Download PDF | Origins of the Hussite Uprising_ The Chronicle of Laurence of Březová (1414 –1421) (Routledge Medieval Translations)-Routledge (2020).
300 Pages
The Hussite Chronicle is the most important single narrative source for the events of the early Hussite movement. The author is Laurence of Březová (c.1370–c.1437), a member of the Czech lower nobility and a supporter of the Hussite creed. The movement arose as an initiative for religious and social reform in fifteenth-century Bohemia and was energized by the burning of the priest Jan Hus in 1415. Church and empire attempted to suppress the movement and raised five crusades against the dissenters. The chronicle offers to history and scholarship a nuanced understanding of what can be regarded as an essential component for a proper understanding of late medieval religion. It is also a considered account of aspects of the later crusades. This is the first English-language translation of the chronicle.
Thomas A. Fudge is Professor of Medieval History at the University of New England, Australia. His current research is broadly focused on medieval heresy in the later Middle Ages, and the history and religion of fifteenth-century Hussites.
PREFACE
I spent much of 1991 and 1992 in the Czech Republic undertaking research in various libraries and archives with excursions here and there across Europe. In the summer of 1991, I stayed in Brno with a family whose name I have now forgotten. One evening over drinks and nibbles under Moravian skies and in the company of a few other friends from the area, the conversation naturally turned to the topic of my research program and their curiosity about a foreigner’s interest in aspects of their national history. I can now recall only bits and pieces of that exchange punctuated by a repeated query: do you really find Hussites interesting?
The next day the lady of the house presented me with a brand new copy of the 1979 Czech edition of the Hussite Chronicle including a pristine dust jacket. The Hussite Chronicle is de rigueur for all those interested in the early history of the Hussite adventure. Its narrative presents a firm riposte to the crushing weight of neglect too often borne by Hussite history. The volume is still on my crowded bookshelves. For several weeks after accepting the Brno gift, and whilst riding trains between one archive and another between Prague and Rome, Basel and Kraków, I whiled away the time looking at the pages.
The compelling images and riveting depictions of a rich historical narrative were virtually unknown by most medievalists. I did not suspect all those years ago that three decades later I would bring an edition of this important work to an Anglophone audience. After the onerous task of producing nearly 400 pages of Hussite texts in translation two decades ago and being painfully aware of my deficiencies in attempting to transform medieval texts into modern English, I determined sensibly never again to engage in such a monumental task, one that took me well outside the scope of my intellectual abilities.
I was not a skilled translator then and my abilities have not improved over the past 20 years and may even have deteriorated. Despite the clear limitations of the 2002 volume, I have been surprised as well as heartened to learn how widespread the use of that collection has been and pleased to think it has helped a new generation of students gain some acquaintance with Hussites. Some of those who found that collection interesting and stimulating have gone on to make their own contributions to scholarship. Still, over the years there has continued to be much lamentation in the Anglophone world among medievalists and teachers of medieval history, especially among those who recognize the significance of the Hussite history, concerning the dearth of primary source materials accessible to undergraduates.
The purists in our discipline argue that students ought to gain facility in medieval Latin (or Czech) in order to access medieval texts directly. I agree in principle. I routinely direct first-year undergraduates to our Latinists and encourage them to achieve at the very least a modicum of ability in reading Latin. Some do. Many do not. Ideals aside and the academic de rigueur of times past, the truth of the matter is this: most students nowadays do not study classical languages beyond a superficial level and this is a trend in higher education across the sector, especially outside of Europe. Part of the reason I have had only a handful of PhD students over the years is because I do not admit to higher-degree research, candidates who do not possess adequate competence in the relevant languages for doctoral work. A mere generation ago, doctoral students were routinely handed documents in medieval Latin and expected to be able to deal with them.
Leading professors conducted seminars dealing exclusively with the primary sources in the original languages and hardly anyone batted an eye. One of the specialists I knew during my own doctoral studies at Cambridge used to appear unannounced at continental archives to check up on his students and often interrogated them about the manuscripts and their research progress and did not conduct his examination in English either! Today, higher education has experienced a sea change on the matter of language competence and recently I heard a well-published scholar advising students that when all else failed to simply consult Google Translate. One of my students (though I cannot take credit) excelled in Latin and became so proficient that when the Latin lecturer attempted to trick her she was able to identify the ploy, expose the deliberate pedagogical error, and demonstrate her acumen and command of the language. Unfortunately, this is now the exception, hardly the rule.
This reality weighed on my mind. Despite my staunch resistance to taking on another major translation project, I slowly yielded to the desire to expand the fairly narrow selection of sources from the Hussite period for the student who cannot handle the Latin or the Czech. Many years ago I became persuaded that the chronicle prepared by Laurence of Březová was almost certainly the most important single narrative source for the events of the early Hussite movement. In consequence, I undertook draft translations of various parts of the chronicle and made these available to my medieval students without any intention of dealing with the entire text and certainly not with bringing these efforts to print. The enthusiasm with which some of my students seized the chronicle naturally stimulated me to make available more bits and pieces.
Over the years this accounted for three-quarters of the text. By that stage with no reliable assurance that another more qualified or capable scholar was interested in undertaking a full translation I decided to grasp the nettle. Giving Laurence of Březová an Anglophone voice has not been to encourage students to avoid gaining facility in Latin and other relevant European languages for the study of medieval history but quite the opposite.
It is my hope that broader exposure to Hussite history through the medium of this chronicle will alert students to the vast and rich world of medieval history with the admonition that the medieval past (Hussite or otherwise) is best accessed by means of Latin (or whatever language is pertinent). Here one becomes immersed in the wit, humor, passion, ideas, and ethos of the times, which are not always or reliably reflected in translation. That advice applies equally to this volume. This is the first English translation of Laurence’s chronicle. Intermittent work began as long ago as 2001 but was interrupted repeatedly over the years and was completed only in 2019. The translation is based upon Jaroslav Goll’s critical Latin edition but for the Czech parts of the text I preferred the modern translation prepared by František Heřmanský in 1954 and revised by Marie Bláhová in 1979. The sole departure has been to incorporate a second fifteenth-century Czech account of the execution of Jan Krása, which Goll had included in his edition. This addition was used by Heřmanský and Bláhová only in a footnote.
The introduction to the chronicle attempts to deal with the text as well as the historical context. I tried to balance narrative and analysis on why the years between 1414 and 1421 were so important for the larger history of religion and religious practice in the Bohemian province with a codicological analysis of the manuscript tradition while at the same time not delving too deeply into a technical analysis of the manuscript stemmae or attempting a full codicological description of all manuscripts including the identification of hands, provenance notes, marginalia, glosses, watermarks, and so on. Lastly, the great limitation of draft translations I provided students over the years was the absence of explanatory notes dealing with the special difficulties present in the text. The 400 notes attached to the translated text address many of these and point toward additional research.
In conjunction with Matthew Spinka’s editions of materials relating to Jan Hus (1965 and 1972), Howard Kaminsky’s translations of some of the works of Petr Chelčický and Nicholas of Dresden (1964/1965), Frederick G. Heymann’s treatment of documents connected to Jan Žižka (1955), and my collection of materials on the crusade against the Hussites (2002), the appearance of this volume and the accessibility of the Hussite Chronicle now allow students and interested scholars lacking facility in medieval Latin and Czech reasonable access to a substantial array of primary sources from the first decade of the Hussite Revolution. Cistercian Abbey Lafayette, Oregon Feast of St. Wenceslas, 2019
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