Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe: Tenth to Eleventh Centuries

Life of Saint Adalbert Bishop of Prague and Martyr [Includes Image Plate]

THE LIFE OF SAINT ADALBERT BISHOP OF PRAGUE AND MARTYR Fig. 3. St. Adalbert of Prague, marble fountain, eleventh/twelfth century, S. Bartolomeo all'Isola, Rome (photo © Cristian Gaşpar) [79] PREFACE Cristian Gaşpar One of the things that today’s visitors to the Roman church of San Bartolomeo all’Isola will notice almost immediately is a marble fountain incorporated somewhat incongruously in the steps leading up to the main altar (see Fig. 3). This impressive artifact, dating back to the eleventh or the twelfth century, preserves the memory and possibly one of the earliest iconographic representations of St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, whose first Latin Vita is translated here. Born ca. 956 in Central-Eastern Bohemia, in Libice (today Libice nad Cidlinou, in the Czech Republic), Vojtěch, as he was called by his Slavic name, was the son of a local potentate. A few years spent at the cathedral school in Magdeburg, in the Ottonian Empire, gave him a solid education and a new, Germanic name, Adalbert, by which he is commonly known today. In 983 Adalbert became the second bishop of Prague, but his episcopal career was somewhat of a failure. The years when he occupied his see (983– 989 and 992–994) alternated with spells of wandering and settled monastic life in Italy (990–991 and 995–996), much to the dissatisfaction of both his abandoned parishioners and his ecclesiastic superiors. The patronage of Emperor Otto III, whom Adalbert first met in Rome in 996, eventually allowed the fugitive bishop to resist a final call to resume his pastoral duties and, with support from the Polish duke Bolesław Chrobry, embark instead upon an evangelizing mission among the pagan Prussians, at whose hands he would die a martyr’s death on 23 April 997.1 1 The only recent overview of St. Adalbert’s life in English is Ian Wood, The Mis­ sionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 207–11. The most complete monograph is that of Gerard Labuda, Święty Wojciech: biskup­męczennik, patron Polski, Czech i Węgier [Saint Adalbert: The martyr bishop, patron of the Poles, the Czechs, and the Hungarians], 2nd ed. (Wrocław: THE LIFE OF SAINT ADALBERT BISHOP OF PRAGUE AND MARTYR 80 Imperial interest in and patronage of Adalbert’s cult throughout the Ottonian empire would have probably turned him into a Reichsheilige of sorts, but the premature death of Emperor Otto III dampened the initial enthusiasm, and Adalbert’s veneration in the Empire eventually lost its significance. Adalbert’s memory was, however, kept alive in Central-Eastern Europe, where the presence of his relics, disputed even today between two cult centers, Gniezno and Prague, as well as the interest of (sometimes competing) ruling dynasties in medieval Bohemia, Poland and Hungary in claiming him as a national patron turned Adalbert into a very important and to this day very popular saint. Several hagiographic texts produced in this area (for which, see the hagiographic inventory below, p. 383), a significant presence in the liturgical and homiletic material, an impressive number of patrocinia in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and the popularity of modern names derived from his (Czech Vojtěch, Polish Wojciech, Hungarian Béla), all testify to Adalbert’s posthumous fortune in Central-Eastern Europe. This fortune took a spectacular turn in the years around 1997, in various celebrations connected with the millenary of his death. In that context Adalbert was promoted, both in popular and in scholarly discourse, not so much as a national patron, but Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2004). On Adalbert’s cult and its ideological background, see Roman Michałowski, Zjazd gnieźnieński: religijne przesłanki powstania arcybiskupstwa gnieźnieńskiego [The Gniezno meeting: The religious conditions of the establishment of the archbishopric of Gniezno] (Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2005). Also see Adalbert von Prag – Brückenbauer zwischen dem Osten und Westen Europas, ed. Hans Hermann Henrix (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997), especially Gerard Labuda, “Ein europäisches Itinerar seiner Zeit: Die Lebensstationen Adalberts” (ibid., 59–75); Tropami Świętego Wojciecha [The life of St. Adalbert], ed. Zofia Kurnatowska (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyaciół Nauk, 1999); Święty Wojciech w polskiej tradycji historiograficznej: antologia tekstów [St. Adalbert in the Polish historiographic tradition : An anthology of texts], ed. Gerard Labuda (Warsaw: Pax, 1997); Aleksandra Witkowska and Joanna Nastalska, Świ...