The originally local cult of Saint Ludmila was acknowledged by the wider society primarily because of Charles IV’s resuscitation of the Přemyslid cults and development of the cults of the saints during the 14th century. With understandable delay, the boom of preaching about Saint Ludmila overlaps with the preaching activity of Hussite masters. Nevertheless, it withered away during the post-Hussite times and even the Catholics no longer delivered sermons about Ludmila.
The biblical texts known as pericopes have always been the basis of sermons. Regarding Saint Ludmila, it was not settled in the course of the 15th century and showed more varieties. It was not until the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries that uniformly recommended pericopes emerged with emphasis on Ludmila’s archetype as a biblical widow. The pericope with Jesus’s Parable of the Hidden Treasure was most frequently used.
Twenty-two sermons have survived from the Hussite and post-Hussite eras; however, only thirteen exceed a mere pericope explication and include biographical notes about Saint Ludmila, e.g. Master John Huss preached about Saint Ludmila who in the spirit of John Milíč’s pre-Hussite movement often received the communion. Younger authors such as Master Jan Rokycana mention in accordance with other sources that Ludmila, ‘the Bohemian heiress, also also received the communion under both kinds’.
Images
- The Beginning of Master John Huss’s Preaching
Sermones, tractatus, questiones,
2nd quarter of the 15th century, Bohemia
NKP IV F 25, fol. 104r - Sermones de tempore et de sanctis super evangelia et epistolas
Priest Wenceslas from Saint Gall Church, late 15th century, Bohemia
NKP XXIII F 113, fol. 142v - Sermones de sanctis; cum nonnullis glossis textual. Bohemicis
Master John of Příbram, mid-15th century, Bohemia
NKP III H 1, fol. 35v - Church of Saint Ludmila at Mělník
Zdeněk Rerych © - The interpretation of the Dispute of Václav Písecký with a Monk in Vlachy over the Communion under Both Kinds
Řehoř Hrubý from Jelení: Great Collection, 1513, Bohemia
NKP XVII D 38, fol. 110v
