Image II: Moravia, František Sušil and Catholic Romanticism, Bedřich Fučík and Catholic Anti-Modernism

„Dyby byla Morava, jako je Vídeň,

dala bych ti huběnky na celý týden.

Dyby byla Morava, jako jsou Čechy,

dala bych ti huběnky ze štyry měchy.

Dyby byla Morava, jako je Slezsko,

dala bych ti huběnky, až by to plesklo.

Dyby byla Morava, jako jsou Uhry,

dala bych ti huběnky na všecky uhly.

Ale že je Morava maličká,

ošidila děvečka synečka.“1

“If Moravia was like Vienna,

I’d kiss you all week long.

If Moravia was like Bohemia,

I’d kiss you four bellows strong.

If Moravia was like Silesia,

I’d kiss you till your ears popped.

If Moravia was like Hungary,

I’d kiss you from every angle.

But because Moravia is little,

the maid gave the farmer’s boy the run-around.”

As is often the case, this folk song describes something very fundamental using a playful and chastely erotic metaphor. In this case, it is the position of Moravia within Central Europe – as well as how it sees itself. Moravia is an area found between four larger and stronger states: Austria (named synecdochically as “Vienna”), Bohemia, Silesia (understood as the original Great Silesia, Image III) and Hungary. Moravia is “in-between”. Moravia is “little”. And because it is little, it can’t do anything and it is not responsible for anything. That’s for the stronger ones around it. Moravia is small, ergo: the girl gave the boy the run-around.

Little Moravia

Also on a more serious level, a self-reflecting sense of Moravian identity contains the motif of geographical and historical “smallness”, “lacking size”. This motif can then awaken either a search for external guilty parties for this smallness – or, quite naturally, a search for an alternative spiritual greatness: religious in the narrower sense, and/or artistic. And again the most natural expression of this spiritual greatness is formulated in a great myth – the myth of the ancient Great Moravia. The myth of a Moravia made great through its geographical scope and political influence. The myth of a Moravia incorporating parts of its future great neighbours – Bohemia, Hungary and also “Vienna”. The myth of a Moravia made great through its founding saints, interconnected through their work and enlightening the furthest corners and beyond. The myth of a Moravia of Cyril and Methodius. The myth of a Moravia whose centre is not Brno or Olomouc, the seat of the Přemyslid princes and/or Moravian margraves, but Velehrad, the seat of the ancient Great Moravian kings and archbishops, in particular the very first one – Methodius. And, therefore, also the myth of the ancient Great Moravian Velehrad, in contrast to which the real Velehrad near Uherské Hradiště is again just a “little” Velehrad.

The reason for this is that when a Cistercian monastery was founded in Velehrad at the start of the 13th century, it was not in relation to the traditions of Great Moravia. When the memory of St Cyril and St Methodius began to resonate in Moravia in the 14th century, the monastery was far more the object of Moravian provincial-patriotic efforts than the instigator of them. It was only in the 17th century, during the time of Slavonic Baroque (Image XIV), that the Velehrad monks were linked to the Cyril-Methodius tradition through the pens of their monastic historians – though even then the main works which were inspired by this tradition emerged elsewhere in Moravia, as well as in Bohemia: the Baroque historians from Bohemia had no problem celebrating the Moravian myth, as for them the spiritual glory of Moravia was a natural part of the spiritual glory of Bohemia. This is why Balbín wrote Diva Turzanensis, “The Divine from Tuřany”, i.e. from a place of pilgrimage which legend attributed to Cyril and Methodius. This was why Tomáš Pešina of Čechorod (1629 –1680) wrote Prodromus Moravographiae “A Precursor of Moraviography” (1663).

However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the mythization of Velehrad reached its zenith through the work of František Sušil (1804 –1868) and his retinue.2 An evaluation of the importance of Sušil’s personality and work is sharply refracted along provincial borders. For Bohemia, Sušil is nothing more than a collector of charming folk songs, and even then this is usually through their revival by Jaroslav Hutka and other singers of “different-than-traditional-folk” genres.3 For Moravia, Sušil is nothing less than a founding father, a role model of priest-patriot and folk-educator, a “cultural hero”, mythicizer – and soon to be mythicized.

At the same time, Sušil did not produce any canonical texts on the Cyril-Methodius-Velehrad myth, nor any interpretations of it. The Velehrad story makes its mythical nature known by the fact that it has never been recorded anywhere, instead it is preached, lectured and sung about over and over. All of the writings to be found are actually commentaries on these. Sušil is not the creator of Velehrad because he penned a Cyril-Methodius epic or play or historical-theological treatise. Nor is it because he wrote several Velehrad-themed poems. He is its creator because his life’s work as a Moravian patriot was filled with enthusiasm for this ideal.

The story behind the myth is actually quite brief: Prince Rostislav summoned two brothers from Thessaloniki to Great Moravia to teach the Moravians Christianity in the Slavonic language. Cyril and Methodius defended their actions before the pope in Rome, Cyril remained in Rome, whereas after many tribulations Methodius returned to his new homeland, where he died as the Archbishop of Moravia with its seat in Velehrad, beloved by all the people, buried in an unknown site. What was to follow historically – the power struggles of the Mojmírs, the expulsion of Methodius’s pupils, the reintroduction of the Latin worship and the fall of Great Moravia – although not exactly silenced, were never part of its myth.

The interpretation of the myth is as follows: the Moravian nation had its own state, older than that of the Bohemians and older than that of the Austrians. The spiritual basis of this state was Christianity, brought there by two saints. This Christianity was characterized by a movement towards the people, the moderate and gracious way in which it was communicated, and its emphasis on education and the Slavonic language. Although it was so openly Slavonic, it accepted jurisdiction from the Roman pope and received his approval. Slavism and Catholicism in perfect unity. Therefore, if Moravia wants to rise from humiliation today, it has to return to this founding story and derive strength and lessons from it, it has to be a Moravia of Cyril and Methodius and, therefore, Slavonic, Catholic, educated, moderate and gracious, of the people. Velehrad personifies all of these values and Sušil’s call of “nation, now to Velehrad / retracing our steps”4 means returning to those values, building a harmonised national community upon them, resurrecting the golden age of Moravia. The sign for the coming of this blissful time in God’s grace will be the discovery of St Methodius’s grave.

The Velehrad myth is a clear example of Catholic Romanticism in its most original form within the Czech linguistic area. Three aspects point to the fact that this is indeed purely a myth.

The first: The followers of the Cyril-Methodius tradition showed very little interest in Moravia’s subsequent thousand-year history. Between the mythical Great Moravia and the present was only “little Moravia”, an appendage to the history of the Bohemian and then Habsburg state, certainly full of interesting people and events, as are examined by journals such as Matice moravská, but now without the mytho-cultural-nation-forming giants worthy of such an impassioned nationwide cult.

Not even Jan Sarkander, beatified on the initiative of the Olomouc archbishopric in 1859, has significantly influenced the national consciousness and culture of Moravia. From a Cyril-Methodius perspective, history is not essential. As though those thousand years had not existed. A myth bordering directly on the present day.

The Second: Logically for the Velehrad cult, the key question should be the actual location of the historical seat of the Great Moravian rulers. But this matter is surrounded by uncertainty. Dobrovský doubted that it would ever be possible to reliably identify the original area. For various historians, Great Moravia’s Velehrad has been Uherské Hradiště, Staré Město u Uherského Hradiště, Olomouc and even Mosaburg in Pannonia.5 And so there is a shrewd solution to the Cyril-Methodius issue: although archaeological research continues in the hope of finding historical evidence – at the same time, they prudently state that no matter what happens concerning the discovery of the original site of Velehrad, “it is necessary to emphasize that the spiritual significance of today’s Velehrad does not in any way derive from a place, but from the psychological relationship towards the centre of the apostolic succession of our missionaries.”6

The third: Only a myth can be owned by people so quickly and easily, a generally understandable reference to a commonly understood world. The National Unity of St Cyril and Methodius and the Cyril-Methodius Legacy were followed by dozens of other institutions which turned this name into an ever-more popular slogan across Moravia and even outside of it, such as Prague’s Cyril-Methodius Publishers or the religious brotherhood of the same name in Slovenia, the Lužice Serbs and the Paris Russian Catholics. The most bizarre use of this nickname will forever be the Cyril-Methodius Faculty of Divinity in Litoměřice, a loyal tool of communist control over the Catholic church, from which several good priests emerged “in spite of the school”.

As has already been said, Sušil was a mythicizer who became mythicized. This mythicization can be seen in a biography of Sušil, written by his most loyal pupil, Matěj Procházka, first published in the Moravan almanac in 1869: “If it pleases God, a nation everywhere constrained and deeply reduced, to be once more raised up (…) awoken by great men of remarkable sacrifice and iron resolve. Bright in their spirit like the spark of an elevated idea which can save a nation. The great František Sušil was such a farther of the Czech-Moravian people.”8 When Matěj Procházka describes all of Sušil’s virtues, from his famous chastity and moderation in food, to his generosity, and when he describes his pious death and glorious funeral, then there can be doubt about the genre: this is hagiography. Although there was never any attempt to canonize Sušil, he assumed the role of a modern Moravian national saint.

Through the cult of František Sušil, Moravia discovered a much sought-after connection between myth and the present day: what St Cyril and St Methodius meant for Great Moravia is what Sušil means for the new Moravia. Belief and education, Catholicism and Slavism, “Church and country”. The meaning of the arrival of the missionaries in Velehrad, is the same meaning as the renewal of Velehrad and the pan-Moravian celebration which was held there in 1863 on the 1,000th anniversary of the arrival of Cyril and Methodius (and again in 1885 on the 1,000th anniversary of Methodius’s death). At the same time, “one thousand years” is not just a numerical expression of the distance in time between the two events. “One thousand” means fullness, replenishment, the closing of a circle, the return of a golden age. The traditions of “Cyril-Methodius”, “Velehrad” and “Sušil” become synonyms.

The numerous biographies written by the Moravian Catholic clergy-literati about Sušil and his successors often use references to or the direct title of “preacher”. This term is apposite. For in their poems, sermons, articles and stories, whatever they are talking about, at heart they are always “preaching” – they enthusiastically glorify not so much an idea as a kind of state, a feeling in life. The words which have to evoke this and which form the compulsory content of each text carry within them more than anything else an emotional charge: glorious, sacrosanct, Cyril and Methodius, the people, the nation, Moravia, faith, script, one thousand, Christ, Slavonic, Sušil… Moravian “Sušilesque” literature wants to encourage the blissful dwelling in a restored myth, and continuous celebration.

Throughout the 20th century, Velehrad managed to maintain its myth-making power. However, other elements were added to this unadulterated celebration. Some serious science also emerged from this interest in Great Moravia, especially in the field of old Slavonic philology and archaeology. In particular, the philological work of Josef Vajs (Image XIV) and Josef Vašic, and the byzantological work of František Dvorník were internationally acclaimed, even on a global scale. Enthusiasm for Cyril and Methodius has been connected to the political-religious programme of unionism, i.e. the efforts to bring the Orthodox Eastern Slavs under the Roman Church. Although the programme failed in its original intention, it was successful in the opposite direction: it brought the culture of Orthodox Eastern Slavs to the attention of the Roman Church. And if it was difficult for the science of Vajs, Vašic or Dvorník to become a subject of study for the wider Moravian classes – then “philo-Orthodoxy” in the form popularized by Tomáš Špidlík has indeed become a subject of mass appeal.

Velehrad itself underwent significant rebirth in the 1980s. Exactly one hundred years since the glory years of the Sušil movement, since the celebrations of 1885, here on the 1,100th anniversary of Methodius’s death saw one of the first mass demonstrations against the communist authorities. And it was here five years late that a Roman pope first spoke on Moravian soil.

Translated by Graeme Dibble