Dalimil’s Chronicle

(ca. 1310)

   The so-called Dalimil’s Chronicle is the first verse chronicle in the Czech language, dating probably to the beginning of the 14th century. The name Dalimil is traditionally given to the author of this text, but it seems unlikely that any such person ever existed. Based largely on the 12th-century Latin Chronica bohemica (Bohemian Chronicle) by a canon named Cosmas, Dalimil’s Chronicle gives the story of Czech history from its mythic beginnings to about the year 1310.

   Some scholars have suggested that the unknown author of the chronicle was a high-ranking clergyman; others that he was a minor aristocrat. In either case, he is quite outspoken in his views. There is a good deal of moralizing in the chronicle, which is doubtlessly why a cleric has been proposed as its author. But more significant is the chronicler’s vehement condemnation of foreign influences in Bohemia. Certainly the impact of Italian and French power had been felt Dalimil’s Chronicle 171 in the region, but most especially the chronciler resents German hegemony.With a nationalistic fervor unusual in medieval Europe, he fiercely condemns German influence, foreign knights and their customs, and any Czech rulers who grant privileges to foreigners. The chronicler’s evaluation of past Bohemian rulers is based chiefly on their attitude toward Germans: Those who showed favor to Germans are invariably categorized as bad kings.

   On the positive side, the chronicler expresses a real affection for the Czech land, traditional Czech customs, and the Czech language. His choice to write a chronicle in the vernacular Czech language is in itself a nationalistic gesture, paralleling in its own way DANTE’s choice to write in Italian or CHAUCER’s in English. At one point in his poem, the chronicler depicts the princess and seer Libuˇse prophesying that if the Czechs allow themselves to be ruled by foreigners, their language will disappear. In part, the chronicler’s apparent xenophobia may stem from the end of the native Przemyslid dynasty in Bohemia with the death of Wenceslas (Vaclav) III and the ascension of the 14-year-old John of Luxembourg to the Czech throne. The chronicler’s chief goal was to advocate for an independent Czech state with its own native language.

   Written at the beginning of what is known as the ˇCzech Gothic period, Dalimil’s Chronicle is written in irregular rhymed verse. The author made rather uncritical use of his sources and, as a result, mixes myth and legend quite freely. For example, he tells the story of a man named ˇ Cech, who killed a man in Croatia and was forced to flee with his six brothers. After a time they came through a forest and climbed a hill called ˇRíp. From that high vantage, he saw that the land was good and claimed it for his own and his descendants. For more recent events, those covering the period 1230–1310, Dalimil’s Chronicle is far more reliable.

   Bibliography

   ■ Thomas, Alfred. Anne’s Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.