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Bohemian Broadsheet Legends, 1650–1800

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

Within Early Modern hagiography produced in the Bohemian Lands in Czech, German, or Latin, the paper focuses on the legends published in the form of a single sheet of paper printed only on one side. These - rather remarkable - hagiographical broadsheets differ fundamentally from the most common devotional pictures of saints, which are usually accompanied by little text.

The text of these broadsheets is an equal partner of the image: neither the text nor the image can be omitted from the broadsheet without a significant semantic loss. In other words, the image does not simply illustrate the text - and the text does not simply clarify the image.

Nevertheless, this kind of broadsheet has diverse forms including attempts to combine the advantages of a large single image of a saint with narrative strips, sequences of separate images depicting episodes from the life of a saint, etc. - and complicated allegories are not being avoided, either. These broadsheets are far from being popular imagery; usually, they were neither cheap to produce nor were they intended for sale and the intended audience was intellectuals and/or clerics.

The paper presents this kind of Bohemian hagiographical broadsheets, those related to the Benedictine monastery of Svatý Jan pod Skalou [St John Baptiste Under the Cliff] in the vicinity of Prague in particular.