Conference paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/mjrl3u75q9
A Czech called Duh, the First Bishop of Zagreb
Marijan Lipovac
orcid.org/0000-0003-4081-2831
; Office for Public Relations and Media of CASA
Abstract
On the first bishop of Zagreb, there are only meagre historical data. The charter of Archbishop Felician of 1134 mentions that he was called Duh, that he was Czech by origin and that he was capable man of honourable life. It is not known where Duh was born nor where and when he died, that is, until when he held the duty of the bishop of Zagreb. Historians and philologists tried go reconstruct what was his origin and constructed Povjesničari i filolozi su ipak pokušali rekonstruirati njegovo porijeklo pa su stvtheories that he was a Benedictine monk of the Czech Glagolytic monastery of Sázava or from the Latin monastery of Břevnovu near Prague, or that he was a monk of some Glagolytic monastery from the area of Northern Croatia, who was by origin from the village of Čehi near Zagreb.
The reason why the king of Hungary brought exactly a Czech for the bishop of the newly established diocese in the conquered Croatian area was probably linguistic proximity with the congregation. According to the tradition, exactly Duh brought in Zagreb the oldest extant ecclesiastical books, and the glossa in the Radon’s Bible which may be the oldest monument of Croatian language are also attributed to him, as well as merits for beginning of the construction of the Zagreb cathedral. In his native homeland, Bohemia, Duh remained mostly unknown, but poet Jan Kollár mentioned him in his poem Slávy Dcera [The daughter of Sláva] of 1832, placing him in the Paradise among men important for the Christianisation of Slavonic peoples, and in an explanation, he called Duh “the Apostle of the Croats”. Members of the Czech minority consider Bishop Duh as their founder. In Zagreb, one public stairs were named upon Bishop Duh, and in 2014 a monument to him was erected in Dubrava near Vrbovec.
Keywords
Bishop Duh; King Ladislas; the bishopric of Zagreb; Croato-Czech relations; history of Zagreb
Hrčak ID:
240571
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2019.
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