The subject-matter of this study is liturgical law in the Czech lands in the Middle Ages, i.e. in Great Moravia, in the Duchy of Bohemia, and in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Liturgical law was shaped by the decrees of popes, ecumenical councils, Decretum Gratiani, and collections of decrees. The ordinances of the metropolitan and diocesan bishop or the statutes of a monastic order played a role at the particular church level. The customs of the metropolitan church and the cathedral church are summarised in the agenda in force within the territory of the ecclesiastical province or diocese. A new Slavonic liturgy arrived in Great Moravia in the final third of the 9th century and at the beginning of the 10th century. Popes issued several decrees regulating its use. The newly-established bishopric of Prague and subsequently the restored bishopric of Olomouc used the Latin liturgy alone. The form of the liturgy used was determined by surviving liturgical manuscripts: pontificals, missals, breviaries, lectionaries, psalters, antiphonaries, and graduals. These codices are often richly-illuminated, the most elaborate ones being used by the owner, often the bishop, for prestige promotion. A large number of these liturgical books survive in Czech libraries and manuscript collections from the Middle Ages, most of them from the 14th and in particular the 15th centuries.
It was relatively early that the archbishops of Gniezno began to convoke provincial synods - the oldest dated assembly which is marked in the sources as a provincial synod took place as early as in 1210. But even before this synod another provincial synod took place in 1206 (?). In the beginning, i. e. in the thirteenth century, it is important to distinguish clearly between bishops' conventions, or colloquia, and provincial synods. The first statutes backed up with evidence are the statutes issued by Archbishop Henryk Kietlicz around 1217 in Kamień. Another important archbishop was Pełka (Fulko, 1232 - 1258). Two statutes issued by this metropolitan are still preserved. An important role in the system of provincial legislation was played by legates' synods and the legates' statutes which were proclaimed at them. A number of provincial synods was summoned by the archbishop of Gniezno Jakub Świnka (1285, 1287,1290,1298, 1306, 1309). Several not dated fragments of statutes originate from his time. In the fourteenth century the situation changes - the only two provincial synods that we know of are the synods of Janisław (1326) and Jarosław Bogoria Skotnicki (1357). „Synodyk“, the first attempt at codification of the legislation of Gniezno church province, comes from Skotnicki's synod. We cannot agree with referring to the assembly at Krakow from 1356 as to a provincial synod. Similarly, the „convencio generalis“ in Łęczyca in 1402 could not have been a provincial synod. Thus the first reliably proved provincial synod of the fifteenth century is the synod of Mikołaj.
This book is a result of a project run by the 'Religion' team in the Nordic Centre for Medieval Studies, which was a Nordic Centre of Excellence comprising the universities of Southern Denmark (Odense), Helsinki, Gothenburg and Bergen in the period -. The book's aim is to 'demonstrate how medieval Latin Christianity in Scandinavia incorporated influences from Nordic beliefs and customs' (p. ), and to 'analyse the extent to which Scandinavians imported and accepted all foreign ideas and habits: did they assimilate or even refashion the new ideas to correspond to their existing cultures, or did they actively contribute, by producing something entirely new, with regard to common Christian (or European) culture?' (pp. -). This is not a good book, even though the quality of the individual contributions is uniformly high. The main problem is lack of coherence, which the editors do not even try to create in the introduction, and can best be seen in that they only give the background to 'some of the research questions investigated by the project' (p. ). The lack of historiographical and historical background in the introduction should, however, not overshadow the fact that most of the articles in the volume are interesting and touch upon important topics. Just to mention two, 'The making of new cultural landscapes in the medieval Baltic' by Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen gives a good insight into the complicated process of transforming the heathen cultural landscape into a Christian one. And 'The Lars Vi case: a fragmentary example of Swedish ecclesiastical legal practice and sexual mentality at the beginning of the fifteenth century' by Bertil Nilsson discusses the fascinating case of Lars Sunesson, a rector and canon in the diocese of Linköping in Sweden. JON VIDAR SIGURDSSON UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Heresy and Hussites in late medieval Europe. By Thomas A. Fudge. (Variorum Collected Studies, .) Pp. xiv + incl. frontispiece. Farnham-Burlington, VT: Ashgate, . £. JEH () ; doi:./S The attention of European scholars focusing on Czech medieval history is drawn in particular to the phenomenon of the Hussite movement. The New Zealand historian Thomas A. Fudge is a prominent Hussitologist. The book reviewed here offers a reprint of seventeen of his studies. Most of them were originally published in the Czech Republic, with others in Germany, Canada, Belgium and Poland in journals of various kinds, as well as in conference proceedings. The common theme of the essays is the particulars of the Hussite heresy in the context of late medieval Europe. The collection is introduced by a theoretical essay in which Fudge tries to bring heresy into the context of the development of society, laying emphasis, for example, upon the endeavour to uphold proper doctrine and the existing social
KRAFL, Pavel. Confraternities of the Convent of Our Lady and St Charles the Great in Prague's New Town in the Pre-Hussite Period. The objective of this paper is to provide a summary of the confraternities of the convent of the Canons Regular of St Augustine in Prague's New Town with other monasterial convents from the pre-Hussite period. The tool used to conclude confraternities was a confraternity document. With a few exceptions, this was not a jointly-issued document. It comprised two separate documents with the same wording which both convents produced. One of the prominent institutions in the newlyestablished Prague New Town was the monastery of the Canons Regular of St Augustine at the church dedicated to Our Lady and St Charles the Great. There are three extant confraternity documents issued by the Prague convent for other convents of the Order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine, specifically for the convents in Třeboň (1376), Kłodzko (1386), and Kazimierz near Cracow (1412). We also have five confraternity documents issued by convents of the Canons Regular of St Augustine for the Prague convent. These are documents from the convents in Třeboň (1377), Rokycany (1380-1397), Lanškroun (1387), Sadská (1389), and Wrocław (1406). With the exception of the Wrocław monastery document, these documents have the same wording. Using the necrology of the monastery of the same order in Roudnice, the confraternity of the Prague convent with the Roudnice convent was proven. Medieval inventory numbers on the Prague convent documents have allowed us to demonstrate the existence of five or more now lost confraternity documents of convents issued for the Prague convent.
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