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Authors: Peter Demetz
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The P
emyslid and Czech loyalties of Isaac ben Moses are a matter not of speculation but of fascinating philological evidence which has been discussed for nearly a hundred and fifty years now. When speaking of
Bohemia and the Czech language (or perhaps other West Slavic languages), Isaac ben Moses and other Tosafists of his time use the terms “Canaan” and “Canaanite”; he proudly speaks of “our kingdom of Canaan” and “Canaanite,” and Czech glosses, together with a few French and German words, are numerous in his manuscript. Abraham ben Azriel used “Canaanite,” or Czech, examples to explicate different questions of grammar and syntax, and Isaac ben Moses, in his glosses on terms of rabbinical Hebrew, prefers to cite things of daily life, for instance
led
(ice),
blecha
(flea),
jahody
(berries),
or motouz
(thread). In one of his most brilliant essays Roman Jakobson has suggested that these Czech glosses belong among the earliest traces of the Czech vernacular in written literature, but it is more difficult to accept his more general conclusion that the “Canaanite” glosses offer incontrovertible proof that the Prague Jews had adopted the Czech vernacular as their idiom of communication
within
their town, whatever language they used earlier or later. I fully understand the reasons why Jakobson, writing during World War II, wished to argue against older German-Jewish scholars who were infected, he thought, by what he rather hastily called Pan-German ideas and therefore could not imagine Prague Jews as early speakers of Czech. But it is a dubious assumption that continued use of Jewish-German, or
daitch,
a medieval German idiom much enriched by Hebrew (only later called Yiddish), binds fourteenth-century Jewish speakers to a later Germany. It is another question entirely whether Jakobson’s argument was not really directed against Czech nationalists, who always very much disliked the idea that Yiddish, in its early shape, was spoken in Slavic Prague. The P
emyslid dynasty was Christian and Czech, but their state was not so entirely, at least not in the sense of later nationalists who cultivated ideas of exclusion and “cleansing.” Learned glosses are one thing, the idiom(s) actually spoken within a community another, and I am not fearful of the idea of Prague Jews, learned in sacred Hebrew, speaking
daitch
or Czech or any language they wished in a town where many idioms were heard and many cultures thrived.
emyslid and Czech loyalties of Isaac ben Moses are a matter not of speculation but of fascinating philological evidence which has been discussed for nearly a hundred and fifty years now. When speaking ofBohemia and the Czech language (or perhaps other West Slavic languages), Isaac ben Moses and other Tosafists of his time use the terms “Canaan” and “Canaanite”; he proudly speaks of “our kingdom of Canaan” and “Canaanite,” and Czech glosses, together with a few French and German words, are numerous in his manuscript. Abraham ben Azriel used “Canaanite,” or Czech, examples to explicate different questions of grammar and syntax, and Isaac ben Moses, in his glosses on terms of rabbinical Hebrew, prefers to cite things of daily life, for instance
led
(ice),
blecha
(flea),
jahody
(berries),
or motouz
(thread). In one of his most brilliant essays Roman Jakobson has suggested that these Czech glosses belong among the earliest traces of the Czech vernacular in written literature, but it is more difficult to accept his more general conclusion that the “Canaanite” glosses offer incontrovertible proof that the Prague Jews had adopted the Czech vernacular as their idiom of communication
within
their town, whatever language they used earlier or later. I fully understand the reasons why Jakobson, writing during World War II, wished to argue against older German-Jewish scholars who were infected, he thought, by what he rather hastily called Pan-German ideas and therefore could not imagine Prague Jews as early speakers of Czech. But it is a dubious assumption that continued use of Jewish-German, or
daitch,
a medieval German idiom much enriched by Hebrew (only later called Yiddish), binds fourteenth-century Jewish speakers to a later Germany. It is another question entirely whether Jakobson’s argument was not really directed against Czech nationalists, who always very much disliked the idea that Yiddish, in its early shape, was spoken in Slavic Prague. The P
emyslid dynasty was Christian and Czech, but their state was not so entirely, at least not in the sense of later nationalists who cultivated ideas of exclusion and “cleansing.” Learned glosses are one thing, the idiom(s) actually spoken within a community another, and I am not fearful of the idea of Prague Jews, learned in sacred Hebrew, speakingdaitch
or Czech or any language they wished in a town where many idioms were heard and many cultures thrived.
The real, not fictional, medieval women whose names and distinct lives have been preserved in the history of Prague are all of the P
emyslid family and deeply committed to the spirit of the church. Ludmila educated Duke Václav in the tradition of the Slavic priests who had baptized
her; Princess Mlada, sister of Boleslav I, established a Benedictine convent at Prague Castle (after 973) and served as its first abbess; Princess Anežka (Agnes), sister of King Václav I and aunt of Otakar II, moves both in pious legends and on the sober scene of history (the life and death of Blažena, allegedly her sister and suspected of heresy in the Italian Inquisition, is another story entirely).
emyslid family and deeply committed to the spirit of the church. Ludmila educated Duke Václav in the tradition of the Slavic priests who had baptizedher; Princess Mlada, sister of Boleslav I, established a Benedictine convent at Prague Castle (after 973) and served as its first abbess; Princess Anežka (Agnes), sister of King Václav I and aunt of Otakar II, moves both in pious legends and on the sober scene of history (the life and death of Blažena, allegedly her sister and suspected of heresy in the Italian Inquisition, is another story entirely).
Anežka, born in 1211, was the third and youngest of King P
emysl Otakar I’s daughters from his second marriage, and from early on her father used her as a pawn in traditional intrigues about political betrothals and prearranged diplomatic marriages, projected and canceled as the power plays required. When she was three years old, she was promised to a Silesian prince; as a girl she was sent to the Cistercian convent at Trebnitz (now Polish), but when her fiancé died, she was returned to her family and then farmed out again for nearly two years to the Bohemian convent at Doxany, where she learned how to read. (The magnificent Book of Hours which she used there is now in the Morgan Library in New York.) Again, her father called her back because ten-year-old Heinrich, son of Emperor Frederick II, was to be her next suitor; after this convent childhood, she was sent to the Babenbergs’ lively court at Vienna to be educated as queen or perhaps empress. The trouble was that her gracious host, Duke Leopold VI, in the best Viennese manner elegantly undercut her father’s plans and married off his own daughter Margarete to Heinrich; the enraged king of Bohemia wanted to attack Vienna, and Anežka had to come home again. The next suitor-to-be was Henry III, king of England (the negotiations dragged on for years, mostly about the dowry); when Emperor Frederick II himself wanted to marry Anežka, first in 1228 and then again in 1231, she turned him down (Pope Gregory IX may have strengthened her resolve).
emysl Otakar I’s daughters from his second marriage, and from early on her father used her as a pawn in traditional intrigues about political betrothals and prearranged diplomatic marriages, projected and canceled as the power plays required. When she was three years old, she was promised to a Silesian prince; as a girl she was sent to the Cistercian convent at Trebnitz (now Polish), but when her fiancé died, she was returned to her family and then farmed out again for nearly two years to the Bohemian convent at Doxany, where she learned how to read. (The magnificent Book of Hours which she used there is now in the Morgan Library in New York.) Again, her father called her back because ten-year-old Heinrich, son of Emperor Frederick II, was to be her next suitor; after this convent childhood, she was sent to the Babenbergs’ lively court at Vienna to be educated as queen or perhaps empress. The trouble was that her gracious host, Duke Leopold VI, in the best Viennese manner elegantly undercut her father’s plans and married off his own daughter Margarete to Heinrich; the enraged king of Bohemia wanted to attack Vienna, and Anežka had to come home again. The next suitor-to-be was Henry III, king of England (the negotiations dragged on for years, mostly about the dowry); when Emperor Frederick II himself wanted to marry Anežka, first in 1228 and then again in 1231, she turned him down (Pope Gregory IX may have strengthened her resolve).In 1234, at the age of twenty-three, she entered a convent in the Old Town next to the river, and remained there for almost a half-century (she died in 1282). Anežka had long been an object of dynastic and family politicking, and when she decided to become a bride of Christ she did so on her own terms and with remarkable independence. She wanted her own life in a convent of her own and silently brushed aside the traditional possibility of entering the Benedictine convent of St. George, at the castle. She organized her own hospital in 1233, run by a lay brotherhood later called the Order of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star (1237), the only monastic order ever to emerge in Prague, and then, when Pope Gregory IX sent her a group of Italian nuns, she founded a convent that she established as a Franciscan cloister, thereby risking a prolonged conflict
with the
Fratres Minores,
who had come to Prague in the 1220s and settled, according to the king’s will, at St. Jacob in the Old Town. On June 11, 1234, after her hair had been shorn and she had given away her riches, she entered this convent herself (seven bishops officiating and the entire royal family being present), and the pope appointed her, hardly a year later, abbess of the new institution. Soon she left the hospital to the Knights of the Cross and by her own example, as the Latin legend of her life tells us, made the new convent a radiant home of Franciscan spirituality and a magnificent monument of early Prague Gothic architecture. Construction probably went on for nearly fifty years; first, art historians assume, came a Church of St. Francis and convents for the sisters; then, after 1240, friaries were built, and, later, the Church of the Redeemer, to serve as a burial place for the dynasty. The early part still reveals the Cistercian-Burgundian legacy of sacred architecture, but the later buildings are closer to the High Gothic of German and French cathedrals.
with the
Fratres Minores,
who had come to Prague in the 1220s and settled, according to the king’s will, at St. Jacob in the Old Town. On June 11, 1234, after her hair had been shorn and she had given away her riches, she entered this convent herself (seven bishops officiating and the entire royal family being present), and the pope appointed her, hardly a year later, abbess of the new institution. Soon she left the hospital to the Knights of the Cross and by her own example, as the Latin legend of her life tells us, made the new convent a radiant home of Franciscan spirituality and a magnificent monument of early Prague Gothic architecture. Construction probably went on for nearly fifty years; first, art historians assume, came a Church of St. Francis and convents for the sisters; then, after 1240, friaries were built, and, later, the Church of the Redeemer, to serve as a burial place for the dynasty. The early part still reveals the Cistercian-Burgundian legacy of sacred architecture, but the later buildings are closer to the High Gothic of German and French cathedrals.
“A queen turned servant,” the Latin legend suggests, but Anežka was very much concerned about the rules according to which she and the sisters were to live, and for more than twenty years she corresponded and pleaded with Rome about her Franciscan theory and practice; the letters going back and forth between her and Clara (who had established at San Damiano, in Umbria, the first women’s convent in the spirit of St. Francis—hence the name Poor Clares for the nuns of this new order) amply suggest that the two women strongly supported each other. They both defended a radical view of poverty which the Holy See, for many pragmatic reasons, did not share. Gregory IX did not wish to see the new monastic orders multiply endlessly, each with a different set of rules and rituals, and he believed that it would be economically more feasible if the Poor Clares’ convents shared property rather than depend on the
Fratres
begging in the streets. Anežka and Clara in unison believed in absolute poverty as a way of pious life; it was precisely her belief in poverty which prompted Anežka early to disaffiliate herself from her hospital, which was substantially endowed by the queen mother. Discussion intensified, busy Franciscans carried letters across the rivers and the Alps, and after Anežka sent him a sketch of her own new rules to be approved Gregory IX did not, in response, even bother to hide his iron fist in a glove of velvet rhetoric: he admonished Anežka to distinguish between zeal and expert knowledge and told her in no uncertain terms to follow in God’s grace the old rule.
Fratres
begging in the streets. Anežka and Clara in unison believed in absolute poverty as a way of pious life; it was precisely her belief in poverty which prompted Anežka early to disaffiliate herself from her hospital, which was substantially endowed by the queen mother. Discussion intensified, busy Franciscans carried letters across the rivers and the Alps, and after Anežka sent him a sketch of her own new rules to be approved Gregory IX did not, in response, even bother to hide his iron fist in a glove of velvet rhetoric: he admonished Anežka to distinguish between zeal and expert knowledge and told her in no uncertain terms to follow in God’s grace the old rule.
At least he had been willing to listen; Anežka had pleaded for a modification of rules originally written for the sunny hills of Italy, not
unheated cloister halls of a Prague winter, and while the pope readily gave permission for his Poor Clares of the north to shorten the times of fasting and wear double tunics, wool stockings, and fur-lined coats, he remained adamant on the central question of the privilege of poverty, which the Curia interpreted as “shared endowment.” Anežka relented for the time being, but as soon as Innocent IV was elected in 1243, Anežka wrote again, though modestly speaking only of modifications; the new pope, addressing her as his “peaceful dove”
(columba pacifica
: he had a sense of discreet irony), gently asked her to “quit worrying” and “calm down,” and allowed the sisters of the inclement clime to partake of warm food, wine, and eggs. Ultimately, the Roman hierarchy granted the wishes of the Poor Clares; in 1247, the rule of St. Francis was substituted for that of St. Benedict (though shared property was still recommended), and on August 9, 1253, two days before Clara died, Innocent IV confirmed the
privilegium pauperitatis
as she wanted it to be; the Poor Clares in Umbria and Prague rejoiced that their vision had prevailed.
unheated cloister halls of a Prague winter, and while the pope readily gave permission for his Poor Clares of the north to shorten the times of fasting and wear double tunics, wool stockings, and fur-lined coats, he remained adamant on the central question of the privilege of poverty, which the Curia interpreted as “shared endowment.” Anežka relented for the time being, but as soon as Innocent IV was elected in 1243, Anežka wrote again, though modestly speaking only of modifications; the new pope, addressing her as his “peaceful dove”
(columba pacifica
: he had a sense of discreet irony), gently asked her to “quit worrying” and “calm down,” and allowed the sisters of the inclement clime to partake of warm food, wine, and eggs. Ultimately, the Roman hierarchy granted the wishes of the Poor Clares; in 1247, the rule of St. Francis was substituted for that of St. Benedict (though shared property was still recommended), and on August 9, 1253, two days before Clara died, Innocent IV confirmed the
privilegium pauperitatis
as she wanted it to be; the Poor Clares in Umbria and Prague rejoiced that their vision had prevailed.
One can point out, of course, that Anežka’s convent, the pride of early Gothic Prague, was amply supported by the king and the queen, who were always willing to sell a few villages when architects needed money for expansions and additions (Prague art historians have found the documentary evidence), but it is also true that Anežka, like her friend Clara, also of a noble family, truly lived according to early Franciscan ideals. Her legend, written some fifty years after she died and discovered in 1896 by the scholar Achille Ratti (later Pope Pius XI), praised her simplicity, the humble willingness with which she served the sisters, washed and mended their clothes, lived on a frugal diet of raw onions and fruits with long weeks of fasting, and her joy in the Eucharist. “There she sucked, like a bee, honey from the rock of the sweetest godhead and the oil of compassion from the hardest stone”
(ibi sugebat enim ut apicula mel dulcissime divinitatis de petra et condescensionis humanitatis oleum de saxo durissimo
).
(ibi sugebat enim ut apicula mel dulcissime divinitatis de petra et condescensionis humanitatis oleum de saxo durissimo
).
Anežka and Clara belonged to those Franciscans who cherished a radical view of evangelical poverty and anticipated the thought and the protest of later church reformers who argued against a church too deeply involved in worldly power and magnificence. Unfortunately, the Poor Clares of Prague did not have a chance to go on living undisturbed by history. During the Hussite revolution in the fifteenth century, the convent, from which the sisters and friars had escaped, was turned into an arsenal (1420), and though Dominicans and Poor Clares returned for a while in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Emperor Joseph II secularized
and transformed it, in his own revolution from above, into a place where the Prague poor lived or set up little workshops; the churches and chapels fell apart. Even in our century, the “Na Františku
”
neighborhood was a picturesque place for the underprivileged and a few imaginative screwballs (all wonderfully portrayed in the writings of Géza V
eli
ka, who was born there). Czech archaeologists and art historians fought city planners who wanted to do away with the medieval remnants, as they had in the Jewish Town, and insisted on a judicious restoration, which was completed against many odds in the 1980s.
“
Anež
in Klášter
,”
St. Anežka’s convent, now serves as a branch of the Czech National Gallery, elegant concerts are performed in its halls, and during the intermissions chic tourists and those Prague citizens who can afford it have drinks at the little bar built into the old cloister wall.
and transformed it, in his own revolution from above, into a place where the Prague poor lived or set up little workshops; the churches and chapels fell apart. Even in our century, the “Na Františku
”
neighborhood was a picturesque place for the underprivileged and a few imaginative screwballs (all wonderfully portrayed in the writings of Géza V
elika, who was born there). Czech archaeologists and art historians fought city planners who wanted to do away with the medieval remnants, as they had in the Jewish Town, and insisted on a judicious restoration, which was completed against many odds in the 1980s.“
Anež
in Klášter,”
St. Anežka’s convent, now serves as a branch of the Czech National Gallery, elegant concerts are performed in its halls, and during the intermissions chic tourists and those Prague citizens who can afford it have drinks at the little bar built into the old cloister wall.
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