Hagiografia doby chrystianizacji w nowej odsłonie

Abstract

Hagiography of the Christianization Age Re-Revealed

Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe (Tenth-Eleventh Centuries), ed. Gábor Klaniczay, transl. Cristian Gaşpar, Marina Miladinov, Budapest–New York 2013, is already the sixth volume of the Central European Medieval Texts series, published by Central European University. In the same manner as previous volumes it contains bilingual (Latin-English) editions of texts, which in this volume are hagiographical. The objects are saints of the age of Christianization in the present-day regions of Dalmatia, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, and the subject are post-Carolingian hagiographers, either outsiders or homines novi in Central Europe. The review is particularly interested in editions of two texts, namely, the anonymous Vita prior s. Adalberti (BHL 37) and the so-called Vita quinque fratrum (BHL 1147), composed by Bruno-Boniface of Querfurt. Every new edition has a potential for redefining a text, which subsequently a relatively wide group of readers will recognise as a canonical version. Consequently, every new proposal should be examined with due attention and a dose of criticism. In the case of Vita prior s. Adalberti the editors suggest a number of independent solutions of problems connected to the manuscript tradition, the chronological order of the redactions, the hagiographer’s erudition, the place of origin of the oldest version, and the authorship. The number of strictly ecdotic new proposals for Vita quinque fratrum is smaller, and the remarks pertain mainly to the author’s cultural “equipment” (citations, allusions, etc.) indicated in the edition. The review discusses in greater detail the majority of editorial recommendations and attempts to place them within the context of an extensive and long-lasting debate involving problems of both textual criticism and hagiographers’ worldview.