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St. Jerome, Apostle to the Slavs,and the Roman Slavonic Rite

By Jul ia Verkholantsev

Usus litterarum repertus propter memoriam rerum. Nam ne oblivionefugiant, litteris alligantur.[The use of letters was invented for the memory of things. Things arebound in letters so that they may not vanish into oblivion.]

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 1.3.2

It is ironic that Emperor Theodosius the Great, a famous advocate of a stronguniversal church and its alliance with the state, would inadvertently trigger theGreat Schism of 1054 and the split into Eastern and Western churches. WhenTheodosius divided the Roman Empire between his sons in 395, he could nothave foreseen the consequences that his administrative decision would have forthe Christian world. As it turned out, the split of the great empire into two partsnot only created two independent administrative territories but also indirectly ledto the creation of two different cultural spheres, two civilizations: Roman Cath-olic and Byzantine Orthodox. As time went by, despite several unsuccessful at-tempts to reunite the two churches, the gap between them grew, as did the theo-

logical, ecclesiological, and political differences that disturbed prelates on bothsides. One such difference was invariably a disagreement on the language of wor-ship and Holy Scripture.

Although the Catholic Latinate tradition, inherited from Roman imperial uni-versalism, had always been strict in its language canon, the Roman curia madeexceptions. From about the tenth until as late as the eighteenth century, Cro-atian monks and men of letters were the only Catholic community in Europe thatdid not use Latin in the liturgy. Instead, they celebrated the Divine Office inChurch Slavonic—essentially the same language that the Orthodox Slavs used astheir lingua sacra. However, unlike the Orthodox Slavs, the Croatian monks used

a special alphabet—littera specialis Slavonica—that later received the name of Glagolitic.1

Glagolitic letters have captivating and symbolic shapes, inspired by the Chris-tian signs of the cross, circle, and triangle. They also conceal a remarkable storythat implicates an unlikely participant—the church father and biblical translatorSt. Jerome. Although the Glagolitic alphabet was introduced by the Byzantinemissionaries Sts. Cyril and Methodius in the 860s, a theory that developed aroundthe thirteenth century attributed its invention to St. Jerome because of his ex-traordinary philological talents and, more importantly, his alleged Slavic origin.

1 For the sake of terminological clarity, the term “Slavonic” in this paper refers to the ecclesiasticallanguage and tradition that developed from the Old Church Slavonic language introduced amongthe Slavs by Sts. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius. The term “Slavic” indicates ethnic attribution.

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The special status of Jerome’s letters gave the Catholic Croatian monks the uniqueprivilege of being able to celebrate the Divine Office in Slavonic and placed theirRoman Slavonic rite on equal terms with the Latin Mass. With such an endorse-ment, the Roman Slavonic rite persevered and even exceeded the limits of a local

tradition. In the fourteenth century, St. Jerome’s Slavonic rite inspired pan-Slavicambitions of political and ecclesiastical elites in Bohemia and Poland and waseven viewed as having the potential to heal the rift between the Eastern and West-ern churches.

This paper examines the intriguing story behind the medieval belief in St. Je-rome’s authorship of the Glagolitic alphabet and the Slavonic rite. It shows howthis belief, having been conceived and introduced by the Latin Church, lent itself to the construction of narratives about the distinguished historical mission of theSlavs. The paper takes the reader from Dalmatia to Charles IV’s Prague and thento Władysław Jagiełło’s Cracow, where these monarchs founded Slavonic Glagolitic

monasteries in honor of St. Jerome’s special letters as a testament to the superi-ority of the Slavs and as a means of promoting the idea of religious unity be-tween the Catholic and Orthodox Slavs.

Early Slavic Writing (Glagolitic and Cyrillic)

The Croatian Glagolite tradition dates back to the very beginning of Slavic writ-ing, which, unfortunately, remains more a matter of legend than of establishedfact. The origins of the two Slavic alphabets—Glagolitic and Cyrillic—seem tohave provoked more scholarly research and debate than any other subject in Slavic

medieval studies, and yet there remains great uncertainty. The main difficulty inresolving the questions of which alphabet appeared first and who invented it liesin the very limited data and the scarcity of unambiguous documented informa-tion. Although all scenarios that have been suggested rely on various degrees of speculation, most scholars agree that the letters that are currently called Glagoliticwere created by the Byzantine scholar and philosopher Constantine-Cyril for thepurpose of the Christian mission to Great Moravia, which he undertook withhis elder brother Methodius in 863.2

The word “mission,” although an accepted term in relation to the embassy of Cyril and Methodius, is somewhat misleading in this case. By 863 Moravia was

already considered a Christian territory, and the task of the holy brothers went

2 This point of view is shared by most scholars of early Slavic history, although they may not agreeon all the details. The literature on this topic is voluminous and in many languages. In English someof the fundamental studies include books by Francis Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs:SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970); A. P. Vlasto, The Entry of theSlavs into Christendom: An Introduction to the Medieval History of the Slavs (Cambridge, Eng., 1970);Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs (New York, 1994); Ihor S ˇ evčenko, Byzantium and theSlavs in Letters and Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), as well as the English translation from theGreek of Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of theSlavs (New York, 2001). Shorter studies may be found in a collection of conference papers, Thessa-

loniki Magna Moravia: The Proceedings of the International Conference, Thessaloniki 16–19 Octo-ber 1997 (Thessaloníki, 1999), and in Slavic Review 23 (1964), to name only a few. Also, see below,nn. 4 and 5.

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beyond mere evangelization. The Moravian ruler Rastislav turned to the Byzan-tine emperor Michael III with a request for a teacher and bishop for his land,someone capable of instructing Moravians about the Christian faith in their ownlanguage. The ambassadors sent by the emperor were chosen with care, which

demonstrates the importance of the mission for Byzantium. The achievements of the mission testify to both brothers’ exceptional qualities.3 Cyril and Methodiuswere proficient in a South Slavic (Macedonian) dialect that was spoken in theirnative city of Thessalonica. They therefore used it as the foundation for the ChurchSlavonic language, into which they translated liturgical and selected biblical books,recording them in specially devised Glagolitic letters.4 Later, their followers in-troduced the Glagolitic alphabet and liturgy to other Slavs, including the Croats.

3 In an apostolic letter, Egragiae virtutis, dated December 31, 1980, Pope John Paul II proclaimed

Sts. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius copatrons of Europe ( compatroni Europae); they share thishonor with St. Benedict. The main sources of information about Constantine-Cyril and Methodiusare their vitae. The Vita Constantini was written in Moravia before 885 (the earliest copies are fromthe fifteenth century). Later sources usually refer to Constantine as Cyril, the name that he took athis tonsure on his deathbed in 869. The Vita Methodii dates from the late ninth or early tenth cen-tury (the earliest copy is from the twelfth century). A thorough study of the legends as historicalsources, analyzing them in the context of ninth-century Byzantium, has been published by FrancisDvornik, Les légendes de Constantin et de Méthode vues de Byzance, Byzantinoslavica, Supple-menta, l (Prague, 1933). For a more recent discussion see Harvey Goldblatt, “History and Hagiog-raphy: Recent Studies on the Text and Textual Traditions of the Vita Constantini,” Harvard Ukrai-nian Studies 19 (1995), 158–79. An English translation along with the Church Slavonic texts andcommentaries is in Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes, Michigan Slavic Trans-lations 5 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983).

4 The graphic foundation of the Glagolitic alphabet has not been definitively determined. It hasbeen linked to Greek minuscule and cursive scripts; zodiacal, medical, chemical, and shorthand signs;Merovingian Latin; Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and Coptic letters; and Germanic runes. However,while at times one can see a certain degree of resemblance between individual Glagolitic letters andthose of other alphabets, no single system of writing can be genetically connected to Glagolitic. Forsome recent studies that summarize previous scholarship on this matter and offer new ideas see OlgaB. Strakhov, “The Adventure of the Dancing Men: Professor S ˇ evčenko’s Theory on the Origin of Glagolitic,” Palaeoslavica 19 (2011), 1–45; Boris Uspenskii, “O proiskhozhdenii glagolitsy,” Vo-

prosy iazykoznaniia 1 (2005), 63; T. A. Ivanova, “Glagolitsa: Novye gipotezy,” Trudy otdeladrevnerusskoi literatury 56 (2004), 78–93; Vojtěch Tkadlčík, “Über den Ursprung der Glagolica,” inGlagolitica: Zum Ursprung der slavischen Schriftkultur, ed. Heinz Miklas, with Sylvia Richter andVelizar Sadovski, Schriften der Balkan-Kommission, Philologische Abteilung, 41 (Vienna, 2000), pp. 9–

32; and Horace Lunt, “Thoughts, Suggestions, and Questions about the Earliest Slavic Writing Sys-tems,” Wiener slavistisches Jahrbuch 46 (2000), 271–86. There have been some attempts to provethat the Slavs had developed their own writing before Cyril and Methodius. For example, WilhelmLettenbauer (developing Michael Hocij’s thesis) has argued that the Glagolitic alphabet developed inthe eighth century from the Merovingian Latin cursive used among the Slovenes in the territories of Istria and Venice (“Zur Entstehung des glagolitischen Alphabets,” Slovo 3 [1953], 35–50). Referringto the evidence of the Legend of Saloniki and the stylistic similarity of the Glagolitic letters withother missionary alphabets, G. M. Prokhorov has argued that they were invented or discovered bythe seventh-century missionary-Monophysite Cyril of Cappadocia (“Glagolitsa sredi missionerskikhazbuk,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury 45 [1991], 178–99). The Croatian scholar Marko

Japundžić has argued that the Slavic Glagolitic liturgy and writing originated in Croatia at the timeof its conversion at the end of the seventh and early eighth centuries ( Hrvatska glagoljica [Zagreb,

1998], pp. 9–34). However, none of the attempts to date the Glagolitic alphabet before the Cyrillo-Methodian mission has been widely accepted. See Radoslav Katičić in “Uz pitanje o postanku i sta-rosti glagoljice,” Croatica 42–44 (1995–96), 185–98.

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Soon, however, because of events of a largely political nature, the Glagolitic al-phabet and liturgy were banned from all Slavic lands within Roman and Frank-ish jurisdictions. In the Slavic Orthodox churches, Glagolitic writing also did notendure long and was gradually replaced by Cyrillic, which in time supplanted

the position of Glagolitic as the invention of St. Cyril.5 Yet a number of monas-teries on the Dalmatian coast and Adriatic islands preserved the Slavonic liturgyand Glagolitic alphabet until as late as the eighteenth century.

The Croatian Glagolite Tradition

and the Roman Slavonic Rite

The term Glagolitic ( glagolitsa) derives from the Slavic stem glagol - and con-veys the general meanings “word” and “speaking.” In Church Slavonic the verb

glagolati means “to write, speak graphically” since the written word was per-ceived as equivalent to the spoken one. In Croatian, words with the stem glagol -were most likely introduced by the followers of Cyril and Methodius along withthe Slavonic liturgy and became associated with the language of ecclesiasticalbooks and service—hence the Croatian name glagoljaši (Glagolites) for priestsand monks who used the Slavonic liturgy and the first Slavic alphabet. However,the Croatian monks and bookmen who used the Glagolitic alphabet received thatname only relatively recently. Before the fifteenth century, they were referred toby their ethnic affiliation as the Slavic priests ( presbyteri Sclavici ), and their spe-cial letters were associated with the collective Slavic identity.6

As the influence of the Western Church in Croatia grew, the Glagolite monks

adopted the Rule of St. Benedict but continued to use the Slavonic liturgy andGlagolitic writing, giving the letters a more angular shape under the influence of the Latin Beneventan script of Monte Cassino.7 They revised their liturgical books

5 The prevailing scholarly view is that Cyrillic arose from the Byzantine Greek uncial alphabet inBulgaria in the late ninth–early tenth century after the Cyrillo-Methodian mission. However, HoraceLunt has offered another explanation, suggesting that Cyril created both Cyrillic and Glagolitic. Lunthas hypothesized that Cyril created a special writing system to note Slavic sounds based on Greekletters—what is now known as Cyrillic—as part of his mission before he arrived in Moravia. How-ever, in Moravia, having met with great resistance from the Frankish Latin-literate clergy to his sys-

tem on account of its “Greekness,” he devised new—Glagolitic—letters, which were different fromeither Latin or Greek writing (“Thoughts, Suggestions,” pp. 275 and 284). Incidentally, the fact thatSt. Cyril was referred to as Constantine in earlier documents and devotional texts suggests that theCyrillic alphabet was not known as “Cyrillic,” in honor of Constantine-Cyril’s role in its creation,until several centuries after his death (see Andrzej Poppe, “Is kurilotsě i is kurilovitsě,” International

Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 31–32 [1986], 324–25).6 The earliest documented occurrences of the terms with the stem glagol - that describe Glagolitic

are found episodically starting from the fifteenth century. In the areas of Croatia and Bosnia, whereboth Slavic alphabets were in use, the words presbyter chiuriliza and presbyter glagolita were usedto denote priests who used either the Cyrillic or Glagolitic alphabet. However, it was only in thenineteenth century that the term glagolitsa ( glagoljica, hlaholice, etc.) became used consistently inscholarship to denote the Glagolitic alphabet (see Vjekoslav S ˇ tefanić, “Nazivi glagoljskog pisma,”

Slovo 25–26 [1976], 17–76).7 Manuscript illuminations in Glagolitic manuscripts show strong dependence on the Beneventan

style. Glagolitic scribes not only imitated illuminations and decorations of the Latin manuscripts but


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according to the Roman rite and enriched their textual repertoire with transla-tions from Latin.8 Having matured with years, the Croatian Glagolite traditionbecame a unique cultural phenomenon. The Glagolites were not mere monas-tics, engrossed in their books and devotion to God; their activities penetrated deep

inside the secular life of the people who surrounded them. They were writers,public scribes, educators of the masses, and spiritual mentors.9

Yet from the time the Slavonic liturgy was introduced in Dalmatia in the lateninth or early tenth century, it was controversial. In general, ever since the emer-gence of the Slavic letters there had been a persistent problem with their ecclesi-astical authority. This issue had surfaced already by the end of the ninth centuryin the Vita Constantini, a devotional account of St. Constantine-Cyril’s life, whichrelates the following story about the Cyrillo-Methodian mission: “When he [Con-stantine] was in Venice, bishops, priests and monks gathered against him like ra-vens against a falcon. And they advanced the trilingual heresy, saying: ‘Tell us,

O man, how is it that you now teach, having created letters for the Slavs, whichnone else have found before, neither the Apostle, nor the pope of Rome, nor Greg-ory the Theologian, nor Jerome, nor Augustine? We know of only three lan-guages worthy of praising God in the Scriptures, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.’”10

In the thirteenth century, the origin and status of Glagolitic writing (by thenassociated with the special Roman Slavonic rite) were still unresolved issues forthe Dalmatian church, which was dominated by a Latin hierarchy. Latin clergyattempted to undermine the Slavonic rite several times; but, although they weresuccessful in significantly limiting the privileges of the Slavonic clergy, they wereunable to eradicate the rite completely. While one of the most important sources

also modified their own script to emulate the shape and style of Beneventan letters. In addition, someCroatian Glagolitic codices feature Latin initials, illuminated by Italian masters (see Josef Vajs , Ru-kovět’ hlaholské paleografie [Prague, 1932], pp. 135–36 and 144; and Viktor Novak, ScripturaBeneventana: S osobitim obzirom na tip dalmatinske beneventane. Paleografijska studija [Zagreb,1920], pp. 62–66).

8 On the revision of Croatian liturgical books according to the Latin Bible see the studies by Ma-rija Pantelić, “Prvotisak glagoljskog misala iz 1483. prema Misalu kneza Novaka iz 1368.,” RadoviStaroslavenskog instituta 6/6 (1967), 5–108, esp. pp. 68–71; Johannes Reinhart, “Eine Redaktiondes kirchenslavischen Bibeltextes im Kroatien des 12. Jahrhunderts,” Wiener slavistisches Jahrbuch

36 (1990), 193–241, and “Najstarije svjedočanstvo za uticaj Vulgate na hrvatskoglagoljsku Bibliju,”Slovo 39–40 (1989–90), 45–52; and Andrew Corin, “O reformama hrvatskoglagoljskih liturgiskihknjiga u 13. stoljeću,” in Prvi hrvatski slavistički kongres: Zbornik radova, ed. Stjepan Damjanovićet al. (Zagreb, 1997), pp. 527–38.

9 Ivan Ostojić, Benediktinci u Hrvatskoj i ostalim našim krajevima (Split, 1963); Eduard Her-cigonja, “Glagoljaštvo u društvenom životu i kulturi Hrvata od IX do XVIII stoljeća,” Ricerche sla-vistiche 38 (1991), 53–91, and “Glagolists and Glagolism,” in Croatia and Europe: A Cultural Sur-vey, 1: Croatia in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Ivo Supičić (London, 1999), pp. 379–80. Hercigonja’spaper provides a good general review in English of Glagolitic culture in Croatia.

10

(Vita Constantini 16, ed. and trans. Kantor,Lives, pp. 70–71).


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about the beginnings of the Slavic letters, the Vita Constantini, clearly rejects St. Jerome’s role in the establishment of the Slavonic liturgy,11 it was nonetheless St. Jerome, a Latin doctor of the church,12 a biblical exegete, and a translator, wholater became the patron of Glagolitic letters and the protector of the Roman

Slavonic rite.

The Special Slavic Letters of St. Jerome

In 1248, in an effort to resolve the controversy regarding the Slavonic Glagoliticrite in his diocese, the bishop of Senj, Philip, appealed directly to Pope InnocentIV and received a special license to celebrate the Divine Office in Slavonic in hisdiocese. Philip’s letter has not survived, but the pope’s rescript, dated March 29,1248, conveys its content. Philip’s petition, as the pope restates, explained thatthe Senj Glagolites use liturgy and letters that they believe they have received fromSt. Jerome: “Your petition directed to us maintains that there are special lettersin Slavonia, which the clergy of that land say they have from Blessed Jerome andwhich they use in celebrating the Divine Offices. That you may become like themand follow the custom of the land in which you are bishop, you have petitionedus for permission to celebrate the Divine Offices in these letters. Therefore, con-sidering that the word is subject to the matter and not the matter to the word,we, by the authority of this letter, grant you the permission requested, only inthose places where this rite is customarily observed and provided the meaningdoes not suffer from this difference in letters.”13

The specific historical circumstances and impetus of Philip’s petition are un-

known. However, from the pope’s reply it is possible to infer the following facts.First, the 1248 application to the pope demonstrates that the Glagolites did notexplicitly claim that St. Jerome himself invented their special alphabet. Rather,they believed that their letters were brought to them by St. Jerome (“littera spe-cialis, quam illius terre clerici se habere a beato Jeronimo asserentes”).

Second, the pope refers to the special letters that the Glagolites use to cel-ebrate the Divine Office metonymically to indicate both the way of writing

11 Although the letters disputed in the Vita Constantini were, in fact, Glagolitic, the Slavic Ortho-dox churches that claimed the legacy of Sts. Cyril and Methodius subsequently believed that the dis-

pute was over the Cyrillic letters.12 St. Jerome was named (along with Sts. Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory) a doctor of the Latin

Church by Pope Boniface VIII on September 20, 1295.13 “Porrecta nobis tua petitio continebat, quod in Sclavonia est littera specialis, quam illius terre

clerici se habere a beato Jeronimo asserentes, eam observant in divinis officiis celebrandis. Unde cumillis efficiaris conformis, et in terre consuetudinem, in qua consistis episcopus, imiteris, celebrandi di-vina officia secundum dictam litteram a nobis suppliciter licentiam postulasti. Nos igitur attendentes,quod sermo rei, et non res est sermoni subiecta, licentiam tibi in illis dumtaxat partibus, ubi de con-suetudine observantur premissa, dummodo sententia ex ipsius varietate littere non ledatur, auctori-tate presentium concedimus postulatam” (Lucas Jelić, ed., Fontes historici liturgiae Glagolito-Romanaea XIII ad XIX saeculum [Zagreb, 1906] , saec. XIII, p. 9; see also Tade Smičkiklas et al., eds., Codexdiplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, 4 [Zagreb, 1906], p. 343). The English transla-

tion follows a revised reading of this document suggested by Mile Bogović, who has pointed out amistake in the edition: instead of “Unde cum illis efficiaris conformis,” the text should read, “Unde utillis efficiaris conformis” (“Hrvatsko glagoljsko tisućljeće,” Senjski zbornik 25 [1998], 56–57).


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(Glagolitic letters) and the language and text of the liturgy itself (the Croatianvariant of Church Slavonic). We can therefore conclude that Innocent identifiedthe littera specialis with the language and textual corpus of the Slavonic rite.14

Third, the pope granted license to the Slavonic Glagolitic rite and letters be-

cause he considered the “word” (verbal expression) subject to the “matter” (faith;“quod sermo rei, et non res est sermoni subiecta”) as long as the faith did notsuffer from the change of the language (that is, letters).15 This important state-ment shows that Innocent approached the question of using Slavonic in the Ro-man rite in the spirit of the decisions made by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which allowed the use of various languages not only to instruct the con-gregation but also to celebrate the divine services and administer the church’s sac-raments.16

Finally, the rescript shows that Philip, not being a Glagolite himself, consid-ered it important that the diocese of Senj should follow the custom of the Glagolite

clergy and not ignore, condemn, or ban it. The pope acknowledged that the useof the Glagolites’ letters was a lasting historical tradition, a custom (consue-tudo) of the land that demanded respect. He therefore acknowledged the Ro-man Slavonic rite’s importance and Philip’s obligation as a bishop to support it.

Innocent IV’s rescript of Philip’s petition is the earliest known source that doc-uments the belief that the Glagolitic letters (and liturgy) came from St. Jeromeand the use of that belief as evidence of the sacred foundation of Slavonic writ-ing and worship. Despite an obviously legendary origin, this theory proved re-markably enduring over the centuries and persisted even into the modern peri-od.17 Let us therefore review the premises and circumstances of its emergence.

St. Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus) is generally believed to have been born inthe mid-fourth century in the town of Strido(n), which scholars situate some-where between Dalmatia and Pannonia.18 It is accepted in contemporary histo-riography that the Slavs did not arrive in Dalmatia before the sixth century, and,therefore, Jerome could not have had any connection with Slavs or their writ-

14 In medieval grammatical and writing theory, the term litterae was understood in three senses:letters (of the Latin alphabet), a body of written texts, and the knowledge of written texts (educa-tion). See Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “Grammatica” and Literary Theory, 350– 1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 19 (Cambridge, Eng., 1994), pp. 97–104 and 213–

16.15 This dictum has been taken from St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate 4.14 (PL 10:107): “Intelli-

gentia enim dictorum ex causis est assumenda dicendi: quia non sermoni res, sed rei est sermo sub-jectus” (The meaning of what is said should be taken from the reasons for saying it, since wordsshould be subject to things and not things to words).

16 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V (London,1990), pp. 239–*239, canon 9, “De diversis ritibus in eadem fide.”

17 John Fine provides an engaging account of its trajectory among the Croats (John V. A. Fine,“The Slavic Saint Jerome: An Entertainment,” in Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Eu-rope: Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk, ed. Zvi Gitelman, Lubomyr Hajda, John-Paul Himka,and Roman Solchanyk [Cambridge, Mass., 2000], pp. 101–12).

18 Little is known about the exact location of this town because it was entirely destroyed by the

Goths in the late fourth century. An alternative theory argues that Jerome was born at Zrenj nearBuzet in Istria. See Marija Pantelić, “Prvotisak glagoljskog misala” (above, n. 8), pp. 39–40, and“Hrvatskoglagoljski amulet tipa Sisin i Mihael,” Slovo 23 (1973), 161–203, at p. 188.


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ing.19 However, it is not difficult to imagine that in the eyes of the medieval Cro-atian clergy, who knew little about a poorly documented period of great migra-tions, Jerome was a Slav and a Croat. Undoubtedly, the Slavic origin of St. Je-rome was already an important argument for the Glagolite clergy, whose belief

in Jerome’s contribution to their tradition was further substantiated by Latinlearned sources.

The earliest source of information about St. Jerome’s Slavic letters may havebeen a notoriously perplexing treatise, titled the Cosmographia, by an as-yet-unidentified author posing as St. Jerome.20 The author presents his treatise as anamended and explicated edition of the account of the lands and peoples that Aethi-cus Ister, a Scythian philosopher and cosmographer of noble birth, had encoun-tered during his travels. This remarkable work is a bit of a literary puzzle, vari-ously dated and attributed.21 While St. Jerome’s alleged authorship was quiteeffective in providing authority to this treatise up until the nineteenth century,

twentieth-century scholarship has proven that Jerome cannot have been the au-thor. The Cosmographia’s Latin has been found too flawed for, and stylisticallyuncharacteristic of, Jerome whereas its numerous literary references have beenlinked to later sources (such as, for example, Isidore of Seville and Avitus).22 Re-cent research on the Cosmographia’s language, sources, and manuscript evi-dence suggests that the author was most likely a Merovingian Frank educated inIreland (where he became acquainted with the writings of Virgilius Maro Gram-maticus) and England (where he may have spent some time at the school of Can-terbury). The time of its composition is placed between the end of the seventhand the beginning of the eighth centuries.23

Whoever the real writer of the Cosmographia was, it is clear that Aethicus isan imaginary character and St. Jerome a fictitious author. The Cosmographia isdescribed by specialists as a work of fiction, based on the literary technique of a

19 John V. A. Fine, Jr., The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the LateTwelfth Century (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983), pp. 25–41; Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Mid-dle Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge, Eng., 2006), pp. 70–110.

20 Michael W. Herren is currently preparing a new edition and English translation of the Cos-mographia for Oxford Medieval Texts. The two most commonly used editions are Otto Prinz, ed.,Die Kosmographie des Aethicus, MGH QQ zur Geistesgesch. 14 (Munich, 1993), and Heinrich Wutt-ke, ed., Cosmographiam Aethici Istrici ab Hieronymo ex Graeco in Latinum breviarium redactam,

. . . 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1854).21 Views have ranged from accepting Aethicus’s or Jerome’s authorship (mostly by nineteenth-

century scholars and by some contemporary Bulgarian and Croatian patriotically inclined enthusi-asts) to identifying the author as an émigré Avar from Turkey (Prinz, Kosmographie, p. 18) or as aneighth-century bishop of Salzburg, Virgil (Heinz Löwe, Ein literarischer Widersacher des Bonifatius,Virgil von Salzburg und die Kosmographie des Aethicus Ister, Akademie der Wissenschaften und derLiteratur, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jahrg. 1951, 11 [Mainz,1952]). The last hypothesis has received much scholarly attention. However, recently Michael Her-ren has demonstrated that the Cosmographia was written before Virgil’s time and not by an Irish-man (Michael W. Herren, “The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister: Speculations about Its Date, Prov-enance, and Audience,” in Nova de veteribus: Mittel- und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer and Elisabeth Stein [Munich, 2004], pp. 79–102).

22

Prinz, Kosmographie, pp. 22–38; Herren, “Cosmography,” pp. 80–88.23 Herren, “Cosmography,” pp. 79–102.


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“found work.” It opens with a short cosmographical section and proceeds asAethicus’s travelogue through various parts of northern, central, and easternEurope, the Middle East, and Africa.24 Its tall tales, fanciful accounts of non-existing lands and peoples, and chronological incongruity made scholars call it a

“literary forgery” and a work of “Schwindelliteratur.”25 At the end of the Cos-mographia the author includes “the letters of Aethicus,” which contribute to thefantastic nature of the treatise.26 The illustrations in the extant manuscripts of the Cosmographia show the shapes and names of twenty-two letters, which donot correspond to any known system of writing. Despite its fictional setting, thismystifying alphabet played an important historical role: it inspired the belief thatSt. Jerome invented the Slavic alphabet.

It remains to be explained how a fictional work, such as the Cosmographia isbelieved to have been, could have become a source of information to the Bene-dictine scholar and educator, and archbishop of Mainz, Rabanus Maurus (776–

856). Rabanus incorporated the account of Aethicus’s letters in his treatise Deinventione linguarum, a curious short discourse, with no claim to any thorough-ness, on several writing systems and their origins.27 Along with Hebrew, Greek,and Latin letters and Germanic runes, Rabanus describes the letters of Aethicus,stating: “We have also discovered letters of Aethicus, philosopher and cosmog-rapher of Scythian nationality and noble birth, which the venerable Jerome, priest,brought all the way to us, explaining [them] in his own words. Since he highlyappreciated his [Aethicus’s] learning and diligence, he also wished to make hisletters known. And if we are still mistaken in these letters, and if we put the blameon others, correct us.”28 To Rabanus’s credit, it should be noted that he had

24 Ibid., pp. 81–82. In terms of its genre, the Cosmographia has been characterized as a “philo-sophical novel” and a “travel novel” (ibid., pp. 98–99; Danuta Shanzer, “The Cosmographia Attrib-uted to Aethicus Ister as Philosophen- or Reiseroman,” in Insignis sophiae arcator: Essays in Hon-our of Michael W. Herren on His 65th Birthday, ed. Gernot R. Wieland, Carin Ruff, and Ross G.Arthur, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 6 [Turnhout, 2006], pp. 57–86).

25 Michael W. Herren, “Wozu diente die Fälschung der Kosmographie des Aethicus?,” in Latei-nische Kultur im VIII. Jahrhundert, ed. Albert Lehner and Walter Berschin (St. Ottilien, 1989),pp. 145–59; Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum:Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 1/2 (Munich, 1971), pp. 77–78.

26 The text under the alphabet reads, “Explicit liber Aethici philosophi chosmografi natione Sci-

tica nobile prosapia parentum, ab eo enim ethica philosophia a reliquis sapientibus originem traxit”(Here ends the book of Aethicus, philosopher and cosmographer of Scythian origin and noble birth.Indeed, from him other wise men’s ethical philosophy originates): Prinz, Kosmographie, pp. 243–44.

27 The complete title is De inventione linguarum ab Hebraea usque ad Theodiscam, et notis an-tiquis. If indeed the Cosmographia was written as a work of fiction and was received as such by itsreaders, it is surprising that the information about a similarly imaginary “alphabet of Aethicus” wastaken seriously by Rabanus Maurus. Does this mean that Rabanus did not understand its literaryimplications?

28 “Litteras etiam Aethici philosophi cosmographi natione Scythica, nobili prosapia, invenimus, quasvenerabilis Hieronymus presbyter ad nos usque cum suis dictis explanando perduxit, quia magnificeipsius scientiam atque industriam duxit; ideo et ejus litteras maluit promulgare. Si in istis adhuc lit-

teris fallimur, et in aliquibus vitium agemus, vos emendate” (Rabanus Maurus, De inventione linguarum ab Hebraea usque ad Theodiscam, et notis antiquis, PL 112:1581).


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licia (Halych) if the Galician prince, Danilo Romanovich, was willing to acceptthe jurisdiction of the Apostolic See.32

Although in 1248 it was claimed only that the Glagolitic letters were receivedfrom St. Jerome, the legend grew, and gradually Jerome became acknowledged

as the inventor of the Slavic alphabet and the translator of the Mass into Slavonic.It is not surprising that the creation of a new alphabet would then have beenassociated with strictly ecclesiastical needs, specifically with an apostolic pur-pose. Indeed, why would new letters be used if not to record the Divine Officein a new language? And who would be better qualified than the translator of theVulgate to be their creator? The medieval idea of Holy Scripture assumed the apriori authority of writing as God’s instrument. This is reflected in the terms Scrip-tura and Biblia— “writing, way of writing,” “books, scrolls.” Medieval gram-matical theory acknowledged the primacy of writing over speech and consideredwriting the foundation of knowledge and true faith since it was through writing

that knowledge and faith were preserved.33 The sacralizing of writing is the themeof Rabanus Maurus’s poem Ad Eigilum de libro quem scripsit:

Letters alone escape ruin and ward off death,Letters alone in books renew the past.Indeed God’s finger carved letters on suitable rockWhen He gave the law to his people:These letters disclose all that is in the world,Has been, and may chance appear in the future.34

In the poem Rabanus uses the word grammata, a Greek equivalent of litterae. In

Greek the word grammata (plural of gramma) referred to the letters of the al-phabet, writing in general, as well as knowledge and learning. Since the medi-eval concept of letters also included the body of written texts, it is understand-able why St. Jerome was also credited with the establishment of the Slavonicliturgy, written with letters of his making.

The medieval veneration of letters was conducive to the emergence of numer-ous legendary accounts about inventors of alphabets. In the tradition of Pente-cost, these legends associated the origin of writing with mysterious and super-natural events, which underlined letters’ sacred origin and function.35 In the SlavicOrthodox churches, Cyrillic letters had been accepted as a divinely inspired cre-ation of St. Cyril, whereas in Dalmatia, Glagolitic letters were left without a pa-tron. The establishment of their sacred origin must have been seen as necessary

32 The bull Cum te de cetero specialem, August 27, 1247, is edited by Athanasius G. Welykyj, Do-cumenta pontificum Romanorum historiam Ucrainae illustrantia (1075–1953), 1 (Rome, 1953),pp. 36–37.

33 See the epigraph from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae at the start of this article.34 “Grammata sola carent fato, mortemque repellunt, / Praeterita renovant grammata sola biblis. /

Grammata nempe dei digitus sulcabat in apta / Rupe, suo legem cum dederat populo, / Sunt, fuerant,mundo venient quae forte futura, / Grammata haec monstrant famine cuncta suo” (Hrabanus Mau-rus, Carmen 21, in MGH Poetae, 2, ed. Ernest Dümmler [Berlin 1884], p. 186). The English trans-

lation is from Irvine, Textual Culture, p. 14.35 Irvine, Textual Culture, pp. 101–2.


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for the prestige of the Roman Slavonic rite. And because the medieval mind as-sociated letters with Scripture, St. Jerome’s reputation as the translator of the Vul-gate made him perfect for the role of inventor of Glagolitic letters and of theRoman Slavonic rite. Jerome’s Christian authority, constructed in late antiquity

around (then) vernacular Latinity, was now once again called upon to sanction“vernacular” Slavonic translations. Since then, Jerome’s name became closely con-nected with Croatian Glagolitic writing, as is demonstrated by many linguisticand encyclopedic treatises from the Renaissance until the eighteenth century. En-dorsed by St. Jerome’s authority, the Glagolites created a religious practice thatwas unique in the medieval Catholic world because it reconciled the ChurchSlavonic language, which was also used in the Orthodox Church, with the dogmaand ecclesiology of Western Christianity.36 Little by little, the Glagolite bookmentranslated new texts, modified their liturgical books according to Latin models,and gradually enlivened the originally bookish Church Slavonic language with

local vernacular elements. Yet their Slavonic liturgical language was still rela-tively close to other Slavic vernaculars. This linguistic affinity made other Cath-olic Slavs view the Glagolites as the custodians of ancient Slavic traditions, andeven Orthodox bookmen found the Glagolites’ texts valuable and worthy of re-production.

St. Jerome’s Slavic Letters in Prague

After the papal blessing of 1248, the story of St. Jerome’s Slavic heritage alsoreceived recognition outside of Croatia. The liturgy in a sacred Slavonic tongue

according to the Roman rite drew the attention of the Czech king and Holy Ro-man Emperor Charles IV. In 1347 he invited a group of eighty Benedictine Glagolitemonks from the island of Pašman to establish a Slavonic Glagolitic monastery inPrague’s New Town, which became known first as the Slavonic Monastery (Monas-terium Slavorum in Latin documents) and from the seventeenth century as the Em-maus Monastery.37

Historians argue about Charles’s motives in founding the Slavonic Monasteryin Prague. Among the frequently proposed explanations is his intention to con-duct the apostolate among heretics and non-Catholic neighbors—eastern and

36 A useful, although somewhat outdated, account of the Roman Slavonic rite and its history ispresented in Stephen Smržík, The Glagolitic or Roman-Slavonic Liturgy, Series Cyrillomethodiana 2(Cleveland, Ohio, 1959).

37 The literature on the Slavonic Monastery in Prague and its heritage is fairly extensive. Some of the important publications include Klára Benešovská and Kateřina Kubínová, eds., Emauzy: Bene-diktinský klášter Na Slovanech v srdci Prahy (Prague, 2007); Klára Benešovská, “Benediktinský klášterNa Slovanech s kostelem Panny Marie a Slovanských Patronů,” Umění 44 (1996), 118–30; HansRothe, “Das Slavenkloster in der Prager Neustadt bis zum Jahre 1419: Darstellung und Erläuterungder Quellen,” Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 40 (1992), 1–26 and 161–77; PeterWörster, “Monasterium Sancti Hieronymi Slavorum Ordinis Benedicti,” in Kaiser Karl IV. 1316– 1378: Forschungen über Kaiser und Reich, ed. Hans Patze (Neustadt an der Aisch, 1978), pp. 721–

32; Jan Petr and Sáva S ˇ abouk, eds., Z tradic slovanské kultury v Č echách: Sázava a Emauzy v dě- jinách české kultury (Prague, 1975); and Karel Stejskal, Klášter Na Slovanech (Prague, 1974).


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southern Orthodox Slavs.38 It is well documented that Charles was a proponentof a united church, as was his childhood mentor and friend Pope Clement VI. Inthe Roman Slavonic rite of the Glagolites, Charles probably recognized the po-tential for a Slavic religious oikumene, in which Slavs of different Christian con-

fessions could come together. That he understood the importance of the com-mon Slavic language in this matter is evident from his effort to influence theSerbian tsar Stefan Dušan in 1355, who was then negotiating with the pope abouta possible union between the Serbian and Roman churches. In his letter of en-couragement to Dušan, Charles referred to the Slavs’ advantage in being able tocelebrate the Divine Office in their native Slavic tongue (“in wlgari lingwa pre-dicta Slavonica”) even in the Western Church.39 He pointed out that the promi-nent and dignified Slavic language would help Serbian clergy to convert to Ca-tholicism. He must have had in mind the Slavonic Glagolitic rite. The union,however, did not take place because Dušan soon died.

Although Charles’s wish to expand the Western Church is an important con-sideration, the foundation of the Slavonic Monastery should also be viewed inthe broader context of his imperial and dynastic politics. In his efforts tostrengthen the Luxemburg dynasty within the European political scene, Charlessought to elevate the status of his seat—the Bohemian kingdom—in the HolyRoman Empire. While still margrave of Moravia, he took pains to raise the Praguebishopric to an archiepiscopal see to make it independent of the archdiocese of Mainz.40 He then established the New Town of Prague and modeled it on Rome,collecting every available relic and populating his capital with representatives of every ecclesiastical rite and order.41 One of the leitmotifs of his ideological pro-

gram became that of the noble and holy origins of the Slavs (and, hence, theCzechs), which provided a historical justification for the political importance of the Bohemian state.

38 For example, considerations of a mission to “schismatics”—the Orthodox Slavs—have been sug-gested by Milada Paulová, “L’idée cyrillo-méthodienne dans la politique de Charles IV et la fonda-tion du monastère slave de Prague,” Byzantinoslavica 11 (1950), 174–86; Josip Hamm, “Glagoljicau predrenesansno doba,” in Studia Paleoslovenica (Prague, 1971), pp. 95–104, at p. 96; and VáclavHuňáček, “Klášter na Slovanech a počátky východoslovanských studií u nás,” in Z tradic slovanské kultury v Č echách, pp. 177–79. This assumption is inspired by Charles’s own explanation to PopeClement VI, to whom he turned for permission to invite the Croatian Glagolite monks. However,

Tadeusz Trajdos is skeptical about the relevance and even the technical possibility of such a missionfor a monastery based in Bohemia (Tadeusz M. Trajdos, “Fundacja klasztoru benedyktynów sło-wiańskich na Kleparzu w Krakowie,” Rocznik krakowski 54 [1988], 73–89).

39 Mita Kostić, “Zašto je osnovan slovensko-glagoljaški manastyr Emaus u Pragu?,” Glasnik skop-skog naučnog društva 2 (1926), 159–65. On Charles’s role in the negotiations with Dušan see VěraHrochová, “Karel IV., jižní Slované a Byzanc,” in Mezinárodní vědecká konference “Doba Karla IV.v dějinách národ ů Č SSR,” pořádaná Univerzitou Karlovou v Praze k 600. výročí úmrtí Karla IV.

29.11.–1.12.1978: Materiály z plenárního zasedání a ze sekce historie, ed. Michal Svatoš (Prague,1981), pp. 192–99.

40 He accomplished this task around 1344 with the help of Clement VI, his former mentor, PierreRoger.

41 Kateřina Kubínová, Imitatio Romae: Karel IV a Ř ím (Prague, 2006), pp. 217–86; Paul Crossley,

“The Politics of Presentation: The Architecture of Charles IV of Bohemia,” in Courts and Regions inMedieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and A. J. Minnis (York, 2000), pp. 99–172.


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As a farsighted statesman, Charles devoted himself to historiography. He en-couraged and commissioned a number of works on the cultural, religious, andpolitical history of Bohemia, which substantiated the ancient and noble origin of the Slavs and Czechs. He supervised chronicles by several Czech authors (Beneš

Krabice of Weitmil, Canon Francis of Prague, Přibík Pulkava of Radenín), as wellas a chronicle by an “outsider,” the Florentine Franciscan scholar Giovanni deiMarignolli.42 Charles not only suggested and collected historical sources for thesechronicles but also put pen to paper himself. Although several versions of theLife of St. Wenceslas (Václav) already circulated at that time, Charles, appar-ently not fully satisfied with them, wrote his own devotional account of the lifeof Bohemia’s celebrated patron saint.43 In his revision (the work is titled Hysto-ria nova), Charles connects the beginnings of Czech Christianity with the activ-ity of the Slavic apostles Sts. Cyril and Methodius and traces the descent of theCzech crown to the archdiocese of Great Moravia.44 Charles’s version of St. Wen-

ceslas’s vita conveys the main point of his political doctrine, which was that thesecular power in Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire stood on sacred foun-dations. No wonder then that he readily embraced the legendary Slavic heritageof St. Jerome.

Just as the bishop of Senj had done a century earlier, Charles referred to Je-rome’s authority in his request for the pope’s permission to found a monasterywith the Roman Slavonic rite in Prague. In an act Charles issued at the monas-tery’s foundation, he reiterated that the Slavonic liturgy was celebrated in honorof St. Jerome, who had translated Holy Scripture from Hebrew into Latin andSlavonic. Significantly, he acknowledged the Croatian Slavonic of Jerome as the

original language of the Slavs and a protolanguage of the Czech vernacular: “Not

42 Most chronicles were based on the work of Cosmas of Prague, the Chronica Boemorum: theCronica ecclesiae Pragensis by Beneš Krabice of Weitmil (first part until 1346 and second part until1374), the Cronica Pragensis by Francis of Prague (dedicated to Charles in 1353), Kronika Č eská byPřibík Pulkava of Radenín (1374), and the Chronica Boemorum by Giovanni dei Marignolli. (SeeMarie Bláhová, Kroniky doby Karla IV. [Prague, 1987].) Marignolli’s chronicle, in particular, servesas a valuable source for understanding Charles’s dynastic agenda and political outlook. Marignolliconceptualized the history of the Bohemian kingdom in the context of world history and tracedCharles’s lineage on his paternal side to the Trojans, Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne and on his ma-ternal side to the ancient Greeks (or Romans, as he calls them) and Helisa, the son of Javan (Jo-

hannes de Marignola, Chronicon [Kronika Jana z Marignoly], ed. Josef Emler, Fontes Rerum Bohe-micarum 3 [Prague, 1882], pp. 485–604). On Marignolli’s chronicle see Marie Bláhová, “C ˇ eskákronika Jana Marignoly,” in Kroniky doby Karla IV., and “Odraz státní ideologie v oficiální histo-riografii doby předhusické,” Folia historica Bohemica 12 (1988), 269–88; and Kateřina Engstová,“Jan Marignola a památky doby Karla IV.,” Č eský časopis historický 97 (1999), 476–505.

43 Charles IV, Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita ab eo ipso conscripta et Hystoria nova deSancto Wenceslao martyre/Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and His Legend of St. Wenceslas,ed. Balázs Nagy and Frank Schaer (Budapest, 2001), pp. 183–209.

44 Charles borrowed this idea from two earlier works: the “Dalimil” Chronicle and the LegendaChristiani. For the analysis of this motif in the “Dalimil” Chronicle see Marie Bláhová, “. . . Kakojest koruna z Moravy vyšla, . . .” Mediaevalia historica Bohemica 3 (1993), 165–76. On the ideo-logical program of the Legenda Christiani see David Kalhous, “Kristiánova legenda a počátky českého

politického myšlení” (dissertation, Masaryk University, 2005), and “Christian und Grossmähren,”in Die frühmittelalterliche Elite bei den Völkern des östlichen Mitteleuropas, ed. Pavel Kouřil (Brno,2005), pp. 25–33.


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long ago, our most holy Father, the Lord Pope Clement VI, in response to oururgent request, wished to entrust venerable Arnošt, the first archbishop of Pragueand our dearest counselor, that he by the apostolic authority can institute andoversee in our city of Prague a convent-cloister monastery of the Order of St.

Benedict, and that an abbot and brothers are appointed in that place so that theyin the future, serving God, would celebrate the Divine Office only in the Slaviclanguage in honor and memory of the most glorious confessor Blessed Jerome,Stridon’s illustrious doctor and distinguished translator and exegete of the HolyScripture from Hebrew into Latin and Slavic, since indeed from it the Slavic lan-guage of our Bohemian kingdom originated and derived.”45

Charles’s charter demonstrates that he regarded Jerome not only as the inven-tor of the Glagolitic alphabet but also as the author of the Holy Scripture in theSlavic tongue. It was thus understood that the language spoken in Bohemia be-longed to the Slavic language family. The kinship between the Slavic language of

Bohemians (“slauonica nostri regni Boemie ydioma”) and the original (Cro-atian) Slavonic of St. Jerome (“slauonica[] lingwa[]”) was a very important ideo-logical point. St. Jerome’s authorship of the Roman Slavonic rite and letters pro-vided a sacral authentication of the Slavs and Czechs as privileged peoples.

This idea is further linguistically substantiated in a work by the Břevnov Bene-dictine Jan of Holešov, the Expositio cantici Sancti Adalberti, a treatise on thereligious hymn Hospodine, pomiluj ny (Lord, have mercy on us).46 In this trea-tise Jan of Holešov offered a linguistic proof of the genetic relationship betweenCzech and Croatian (a language of St. Jerome) by noting that the hymn containsmany Croatian words; he argued that therefore the Czech people and their lan-

guage are Croatian in origin: “. . . it should be known, that at the beginning we,Bohemians, both by descent and language, originate from the Croatians, as ourchronicles relate and testify, and therefore our Bohemian language by its originis the Croatian language. . . .”47

45 “Dudum siquidem sanctissimus pater dominus noster . . papa Clemens sextus venerabili Ar-nesto archiepiscopo Pragensi principi et consiliario nostro carissimo ad nostri instanciam et reques-tam committere voluit, ut ipse in nostra civitate Pragensi monasterium conuentuale et claustrale or-dinis sancti Benedicti instituere et auctoritate apostolica posset ordinare, institutis ibidem . . abbateet fratribus, qui domino famulantes diuina officia in lingua slauonica dumtaxat ob reuerenciam et

memoriam gloriosissimi confessoris beati Jeronimi, Stridonensis doctoris egregii et translatoris inter-pretisque eximii sacre scripture de ebrayca in latinam et slauonicam lingwas, de qua siquidem slauoni-ca nostri regni Boemie ydioma sumpsit exordium primordialiter et processit . . .” (the charter of No-vember 21, 1347, in Nuremberg, ed. L. Helmling and Ad. Horcicka, Die Urkunden des königlichenStiftes Emaus in Prag, 1: Das vollständige Registrum Slavorum [Prague, 1904], pp. 9–10, with read-ings of the original as reported in the apparatus).

46 Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic (Národní knihovna C ˇ eské republiky), MS III D17, Varii tractatus et canticum “Hospodine pomyluj ny,” fols. 15r–19r: “[Johannis HolešoviensisExpositio cantici, quod dicitur s. Adalberti] O bone procurator scriptor huius expositionis . . . Hos-podyne pomyluj ny . . . Pro vera sciencia et intelligencia huius cantici sancti Adalberti . . . Explicitexposicio cantici sancti Adalberti Hospodyne pomyluj ny compilatione sua finita in monasterioBrewnovyensi Anno Domini Mo CCCo XCVIIo” (1397).

47 “Ubi sciendum est, primo quod nos Bohemi et genere et lingwa originaliter processimus a Char-vatis, ut nostre chronice dicunt seu testantur, et ideo nostrum boemicale ydioma de genere suo estcharvaticum ydioma . . .” (Zdeněk Nejedlý, Dějiny předhusitského zpěvu v Č echách [Prague, 1904],


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Interestingly, the connection between Bohemia and Croatia was first substan-tiated by the famous Czech rhymed “Dalimil” Chronicle (Kronika tak řečenéhoDalimila), written by an anonymous author at the beginning of the fourteenthcentury. It tells the story of a certain “Czech (Ċech)” from a “land named Cro-

atia (zemie jież bye® S e Charwaty gmie),” who committed a murder and was forcedto leave his native country with his family and six brothers and wandered awayto seek another home. He found it in the shadow of the mountain R ˇ ip, whichmarked the beginning of the Czech land.48

The Slav St. Jerome, who epitomized the origin of Slavic (Glagolitic) letters onthe one hand and the humanistic values of learning on the other, became popu-lar especially among the learned in Bohemia. Among Jerome’s ardent admirerswas the famous Czech religious reformer Jan Hus, who habitually calls Jerome“a glorious Slav” in his sermons: “Here, the glorious Slav Jerome on this ( Hec

gloriosus Slawus Ieronimus super isto)”;49 “the glorious Christian Blessed Slav

Jerome ( gloriosum cristianum beatum Slavum Ieronimum)”;50 “Blessed Jerome,the glorious Slav ( Jeronimus beatus, Slavus gloriosus).”51

A rather noticeable increase in the occurrence of the Christian name Jerome(Czech Jeroným), as is documented in ordination records from 1395 to 1416,shows the popularity of this saint among the clergy, especially in the Prague di-ocese.52 This is especially important given the relative scarcity of the name be-fore the end of the fourteenth century. Several of these Jeromes were graduatesof Charles University. Among them are Jerome of Prague (Jeroným Pražský), JanHus’s associate and fellow martyr,53 as well as his religious opponent John Je-rome of Prague (Jan Silván Jeroným Pražský, Hieronymus Pragensis), later a Ca-

maldolese monk, whose missionary experience in Lithuania was documented byAeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) in his De Europa (1458). Anotherwell-known personage is Jerome of Seidenberg of Vratislav, first educated in Bo-

p. 319). František Václav Mareš provides a detailed study of this Old Czech hymn in Cyrilometoděj-ská tradice a slavistika (Prague, 2000), pp. 403–76.

48 Staročeská Kronika tak řečeného Dalimila, 1, ed. Jiří Daňhelka, Karel Hádek, Bohuslav Havránek,and Naděžda Kvítková (Prague, 1988), pp. 105–315.

49 Jan Hus, Opera omnia, 7: Sermones de tempore qui Collecta dicuntur, ed. Aněžka Schmidtová(Prague, 1959), p. 540.

50 Ibid., p. 543.51 Jan Hus, M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem, 5, ed. Václav Flajšhans (Prague, 1942),

p. 206.52 Eva Doležalová, “Stopy svatého Jeronýma v C ˇ echách na konci 14. století,” in Evropa a Č echy

na konci středověku: Sborník příspěvků věnovaných Františku Š mahelovi, ed. Eva Doležalová, Ro-bert Novotný, and Pavel Soukup (Prague, 2004), pp. 207–20, esp. pp. 214–19. Interestingly, Doleža-lová compared the results of her study of the Czech ordination books with the data from the ordi-nation books of the diocese of London: out of 20,246 records of ordained clergy she found only twopeople named Jerome (p. 219).

53 On the connection of Jerome of Prague with St. Jerome and the Slavonic Monastery see KarelStejskal, “Klášter Na Slovanech a mistr Jeroným Pražský,” Dějiny a současnost 2 (1967), 15–17, and3 (1967), 10–13. In 1412–13 Jerome of Prague undertook a journey to Poland and Lithuanian Rus’,

where he visited the churches of the Orthodox Ruthenians. In 1416, as a follower of Jan Hus, hewas accused of heresy and of being partial to the Orthodox Church; he was burnt at the stake at theCouncil of Constance the same year.


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logna and later at Prague, a canon of Olomouc and Vratislav, a papal auditor,and archdeacon of St. Vitus.54 Thus, although devotion to St. Jerome did not be-come a widespread cult in Bohemia, he was revered among the clergy and learnedaudiences.

By recognizing Jerome as a glorious Slav, Czech historiographic and linguisticthought added another link to the syllogistic chain represented by the CroatianGlagolites: the Slavic letters are sacred because they were received from St. Je-rome, who translated Holy Scripture into Church Slavonic; since Czech, a Slaviclanguage, is derived from the sacred language of St. Jerome, it is a blessed lan-guage, too, and so are the people who speak it. Such syllogistic rhetoric was notexclusive to Croatian or Bohemian cultural-political thinking. Since Pope JohnVIII in 879 banned the Slavonic liturgy that had been recognized in 867 by hispredecessor Hadrian II, the Slavonic clergy were in need of a legitimate reasonfor their rite, one more dependable than the Roman curia’s variable benevolence.

For example, the Old Rus’ Primary Chronicle, in an attempt to elevate the sta-tus of Christian Rus’, used the same kind of syllogistic argument to claim its con-nection with the general Slavic heritage and the apostolic tradition: the Slavic al-phabet was brought by Cyril and Methodius to the Moravians; the Rus’, like theMoravians, are Slavs and speak the same Slavic language; therefore, the Rus’ peo-ple, too, are disciples of the Slavic apostles. This syllogism is followed by an-other: Moravia and Pannonia had once been evangelized by St. Andronicus, oneof Christ’s seventy disciples and “a teacher to the Slavs”;55 St. Andronicus was adisciple of St. Paul, who himself preached in Moravia and Illyricum and was also“a teacher to the Slavs”; therefore, the Rus’, by virtue of being of the same Slavic

tribe, are likewise disciples of St. Paul.56 In both instances, the Rus’ chroniclerrelied on a concept of Slavic affinity to trace the spiritual ancestry of his peopleback to Sts. Cyril and Methodius, on the one hand, and to Sts. Paul and An-dronicus, on the other. These early Slavic chroniclers’ awareness of, and insis-tence on, the shared cultural heritage and religious importance of different Slavicpeoples laid the foundation for what would later be termed “the Slavic idea” asan ideological concept.

It took years of construction, decoration, and mural painting to realize Charles’sgrandly conceived plan. Finally, in 1372, the Slavonic Monastery’s church was

54 Doležalová, “Stopy svatého Jeronýma,” pp. 218–19.55 This fact is also mentioned in the Vita Methodii 8 (Kantor, Lives, p. 117). St. Andronicus, a

disciple of St. Paul, was believed to be a founder and first bishop of the city of Sirmium, the capitalof the Roman province of Illyricum. As the administrative parts of Illyricum, Moravia and Pannoniaclaimed its apostolic legacy.

56

(Therefore, Paul is a teacher to the Slavs [literally, to the Slavic tongue], from whose tribe [literally,tongue] and we, the Rus’, originate. Therefore, the apostle Paul is also a teacher to us, the Rus’,because he preached to the Slavs and appointed Andronicus as bishop and his successor among the

Slavs, and the Slavs and the Rus’ are the same people): Povest’ vremennykh let. Chast’ pervaia: Tekst i perevod, trans. D. S. Likhachev and B. A. Romanov (Moscow, 1950), pp. 22–23, the Primary Chron-icle entry for the year 898.


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consecrated. The spirit of early Slavic writing and the celebrated Slavic heritagewas very much alive at its foundation, which becomes especially clear when weconsider the saints chosen as the monastery’s patrons. The monastery was dedi-cated first and foremost to the patron of the Benedictine Glagolites, St. Jerome,

and to the Virgin Mary. Its other patron saints were the Slavic apostles Sts. Cyriland Methodius and two Czech saints, Procopius and Adalbert (Vojtěch in Czech).In eleventh-century Bohemia, St. Procopius was the legendary founder and ab-bot of the Sázava Monastery, where he is believed to have introduced the Ruleof St. Benedict along with the Slavonic liturgy. St. Adalbert, one of the patronsaints of the Czech lands, was a bishop of Prague in the tenth century and wasmartyred during the apostolate among pagan Prussians.57 The choice of patronsthus emphasized the connection between the general Slavic and local Czech her-itage, associating the monastery with the beginnings of Slavic writing and the ap-ostolic tradition. Indeed, the name of the Prague Glagolitic monastery shows that

the Glagolite monks were perceived in Prague not as Croats or even Glagolitesbut as Slavs, the custodians of Slavic traditions. In Czech the monastery was called“na Slovanech” or “u Slovanů,” both names defining the monastic communityas “the Slavs.” In all administrative and financial documents related to the mon-astery, it is called the Monasterium Sancti Hieronymi Slavorum ordinis Benedictiin nova civitate Pragensi (the Slavonic Monastery of St. Jerome of the Order of St. Benedict in Prague’s New Town) or, simply, Monasterium Slavorum.58

The monastery enjoyed the generous support of the emperor and therefore flour-ished. In time, local Czech brethren joined the Slavonic community and enrichedits literary production with texts in the Czech vernacular. They adjusted the

Glagolitic script for the needs of writing in Czech and translated important ec-clesiastical works from Latin into Czech. During the relatively short time of themonastery’s existence, numerous Czech texts were recorded in Glagolitic, includ-ing the Czech translation of the Bible.59 The new Czech Slavonic brethren inher-ited the Croatian monks’ main linguistic concept, association of their specialGlagolitic letters with a Slavic tongue. Indeed, the Glagolitic letters were bettersuited for recording Czech than Latin script, which used ligatures, not alwayssuccessfully, to render unique Czech sounds.60 Unlike Latin, the Glagolitic alpha-bet utilized the principle “one sound, one letter.” Most likely the adoption of the

57 On the role of Sts. Adalbert and Procopius as patron saints of Bohemia see the study by MarieBláhová, “The Function of the Saints in Early Bohemian Historical Writing,” in The Making of Chris-tian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–1300), ed. Lars Boje Mortensen (Copen-hagen, 2006), pp. 83–119.

58 Rothe, “Das Slavenkloster” (above, n. 37), pp. 16–19.59 Ludmila Pacnerová, “Staročeské literární památky a charvátská hranatá hlaholice,” Slovo 56–57

(2008), 405–20. Among attested Czech Glagolitic texts are a Czech translation of Peter Comestor’sHistoria scholastica and a Czech version of the Legenda aurea (Zlatá legenda), known as the CzechPasionál, which incorporated the lives of several Czech saints into the original collection. Overall,the Slavonic Monastery had a noticeable effect on the development of Czech vernacular literature(Igor Němec, “K podilu Emauzského kláštera na rozvoji staré češtiny,” in Z tradic slovanské kulturyv Č echách [above, n. 37], pp. 165–68).

60 On the Czech variant of the Angular Glagolitic script see Ludmila Pacnerová, “C ˇ eská variantacharvátské hranaté hlaholice,” Slovo 44–46 (1996), 54–62, and “Die tschechische Variante der kro-atischen eckigen Glagolica—Die dritte Periode des Glagolitismus in Böhmen,” in Glagolitica: Zum


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Glagolitic alphabet for Czech texts also gave impetus to the famed orthographicreform usually ascribed to Jan Hus.61

The emergence of the vernacular translation of the Czech Bible is in itself anevent of great consequence, which has not yet been sufficiently explained by his-

torians in terms of its relation to Charles’s ideology and politics. The work hasbeen done primarily by philologists and linguists, who have shown that the firsttranslation of the complete Czech Bible was carried out under the auspices of Charles IV and Arnošt of Pardubice in the 1350s and 1360s and was most likelyintended for the needs of the Slavonic Monastery and female convents, as wellas for preaching. The costly project, which must have taken over a decade, in-volved about ten translators, only several of whom have been tentatively identi-fied.62 How such an enterprise was validated remains an open question. Afterall, the creation of the complete Bible in a vernacular, a copy of the Latin Vul-gate, was a radical challenge in the second half of the fourteenth century and

required justification.63 A focused and interdisciplinary inquiry into this matteris still needed.

The fact that Glagolitic was adopted for writing down Czech translations of the Bible and other ecclesiastical writings is crucial for comprehending the am-bition and the scale of Charles’s “Glagolitic project.” Certainly, the Roman script,which relied on ligatures for rendering Czech-specific sounds, was far from ideal,and the use of an alphabet geared to Slavic sounds was very attractive to Czechliterati. However, that linguistic circumstance alone could not have triggered sucha radical change. A decision to shift to a formerly unknown and genetically un-related alphabet was not a trivial matter for fourteenth-century literati and would

have to have been ideologically motivated. Most likely, following the example of the Croatian Glagolites, the Czech clergy also claimed their right to Jerome’s Slaviclegacy. The Glagolitic letters, associated with Jerome, lent the Czech biblical trans-lations incontestable authority and put the Czech Bible on equal terms with theLatin Vulgate. While the Croatian Glagolites, who established the Slavonic Mon-astery, guarded and kept alive the Slavonic rite, the Czech brethren were hard atwork building a corpus of Czech vernacular texts written in Glagolitic.

Ursprung des slavischen Schriftkultur, ed. Heinz Miklas, Sylvia Richter, and Velizar Sadovski, Schriftender Balkan-Kommission, Philologische Abteilung, 41 (Vienna, 2000), pp. 192–97.

61 Antonín Frinta, “O předloze Husovy reformy pravopisné,” Listy filologické 67 (1940), 252–55;Aněžka Vidmanová, “Ke spisku Orthographia Bohemica,” Listy filologické 105 (1982), 75–89; Fran-tišek Václav Mareš, “Emauzské prameny českého diakritického pravopisu,” in Cyrilometodějská tra-dice a slavistika (Prague, 2000), pp. 521–26.

62 Vladimír Kyas, První český překlad bible (Prague, 1971), pp. 56–60, and Č eská bible v dějináchnárodního písemnictví (Prague, 1997), pp. 35–51; Pavel Spunar, “První staročeský překlad bible vkulturním kontextu 14. století,” Religio 1 (1993), 39–45, and “The First Old Czech Translation of the Holy Spirit in the Cultural Relations of the 14th Century,” in Č eská bible v dějinách evropské kultury, ed. Helena Pavlincová and Dalibor Papoušek (Brno, 1994), pp. 321–26; Jaroslava Pečír-ková, “Czech Translations of the Bible,” in The Interpretation of the Bible: The International Sym-

posium in Slovenia, ed. Jože Krašovec (Sheffield, Eng., 1998), pp. 1169–71.63 The importance of a legitimate context is exemplified by the controversial attempt of the Wyc-

liffite biblical translations in England several decades later.


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St. Jerome’s Slavic Letters in Silesia and Poland

The success of Charles IV’s undertaking was an inspiration to his neighbors.

In 1380 Prince Conrad II summoned the Prague Glagolites to Oleśnica in Silesiato revive the Benedictine Abbey of Corpus Christi.64 Ten years later, Queen Jad-wiga and King Władysław Jagiełło of Poland invited the Prague Glagolites to in-troduce the Slavonic liturgy in Poland and founded the Monastery of the HolyCross for them in Kleparz, a suburb of Cracow.65 There are more questions thananswers regarding the purpose of these two satellite Slavonic monasteries andtheir role in local religious life. Unfortunately, almost no historical documentsrelated to the Monastery of Corpus Christi have been discovered.

The motives and intentions behind the foundation of the monastery in Kleparzare also enigmatic. Some historians suggest that a Catholic mission among theOrthodox Ruthenians was intended, but others question that hypothesis, citingthe lack of evidence. While a traditional missionary goal for the Slavonic mon-astery in Kleparz is unlikely, the historical circumstances do suggest that its foun-dation may have been motivated by the presence of the Orthodox Rutheniansin Poland.66 In the 1340s King Casimir III the Great of Poland annexed the landsof Ruthenian Galicia (Halych) and parts of Podolia and Volhynia, confrontingtheir Orthodox residents with Poland’s Catholic majority.67 In 1386, only a fewyears prior to the establishment of the monastery at Kleparz, Grand Duke Jogailaof Lithuania had become King Władysław Jagiełło of Poland as a result of hismarriage to Queen Jadwiga, an heir to the Polish throne, thereby effecting dy-nastic and political union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland.

At that time, he accepted Catholicism and took on the task of Christianizing hisnative pagan Lithuania in the Catholic faith. Thus, an even greater number of Orthodox Ruthenians of the grand duchy came into close contact with CatholicPoles and newly converted Lithuanians. Obviously, the large Ruthenian Ortho-

64 Stanisław Rybandt, “O pobycie benedyktynów słowiańskich w Oleśnicy,” Sobótka 25 (1970),665–80; Heinrich Grüger, “Schlesisches Klosterbuch: Oels. Abtei der slawischen Benediktiner,” Jahr-buch der Schlesischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau 29 (1988), 7–13.

65 Joannes Długosz, Joannis Dlugosii Annales seu Cronicae incliti regni Poloniae: Liber X (1370– 1405), ed. Danuta Turkowska (Warsaw, 1985), pp. 183–84. The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz, who

testifies that the Slavonic liturgy was celebrated at the monastery until his own time, explicitly men-tions Queen Jadwiga as the main proponent of the monastery’s foundation. According to Długosz,after Jadwiga’s death the king lost interest in the enterprise, for which she seems to have been themain inspiration. Długosz compiled his chronicle before 1480, the year he died. On the Monasteryof the Holy Cross at Kleparz see Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Benedyktyni słowiańscy w Oleśnicy i Kra-kowie,” Zeszyty naukowe Wydziału Humanistycznego Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego: Slawistyka 3 (1982),113–24; Trajdos, “Fundacja klasztoru” (above, n. 38); and Leszek Moszyński, “Próba nowego spojrze-nia na duchowe dziedzictwo krakowskego głagolityzmu w średniowiecznej Polsce,” in Glagoljica ihrvatski glagolizam, ed. Marija-Ana Dürrigl, Milan Mihaljević, and Franjo Velčić (Zagreb, 2004),pp. 309–18.

66 Orthodox Ruthenians are East Slavic residents of the Rus’ lands that, after the disintegration of the Kievan Rus’, fell under the influence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland and are now

within the borders of Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and eastern Poland.67 Rome considered Casimir’s campaigns against the “schismatic” Rus’ as crusades and granted

the Polish army a full indulgence.


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dox population of the grand duchy could not remain unaffected by the religiouschanges in the country. This religious heterogeneity must have presented a chal-lenge to the Polish court. The fifteenth-century chronicler Jan Długosz informsus that Jagiełło and his brothers were raised in the “Greek faith” by their mother

Iuliania, the daughter of Prince Alexander of Tver and the second wife of GrandDuke Algirdas.68 As king of Poland, Jagiełło was therefore favorably disposedto his Orthodox subjects and allies.69 Jadwiga, too, seems to have cared for theRuthenian people and was eager to incorporate their lands into the Polish crown.In 1390, according to Długosz, while her husband was in Lithuania, Jadwigaeven headed a military expedition to Galicia to reclaim from Hungary the Ru-thenian territories that formerly belonged to Poland.70

The immediate and formal conversion of Orthodox believers to Catholicismwas not a part of the Polish court’s official policy and would not have been arealistic goal. But the Polish monarchs must have realized that the confrontation

of two Christian confessions could only weaken their country and that a suit-able solution was needed. Władysław Jagiełło was a devoted advocate of a unionbetween the Orthodox and Catholic churches. In the 1390s he entered into ne-gotiations with the patriarch of Constantinople over church union, negotiationsthat proved fruitless.71 Some years later, he approached this task from anotherangle and appealed with the same proposition to the Council of Constance (1414–18).72

In 1390, when the Polish monarchs founded the Monastery of the Holy Cross,they were probably already exploring the prospect of an alliance between Cath-olics and Orthodox. The existence of the Roman Slavonic rite, imported by

Charles IV to central Europe, provided some hope for such an alliance. The useof Church Slavonic had always been a salient feature of the Slavic Orthodoxchurches and perhaps the most important symbol of Ruthenian identity in Lith-uania and Poland. The Benedictine Glagolites demonstrated that the Roman ritecould also be observed in Church Slavonic, that the two churches were not sofar apart after all, and that a common ground could be found. It is unlikely, how-ever, that the Polish monarchs expected the Glagolite monks to carry out any

68 Długosz, Annales, p. 93.69 In 1384, as grand duke of Lithuania, he considered the Muscovite proposition of a dynastic al-

liance with Sofia, a daughter of Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich (Donskoi). In exchange, the Muscovitesexpected him to be baptized in the Orthodox rite and publicly announce his baptism: “. . . krest’ianstvosvoe ob’iaviti vo vse liudi” (L. V. Cherepnin, “Dogovornye i dukhovnye gramoty Dmitriia Don-skogo,” Istoricheskie zapiski 24 [1947], 225–66, at p. 249). Only the more advantageous counter-offer of Queen Jadwiga’s hand and Poland’s crown in the following year changed his plans and broughtLithuania into the Catholic fold.

70 Długosz, Annales, p. 182.71 Antoni Mironowicz, Kościół prawosławny w państwie Piastów i Jagiellonów (Białystok, 2003),

pp. 150–51.72 One of his letters from 1417 relates his efforts to bring the Ruthenian Orthodox Church (“illa

veterna Grecorum rebellio,” as Jagiełło puts it) into union with Rome (August Sokołowski and Ana-tol Lewicki, eds., Codex epistolaris saeculi decimi quinti, 2 [Cracow, 1876], no. 77, pp. 92–93). In

another letter Jagiełło notifies the council of a mission that he entrusted to Metropolitan GregoryTsamblak (“metropolitu[s] tocius Russie ac plage orientalis”), whom he sent to Constance to nego-tiate for church union (ibid., no. 81, pp. 98–100).


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missionary work: other Catholic orders, such as the Franciscans and Domini-cans, were already much more active and successful in this task.73 In any event,no trace of any missionary activity by either of the Slavonic Glagolitic monaster-ies in Silesia and Poland has been found. It is more likely that the Slavonic mon-

astery’s role in Cracow was conceived as more symbolic in nature. Its founda-tion was envisioned as a significant political and cultural event, intended tocelebrate the accomplishments of Slavic civilization.

Ultimately, we possess no other explanation for the foundation of the Monas-tery of the Holy Cross than the one given by Jan Długosz in his chronicle, theAnnales seu Cronicae incliti regni Poloniae. Let us therefore examine it carefullyand try to extract as much information as possible from its text: “Władysław II,king of Poland, with his wife, the pious and most excellent Jadwiga, wishing tospread to Poland the eternal memory of the Redeemer’s clemency, which raisedand greatly honored the race of the Slavs by granting them an exceptional favor

so that all sacred services and divine daily and nightly acts and even mysteries of the Holy Mass themselves could be celebrated in their own language (while thisis not given to any other language, except Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, with whoseexcellence divine goodness has compared the Slavic tongue), and also with theirusual generosity wishing to express their gratitude to God for great kindness andfor victories that were won with divine help, and inspired by a similar examplethat exists in Prague, the Slavonic Monastery of the Order of St. Benedict, estab-lished, founded, and endowed [a similar monastery] to endure under the Praguemonastery’s regular guidance, named in honor of the Holy Cross outside the wallsof Cracow in the town of Kleparz not far from the river Rudawa, during the

pontificate of the bishop of Cracow Peter Wysz, on Thursday after the feast of St. James the Apostle. . . .”74

There is no mention of a missionary intent in the entire chronicle entry thatdescribes the foundation of the monastery by the royal couple and their futureplans for its construction. On the contrary, Długosz emphasizes the new institu-tion’s emblematic and commemorating role.75 He opens his account by statingthat the monastery was founded by the Polish monarchs as a living monument

73 Trajdos, “Fundacja klasztoru,” p. 82.74 “Sempiternum memoriale, quo clemencia Redemptoris genus Slavonicum extulit et mirifice hono-

ravit, donando illi graciam specialem, ut omnia sacra officia et res Divine tam nocturne quam di-urne, ipsa quoque sacrarum missarum archana idiomate illo possent celebrari (quod nemini alterilinguagio, preterquam Greco, Latino et Hebreo videmus contigisse, quorum excellencie etiam boni-tas Divina Slavonicum equavit) Wladislaus secundus Polonie rex cum consorte sua Hedvigi, feminadevota et nobilissima, volentes etiam in Regnum Polonie diffundere et de multiplicibus beneficiis etvictoriis divinitus eo anno eis prestitis ostendere erga Deum gratitudinem et munificenciam regula-rem, incitati exemplari simili, quod in civitate pragensi habetur monasterium Slavorum ordinis sanctiBenedicti, et sub eius regulari observancia duraturum, sub honore et titulo Sancte Crucis, extra murosCracovienses in opido Cleparz, non longe a fluvio Rudawa, sub pontificatu Petri Wisch episcopi Cra-couiensis, feria quinta post festum sancti Iacobi apostoli, fundant, condunt et donant . . .” (Długosz,Annales, p. 183). The same information is recorded in Długosz’s Liber beneficiorum diocesis Craco-viensis (Cracow, 1864), pp. 225–27, along with Jagiełło’s act of donation.

75 The only published translation of Długosz’s Latin chronicle in Polish provides a somewhat im-precise rendering of this passage that ignores the opening words “Sempiternum memoriale.” Thisphrase, however, is crucial for the understanding of the intended role of the monastery.


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in order “to spread to Poland the eternal memory (Sempiternum memoriale . . .diffundere)” of the Slavic tongue’s distinction by divine grace and, consequently,of its parity with Latin. The Kleparz monastery’s model was said to be its parentconvent in Prague. As emblems of the Slavs’ standing as a Christian people, these

monasteries ratified Slavonic worship on equal terms with the Latin rite andshowed that Slavic ethnic identity lends itself as a unifying principle for religiousunity. Although the Polish monarchs did not intend to convert the Orthodox Ru-thenians to Catholicism, their policies were intended to familiarize the Ortho-dox with, and promote the tolerance of, Catholicism. The Kleparz monasteryseems to have served exactly this purpose: it was most likely expected to encour-age contacts between Polish Catholics and Ruthenian Orthodox.

When historical documentation is lacking, scholars must turn to indirect sources.In this case such sources are literary artifacts—evidence of the Glagolites’ pres-ence in Poland. Unfortunately, because of the turbulent history of this region and

its frequent calamities, only a small fraction of the writings that the Polish Glag-olites once possessed has survived. Several fragments of Glagolitic liturgical booksat the Jagiellonian University Library in Cracow and, possibly, some of the Czechmanuscripts that migrated to Poland from Prague and are currently held in Pol-ish archives could have belonged to the Kleparz Glagolites.76 To these literaryartifacts, I would add another group of sources that may bear traces of theGlagolite monks’ contact with the Orthodox Ruthenians in Poland. These areseveral texts in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ruthenian manuscripts that werelikely made at the Kleparz monastery or were inspired by the Kleparz Glagolites.Among them are Ruthenian translations of the Croatian Glagolitic Order of the

Mass in Honor of the Virgin Mary, the Czech Song of Songs, and the Czech Vi-sion of Tundal, as well as a number of Latin liturgical texts and prayers re-corded in Cyrillic and accompanied by Ruthenian translations.77 All of these Ru-thenian translations are later copies made from now-lost manuscripts. The factthat they circulated in manuscripts shows that the Prague and Kleparz Glag-olites indeed reached a Ruthenian audience.

The Croatian, Czech, and Latin sources of the Ruthenian translations are Cath-olic, but the translations themselves have a clear Orthodox character. The lan-guage, terminology, and adaptation of the Ruthenian translations show that theywere made by and for an Orthodox audience. Ruthenian translators were not

merely translating from Czech, Croatian, or Latin into their native Ruthenian

76 Leszek Moszyński, “Polskie głagolitika,” Zeszyty naukowe Wydziału Humanistycznego Uni-wersytetu Gdańskiego: Slawistyka 3 (1982), 133–50.

77 The Ruthenian translation from the Croatian Glagolitic Mass is discussed in František VáclavMareš, “Moskevská mariánská mše,” Slovo 25–26 (1976), 296–359; and in Leszek Moszyński, “Cer-kiewnosłowiańska tzw. Moskiewska Msza Maryjna jako odzwierciedlenie litewsko-białorusko-polskichkontaktów kulturowych w XV wieku,” in Czterechsetlecie unii brzeskiej: Zagadnienia języka religij-nego, ed. Zenon Leszczyński (Lublin, 1998), pp. 21–35. On the Ruthenian translations from Czechand the Cyrillic transcriptions from Latin see Julia Verkholantsev, Ruthenica Bohemica: RuthenianTranslations from Czech in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, Slavische Sprachgeschichte 3

(Vienna, 2008), pp. 39–85 and 154–90, and “Kirillicheskaia zapis’ latinskikh molitv i otryvka chinamessy iz rukopisi Sinodal’nogo Sobraniia GIM # 558,” Drevniaia Rus’: Voprosy medievistiki 40 (2010),74–90.


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or from a Glagolitic or Latin script into Cyrillic letters; they were dressing aWestern Christian text in Orthodox clothing. Moreover, analysis of the Cyrillictranscriptions of common Latin prayers (the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Creed)suggests that they were made for catechetic purposes.78 This point suggests fur-

ther that the doctrinal and textual differences between Catholicism and Ortho-doxy in fifteenth-century Poland and Ruthenia were not absolute. Perhaps thesetexts emerged and circulated as a result of Jadwiga and Jagiełło’s endeavor tocreate an oikumene, a common religious space, in which the Eastern and West-ern churches might meet and Polish Catholics might live in harmony with Ru-thenian Orthodox. After all, Jagiełło ornamented the Gothic Catholic chapels inhis castles with Orthodox f

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