

Methodius prophesizes the baptism of a prince of the Vistulans

A very powerful pagan prince, settled on the Vistula, mocked the Christians and did nasty things to them. Having sent word to him, Methodius said, "My son, it would be better for you to be baptized of your own will in your own land, so that you will not have to be baptized against your will as a prisoner in a foreign land; and then you'll remember my words:' And so it came to pass. 71

The prince, who is sometimes said to have been from the area that would later become Cracow, was allegedly captured and baptized by force by Prince Svatopluk. Despite the obvious hagiographic character of the work and apparent ambiguity, it is often used as a proof that Methodius or his disciples proselytized to the Poles living in the Vistula region, and that there were already some Christians among them. The arguments in favor of the Slavonic rite in Poland are largely grounded in a conceptual understanding of the political rivalry for jurisdiction over the Slavic lands between the three Christian powers-Rome, Byzantium, and the Frankish Empire-as well as Moravia's missionary expansion politics. With some degree of variation, the central historical premise is that from the time of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission, the metropolitan see of Cracow was the center of the Slavonic rite in Poland with suffragan bishoprics that were faithful to Rome in Wislica and Sandomierz. According to Karolina Lanckoronska, for example, the first metropolitan

29

Gorazd as metropolitan of Cracow

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Latin & Slavonic rites coexist in Poland

lack of direct evidence

Church Slavonic lexical layer in Polish

"Bogurodzica"

appointed to Cracow at the end of the ninth century was none other than Gorazd himself, Methodius's favorite disciple and illfated successor as archbishop of Moravia. One of Lanckoronska's strongest arguments is the presence of St. Gorazd's name in the early fifteenth-century Polish WiSlica Calendar. 72 1he proposed periods of the Slavonic rite's survival vary. The most common hypothesis is that the Latin and Slavonic rites existed side by side until the eleventh century "free from mutual antagonism;' and that the Slavonic rite enjoyed the protection of Boleslaw the Brave (992-1025). The conjectures about, and even the plausibility of, the CyrilloMethodian Slavonic rite in Poland have been again and again criticized, mainly due to lack of direct or reliable contemporaneous historical evidence. 73 Critics point out that the Life of Methodius, even if taken at face value, says nothing about any mission conducted by Methodius or any of his followers in Poland. Nor does Methodius's prediction of baptism indicate that it was afterward received in the Slavonic rite. Even if the baptism was later carried out after Methodius's death by the efforts of his Frankish successor, Archbishop Wiching, the language of the rite would surely have been Latin. The hypothesis of the early existence in Poland of the cult of St. Gorazd (Methodius's disciple), which would indicate the existence of the Slavonic rite, has also been dismissed. It has been proven that the cult of St. Gorazd migrated into the Wislica Calendar from Czech breviaries, as did the prayers for Cyril and Methodius, at the end of the fourteenth century. 74 Linguists and philologists have also applied their skills to verify the hypothesis that there was direct contact between Poland and the Cyrillo-Methodian mission. Their inquiry focused on uncovering a Church Slavonic lexical layer in Polish language and literary sources/5 Although their examination has produced a list of lexemes that may be associated with Church Slavonic, from a methodological point of view these data cannot be used as definite proof of the Slavonic rite's direct influence on Polish because they are also found in Old Czech and can be explained by Czech mediation from the time when Poland received Christianity from Bohemia. 76 The Polish song "Bogurodzica'' ("Theotokos"), recorded in the fifteenth century but believed to be an autograph of St. Adalbert (St. Wojciech), has become an important document of the early poetic vernacular tradition among the Poles. 77 Its real author is

30

Origins

unknown and the song itself is variously dated from the eleventh (Lehr-Splawinski, Ostrowska) to the thirteenth (Woronczak) to the turn of the fourteenth (Urbanczyk) centuries. 78 Scholars hypothesize that several expressions in this old song (such as Bogurodzica and bozycze) are the result of the original Church Slavonic language's direct influence on Polish. 79 Yet the poetic structure and terminology in "Bogurodzica" show dependence on thirteenthcentury Czech and Latin poetry, while its melody excludes the possibility of its emergence before the twelfth century. 80 Archeologists joined historians and philologists in their efforts to discover material evidence of the spread of Christianity in Poland at the time of the Moravian mission. However, one by one, all archeological data have been discarded on the basis of recent excavations that show consistent signs of pagan cults until the end of the tenth century and date the first signs of Christianity in Poland to after the mission from Bohemia in 965-966, which the written sources firmly attest_BI Scholars who share a skeptical view regarding the existence of the Slavonic rite in Poland during or immediately following the Cyrillo-Methodian mission point to the fact that all historical, linguistic, and archeological sources are too ambiguous and subject to interpretation. The only methodologically sound conclusion, therefore, is that, despite some vague and indirect references that the southern Polish lands could have been touched by the CyrilloMethodian mission, there is no proof of any church organization or even of any reliable missionary activity in Polish lands before Mieszko decided to marry Boleslav's daughter Dubravka and be baptized in 966. Everywhere in the Slavic lands under Roman or Frankish jurisdiction that the Slavonic rite spread, we find evidence of tension between the Latinate and Slavonic clergy. In Pannonia, where Prince Kocel had showed great appreciation for the Slavonic rite, the claims of the Salzburg clergy had already put an end to the Slavonic rite by the 870s. In Moravia, this conflict resulted in the expulsion of Cyril and Methodius's followers in 885, some of whom escaped to Bulgaria and to Bohemia. In Bohemia, the Slavonic rite met with resistance, and eventually the Latinate German clergy managed to convince Prince Bfetislav II in 1096 to evict the Slavonic monks from their last stronghold-the Sazava Monastery. In Croatia, this opposition led to a significant restriction of the Slavonic clergy by the decisions of the Councils of 925 and 1060. The

31

archeological data

no documented conflicts between the Latinate & Slavonic clergy

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

fact that we find no evidence of such conflict in Poland is an additional argument against the existence of the Cyrillo-Methodian Slavonic rite and church in pre-Piast Poland.

The Bifurcation of Slavic Writing: Glagolitic and Cyrillic

Slavonic rite finds refuge in Bulgaria

Ohrid & Preslav

St. Clement of Ohrid

Cyrillic challenges Glagolitic in Bulgaria

Glagolitic in Rus'

The dissemination of Slavic writing is directly related to the fate of the Slavonic liturgy. In the territories with Slavic-speaking populations that found themselves in the orbit of Byzantine jurisdiction, the Slavonic rite took root and flourished, as did literature in Church Slavonic. Above all, the Slavonic rite and writing found a second life in Bulgaria, where the disciples of Cyril and Methodius were warmly received. 82 Their arrival was particularly timely as the Bulgarian ruler Boris and, later, his son Symeon sought to replace the Greek liturgy of Byzantium-dominated Bulgaria with the native and, importantly, independent Slavonic rite. Two major educational centers of Slavonic literacy were established by Methodius's disciples, Clement, Nahum, Angelarius, and Constantine at Ohrid and Preslav, where clergy were trained and numerous biblical and patristic writings were translated into Church Slavonic. Gradually, the Greek-based and therefore more familiar Cyrillic letters rivaled and came to obscure the esoteric Glagolitic alphabet, first in the secular and then in the ecclesiastical sphere.BJ Under the leadership of Clement, who headed this ambitious Slavonic literary project, the Bulgarian literati expanded the initial Cyrillo-Methodian textual corpus to such an extent that they were able to oversee the Christianization and re-Christianization of the Serbs, Romanians, and Rus' over the course of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. As Ihor Sevcenko has aptly remarked, "What Methodius had been to Moravia and Pannonia, his follower St. Clement was to Bulgaria, only with more enduring effects:' 84 By then Cyrillic had become the "mainstream'' of the Slavonic writing in Bulgaria, although Glagolitic was used in Macedonian Ohrid until as late as the thirteenth century. It is even attested in Rus: where, at the dawn of its Christianity, Glagolitic writing, along with Cyrillic, was imported from Bulgaria. William Veder has recently shown that, rather than copying Bulgarian Cyrillic exemplars, the Rus' bookmen preferred to transcribe from the original Glagolitic and, in fact, produced multiple Cyrillic copies from a single Glagolitic source. 85 Thus Cyrillic became the script of the Orthodox churches

32

Origins

of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Rus', while the Western Slavs observed the Roman Catholic rite and adopted the Latin language and script. However, as will be shown in the next chapter, in Dalmatia and the Adriatic islands the Slavonic rite continued to be recorded in the Glagolitic alphabet, which remained in use until as late as the eighteenth century.

33

Glagolitic in Dalmatia

2 Croatia Empowering Myth

S(ve)ti Eronim' imese o(t)ca cast'na komu ime bese Evsebie slovenskago ezika i slovucago. (St. Jerome had an honorable father, whose name was Eusebius, of noble Slavic origin.)

-Ctenie svetago Eronima Hrvatina'

Christianization of the Croats

T

The Arrival of the Slavonic Rite in Croatia

he Croats came into contact with Christianity in Dalmatia and !stria as early as the seventh century, shortly after they had settled on the Balkan Peninsula. 2 First initiated by the local Roman clergy, their conversion was gradual, lasted for several centuries, and was closely connected with Rome, Constantinople, the Patriarchate of Aquileia, and Venice. As with other instances of Christianization among the Slavs, scholars dispute the time and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of this conversion. Because the literature on this subject is voluminous, only a succinct analysis is given here with references to works that scrutinize the Christianization of the Croats in greater detail. By the seventh century, Dalmatia, Istria, and Pannonia had entered the orbit of the Roman Empire and Byzantium, and were, therefore, already populated by Christians. The great migrations of the sixth and seventh centuries, which brought the Slavs and the Avars to these territories, changed the demographic scene and challenged the position of Christianity in the Balkans. Although some evangelical work among the Slavs must have already begun in the seventh century, especially around the coastal towns, the

Croatia

Christianization of the Slavs in Dalmatia, the Pannonian part of Croatia, Istria, and the Kvarner islands gained importance starting in the ninth century. This missionary activity emanated from several centers: Rome, the Frankish Cividale (Old Aquileia), and Salzburg, from Constantinople and the Byzantine Grado (New Aquileia), which then dominated Croatia's coast and islands, as well as from Venice beginning in the later ninth century. 3 The conversion of the Slavs of Dalmatia and Illyricum resulted naturally from the spirited political interest that the Franks, Byzantium, and Rome took in this territory. 4 The inhabitants of southern Croatia, to the east of the River Neretva, were most likely converted by the Byzantine efforts, possibly even by the disciples of Methodius during the reign of Emperor Basil I (867-886). 5 In general, the question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction over these provinces is difficult because various parts of the hinterland and coastal Croatia changed hands several times during the eighth and ninth centuries. By the beginning of the ninth century, the patriarchate of Constantinople was losing influence over the province of Illyricum, which for a short time had been under its jurisdiction. Starting in 812, by agreement between Charlemagne and Byzantium (Treaty of Aachen/ Aix) most of Dalmatian Croatia fell under Frankish administrative control, while Constantinople retained suzerainty over the offshore islands and coastal settlements as well as over Venice. As a result of this extended struggle for spheres of influence, the whole region had become, as Alexis P. Vlasto characterized Venice, "a Latin-Byzantine hybrid:' 6 While the initial spread of Christianity among the Croats should be credited mostly to Roman and Franko-Aquileian efforts, the introduction of the Slavonic rite and of Glagolitic letters is usually attributed either to the Byzantine missionaries to Great Moravia, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, or to their disciples. In the absence of direct evidence of the beginnings of Glagolite writing in Croatia, the exact date and route by which the Croats acquired the Slavonic rite remains a subject of conjecture. Historians are forced to base their judgments on indirect evidence and supposition. Ivanka Petrovic, for example, dates the first encounter of the Croats with the Slavonic rite to as early as 863, when the Cyrilla-Methodian mission was passing through Byzantine Dalmatia on its way to Moravia. 7 In the opinion of Henrik Birnbaum, historical sources, manuscripts, and epigraphic material suggest that Glagolitic writing reached the coastal region of northwestern Croatia by two routes at different

35

Rome, Constantinople, & the Franks compete for influence among the Slavs

routes of the Slavonic rite

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Dalmatia & the Slavonic rite

times and that it did not seem to occur instantaneously or as a result of an organized venture. 8 The disciples of Methodius, after his death, in 885 first came to Croatia from Moravia-Pannonia, probably through Bohemia. They also could have arrived in Croatia directly from the north or indirectly from Venice after some of them were sold into slavery by the new Frankish ecclesiastical authorities and then freed from the slave market by a Byzantine imperial official. The other route went from Macedonia via Dioclea (Duklja), Bosnia, and adjacent territories. It dates to a later period and may possibly be connected in part with the dispersion of the Bogomils, who were escaping persecution by the official Orthodox Church. Henrik Birnbaum believes that the explanation of how Glagolitic came to Croatia depends upon whether this territory was under Byzantine or Roman jurisdiction. Eduard Hercigonja is of the same opinion and refers to a group of studies supporting the assumption that Glagolitic script first took root in the zones under the jurisdiction of the episcopate of Byzantine Dalmatia, in the cities and the surrounding islands in the Kvarner Gulf that were owned by Byzantium.9 However, Franjo Sanjek notes that this question is complicated and that historians should not directly link questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Dalmatia and Croatia to the struggle over the use of the Glagolitic script and the Slavonic language in the liturgy. 10

The Roman Slavonic Rite of the Glagolite Clergy semantics of Glagolitic

terms glagoijasi, Glagolite

The term "Glagolitic" derives from the Slavic stem glagol-, which conveys the general semantics "word" and "speaking:' In Church Slavonic the verb glagolati means "to write, speak graphically" because the written word was perceived as equivalent to the spoken one. In Croatian, words with the stem glagol- were most likely introduced along with the Slavonic liturgy by the followers of Cyril and Methodius. They became associated with the language of ecclesiastical books and service-hence the Croatian name glagoljasi (Glagolites) for the priests and monks who used the Slavonic liturgy and the first Slavic alphabet. However, the Croatian monks and bookmen who used the Glagolitic alphabet did not receive that name until relatively recently. At first, they were referred to by their ethnic affiliation as the Slavic priests (presbyteri sclavici),

36

Croatia

and their special script was associated with a collective Slavic identity. The earliest documented occurrences of terms with the stem glagol- to describe Glagolitic writing are found episodically starting from the fifteenth century. In the areas of Croatia and Bosnia, where both Slavic alphabets were in use, the words presbyter chiuriliza and presbyter glagolita were used to denote priests who used the Cyrillic or Glagolitic alphabet, respectively. However, it was only in the nineteenth century that the term glagolitsa (glagoljica, hlaholice, etc.) became consistently used in scholarship to denote the Glagolitic alphabet. 11 As in Moravia and Pannonia, as soon as the Slavonic rite arrived on the Adriatic shore in the late ninth or early tenth century controversies over its use arose. The earliest attested documents regarding the Slavonic rite in Croatian Dalmatia are associated with the Split Church Council of 925. 12 Prior to the Council, Pope John X (914-928) wrote to both secular and ecclesiastical authorities in Croatia to ensure that the Slavonic rite did not become deeply rooted and gain preference over Latin. 13 The pope's disapproval of the Slavonic rite shows that Slavonic writing had spread sufficiently to cause concern to the Roman curia. In his letter to Archbishop John of Split and his suffragan bishops, John reproached them for allowing what he called Methodii doctrina (Methodian teachings) to spread in their churches: But let it be far from the hearts of the faithful (God forbid), who worship Christ and believe that they can attain another life by their devotion, that they, overlooking the teaching of the Gospel and the canons of the Apostolic books, be attracted by the teaching of Methodius, whom we could not find in any book among the holy writers. 14

By "the teachings of Methodius" he most likely meant the use of the Slavonic rite unaccompanied by the liturgy in Latin, which he perceived as neglect and rejection of the Latin canonical texts and teachings. 15 There is a clear opposition between two doctrinae in this letter: the doctrina of the Gospel and the doctrina of Methodius. The Roman curia's concern about Methodius's teachings could have been less about the choice of language than the fact that it was impossible to verify the canonicity of these liturgical texts. In the third decade of the tenth century there was no leader of Methodius's caliber among the Slavonic clergy in Croatia who could face the pope and vouch for the orthodoxy of the Slavonic rite.

37

controversies over the Slavonic rite

Pope John X writes to Archbishop John of Split about Methodii doctrina

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Pope John X writes to Archbishop John of Split, King Tomislav of Croatia, et a!.

Another letter that John X wrote at the same time is addressed to Archbishop John and his suffragan bishops; the king of Croatia, Tomislav; the prince of Zahumlje, Mihajlo ViseviC; and all of their subjects. In this letter the pope advised that Croatian children study Latin from an early age in order to be able to celebrate God properly in Latin, and not in Slavonic, a "barbarous" language: That is why we urge you, beloved sons, to give your children from the cradle to God for the study of letters, so that they-instructed by God-can by their admonitions save you from the enticements of sin for the heavenly kingdom, where Christ is, with all the hosts of the chosen. Indeed, what chosen son of the Holy Roman Church, such as you are, would delight in offering his sacrifice to God [i.e., Divine Office] in that barbarous or Slavic language? I have absolutely no doubt that for those who insist on celebrating the Mass in the Slavic language nothing else is left than what is written: "they broke away from us and are not of our mold, for if they were of our mold they would surely remain with

us:' than [to remain] in our mode of life and language. 16

The main issue was evidently political and administrative, rather than linguistic. Rome perceived the Slavonic clergy as nonconformists who compromised the unity of the church. That is why, as a precaution, the pope urged the Dalmatian hierarchy to take measures to unify practice in their churches according to the Latin rite if the Dalmatian Slavs wished to remain under Roman jurisdiction (or what he calls a "Mother Church"): And so we advise you, our beloved, that together with our bishops, John [... ] and Leon [... ],you make effort to boldly set all things right in your Slavic land on grounds, say, that you in no way dare to depart in any way from the instruction of the aforementioned bishops, so that in the land of the Slavs the Divine Office is performed according to the customs of the Holy Roman Church, that is, in Latin, and not in a foreign [language], because no son should say or know anything, except what his father has advised him. And since the Slavs are most special children of the Holy Roman Church, they have to remain in the teaching of their MotherY

The decision of the Split Council of 925 shows that the pope's efforts at church unification were not wasted. The resulting decree,

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Croatia

outlined in the tenth canon of the Council, did not prohibit the Slavonic rite but did significantly limit its scope:

Split Council of 925 limits the Slavonic rite

No bishop in our province should dare to elevate [anyone serving in] the Slavonic language to whatever rank; only those in the clerical state or monks [are allowed to use it (?)] to serve God. Nor in his diocese should he allow to him to serve the mass, except if there is a necessity for priests; [in which case] by applying to the Roman Pontiff, he may obtain a license for their priestly offices. 18

The papal epistles and the special resolution of the Council testify to the relatively wide use of Slavonic in Croatia; the Latin hierarchy would not have concerned itself with just a few Glagolite priests. The words in clericatu et monachatu ("in the clerical state or monks") could mean that the Council intended to limit the use of Slavonic to clergy who were monks, implying that it had also been used by other non-monastic clergy. There were also practical reasons for retaining the Slavonic rite in Dalmatia. If only temporary, the rite was instrumental for the evangelization of common people in rural areas, an activity that involved monasteries. The Split Church Council of 1060 again condemned the Slavonic clergy's neglect of the Latin rite, forbidding them to be ordained if they had not learned Latin: "Henceforth we prohibit in all circumstances, under the threat of excommunication to promote to holy orders the Slavic clergy, unless they have learned the Latin letters, and from now on to subject a member of the clergy of any degree to secular authority or secular taxation:' 19 In both cases, the concern seemed to be not so much about the non-doctrinal use of Slavonic in the liturgy as about the "separatism" and isolation of the Slavonic clergy from the "Mother Church;' whose language was Latin. Despite the strict measures applied against them, the Slavonic Glagolites in Dalmatian dioceses managed to preserve their rite by addressing this concern in the centuries that followed. Unlike the advocates of the Slavonic rite in Moravia, the Croatian Glagolites did not wish for independence and authority but, on the contrary, sought integration into the Western Church. This is what allowed them to stay afloat amid the strong Latin current. They even engaged in political matters. First, they supported the anti-pope Honorius II-who was in favor of the Slavonic riteagainst Pope Alexander II-who opposed the Slavonic rite. Later, they participated in various territorial disputes, through which

39

Split Council of 1060 forbids ordination of the Slavic clergy

Glagolites & Rome

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Slavonic rite & monasticism

852: the earliest Benedictine monastery in Dalmatia

Benedictine Glagolites

Croatian Church Slavonic Rule of St. Benedict

they managed to gain privileges in exchange for supporting one side or the other. 20 But, whichever side they took, the Slavonic Glagolite clergy always remained loyal to Rome. Another factor that allowed the Slavonic rite to continue in Croatia-whereas elsewhere under Roman authority it was banned-was its general confinement to monastic and religious orders. Evidence of monks and hermits on the shores of the Adriatic dates to as early as the fourth century, long before the Croats came to this territoryY The first Western monastics to settle among the Croats were the monks that observed the rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547). In historiography, their arrival is usually connected to the end of Frankish rule and the emergence of the Croatian national state in the ninth century. The earliest Benedictine monastery that we know of in Dalmatia was founded in 852 by Prince Trpimir at Rizinice near the town of Solin, in the vicinity of Split. The Cistercians, who were even more rigorous in the application of the rules of St. Benedict, came to Croatia toward the end of the twelfth century. 22 Of the three religious orders that observed the Slavonic rite-the Benedictines, the Third Order of Franciscans, and the Pauline fathers-the Benedictines were the first monastic group to set foot in Croatia, and they played a key role in the early development of Croatian Glagolitic writing. Glagolitic stone inscriptions suggest that the Slavonic Glagolite monks may have adopted the rule of St. Benedict in the eleventh century. 23 Ivan Ostojic-the leading historian of Benedictine monasticism in Croatia-describes the second half of the eleventh century as the golden age of the Benedictine movement and attributes the "Benedictization" of the Slavonic Glagolites to this period. 24 Initially, the Slavonic monks probably adopted the Benedictine rule superficially to prove their conformity, but later, influenced by the Cluny reforms in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, they followed the rule more rigorously. 25 The Croatian Church Slavonic translation of the Regula Sancti Benedicti (Rule of St. Benedict)-the earliest vernacular translation of this document-shows that the introduction of and adherence to the rule was carried out comprehensively. The document was translated into Slavonic for those brethren who did not know Latin to ensure precise understanding of the guidelines. Attested in a fourteenth -century copy, it was most likely translated either in the eleventh century, according to OstojiC, or in the early twelfth century, according to Hercigonja. 26

40

Croatia

It is difficult to establish the home(s) of the first Slavonic Glagolite monks. The earliest Glagolitic monasteries were located on the northern and central Dalmatian coast and islands; most of them had already disappeared by the end of the medieval period. They were all male convents. Ivan OstojiC provides a list of at least five monasteries that indubitably used the Slavonic rite and Glagolitic script: St. Lucy (Lucija) in Jurandvor near Baska on the island of Krk; St. Nicholas (Nikola) in Otocac whose location has not been identified; St. Cosmas and Damian (Kuzma and Damjan) near Tkon on Pasman; St. John the Baptist (Ivan Krstitelj) in Povlja on the island of Brae; and St. Nicholas (Nikola) in OmiSalj on the island of Krk. 27 The Slavonic rite in Benedictine communities most likely predated the acceptance of the rule. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why the liturgy in the "vernacular" -as Church Slavonic must have been perceived by the Latinate clergy-could be used among those brethren who elsewhere in the Western Christian world defended ancient Latin traditions, preserved Roman classical monuments, spread Latin among the newly converted European peoples, and advocated for the establishment of Latin as the only language of the Catholic Church. Although the Glagolite monks did not abandon their Slavonic rite and script, they gradually established themselves as members of the Western monastic communities. In the wake of the Benedictines, the followers of St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) made their appearance in Croatia during the lifetime of their teacher. Quite remarkably, the members of the Third Order of St. Francis exclusively observed the Slavonic rite from the order's inception in Croatia. 28 Another religious order that used the rite in Slavonic, along with the Latin rite, was that of St. Paul the First Hermit. The Pauline fathers appeared in Croatia in the thirteenth century; by the second half of the fourteenth century, they were engaged in the production of Glagolitic manuscripts in substantial numbers, especially within the domain of the Frankopan estate, in the environs of Novi Vinodolski. Among the Glagolitic texts that came out of Pauline scriptoria of Novi are two Glagolitic breviaries from the second half of the fifteenth century, as well as several fifteenth- and sixteenth-century translations of the Vita sancti Pauli primi eremitae (The Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit), originally composed in Latin by St. Jerome. 29 The Latin clergy's criticism of the Glagolites at the Split Church Councils and the early emergence of the Slavonic translation of

41

earliest Glagolitic manasteries

Glagolites of the Third Order of St. Francis

Glagolites of St. Paul the First Hermit

Croatian Church Slavonic Life of St. Paul Glagolites' knowledge of Latin

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Baska Tablet

Valun Tablet

revision of liturgical books according to the Vulgate

the Regula Sancti Benedicti cause historians to assume that the Slavonic Glagolites generally did not know Latin. 30 This was definitely true during the earlier period, especially in the case of lay brothers and lower monastic ranks. The subsequent development of the Glagolites' literary activity, however, shows that Latin was not entirely a terra incognita for them. Unfortunately, traces of literary records from the period before the end of the twelfth century are fragmentary. 31 The attested stone inscriptions show that the Glagolites knew several graphic systems, or, more precisely, that the Glagolites were part of a culture that was bilingual and triscriptural. The famous Ba.Ska Tablet (Bascanska ploca) from the Benedictine Abbey of St. Lucy at Jurandvor near Baska on the island of Krk, which records in Glagolitic an important donation made by King Zvonimir (1075-1089) to the monastic community, includes several Latin letters (although some scholars see them as Cyrillic).32 Another famous biscriptural Latin-Glagolitic inscription is the eleventh-century Valun Tablet (Valunska ploca), a tombstone from the island of Cres. 33 The examination of the resources and production of the Glagolitic scriptoria suggests that the Glagolites not only possessed Latin manuscripts but also actively translated from them into Slavonic. By preserving and revising old canonical texts, as well as by translating new texts from Latin, the Croatian Glagolites created their own liturgical and textual repertoire, as well as their own version of Church Slavonic. 34 The oldest surviving codices date to the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The lack of pre-thirteenthcentury liturgical books in Glagolitic monastic archives, however, is understandable. By the beginning of the twelfth century the Glagolites were already engaged in revising the liturgical books that contained original translations from Greek by adapting them to the text in the Vulgate. 35 The Cluniac reforms, which demanded stricter observance of the rules, and the Roman Missal reform of the thirteenth century rendered the earlier versions outdated. 36 The fact that the Glagolites participated in the liturgical reforms of the Western Church by amending their books according to the Latin sources means that at least some of the Glagolites possessed good knowledge of Latin and competence in Latin biblical exegesis. Many of the Benedictine scriptoria in Zadar and Krk were polygraphic, producing books in Glagolitic, Latin, and even in Cyrillic. 37 One of the influences on the Croatian Glagolites' literary activity was the Abbey of Monte Cassino, which was founded by St. Bene-

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diet and the birthplace of the southern Italian school of Beneventan script. Since its establishment, the abbey had been closely associated with Byzantine monasticism and patronized by the court in Constantinople. 38 Paleographers believe that the angular letters that gradually developed from round Cyrillo-Methodian Glagolitic script in Croatian Glagolitic scriptoria were influenced by the angular contours of the Latin Beneventan letters (cf. fig. 2 and fig. 3). They point out that a similar change from round to angular letters was occurring in the Latin Beneventan script at that time. The beginning of this process is clearly seen in the Baska Tablet from the late eleventh century, on which the round Glagolitic letters already show a tendency toward angular contours. Decorations in Glagolitic illuminated manuscripts also demonstrate strong dependence on the Beneventan style and were often even made by nonGlagolite masters. Glagolitic scribes not only imitated decorations of the Latin manuscripts but also modified their own script to emulate the graphic shape and style of Beneventan letters. One of the most prominent imports is the letter M (m), which the Glagolite scribes borrowed from the Latin script to replace the cumbersome Glagolitic symbol 'ff€. Some Croatian Glagolitic codices even feature Latin initials, illuminated by Italian masters.39

Figure 3. First Vrbnik Breviary (late 13th c. or early 14th c.), Vrbnik Parish Archive, fol. 168, fragment

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Glagolitic & Beneventan scripts

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome Glagolites in Croatian cultural history

Bishop Philip of Senj asks pope for permission to use Slavonic in worship

Pope Innocent IV approves the Slavonic rite in 1248

Having matured with years, the Croatian Glagolite tradition became a unique cultural phenomenon. 40 The Croatian Glagolites were not mere monastics, engrossed in their books and devotion to God; their activities penetrated deep into the secular life of the people who surrounded them. They were writers, public scribes, educators of the masses, and spiritual mentors. To cite Eduard Hercigonja, an authority on medieval Croatian literature and culture, ''As a way of thinking, a philosophy of life and a spontaneous spiritual movement, the social projection of the daily, pastoral, catechistic and other pragmatic activities of Croatian Glagolitic priests (and also of their Moravian and Macedonian precursors), Glagolism came to define Glagolitic religious activities as a polyvalent function of the community in which the Glagolists lived and carried out their tasks:' 41 Although the law outlined in the tenth canon of the Split Council of 925 prohibited the ordination of the Slavonic priests, it also suggested the remedy-a supplication to the Apostolic Pontiff. Consequently, when in 1248, in an effort to resolve the controversy regarding the Slavonic Glagolitic rite in his diocese, the bishop of Senj (Segna), Philip, appealed to Pope Innocent IV for a special license to celebrate the Divine Office in Slavonic, he acted strictly according to canon law. Philip's letter of request has not survived,42 but the pope's rescript, dated 29 March 1248, conveys its content. Philip's petition, as the pope restates, explains that the Senj Glagolites use liturgy and letters that they believe they have received from St. Jerome: Your petition directed to us maintains that there are special letters in Slavonia, which the clergy of that land say they have from Blessed Jerome,

special letters in Slavonia from St. Jerome

and which they use in celebrating the Divine Offices. That you become like them and follow the custom of the land in which you are bishop, you have petitioned us for permission to celebrate the Divine Offices in these letters. Therefore, considering that the word is subject to the matter and not the matter to the word, we, by the authority of this letter, grant you the permission requested, only in those places where this custom is lawfully in use, and provided the meaning does not suffer from this difference in lettersY

The specific historical circumstances and impetus for Philip's petition are unknown, but it is possible to infer the following facts from the pope's reply. First, the application to the pope demonstrates that the Glagolites did not explicitly claim that Jerome himself invented their special alphabet. Rather, they believed that their

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letters were brought to them by Jerome ("littera specialis, quam illius terre clerici se habere a beato Jeronimo asserentes"). Second, the pope refers to the special letters that the Glagolites use to celebrate the Divine Office metonymically to indicate both the way of writing (Glagolitic letters) and the language and text of the liturgy itself (the Croatian variant of Church Slavonic). We can therefore conclude that Innocent identified the littera specialis with the language and textual corpus of the Slavonic rite. 44 Third, the pope granted license to the Slavonic Glagolitic rite and letters because he considered the "word" (verbal expression) subject to the "matter" (faith; "quod sermo rei, et non res est sermoni subiecta'') as long as the faith did not suffer from the change of the language (that is, letters). This important statement shows that Innocent approached the question of using Slavonic in the Roman rite in the spirit of the decisions made by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which allowed the use of various languages not only to instruct the congregation but also to celebrate the divine services and administer the church's sacraments. Finally, the rescript shows that Philip, not being a Glagolite himself, considered it important that the diocese of Senj should follow the custom of the Glagolite clergy and not ignore, condemn, or ban it. The pope acknowledged that the use of the Glagolites' letters was a lasting historical tradition, a custom (consuetudo) of the land that demanded respect. He therefore acknowledged the Roman Slavonic rite's importance and Philip's obligation as a bishop to support it. Thus, although one of the most important sources about the beginnings of Slavic letters, the Life of Constantine, clearly rejects St. Jerome's role in the establishment of the Slavonic rite, 45 it was nonetheless St. Jerome, a Latin Doctor of the Church, a biblical exegete, and a translator, who was chosen as the patron of the Glagolitic letters and the protector of the Roman Slavonic rite. But how did it happen that, among the Glagolites, Jerome usurped Cyril and Methodius's position as the author of the Slavonic rite and Glagolitic letters? The answer to this question, of course, depends upon the trajectory of the cult of Cyril and Methodius as Slavic apostles in Croatia.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius as Slavic Apostles in Croatia

Unfortunately, the body of surviving manuscripts is insufficient to reconstruct the beginnings of Sts. Cyril and Methodius's cult.

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''quod sermo rei, et non res est sermoni subiecta"

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Life of Constantine

Life of Method ius

liturgical texts

Little is known about the first several centuries of their veneration. Furthermore, as sanctity and missionary self-sacrifice were at the core of Cyril's and Methodius's cults as saints, the ecclesiastical texts devoted to them focused much more on their spiritual virtues than on their intellectual and cultural achievements. 46 Therefore, it is difficult to determine the extent to which their role as Slavic apostles, and more specifically as the inventors of the Slavic alphabet, contributed to the development of their cults during the first several centuries. The foundations of Sts. Cyril and Methodius's religious cult were already laid by the end of the ninth century, shortly after their death. At that time, the saints' vitae were written by their disciples in Moravia, and later their pictorial representations were placed in Cyril's burial placeY Methodius is thought to have contributed eight chapters to the Life of Constantine, the complete text of which was composed between 869 (Cyril's death) and 880, possibly in Greek, and then translated into Slavonic. Cyril's vita, although it incorporates a fair amount of secular elements, is, nevertheless, written as a hagiographic composition and celebrates above all his sanctity, divine gifts, and Christian virtues. The Life of Methodius was written between Methodius's death in 885 and Moravia's fall to the Hungarians in 905. Its main focus is the demonstration of Methodius's orthodoxy and holiness by relating the hardship and self-sacrifice of his work as a holy shepherd. Importantly, it documents the recognition and admiration of Methodius by secular and ecclesiastical hierarchs, especially by the pope. In both texts, Cyril, although a layman, is given precedence as far as the missionary work is concerned, while Methodius, although an archbishop, acts as Cyril's assistant and his successor. 48 For the sake of celebrating the saints' feast days, shorter liturgical texts were composed, consisting of encomia, services, and short Synaxarium readings. These were written partly in Moravia and partly in Bulgaria, where the missionaries found refuge after Methodius's death. 49 In Bulgaria, the cult of the holy brothers was developed in centers of Church Slavonic missionary and literary activity such as Preslav, and especially in Ohrid, the workplace of Clement, Cyril and Methodius's disciple. Clement of Ohrid is believed to be the author of the Encomia to Sts. Cyril and Methodius. In the Encomium to St. Cyril, as well as in the Office to St. Cyril, his invention of the Slavic letters is mentioned as only one of many accomplishments. He is presented as a universal figure of Christian

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oikoumene and, just like in his vita, his multinational missionary activity is emphasized and he is likened to the Apostle Paul. After Methodius's death, the Encomium to both holy brothers was composed, as well as a separate Office to St. Methodius. This Office, written by Cyril and Methodius's disciple Constantine of Preslav, praises the pastoral work of Methodius, linking him to Apostle Andronicus, the first bishop of Pannonia. 50 The oldest known iconographic representation of St. Cyril in a Slavic Orthodox church is an eleventh-century fresco in the Cathedral Church of Hagia Sophia in Ohrid. On the wall of the southern nave, St. Cyril is depicted along with St. Clement of Ohrid, his disciple. The Greek inscription identifies St. Cyril as "Agios Kyrillos didaskalos ton Slavon" -St. Cyril the teacher of the Slavs. Both figures are shown as bishops, clothed in episcopal garments. In his right hand, Cyril holds a copy of the Gospels. 51 The treatise On the Letters, written in Bulgaria as the polemical apologia of the Glagolitic letters (see chapter 1), is an important witness to the construction of St. Cyril's sanctity. But it is unclear how widely this treatise circulated in Bulgaria and in the Balkans generally, as its copies are mostly found in later Rus' manuscripts and no copies have been attested in any of the Croatian Glagolitic manuscripts. 52 In Bulgaria, where the cult of Cyril and Methodius was brought and cultivated by their disciples, the saints later became venerated as the patrons of the Slavic (Cyrillic) letters. The situation in Croatia, however, is not clear. First and foremost, due to the lack of preserved sources, the early stages of the cult of holy brothers in Croatia are obscure and, unfortunately, no definitive conclusions can be drawn. Documented evidence dates to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the date of the oldest attested Croatian Glagolitic missal, Illirico 4 ( 1317-1323) from the Vatican Library, which contains a calendar of the saints. 53 The calendar lists Cyril and Methodius's feast day on 14 February, the day of Cyril's death. The majority of other Glagolitic missals and breviaries follow the same practice, with only a few manuscripts having separate feast days for Cyril and Methodius. Based on the calendars alone, it is hard to determine the capacity in which Cyril was venerated by the Glagolites because his liturgical class is generally not specified, while Methodius's class is usually indicated as (bishop )-confessor. 54 Early calendars do not provide any information about the extent of veneration of the holy brothers among the Glagolites, nor do they

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iconographic representations

On the Letters

calendars of saints

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Office to Sts. Cyril & Methodius

Bosnian Glagolitic texts as sources of the Office

Slavonic Monastery in Prague as provenance of the Office

in any way indicate that Cyril and Methodius were venerated as the Slavic apostles or the patrons of the Slavic Glagolitic alphabet. Furthermore, no attested Glagolitic manuscripts contain the full text of the Life of Constantine or the Life of Methodius. Fragments from the Life of Constantine and the Encomium to St. Constantine, however, are included in the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius, which is found in the Glagolitic breviaries at the end of the fourteenth century. 55 Among the nine attested breviaries that contain the Office, scholars distinguish several textual types, depending on the features used for classification. 56 The saints' class in the Office is defined by the selection of biblical readings from the Common of saints, which is specific for each class. The oldest type of the Office, represented by the Ljubljana Breviary manuscript, number 161 (1396), has readings from the Common of Martyr, whereas other types follow the protocol for the Common of Confessor, in which both brothers are referred to as bishops (arhierei). 57 The fact that among the Croatian Glagolitic manuscripts the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius is found predominantly in Franciscan breviaries prompted Vjekoslav StefaniC to hypothesize that the Franciscans could have used one of the Bosnian Glagolitic texts as a source for their version of the breviary. 58 Unlike in Dalmatia and Croatia, where the cult of the holy brothers was compromised because Methodius came to be perceived as a heretic by church officials, liturgical books in Macedonia, Hum, and Bosnia retained the cult of Cyril and Methodius and could have provided models to the Croatian Franciscan Glagolites for their reform of liturgical books. The archaic language of the citations from the Life of Constantine and the Encomium led scholars to assume that the Office originated in tenth- or eleventh -century Bohemia. 59 Vojtech TkadlCik has suggested, however, that the Glagolitic Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius was composed around the 1360s or 1370s at the scriptorium of the Slavonic Monastery in Prague, where the Croatian Glagolites were then active. 60 His analysis convincingly demonstrates that the Office's language and rhetoric express the ideological and religious aspirations of the Prague Glagolites vis-a-vis the Czech cultural milieu. TkadlCik explains the archaic language in the citations by the fact that the Glagolites drew from old versions of the Life of Constantine and the Encomium. TkadlCik concludes that the foundation of the Benedictine Slavonic Monastery in Prague, which promoted the Roman Slavonic liturgy and writing, gave the

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formerly limited cult of Sts. Cyril and Methodius a new life both in Bohemia and in Croatia, where the text of the Office migrated at the end of the fourteenth century (also see chapter 3). Although the Office, as attested in the Ljubljana Breviary, recounts that Cyril "put together letters and began writing books" ("i abie sloziVb pismenae slova nacet besedu pisati"), it does not specify which letters-Cyrillic or Glagolitic. 61 This lack of name for a Slavic script was, in fact, not uncommon in pre-sixteenthcentury sources. In most regions, only one of the two Slavic scripts was in use and was therefore designated by its ethnic attribution as "the Slavic letters:' 62 Without historical context and manuscript evidence, it becomes especially difficult to determine which of the two alphabets is being referred to in the Office. It is likely, though, that among the Glagolite clergy the letters that Cyril "put together" were thought to be Cyrillic. As a matter of fact, in thirteenth-century Bohemia, where the Office most likely originated and where Cyril was said to have labored, the Slavonic liturgy was already associated with Cyrillic letters. Consequently, even though the Croatian liturgical books contained some information about Cyril and his letters, it remains unclear whether the Glagolites had sufficient basis to connect their own letters with those that St. Cyril invented. Interestingly, the Office shows a somewhat vexing neglect of Methodius. If we look at the contents of the Office in all its variants, it is mostly devoted to Cyril and mentions Methodius only in passing. The readings, taken from the Life of Constantine, focus on Cyril; hymns and antiphons are either devoted to Cyril or to both brothers. This negligence is to some extent corrected in a later version of the Office, attested in the Breviary of Priest Mavar (1460), where several antiphons are addressed specifically to Methodius. Yet remarkably, although in Priest Mavar's Breviary the brothers are called the "attendants of the Slavonic books" (knigb slovin'skihb sluziteli) and are said to have translated the Slavonic books and to have taught the Czech people, nowhere in the text of the Office does one find any explicit indication that St. Cyril invented the Slavonic letters. 63 The examination of the manuscript evidence leads us to the following conclusions. There are no Glagolitic sources that show the existence of a special cult of Cyril and Methodius as the creators of the Slavic letters among the Croatian Glagolites until the end of the fourteenth century, when the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius is first attested. 64 Even if the Office was known to the

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Office to Sts. Cyril & Methodius in the Ljubljana Breviary

Office to Sts. Cyril & Methodius in the Breviary of Priest Mavar

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

thirteenth-century Glagolites, it did not provide explicit evidence that the Slavonic letters that St. Cyril invented were Glagolitic (and not Cyrillic). That the Glagolites did not resort to the authority of St. Cyril, a scholar and a saint, in validating their letters to the pope may suggest that they were unaware, or at least unsure, of his authorship of their Glagolitic letters. Finally, the exclusion of Cyril and Methodius from the patrons of"the special letters in Slavonia'' may also mean that the story of St. Jerome's Slavic letters was not invented by the Glagolite monks. We will explore this idea further in the chapter.

Cyril and Methodius in Historical Sources

Methodius in Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum

While there are no early sources that explicitly identify Cyril and Methodius as the inventors of the Slavic alphabet, there are sources that view Methodius and his teaching in a very negative light. In 870, in order to support the legal claim of the Salzburg See on Pannonia, Adalwin, archbishop of Salzburg, gave orders to document the missionary activities of the Salzburg Church in these lands. 65 The treatise Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum (Conversion of the Bavarians and Carantanians) was written at approximately the same time that the Bavarian clergy imprisoned and tried Methodius. It is therefore possible that the Conversio was compiled as evidence against him. In this document, an anonymous writer (possibly, Adalwin himself?) presents Methodius as the inventor of the infamous Slavic letters and the propagator of questionable teaching and accuses him of stealing business from the Latin bishop Rihpald: He [Rihpald] remained there for a long time, performing his duties, just as his archbishop empowered him to do, until some Greek, Methodius by name, acting as a philosopher, 66 replaced the Latin language and Roman doctrine, as well as the Latin authoritative writings, with the recently invented Slavic letters, and in the eyes of all people in this region disparaged the Mass and the Gospel and the duties of those ecclesiastics, who celebrated them in Latin. He [Rihpald] was unable to tolerate this, so he returned back [to the Salzburg see]. 67

Rather than fading away, this unfavorable memory of Methodius soon resurfaced in Croatia. A number of documents associated with the Split Church Councils of925 and 1060 are recorded in the

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thirteenth-century Historia Salonitana (The History of the Bishops of Split) written by Archdeacon Thomas of Split. 68 Among these documents is the aforementioned letter of Pope John X to Archbishop John of Split about a dangerous "Methodii doctrina~' It exposes Methodius as a non-canonical self-proclaimed apostle and notes that his name was not found "in any book among the holy writers:'69 In agreement with its previous decisions, the Council of 1060 again condemned the Slavonic rite and pronounced Methodius a heretic:

Methodius in Historia Salonitana by Archdeacon Thomas of Split

Among these [i.e., the council of all prelates of Dalmatia and Croatia] it was decreed and established that no one in the future should presume to celebrate the divine mysteries in the Slavonic tongue, but only in Latin and Greek, and that neither should anyone of that language be elevated to holy orders. For they said that a certain heretic called Methodius had devised a Gothic alphabet, and he perniciously wrote a great deal of falsehood against the teachings of the Catholic faith in that same Slavonic language. On account of this, he is said to have been condemned by divine judgment to a swift end. 70

Another late twelfth- or early thirteenth -century source served as a reminder of Methodius's unwelcome appearance in the Balkans. A short document titled Excerptum de Karentanis (Excerpt from the Conversion of the Carantanians ), which is based on the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum but somewhat elaborated, was included in a manuscript, Codex Vindobonensis 423. This document calls Methodius a Slav, credits him with the invention of the Slavic alphabet, and states that he brought his teachings to Pannonia from the Dalmatian Coast:

Methodius in Excerptum de Karentanis

After this, in some time, there arrived a certain Slav from the land of Istria and Dalmatia, Methodius by name, who invented the Slavic letters and celebrated the Divine Office in Slavonic, and undermined the Latin language [literally: made Latin worthless]. Finally, he was driven away from the Carantanian lands, went to Moravia and there he rests in peace. 71

By the thirteenth century, the only areas within Roman jurisdiction where the Glagolitic Slavonic liturgy had survived were Istria and Dalmatia, hence the association of Methodius with this region. The "demotion" of Methodius, who was Greek, to Slavic ethnicity is a noteworthy feature of this document, for it shows that ecclesiastical issues were connected to ethnic identity.

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Methodius as a Slav

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Cyril & Methodius in the Chronicle of the Presbyter Diocleas

In all of these sources, it is Methodius and not Cyril who is charged with heretical teachings. In fact, there is no mention of Cyril in any of the early documents issued against the Slavonic rite. The only Croatian source that provides information about Cyril is the Chronicle of the Presbyter Diocleas (also known as Sclavorum regnum- The Kingdom of the Slavs), written in the twelfth century in what is today's Montenegro. 72 Yet the account that it provides is idiosyncratic. Attested only in later copies, the Chronicle is problematic as a historical source due to numerous errors and to the author's political agenda. The author, believed to be Bishop Grgur of Bar (1172-1196), relates a distorted story of the Moravian mission, moving it to the Croatian lands and to the kingdom of legendary king Svetopelek (the son of Zvonimir). 73 In this version, Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher baptized Svetopelek and his kingdom, invented the Slavic letters, translated all biblical books of the New and Old Testament from Greek into Slavonic, ordained priests, and established the liturgy according to the Greek rite. 74 The author does not mention Moravia or Rostislav or any other historically accurate figure. In Grgur's story Pope Stephen admires and supports Constantine and the Slavonic rite, while in fact the historic Pope Stephen V (885-891) banned the Slavonic liturgy and assisted in the restoration of the Frankish clergy in Moravia after Methodius's death in 885. The name of Methodius is not mentioned in connection with this affair, but later comes up in an unexpected way. The author relates that King Svetopelek adopted the "liberum Sclavorum, qui dicitur Method ius" (a Slavonic book, called "Methodius") as a book oflaws and customs for his state?5 It is believed that this liber Methodius probably stands for the Nornakanan, translated by Methodius into Church Slavonic and named in his honor. 76 As sources demonstrate, in thirteenth-century Dalmatia the events of the Moravian mission devolved into myth, while Methodius grew to be a persona non grata. Since no vitae of Cyril and Methodius are attested in Croatian Glagolitic codices, the only source of information about Cyril and his invention would have been the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius, which is found in manuscripts from the late fourteenth century. The lack of accurate information about Cyril in the Historia Salonitana and in the Chronicle of the Presbyter Diocleas suggests that the Office may not yet have circulated in Dalmatia in the thirteenth century. As for Methodius, his reputation as a heretic and an adversary of the Lat-

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in Church may have rendered him undesirable as a patron of Slavic letters and discouraged the Glagolites from evoking his name in relation to their rite. 77 This circumstance, of course, did not prevent the Slavic Orthodox churches of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, and Rus: where the Cyrillic script had long ago supplanted the original Glagolitic, from venerating Cyril and Methodius as the Slavic apostles and considering Cyril to be the inventor of the alphabet that was ultimately named in his honor. In Bohemia, too, the emergence of the Cyrillic letters was associated with Cyril. Thus, by the mid-thirteenth century, Orthodox Slavs had appropriated Cyril as the creator of the Cyrillic alphabet, leaving the Glagolitic letters without a patron. It was natural, then, that the Glagolites, having by that time adopted the monastic rules of the Western Church and the Roman liturgical protocol, would look for a patron among the Latins.

Cyrillic is accepted as the invention of St. Cyril

The Legend Is Created: Sources

Innocent IV's rescript of Philip's petition is the earliest known source documenting the belief that the Glagolitic letters (and liturgy) came from St. Jerome. The rescript is also the earliest citation of that belief as evidence of the sacred foundation of Slavonic writing and worship. Despite an obviously legendary origin, this theory proved remarkably enduring over the centuries and persisted even into the modern period. 78 Let us therefore review the premises and circumstances from which it emerged. According to Jerome's own testimony in De viris illustribus (On Famous Men), he was born in the mid-fourth century in the town of Strido(n), which was, according to his description, situated on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. In reality, little is known about the exact location of this town, which was entirely destroyed by the Goths in the late fourth century. An alternative theory argues that Jerome's hometown was Zrenj near Buzet in Istria. Indeed, a strong local devotion to St. Jerome existed among the Glagolites in Istria. A complete Mass devoted to St. Jerome and a special Holy Office celebrating the holiday of the Translation of Relics of St. Jerome are recorded only in a Glagolitic codex of Istrian provenance-the Ljubljana-Beram Breviary of 1396. 79 Jerome's name is also included in a late fourteenth-century Glagolitic amulet-invocation against the devil, which was written in Istria,

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Jerome on his birthplace in De viris illustribus Stridon

Zrenj in !stria

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Franciscans do not believe jerome created Slavic letters

Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister as a source of the theory

although the saint was not generally venerated as a popular protector against the deviLB0 Whether Stridon was in Dalmatia or !stria, the theory of Jerome's Slavic identity is of course unfounded: since historical sources and archeological evidence prove that the Slavs did not arrive in Dalmatia or !stria before the sixth century, Jerome could have had no connection either to Slavs or their writing. 81 This, however, was not necessarily obvious to the medieval Croatian clergy, whose awareness of changes on the ethno-linguistic map of the Balkans was lacking, and in whose eyes, therefore, Jerome was a Slav and a Croat. The traditional position of Croatian historiography is to view the emergence of the theory of Jerome's apostolic legacy among the Slavs as a deliberate attempt by the Croatian Glagolites to defend their rite by using Jerome as a shield against the Latin clergy's censure. Yet the conclusion that in 1248 the Glagolites fabricated this legend is extrapolated by means oflogical reasoning, not from historical sources. The latter may tell a different story, namely that the legend of special letters that Jerome had devised for the Slavs did not necessarily originate with the Glagolites. Not all Glagolite communities shared the belief in Jerome's letters. For example, according to the testimony of the Sibenik historian Dinko Zavorovic (ca. 1540-1608), initially the Franciscan Glagolites did not accept the belief that Jerome had created their letters. 82 But eventually, it seems, they found the theory to be of some credence. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Franciscan fathers already included Jerome in their midst: in a letter of petition to the Holy See, they name both Jerome and Cyril as patrons of the Slavonic rite. 83 More important, the hypothesis of the leading role of the Glagolite monasteries in myth-making is compromised by the fact that the premise for the myth seems to borrow from Latin sources, which lie outside of the strictly monastic literature of the Slavonicreading Glagolites. The earliest source is likely the Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister, a notoriously perplexing treatise by an as-of-yet unidentified author posing as St. Jerome. 84 1he author presents his treatise as an abridged and explicated edition of the account of the lands and peoples that Aethicus Ister, a Scythian philosopher and cosmographer of noble birth, had encountered during his travels. This remarkable work is a bit of a literary puzzle, variously dated and attributed. 85 While Jerome's alleged authorship may have been accepted until the nineteenth century, twentieth-century schol-

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arship has proven that Jerome cannot have been the author. The Cosmographia's Latin has been found too flawed for, and stylistically uncharacteristic of, Jerome, whereas its numerous literary references have been linked to later sources (such as, for example, Isidore of Seville, Avitus, and Pseudo-Methodius). 86 Although it is impossible to identify the author or even determine his ethnic identity and native language, analysis of the Cosmographia's language, sources, and manuscript evidence leads to several hypotheses. The author could have been educated in Merovingian Gaul or northern Italy, as well as in Ireland (where he became acquainted with the writings of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus) and England (where he may have spent some time at Canterbury and Malmesbury)Y After his travels he returned to the continent where he composed his treatise soon after 727. 88 Whoever the real writer of the Cosmographia was, it is clear that Aethicus is an imaginary character and Jerome a fictitious author. The Cosmographia is described by specialists as a work of fiction, based on the literary technique of a "found work;' while its genre has been characterized as a "philosophical novel" and a "travel novel:' 89 It opens with a short cosmographical section and proceeds as Aethicus's travelogue through various parts of northern, central, and eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 90 Its tall tales, fanciful accounts of non -existing lands and peoples, and chronological incongruity have led scholars to call it a "literary forgery;' a work of"Schwindelliteratur;' a "Menippaean satire;' and a "farrago of science fiction:' 91 At the end of the Cosmographia, the author includes "the alphabet of Aethicus;' which contributes to the fantastic nature of the treatise. 92 The illustrations in the extant manuscripts of the Cosmographia show the shapes and names of 22 letters, which do not correspond to any known system of writing (see fig. 4). 93 It remains to be explained how a fictional and even satirical work, such as the Cosmographia is believed to have been, could have become a source of information to the Benedictine scholar and educator, and archbishop of Mainz, Rabanus Maurus (776-856). Rabanus incorporated the account of Aethicus's letters in his treatise De inventione linguarum (On the Invention of Writing), a curiously short discourse on several writing systems and their origins, with no claim to any thoroughness. 94 Along with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin letters and Germanic runes, Rabanus describes the letters of Aethicus (fig. 5), stating:

55

alphabet of Aethicus

alphabet of Aethicus in Rabanus Maurus's De inventione linguarum

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Figure 4. Alphabet of Aethicus. Pseudo-Jerome, Aethicus Ister's Cosmographia

alamon.

beeba.

chain.

~~btyc1d

delfoi.

ell'oll1u.

fonelhu.

prfoa. .._.

zyeif£1.\g,3h}l

i(}> '-k. 1 A mAnfio~p~q9 rcxx !olio.

bltu.

lheotlmo.. aptJaot.

leblfo.

req.

mablbi. aabalec:h. ozeebl. chorizech. pblliria. ulallli. illalld.

yrchoim.

aela.

t:trei)u'1:YJQ:X·

Figure 5. Alphabet of Aethicus. Rabanus Maurus, De inventione linguarum

We have also discovered the letters of Aethicus, philosopher and cosmographer of Scythian nationality and noble birth, which the venerable Jerome, priest, brought all the way to us, explaining [them] in his own

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words. Since he highly appreciated his [Aethicus's]learning and activity, he also wished to make his letters known. And if we are thus far mistaken in these letters, and if we will make mistakes elsewhere, you will correct us. 95

If indeed the Cosmographia was written as a work of fiction and was received as such by its readers, it is surprising that the information about the imaginary alphabet of Aethicus was taken seriously by Rabanus. Does this mean that he did not understand that it was fictitious? To Rabanus's credit, it should be noted that at least he had certain doubts about the reliability of this information, which he elegantly expressed in his closing remark. Despite Rabanus's doubts about the authenticity of the litterae Aethici, this mystifying alphabet could have inspired some of his readers to link it with the Slavic alphabet of the Glagolites. The nationality of Aethicus was essential. As a Scythian and native of the !striae regia (region of Istria), he was considered to have been a Slav by medieval scholars who had heard about Scythians from ancient authors and erroneously equated them with Slavs. 96 It was logical, therefore, that Jerome, also believed to have been a Slav by virtue of his birthplace, would be interested in Aethicus's letters and include them in his work "explaining [them] in his own words:' Although the symbols depicted in the Cosmographia and in De inventione linguarum were not at all similar to the Glagolitic letters, either in shape or in name, they seem to have inspired the theory that the Glagolites received their writing from St. Jerome. 97 The aforementioned Latin sources suggest that the theory of Jerome's Slavic alphabet originated not among the Glagolites but among the Latin clergy who, as Bishop Philip of Senj must have been, were sympathetically inclined toward the Dalmatian Slavonic monasteries. 98 Having found mention of Aethicus's letters, deciphered and explained by Jerome, the Latin clerics could easily conclude that these were the special letters of their Croatian Slavonic fellow-monks. It is possible that they never even bothered to compare Aethicus's letters in the Cosmographia and De inventione linguarum with those of the Glagolites, and that the Glagolites embraced this theory without critically examining the sources upon which their Latin brethren relied. It should be noted that there are no explicit references to Rabanus's treatise or to Aethicus's alphabet in any of the earliest historical documents that mention the Glagolites' belief that they received their letters from Jerome. It is

57

Aethicus the Scythian

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

unknown when-prior to 1248-this belief emerged and whether Philip was the first to express it officially.

The Legend Is Created: Historical Setting

Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 on rites in different languages

If we follow the generally accepted "conspiracy theory" that the Glagolites devised the legend of Jerome's Slavic alphabet for the purpose of validating their rite, we should question whether the political climate of the Roman curia was such that the claim would have any weight. Philip does not support the association between "the special letters in Slavonia" and Jerome with any solid evidence beyond the fact that it is a belief and a custom of the Glagolitic clergy. If deemed controversial, the accuracy of that claim could have been challenged by the Roman curia. Therefore, it is more likely that Philip referred to Jerome not so much to validate the Slavonic rite of the Glagolites as to describe them as proper Catholics, loyal to the pope and to the Western "Mother Church:' Furthermore, was it even necessary to defend the Slavonic rite of the Glagolite monks, who had already been observing it with the permission, albeit restrictive, of the Split Council of 925, which allowed it to be observed in monasteries? A close reading of the pope's rescript to Philip suggests that the bishop of Senj could have been asking for authorization to observe the Slavonic rite at his own cathedral church and that in so doing he commended the customs of the local Glagolites to strengthen his case. Stjepan Damjanovic, following a revised reading and interpretation of the papal rescript by Mile BogoviC, has argued that Philip's request concerned the whole diocese and that the papal privilegium was given to him personally as a bishop of Senj. 99 1he approval of the Slavonic liturgy by the pope could also be viewed within the context of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. 100 The ninth canon (De diversis ritibus in eadem fide [On Different Rites within the Same Faith]) issued by the Council calls for the adequate provision of priests capable of ministering to Christians of different languages and rites by celebrating the divine services, administering the church's sacraments, and instructing them in their mother tongue: Since in many places peoples of different languages live within the same city or diocese, having one faith but different rites and customs, we therefore

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strictly order bishops of such cities and dioceses to provide suitable men who will do the following in the various rites and languages: celebrate the divine services for them, administer the church's sacraments, and instruct them by word and example. 101

The expression "sermo rei et non res sermoni subjecta" (the word is subject to the matter and not the matter to the word) in Innocent's decretal demonstrates that he considered the canon of liturgy more important than its language. 102 Although the Glagolites continued to celebrate the liturgy in Slavonic (despite the limitations of the Split Councils of 925 and 1060 that forbade ordination of the Slavonic-ministering priests), they eagerly interacted with the Latin ecclesiastical communities. They adhered to the monastic rules of the Western Church and participated in liturgical reforms. By accepting the maker of the Vulgate Bible as their patron, the Glagolites simply reiterated their loyalty to Rome. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that the Roman curia had a pragmatic interest in approving the Slavonic rite as a potential strategy to attract other Slavs to the Roman Church. Eduard Hercigonja links papal good graces toward the Glagolites with Rome's effort to bring the heterodox Bosnian Church, which also used Slavonic in liturgy, back into the fold. 103 Indeed, the Glagolites who used the Slavic language in the Roman rite could be used as an attractive bait by Rome as it sought to acquire new devotees among the Slavs. In this respect, it is noteworthy that the terms "Sclavi" and "Sclavonia'' were used in the 1248 papal letter rather than "Croats" and "Croatia'' or "Dalmatia:' Other contemporaneous Latin sources show that the geographical term "Slavonia'' also referred to Bosnia. 11 Furthermore, Innocent's liberal views on the language and rite of the liturgy had already manifested themselves two years prior, in 1246, when he was prepared to allow the GreekOrthodox Slavonic rite in the Church of the Rus' principality of Galicia (Halych) if the Galician prince Danilo Romanovich was willing to accept the jurisdiction of the Apostolic See. 105 Innocent's rescript of 1248 was the third official papal documentafter Hadrian II's in 868 and John VIII's in 880-to approve the Slavonic rite. 106 Whether inspired by belief in the connection between St. Jerome and the Slavonic rite or for other reasons, Pope Innocent IV was apparently inclined to patronize the Croatian Glagolites. Four years later, in 1252, he granted the appeal of Bishop Fructuosus )4

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"sermo rei et non res sermoni subjecta"

Rome & the Bosnian

Church

Rome & Orthodox Rus'

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome Innocent allows the Slavonic rite in OmiSalj

of Krk and allowed the Benedictines of the Abbey of St. Nicholas (St. Nikola) in OmiSalj to use Slavonic: Innocent the bishop, etc., to the Venerable Father Fructuosus, the bishop of Krk, etc. Our beloved sons, abbot and the convent of St. Nicholas of Omisalj of the order of St. Benedict of your diocese, humbly beseeched us that we might care to give them permission to celebrate the Divine Office in the Slavic letters following the rite of the Roman Church, as their predecessors had been accustomed to do, since they are Slavs and have Slavic letters and cannot learn the Latin letters. Having full confidence in God in your circumspection, we permit you by the authority of the present letter to act on this as you see expedient. 107

Notably, the document does not refer to Jerome but rather to the observance of the Roman rite ("secundum ritum ecclesie Romane") and to the long-standing tradition of the Glagolites to justify the granting of the request. The fact that Innocent did not mention the authority of Jerome in this document, which was issued only four years after he had cited Jerome while granting a similar permission to the Senj Glagolites, is perplexing. It may indicate that Fructuosus omitted Jerome's name from his request because he either did not know about this belief, or he did not consider its mention important or essential. Whether the theory of St. Jerome's Slavic letters originated among the Glagolite or the Latinate clergy, the Roman curia never challenged it and the Glagolites never found it necessary to either defend or contradict this belief. 108 On the contrary, the popes several times confirmed their privileges and acknowledged St. Jerome's authorship of the Slavonic rite. One of these pontiffs was Eugene IV, who also signed a church union at the Council of Florence. 109

"Letters alone in books renew the past"

Although in 1248 it was claimed only that the special letters of the Glagolite monks were received from St. Jerome, the legend grew, and gradually Jerome became acknowledged as the inventor of the Slavic alphabet and the translator of the Mass into Slavonic. It is not surprising that the creation of a new alphabet would then have been associated with strictly ecclesiastical needs, specifically with the apostolic purpose. Indeed, why would new letters be

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used if not to record the Divine Office in a new language? And who better to create them than the translator of the Vulgate? The medieval idea of Holy Scripture assumed the a priori authority of writing as God's instrument. This is reflected in the terms Scriptura and Biblia- "writing, way of writing;' and "books, scrolls:' Medieval grammatical theory acknowledged the primacy of writing over speech and considered writing the foundation of knowledge and true faith because it was through writing that these were preserved. 110 The sacralizing of writing is the theme of Rabanus Maurus's poem "Ad Eigilum de libra quem scripsit" ("To Eigil, On the Book He Wrote"):

Medieval theory on writing

Letters alone escape ruin and ward off death, Letters alone in books renew the past. Indeed God's finger carved letters on suitable rock When He gave the law to his people: These letters disclose all that is in the world, Has been and may chance appear in the future. 111

In the poem Rabanus uses the word grammata, a Greek equivalent of litterae. In Greek the word grammata (plural of gramma) referred both to the letters of the alphabet and to writings in general, as well as to knowledge and learning. Since the medieval concept of letters also included the body of written texts, it is understandable why the Slavonic liturgy, which was believed to be written with letters of his making, was attributed to Jerome. The medieval veneration of letters was conducive to the emergence of numerous legendary accounts about inventors of alphabets. In the tradition of Pentecost, these legends associated the origin of writing with mysterious and supernatural events, which underlined letters' sacred origin and function. 112 By the thirteenth century, Cyrillic had been accepted as a divinely inspired creation of St. Cyril in the Slavic Orthodox churches, whereas in Dalmatia, Glagolitic letters were left without a patron. The establishment of their sacred origin must have been seen as necessary for the prestige of the Roman Slavonic rite. Because the medieval mind associated letters with Scripture, St. Jerome's reputation as the translator of the Vulgate made him perfect for the role of inventor of the Glagolitic alphabet and of the Roman Slavonic rite. Jerome's Christian authority, constructed in late antiquity around (then) vernacular Latinity, was once again called upon to sanction what were

61

Jerome as patron of vernacular letters

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

roots of the legend among the Latin clergy

perceived as vernacular Slavic translations. Since then, St. Jerome's name has become closely connected with Croatian Glagolitic writing, as many linguistic and encyclopedic treatises from the Renaissance until the eighteenth century demonstrate. It has long been assumed that in 1248 the Croatian Glagolites intentionally devised the legend of Jerome's invention of Slavic letters in order to protect themselves from the Latin clergy's disapproval. This view has been taken for granted by generations of scholars, and it has migrated from textbook to textbook without adequate analysis. Common sense would seem to support this assumption: since, as is now known, Jerome was not a Slav and could not have invented the Slavic alphabet, clearly the Glagolites must have invented the legend. Yet analysis of the historical circumstances surrounding the pope's confirmation of the Slavonic rite, as well as examination of the possible sources of the legend, demonstrates that Jerome's role as patron of the Slavic letters was as useful to the Roman curia as it was to the Croatian Glagolites, and that this belief was cultivated for the purpose of incorporating the Glagolitic communities into the Roman Church. If indeed the belief that Jerome had created the Glagolitic alphabet was initially inspired by Pseudo-Jerome's Cosmographia and Rabanus Maurus's treatise De inventione linguarum, then its roots are more likely to be found among the Latin clergy in Dalmatia or even Rome. The decision of the Roman curia to make the Slavonic rite official under the aegis of St. Jerome did, however, coincide with the needs of the Glagolites, who seemed to be without a patron saint. Endorsed by St. Jerome's authority, the Glagolites created a religious practice that was unique in the medieval Catholic world because it reconciled the Church Slavonic language, which was also used in the Orthodox Church, with the dogma and ecclesiology of Western Christianity. Little by little, the Glagolite men of letters modified their liturgical books that had retained the original translations from the Cyrilla-Methodian period according to Latin models. They enlivened the originally bookish Church Slavonic language with vernacular elements, transforming it into a distinct Croatian variant. Yet their liturgical language was still relatively close to other Slavic vernaculars, and eventually this linguistic affinity attracted even the attention of the Orthodox Slavs. The common Roman rite also made the letters and customs of the Glagolites attractive to other Catholic Slavs, who saw in them an ancient and distinguished tradition.

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3 Bohemia Imperial Aspirations

Jeronimus beatus, Slavus gloriosus. (Blessed Jerome, the glorious Slav.) -John Hus, Sermones

T

The Roman Slavonic Rite in Prague

he Roman Slavonic rite did not pass unnoticed by the Czech king and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1346-1378), who modeled his capital city of Prague on Rome, collecting every available relic and populating his capital with representatives of every ecclesiastical rite and order. 1 Charles became acquainted with the customs of the Glagolite monks in 1337, when, as margrave of Moravia, he traveled through the Dalmatian coast and the diocese of Senj. 2 In the spring of 1346, while visiting his mentor and benefactor Pope Clement VI (1342-1352) in Avignon to discuss his election as the Roman emperor, Charles informed the pope about the Slavonic rite and the hardship that the Slavonic monks in Dalmatia experienced because of the wars between Venice and Louis I, the king of Hungary and Croatia. It was most likely then that Charles asked Clement for permission to relocate some of the Benedictine Glagolite monks, as well as the Glagolites from other orders, to Bohemia. Unfortunately, the only testimony of Charles's application is the papal rescript, written in Avignon on 9 May 1346 and addressed to Prague Archbishop Ernest (Arnost) of Pardubice (1344-1364). Close reading of this document suggests that Charles's plans to introduce the Slavonic

Charles IV invites the Glagolites to Prague

Clement VI authorizes Archbishop Ernest to provide a house for the Croatian Glagolites in Bohemia

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

rite in Bohemia were quite ambitious and may have even included conducting missionary activity:

Charles informs Innocent about the Glagolite monks & their troubles

Slavic-speaking schismatics & pagans in & near Bohemia may benefit from the Slavonic rite

Bishop Clement, servant of the Lord's servants, [sends] to the venerable brother, the archbishop of Prague, his greetings and apostolic benediction. Charles, margrave of Moravia, dear son and noble man, has pointed out to us that, in Slavonia and some other regions in [the sphere of] the Slavic language, the Mass and the other canonical hours for the praise of Christ are read and sung as well in their vernacular with permission and by the leave of the Apostolic See, and that many monasteries and seats of the black monks of Saint Benedict and of other orders in those regions, who have preserved religious rites of this type from the ancient custom up till today, have been destroyed and annihilated because of the battles and wars in those regions, and that for this reason the monks and brothers of those monasteries and seats mentioned, being unable to benefit either God or Christian men, and unable even to hold on to their monasteries and lands suitably, are left vagabond. For this reason divine worship and the Christian faith are diminishing in these regions. And since, moreover, just as his notification added, there are within the boundaries and around the lands of the kingdom of Bohemia, which originate from the same vernacular tongue, many who are schismatic and faithless, who, when the Holy Scripture is read, set forth or preached to them in Latin, are neither willing to understand it, nor able to be readily converted to Christianity, and since the aforementioned monks and brothers, common preachers, who keep the aforesaid rite, are recognized in the said kingdom and its boundaries as necessary to the highest degree and useful for the praise of God and the spread of Christian faith, that same margrave humbly requested from us that we deign to allow these brothers and religious devotees, to choose locations in the kingdom of Bohemia and within the aforementioned boundaries, in and around which they can stand and put forth the word of God, preach, and celebrate the Mass in accordance with the rite and custom of these lands, that we deign to concede this permission to them on special courtesy. We, therefore, having no knowledge of the aforesaid, [defer] to your fraternity, in which we have full faith in the Lord, that by our authority you grant these monks-either the brothers of the said St. Benedict or of some other order, that has been approved by the same [Apostolic] seefull and free opportunity to receive one location in the said kingdom or within its boundaries, in which they would be able to observe the said rite, which has been previously approved by the [Apostolic] see, with the condition, however, that the right of the parochial church of the place

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Bohemia

that, as has been said, the aforementioned monks or brothers (or any other foreigners) are to receive, is maintained in all respects. 3

The papal letter primarily discusses the rationale for, and the preconditions of, the establishment of a monastery with the Slavonic rite in Bohemia, which seems to have been suggested by Charles himself, as Clement claimed to have no knowledge of the matter ("Nos igitur de predictis noticiarn non habentes"). The pope defers to Charles when he states that the Croatian Glagolite monks would contribute to the strengthening of faith by proselytizing to numerous Slavic-speaking heretics and pagans who allegedly resided in Bohemia and its surroundings. This somewhat vague and enterprising claim of Charles has been varyingly interpreted by scholars. Some hypothesize that Charles intended for the Glagolites to engage in missionary work among Bohemia's pagan and non-Catholic neighbors-the Balts and the Orthodox Slavs. 4 Indeed, Charles was a zealous proponent of a church union, and it is possible that he viewed the Roman Slavonic rite of the Glagolites as a tool for uniting the Slavic Western and Eastern churches. The exploits in Lithuania of the Czech Franciscan friars Ulrich and Martin, who were martyred there in the 1340s as a result of their missionary activities, lend plausibility to this hypothesis. 5 Alternatively, it has been proposed that Charles hoped to ground the Roman Slavonic rite in Bohemia in order to use it as an antidote against the Bogornil heresy, which had spread from Bulgaria where it had gained popularity owing to the fact that the rite was in a Slavic tongue. 6 Others believe that the idea of founding a Slavonic monastery in Bohemia carne from Clement VI, who hoped that the Roman Slavonic rite of the Croatian Glagolites would help him to negotiate a union with the Serbs. According to this hypothesis, Charles was inspired by and acted on behalf of the Roman curia. 7 Yet another assumption is that the Croatian Glagolites were invited in order to educate the Czechs in Church Slavonic and the Glagolitic script. 8 Whether the proposed hypotheses and conjectures hit the mark or not, Clement's rescript shows that Charles appreciated the rite of the Croatian Glagolites for its linguistic accessibility and found it potentially beneficial for apostolic and catechetical purposes. This expectation is also evident in an epistle that Charles wrote from Pisa on 19 February 1355 to the Serbian tsar Stefan Dusan ( 1331-1355) regarding a possible union between the Serbian and Roman churches. In his note of encouragement to Dusan, Charles

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Charles's motives for inviting the Glagolites

Czech missionaries Ulrich & Martin in Lithuania

the role of Clement VI

Glagolites as educators

Charles encourages Stefan Dusan to accept a church union

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

"nobilis slavici idiomatis participatio"

referred to the Slavs' unique privilege and advantage in being able to celebrate the liturgy in their native language even in the Western Church and pointed out that "the noble Slavic language" (nobilis slavici idiomatis participatio) would help Serbian clergy to be accepted into the bosom of the Western Church because: the ceremonies of the Holy Mass and the praise of the Divine Offices are quite freely celebrated in the eminent and native tongue, and, on that same note, the pontifices, prelates, and clergy of your kingdom will be able to be restored easily by our mediation into the favor of our church, where they are allowed by a certain singular privilege, unlike other nations, to be engaged in divine celebrations in the aforementioned Slavic vernacular language. 9

Charles establishes the Slavonic Monastery as tribute to St. Jerome

The negotiations, however, fell through and the union never took place due to Dusan's death shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, the scarcity and inconsistency of sources do not definitively support any of these assumptions. Moreover, Charles's initial plan for the introduction of the Slavonic rite in Bohemia, as construed from Clement's letter, could have differed significantly from its subsequent realization. Since Clement VI did not seem to be taken with Charles's plan for extensive implantation of the Glagolite Slavonic rite in Bohemia and its environs, it is perhaps fruitless to conjecture what Charles's initial intention had been. In addressing Charles's request, which implied anumber of foundations, Clement allowed only one monastery, and the Slavonic rite was restricted to internal use. The conditions set up by Clement, therefore, do not appear to be ideal for missionary and catechetical work. Even more perplexing is the fact that the foundation charter for the Glagolitic monastery that Charles issued on 21 November 1347 in Nuremberg says nothing about any proselytizing mission. It declares the commemoration of St. Jerome as an architect of the Slavic traditions to be the foremost objective of the Slavonic Benedictines in Prague: Not long ago· our most holy Father, Pope Clement VI, at our urging and request, wished to entrust venerable Ernest, the first archbishop of Prague and our dearest counselor with the task of establishing and by the apostolic authority overseeing in our city of Prague a monastery with convent and cloister of the Order of Saint Benedict, with an abbot and

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Bohemia

brethren to be established there, who, serving the Lord, will be obligated in the future to celebrate the Divine Office only in the Slavic tongue, on account of their reverence for and memory of Blessed jerome, most glorious confessor, Stridon's illustrious doctor and distinguished translator and exegete of the Holy Scripture from Hebrew into Latin and Slavic, since indeed from it the Slavic language of our own kingdom of Bohemia had its genesis and developed. In response to this we have thought it necessary that a monastery be constructed and erected at the parochial church of the martyrs Sts. Cosmas and Damian situated in a suburb of our aforementioned city of Prague, in Podskali between Vysehrad and Zderaz (the right of patronage of which used to belong to the church

Jerome translated the Bible from Hebrew into Latin and Slavic

parochial church of Sts. Cosmas & Damian in Podskali

at Vysehrad), with worthy restitution and amends for the right of patronage of said parochial church made through our agency to the aforesaid church at Vysehrad. And we request and urge the aforementioned archbishop attentively in accordance with the commission made for him by the Apostolic See that said parochial church be erected and even elevated into said convent-cloister monastery in honor of the Lord and his mother, most blessed Virgin Mary, as well as in honor of these glorious men: the aforesaid Jerome, Cyril, Methodius, Adalbert, and Procopius, patrons of the aforementioned kingdom of Bohemia, martyrs, and confessors; and, in this matter/there ... by the aforementioned authority, an

Sts. Jerome, Cyril, Methodius, Adalbert, & Procopius-patron saints

abbot and brethren [will be appointed], who (under the rule and custom of the Order of St. Benedict, to whom the glorious way of life of the aforementioned saints gave beauty and splendor during their times, which it still retains through the grace of God), in the Slavic language only, for future and all times would be able by serving the Lord to celebrate the Divine Office, both nightly and daily, in memory and reverence of the aforesaid most blessed Jerome, so that he is as glorious and his most deserving memory is as famous in the said kingdom as among his own people and homeland. 10

The foundation charter designates the site (the parochial church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian) and the purpose of the new monastery (celebrating the memory of St. Jerome and that of Sts. Cyril, Methodius, Adalbert, and Procopius) and formally proclaims a particular connection between St. Jerome and Bohemia. In his line of reasoning, Charles acted as a true historical linguist. By drawing on the comprehensibility of the Croatian version of Church Slavonic to a Czech speaker, Charles claims a genetic relationship between the Slavic language of Jerome that was employed by the Croatian

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Charles claims genetic relationship between Czech & Croatian

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

John of Holesov, Expositio cantici sancti Adalberti, a commentary on "Hospodine, pomiluj ny"

Czech originates from Croatian

Dalimil Chronicle & the origin of the Czechs from the Croats

Croatian Benedictines arrive from the Monastery of Sts. Cosmas & Damian near Tkon on Pasman

Glagolites in their rite and the Slavic language of the kingdom of Bohemia ("slavonica nostri regni Boemie ydioma"), recognizing the seniority of Croatian but identifying both languages as Slavic. 11 The same idea of a linguistic kinship between Czech and Croatian is expressed in a work by the Bfevnov Benedictine John of Holesov, the Expositio cantici sancti Adalberti Hospodine, pomiluj ny (Commentary to the Song 'Hospodine, pomiluj ny' by St. Adalbert), a treatise dated from 1397, on the oldest Czech religious hymn "Hospodine, pomiluj ny" ("Lord, Have Mercy on Us"). 12 In this treatise, John of Hole5ov names St. Adalbert as author of the hymn and examines its content in scholastic terms. 13 He offers linguistic proof of the genetic relationship between Czech and Croatian by noting that the hymn contains many Croatian words; he argues that the Czech people and their language are therefore Croatian in origin: "It should be known, first, that we, Bohemians, by origin and language initially descend from the Croats, as our chronicles relate and testify, and therefore our Bohemian language by its origin is the Croatian language.[ ... ] And he who wishes may experience this in Prague at the house of the Slavs:'' 4 The linguistic evidence, in fact, agreed with the historiography of that time: the kinship between the Czechs and the Croats was recorded in an early fourteenth-century rhymed chronicle written in Czech by an anonymous author (ascribed to one Dalimil). The Dalimil Chronicle tells the story of a certain "Czech'' (Cech) from the "land named Croatia'' (zemie gyez charwatczy geft gmie), who committed a murder and was forced to leave his native country with his family and six brothers and wandered away to seek another home. He found it in the shadow of the mountain Rip, which marked the beginning of the Czech state. 15 Charles concludes his charter by stressing that the foundation of the Slavonic Monastery in Prague will ensure proper veneration and celebration of St. Jerome in Bohemia "as among his own people and homeland" (velut inter gentem suam et patriam), once again underlining the connection between the Czechs and the Croats. 16 After all, the Croatian Glagolites were the only custodians of the earliest native Slavic Christian traditions who stayed faithful to the Western Church and the Apostolic Pontiff. In 1348, the Croatian Benedictine monks finally arrived in Prague. Unfortunately, no unequivocal evidence regarding the former home of the Croatian monks survives, although historiographic literature has adopted as certain the hypothesis of

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Bohemia

FrantiSek Pechuska that they came from the Monastery of Sts. Cosmas and Damian near Tkon on the island of Pasman, in Zadar diocese, which had been destroyed by the Venetians in a war with Louis I, king of Hungary and Croatia. 17 They settled at the parochial Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, located in the neighborhood of Podskali, "between Zderaz and Vysehrad;' which was then in the jurisdiction of the Vysehrad collegiate chapter church of Sts. Peter and Paul (see map 2). 18 The association with the Vysehrad Castle, the historical seat of the first Premyslid dynasty, served as an additional reminder of the future Slavonic Monastery's connection to Czech Christianity's roots. 19 In terms of practical considerations, the neighborhood was also well suited for a monastery using the Slavonic rite. Situated on the right bank of the Vltava below the Old Town, Podskali was inhabited mostly by ethnic Czechs, who were likely to find the liturgy in an understandable Slavic language to be attractive and who would therefore be loyal supporters of the monastery. 20 In a charter of 14 December 1348, Archbishop Ernest of Pardubice elevated the status of the church from parochial to monastic and transferred the parochial rights to the neighboring St. Nicholas Church to comply with Clement's directions. 21 The legendary rite of the Slavonic Monastery was soon marked with ecclesiastic distinction. On 3 February 1350, in response to Charles's request, Clement VI granted the abbot of the Slavonic Monastery and his successors the privilege of wearing pontifical insignia. 22 While this distinction was not uncommon in the Western Church, very few monasteries in Bohemia enjoyed it before the end of the fourteenth century, when the wearing of pontifical insignia by abbots became less unique. 23 This ceremonial privilege put the Slavonic Monastery on par with the most celebrated Bohemian monasteries, such as the oldest Premonstratensian Abbey at Strahov, whose abbot Peter II received the honor of pontificalia from Pope John XXII in the early 1340s, as well as one of the oldest and most renowned Benedictine abbeys at Kladruby, whose abbot received the honor of pontificalia from Clement VI in 1347, both through Charles IV's intercession. 24 It took years of administrative arrangements, construction, and decoration to realize Charles's grandly conceived and generously funded project. Finally, in 1372, the monastery's church was consecrated. The consequence attached to the monastery is demonstrated by the presence of the royal family and many important ecclesiastical officials at the consecration ceremony,

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Podskali

14 December 1348, Church of Sts. Cosmas & Damian elevated to monastery

3 February 1350, Clement VI grants the privilege of wearing pontificalia

Premonstratensian Abbey at Strahov

Benedictine Abbey at Kladruby

29 March 1372, the monastery's church is consecrated

~

t

[!] [!] St. jerome

Monastuy

Church/Cathedral GHden Vineyard

Benedictine Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome

St. Charlemagne

Monastery of the Augustinian Canons Regular and Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. Charlemagne (Karlov)

Su. Peter & Paul

Chapter Church of Sts. Peter and Paul

St. Ambrose Strahov St. Vitus

Tjn Cathedral

Benedictine Monastery of St . Ambrose Premon.stratensian Monastery at Strahov St. Vitus Cathedral

Church of the Mother of God in front of Tfn (Tjn Cathedral)

Map 2. Prague ca. 1380s

which was performed by Archbishop John Ocko of Vlasim on Easter Monday, 29 March 1372. 25

"Monasterium Sancti Hieronymi Slavorum Ordinis Benedicti" In contemporary historiography, the Glagolitic Monastery in Prague is often referred to as "the Emmaus Monastery" 26 or "the Slavonic Monastery;' following the Latin term monasterium slavorum and the Czech terms klt:iSter na Slovanech and klaster SlovanskyY However, leafing through the official documents related to the monastery, which are collected in the Registrum Slavorum, one cannot fail to notice that almost all records starting from Charles's foundation charter and continuing throughout his reign, consistently refer to the monastery as "monasterium Sancti Hieronymi Slavorum ordinis Benedicti in nova civitate Pragensi" 70

Bohemia

(the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome of the Order of St. Benedict in the New Town of Prague), indicating the monastery's rite, rule, main patron saint, and location. The following non-exhaustive list of excerpts from documents of various years shows this formula with insignificantvariations: "monasterii Slauorum sancti Jeronimi ordinis sancti Benedicti in noua ciuitate Pragensi" (8 November 1349);28 "monasterio beati Jeronimi Slauorum ordinis sancti Benedicti noue fundacionis nostre in noua ciuitate nostra Pragensi situato'' (20 November 1349);29 "monasterio sancti Jeronimi Slauorum ordinis sancti Benedicti fundacionis sue in noua ciuitate Pragensi" (7 January 1350);30 "monasterii S. Hieronymi Slavorum ordinis S. Benedicti" (17 March 1350);31 "monasterium sancti Jeronimi Slauorum ordinis sancti Benedicti noue fundacionis nostre in noua ciuitate nostra Pragensi" (15 November 1350);32 "monasterii sancti Jeronimi Slauorum ordinis sancti Benedicti in noua ciuitate Pragensi" (15 March 1351); 33 "monasterium sancti Jeronimi in noua ciuitate Pragensi" (16 September 1355); 34 "monasterii sancti Jeronimi Slauorum et ipsi monasterio noue ciuitatis Pragensis" ( 17 December 1359); 35 "monasterio Slauorum sancti Jeronimi ordinis sancti Benedicti in noua ciuitate Pragensi" (25 January 1360);36 "monasterii S. Hieronymi fratrum Slavorum ordinis S. Benedicti in nova civitate" and "monasterii S. Hieronymi ordinis S. Benedicti praefatae civitatis" (16 November 1368);37 "monasterii sancti Jeronimi Slauorum in noua ciuitate Pragensi ordinis sancti Benedicti" (6 April 1370); 38 and "monasterii s. Hieronymi ad Slauos in noua ciuitate Pragensi" (15 January 1411). 39 Likewise, in a Czech record dated from 2 December 1403, the abbot of the Slavonic Monastery, Paul, and all the brethren refer to themselves as "wessken conwent klasstera sho Jeronyma Slowanskeho;' while the Latin translation of this document reads "totus conuentus monasterium Slavorum S. Hieronimi:'40 Hans Rothe has conducted a statistical survey of the variants of the monastery's official title based on records in the Registrum Slavorum and has come to the conclusion that the royal chancery, as well as the monastic community itself, fairly consistently employed the full title "monasterii S. Hieronymi ordinis S. Benedicti Slavorum;' while the documents issued by other towns and individuals favored the short form "monasterium Slavorum;' without indicating a patron saintY Similarly, the chronicles composed during the second half of the fourteenth century record no information about patron saints of the Slavonic Monastery. 42 The evidence of the above-mentioned sources thus supports

71

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

St. Jerome is a principle patron saint of the Slavonic Monastery

Charles's original statement of his vision for the monastery, as indicated in his foundation charter of21 November 1347 in Nuremberg: "that he [i.e., Jerome] is as glorious and his most deserving memory is as famous in said kingdom [i.e., Bohemia] as among his own people and homeland:' 43 Considering the compelling evidence of the administrative documents, it is surprising that, with the exception of a few specialized publications, 44 most historiographic and popular literature that mentions the Slavonic Monastery in Prague neglects or even fails to note that St. Jerome was not a mere co-patron but the principal patron saint of the monastery and, consequently, that the foundation of the Slavonic Monastery was primarily associated with his cult. In fact, scholarly literature tends toward the opposite: greater significance is usually assigned to the figures of Sts. Cyril, Methodius, Adalbert, and Procopius as patron saints of the monastery, while Jerome is mentioned only in passing.

Patron Saints of the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome

St. Adalbert

St. Procopius

As Charles's charter states, besides the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome, the monastery's church was dedicated to the Slavic apostles Sts. Cyril and Methodius, and to two local patron saints of Bohemia, St. Adalbert (Vojtech) and St. Procopius (Prokop ). 45 The choice of patron saints for the monastery reflected its intended symbolic and commemorative function as a testament to the Slavs' privileged place in the Christian world. St. Adalbert (ca. 956-997), the second bishop of Prague and the founder of the first Benedictine monastery in Brevnov, conducted the apostolate in Hungary, Poland, and in Prussia, where he was martyred at the hands of the pagans. By the end of the fourteenth century, Adalbert was one of the most worshipped saints in central Europe and a patron of Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and Prussia. 46 In Bohemia, he symbolized the highest ecclesiastical office and even lent his name to the crosier of the Prague archbishopY The inclusion of St. Adalbert among the patron saints could be due to his strong connection with the Czech Benedictines and his alleged authorship of the above-mentioned iconic Old Czech hymn "Hospodine, pomiluj ny;' which, according to John of Holesov, contained many Croatian words. 48 Like St. Adalbert, St. Procopius (ca. 970/980-1053) was connected with Benedictine monasticism as the founder and abbot of the leg-

72

Bohemia

endary Sazava Monastery, where he was believed to have instituted the Slavonic rite and the rule of St. Benedict. In fourteenth -century Bohemia, the monastic community of the Sazava Monastery was viewed as a successor to Cyril and Methodius's apostolic mission to the Slavs. 49 Although the cult of Sts. Cyril and Methodius does not appear in Latin liturgy before the second half of the fourteenth century, when their feast day of 9 March was entered into church statutes, the connection of the Moravian mission with Bohemian Christianity had been on record since early times. 50 The earliest attested local source that connects the activity of Cyril and Methodius with Bohemia is the late tenth-century legend, discussed in chapter 1, the Vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius (7he Life and Passion of St. Wenceslas and His Grandmother St. Ludmila), or the Legenda Christiani. The author of this influential work argues that Great Moravia's demise was caused by its ruler's disregard of St. Methodius and his tolerance of paganism. Therefore, as the legend implies, Bohemia, whose prince, Borivoj, and his wife, Ludmila, were baptized by Methodius himself, should be seen as the rightful successor to Great Moravia's Christian legacy and its hierarchical position as a diocese. Following the Legenda Christiani, the motif of the Moravian mission surfaced in several hagiographical legends and chronicles, such as the Legend of St. Procopius, the Chronica Boemorum of Cosmas (1045-1125), the Sazava Chronicle (Mnich sazavsky), and the Hradiste-Opatovice Annals (Letopisy hradist'sko-opatovicke), although officially Cyril and Methodius were not yet beatified in the Western Church. 5 1 In the early fourteenth-century Dalimil Chronicle, the narrative of the Moravian mission is tied to the account of the foundation of the kingdom of Bohemia, or, as the chronicler puts it, "Here I want shortly to make use of the chronicle of Moravia to better serve my goal of telling how the crown came out of Moravia and how from that land it came to the land of the Czechs:' 52 The chronicler names Velehrad, a small village in southern Moravia (now, Stare Mesto near Uherske Hradiste), a former center of Great Moravia and the seat of King Svatopluk and Archbishop Methodius. 53 Thus, the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition became associated with the Cistercian monastery at Velehrad, which, according to the confirmation charter of King Premysl Otakar I (1198-1230), was founded around 1207 by his younger brother, the margrave of Moravia Vladislav Jindrich (1197-1222), and generously endowed

73

Sts. Cyril & Methodius

Legenda Christiani

hagiographicallegends of Cyril & Methodius

Dalimil Chronicle

Velehrad

Cistercian Monastery at Velehrad Premysl Otakar I

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Pfemysl Otakar II

Dalimil Chronicle

Diffundente sole

Quemadmodum, the Moravian Legend

by the king himself. 54 Contrary to popular opinion, the monastery was originally dedicated not to Sts. Cyril and Methodius, but to the Virgin Mary, and its church was consecrated on 27 November 1228, as the king's privilegium testifies. 55 Unfortunately, no sources describe how the Cistercian monastery at Velehrad became linked to the Moravian metropolitan see of Methodius. It has been suggested that this theory emerged at the time when King Ptemysl Otakar II (1253-1278) petitioned the pope to elevate the diocese of Moravia in Olomouc to archdiocese. 56 Indeed, Clement VI's bulla-rescript of 20 January 1268 shows that Otakar II justified his request by claiming that there formerly existed an archdiocese in the kingdom of Bohemia, the margravate of Moravia, and the duchies of Austria and Styria. 57 It is possible-although still hypothetical-that the reference to an archdiocese implied Archbishop Methodius's seat in Great Moravia. As it stands, however, the Dalimil Chronicle is the earliest attested document that grounded in local historiography both the association of Bohemia with the distinguished apostles and Velehrad as an archepiscopal center, thus tracing the origin of the monarchial power in Bohemia to Great Moravia in this Czech version of the translatio regni. 58 As a result of the official recognition of the church, Sts. Cyril and Methodius were honored in a number of hagiographic and historiographic works composed in Czech and Latin during Charles's reign. The late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century Latin legend De sancto Quirillo et conversione Moravie et Bohemie (On St. Cyril and the Conversion of Moravia and Bohemia), also known by its incipit as Diffundente sole, was translated into Czech and included in the Czech Pasional-a Czech adaptation of Jacobus de Voragine's hagiographic collection Legenda Aurea. 59 Another Cyrillo-Methodian Latin legend, with the incipit Quemadmodum ex histories, was adapted from an earlier work, which is known in scholarship as the Moravian Legend, and included all the main motifs: Velehrad as the capital of Great Moravia, the baptism of the Moravians and the Czechs by Cyril and Methodius, and the defense of the Slavonic liturgy. 60 The legend Quemadmodum also features Methodius's prophecy to Prince Botivoj that should the Czech prince be baptized, all Czech princes and kings, as well as their successors, would become the strongest among the Slavic princes and kings, a prophecy that "has indeed been fulfilled up to the present:'61 With the institution of the feast day, the legend Quemadmodum became the basis for the Latin Office to Cyril and Method ius, which is called

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by the beginning Adest dies Gloriosa, and which is attested in manuscripts of Czech and Moravian provenance. 62 In geographic terms, the patron saints of the Slavonic Monastery covered an impressive expanse of Slavic and even non-Slavic territories, quite equal to Charles's scale and imperial aspirations. Jerome represented the origin of the Slavic letters in the Slavic "homeland" and southern Slavic lands (Slavonia-Croatia). Cyril and Methodius represented Great Moravia and its link with Bohemia, symbolized by the persona of Procopius, while Adalbert had ties to Poland, Hungary, and Prussia. The Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome in Prague, therefore, laid claim to being the symbolic model of Slavic Christendom. The patron saints of the Slavonic Monastery had a strictly monastic calling and a particular connection with the Order of St. Benedict, as Charles stresses in his foundation charter. 63 The absence of St. Wenceslas or St. Ludmila among the patron saints is an additional indication of the strictly ecclesiastical orientation of the patrons. 64 Thus, the patron saints of the newly founded monastery stressed the connection between the general Slavic and the local Czech Christianity, and they commemorated the Holy Scripture, the noble Slavic language and letters, the apostolic tradition, and Benedictine monasticism. The indigenous holy letters of St. Jerome provided the desired importance to the local Christian tradition and its main guardian-the Bohemian Church. The intended hierarchy of patron saints is evident from the following donation document, issued by Charles on 15 November 1350, which explicitly states that St. Jerome is considered as the principal patron saint: "prefato monasterio ob reuerenciam principaliter beati Jeronimi aliorumque patronorum videlicet Procopii, Adalberti, Cirilli et Metudii" (the abovementioned monastery on account of reverence primarily of Blessed Jerome, as well as of other patrons, namely, Procopius, Adalbert, Cyril and Methodius). 65 Charles makes a similar distinction in yet another charter, issued two days later, on 17 November 1350: "monasterii sancti Jeronimi Slauorum ordinis sancti Benedicti et titulo beatorum patronorum regni Boemie Procopii, Adalberti, Cirilli et Metudii" (the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome of the Order of St. Benedict and in honor of blessed patrons of the kingdom of Bohemia Procopius, Adalbert, Cyril and Methodius). 66 The names of all four saints, Cyril, Methodius, Adalbert, and Procopius, as co-patrons of the Slavonic Monastery, appear in four

75

the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome as a model of Slavic Christendom

connection with Benedictine monasticism

hierarchy of patron saints

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

St. Adalbert omitted

Gospel of Reims

charters-three issued by Charles IV (the foundation charter of 21 November 1347 and the two donation charters of 15 and 17 November 1350) and one issued by his son, Sigismund (a confirmation letter of privileges of 12 June 1437).67 However, in the sources after 1350-Sigismund's derivative letter can hardly be taken into account-Adalbert's name is absent. The names of Jerome, Cyril, Methodius, and Procopius appear in two later documents-Charles's donation charter of 13 January 1352 and a charter of restitution, signed by the chancellor of Bohemia, Burchardus, and the officials of the Vysehrad chapter church on 12 March 1368.68 Moreover, Adalbert's feast day is noticeably absent from the Glagolitic lectionary, the so-called Gospel of Reims, which otherwise includes feast days for other important Slavic and Bohemian saints. The omission of St. Adalbert in the above-mentioned sources is remarkable and poses the question of whether it is accidental or whether by 1352 Adalbert had lost appeal as a patron saint of the Slavonic Monastery. 69 Likewise, it is hard to determine to what extent the fact that Pope Clement VI does not mention any patron saint in either of his bullas (of 9 May 1346 and 3 February 1350) may be considered meaningful, as Hans Rothe believes. 70 Rothe attaches great importance to the pope's "silence" on this matter and generally questions any role that Slavic-specific historical or political references ever played in relation to the Prague Slavonic Monastery, arguing that Charles's original idea did not find proper realization. 71 Let us therefore consider this issue carefully.

The Slavic Theme in Charles's Representation of Bohemia's Sacred History

Innocent VI allows spe-

cial rites of St. Jerome & St. Ambrose to be celebrated outside of their monasteries

Although we see no reference to Jerome's creation of the Slavonic rite in the rescript of Pope Clement VI, it is recorded in a letter of his successor, Pope Innocent VI (1352-1362). In response to Charles's "devout supplication;' Innocent issued a document on 28 December 1359 that granted permission to the brethren of the two Benedictine monasteries (the Monastery of St. Jerome and the Monastery of St. Ambrose) to celebrate their special rites (the Slavonic rite of St. Jerome and the Milanese rite of St. Ambrose) outside of their respective monasteries in the presence of the king:

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Bohemia

Bishop Innocent, servant of God's servants [sends] greetings, etc., to Charles, dearest son in Christ, Roman Emperor, forever Augustus, and illustrious king of Bohemia. Of your excellent devotion [... ] And so, since, as we have heard, in the city of Prague, there are two monasteries of the Order of St. Benedict-one, evidently, named in reverence and honor of confessor and doctor St. Jerome, called "at the Slavs" in the vernacular, and the other in reverence and honor of confessor and doctor St. Ambrose-and [since] under their [i.e., Jerome's and Ambrose's] names they were not long ago lawfully founded and endowed by you, and [since] the Divine Offices are celebrated with apostolic permission in the monastery of St. Jerome, in the Slavic language, in accordance with the instruction and rite of St. Jerome (who was a Slav by birth) himself, and in the aforesaid monastery of St. Ambrose in accordance with the instruction and rite of St. Ambrose himself, and [since] you, from the devotion that you have for these saints, have vowed that, sometimes, the offices of this type [i.e., the Divine Office], according to these rites, can be celebrated in your presence outside of the monasteries themselves, we, being inclined by your devout supplication in this matter, that the abbots and monks of the aforesaid monasteries, whenever they are outside of said monasteries and in your presence (in places, however, that are suitable to this [cause] and honorable), be able to celebrate lawfully the Mass and other divine offices-only, of course, in accordance with their aforementioned rites (even if the established apostolic constitutions and the contrary customs of the monasteries and the said orders in any way contradict [each other]), by the contents of this letter with apostolic authority from a special favor [we] indulge your devotion as well as that of the abbots and monks themselves. 72

The Benedictines who observed the special rite ascribed to St. Ambrose came to Prague in 1354 from Milan's Basilica of St. Ambrose. It is not coincidental that the two special rites, that of St. Jerome and of St. Ambrose, are discussed in the same document. There is a lot of resemblance between them, as far as their origin, status, and intended function are concerned. Indeed, even the syntax of the pope's phrasing stresses that permission is being granted because both rites are associated with a figure of ecclesiastical importance-a confessor and a doctor of the church, for whom Charles had special devotion. Thus, just as St. Ambrose gave prestige and authority to the special Milanese rite, so St. Jerome brought distinction to the Roman Slavonic rite. The rescript of

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Milanese rite of St. Ambrose

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Jan Dubravius, Historia Bohemica

Charles's personal devotion to St. Jerome

Charles's understanding of Slavic identity

Privilegium Alexandri Magni

Innocent VI is particularly notable because, unlike the rescript of his namesake, Innocent IV, given to Bishop Philip of Senj in 1248, it not only officially acknowledges Jerome's authorship of the Slavonic rite but also validates it by referring to Jerome's Slavic pedigree. It is of little doubt that the pope's rescript echoes Charles's own notion of the importance of these special rites. Another-albeit indirect-indication that Charles favored the Glagolites because of his particular veneration of St. Jerome as a Slav is found in the Historia Bohemica (1552), written by the Czech humanist Jan Dubravius (ca. 1486-1553). 73 In the passage that describes Charles's creation of the Prague's New Town and his strategy of populating it with monastic brotherhoods of all kinds, Dubravius attributes the foundation of the Slavonic Monastery to Charles's personal devotion to St. Jerome: '1\.lso, he gathered separately those brothers who called themselves Slavs and named Blessed Jerome an author of their rite, whose name Charles particularly venerated, as he was a native of Illyria, whence the Bohemians derive their origin:' 74 Charles's interest in and use of general Slavic and local Moravian and Czech historical references in the representation of his dynastic and imperial politics are by no means novel topics in scholarship and have been discussed from a variety of perspectives. 75 Before we proceed any further, however, let us define the way Charles and his advisers understood "Slavic identity" in the second half of the fourteenth century. It is important to make a terminological and methodological distinction between the study of the awareness of a collective Slavic identity as reflected in historical sources (or what is often termed as "Slavism" or the "Slavic idea'') and the range of questions pertaining to the rise of Czech nationalism, whether that of fifteenth -century Hussitism or that of nineteenthcentury Romanticism. 76 A quite remarkable indicator of the emerging Slavic identity in Bohemia is the appearance of a humanistic counterpart of the Donatio Constantini (Donation of Constantine), the Privilegium Alexandri Magni donatum populis Slavis (The Privilegium of Alexander the Great to the Slavic People)/7 This fictitious and fanciful document is ascribed to Alexander the Great and is said to have been translated "word for word" from the Greek. Allegedly, it records the will of Alexander, who bequeaths the possession of all of his lands to the Slavs. Based on textological and linguistic analyses of several extant manuscript copies, Anezka Vidmanova firmly locates this

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falsification in Bohemia, specifically, at the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome, and dates it to the time of Charles, whose involvement she assumes. 78 Charles's notice of the Croatian Glagolites and their Slavonic rite was not sudden or accidental. Born in Prague to John of Luxemburg (1296-1346) and Elisabeth Ptemysl of Bohemia (1292-1330), but educated in France, Charles attached political importance to the Slavic patrimony that he claimed through his maternal ancestors and used it to aggrandize the new Slavo-Roman PtemyslidLuxemburg dynasty. In Charles's self-representation, his roles as the king of Bohemia and the Roman emperor intertwined and grew stronger together. Historians explain Charles's "Bohemocentrism" not so much by his ethnic background as by his political goals of establishing a strong dynastic monarchy, for which the kingdom of Bohemia presented an excellent opportunity and a reliable base. 79 However, while he obviously saw himself as a representative of the Bohemian and Roman dynasties, Charles's perception of his Ptemyslid heritage-at least as far as his political rhetoric goeswas not specifically Czech but generally Slavic. 80 Charles appreciated his Slavic ancestry because it added a unique quality to his royal and imperial genealogies, not because it distinguished the Slavs (or the Czechs) as a separate nation-the prism through which nineteenth-century nationalists looked at Slavic identity. His "Slavic awareness" found expression primarily in political symbolism that characterized his self-presentation as a ruler in general. The Slavic theme in his political agenda highlighted the prominent place of Bohemia in the empire and was by no means in conflict with Charles's pan-European aspirations. Historians point out that Charles understood the nature of monarchial power in the humanistic terms of Dante's Monarchia: that it is autonomous and proceeds directly from God. 81 To articulate his dynasty's eminence and legitimacy, Charles turned to media effective in his time: name symbolism, art, architecture, hagiography, and historiography. An example from the historiography provides a good illustration. Charles encouraged and commissioned a body of chronicles and historiographic treatises that glorified the Slavs and substantiated their ancient and aristocratic roots. He personally supervised chronicles by several Czech authors: the Chronica Ecclesiae Pragensis by BeneS Krabice of Weitmil (first part until1346 and second part until1374), the Chronica Pragensis by Canon Francis of Prague (dedicated to Charles in 1353), and

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Pfemyslid heritage

Bend Krabice ofWeitmil, Chronica Ecclesiae Pragensis Francis of Prague, Chronica Pragensis

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome Pribik Pulkava of Radenin, Chronica

John of Marignolli,

Chronica Bohemorum the sibylline prophecy

Charles's dynastic agenda

Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, the Trojans Elisabeth Ptemysl of Bohemia & Elisa

the Chronica by Ptibik Pulkava of Radenin (last redaction, 1374). 82 But for a more general European perspective he commissioned the Florentine Franciscan scholar John of Marignolli to write a history of the Bohemian Kingdom in the context of world history (composed 1355-1358). 83 Marignolli, a learned theologian and bishop of Bisignano, who had recently returned from his mission as a papal legate to the court of the Mongol emperor of China and become Charles's personal chaplain, was an eager collaborator. He conceptualized his chronicle in a Joachimite prophetic tradition, presenting Bohemia as the center of the world, uniting East and West, with Charles IV as the Last Emperor, who is destined torestore world peace and ascend the throne in Jerusalem, thereby fulfilling the sibylline prophecy. 84 As Charles commanded, Marignolli's Chronica Bohemorum consists of three books that embody the idea of the Holy Trinity as an underlying principle. The first book, Thearchos, documents the prehistoric period of the divine reign; the second book, Monarchos, records the establishment of first states and documents Charles's lineage as the king of Bohemia; the third book, Hierarchos, or Liber Ierarticus sive Ecclesiasticus (Hierarchs or The Book of the Church), narrates Bohemia's ecclesiastical history, which begins with the Old Testament figures of Abel and priest Melchizedek and establishes the Bohemian bishops as successors to St. Peter. Even though historians do not praise Marignolli's work for its accuracy or importance to the historiography of Bohemia, they acknowledge that it serves as a valuable source for understanding Charles's dynastic agenda and political outlook. 85 Marignolli's genealogical schema and the historical mission that he assigns to Charles are based on two main pillars, both of which are mutually connected: Charles's station as a king of Bohemia and his noble descent from the Slavs and Greco-Romans. His paternal ancestry was well established: John of Luxemburg's lineage, which included Charlemagne and Julius Caesar, derived from the Trojans. According to Marignolli, Charles's lineage is even more illustrious than that of other European royal families because he descends through his mother from ancient Greeks, whom Marignolli identifies as Romans or Italics. 86 His line of reasoning rests upon a claim that the Slavs, of whom Elisabeth Ptemysl is the noblest offspring, originate from Elisa (spelled "Helisa''), a son of Javan and a grandson of Japheth. 87 As his evidence, Marignolli has contrived an etymological proof: he derives Elisabeth's name (spelled "Helisa-

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beth'') from "Helisa'' and "beth" ("house" in Hebrew), arriving at the etymology of "the house of Helisa, that is, the house of Slavs:' He further compares Charles to Roman emperors Diocletian and his son Maximian, who were at that time considered Slavs due to their Dalmatian origin, and points out that unlike these emperors, who were of plebeian origin, Charles's entitlement to the imperial crown and his mission as the Last Emperor are justified not simply by election but by his most noble descent. 88 In the third book of the chronicle, the Liber Ierarticus sive Ecclesiasticus, Marignolli situates the Bohemian Church in the general context of ecclesiastical history. 89 Following an account of the events in the Old Testament that prefigure the Christian tradition and a short record of the important figures of the New Testament and the apostolic tradition, the author establishes St. Peter as the sole successor to Jesus Christ's priesthood and as the head of the Christian Church in Rome. After a brief record of Roman popes, Marignolli names Pope John XV as the founder of the Prague bishopric (drawing from a story in Cosmas's Chronica Boemorum about the papal blessing that Prince Boleslav II and his sister, the Benedictine nun Mlada-Maria, received to institute a bishopric in Prague). Having thus demonstrated a direct link between the apostolic continuity of Rome and the Bohemian Church, Marignolli outlines the history of Bohemian bishops and ends his chronicle by honoring the collegiate chapter church of Sts. Peter and Paul at the Vysehrad Castle, which was under Rome's direct jurisdiction. Owing to Charles's efforts-Marignolli points out-it became "a seat and a special abode of St. Peter forever as in Rome" (beati Petri sedes et specialis mansio in perpetuum sicut Rome). For the newly built altar of St. Peter, Charles brought a valuable relic from Italy: half of the stone altar at which St. Peter was believed to have served the Mass when he landed at the harbor in Pisa. 90 Marignolli's history of the Bohemian Church echoed Charles's efforts to connect Bohemia with the imperial cult of St. Peter and to make Bohemian hierarchs equal in status and privileges to the other six archbishops in the empire. 91 Paralleling his formulation of the Bohemian monarchs' dignified ethno-genealogy, Marignolli's representation of the Bohemian Church as having been blessed by the Roman pontiffs provided Charles with the necessary rhetoric for his political claims. Yet Marignolli, who acknowledges being perplexed by inconsistent and unclear accounts of old Czech sources, failed to incorporate an important narrative in the history

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Diocletian & Maxim ian

Bohemian Church & Rome

Prague bishopric founded by John XV Cosmas, Chronica Boemorum

Sts. Peter & Paul at Vysehrad

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Bohemia & the legacy of Great Moravia

Velehrad Cistercian Monastery

St. Wenceslas

Charles composes the Life of St. Wenceslas

Charles was baptized Wenceslas

of Bohemian Christianity-its connection with the legacy of Great Moravia. The beginning of Charles's engagement with the symbolic and ceremonial aspect of local Bohemian history dates to his early days as margrave of Moravia. Zdenek Kalista has observed that in the 1330s and 1340s, Charles endowed the Velehrad Cistercian Monastery with donations more numerous and generous than any other monastery. This is especially revealing, considering that Charles did not seem to have any particular connection with the Order of Cistercians or with any particular individual residing in the monastery. Kalista hypothesizes that a journey to TrenCin in 1335, on which Charles accompanied his father John of Luxemburg, brought him to the Velehrad Cistercian Monastery, where he learned about the Cyrillo-Methodian mission. 92 Whatever the source of Charles's knowledge about the former Moravian archdiocese, Velehrad became an important symbolic locale for Charles in his political representation of Bohemia. A literary artifact that bears witness to this is Charles's own devotional account of the life of Bohemia's most celebrated patron saint, St. Wenceslas, titled Hystoria nova de Sancto Wenceslao Martyre (The New History of St. Wenceslas the Martyr). 93 Charles's personal devotion to St. Wenceslas, one of the ancestors of the Bohemian Ptemyslid dynasty and a model of the Christian monarch, was also politically motivated. As a representative of the new ruling dynasty of the Luxemburgs in Bohemia, Charles was keen to stress his kinship with the native ancestral saints. At his birth he was baptized Wenceslas, possibly by the efforts of his mother, Elisabeth of Bohemia, the last descendant of the Ptemyslids, who after the death of her brother, Wenceslas III (1289-1306), claimed the Bohemian throne for her husband, John of Luxemburg, circumventing her elder sister, Anne of Bohemia (1290-1313). Moreover, Elisabeth's father, Wenceslas II of Bohemia (1278-1305), also bore the name of the Ptemyslid saint. Thus, the name of the renowned Czech saint provided a sacred link to the old local ruling dynasty. Naming their son Wenceslas was obviously a political move for John and Elisabeth, who chose to ignore the Luxemburg tradition of naming the first son after his paternal grandfather. At the age of seven, while living at the court of his godfather, the French king Charles IV Capet (the Fair), the young Wenceslas acquired the auspices of another ancestral patron saint and political model. The French king wished to associate his godson with Charlemagne, the

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greatest ruler of all Christians, which he did through the rite of confirmation. In this way, Wenceslas-Charles was well qualified to trace his paternal ancestry to Charlemagne and his maternal to St. Wenceslas, a fact that was rhetorically evoked on more than one occasion. 94 Most remarkably, in the course of two generations, the name of Wenceslas was used four times by the Luxemburgs: after the elder son Wenceslas changed his name to Charles, John baptized his next son Wenceslas (1337-1383), and Charles IV also baptized both of his sons (1350 and 1361) with the name Wenceslas (the first of them did not live more than a year). Wenceslas IV (1361-1419) later succeeded his father on both the Bohemian and the Roman (German) thrones. Asserting his own version of St. Wenceslas's legacy for Bohemia was undoubtedly a matter of personal and political importance for Charles. Following the narrative structure of the Legenda Christiani, Charles also opens his composition with an account of the beginning of Czech Christianity, connecting it with the first Czech dynasty of Premyslids and the acts of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. 95 His focus on the reframing of history is emphasized already in the title- Hystoria nova. In his revision, Charles specifies that the king of Moravia, Svatopluk, received baptism from the "Blessed" Cyril (a beato Cirillo), and that Wenceslas's grandparents, Prince Borivoj of Bohemia and his wife St. Ludmila, were baptized by Archbishop Methodius at the St. Vitus Cathedral of the metropolitan city of Velehrad, the capital of Great Moravia. The site of the baptism, as well as the fact that Svatopluk himself was baptized by St. Cyril, was an important ideological point absent in earlier hagiographic accounts of St. Wenceslas's life. Charles's version of the Life of St. Wenceslas, therefore, reflected two of the main lines in his "Slavic politics:' First, it commemorated the beginning of Christianity among the Slavs, situating the former archdiocese of Great Moravia within the borders of the fourteenth-century kingdom of Bohemia, and presenting Sts. Cyril and Methodius as the apostles and patron saints of Bohemia. 96 Second, it firmly associated the legacy of Great Moravia with the figure of St. Wenceslas, a symbol of Czech statehood and sovereign power, and Charles's special patron saint. 97 Altogether, it conveyed the main tenet of Charles's political doctrine: the secular power in Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire stood on sacred foundations. With Charles's leadership and encouragement, the symbolic, metaphorical, and allegorical representations of this idea were molded time and again in art and

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Wenceslas, a Premyslid dynastic name

Great Moravia and Sts. Cyril & Methodius

Great Moravia & St. Wenceslas

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Velehrad theory

John of Neumarkt

Pope Urban VI grants the privilege of pontificalia to the Velehrad Cistercians

Pfibik Pulkava,

Chronica

divine approval of the Slavonic rite

Psalm 150:6, Romans 14:11

architecture, the written word, and ritual, for example, in religious rites, ceremonies of coronation, and presentation of holy relics. The Velehrad theory that elevated Moravia as a former archdiocese was successfully put to use by John of Neumarkt, Charles's chancellor (1353-1374) and the bishop of Litomysl (1353-1364) and of Olomouc (1364-1380). 98 In his capacity as bishop of Olomouc, John sought for the Velehrad Cistercian Monastery the same distinction that had been bestowed on the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome in Prague. In the 1370s, John petitioned Pope Gregory XI (1370-1378) to grant the abbot of the Velehrad Cistercians the honor of using pontifical vestments, referring to the honorary historical primacy of the Moravian metropolitan church. 99 The privilege was accordingly granted by Gregory's successor Pope Urban VI (1378-1389) in 1379. The narrative of the ancient archdiocese in Great Moravia as a cradle of Bohemian Christianity was in time augmented by another significant motif-the divine approval of the Slavonic rite. The chronicle that develops this motif is ascribed to Pribik Pulkava of Radenin, who compiled it according to Charles's orders and under his direct supervision, using a number of historical sources and archival chancery documents. 100 That the CyrilloMethodian tradition was perceived in Charles's political theology as not only a unique custom enjoyed by the Slavs but also as an act of divine intervention is articulated in a remarkable account of St. Cyril's appeal to the pope to allow the use of the Slavonic liturgy. According to the chronicler, the pope did not take Cyril's request seriously. Suddenly, in a scene reminiscent of the Pentecostal gift of tongues, a voice from heaven commanded that God be celebrated in all languages: The pope regarded this kind of request as a joke, and while he held deliberation in a council of cardinals and many prelates, suddenly a voice sounded from the heavens saying, "Let every spirit praise the Lord and every tongue confess to Him:' Then, after this miracle was heard, he decreed that forever the Mass and other divine offices may be celebrated in the Slavic tongue. 101

This extraordinary episode of divine intervention is not found in any earlier source and must be Pribik Pulkava's invention. It is quite likely that the author drew inspiration from Psalm 150:6 and Romans 14:11, quoted both in the Life of Constantine and in Pope

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John VIII's bulla, "Industriae tuae:' of 880. 102 This biblical quotation has also been evoked in the legend Quemadmodum, in which Cyril opens the Book of Psalms and reads this passage to the pope and the congregation of bishops as he defends the use of the Slavic language in liturgy. 103 This literary twist on Cyril's dispute with the Latin clergy eloquently reflects the claim that the chronicler, as well as those for whom he composed his work, made for the divine nature of the Slavonic rite. And, indeed, readers have paid it due attention: Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464), later Pope Pius II (1458-1464), included this episode in his influential Historia Bohemica (written in 1457, first printed in 1475), thus introducing the legend of the divine intercession for the Slavonic liturgy to a wider European audience. 104 The only extant manuscript of Marignolli's chronicle demonstrates the definite lack of popularity that this composition enjoyed. Whether its ideological concepts found no response among later historians or Charles himself was dissatisfied with its execution, it had almost no influence on Czech historiography. The Moravian and general Slavic theme of Pulkava's chronicle, on the other hand, gained wide recognition and-despite its many stylistic and historiographic defects-became one of the most frequently used sources. Pribik Pulkava's chronicle, as well as other writings that emerged under Charles's supervision, leaves no doubt that Charles was well informed about Premyslid Bohemian and Slavic history and that he actively engaged in Slavic-themed "myth-building:' His desire to perpetuate a distinguished Slavic pedigree was contingent upon the concept of the sacred foundation of the local Slavonic rite and the authority of the Slavic apostolic saints, which the chronicles substantiated. Charles's interest in the political and ecclesiastical legacy of Great Moravia is sometimes connected with his ambitions of political expansion in the Slavic East and of gaining Orthodox Slavs for the Roman Church. 105 The symbolic representation of this is seen in the figure of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, with whose image-as a protector of universal Christianity-Charles presumably identified. A direct reference is found in the oration of Archbishop John Ocko ofVlasim, delivered in 1378 at Charles's funeral, in which John calls Charles "sicut alter Constantinus" (just as a second Constantine ). 106 Likewise, art historians point to evidence that links Charles metaphorically to Constantine

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Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica

Slavic myth-building

Charles as "second Constantine"

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

the Great. 107 Indeed, like Constantine, Charles built a new capital in the east and labored to erase the political and religious divides of the empire that had been entrusted to him. While there are indications that Charles IV presented himself as seeking an alliance between East and West, it remains an open question whether the foundation of the Slavonic Monastery was strategically connected to this project. Its missionary role remains unknown, but its other function is apparent: the monastery became a showcase of local Bohemian and Slavic ecclesiastical history and-no less important -a means of salvation for its royal benefactor, his family, and the kingdom of Bohemia. 108

The Theology of the Slavonic Monastery's Murals

Prague as "New Rome"

Monastery of St. Charlemagne

Monastery of St. Ambrose

In the late medieval period, the foundation of churches and monasteries was not only an expression of a ruler's piety but also an important public and political activity. For a Christian monarch, especially, the patronage of shrines and of the relics housed in these shrines acquired political meaning: in this way the anointed sovereign claimed the power and authority bestowed on him or her by God. The grand architecture and decorations commissioned and financed by a generous benefactor recorded his magnificence for future generations and formed the sacred landscape of a city (as well as providing a substantial source of income for the king). 109 Charles turned the patronage of ecclesiastical institutions, as well as the veneration of saints and relics, into a state affair, earning himself the title of rex clericorum (king of the priests). In his model of rulership, public spaces-whether sacred or secular-and their symbolic meanings as conveyed by art and architecture represented the legitimacy of his imperial office and presented Prague as a "New Rome" and a "New Jerusalem'' -a cosmopolitan center of the Roman Empire and an earthly image of the kingdom of Heaven. 110 Monastic communities, in particular, reflected this politics of representation. For example, the monastery for the canons regular of St. Augustine, founded in 1350 at the highest point of New Town and dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. Charlemagne, promoted the cult of Charles's imperial forefather and patron.'" The Benedictines of the St. Ambrose Monastery, which was founded in 1354 across from Old Town Royal Court, were brought by Charles di-

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reedy from the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan, the site of his coronation as king of Lombardy. Their special Milanese Ambrosian liturgy accentuated Charles's connection with Milan, which itself was endowed with the title of Rom a secunda. 112 Similar to these and other holy places established in Prague's New Town, the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome emerged as a part of Charles's plan, and therefore its physical space and function were inextricably linked with the general concept of New Town's urban landscape. 113 Its walls and altars were another star in the constellation of the newly established holy sites and their representational imagery. Its location between the New Town Square (also called Forum magnum, or Dobytci trh in Czech) and the Vysehrad Castle made it an indispensable participant in the main public processions and the teatrum sacrum performances, which took place on this route. 114 During these ceremonies and holidays its doors were opened wide to the public, who were thereby exposed to its magnificently decorated interior. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the themes of Christ's Passion and the Holy Cross in the monastery's mural cycle were linked to the annual exposition ceremonies of Bohemian and imperial Passion relics that may have been taken to the Slavonic Monastery regularly for veneration. 115 It has also been suggested that Charles designated the monasteries of St. Charlemagne and St. Jerome as temporary repositories of imperial insignia, and that the abbots of both monasteries received the right to wear pontifical vestments for the purpose of serving the Pontifical Mass in recognition of the exceptional role of their convents. 116 Numerous studies have examined the Slavonic Monastery's decorations, particularly the chapter hall decorations and the fresco cycle in the cloister, which have recently been partially restored and opened to the public (fig. 6). 117 Believing that the wall paintings are connected with the monastery's mission, these studies seek to interpret the former and extrapolate the latter. Remarkably, however, the Slavic historical references, emphasized in Charles's foundation charter and implicit in the choice of the monastery's patron saints, find no immediate corresponding representations among the surviving frescoes. On the contrary, art historians and theologians highlight the universal spiritual and didactic nature of the narrative mural cycle, which is based on the concept of typological correspondence between the New and Old Testaments. 118 In the late 1350s and the early 1360s, about 90 frescoes were painted on all four walls of the

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Forum magnum

Passion relics

fresco cycle in the cloister

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Ernest of Pardubice John Ocko ofVlasim John of Neumarkt

monastery's cloister, as well as in the adjacent chapter hall, church, and presbytery. Charles's sponsorship of this project is almost certain-two of the four painters of the Slavonic Monastery's cycle have been identified as those of the murals at the royal castle of Karlstein. 119 Besides Charles, archbishops Ernest, John Ocko of Vlasim, and chancellor John of Neumarkt are named as the ideologues behind the choice of themes and objects for decoration. 120 Models and ideas for the cycle came from several written manuscript sources that contain typological biblical illustrations: the Biblia pauperum, the Speculum humanae salvationis, the Liber depictus, Concordantiae caritatis, and other works.

Figure 6. Gallery in a cloister of the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome in Prague. Photograph by Petr Bajak

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The concept of the Speculum humanae salvationis, which was graphically represented on the walls of the Glagolites' abode, was also conveyed in their books. Its Czech version, the Zrcadlo cloveCieho spasenie, is attested in several manuscript copies from as early as the mid-fourteenth century, most notably in a copiously illuminated Krumlov Miscellany (Krumlovsky sbornik) that was composed around 1420. 121 A Croatian version of the Speculum, titled Zercalo Cloveeskago spasenie, also emerged at the Slavonic Monastery scriptorium and was translated from a Czech source. A copy of this translation that found its way to Croatia is preserved in a Glagolitic miscellany, written in Vrbnik on Krk in 1445 by deacon Luka for presbyter Grgur. 122 Along with the Zercalo, Luka copied several other Croatian translations from Czech. 123 As an iconographic and exegetical representation of the Bible, the murals' typological cycle created a congruent setting for a holy place that commemorated the acts of the exemplary biblical exegete and-according to belief-creator of the Slavonic Bible, St. Jerome. It was, therefore, consistent with Charles's desire to create a memorial for St. Jerome as indicated in the foundation charter of 1347. The inscriptions in Latin accompanying scenes from the typological cycle show that Latin letters were at home in the Slavonic Monastery and that the wall decorations were designed not only for the resident brethren, but with a wider audience in mind. There is even evidence that the mural cycle was an object of theological study for outside viewers. A description of the cycle has been discovered in the notes of a Swedish visitor from around 1400, which were found in a fifteenth-century manuscript in the Uppsala University Library. The notes do not contain a copy of the Latin inscriptions on the walls but rather a list and a brief summary of the scenes with the author's own interpretation of the correspondences. 124 The Slavonic Monastery's influence beyond its walls has also been attested in the works of contemporaneous artists active in Bohemia, who borrowed copies of its murals (exempla) for book illumination and monumental painting. 125 Although no images of St. Jerome have been attested among the restored murals at the monastery, art historians believe that there must have been analtar devoted to St. Jerome there, which featured a new type of representation of St. Jerome with a lion, developed by the master of the Slavonic Monastery's decoration from Italian and Byzantine sources. From the Slavonic Monastery-a center of the cult of St. 89

Speculum humanae salvationis

iconographic representation of the Bible as a memorial to St. Jerome

St. Jerome & the lion

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Ten Commandments in Glagolitic

Jerome-this new type is supposed to have spread in Bohemia, serving as a model for other artists of monumental painting and book illumination. 126 The Slavic alphabet of St. Jerome did, of course, find its honorary place on the monastery walls. In the 1950s, a Glagolitic inscription, containing a brief exposition of the Ten Commandments, was discovered on the south wall of the monastery's eastern wing, where a chapter hall previously existed. 127 The text of the Ten Commandments fits organically into the theme of the wall decoration because it continued the biblical theme of the frescoes in the cloister. The reconstruction of the remaining fragments suggests that the original inscription might have been surrounded by additional text, which is today invisible. 128 The persona of Jerome, who represented the Latin-Slavic union ofletters and the question of biblical exegesis, was likely an inspiration behind the choice of the subject matter for the mural painting. If taken into consideration, the theological program of the interior wall decoration speaks against a narrow mission of the Slavonic Monastery as a self-contained, marginal sanctuary of Slavic worship and writing. Rather, it suggests that the Slavic element provided a political frame for universal Christian concepts. This marriage of sacred and local earthly histories was a powerful strategic idea that turned the Benedictine Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome, one of the oldest and most prominent in New Town's network of monasteries, into an emblem of Slavic and Czech Christianity, embedded in sacred history.

Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin Letters at the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome

Glagolitic Gradual Fragment

Glagolitic Gradual Fragment rahov Premonstratensian Monastery

Like the walls of the Slavonic Monastery, its scriptorium united both alphabets-Latin and Glagolitic. A fragment of the late fourteenth-century notated missal (or gradual) from the Strahov Monastery archive, which contains Croatian Church Slavonic chants written in Glagolitic along with parallel Latin transliterations, testifies to the Glagolitic-Latin alliance. 129 The Glagolitic part of the fragment was most likely the work of the Prague Slavonic

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monks. The Latin transliteration is written in the Gothic minuscule script of Bohemian provenance, but it is unclear whether it was written at the Slavonic Monastery's scriptorium or added at a later time elsewhere. In his analysis of the notation system, Josef Vajs came to the conclusion that the notation in the Latin transliteration was borrowed from Latin graduals. 130 The Latin-Glagolitic parallel notation was thus used as a guide for the study of the Glagolitic alphabet and Slavonic hymns. Another product of the Slavonic Monastery's scriptorium is the Latin Bible, copied and illuminated around 1360. It contains among its images a representation of St. Jerome instructing (Slavonic?) monks, depicted in an illuminated initial "C" on folio 129. 131

Divis's Abecedarium An important example of the use of Glagolitic letters outside of the Slavonic Monastery is the Divis's Abecedarium, preserved in the famous Codex Gigas from the National (Royal) Library in Stockholm.132 This codex, also known as the "Devil's Bible;' acquired fame for its enormous size and a full-page depiction of the devil on folio 290r. In addition to the Old and New Testaments, this manuscript book (regarded as the world's largest-its vellum pages measure 890x490 mm) contains Josephus Flavius's Antiquitates iudaice (Antiquities of the Jews) and De bello iudaico (Ihe Jewish War), Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, the Rule of St. Benedict (torn out), Cosmas's Chronica Boemorum, magic spells, a calendar-martyrology, and other texts. The book was created at the Podlazice Benedictine Abbey before 1230 but ended up in a pawnshop, from which it was rescued by the Brevnov Benedictines in 1295. In 1594, Rudolph II "borrowed" the codex for his Kunstkammer, from which it was stolen by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War. The first folio features the Glagolitic (Alphabetum Sklauorum) and Cyrillic alphabets (Alphabetum Rutenorum) along with the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets and a note of Abbot Bavor from 1295 about the history of the manuscript (fig. 7). According to the Glagolitic inscription and its Latin translation under the Glagolitic alphabet, this azbukovnak (ABC book or abecedarium) was ordered to be written by one Abbot Divis. Two abbots of this name at the Btevnov Monastery are known-DiviS I (1360-1366) and DiviS II (1385-1408).1he latter also requested John of Holesov to compose the aforementioned

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Divis's Abecedarium

Codex Gigas

Brevnov Benedictine Monastery

Alphabetum Sklauorum

Alphabetum Rutenorum

John of Holesov

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Figure 7. Codex mixtus or Codex Gigas (1200-1230), National (Royal) Library of Sweden (A 148), fol. 1v

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Figure 8. Glagolitic (Alphabetum Sklauorum) and Cyrillic (Alphabetum Rutenorum) alphabets, Codex Gigas, fol. l v, fragment

treatise commentary on the Old Czech hymn "Hospodine, pomiluj nY:' 133 The Glagolitic and Cyrillic letters are inscribed on separate strips of parchment and pasted beside the other three sacred alphabets, thereby completing the inventory of holy letters (fig. 8).

The Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius It is not by chance that the Cyrillic alphabet was recorded together with Glagolitic in the Codex Gigas. The different titles for Glagolitic ("Alphabet of the Slavs") and for Cyrillic ("Alphabet of Rus"') show that the latter alphabet was closely associated with the Orthodox rite of Rus'. At the same time, the Cyrillic letters-a divinely inspired invention of Cyril-were also welcome at the Slavonic Monastery. Manuscript evidence suggests that the foundation of the Slavonic Monastery gave the cult of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, formerly limited to literature, a new life in liturgy. Vojtech TkadlCik, an authority on glagolitica, has convincingly argued that the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius found in Croatian Glagolitic breviaries starting from the late fourteenth century was most likely composed around the 1360s or 1370s at the scriptorium of the Prague Slavonic Monastery.134 Textual analysis suggests that the Office, as a liturgical composition, evolved over the years and, according to Tkadlcik, within Bohemia. 135 TkadlCik, who has studied both textual and linguistic

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The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Life of St. Constantine Encomium to St. Constantine

Constantine the Philosopher

the Czech land

Master Claretus

features of the Office, points out that its language and rhetoric express the ideological and religious aspirations of the Prague Glagolites vis-a-vis the Czech cultural milieu. The Glagolitic Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius draws on the Life of St. Constantine and the Encomium to St. Constantine and narrates the embassy of the ruler Rostislav to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III; the preparation of Cyril (as Constantine the Philosopher) for the mission among the Slavs in Constantinople; and the coming of the Byzantine missionaries "to the Czech land" (v stranu ceS'ku) and their activity among the Slavs "in the Czech land" (v zemli ceskoi) up until the first conflict with Frankish clergy and Cyril's death in Rome. 136 The parts of the Life of St. Constantine about the holy brothers' activity among the Pannonian Slavs, Constantine's apologia of the Slavonic liturgy and letters in Venice, and Rome's approval of the Slavonic books are not included in the Office. One of the most striking features of this text is that the author consistently places the activity of Cyril and Methodius in the Czech lands and not in Moravia. Some breviaries even contain a hymn praising the Czech people. 137 The substitution of"the Czech land" for "Moravia'' as a scene of the Slavic apostles' activities in the Office is especially remarkable as it deviates from earlier local Bohemian sources that set the Cyrilla-Methodian mission in Moravia. TkadlCik suggests that the zeal in associating the Slavonic rite with Bohemia could more naturally come from foreign Croatian Glagolites than from native Czechs. First, he suggests, the Croatian monks may have not fully understood the difference between "the Czech land" and "Moravia;' since both provinces were a part of the Bohemian Kingdom in the fourteenth century. Second, they were anxious to establish a legitimate connection with the patron saints of their monastery and thus were in need of a liturgical text, which they lacked. Third, TkadlCik notes, were this text authored by a local Czech it would have contained at least some references to "our land" or "our people;' rather than to "the Czech land:' Finally, scholars have noted the defensive tone of the Office, which TkadlCik explains by the fact that the Glagolites felt the need to prove their worth to those Czechs-he particularly names Bartholomew of Chlumec (also known as Master Claretus)-who doubted their connection with the ancient Slavic tradition and accused them of corrupting it. 138 Since TkadlCik published his study in 1977, another manuscript discovery has confirmed his conclusions. Anatoly Turilov

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has examined a fourteenth-century Glagolitic fragment from the Museum Collection of the Russian State Library in Moscow and identified it as the oldest known copy of the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the original of which originated at the Prague Slavonic Monastery. 139 TkadlCik's and Turilov's discoveries point to important interaction between the local Czech and Croatian Glagolite communities in Prague. Not only did the Czech hosts ideologically justify their common roots with Croatia (and, hence, their special connection with Jerome), but the Croatian guests also reciprocated by relating themselves to Bohemia's ancient ecclesiastical tradition and its cult of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. This initiative on the part of the Glagolites undermines the opinion, occasionally voiced in literature, that the role of the Slavonic Monastery in Prague's cultural and ecclesiastical life was static, and explains why Pribik Pulkava's chronicle presents the Croatian Glagolites as direct heirs to Cyril's divinely inspired invention. 14° Finally, if indeed the protograph of the Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius was composed at the Slavonic Monastery as part of the liturgical cult to these saints, then that fact undermines Hans Rothe's thesis that the Slavic saints, and the Slavic references in general, held little significance for this monastery. 141 The Glagolitic Office to Sts. Cyril and Methodius also claims that Cyril "put together letters and began writing books" (i abie slozivh pismenae slova nacet besedu pisati). As early Bohemian sources demonstrate, these letters were considered to be Cyrillic. For example, the Legenda Christiani (and sources that follow it) explicitly connects the letters that Cyril invented with the writing tradition in Bulgaria. 142 Similarly, the author of the Czech Dalimil Chronicle mistakenly calls Methodius "Rusin;' most likely by association with the Cyrillic letters, which were then used in the Rus' Orthodox Church. 143 All patron saints of the Slavonic Monastery were also patrons of Slavic indigenous sacred writing, including, although perhaps to a lesser extent, St. Adalbert. 144 The newly revived cult of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, which embodied the concept of the divine right of the Slavonic rite and letters, was linked with the cult of St. Procopius, who was seen as a successor to the Cyrillic tradition in Bohemia. These patron saints of Bohemian Christianity were united under the same roof with St. Jerome, who epitomized the origin of Slavic (Glagolitic) letters on the one hand and the humanistic value of learning on the other. 145 The authority of St. Jerome, a doctor of the

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Legenda Christiani

Dalimil Chronicle

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

the Sazava Monastery

Church and a biblical exegete, played a significant role in providing legitimacy to a new Slavonic monastic center, especially as the liturgy in a Slavic tongue had been a controversial issue for the Roman curia since its emergence at the end of the ninth century. After all, in 1079, Pope Gregory VII rejected the request ofVratislav II for official permission for the Slavonic rite in Bohemia, and in 1096, Vratislav's successor, Btetislav II, forced the monks observing the Slavonic rite from their last stronghold in Bohemia-the Sazava Monastery. Even Clement VI, who was Charles's benefactor and ally in ecclesiastical matters, took a rather vigilant approach to the matter and gave authorization only for one monastery with the Slavonic rite.

The Slavonic Gospel of Reims

a coronation book of the French kings

St. Procopius

The biscriptural Slavonic Gospel of Reims is a manuscript relic that symbolically embodied the Glagolitic-Cyrillic continuity and the unity of the Slavic letters that Sts. Jerome, Cyril, Methodius, and Procopius represented. 146 From the seventeenth century, this manuscript codex acquired fame as a coronation book of the French kings. 147 In fourteenth-century Bohemia, however, its role was equally prominent: it represented the country's sacred past. According to the Glagolitic colophon at the end of the codex, written in Czech, the Glagolitic part of the codex (31 leaves), which contains readings from the Gospels and Epistles, was written in the monastery for the purpose of the Pontifical Mass in 1395. The first part (16leaves), written in Cyrillic and believed to be an autograph of St. Procopius, the eleventh-century abbot of the Sazava Monastery, was given to the Prague Glagolites by Charles IV for "the glory of this monastery and in honor of St. Jerome and St. Procopius;' thereby acknowledging the connection between the ancient Slavic Christian traditions in Bohemia and Dalmatia: AD 1395. These Gospels and Epistles, written in the Slavonic language, should be sung hourly when the abbot serves the Mass under the crown. The second part of these books, according to the Rus' rite, was written by St. Procopius, the abbot, in his own hand. This Rus' Scripture was presented as a gift by the late Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV to the glory of this monastery and in honor of St. Jerome and St. Procopius. Lord, grant him eternal peace. Amen. 148 [fig. 9a & b]

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The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

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St. Procopius & Cyrillic

The two parts were bound together in a majestically decorated codex, symbolically uniting the Slavic (Cyrillic) letters that Procopius cultivated in Bohemia and the Slavic (Glagolitic) letters of Jerome that the Glagolites brought to Prague from Dalmatia (Slavonia). In addition to the date of the Glagolitic part and the alleged provenance of the Cyrillic part of the codex, the Czech colophon reveals important nuances about the reception of Slavonic graphic symbolism: although it was understood that the Cyrillic letters had been introduced by Cyril and Methodius, it was the local saint, Procopius, who was credited with their preservation in Bohemia.

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Bohemia

Charles's gift of the Cyrillic manuscript to the Glagolites acknowledged the contribution of St. Procopius to Bohemian Christianity and emphasized the connection between the Slavonic traditions of Moravia, Bohemia, and Croatia. Unlike Charles and the Glagolites, who believed in Procopius's authorship of the Cyrillic part unreservedly, modern historians often hesitate to take this legend at face value. Yet it may not be easy to separate myth from fact. The writing and language of the Cyrillic part are indeed quite archaic, and whether or not Procopius could have written it is still debated by linguists, philologists, and historians of liturgy. Linguists describe the Cyrillic part as an East Slavic, a Serbian, or an eleventh-century Bohemian copy or, even more specifically, suggest that it was copied by a Rus' scribe residing in Bohemia from a Rus' or a Serbian original. 149 At the same time, the candidacy of Procopius has not been completely rejected. Ladislav Matejka, for example, has argued that the linguistic and orthographic features of the manuscript clearly point to its Bohemian provenance, and therefore, the Cyrillic part of the Gospel of Reims could have been written by Procopius himself: There is, of course, no guarantee that even the most meticulous study will definitely solve the problems of the Reims Cyrillic text which, for the time being, remains the most intriguing puzzle of Church Slavic literature. Nevertheless, based on the historical evidence and linguistic arguments, it seems reasonable to propose that the Reims Cyrillic text was not written by a Russian scribe hampered by a lack of literary competence, but by a relatively sophisticated Czech monk who tried hard to retain a spiritual contact between East and West by copying an EastSlavicized Bulgarian manuscript in the period when the schism threatened to separate the Western Church from the Eastern Church almost hermetically. 150

If the implications of this Bohemian relic of Cyrillic writing were understood by Charles IV exactly as Matejka has formulated them, then the emperor's gift to the Glagolites was doubly symbolic. The hypothesis of Procopius's authorship and Bohemian provenance of the Cyrillic part is further complicated by the fact that the Benedictine monks at the Sazava Monastery most likely wrote in Glagolitic, not Cyrillic, script, although their reading knowledge of "imported" Cyrillic is presumed. 151 Moreover, while there is little agreement among linguists and philologists, liturgy specialists add

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Glagolitic at the Sazava Monastery

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Pontifical Mass

Passion relics & imperial insignia presentation ceremonies

feasts of Sts. Procopius, Wenceslas, Jerome, Cyril & Methodius, Benedict

further uncertainty to this debate. Thus, based on his analysis of the Cyrillic part's liturgical content and its inclusion of individual saints, Arnost Vykoukal-the abbot of the Emmaus Monastery (1925-1942)-ruled out its origin at the Sazava Monastery and Procopius's authorship. 152 The title of the "Gospel" that this codex has acquired is conventional. In terms of its content and function, the codex is not a Gospel book but a Lectionary (lectionarium missae), that is, it contains readings from Gospels and Epistles that are used during the Mass. 153 The Cyrillic part, which is missing both the beginning and the end, contains only readings from the Gospels. According to Vykoukal, its content fully corresponds to the calendar and perkopes of the Byzantine-Slavonic Menology and Synaxarium. As the colophon says, the Glagolitic section was compiled according to the Roman rite for use during the Pontifical Mass, conducted by a bishop, that is, "when the abbot serves the Mass under the crown:' The clarification of the book's purpose in the colophon is of great consequence: it confirms that the Glagolites exercised the privilege bestowed on them by Clement VI in 1350, according to which the abbot of the Slavonic Monastery was allowed to use pontifical insignia and serve the Pontifical Mass at special festive occasions. This privilege, which was also bestowed on the abbot of the St. Charlemagne Monastery the same year, has been connected with the arrival in Prague of the Passion relics in 1350 and the involvement of both monasteries in the Passion relics and imperial insignia presentation ceremonies. 154 The Pontifical Mass was most likely celebrated in Latin, but the biblical lessons were also read in Slavic, as was the custom in Dalmatia. 155 A special lectionary that includes these Slavonic lessons was required and was probably compiled around that time to complement the Latin Order of the Mass. In this case, the Glagolitic part of the Gospel of Reims, copied in 1395, could be a grandchild of that lectionary. The text of the readings was taken from one of the Croatian Glagolitic missals or breviaries that the Glagolites had brought from Dalmatia. Linguists describe its language as the Croatian variant of Church Slavonic with very few Bohemisms. 156 While the Cyrillic part includes the traditional holidays of the Eastern Church, the Glagolitic part of the Reims lectionary reflects the hagiographical focus of the Slavonic Monastery and was compiled specifically for services that took place within its walls. It contains readings for principal feasts according to the Roman

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Bohemia

rite and also includes texts for feast days of Sts. Procopius (4 July), Wenceslas (28 September), Jerome (30 September), Cyril and Methodius (14 February), and Benedict (21 March) but-most notably-omits the feast day of St. Adalbert (23 April), one of the monastery's patron saints. As has been mentioned above, other instances when St. Adalbert is absent from the list of patron saints of the monastery include Charles's donation charter of 1352 and a charter of restitution of 1368, in which only Jerome, Cyril, Methodius, and Procopius are mentioned. It is then possible that the lectionary was also compiled around or after 1352, when St. Adalbert seemed to fall out of favor with the Glagolite brethren. Manuscript illumination reinforces the emblematic spirit of the written word. There are seventeen illuminated initials in the Glagolitic text, all of which are Latin letters, as was the standard practice in Croatian Glagolitic manuscripts. Seven of the initials render images of concepts and personages of corresponding feast days in the text. As might be expected, both "authors" of the Slavonic liturgy are represented: one initial depicts St. Procopius as a bishop with a white mitre, black garb, and a golden crosier in his hand (fig. 10); another (fig.11) depicts St. Jerome in a red cardinal's hat with a lion. The remaining images illustrate universal Christian themes-the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary with the child Christ, and the Nativity scene with a star of Bethlehem, while the image of St. Peter with a key emphasizes the connection of the Glagolites with the Roman Church. The Glagolitic colophon, which crowns the codex, itself carries important symbolism. Composed in Czech by the same scribe who copied the Glagolitic lectionary in the Croatian variant of Church Slavonic, it highlights another important idea of the CyrillicGlagolitic project: in this colophon the scribe explicitly claimed the holy letters of St. Jerome for his own vernacular language.

St. Jerome's Slavic Alphabet, the nobilis lingua Slauonica, and the Czech Bible The source of the Glagolitic part of the Gospel of Reims was just one of a number of liturgical books that the Croatian Glagolites brought with them to Prague and used for worship at the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome. Although their liturgical books contained key readings from the biblical books, the Croatian Glagolites did

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no feast for St. Adalbert

image of St. Procopius as a bishop image of St. Jerome with a lion

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

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Figure 11. St. Jerome in an illuminated initial, The Slavonic Gospel of Reims, Bibliotheque de Reims (MS 255), leaf 37

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The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

Czech Glagolitic

Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica

Czech Pasional

Charles IV supports Glagolitic scriptorium

nobilis lingua Slauonica

John ofNeumarkt praises "the noble Slavic language"

not possess a complete translation of the Bible or substantial exegeticalliterature.157 This essential textual lacuna had yet to be filled. But the Croatian monks were neither Latin scholars nor biblical exegetes. It was up to the local Czech brethren, who joined the Slavonic monastic community, to enrich its literary production with texts in original Latin and translations. However, they translated into their own, Czech, vernacular. The new Czech scribes inherited the Croatian monks' main linguistic concept, which was to associate their special Glagolitic alphabet received from Jerome with the Slavic tongue. They thus adopted the Glagolitic script for the needs of writing in Czech. 158 Unfortunately, the monastic library did not survive, and only remnants of the former Glagolitic book collection remain. Among attested Czech Glagolitic texts are a Czech translation of Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica and a Czech expanded version of the Legenda Aurea, known as the Czech Pasional, which incorporated the lives of several Czech saints into the original collection, as well as the Czech Bible. 159 The donation document of 26 August 1356 shows that Charles supported a professional scriptorium in the monastery. One such scribe, by the name of John, received a yearly salary of ten marks for his extraordinary services for the glory of the Slavonic Monastery "in copying books for reading and chanting in the noble Slavic language [... ] with an eagerness of mind, as restlessly as faithfullY:' 16°From this document we may deduce that, most likely, John was not a monk, since Charles included his legitimate heirs (legitimi heredes) as beneficiaries of his earnings. Just as in his letter to the Serbian tsar Dusan in 1355, Charles uses the attribute "noble, renowned" to describe the Slavic language (nobilis lingua Slauonica). 161 Charles's chancellor John of Neumarkt, a German nobleman, shared this regard for the Slavic language. In a letter to Charles regarding a German translation of the Soliloquia (Soliloquies) ascribed to St. Augustine that he was undertaking, John complains that the intricate and exquisite philosophical and theological terminology of this work makes the translation so difficult that even St. Jerome would have difficulty, were he to translate this treatise into "the noble Slavic language:' 162 Such a compliment to the Slavic language from John ofNeumarkt, a connoisseur of literature, who himself aspired to a refined style in Latin and German, is especially noteworthy because in the same letter he complains that the words of the German language are not at all elegant. 163 The epithet of a lingua nobilis-customary in reference to Latin-

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Bohemia

shows the high rank that Charles and his chancellor considered the Slavic language to occupy in the ecclesiastical sphere. Although the historical circumstances surrounding the translation of the complete Czech Bible are not documented, it seems plausible that the establishment of the Slavonic Monastery in Prague and the cult of St. Jerome as a Slavic apostle triggered its emergence. As the Croatian monks were not sufficiently skilled, the project was undertaken by local men of letters in the 1350s and 1360s under the auspices of Charles IV and archbishops Ernest of Pardubice and John Ocko ofVlasim, and backed by the authority of the newly founded university (studium generale, 1348). Based on the source of the translation-the Parisian edition of the Vulgate Latin Bible-it has been suggested that the Augustinian canons regular of the Roudnice Monastery (the center of the devotio moderna movement), who possessed a copy of this edition, could have played a key role in the biblical translation project. 164 According to a linguistic and textological analysis, the project involved about ten translators belonging to different monastic orders and ranks, as well as coming from different cultural and religious circles, only several of whom have been identified. Among the possible collaborators, scholars name several prominent theologians and university professors: the university vice-chancellor Nicholas of Roudnice, the Dominican John Moravec, the Minorite Albert Bluduv (Bludonis), and the Augustinian eremite Nicholas of Louny, as well as the "father of Bohemian Reformation" Milic of Krometiz, and the renowned lexicographer Bartholomew of Chlumec (Master Claretus). 165 Even if the Prague Glagolites did not participate in the translation project themselves, they could have been one of its ideological inspirations. At the very least, they numbered among its beneficiaries: a copy of the Czech Glagolitic Bible was made at the Slavonic Monastery's scriptorium in 1416, of which only the second volume and several fragments have been preserved. 166 In a colophon at the end of the codex the scribe specified that it was written in the monastery and therefore was not one of the books brought to Prague from Croatia: "Psana tato bible ot bratrzi Klasterskich'. ale ne ot pisarzov' charvat'skich'" (This Bible has been written by the monastery brethren and not by the Croatian scribes). 167 Numerous corrections and additions made over time in different ink and handwriting show that the Bible was continuously read and kept current with the latest revisions of the biblical translations (fig. 12). 168

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Czech Bible

under the auspices of Charles IV and archbishops Ernest of Pardubice & John Ocko ofV!asim

studium gerzerale

Roudnice Augustinian Monastery

Nicholas of Roudnice John Moravec Bludonis Nicholas of Louny Mille of Kromeriz Master Claretus

Czech Glagolitic Bible of 1416

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

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The Bible in the Czech language benefited not only the Slavonic monks but also female convents, as well as many common preachers. In addition to the practical application, however, it had important symbolical, theological, and political significance. The implications of such an important enterprise as a vernacular Bible, which could only have been authorized by the highest secular and ecclesiastical authorities, need to be explained in the general context of Charles's ideology and politics. If indeed Charles IV and Archbishop Ernest of Pardubice (and later John Ocko of Vlasim) sanctioned the translation of the Czech Bible, how did they justify it? While a more focused and interdisciplinary inquiry is still needed to explain the theological and political justifications for the biblical translation project, it is evident that the authority of St. Jerome, which elevated the status of the Slavic letters and language, must have played an important role in providing the necessary legitimacy.

The Cult of St. Jerome in Bohemia beyond the Slavonic Monastery

The cult of St. Jerome in Bohemia is not attested before Charles's reign. Jerome's name first appears in 1349 on the list of saints whose feasts are celebrated in the Prague diocese, in relation to

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the holiday of the four doctors of the church (Ambrose, Gregory, Augustine, and Jerome). 169 In the years following the establishment of the Slavonic Monastery, administrative records of the Prague diocese (the Libri erectionum Archidioecesis Pragensis) catalog several other cases of dedications to Jerome. 170 The inventory of altars from 1367-1373 includes an altar to the four doctors of the church at the Prague metropolitan Cathedral of St. Vitus. This altar must have been established during Charles's lifetime. In 1394, brothers Zikmund and Ondtej Huler of the Old Town built an altar to St. Jerome at the Tyn Cathedral (the Church of the Mother of God in front of Tyn) in Prague. At that time, Zikmund Huler, formerly a scribe in a royal chancery, served as a royal chamberlain. In 1400, Katetina, the widow of Kunat Kaplit of Sulevice, a former royal mint master and chief scribe, established an altar in honor of the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome in a chapel of St. Anna at the St. Vitus Cathedral and provided for an altar keeper. In 1402, an altar to St. Jerome was established at a church of the royal town of Nymburk with a designation for an altar keeper. The name of St. Jerome is also among the saints of an altar established at the St. Vitus Cathedral in 1412 by Jost, the margrave of Moravia. Finally, one of the 32 altars of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul at Vysehrad was dedicated to St. Jerome. 171 The number of church altars established in his name suggests that St. Jerome occupied a relatively modest place in popular devotion. However, a noticeable increase in the occurrence of the Christian name Jerome (Czech Jeronym), as is documented in ordination records from 1395 to 1416, shows the popularity of this saint among the clergy, especially in the Prague diocese. 172 This is especially important given the relative scarcity of the name before the end of the fourteenth century. Several of these Jeromes were graduates of Charles University. Among them are Jerome of Prague (Jeronym Prazsky), John Hus's associate and fellow martyr, 173 as well as his religious opponent John Jerome of Prague (Jan Silvan Jeronym Prazsky), later a Camaldolese monk whose missionary experience in Lithuania was documented by Enea Silvio Piccolomini in his De Europa (1458). Another well-known figure is Jerome Seidenberg of Vratislav (Jeronym Seidenberg z Vratislavi), educated in Bologna and Prague, a canon of Olomouc and Vratislav, papal auditor, and archdeacon of St. Vitus. 174 Thus, although devotion to St. Jerome did not become a widespread cult in Bohemia, he was revered among the clergy and learned audiences.

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altars to St. Jerome Cathedral of St. Vitus the Tyn Cathedral

chapel of St. Anna at the St. Vitus Cathedral Nymburk church Church of Sts. Peter & Paul at Vysehrad

)eronym

Jeronym Prazsky Jan Silvan Jeronym Prazsky

Enea Silvio Piccolomini, De Europa Jeronym Seidenberg z Vratislavi

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

St. Jerome by Master Theodoric

Holy Cross Chapel at Karlstein

In art, too, the cult of St. Jerome found a place in Bohemia. Jerome's images are found in manuscript illuminations, murals, and woodcuts. In general, while the literary models of Jerome's cult came directly from Italy, the iconographic tradition in Bohemia could have developed from Byzantine-Dalmatian-Venetian prototypes.175 Yet one of the most famous Czech representations of St. Jerome belongs to Master Theodoric, whom Charles commissioned, around 1365, to paint a series of portraits for the Holy Cross Chapel at the royal castle of Karlstein, a treasury of holy relics and imperial insignia. 176 Jerome's portrait is set in the panel along with the other doctors of the church, Sts. Gregory, Ambrose, and Augustine. Importantly, scholars point out that this representation does not depend on the traditional iconography of Jerome, which at that time depicted him as a cardinal sitting in his study with a lion at his side. 177 Theodoric depicted Jerome in profile holding a book. He did not include any details in the golden background besides a desk, a pulpit, and a scroll-a key attribute of the evangelists and those who reveal divine wisdom (the Word, the Book) through writing. After all, it was Jerome's letters in the broadest sense of this term that sparked devotion to this saint.

St. Jerome in Literary Sources of Bohemian Provenance

Czech Pasional Jacobus de Voragine,

Legenda Aurea

Although Jerome did not become a popular Bohemian saint, his recognition as a Slav did spread beyond the Benedictine Slavonic Monastery and accompanied his Renaissance-inspired fame as a scholar. Literary sources and historical documents from the second half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries show that the Slavic pedigree of St. Jerome acquired wider recognition in Bohemia than previously thought. The earliest literary works devoted to St. Jerome that appeared in Bohemia do not yet contain any information about his Slavic descent, adhering instead to the contents of their Latin sources. A relation ofJerome's exemplary life and merits was of course included in the Czech Pasional, a Czech version of Jacobus de Voragine's popular collection of saints' lives, the Legenda Aurea, which also incorporated the lives of local saints. Jerome's vita drew together various traditional hagiographical motifs: it emphasized Jerome's merits as a biblical exegete and exemplary ascetic, and told the story of Jerome's temptation and life in the desert, including a colorful

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account of Jerome's miraculous cure of a lion by extracting a thorn from the animal's paw. This legend was perceived as an allegory of Jerome's eradication of errors and imperfections from the Church. Following its source, however, the Czech version has no mention of Jerome's Slavic roots. Another famous work on St. Jerome-the Vita et Transitus Sancti Hieronymi, a collection of hagiographical epistles on St. Jerome ascribed to Eusebius, Augustine, and Cyril, also known as the Hieronymus-appeared in Bohemia through the labors of John of Neumarkt. A man of letters and promoter of humanistic ideas, John of Neumarkt was an admirer of St. Jerome and his "delightful eloquence" (grata facundia) and "renowned merits" (merita gloriosa). 178 During his stay in Italy in 1368-1369, John acquired a fourteenthcentury manuscript of Italian or south French provenance of the pseudo-epistolary Hieronymus. 179 At Charles's request, John personally copied and edited this work, presenting it to Charles with an explanatory note. 180 Between 1371 and 1375, he translated the Hieronymus into German and supplied it with numerous personal additions for Elizabeth, the wife of Charles's younger brother, the margrave of Moravia John Henry. 181 A Czech translation of the Hieronymus soon emerged under the title 0 sv. Jeronymovi knihy troje (Three Books on St. Jerome), although its Czech translator has not yet been identified. 182 The Czech and German versions follow their Latin original fairly closely, showing no sign of St. Jerome's association with the Slavs: the letter of Augustine to Cyril, which contains a passage about Jerome's acts as a translator of the Holy Writings, mentions only his translation to Latin. It gives a list of the languages in which Jerome was allegedly proficient: Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Persian, Arabic, and Median. 183 John's correspondence demonstrates that he took care to promote St. Jerome's fame. In a letter from 1372, John thanks his notary, Peter, for working diligently on copying the works of St. Jerome. 184 In his letter to the prior of Augustinians in Brno, written shortly after 1372, John hastens the scribe and manuscript illuminator John of Opava (a canon in Brno), whose work copying the liber s. feronimi (the book of St. Jerome) was delayed. 185 The epistolary Hieronymus, which John of Neumarkt industriously promoted, circulated widely in Bohemia, both in the original Latin version and in the two local vernacular languages: the great number of fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury manuscript copies of all three versions of this work in the Czech archives speaks to its wide circulation and popularity. 186

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jerome & the lion

Vita et Transitus Sancti Hieronymi

John of Neumarkt

admiration for Jerome John of Neumarkt edits the Latin Hieronymus & translates it into German

0 sv. Jeronymovi knihy

troje

John ofNeumarkt promotes St. Jerome

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome Giovanni d' Andrea, Hieronymianus

Missal of John of Neumarkt

Franciscus Thebaldus

Petrarch

Giovanni d' Andrea's influential work Hieronymianus also reached Bohemia. 187 One of the earliest copies of the Hieronymianus to make its appearance in Bohemia was in 1350 in the library of the first professor of canon law at Charles University, Bonsignore de Bonsignori from Bologna. Several copies of the Hieronymianus in the hand of Italian scribes, as well as an incunabula edition of 1482, are attested in the Czech archives. Although no Czech translation of Andrea's treatise was made, and its circulation was very modest (there are only three manuscripts recorded in Czech archives), it nevertheless influenced the local poetic tradition devoted to Jerome. Credit is again due to John of Neumarkt, who introduced this source to the readership in Bohemia. Sometime after 1364 he commissioned a splendidly illustrated book of the Missal and other hymns, in which he included a poem by Franciscus Thebaldus {1241-1331) from Andrea's Hieronymianus. 188 The source of Thebaldus's poem, "Ecclesie doctor Ciceronis codice flagrans;' is specified in a preface: ''Attached are the verses edited to the praise of St. Jerome according to the collection of Dominus Giovanni d' Andrea, the doctor of canon law, to the praise of the glorious Jerome:' 189 Thebaldus's poem is followed in the manuscript by a poem by Petrarch {1304-1374), which is also devoted to St. Jerome. 190 The addition of a poem by Petrarch, whose Latin style John adopted as a model, is not surprising. He met the great Florentine poet and humanist in Mantua in 1354, when he traveled to Italy as a member of Charles IV's entourage and later also corresponded with him. 191 John of Neumarkt concluded his "edition" of the Latin Hieronymus with poems consisting of 36 hexameters that eulogize Jerome.192 Since John did not indicate the poems' authorship, they were initially ascribed to him until finally being identified as belonging to Thebaldus (the first 12 hexameters) and to Petrarch (the following 24 hexameters). 193 Thebaldus's and Petrarch's poems appear side by side in yet another source associated with John of Neumarkt-a fourteenth-century manuscript from the Olomouc Metropolitan Chapter Library, which contains records from the time when John was the bishop of Olomouc. 194 Although we have seen from John's letter to Charles that heappreciated Jerome as an accomplished translator into Slavic, he does not tamper with the above-discussed Italian literary sources, preferring to preserve their content. Other Bohemian men of letters, however, found creative ways to recognize Jerome's services to the

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Bohemia

Slavs, even when copying other authors' compositions. One example comes from an early fifteenth-century versed Oracio de Sancto Jeronimo (The Oration on St. Jerome), which Ferdinand Tadra has described as "the best fruit of devotional poetry in the Czech lands:' 195 The author of this poetic masterpiece, however, is not Bohemian: the same verses are also attested in earlier manuscripts of Austrian provenance. 196 Moreover, it is quite possible that the poem originated in the monastic community of St. Peter's Benedictine Abbey in Salzburg. Besides the fact that two of the surviving manuscripts belonged to St. Peter's monastic library, this poem-prayer seems to have been originally addressed to St. Benedict (as attested in a manuscript from 1470) and only later adapted as a prayer to St. Jerome. 197 What distinguishes the Bohemian copy of the oration from other versions, though, is a small but important textual variation. The Bohemian author, in his keen desire to draw attention to Jerome's services to the Slavs, sacrificed a eulogizing line in the very beginning of the poem-"Doctorque eximie" (and extraordinary doctor)-in order to insert the line "Sclavorum apostole" (the Slavic apostle or the apostle of the Slavs), thus managing to preserve the poem's rhyme and meter: Analecta Hymnica 15, n. 184 "Dispensator scripturarum Jeronyme tu sacrarum, Doctorque eximie, Protege me supplicantem, Serva tibi famulantem, Excelse Christicole:' 198

Oracio de sancto Jeronimo "Dispensator scripturarum, Jeronime, tu sacrarum, Sclavorum apostole, Protege me supplicantem, Serva tibi famulantem, Excelse celicole:' 199

(0 Jerome, the steward of the Holy Scriptures, and exceptional doctor, protect and guard me, your servant and humble supplicant, o exalted worshiper of Christ.)

(0 Jerome, the steward of the Holy Scriptures, the apostle of the Slavs, protect and guard me, your servant and humble supplicant, o exalted worshiper of heaven.)

A similar editorial technique is found in the Cheb Office to St. Jerome, which is included among the masterpieces of Czech manuscript illumination on account of its majestically and unusually ornamented title page and decorated initials. 200 According to a

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Oracio de Sancto Jeronimo

Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter in Salzburg

Sclavorum apostole

John ofTephi, Cheb

Office to St. Jerome

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

altar to St. Jerome at St. Nicholas Church

John of Tephi, Der Ackermann aus Bohmen

John ofTephi & John of Neumarkt

Vita et Gesta Sancti Jeronimi

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea Hieronymus Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronicon Jerome knew Slavic, Greek, Latin, & Hebrew

colophon at the end, the manuscript was commissioned by the Cheb (Eger, in German) burgers Nicolai Zychner (Czychner) and Nicolai Hasenzagl (Hasenczagl) for the consecration of the altar at St. Nicholas Church devoted to St. Jerome. 201 The Office was composed in 1404 by John ofTepla (ca. 1350-1413/15), the author of the famous rhetorical and poetic composition Der Ackermann aus Bohmen (The Ploughman from Bohemia). 202 The appointments ofJohn of Tepla, in the years circa 1383-1411, as a public notary of the bilingual town of Zatec (Saaz, in German); as the rector of the Latin grammar school there; and, from 1411 to his death, as a notary of Prague's New Town, attest to his proficiency in Czech, Latin, and German. 203 Of particular note is John of Tephi's literary connection with John ofNeumarkt, whom he perceived as his precursor in German prose: literary critics characterize John ofTephi's style as showing the strong influence of John of Neumarkt's prose, modeled on the Latin classicizing style of Italian humanists. 204 The Office to St. Jerome consists of several pages of notated hymns, followed by the narrative Vita et Gesta Sancti Jeronimi (The Life and Deeds of St. Jerome) in six lectures. 205 That the hymnal portion of the Office is attested in several manuscripts speaks of a relatively wide circulation. The lectures are masterfully compiled from several sources, among which are Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, John of Neumarkt's version of the Hieronymus, Sigebert of Gembloux's Chronicon, and several biblical books. 206 One of John of Tephi's creative touches is the inclusion of a passage about Jerome's competence in the Slavic language prior to his learning of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. In the opening section of the first lecture, which reproduces the Legenda Aurea, the author inserted the clause "sclavonica ligwa fruens" (enjoying/speaking the Slavonic tongue) in the sentence "Hie puer adhuc Romam adiit" (While still a youth he went to Rome): Legenda Aurea, Cap. 146.

Cheb Office to St. Jerome, Vita et Gesta

"Ieronymus Eusebii viri nobilis filius ab oppido Stridonis quod Dalmatie et Pannonie confinia tenet exstitit oriundus. Hie adhuc puer Romam adiit et litteris Grecis, Latinis et Hebraicis plene eruditus est:' 207

"Hieronymus Eusebii viri nobilis filius, ab opido Stridonis quod Dalmacie et Pannonie confinia tenet extitit oriundus. Hie puer adhuc Slauonica ligwa fruens Romam adiit, et litteris grecis, latinis, et hebraicis est plene et uberrime eruditus:' 208

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Bohemia

(Jerome was the son of a nobleman named Eusebius and was a native of the town of Stridon, which lay on the boundary between Dalmatia and Pannonia. While still a youth he went to Rome and became thoroughly proficient in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages and letters.)

(Jerome was the son of a nobleman named Eusebius and was a native of the town of Stridon, which lay on the boundary between Dalmatia and Pannonia. While still a youth, speaking the Slavonic tongue, he went to Rome and became thoroughly and fully proficient in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages and letters.)

In the hymnal section of the Office, too, John of Tephi inserted references to Jerome's Slavic origin, for example: "Hie specimen Slawonie I is doctor sapiencie I hie speculum ecclesie I exemplar sanctimonie'' (Behold the scion of Slavonia, I The teacher [doctor] of wisdom. I Behold the mirror of the Church, I The example of sanctity), 209 and "Lucis lumen lucet clarum I quod gingnit Slavonia I vasta mundi graciarum I luce lustrat spacia'' (The bright torch of light shines, I Which Slavonia begets, I And it illuminates with the light of Grace I The vast expanse of the universe). 210 The number of Slavic references in the Cheb Office to St. Jerome, written by a German-Bohemian author, is particularly notable given the fact that contemporaneous Latin poetry devoted to St. Jerome in manuscripts of non -Slavic provenance contains virtually no mention of Jerome's association with the Slavs. 211 Among Jerome's ardent admirers in Bohemia was also the famous Czech religious reformer John Hus, who habitually calls Jerome "a glorious Slav" in his sermons, in phrases such as: "Hec gloriosus Slawus Ieronimus super isto" 212 (Here, the glorious Slav Jerome on this),"... et gloriosum cristianum beatum Slavum Ieronimum'' 213 (the glorious Christian Blessed Slav Jerome), "Jeronimus beatus, Slavus gloriosus" 214 (Blessed Jerome, the glorious Slav). In addition, according to the explicit that Hus left at the end of his copy of John Wyclif's philosophical treatises, he finished his work "na den sv. Jeronyma Slovana" (on the day of St. Jerome, the Slav), that is, on 30 September 1398. This copy also includes Hus's anti-German comments: "Haha, Nemci, haha, ven, ven" (Ha-ha, Germans, ha-ha, out, out)Y 5 Indeed, for Hus, who advocated the use of the Czech vernacular in church and the accessibility of the religious word to common people, St. Jerome provided a valuable model. After all, in his own time, Jerome translated and interpreted the

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specimen Slawonie

John Hus: gloriosus Slawus Ieronimus

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

noster Sclavus sanctus Jeronimus

John of Jesenice

Holy Scripture into Latin, which then was also a vernacular, thus creating "the Vulgate" (vulgatus- "common, well-known'') version of the Bible. Another reference to Jerome as "noster Sclavus sanctus ]eronimus" (our Slav Saint Jerome) is found in the treatise on the relationship between the power of the pope and that of the emperor with the incipit Quia summum in rebus (1414), which is sometimes attributed to Hus's friend and advocate, John of Jesenice. This instance of allusion to Jerome's Slavic pedigree is often cited as evidence that the treatise was composed by a Czech author. 216

Implications of St. Jerome's Recognition as a Slav in Bohemia

veneration of St. Jerome as a Slav reveals the awareness of Slavic identity

St. Jerome elevates the position of Slavs in Western Christendom

To a modern historian, the association of Jerome with Slavic Christianity might seem a random oddity. But precisely because this theory acquired limited acknowledgment elsewhere in Latin Europe, its reception and recognition in Bohemian learned circles, outside of Dalmatia, Jerome's alleged homeland, is revealing and indicative of an emerging trend that cast Slavic identity as meaningful and politically advantageous. 217 Owing to the Croatian Glagolites, the cult of St. Jerome that developed in Italy, and that had focused on Jerome as a humanistic scholar and miracleworker, acquired in Bohemia an additional dimension-the saint's repute as a scion of the Slavs and their apostle. This is particularly notable given the absence of any Slavic references in devotion to Jerome in non-Slavic communities. Having been introduced in Bohemia, Jerome's Slavic-Croatian background inspired intellectuals to contemplate the connection between the Czechs and the Slavs in general and Croatians in particular. The Benedictine Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome in Prague, which inaugurated the king-sponsored cult of Jerome in Bohemia, favorably combined the representation of the fundamental Christian doctrine of soul salvation (as expressed in the mural typological cycle) with elevating the prestige of the local Slavo-Bohemian Church. As a Slav and a biblical translator, St. Jerome found his due place next to Sts. Cyril and Methodius in their capacity as the apostles of the Slavs and the Czechs. At the same time, his authority as a doctor of the Latin Church elevated his Slavic kinfolk in Bohemia to a privileged place in Western Christianity, a task that Charles considered central to his Bohemian politics. Perhaps this

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Bohemia

is why the Slavonic Monastery was among the earliest foundations that Charles established in Prague's New Town. St. Jerome's Slavic (Glagolitic) letters, which firmly attached a native Slavic liturgical tradition to the Western Church, became a perfect symbol of the union between the Slavs and Rome. The association of Jerome's alphabet with a Slavic tongue, which gave legitimacy to the Roman Slavonic rite, also raised the Slavic vernacular to a lingua nobilis, strengthening its position vis-a-vis Latin and creating a favorable ideological setting for the emergence of the Czech Bible, the first vernacular translation among the Slavs. However, St. Jerome's eminence-both in his role as a biblical scholar and as a Slavic apostle-remained limited to learned circles and did not grow into a popular cult, as did, for instance, the devotion to St. Vitus of Sicily, or St. Sigismund of Burgundy, who were also both promoted by Charles IV. On the margins of this discussion there emerges an interesting paradox of Charles's universalistic politics: his conception of a unified Roman Empire included, and even encouraged, a multiplicity of languages, ethnic groups, and ecclesiastical rites, while simultaneously excluding any nationalist undertones. This universalistic principle was based on the concept of the empire's heterogeneity, not its uniformity. (In this respect, Charles IV stands as a modern European politician.) The foundation of the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome in Prague embodies this paradox. The Glagolites' practice of observing the Roman rite in the Slavic language, and their attribution of the Slavic alphabet to St. Jerome, elegantly reconciled the unique with the universal in Charles's political symbolism and served his political goal of firmly situating Bohemia, the country of Slavs, in the center of the Holy Roman Empire.

llS

St. Jerome's Slavic alphabet is a symbol of the union between the Slavs &Rome

because of St. Jerome, Slavic vernacular becomes lingua nobilis

politics of Charles IV

4 Silesia A Provincial Exploit

Eximie virtu tis beati Jeronimi merita gloriosa quemadmodum per orbis terrarum spacia late diffusa sunt, vt iam in omnem terram laudis eius dulcis quidem son us exiuerit, ita procul dubio eius patrocinia sunt cunctis eum inuocantibus fructuosa. (So widely are the extraordinarily celebrated merits of blessed Jerome's excellence known around the whole world that to all lands the sound of his sweet praise reached, and so his protection is certainly valuable to all those who call upon him.) -John ofNeumarkt to Charles IV (1370/1371)'

T

he prosperity of the Slavonic Monastery in Prague gave the cult of St. Jerome a strong institutional base in Bohemia and put the Slavonic rite and Glagolitic letters into the spotlight. Its fame traveled to Silesia and Poland where, following its example, two daughter monasteries were established. In 1380, Duke Conrad II of Oldnica founded the Monastery of Corpus Christi for the Prague Glagolites at his seat Olesnica (Oels) in Lower Silesia. Ten years later, in 1390, the Prague Glagolites were summoned to Kleparz, a suburb of Cracow, where Queen Jadwiga and King Wladyslaw Jagiello founded the Monastery of the Holy Cross for them. The fact that the Prague Glagolites were invited to introduce their special Roman Slavonic rite in Silesia and Poland is intriguing and thought-provoking. But historians have found it difficult to pinpoint the reasons for, and implications of, these foundations, and thus these questions remain open. 2

Silesia

The Slavonic Monastery

Indeed, in the case of the Slavonic Benedictine Monastery of Corpus Christi at Olesnica, there are more questions than answers regarding the circumstances of its foundation, its purpose, and the role that it played in local religious life. The foundation charter of 21 September 1380, signed by Duke Conrad II of Olesnica and Koile (1366-1403 ), sheds surprisingly little light on these questions.3 The document stresses Conrad's personal invitation to the Slavonic brothers, suggesting that he acted as the main founder and patron of the monastery:

Conrad II establishes the Slavonic Monastery of Corpus Christi in Oldnica

[B]ut with a deliberate mind and from our own certain knowledge, and with the name of Christ invoked, we have assigned, and by the contents of this letter assign, [a place] to the abbot and the convent of the Slavic brothers, members of the order and rule of St. Benedict, where they live for the time being, having been summoned from Prague by us, who together would possess and hold it for all time with every honor and privilege of liberty and joint possession that other monasteries and canonical [i.e., not secular] places[ ... ] enjoy. 1

The document specifies the exact location for the construction of the church, monastery, and utility buildings for the Slavonic Benedictines. The designated area was situated close to the city walls, not far from the Wartenberg (Syc6w) Gate and the place commonly known as the Duke's Apple Yard. 5 To support the daily needs of the monastery ("pro Vitae necessitatibus sustentationem"), Conrad allocated the income from the parochial church in Przecz6w with all its possessions, as well as income from a number of mills and farms. 6 According to the document, the Slavonic brothers were given permission to preach and conduct services on all days and holidays, with the exception of Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, during which the main parochial church's right to celebrate Mass with a presentation of relics was stipulated: And also we desire and order with the consent of the aforesaid parson that the abbot, the convent, and the aforesaid brothers be able to preach the word of God in the aforesaid monastery on all holidays, except for certain holidays, evidently Easter, Pentecost, the Assumption of Mary,

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Wartenberg (Syc6w) Gate and the Duke's AppleYard

pastoral care

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome the Nativity of the Lord-these four days of the year, when the solemn Mass is accustomed to be celebrated in the presence of saints' relics in the city of Olesnica, at the parochial church. 7

james Augustini of Legnica, Matthias of Pannewitz

Conrad's foundation charter reveals the involvement of a striking number of local and general Silesian ecclesiastical officials. Among those who endorsed the foundation were the head of the Olesnica parochial church, Nicholas of Smolna, 8 and-the office of a bishop being vacant at that time-the administrators of the Wrodaw (Breslau) diocese, Archdeacon James Augustini of Legnica (Liegnitz) and Matthias of Pannewitz. 9 Conrad likewise emphasizes the consent of the parson, Phillip, to provide the parochial church in Przecz6w with required pastoral activities for the benefit of the Slavonic brothers. On the whole, Conrad's document seeks to incorporate the new monastery firmly in the local ecclesiastical community, which at the turn of the fourteenth century oversaw the pastoral care of many Polish-speaking parishioners in Oldnica: 10 And so we ask with all due earnestness of our prayers that this be incorporated, implemented and put in practice in all respects by the lords prefects in charge forever to the use of the abbot, convent, and the monastery of the previously named brothers, and likewise be supported by the authority of the church officials (ordinaria), so that they [i.e., the brothers] endure steadfast forever, by the contents of the present letter. 11

In general, the discourse of the foundation charter is very businesslike: it talks at length about the location of the future monastery, administrative issues, and people involved in this matter. One important piece of information, however, is visibly missing from this document. Beyond the conventional "hope for eternal retribution" (spes retributionis aeternae), it does not reveal any related historical circumstances or motives for the foundation. 12 The foundational document does not specify the dedication of the monastery, but from a later document dated to 10 August 1385, which mentions an "abbas monasterii Corporis Christi in Olsna ordinis sancti Benedicti fratrum Sclavorum" (abbot of the Slavonic Benedictine Monastery of Corpus Christi in Oldnica), we learn that it was eventually dedicated to Corpus Christi. 13

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Silesia

Hypotheses

A descendant of the Piast dynasty, Duke Conrad II was one of the most influential rulers in Silesia. He pursued a forceful and practical economic policy, acquiring new lands and engaging in a number of territorial and pecuniary disputes. In 1367 he pledged allegiance to Charles IV of Bohemia, receiving from him a number of royal privileges. In 1377 he joined Louis I of Hungary and of Poland in his military campaign in Galicia-Volynia. The appearance in Olesnica of the Slavonic Benedictines from the Bohemian capital must have been caused by special circumstances. But the lack of any explanation for this event in the only attested document leaves historians to conjecture and hypothesize. A possible scenario of circumstances leading to this foundation has been suggested by Stanislaw Rybandt, who hypothesizes that Conrad founded the monastery as a strategic maneuver and a gesture toward the ecclesiastic authorities. 14 It was necessitated by his strained relationship with the Apostolic See on account of a heated argument with the Cistercians at LubiI(I'OANO Gbll\1>, HI' Gbl 1\H MQI'I\'h CTRi>pHTH, A4 Gbllll4

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rpE'II'CK'h H I\4THNbCKbiH, HMHTI~il.x'b lK£ ElbiRbWOI( €MOl(, (08fl4W4Ch> HA Hb MTHHbCTIH €llHCKOnH H nonoB-k H 'lEflHOflHC~H ll\KO Bfl4HH H4 COKOII'b, H R'b3ARHI'OW4 TflHh>3bl'lHOI(IO Efl€Cb, 1'1\Af'OIIIOI.Jl€: (l ECH HbiHil CTROflHII'b CIIORil.HOM'b KHHI'bl, H Ol('lHWI 4, HXlKE HilCTb HHKTOlK€ HH'b nEpRil€ O&pil.ll'b, HH 4llOCTOII'b, HH flHMbCKbiH n,m£lKb, HH .f>€0/\0f''b l'flHI'OfliH, HH HEflOHHM'b, HH 41!1'0\(CTHH'b? Mbl lK€ TflH ll\3biKbl TOKMO RilM'h, HMHlKE AOCTOHTb R'b KHHf'4X'h CII4RHTH 801'4, ERpilHCKbl, EIIIIHHbCKbl, 114THHbCKbl:' The Life of Constantine, chapter 16,MMFH, 2:105-6. 46. The Life of Constantine, chapter 16, cf. MMFH, 2:105 (pismena), Kantor, Lives, 71 (letters), and Floria, Skazaniia, 170 (pis'mena). 47. The most famous example is the Freising Fragments, recently published again in France Bernik et al., eds., Brizinski spomeniki: Monumenta Frisingensia; Znanstvenokriticna izdaja (Ljubljana, 2004). 48. Thomson, "SS. Cyril and Methodius;' 67-121. 49. The Life of Constantine, chapter 14, MMFH, 2:99-100. 50. The sources show some variation in the description of these events. The Life of Constantine relates that the pope put the Slavonic books in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore and sanctified them. Then he ordered bishops Formosus and Gauderic to ordain Cyril and Methodius's disciples. The ordination was accompanied by a service in Slavonic at St. Peter's. For several days afterward, the liturgy was celebrated in Slavonic in various churches of Rome. The Life of Constantine, chapter 17, MMFH, 2:110-11. One of the copies of the Italian Legend relates that Hadrian II consecrated Methodius as bishop, while others mention only a priestly office: Vita Constantini-Cyrilli cum translatione S. Clemen tis, MMFH, 2:130. In the Life of Method ius, the pope called Cyril's opponents "nHII4T'hH'hl " Tflbhl\3'hl'lbHHK'hi" (Pilatists and trilinguists) and condemned them. He also put the Slavonic Gospel on the altar at St. Peter's and consecrated Methodius. Later, at the requests of Prince Kocel of Pannonia and Rostislav of Moravia, the pope consecrated Methodius as archbishop of Sirmium and Moravia. Zhitie Mefodiia, MMFH, 2:146-54. There is a dispute among scholars regarding the nature and geography of Methodius's office as archbishop. See Imre Boba, "The Episcopacy of St. Methodius;' Slavic Review 26 (1967): 85-93; Henrik Birnbaum, "Where was the Missionary Field of SS. Cyril and Methodius?;' in Thessaloniki, 47-52; Birnbaum, "Some Remaining Puzzles in Cyrillo-Methodian Studies;' Slovo 47-49 ( 1997 -1999): 15-23; Martin Eggers, "The Historical-Geographical Implications ofthe Cyrillo-Methodian Mission an1ong the Slavs;' in Thessaloniki, 65-86; Eggers, Das Erzbistum des Method: Lage, Wirkung und Nachleben der kyrillo-methodianischen Mission (Munich, 1996); Horace G. Lunt, "Cyril and Methodius with Rastislav Prince of Moravia: Where Were They? ;• in Thessaloniki, 87-112. 51. "Igitur hunc Methodium venerabilem archiepiscopum vestrum interrogavimus corampositis fratribus nostris episcopis, si orthodox~ fidei symbolum ita crederet et inter sacra missarum sollempnia caneret, sicuti sanctam Romanam ecclesiam tenere et in sanctis sex universalibus synodis a sanctis patribus secundum evangelicam Christi Dei nostri auctoritatem promulgatum atque traditum constat. Ille autem professus est se iuxta evangelicam et apostolicam doctrinam, sicuti sancta Romana ecclesia docet et a patribus traditum est, tenere et psallere. Nos autem ilium in omnibus ecclesiasticis doctrinis et utilitatibus orthodoxum et proficuum esse repperientes vobis iterum ad regendam commissam sibi ecclesiam Dei remisimus:' The letter "Industriae tuae;' MMFH, 3:203-4. 52. The dispute concerned a disagreement regarding the Procession of ilie Holy Spirit. The Eastern Church refused to recognize the dogma of the double Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and ilie Son, believing that it proceeds only from the Father. This important theological difference was expressed in the Nicene Creed by adding.filioque, "and from the Son," to the original phrase "et in Spiritum Sanctum ... qui ex Patre procedit" (and in the Holy Spirit ... , which proceeds from the Father). During the apostolate of John VIII, in the Roman practice, the Symbolum fidei did not yet contain the addition filioque. Methodius followed the same practice of not including the addition filioque, whereas the Frankish Church included it. See the letter of John VIII, "Industriae tuae;' MMFH, 3:203. The theological dispute about the nature of the Holy Spirit is also apparent in Pope Stephen V's letters. See the letter "Stephanus episcopus servus servorum Dei Zventopolco regi Sclavorum" (Bishop Stephen, the Servant of God's Servants to Svatopluk, the King of the Slavs), MMFH, 3:220-21, and the letter "Commonitorium Dominica episcopo;' 228. 53. New King James Bible, Ps 117:1; Vulgate Bible, Ps 116:1. This English translation keeps the distinction between the populi= Jews and the gentes= all other peoples, made by Jerome in his Latin translation from the Hebrew: "Alleluia laudate Dominum omnes gentes laudate eum omnes populi:'

180

Notes to Pages 24-27 54. "Litteras denique Sclaviniscas a Costantino quondam philosopho reppertas, quibus Deo laudes debite resonent, iure laudamus et in eadem lingua Christi domini nostri preconia et opera enarrentur, iubemus. Neque enim tribus tantum, sed omnibus linguis Dominum laud are auctoritate sacra monemur, qu~ prycipit dicens: 'Laudate Dominum omnes gentes et collaudate eum omnes populi: [... ] Nee sane fidei vel doctrin~ aliquid obstat sive missas in eadem Sclavinica lingua can ere sive sacrum evangelium vel lectiones divinas novi et veteris testamenti bene translatas et interpretatas Iegere aut alia horarum officia omnia psallere, quoniam, qui fecit tres linguas principales, Hebream scilicet, Grecam et Latinam, ipse creavit et alias omnes ad laudem et gloriam suam. Iubemus tamen, ut in omnibus ecclesiis terry vestry propter maiorem honorificentiam evangelium Latine legatur et postmodum Sclavinica lingua translatum in auribus populi Latina verba non intellegentis adnuntietur, sicut in quibusdam ecclesiis fieri videtur:' The letter"Dilecto filio Sfentopulcho glorioso comiti;' MMFH, 3:207-8. 55. "Successorem, quem Methodius sibimet contra omnium sanctorum patrum statuta constituere praesumpsit, ne ministret, nostra apostolica auctoritate interdicite, donee suam nobis praesentiam exhibeat et causam suam viva voce exponat:' The letter"Commonitorium Dominica episcopo;' MMFH, 3:229. 56. Paul J. Alexander, "The Papacy, the Bavarian Clergy, and the Slavonic Apostles;' Slavonic YearBook, American Series 1 (1941): 266-93; Josip Bratulic, "Rimska Kurija i misija Konstantina-Cirila i Methodija;' Slovo 36 (1986): 45-50. 57. Dmitro Cyzevs'kyj, "Der hL Method-Organisator, Missionar, Politiker und Dichter;' in Methodiana: Beitriige zur Zeit und Personlichkeit sowie zum Schicksal und Werk des hi. Method, ed. Franz Zagiba, Annales Instituti Slavici Salisburgo-Ratisbonensis 9 (Vienna, 1976), 7-21. 58. Ihor Sevcenko, "Three Paradoxes of the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission;' Slavic Review 23 (1964): 220-36. 59. For an English translation of major sources, supplemented with commentary, see Marvin Kantor, ed., The Origins of Christianity in Bohemia: Sources and Commentary (Evanston, IL, 1990). 60. MMFH, 2:186-99. For a revised Latin edition, see Jaroslav Ludvikovsky-, Kristianova legenda: Zivot a umuceni svateho Vaclava a jeho baby svate Ludmily (Prague, 1978). Christian's composition is dated to 992-994 but its authenticity is still debated in Czech scholarship. Its dedicatory note is addressed to the second bishop of Prague St. Adalbert, hence the date. However, its peculiar chronicle-like narrative, which stands out among other documents from that period, as well as its idiosyncratic ideological agenda, make some scholars doubt the text's authenticity and suggest a later date. Some of the key works from an extensive list of publications on this issue are Josef Pekar, Nejstarsi kronika ceska ku kritice legend o sv. Ludmile, sv. Vaclavu a sv. Prokopu (Prague, 1903); Pekar, Die Wenzels- und Ludmila-legenden und die Echtheit Christians (Prague, 1906); Vaclav Chaloupecky, ed., Svatovaclavsky sbornik, vo!. 2, part 2, Prameny 10. stoleti: Legendy kristianovy o Svatem Vaclavu a Svate Ludmile (Prague, 1939); Zavis Kalandra, Ceske pohanstvi (Prague, 1947); Rudolf Urbanek, Legenda t. zv. Kristiana ve vyvoji pfedhusitskych legend ludmilskych i vaclavskych a jeji autor (Prague, 1947-1948); Zdenek Fiala, Hlavnf pramen legendy Kristianovy (Prague, 1974); Dusan Tfestik, "Deset tezi o Kristianove legende:' Folia Historica Bohemica 2 (1980): 7-38; Herman Kolin, Die Wenzelslegende des Monchs Christian, Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 73 (Copenhagen, 1996). Recent publications pro and contra the early dating provide a review of existing literature on the subject. Pro: David Kalhous, Anatomy of a Duchy: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures of Early Pfemyslid Bohemia (Leiden, 2012); Kalhous, "Christian und Grossmahren;' in Die fruhmittelalterliche Elite bei den Vii/kern des ostlichen Mitteleuropas, ed. Pavel Koutil (Brno, 2005), 25-33; Josef Sramek, "Osobnost prochazejici dejinami, stale zahadny Kristian:' Studia Theologica 1 (2008): 32-40. Contra: Petr Kubin, "Znovu o Kristiana:' in Od kniiat ke kralum: Sbornik u pfileiitosti 60. narozenin Josefa Zemlicky, ed. Eva Dolezalova and Robert Simi'tnek (Prague, 2007), 63-72. 61. Ludvikovsky, Kristianova legenda, 16-24. On the cult of St. Ludmila, see Petr Kubin, Sedm premyslovskych kultu (Prague, 2011 ), 81-123. For more information on the early period of Bohemian Christianity and its connection to Great Moravia, see Sommer, Ttestik, and Zemlicka, "Bohemia and Moravia:' 62. According to legend, St. Wenceslas-a devoted Christian-was murdered by his brother Boleslav on his way to church. The popularity of St. Wenceslas's cult in Bohemia is documented by a remarkable number of hagiographic works. Secondary literature is voluminous; see, for example, Pekar, Die Wenzels- und Ludmila-legenden; FrantiSek Graus, "St. Adalbert und St. Wenzel: Zur Funktion der

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Notes to Pages 27-29

mittelalterlichen Heiligenverehrung in Bohmen;' in Europa Slavica, Europa Orienta/is: Festschrift fiir Herbert Ludat zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Klaus-Detlev Grothusen and Klaus Zernack (Berlin, 1980), 20531; Rudolf Turek, "Svat-y Vaclav;' in Bohemia Sancta, ed. Jaroslav Kadlec (Prague, 1989), 53-71; Kantor, The Origins, 1-47; Dusan Ttestik, "Translace a kanonizace svateho Vaclava Boleslavem L:' in Svetci a jejich kult ve stfedoveku, ed. Petr Kubin, Hana Patkova, and Tomas Petracek (Ceske Budejovice, 2006), 325-44; Marie Blahova, "The Function of the Saints in Early Bohemian Historical Writing;' in The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000-1300), ed. Lars Boje Mortensen (Copenhagen, 2006), 83-119; Kubin, Sedm pfemyslovskych kultu, 125-50; Kalhous, Anatomy, 237-62. 63. Sommer, Tre5tik, and Zemlicka, "Bohemia and Moravia;' 229-31. 64. Frantisek Graus, "Slovanska liturgie a pisemnictvi v premyslovskych Cechach 10. stoleti;' Ceskoslovensky casopis historicky 14 (1966): 473-95; Radoslav Vecerka, "Velkomoravska literatura v pfemyslovskych Cechach;' Slavia 32 (1963): 398-416; Vecerka, "Jazykovedny ptispevek k problematice staroslovenskeho pisemnictvi v Cechach X. a XI. stoleti;' Slavia 36 (1967): 421-28; Vaclav Konzal, "Cirkevneslovanska literatura-slepa ulicka na prahu i'eske kultury;' in Speculum medii aevi: Zrcadlo stfedoveku, ed. Lenka Jirouskova (Prague, 1998), 150-62; Dusan Tfestik, "Slovanska liturgie a pisemnictvi v Cechach 10. stoleti: Pfedstavy a skutecnost," in Svaty Prokop, Cechy a Stfedni Evropa, ed. Petr Sommer (Prague, 2006), 189-218; Sommer, Tfestik, and Zemlii'ka, "Bohemia and Moravia;' 233-34; David Kalhous, "Slovanske pisemnictvi a liturgie 10. a 11. veku;' Cesky casopis historicky 108 (2010): 1-33; Kalhous, Anatomy, 208-37. 65. Sommer, Tfe5tik, and Zemlicka, "Bohemia and Moravia;' 229. 66. On St. Procopius and the sources on the Sazava Monastery, see Kubin, Sedm pfemyslovskych kultu, 219-55; Petr Sommer, "Svaty Prokop a jeho kult ve stfedoveku;' in Svetci a jejich kult ve stfedoveku, ed. Petr Kubin, Hana Patkova, and Tomas Petracek (Ceske Budejovice, 2006), 261-81; Vladimir Ondas, "Byl svaty Prokop basilian nebo benediktin?;' in Kubin et al., Svetci a jejich kult ve stfedoveku, 211-19; Petr Sommer, Svaty Prokop: Z pocatku ceskeho statu a cirkve (Prague, 2007); Petr Sommer, ed., Svaty Prokop, Cechy a Stfedni Evropa (Prague, 2006); Jaroslav Kadlec and Horni Cerekev, "Das Kloster des hl. Prokop an der Sasau;' and "Der heilige Prokop;' in Tausend Jahre Benediktiner in den K/Ostern Bfevnov, Braunau und Rohr, ed. Johannes Hofmann (St. Ottilien, 1993), 297-307 and 309-24. 67. Milos Weingart, Ceskoslovensky typ cirkevnej slovanCiny (Bratislava, 1949); Josip Vrana, "Praski glagoljski odlomci kao svjedok neprekidne Cirilometodske tradicije u Ceskoj do kraja XI stoljeea;' Slavia 39 (1970): 238-49; Emilie Blahova, Vaclav Konzal, and A. I. Rogov, Staroslovenske legendy ceskeho puvodu (Prague, 1976); Frantisek Vaclav MareS, An Anthology of Church Slavonic Texts of Western (Czech) Origin: With an Outline of Czech-Church Slavonic Language and Literature and with a Selected Bibliography (Munich, 1979); Mares, "Misto ceskodrkevneslovanskeho pisemnictvi v dejinach literatur;' in Cyrilometodejska tradice a slavistika (Prague, 2000), 268-327; Francis J. Thomson, "A Survey of the Vitae Allegedly Translated from Latin in Slavonic in Bohemia in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries;' in Atti del VIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull'alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1983), 331-48; Zoe Hauptova, "Cirkevneslovanske pisemnictvi v pfemyslovskych Cechach;' in fazyk a literatura v historicke perspektive (Usti nad Labem, 1998), 5-42; Emilie Blahova, "Literarni vztahy Sazavy a Kyjevske Rusi;' in Svaty Prokop, Cechy a Stfedni Evropa, ed. Petr Sommer (Prague, 2006), 219-34; Miroslav Veprek, Ceska redakce cirkevni slovanstiny z hlediska lexikilni analyzy (Olomouc, 2006); Frantisek Cajka, Cirkevneslovanska legenda o svate Anastazii (Prague, 2011 ). 68. Konzal, "Cirkevneslovanska literatura;' 153-54. 69. For more or less recent synthetic analyses of this problem and reference to literature, see Przemyslaw Urbanczyk and Stanislaw Rosik, "The Kingdom of Poland;' in Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus' c. 900-1200, ed. Nora Berend (Cambridge, 2007), 263-300; Andrzej Gil, Prawoslawna eparchia chelmska do 1596 roku (Lublin, 1999), 47-48; Hanna Toby, "0 :tr6dlach tradycji cerkiewnoslowianskiej w Polsce;' in Dutch Contributions to the Twelfth International Congress of Slavists, Cracow, August 26-September 3, 1988; Linguistics, ed. A. A. Barentsen, Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 24 (Amsterdam, 1998), 391-428; Stanislaw Szczur, "Misja cyrylo-metodianska w swietle najnowszych badan;' in ChrystianizaLja Polski poludniowej: Materialy sesji naukowej odbytej 29 czerwca 1993 roku (Cracow, 1994), 7-23; Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs, 113-42.

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Notes to Pages 29-30 70. For studies in English, see Karolina Lanckoronska, Studies on the Roman-Slavonic Rite in Poland (Rome, 1961) and Henryk Paszkiewicz, "A Polish Metropolitan See of the Slavonic Rite;' in The Origin of Russia (London, 1954), 381-404. Studies in Polish include J6zef Umanski, Obrzqdek slowim1ski w Polsce IX-XI wieku i zagadnienie drugiej metropolii polskiej w czasach Boleslawa Chrobrego, Roczniki Humanistyczne Towarzystwa Naukowego Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego 4 (Lublin, 1957), 1-44; Henryk Lowmianski, Poczqtki Polski, 6 vols. (Warsaw, 1963-1985), 4:299-532. The most recent attempt to prove the continuation of the Slavonic rite in Poland is a three-volume publication in Polish by Zbigniew Dobrzynski, Obrzqdek slowim1ski w dawnej Polsce (Warsaw, 1989). Among determined advocates of the Slavonic rite in Poland is A. V. Lipatov, whose views have been put forward in at least three publications that, in the most uncompromising fashion, claim the operation of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission and the Slavonic rite in Poland. See A. V. Lipatov, "Kirillo-mefodievskaia traditsiia, istoki pol'skoi literatury i problemy slavianskoi vzaimnosti (o vzaimodeistvii latinskogo Zapada i vizantiiskogo Vostoka;· Seriia literatury i iazyka 45-46 (1995): 34-46; Lipatov, "Vzaimodeistvie latinskogo Zapada i vizantiiskogo Vostoka: Kirillomefodievskaia traditsiia, istoki pol'skoi literatury i problemy slavianskoi vzaimnosti;' Palaeobulgarica 17 (1993): 67-80; Lipatov, "Kirillo-mefodievskaia traditsiia i istoki pol'skoi literatury. (Vzaimodeistvie latinskogo Zapada i vizantiiskogo Vostoka);' in Bolgarskaia kul'tura v vekakh: Tezisy dokladov nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva 26-27 maia 1992 g., ed. Evgeniia I. Demina (Moscow, 1992), 14-15. 71. "UraHbCK'h KH~3b, CHI\bH'h Kfl\bMH, diA~ R'h KIICI\il., fl"'\'TAWEC~ KflbC('l'H)IlmM'h H naKaC'l'H A-klliWE. OC'hi\AB'h lKf K'h HfM"'(' Jlf'IE: A&Jl 'I'll C~ Kfl(b)C'l'H('l'H), C(bi)H"'f, 8