The Trauma of an Arranged Marriage

John M. Klassen with Eva Dolezalová and Lynn Szabo. The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters: Noblewomen in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia. Cambridge, Mass.: D. S. Brewer, 2001. 134 pp. ISBN 0-8599-1612-X (pb).

This small gem of a book brings to life the personal passions, pain, and politics of two well-known families of the Holy Roman Empire: the Rozmberks, a family of the highest Bohemian nobility, and the ancient Austrian family of Lichtenstein. Both families owned numerous family seats scattered along the border of what is now Austria and the southern edges of the Czech Republic: Bohemia and Moravia. For modern tourists and historians alike, the translation of Klassen, Dolezalová, and Szabo opens a treasure trove of well-constructed research and interpretation.

Tourists have discovered the world of the Rozmberks through visits to the splendidly restored medieval South Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov at the spring of the river Vltava (or Moldau), internationally renowned through Smetana's music. Cesky Krumlov's market square is a delightful example of numerous squares in Southern Bohemia; its ancient, elegant castle was the chief Rozmberk family seat. The fifteenth-century noblewomen of this book are sisters Anézka and Perchta of Rozmberk. While Czech school children have for centuries heard the myth of Perchta, the "White Lady" who haunted Southern Bohemia in various guises, readers can now appreciate her story as told in her own words.

The sisters' father, Ulrich of Rozmberk, was head of the family and of an estate that included some twenty-two castles, six towns, and almost five hundred villages and hamlets. By choice, the older sister, Anézka, was unmarried and the life-long mistress of one of the Rozmberk castles at Trebon. This Rozmberk town is also well known for its famous fourteenth-century painter, the Master of Trebon, whose paintings are now one of the glories of the Czech National Gallery.

The family was a major political and cultural force in the Czech lands, and Ulrich supported the Austrian Catholic party against the Revolution of Jan Huss's followers. Huss was burned at the stake in 1415 for his proto-Protestant preaching one hundred years before "The Reformation." Consequently, Ulrich neglected his younger daughter's needs during the early part of her marriage because of his political and military activities. Perchta's letters strongly protest this neglect. Like many medieval women, she had been forced into a marital alliance without choice. She felt closely connected to her powerful family, but had a deep sense of her own worth and subtly played the part of a docile and obedient wife while secretly stirring the Rozmberk men to act on her behalf.

When I first saw the title of this book, I imagined I would find correspondence between the Rozmberk sisters. This is not so. It would have been extremely interesting to have a personal, perhaps even intimate, epistolary exchange between fifteenth-century sisters. But only a few letters came from the older, independent, and single sister Anézka. These were not addressed to Perchta, although Anézka's concern for her sister's well-being is clear.

Perchta composed most of the seventy letters in this collection. They were intended to prod her father and powerful brothers into ameliorating her troubled marital situation. Dictated to her secretary, Henry, whom her father sent along at the time of her marriage, the letters were mostly written in Czech but sometimes in German, indicating how conversant this noble family was in both languages. Czech, however, appears to have been the preferred language among family members. Significantly, as a wom-an married to a man who himself bore the renowned name of Lichtenstein, Perchta always signed her letters with her family name: Perchta of Rozmberk. This Czech version of the German "Rosenberg," based on the family's emblem of the Rose, would have been a fashionable aristocratic usage at this time of Hussite nationalism...