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Authors: Peter Demetz
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The duke and his family lived in a house best described as a magnificent log cabin, but there was ample space for later changes, and the residence was protected by massive earth embankments, natural ravines, stone walls, and mighty wooden beams locked into each other in intricate grids. The burg of Praha protected the left riverbank, and, by economic and military necessity, another fortification, originally called Chrasten and later the Vyšehrad (the “High Burg”), was built upstream on a steep cliff on the eastern, right bank, but not before the first half of the tenth century. Some of the P
emyslid rulers were to dwell there for some time, and another
suburbium
, though of modest size, grew around or below that fortification.
emyslid rulers were to dwell there for some time, and anothersuburbium
, though of modest size, grew around or below that fortification.
Prague is mentioned as a lively trade center by German chroniclers and Arab travelers in the 940s and 950s, but the first international observer who left an interesting record of his visit to early P
emyslid Prague—that is, to the castle and the
suburbium
on the left bank—was Ibrahim ibn Ya‘q
b, an erudite Jew from Tortosa, in Spain, who wrote in Arabic. It is difficult to say whether he was a slave trader or a scientist, or both, and he showed so many diverse interests in his travelogue that scholars believed that he must have been two persons of the same name; only more recently have they come to believe that he was sent by Caliph al-Hakam II, of noted scientific interests, as a member of a diplomatic mission to Emperor Otto I in Merseburg, and that he wrote his observations on landscapes, plants, commerce, medical problems, and peoples for a brilliant group of Jewish scholars assembled, at that time, at Córdoba who preserved his text for later readers. He probably arrived in Prague in 965, when Boleslav I still reigned (according to the legend, he had murdered his brother the sainted Wenceslas), and he was astonished to find “Frága” (or “B.ragha[t],” in a more recently discovered version of his manuscript) built of stone and lime, though possibly he was referring to the new walls and buildings of the castle erected by Bo
ivoj’s sons and grandsons. He noted that many Slavic merchants, Russians and others, were arriving from Cracow and some from Turkey (modern commentators believe he was referring to Hungary), including Muslims and Jews who bought slaves, tin, and furs. Food was inexpensive, and leather saddles and shields were of remarkable quality. He must have looked closely at what was going on at the marketplace on the left riverbank below the castle; people mostly carried light pieces of cloth instead of coin, and though these pieces of textile lacked value in themselves, they were hoarded like money and used to buy “all kinds of things.” Even coming from Mainz and Merseburg, he found Prague (“smaller than towns usually are but bigger than villages”) a place “made richer by commerce than all others.”
emyslid Prague—that is, to the castle and thesuburbium
on the left bank—was Ibrahim ibn Ya‘q
b, an erudite Jew from Tortosa, in Spain, who wrote in Arabic. It is difficult to say whether he was a slave trader or a scientist, or both, and he showed so many diverse interests in his travelogue that scholars believed that he must have been two persons of the same name; only more recently have they come to believe that he was sent by Caliph al-Hakam II, of noted scientific interests, as a member of a diplomatic mission to Emperor Otto I in Merseburg, and that he wrote his observations on landscapes, plants, commerce, medical problems, and peoples for a brilliant group of Jewish scholars assembled, at that time, at Córdoba who preserved his text for later readers. He probably arrived in Prague in 965, when Boleslav I still reigned (according to the legend, he had murdered his brother the sainted Wenceslas), and he was astonished to find “Frága” (or “B.ragha[t],” in a more recently discovered version of his manuscript) built of stone and lime, though possibly he was referring to the new walls and buildings of the castle erected by Boivoj’s sons and grandsons. He noted that many Slavic merchants, Russians and others, were arriving from Cracow and some from Turkey (modern commentators believe he was referring to Hungary), including Muslims and Jews who bought slaves, tin, and furs. Food was inexpensive, and leather saddles and shields were of remarkable quality. He must have looked closely at what was going on at the marketplace on the left riverbank below the castle; people mostly carried light pieces of cloth instead of coin, and though these pieces of textile lacked value in themselves, they were hoarded like money and used to buy “all kinds of things.” Even coming from Mainz and Merseburg, he found Prague (“smaller than towns usually are but bigger than villages”) a place “made richer by commerce than all others.”Archaelogical Sites of Ancient and Early Medieval Prague
The first Latin legend reaching beyond the age of Christianity far into the pagan past of Bohemia offered little illumination about the founding of Prague for later historians, artists, and poets, even if they had trusted the text, which many scholars long considered a later falsification. The tenth century writer called himself, with a formula of modesty, a “Christian by name only” and, being in sympathy with the Slavic rite, had little use for pagan stories. Christian’s narrative about the woman who guided the people to build Prague takes about five lines. The Slavic Czechs (
Sclavi Boemi
), resembling “animals without reason,” he says, were hit by a plague, asked “some kind of soothsayer” (
quandam phitonissam
) what to do, and, receiving her advice, built a castle
(civitas)
and called it “Praga.” Only after they had done so and the plague had abated did they find a “very clever and cautious” farmer named P
emysl, make him their ruler, and give him the virgin-soothsayer in marriage. Christian was not really interested in what, to more modern ears, sounds like an echo of a distant fertility cult, uniting a virgin of great powers and a tiller of the earth, and he does not even have a name for the
“phitonissa.”
Sclavi Boemi
), resembling “animals without reason,” he says, were hit by a plague, asked “some kind of soothsayer” (
quandam phitonissam
) what to do, and, receiving her advice, built a castle
(civitas)
and called it “Praga.” Only after they had done so and the plague had abated did they find a “very clever and cautious” farmer named P
emysl, make him their ruler, and give him the virgin-soothsayer in marriage. Christian was not really interested in what, to more modern ears, sounds like an echo of a distant fertility cult, uniting a virgin of great powers and a tiller of the earth, and he does not even have a name for the“phitonissa.”
It was Christian’s later clerical colleague, the learned dean Cosmas, of Prague Cathedral, who in his remarkable
Chronicle of the Bohemians
(
Chronica Boëmorum
), written between 1119 and 1125, provided names and
scenes of unusually colorful detail. He was a loyal defender of the P
emyslid dynasty and made the story of Lubossa (as many manuscripts of the chronicle spell her name) and Pfemysl the opening chapter of Czech tradition; patriots have for centuries based their visions and claims on his text. Cosmas was the first Prague intellectual, and his book, full of political analyses, documents, lively and occasionally ribald episodes, and eyewitness reports, or so he tells us, has challenged the imagination of his nation for more than nine hundred years. Born c. 1045, Cosmas came from a fairly well-to-do family of Prague clerics (only a century later a legate from Rome began removing married priests from offices in Bohemia), received his early training in Latin, liturgy, and reciting the psalms at the cathedral school, but left Prague, probably in the mid-1070s, to be further educated abroad, and studied at Liège, then an elite church school with close relationships to Prague. Old Cosmas remembered, with tears in his eyes, his years at Liège as the happiest of his life, studying with Magister Franco, once chancellor of the Liège bishopric, and “gambolling, with the muses, on the meadows of grammar and dialectics.” He read widely among the ancient classics and the early church fathers, and evidently acquired a taste for scholarly and elegant prose; as a writer he definitely favored Horace, Ovid, Sallust, and Boethius. He returned to Prague in the early 1080s and was appointed secretary to Bishop Jaromír (1068-90), brother of the duke and king (as of 1085), and chancellor at the court of Emperor Henry IV. In the service of Bishop Jaromír and his successors, Cosmas traveled widely, to Mantua and Verona, to Mainz (on his return, he remembered, he had to sleep in the open because houses and churches were filled, after the plague, with corpses), and to Slovakia and Hungary, where he was ordained a priest by the archbishop of Esztergom (Strigonium) rather late in life (1099). As
canonicus
he ran the economic and administrative affairs of the Prague diocese and once was sent to Moravia to settle a dispute of long standing concerning the market rights of Prague Cathedral and the duke of Olomouc. He was married to Božet
cha, whose unflagging loyalty he praised in his chronicle; their son followed in his footsteps (literally, for he too became dean of Prague Cathedral). Cosmas must have been in his mid-seventies when he began to write his chronicle; he nearly finished three books, and a colleague of his added a note to the manuscript saying that Cosmas had died on October 1, 1125,
Valete fratres!
Chronicle of the Bohemians
(
Chronica Boëmorum
), written between 1119 and 1125, provided names and
scenes of unusually colorful detail. He was a loyal defender of the P
emyslid dynasty and made the story of Lubossa (as many manuscripts of the chronicle spell her name) and Pfemysl the opening chapter of Czech tradition; patriots have for centuries based their visions and claims on his text. Cosmas was the first Prague intellectual, and his book, full of political analyses, documents, lively and occasionally ribald episodes, and eyewitness reports, or so he tells us, has challenged the imagination of his nation for more than nine hundred years. Born c. 1045, Cosmas came from a fairly well-to-do family of Prague clerics (only a century later a legate from Rome began removing married priests from offices in Bohemia), received his early training in Latin, liturgy, and reciting the psalms at the cathedral school, but left Prague, probably in the mid-1070s, to be further educated abroad, and studied at Liège, then an elite church school with close relationships to Prague. Old Cosmas remembered, with tears in his eyes, his years at Liège as the happiest of his life, studying with Magister Franco, once chancellor of the Liège bishopric, and “gambolling, with the muses, on the meadows of grammar and dialectics.” He read widely among the ancient classics and the early church fathers, and evidently acquired a taste for scholarly and elegant prose; as a writer he definitely favored Horace, Ovid, Sallust, and Boethius. He returned to Prague in the early 1080s and was appointed secretary to Bishop Jaromír (1068-90), brother of the duke and king (as of 1085), and chancellor at the court of Emperor Henry IV. In the service of Bishop Jaromír and his successors, Cosmas traveled widely, to Mantua and Verona, to Mainz (on his return, he remembered, he had to sleep in the open because houses and churches were filled, after the plague, with corpses), and to Slovakia and Hungary, where he was ordained a priest by the archbishop of Esztergom (Strigonium) rather late in life (1099). Ascanonicus
he ran the economic and administrative affairs of the Prague diocese and once was sent to Moravia to settle a dispute of long standing concerning the market rights of Prague Cathedral and the duke of Olomouc. He was married to Božet
cha, whose unflagging loyalty he praised in his chronicle; their son followed in his footsteps (literally, for he too became dean of Prague Cathedral). Cosmas must have been in his mid-seventies when he began to write his chronicle; he nearly finished three books, and a colleague of his added a note to the manuscript saying that Cosmas had died on October 1, 1125,Valete fratres!
Cosmas is not easily given to radical pronouncements. He clearly tries to distinguish, not always successfully, between fictive and true sources (
fabulosa/vera relatio
), and the most nationalist utterances are often ascribed to speakers in dramatic situations and are not, inevitably, his own. He
certainly cannot stand well-fed German warriors who are easily defeated by their more nimble Czech opponents; however, when we hear that “asses’ shit” (
asini merda)
would be better than a
German
bishop who came to Bohemia “without pants,” he puts these words in the mouth of an irascible Czech elder, who is ultimately disowned by the ruler himself (the chronicler sympathizes with the elder, though). Cosmas speaks hardly less favorably of the Poles, these “carpetbaggers with uncircumcised lips,” whatever that may mean (yet to this day Polish scholars insist, on the basis of a single disputed line in the text, that Cosmas was actually a Pole).
fabulosa/vera relatio
), and the most nationalist utterances are often ascribed to speakers in dramatic situations and are not, inevitably, his own. He
certainly cannot stand well-fed German warriors who are easily defeated by their more nimble Czech opponents; however, when we hear that “asses’ shit” (
asini merda)
would be better than a
German
bishop who came to Bohemia “without pants,” he puts these words in the mouth of an irascible Czech elder, who is ultimately disowned by the ruler himself (the chronicler sympathizes with the elder, though). Cosmas speaks hardly less favorably of the Poles, these “carpetbaggers with uncircumcised lips,” whatever that may mean (yet to this day Polish scholars insist, on the basis of a single disputed line in the text, that Cosmas was actually a Pole).
As far as Prague’s Jews are concerned, Cosmas does not usually denounce them in his own voice, but he does not seem to be disinclined to approve of what higher-ups in the secular and clerical hierarchy hold against them. He anticipates the later view that Jews are the personal property of the ruler and therefore are not free to leave the country taking their riches with them (if they do, the ruler is right to punish them); and he reports at some length about the anxieties of his bishop who, on his deathbed, bitterly reproached himself for not doing enough to keep Jews who had been forcibly baptized by roving crusaders from slipping back to the beliefs of their forefathers. In his own voice, though, he unsparingly turns against one Jacob—possibly the first Prague Jew in Bohemian literature mentioned by name—who dared to act in the name of the duke in some financial matter (obviously, his transactions were a failure). Cosmas mobilizes much of the repertory of contemporary anti-Semitism against Jacob: his hand makes dirty whatever he touches, his breath kills by poison, Satan is seen to be his steady companion (“many trustworthy say”), he destroys a Christian altar and throws the holy relics in his cesspool (
cloaca
); yet the Jewish community can ransom his life for three thousand measures of silver and one hundred measures of gold (the duke knows whom he can squeeze); and erudite Cosmas, always ready to serve his ruler, throws in an artful hexameter about Mary Magdalene, on whose day, in the year of the Lord 1124, the entire affair happened. On other occasions, he shows independent and poetic gifts, when writing, for example, about an advancing army in full armor as if made “of translucent ice,” or elders at a meeting “confused like fish in turbid waters.”
cloaca
); yet the Jewish community can ransom his life for three thousand measures of silver and one hundred measures of gold (the duke knows whom he can squeeze); and erudite Cosmas, always ready to serve his ruler, throws in an artful hexameter about Mary Magdalene, on whose day, in the year of the Lord 1124, the entire affair happened. On other occasions, he shows independent and poetic gifts, when writing, for example, about an advancing army in full armor as if made “of translucent ice,” or elders at a meeting “confused like fish in turbid waters.”
Cosmas is the first who gives the woman who speaks of the glory of Prague the name Lubossa, but he characterizes her ambivalently, as if she were perhaps not entirely explicable by a Christian view of pagan times alone. Her sisters Kazi and Thethka are almost theological allegories of evil: Kazi, compared to Medea, is accused of being a
venefica
, of preparing
and administering poisons; and Thethka is simply a witch (
malefica
) eager to return people to the blasphemous rituals of yore. Lubossa is unique; in a narrative designed to legitimize the power of the P
emyslid dynasty, Cosmas cannot but celebrate the future mother of his dukes and the king, yet she remains, in his eyes, a rather disturbing character. He begins his portrait with a catalogue of extraordinary praise: “among women she was especially admirable, circumspect in advice, vigorous in her speech, of chaste body, honest conduct, second to none in resolving the legal affairs of the people, affable with everybody and worthy of love, the adornment and glory of womanhood who took care, with discernment, of the business of men” (I,4). Unfortunately, in the human realm nobody is perfect, Cosmas adds, and Lubossa was, after all, a soothsayer
(phitonissa);
he remarks elsewhere that she and her sisters, through magic art, “played” with the people.
venefica
, of preparing
and administering poisons; and Thethka is simply a witch (
malefica
) eager to return people to the blasphemous rituals of yore. Lubossa is unique; in a narrative designed to legitimize the power of the P
emyslid dynasty, Cosmas cannot but celebrate the future mother of his dukes and the king, yet she remains, in his eyes, a rather disturbing character. He begins his portrait with a catalogue of extraordinary praise: “among women she was especially admirable, circumspect in advice, vigorous in her speech, of chaste body, honest conduct, second to none in resolving the legal affairs of the people, affable with everybody and worthy of love, the adornment and glory of womanhood who took care, with discernment, of the business of men” (I,4). Unfortunately, in the human realm nobody is perfect, Cosmas adds, and Lubossa was, after all, a soothsayer(phitonissa);
he remarks elsewhere that she and her sisters, through magic art, “played” with the people.
It is during the judgment scene that Lubossa, by her relaxed ways, reveals something of the problems of her character, and the chronicler, or rather the teller of ribald tales, uses words that will be censured by his more spiritual translators and disappear totally from later patriotic legends. In Cosmas’s version, Lubossa does not sit on the throne surrounded by the elders (as in later schoolbooks), but receives the plaintiffs in bed. “Resting on her elbow like one who is giving birth, she lay there on a high pile of soft and embroidered pillows, as is the lasciviously wanton habit of women (
lasciva mollicies mulierum
) when they do not have a man at home whom they fear” (I,4). It is an image of impropriety,
déshabillé
, spread legs and sensuous disorder, and the male plaintiffs are not sparing in their insults. Women, they say, have little understanding sitting on a throne, and even less when they are lying in bed, where they should be ready to receive their husbands rather than to resolve a legal case. In matters of men Lubossa cannot speak but deceptively, being a woman of a “fissured” body (
rimosa
).
lasciva mollicies mulierum
) when they do not have a man at home whom they fear” (I,4). It is an image of impropriety,
déshabillé
, spread legs and sensuous disorder, and the male plaintiffs are not sparing in their insults. Women, they say, have little understanding sitting on a throne, and even less when they are lying in bed, where they should be ready to receive their husbands rather than to resolve a legal case. In matters of men Lubossa cannot speak but deceptively, being a woman of a “fissured” body (
rimosa
).
Lubossa has a difficult time, as is not surprising, when she subsequently warns her people of the dangers of a male ruler; although she proclaims that under male law the new division of labor will change people into those who pay and those who collect taxes, into executioners, cooks, bakers, workers in vineyards and on the fields, furriers and cobblers (to name but a few), they want their duke, whom Lubossa, submitting, provides. Her prophecy of the glories of Prague does not lack a touch of Virgil, provided by the learned chronicler—“Behold, I see a great city whose fame will touch the stars” (
“urbem conspicio, fama que sydera tanget,”
I
,
7
; Aeneid
, I, 287: “ …
famam qui terminet astris”
)—and her topography of
the future castle has remarkable precision. On the west bank of the Vltava River, there is a place protected by the Brusnice brook on the north, while on the south a rocky hill, the Pet
n, rises above the land and spins around, as if it were a dolphin, turning toward the brook. That is the place where a man hewing a threshold (
prah
) will be found and the castle of Praga should be built. Paradoxically, Lubossa, the pagan
phitonissa,
continues her prediction by saying that from that castle, one day, two golden olive trees will grow: St. Wenceslas and St. Vojt
ch, the famous missionary and first Czech bishop of Prague (she hides the names in a riddle), who will illuminate the entire world by their wonders and miracles. Cosmas enhances the paradox by saying that she would have continued to speak if the hellish spirit of prophecy (
spiritus pestilens et prophetans,
I,9) had not left her body, created by God.
“urbem conspicio, fama que sydera tanget,”
I
,
7
; Aeneid
, I, 287: “ …
famam qui terminet astris”
)—and her topography of
the future castle has remarkable precision. On the west bank of the Vltava River, there is a place protected by the Brusnice brook on the north, while on the south a rocky hill, the Pet
n, rises above the land and spins around, as if it were a dolphin, turning toward the brook. That is the place where a man hewing a threshold (prah
) will be found and the castle of Praga should be built. Paradoxically, Lubossa, the pagan
phitonissa,
continues her prediction by saying that from that castle, one day, two golden olive trees will grow: St. Wenceslas and St. Vojt
ch, the famous missionary and first Czech bishop of Prague (she hides the names in a riddle), who will illuminate the entire world by their wonders and miracles. Cosmas enhances the paradox by saying that she would have continued to speak if the hellish spirit of prophecy (spiritus pestilens et prophetans,
I,9) had not left her body, created by God.
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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