Theorhetoric, sacred topography, and cultural memory: the Jesuit contributions to the myth of Jaroslav of Sternberg (1655-1747)

• Authors: Andrea Trenta

Title variants

CS

Teorétorika, posvátná topografie a kulturní paměť: jezuitské příspěvky k mýtu o Jaroslavu ze Šternberka (1655-1747)

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

For the Jesuits, history was an inquiry into the past primarily aimed at discovering traces of divine manifestation. Wherever they set foot, they read the local past through theological lenses, producing fascinating historical narratives and employing them for pedagogical, devotional, and even legal purposes. An enlightening case study of this Jesuit approach to the past is the legendary episode of the nobleman Jaroslav of Sternberg and his heroic defence of Olomouc against the Tatars in 1241. From 1655 onwards, the Jesuits started contributing to this myth (circulating approx. from the mid-14th century). The first Jesuit enriching the Sternberg myth was Bohuslav Balbín, who transformed this event into the founding memory of the Olomouc Jesuit church. The rationale for this innovation was the ongoing dispute with the Conventuals over the jurisdiction of the same church, where the Jesuits used the Sternberg myth as legal argumentation. In 1661, Jan Tanner devised another version, modelled after the genre of sacred topography and influenced by the Habsburg pietas eucharistica, associating the myth with the Olomouc Corpus Christi chapel and the Eucharistic mystery. Later, when Ottoman and Tatar marauders brutally attacked Moravia in 1663, the Jesuits linked the mythical 1241 Tatar invasion to the pilgrimage sites of Hostýn and Kotouč, making them extremely popular. Due to their constant medial and ritual repetition, the Jesuit contributions to the Sternberg myth (summed up in a canonical form by Johannes Schmidl in 1747) gradually became part of the Bohemian and Moravian cultural memory, remarkably influential to be copied and modified even by the Conventuals. The Jesuit suppression in 1773 did not constitute the end of the Sternberg myth: eventually, it remerged, playing a significant role in the Czech national revival.

Keywords

EN

the Jesuits; Jaroslav of Sternberg; Olomouc; cultural memory; theorhetorics

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Historická geografie (Historical Geography)
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 37
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 197-227
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Andrea Trenta

• Folia historica Bohemica, redakce, Historický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Prosecká 76, 190 00 Praha 9, Czech Republic