FROM CHARTVIRGUS TO TOBIAS: ARCHAIC HUNGARIAN TRACES IN THE LITURGY OF PRAGUE

• Authors: Földváry Miklós István
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In medieval Central Europe, Prague possessed the most splendid liturgy. Not only did it have a distinctive musical notation, indicative of an astonishing level of book culture, but the Use of Prague was an almost ostentatious parade of voluminous and carefully orchestrated rituals. In addition to the wealth of liturgical poetry and music, Prague’s eminence is most evident in the extraordinary ceremonies of the annual cycle, typically recorded in rituals, pontificals, and processionals. One of the earliest relevant documents is the Agenda of Bishop Tobias from 1294. This wealth, however, was not created in a vacuum. It was a synthesis from the collection, supplementation, and reordering of a wide range of liturgies from across Europe. 300 years before the emergence of Prague as an imperial capital, a small but dedicated group of prelates was working on the liturgy of another nascent archdiocese, that of Esztergom in Hungary. The surviving key documents of this process are two pontifical. One of them contains the peculiarities of the annual cycle and is known as the 11th-century Agenda of Hartwick or, more correctly, the Chartvirgus Pontifical. It contains the foundation of the mature Use of Esztergom, and bears witness to an almost extravagant creativity, whose output was often discarded during later trends towards consolidation, although it survived to some degree in Prague.

Keywords

EN

LITURGY; MIDDLE AGES; CANDLEMAS; BOHEMIA; HUNGARY; PRAGUE

• Publisher: Institute of Musicology, Slovak Academy of Sciences; VEDA, Publishing House of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Musicologica Slovaca
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 16 (42)
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 114 – 132

Contributors

author

Földváry Miklós István

• ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, 1081 Budapest, Múzeum körút 4/F, Hungary

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/musicoslov.2025.1.7