Václavův družiník Podiven v boji o Kristiána
| Title in English | Podiven, a Servant of St. Wenceslas in the Battle for Christian |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The chapter explores the long-standing discussion about the dating of what was called Christian’s Legend of St Ludmila, St Wenceslas and his companion Podiven, which is claimed to have been written in the time of the Prague bishop Adalbert/Vojtěch in the late 10th century but which some historians consider a forgery from the mid-12th century. One of the few parts of legends that reveal more about the time they were written is the descriptions of saints’ graves, because the authors wanted not only to spread the cult, but also to convince their readers and listeners to make a pilgrimage to the saint’s relics. These descriptions naturally correspond to the time when the legend was written. A passage describing a tomb can be found in the ninth chapter of Christian’s Legend. Here the author says that while St Wenceslas’s body was interred in St Vitus’ Church, his trusty “miles” Podiven was buried in the cemetery next to the church, with only a wall separating the two. This situation, however, lasted only until Bishop Sever/Šebíř’s time, 1031–1060, when Podiven’s remains were removed and placed inside the church because of the extension of St Wenceslas’ Chapel. According to the chronicler Kosmas, here they were rediscovered later and in 1124 buried again in St Nicholas’ Chapel. From these two mentions, it can be concluded that Christian is describing the location of Podiven’s grave before 1031–1060, and therefore he must have written the legend earlier than that. The article examines various views of this argument, first proposed by Josef Pekař during the debates over the authenticity of Christian’s Legend, and notes that the fundamental problem described above has so far been neglected. It is hard to imagine the author of the legend locating the grave of someone who was (almost) a saint to a place where it had not been for more than a hundred years. But the disputed section also provides more clues with its grammatical structure. Christian not only describes Podiven’s grave in a situation that was last true in 1031–1060, but also deliberately switches from the past to the present tense to emphasise that the remains of Wenceslas’s servant are still there. The article rejects Petr Kubín’s main arguments that date Christian’s Legend to the mid-12th century, when Princess Ludmila was to be canonised. The author explains the discrepancies between Christian’s Legend and the real cult of Saint Ludmila by claiming that the hagiographic text itself had been written before the cult of St Ludmila and Podiven spread and was broadly accepted. He notes that one of the goals of Bishop Adalbert/Vojtěch in the late 10th century was to give Prague more saints. His ambitious (perhaps even grandiose) vision of a Prague of three saints, Wenceslas, Ludmila and Podiven, however only stayed on the parchment of Christian’s Legend; St Ludmila had to wait for widespread veneration until the 12th century and Podiven ultimately never became a saint. |