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  • Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics by Lisa Wolverton
  • Marie Bláhová
Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics. By Lisa Wolverton. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2014. Pp. xviii, 307. $65.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-8132-2691-0; ISBN 978-0-8132-2692-7 e-book.)

This book is the second monograph about Cosmas (c. 1045–1125), the oldest Czech chronicler and canon of the Chapter of Prague; it also is the first written by a non-Czech author. Lisa Wolverton, the author and associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, aims at offering a reinterpretation of the main piece of Czech medieval historiography, which has been reached by the author during her work on an English translation of Cosmas’s chronicle. She is particularly interested in “its story, the narrative shape and style of Cosmas’ history” (p. 2). She offers a detailed analysis of the language, the way of expression, the intentions, and the content of the chronicle; at the same time, she contextualizes and compares it to the works of some contemporary historians of Latin Europe. She wants to read the Cosmas chronicle “in all its fullness with new eyes” (p. 18).

The book is composed of seven chapters. In the introduction, the author gives fundamental information about the present study of Cosmas’s work, its author, and the chronicle itself, as well as discusses her book’s goals. Her work is motivated by the tendency in the Anglo-Saxon world to overlook Cosmas’s chronicle or to consider it only in relation to the chroniclers’ view on women. Wolverton wants to bring “the text into the interpretative frame of Anglophone medievalists” (p. 3). At [End Page 384] the same time, she would like to correct the supposed absence of Czech (and Polish) literature, with only a handful of articles and one monograph trying “to analyze the text on its own terms” (p. 3). However, Wolverton neglects several recent works by Czech historians (such as Martin Wihoda, Petr Kopal, Josef Žemlička, and this reviewer) that analyze problems similar to those examined by the author.

In the second chapter, “The Historian’s Craft,” she analyzes the sources of Cosmas’s narrative in detail, examines the method of composition, and successfully reconstructs Cosmas’s procedures for work. Using a detailed analysis of Cosmas’s text, she disproves Dušan Třeštík’s hypothesis that the Annales Pragenses served as Cosmas’s source and considers other sources. She states that Regino of Prüm deeply influenced Cosmas because of the language, the way of expression, the source of information about past events, and especially the craft of history.

The third chapter, “The Pessimistic Theory of Power,” is dedicated to Cosmas’s political opinions on politics and the functions of law, the appointment and position of the monarch, and the critique of political power. In this context, the author rightly emphasized the fact that Cosmas had not been a court chronicler, as many experts believe, but had been writing the book independently. Peter Hilsch drew a similar conclusion recently, but his study is not mentioned.

The author devotes the fourth chapter, “Gendered Politics and Womeńs Voices,” to Cosmas’s view on women and their position in the society.

In the fifth chapter, “Characterizing a Decadent Political Culture,” Wolverton shows Cosmas’s critique of common political means such as monarchs’ greed, corruption, and corrupt practices, as well as wars and fratricides.

In the sixth chapter, “The Birth of National History,” she rejects the usual description of Cosmas’s chronicle as national history. She reminds us that Cosmas’s Czechs did not come from Troy, as most of (West) Slavic nations, but “from nowhere” (p. 224), and they have become the nation after entering their destined land. The author’s interpretation is inaccurate, as Cosmas posits the first inhabitants’ arrival in Bohemia in relation to the dispersal of people during the construction of the Tower of Babel. Unlike other researchers, Wolverton considers the land to be most important in Cosmas’s narration.

In the conclusion, the author sums up her research results: Cosmas’s chronicle is, first of all, a political work...

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