CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Hornickova, Katerina |
|---|---|
| Title | In Heaven and on Earth: Church Treasure in Late Medieval Bohemia |
| Summary | My work focuses on the role of the church treasury in late medieval Bohemia, and the political and cultural conceptions behind its creation and existence, as well as its religious and social functions. The study tackles questions of the treasuries’ foundation, growth, function, and place in the medieval culture of Bohemia, and to a lesser extent, their management and content. It is confined to the geographical and chronological limits of Luxembourg and Jagellonian rule in Bohemia, and Moravia, from roughly 1310 –1526. These primarily political dates bear little relevance to any major shifts in the practice of treasuring, but they embrace the flourishing late medieval culture in Bohemia with its excellent – albeit now mostly lost – artistic output. These dates also set limits to a period of great importance in the development and redefinition of ecclesiastical treasuries in terms of their political and cultural roles. My work sheds light on the intellectual concepts and practical policies involved in the development of treasuries in Bohemia. It oscillates between three main disciplines of history: art, religious, and cultural history. I follow the relation of general concepts, both biblical and literary, to treasures and their subsequent transformation in church treasuries. I view the medieval church treasury in its social context as a result of piety, as well as a media communicating the status of an individual or a community, or – as in the particular case of Bohemia – as a manifestation of specific cultural policies. I also look at the evolving functions of ecclesiastical treasuries in Bohemian late medieval culture. I study my sources through the lens of cultural history, rather than a stylistic point of view - this has helped me to untangle the network of manifold social and cultural phenomena inherent to a treasury. In particular, I examine treasure as an intellectual construct, and its practical implementation in a medieval church treasury with its own aspects of formation, growth, function and presentation, patronage, administration, differentiation, or destruction. The study is divided in two main parts. First is a general introduction to the study of medieval Bohemian church treasuries. The second part focuses on the historical development of Bohemian treasuries, with the core part in the period from the rule of Charles IV of Luxembourg up to the death of Louis of Jagiello in the battle of Mohacs in 1526. |
| Supervisor | Jaritz, Gerhard |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/mphhok01.pdf |
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