THE CYRILLO-METHODIAN TRADITION IN THE HISTORICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL MEMORY OF BOHEMIA IN THE 12th-13th CENTURIES PART 1

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of representation of the Slavic tradition of St. Cyril and Methodius in the historical and ecclesiastical memory of the medieval Bohemian community that belonged to the sphere of cultural influence of the Latin West. Through the textual analysis of the «Bohemian Chronicle» by the first oldest official chronicler and Vyšehrad canonic Cosma of Prague, four of his later successors: the Hradiště and Bohemian annalists, the Sazavian monk-chronicler of the 12th century, the socalled «Collector‟s Conclusion» («Epilogue»), as well as «The Chronicle» by Martin of Opava and a number of hagiographic texts of the St. Prokop and Cyril-Methodian cycle of the 13 th century, the transformation of the images of both Thessalonian brothers and their missionary fellowship in the official historiographical discourse and the ecclesiastical- intellectual environment of the Přemyslids during the 12 th–13th centuries is traced in the paper. The author

concludes that the concept of the baptism of the first Bohemian princes by the Moravian «bishop» Methodius, initiated around 994 by the monk Christian, became one of the central episodes, as well as the fundamental idea of the Great Moravian and Cyril-Methodian origin of the early Bohemian church organization and statehood, as for the official historiographical, as well as for the Latin-language hagiographical narrative of the Přemyslids. In the historical memory of the Bohemians, represented by the aforementioned chronicles and annals, St. Cyril and Methodius appeared mainly individually and differentiated, and not as a cult couple, while in the ideas of the authors of hagiographic legends created in the conditions of the existence of the institutionalized Bohemian kingdom since the beginnings of the 13th century, the both missionaries are depicted as apostles of the Slavs with the location of Cyril‟s episcopal residence in the ancient Moravian Velegrad and focusing attention on the Christianizing activity of Methodius in the possessions of the Přemyslids. However, in comparison to the de- scriptions of actions of the Latin clergy in the Přemyslid domains, the Cyrillo-Methodian historical and hagio-graphic episodes of the 12th–13th centuries are characterized by their content fragmentation and sometimes informational discrepancies. On the other hand, during the reign of the last kings of the Przemysl dynasty, Wenceslaus II and Wenceslaus III, according to the testimony of their contemporary, Zbraslav chronicler Peter of Žitava, the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition from the dimension of purely historical and ecclesiastical memory began to partially proceed to a limited «court» liturgical practice.