Czech Literature - Middle Ages

Middle Ages

Literature in the Czech lands was founded in the 8th century AD, in the kingdom of Greater Moravia. The Saints Konstantin (i.e. Cyril) and Methodius, sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to complete the Christianization of the kingdom, created there the first written Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic, written in the Glagolitic alphabet. Their translations of Latin liturgy into Slavonic are the earliest surviving literature sources created in the Czech lands.

After the collapse of Greater Moravia at the end of the 9th century, the political and cultural orientation of the Bohemian lands shifted from Byzantium to Rome. Very little is known about the next two centuries of literary development - fragments of works exist, but many are simply inferred from citations in works found elsewhere. The close of the century heralded the ultimate victory of Latin over Old Church Slavonic as the official language of liturgy and culture in Moravia and Bohemia, and cultural alliance shifted from east to west. The Legend of Christian, written in Latin verse in the latter half of the 10th century, describing the lives of Saints Ludmila and Wenceslas is the greatest surviving work; its authenticity however is under some dispute.

In the Přemyslid Bohemia of the 12th and early 13th century, all preserved literary works are written in Latin. Historical chronicles and hagiographies comprise the majority of works preserved. Bohemian hagiographies focus exclusively on Bohemian saints (Sts. Ludmila, Wenceslas, Procopius, Cyril and Methodius, and Adalbert), although numerous legends about Bohemian saints were also written by foreign authors. The most important chronicle of the period is the Chronica Boemorum (Bohemian Chronicle) by Kosmas, though it does approach its topics with then-contemporary politics in mind, and attempts to legitimize the ruling dynasty. Kosmas' work was updated and extended by several authors in the latter part of the 12th and during the 13th centuries.

During the first part of the 13th century, the Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia expanded their political and economic influence westward and came into contact with the political and cultural kingdoms of Western Europe. This cultural exchange was evident in literature through the introduction of German courtly poetry, or Minnesang, in the latter part of the 13th century. After the murder of Wenceslas III and the subsequent upheavals in the kingdom in 1306, however, the Bohemian nobles distanced themselves from Western culture and looked for literature in their native language. Despite this, German remained an important literary language in Bohemia until the 19th century. This new literature in Czech consisted largely of epic poetry of two types: the legend and the knightly epic, both based on apocryphal tales from the Bible, as well as hagiographic legends of earlier periods. Prose was also first developed during this period: administrative and instructional texts, which necessitated the development of a more extensive and specialized vocabulary; the first Czech-Latin dictionaries date from this time. Extensive chronicles, of which the Chronicle of Dalimil and Chronicon Aulae Regiae (the Zbraslav Chronicle) are the most striking examples, and artistic prose (e.g. Smil Flaška z Pardubic and Johannes von Saaz) were also written.