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Book Three
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182 BooK Three here begins the Apology of the same Dean mentioned above to the Third Book of the very same work With God’s piety supporting me, i have now fulfilled the promises i consider myself to have made you, reader.1 remembering a few things among many concerning exploits, causes, and times past, i have now brought my narrative’s history up to the time of Duke Břetislav the Younger. But why i have now decided to delay this pressing work, this work of value, is not irrelevant. Concerning present-day men and times it is more beneficial for us to remain completely silent than to speak the truth, because the truth always makes us unpopular and we incur loss by it. But if we were to write differently than the way things were, deviating from the truth, we would stand accused of flattery and lies—since their causes are known to almost everyone.2 Men of this time, denuded of virtues, seek to dress themselves only in praise; their greatest madness is to wish to be decorated with favors rather than to do what is worthy of favor. But it was not so among men of old. Although they were most worthy of praise, they nevertheless fled 1. This first sentence consists of two lines of verse, which borrow from Valerius flaccus, Argonautica 7.518, in Valerius Flaccus, trans. J. h. Mozley (Cambridge, Mass.: harvard University Press, 1934). 2. These two sentences are lifted, with modifications, from regino’s entry for 892, where he too comments on what it means for a historian to write about contemporary events (Chronicon, 139). several other words and phrases from this entry appear elsewhere in the Apologia. however, the declaration that “the truth makes you unpopular” (veritas odium parit) comes from Terence (Woman of Andros 68) and does not appear in regino. Cosmas has folded it in, as a kind of riff on regino’s word odium. Book Three 183 the praise modern men seek. What was a disgrace to those men is considered an honor by these. if we were transparently to describe with a pen their actions—some of which were not done with God—without a doubt we would not escape offending some of those still living. These are new men and yes men, who have no other response to the duke’s voice ready in their mouths than: “Yes, lord,” [one says]; another, “Yes it is, lord”; and a third, “Yes, do it, lord.”3 But once it was not so. for the duke himself especially cultivated the man who set his shield against iniquity by reason of justice and suppressed with one word of truth4 bad counselors and those deviating from the path of equity.5 There are no such men now, or few; and if they exist, so long as they keep silent, it is as if they do not exist. for it is the same vice or judgment to have silenced the truth or assented to falsehood. Thus it seems to us much safer to narrate a dream, to which no one bears witness, than to write the deeds of present-day men. for that reason we leave it for later men to explain their exploits more expansively. nevertheless , lest someone blame us for passing over them untouched, we will take the trouble to note a few things summarily. 3.1. The new Duke Břetislav—the “younger” but mature in age and more mature in attitude—worthily celebrated the feast of saint Václav, his patron, according to the rite of this land and with all the obligatory ceremonies, in the burg of Prague. With his satraps and comites he hosted a great three-day feast. There, when he perceived how much the church might profit from certain things by virtue of his newness, he established those things for the benefit of this land. Just as previously, in the first campaign [tirocinium]6 of his youth, he put every hope in God’s protection alone, so now, 3. This echoes libuše’s remarks in 1.5. 4. Jas 1:18 and 2 Tm 2:15 (verbum veritas). 5. Ammianus 22.10.2, in Ammianus Marcellinus, trans. J. C. rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: harvard University Press, 1937). 6. This play on the word tiro harks back to 1.12. Cosmas is also specifically referring to Břetislav’s break with his father and his withdrawal to Trenčin with his followers , described in...