In Our Time - Bohemia

Episode Date: April 11, 2002

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the medieval kingdom of Bohemia which was at the crossroads of Europe and, during the 15th century, at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Under Charles IV, its cosmopolitan capital Prague became a cultural and intellectual centre, attracting scholars and artists from all over Europe. But Prague was awash with religious and political dissent. At its core stood the anarchist philosopher Jan Hus, whose ideas anticipated the Lutheran Reformation by a full century. He was burnt at the stake, but his followers, the Hussites, embarked on a series of wars that continue to mark the Czech and German characters even today. Why was Bohemia such a crucible of dissent and how were its ideas exported to the rest of Europe? What did it mean to be Bohemian then and how was the ancient kingdom of Bohemia, with its ferment of religious, national and ethnic ideologies, divided up to form the states of modern Central Europe? With Norman Davies, Professor Emeritus, University of London; Karin Friedrich, Lecturer in History, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London; Robert Pynsent, Professor of Czech and Slovak Literature, University College London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the medieval kingdom of Bohemia was at the crossroads of Europe and during the 15th century at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Under Charles IV, its cosmopolitan capital, Prague,

became a cultural and intellectual centre, attracting scholars and artists from all over Europe. But Prague was awash with religious and political dissent. At its core stood the anarchist philosopher Jan Hus, whose ideas anticipated the Lutheran Reformation by a full century. He was burnt at the stake, but his followers, the Hussites, embarked on a series of wars that continue to mark the Czech and German characters even today.

Why was Bohemia such a crucible of descent, and how were its ideas exported to the rest of Europe? What did it mean to be Bohemian then, and how was the ancient kingdom of Bohemia with its ferment of religious, national, and essence, ethnic ideologies divided up to form the states of modern Central Europe. With me to discuss matters bohemian are Norman Davis, historian, author of Europe and the Isles, whose latest book co-authored is Microcosm, portrait of a central European city.

Karen Friedrich, lecturer in history at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, and author of the other Prussia, and Robert Princeton, Professor of Czech and Slovak Literature at University College London, and author of The Path to Decadence. Norman Davis, the very idea of Bohemia and it's almost like reclaiming parts of Europe that feel that they've only just joined Europe recently although they were there so long ago it didn't matter.

Recently the idea of the East slipped off the European map, didn't it? That's a very western view, of course. Well, I'm a very western person. If one lived in Bohemia, one always thought one was in the centre of affairs. Yes, Central Europe is a... a concept which has come in and out over the 20th century. It's not a fixed concept by the mean. It's very fluid.

It seems to have been consciously invented in the late 19th century. And has changed various ways since then. But it's essentially a region of Europe that is neither east nor west, north or south. But it's something, a mixture of everything. And in particular, of course, a region of... of great ethnic complexity. Bohemian in origin was Celtic. The Bois were a Celtic federation.

The province was then settled in the middle of the first millennium of our era by Slavs, but they later became known as Czechs. Another great wave of settlement began in the late 12th, 13th century, of peoples from the whole of Roman Empire, not just Germans, but people from the West, Germanic peoples. And I think one should also mention the gypsies, the Romani, who still are numerous in Central Europe, who, by some unknown process, gave their name to the Vida Bohem,

the life of bohemia, gypsy life, vagabond life, which became the cliché for artistic, rootless life throughout Europe. Can we start then with the idea, go back to the early 14th century, in the ethnic makeup of Bohemia? Who was there? What were they doing? Are we talking about anything to do with nations

or we're talking about dynasties? What's the shape of things at that time? Well, Bohemia, like several other kingdoms of Central Europe, Poland, Hungary, had native dynasties, native princes, under which these kingdoms had something, if you like, of a national flavour. But the native princes, the native dynasties died out and were replaced by, you might call them, professional international dynasties,

sort of multinational companies of the Middle Ages, who specialised in ruling provinces that needed a professional monarch, Bohemia, as it happened, fell to the House of Luxembourg, John of Luxembourg, and then Poland was taken over by the great Yegillonian dynasty from Lithuania. And hence you get a series of multinational dynasties in central Europe ruling over peoples with whom they have no historical connection, but they make a new fusion of politics and culture that is very tight. typical for the area. Robert

Vincent, there's a text known as Dalimil Chronicle that was published at the time of the John of Luxembourg became King. Did that have a significance in this story? It has a large significance. The Dalai Mil Chronicle, which was more or less finished 1310 to welcome him to the throne and give him advice

what to do that. It's a quite remarkable work. It became a mythic text in Czech culture. It went through all sorts of different redactions, was read very widely for two centuries, disappears, and and then comes into public interest enormously around the beginning of the 17th century again.

And it was banned at all sorts of times. What gave it that energy then? Yes. What gave it its energy is nationalism in it. An extremely strong nationalism. There's a Czech word Yazik, which means tongue, which is in all the Slvonic languages. It's used there to mean nation,

rather as earlier it had in German meant something similar. this daly mill was determined to get rid of all Germans. The only Yazik was the Czech-Jazik as there. The only good kings were those who'd be nasty to Germans in this chronicle. The best kings were those who chopped off the most German noses. He also, quite interestingly, has a new idea for that area of, let's call it, state, where there's something like a parliament, which both protects other lords and the common people from the king,

and works as a vehicle for the laws to instruct the king. He was very keen on the barons, a reigning power, remaining in the Privy Council, not having any foreigners, this becomes a great thing right through into the 17th century, not having any foreigners in the King's Council and so forth. Was this ardent nationalism early and exceptional at the time? Yes, I think it was.

I mean, if in fact becomes very popular, It's reflected throughout the 14th century in literature, except on the Charles IV, Luxembourg's son. Well, let's go to Charles IV now, his son, who had been described as an almost being German by birth, French by education and bohemian by inclination. Now, he was an extraordinary Renaissance man if one can predate that way. Sort of. He was awfully, he invited Petrarch to go and visit him, and he was awfully disappointed because Petrach had these rather, what we now call left-wing political views, which shouldn't suit him at all. sort of Renaissance man. He was an enormous collector of relics as well, which was very important for the church,

became richer and richer in bohemia. He did find what was the first completely stone city in Europe, the Prague Newtown. He founded Prague University as well. He got people building things. He introduced Czechs into Prague in a big way, and Czech became a little bit influential and ever more during his reign.

in town councils and things, which was extremely important. He had his bad sight. He was also known as the father of his country and the stepfather of the empire. He did treat people differently. He made Prague the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, as it became, and here it was centred on Prague.

I've got to bring in Karen now. Was there any attention, though, between the Germanically inclined Holy Roman Empire and the Czech nationalism that we've seen in the Middle Chronicles. So is that building up at that time? I think the Czech nationalism is definitely an exception in the Dalai Mil Chronicle. And even then I would actually say that this nationalism might not actually be right. I mean, it was later...

It covers the whole nation. That's what's important, Karen. He does explicitly say he's not talking... He's talking not... just about the nobles. He's talking about the common people. But it depends a little bit how you translate, Yazic and language, because in many ways he was xenophobic. He was not necessarily just against the Germans.

He was xenophobic against other people, the foreigners, and even Moravians he didn't like particularly. So in a way, this early modern nationalism, I would be very, very careful to call it nationalism at all. If you talk about nations in the early modern period, and especially Prague University is a good example for that, you get university nations, which were called nations. And of course, there were also Saxon nation, the Bohemian nation, the Bavarian nation, and the Silesian nation. And among these groups, there were many different languages. So you had, for example, under the Bohemian nation, you had German speakers and Czech speakers at the University of Prague.

and you had also, for example, under the Polish nation, you had Silesians, a lot of them were German speakers. So I think language and nation was not something that defined each other necessarily in that period. I just want to ask Karen one more question. If I came to Prague as a visitor at the time of Charles Ler-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fort, what would be most striking about it? Would there be intellectual firm, would it be the diversity,

would it be competing ideas of nationalism, Would I be anywhere sort of recognisable to my early 21st century sensibility? I think the diversity of languages and also of visitors from all over Europe would have been very striking. And that's something that is today in Prague as well, a very important feature again. It's a very central European city in the sense of a centre of Europe. And that was certainly the case also at the Court of Charles IV.

Do you think we have something there which we've, developed perhaps later on in the program after we've talked about Jan Hus. Do you think of something there that would unravel through the centuries? Conflicts, coincidences, congruences were developed already there, which would play through the next several hundred years? I think the conflicts there were certainly later over-emphasized. I think that people lived perfectly harmoniously in that city together. It is through the Hussite wars and particularly,

the exodus of the German community at the beginning of the Hussite Wars with Huss, that conflicts really develop. But these are mainly religious conflicts, and I wouldn't say there are mainly national conflicts. Can I come... Do you want to say something wrong? I'm sorry, the nation at the university

and this use of Jazeek in Dalai, is quite different. And the Hussites themselves are using the word, Yazik, the word meaning tongue or language, to mean nation throughout, of German as well. I'm sorry, they're quite completely different things. That's all I want to say just at this moment. I'm sorry to a contrary.

No, no, no, no. I mean, I'm going to go to Jan Hus. Make a point in the middle. What Robert says about the national character of the Czech community, I think is relatively true. But if you look at England at the same time, for example, you have a country where the ruling class is French, the dominant literary language is French,

there is no English nation in the modern sense at all. It only begins in probably the 15th century. In Bohemia, in Poland, in Hungary, for the reasons I said earlier on, there is a greater sense of national community, but it's not nationalism in the way that we talk of it in the 19th and 20th centuries. Karen, will you come in this? Then I'm going to move to Janhus. Okay, very briefly.

It's just about the definition of nation in that period, I think. think that's an important one. And I would, as Norman said, there isn't really a direct link between language and nation at that point. Often people were referring to language as something important to their identity, but that doesn't necessarily make a national identity. That's not the main building stone of it. If you can look at the ideas during Dalai Mill as much time now to go into all that, you'll find all the fundamental ideas of Fichter, who's one of the founders of so-called modern nationalism are there in Dalai Milne. Well, shaking your head can't be seen through the microphone, Karen.

But unless we've got something which will be illuminating more than this, I'm going to move on. Well, I don't think you have time for that, but I'm sure that the territorial origin of these people and the historic identity that's emphasized in early modern national identity is much more important than the linguistic aspect. Well, I'm aware that we've got six centuries to go. Look, Huss, let's... Jan Hus was a university professor and teacher. What did he preach that led to his martyrdom, I suppose, being burnt at the stake, singing as he died, we are told. What did he preach that was so radical, so inflammatory, so important that he had to be put down?

Can you tell us something? Mostly it was a matter of the purification of church, and even the Pope was unnecessary, even at some times. he became very unpopular with a clergy for some time because he was against pluralism, simony and things like selling indulgences. The king kept along with him. Now we got the son of Charles, Wednesdays of fourth, we're in his reign now. The king went along with him until Huss became very strong about selling of indulgences which the king didn't want to stop.

That was the break with the king. Huss was not a particularly radical thinker. What is important, because some of the history books do get this wrong, is that a lot of the ideas actually came from Bohemia towards the end of Charles' reign. There was a church reform movement there. But it was the Wycliffe ideas coming from Oxford that united them first before the crusade that was in 1420.

Of course, once the crusades declared, then you get a unity of sort of checkness. We're going to defend it. We're going to put up even with some things that look a bit heretical. Norman, can we just contextualise Huss a bit more? Because I'd like to see how important that was, because there's one way of saying, and Robert's already mentioned it, the ideas of Wycliffe and Lollards in Oxford and in this country, in our country.

Then I take Huss was a great admirer of Wickliff, as I understand it, and the ideas are going there. And then via one intermediary, Shnaman I've forgotten, I'm off the story, the ideas go on to Luther. Is that an interesting example of ideas moving? Are people reading each other and going along with it? Well, yes, I'm sure there are contexts. between the court in England and the court in Prague,

and ideas diffuse, as we know, through all manner of human contacts. But I was going to take issue with your definition of, who says, an anarchist philosopher. He was essentially a reforming churchman. Yes, and conservative, probably. And there are three basic ideas to him, I think. One is his resistance to church authority.

which was a very severe offence in medieval eyes. The second one was his theological views on the communion. Well, he thought they should be taking... The generality people should be able to take communion in both parts. In both kinds, whereas the practice was that only the clergy... I'm sorry, Huss himself was very lukewarm, even about that, about communion in both kinds. But before we lose the thread, the third thing nobody has mentioned is, of course, that he translated, he had the Bible translation. into Czech.

Wycliffe translated the English Bible, partly. The Hussites partly translated the Bible. But the idea that the scripture should be accessible to the common people and their own language is this crucial idea, which of course is taken up by Luther, and Luther translates the German Bible. These are revolutionary approaches which changed the history of,

Christianity. But Huss actually tapped into a tradition that was already vernacular and he went to the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague and preached in the vernacular and it was only after he was banned from doing so because he appealed to the poverty of the church he wanted. And I think that's the most radical element really in his teaching. It's the appeal that the clergy and especially the Pope should live a life of poverty and just use what's important for churchmen for pastoral care.

And that, of course, undermined the basics of church power at the time because about a third of European territories were actually owned by the church. So an appeal to poverty was particularly radical here. And he did that in the un-N-Urash-Saint-that. The church should divest itself of all its riches, yes. It should give up its properties and its wealth. and also its legal influence, so that, for example, the legal spheres, the secular and ecclesiastical legal sphere should be divided,

so that church law courts, for example, could not in any way interfere in the secular sphere. So behind almost a stoking horse of religion, a very, very radical economic and political, I do. Yes, indeed. Could I just make a geographical point? You asked how the influence of Huss could get to Luther. Luther live right next door to Bohemia. Saxony, Wittenberg, is immediately to the north of Bohemia. And in Saxony, the ideas of Huss would have been known for 100 years before Luther.

We've talked on this program about the Arby Junction Crusades. The Crusades are announced against reforming Catholics, but they're still Catholics in Europe. Can you just describe what sort of, why they felt it necessary to, as it were, employ that full armour? It's all to do with the authority of the church. The great disgrace of all this, I suppose, is that the Council of Constance was there to reform the church, created a scandal by Boninghus, and disgraced the idea of the concilia movement

of reforming the Catholic Church from within. And although there were one, two later attempts, it wasn't until the Council of Trent, which is the middle of the 16th century, the Catholic Church really gets its act together. But after the Protestant Reformation has taken place and after a large part of the reformers have completely broken away. And I think this is the impetus that Huss started

and why it so divided the church, not between reformers and conservatives, but between those who accepted the authority of the church. those who didn't. We've got to keep in our mind all the time, haven't we? Something at Karen said earlier, which is difficult for us, I think, difficult for me anyway, from modern people to keep there all the time, is just the power of the church,

the wealth of the church, the size of the church, the influence that they had. And they wanted to hold on to it, of course, as people do when they've got power. All power, was it a Czech who said that first? All power is violence, all power is evil. Yes, a follower, a much more radical follower of who was a petty nobleman called Kerchitsky, that's right. We're talking

about an incredible religious cauldron but inter-religion is being fed economics, political powers, but it's still the idea of religion and faith is the terms in which it's expressed and people will fight and die for two sorts of communion in both kinds. But in the middle of this

as you point out very much in your book, no one, you have an enormous number of a huge number of a big Jewish settlement. Where did they figure when this ferment began? Central Europe was already the main focus of Jewish settlement in Europe by the time of the Hussites.

The impact on the Jews of these religious quarrels among Christians was that the Jews were made scapegolds. In particular the city I've been writing about it, my co-author, in 1450s, the Catholic Church, having preached cruis AIDS against infidels, having no Turks on hand to persecute no Hussein left in Breslau, they turned on the local Jews. And there was a great massacre and the cessation of the Jewish community in Breslau for a couple of centuries. So the Jewish presence is there, but they get wrapped up in these religious passions. I think that is in a broader context an important time of Jewish persecution.

The 1450s also saw the expulsion of the Jews from the royal cities in Bohemia. However, in the long term, I think in Bohemia in general, the Jews actually were better off in many ways than they were in the Holy Roman Empire. They had guarantees, they had privileges from the king, and later on, especially in the 16th and 17th century, then very often they were employed or directly linked to the nobility again.

And in a way in states where the monarchy is not so strong, often the Jews fare better if they link up with the nobility and get certain protections through service to the nobility. I mean, we haven't got a great deal of time. But what I'd like to do is we said we might do at the beginning of the programme. Can't we just jump now? What I'd just like to know from you three, does history work its way through?

We all know broadly the big things that happened in Europe in the 20th century. We know what we're talking about with regards to Central Europe. Do you see, do the three of you see, any workings through from what you've been very obligingly talking about in the last half hour, working themselves through to the 20th century, or are there too many breaks and dips in between? Well, there are two things, if you like, the path of real history,

and the way that history is used by people, people at different periods. When you come to the 19th century, which is, if you like, the era of nationalism, all these different peoples in Central Europe are creating, one might say inventing their history, drawing on all these multifarious experiences of the past, to provide simplistic schemes that all their people can follow. and this was just as true of the Czechs as the Germans or the Poles or the Hungarians and so on. One of the ideas which was taken off both by the German side and by the Slav side, especially by the Russians, was this of the idea of the thousand years struggle between Chuton and Slav, something which became a Nazi slogan but also was pumped from the other side by Stalin.

and so on. And this was a very strong, simple idea, namely that the slabs like the Czechs had been eternally pitted against the Germans, that this was a story of unbroken horrors and catastrophes. It is, of course, a very false view of history. But the German nationalists looked it on it in the idea that their drive to the east had been a positive influence. The Slavs would look at it the opposite way, especially the Russians,

that the German drang-knuck Austin was in a great invasion of German savages and so on. This is the way, through these simplified nationalist views of history, that the events of the Middle Ages become embroiled once again in the affairs of the 20th century.

I think what unravels is a bilingual bohemian nation, or the two nations, Germans and Czechs, that make up the Bohemian nation in a way. And that unravels in the 19th century. And one of the most influential people to break that up from the Czech point of view is, of course, Frantyshek Palatsky, a Czech historian, who very much formulates that opposition, that antagonism between Germans and Czechs. And that's a continuity. then that's broken here, this tradition of the early modern and medieval period of bohemian,

the two bohemian nations that actually lived relatively harmoniously together, and then really got into this nationalist struggle in the 19th and 20th century. And so I would see it more in terms of breaking continuities than a thread of history that goes through all the way. Robert, what you'll be honest. Yes, I think what she says absolutely, what everybody has been saying is absolutely accurate. Palatsky, for example, was strongly influenced by the ideology of this Dalai Mil we started with. And to the other extent, in December 1999, there was a big seminar at the Vatican considering whether the Husse trial in 1415 should be revised, which was attended by the Pope and the President Vazav Havel, it's still alive.

And there's a statement by a very leading churchman, at the beginning Czech churchman, who's quite likely to be the next president, who says that every Czech Catholic feels the stain every Czech Catholic is yesterday in 1999 he's talking about feels the stain of having it being coming from a heretical nation things are still very much alive and you think that I can only touch on this

because it deserves a programme on its own really this thing do you think that the fact that 13 million Germans were expelled from the area we mean around with me talking about in 1945 Do you think that is connected with the Czech Holy Roman Empire versus Czech? When the most distinguished professor of Czech literature at the time in 1945 wrote in 1945, at last the rules of Dalai Mil have been fulfilled, we are throwing out all the Germans.

It's taken all those centuries. And the German expelies, which is now a top subject, is only part of a bigger process. It's part of the process whereby the Soviet Union annexed Eastern Poland. Poles were expelled in their millions. Germans were expelled in even greater millions to the West. And the Jews disappeared from most of what in the Central Europe. Well, I'm sorry we have to leave that there.

There's a long way to go, and I hope we'll come back to it sometime. But thank you very much, Roy, Vincent, Karen, Friedrich and Norman Davis. There won't be a program next week because you'll be hearing all about the budget. Isn't that fun? I'll be back in a fortnight talking about Tolstoy. Thanks for listening.