Slavic Warrior Women, pt. 11: Libuše

Link to my full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy: Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore: https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787

Time for Slavic Warrior Women, part 11! Today we’ll discuss one of my favorite figures from medieval literature, who really deserves more attention than she gets outside the Czech spheres: Libuše. Enjoy!

Libuše pointing the way to Přemysl

The origin myth of the Czech people establishes the Přemyslid dynasty through a powerfully female-centric narrative. Little known outside of the Czech Republic, this origin myth contains numerous references to ancient literature as well as folkloric elements. For example, mythical Amazons and historical Scythians are invoked by both Cosmas of Prague and the author of the Dalimil Chronicle, and the narrative of the state’s origin opens with a gender-bent inversion of a popular folklore trope. Since the events of the origin myth take place sometime during the late eighth or early ninth century—at the very beginning of the Viking Age—the original narrative developed without significant Scandinavian interference. However, by the time the legendary Bohemian histories took written form, the Viking Age had come and gone, and the narratives had passed unavoidably through a Christian filter.

Instead of the proverbial three brothers, the tale of Bohemian statehood begins with three sisters. The legendary progenitor of the Czech people, Krok, fathered only daughters: Kazi, Tetka, and Libuše. In a further contravention of this trope, the sisters are equally accomplished and never betray one another.^[1] Cosmas grants them intelligence equal to that of men, a misogynistic compliment to be sure.^[2] The eldest daughter, Kazi, is a talented and wise healer; Cosmas duly equates her with Medea and Asklepios for her knowledge of magic and medicine, respectively.^[3] The middle daughter, Tetka, is a pagan priestess. Likely because this particular history was not recorded until after Christianity had risen to dominance in the region, little else is said of the middle sister. Though she is arguably the most accomplished of the three and she does rise to the highest leadership position among their people, in a final inversion of the trope, the youngest daughter never travels to unknown lands to seek her fortune before returning triumphant. Rather, Libuše’s destiny keeps her at home. When Krok dies, she takes his place. For her wisdom, compassion, and virtue, the Czechs unanimously elect Libuše to lead them as their judge.^[4] Throughout her narrative, Libuše is consistently portrayed as both the ideal leader and the ideal woman. Thus, Libuše may not be a recognizably warlike warrior queen, but she is certainly a strong female ruler whose reign, while described as peaceful, necessitated her to pass judgement over violent acts, and led to an undeniably violent outcome.

Unfortunately, the idyll of early Bohemia quickly disintegrates when those who suffer the losing end of Libuše’s decisions band together. The people had chosen Libuše to sit in judgment over them, to guide them, to hear their grievances and find solutions to their battles, yet not everyone is satisfied with the solutions she proposes, and so they use her gender against her.^[5] Eventually the dissatisfied men demand she take a consort so they can have a king to rule beside her, citing the neighboring kingdoms who scoff at their matriarchy: “We alone are set by nature to the shame of all nations and people, we, who lack a male ruler and manly judgment and who suffer under woman’s law,” they declare.^[6] Libuše, harnessing her prophetic powers, warns them of the dire consequences should she subject them to male rule, for men govern with a harsher hand, and male rule inescapably becomes tyranny.^[7] Nevertheless, at their continued insistence, Libuše complies, prophesying the location of her future husband, Přemysl the Plowman, who she predicts will found the utopian city of Prague and father a dynasty to rule Bohemia forever.^[8] 

Although not strictly a warrior queen in that she never participates directly in a military conflict, Libuše’s reign leads to a war that fundamentally changes the gender dynamics of early Czech society. She is a prophetess and a wise judge, yet her rule results in civil war. War ensues not because Libuše is a bad ruler, but because the men ignore her prophetic warnings and demand she take a husband, who then—as she had predicted—becomes a tyrant as soon as she dies, her tempering effect dying with her.^[9] In this, Přemysl’s rise to power is another reversal of the norm, in which usually a woman seizes power only after she becomes a widow; here, it is the widower who succeeds his wife. Unlike widowed queens, however, Přemysl does not serve as a regent for his underage sons, of which Libuše bore three. Maybe, had she born a daughter, events would have unfolded different. As it stands, there was no daughter to inherit Libuše’s role, so leadership passed to her husband instead.

The details of Libuše’s death go unspecified, perhaps because it was not her death as such that was important to medieval authors, but the civil war that erupted afterward.^[10] Presumably, she died peacefully, and thus unremarkably, of natural causes. Nevertheless, once Libuše is no longer holding the reins of the Bohemian kingdom, chaos ensues. While neither Cosmas nor the Dalimil author makes the connection, it is men’s dismissal of female authority that triggers the Maidens’ War. It is not the hubris or foolishness of women that causes the women to revolt, as the Dalimil author suggests, but the hubris of men.^[11] 

Here is where the narratives of Cosmas and the Dalimil author drastically diverge. According to Cosmas’s shorter version, Bohemian women before and during Libuše’s lifetime were accustomed to a level of freedom, equality, and independence akin to that of the Amazons. They hunted, warred, chose their own consorts, and, like the Scythians, wore the same style of clothing as men. When Libuše dies, Czech matriarchy dies with her. The women chafe at Přemysl’s attempts to constrain them. Thus, they rebel, building their own fortress and naming it Děvín.^[12] Intermittent conflict ensues between the men and women until eventually they agree to settle their differences peacefully. They celebrate this peace with a grand feast, but the women are betrayed: once sufficiently drunk, each man seizes a woman as his wife. From that point forward, Cosmas declares, Czech women submitted to the authority of men.^[13] 

The ordeal is reminiscent of the Roman rape of the Sabines, a myth with which the classically educated Cosmas was likely familiar, but some scholars have suggested the Maidens’ War instead describes a playful, pagan fertility rite.^[14] That bridal abduction comprised a key component of early Slavic marriage rituals adds some weight to the latter argument, particularly since it was understood that the abduction was consensual: a very literal interpretation of the folkloric theme of bride-taking, acted out for the marriage ceremony.^[15] Cosmas’s ending of Libuše’s idyllic reign brings the folkloric inversions at the beginning of her narrative full circle. Libuše was the youngest of three sisters who founded a dynasty, not the youngest of three brothers like Scythes, who fathered the Scythians. Moreover, in dispatching her people to bring Přemysl to her to wed, she had turned the bride-taking theme into a husband-taking one, further inverting the gender roles. In reverting those folkloric themes back to their rightful—i.e., patriarchal—position, Cosmas reestablishes the patriarchy as the proper system. Libuše may have been a matriarch, but she was also presented as a feminine ideal; as such, she was a warrior queen who could be tamed, and therefore, not a threat to the power of men.

Next installment, we’ll discuss Libuše’s controversial (and maligned by history) successor, Vlasta, and the Czech Maidens’ War.

Citations:

[1] Česka Kronika (Dalimil), ed. by V. Flajšhans (Jan Laichter, 1920): 3.5-7.

[2] Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle of the Czechs, Mutlová and Martin, trans., 19.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 21.

[5] Rychterová, “Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil,” 178; Česka Kronika (Dalimil), 3.15-16.

[6] Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle of the Czechs, Mutlová and Martin, trans., 23.

[7] Ibid., 27; Česka Kronika (Dalimil), 4.15-16.

[8] Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle of the Czechs, Mutlová and Martin, trans., 29.

[9] Česka Kronika (Dalimil), 7.5-6.

[10] All the author of the Dalimil Chronicle, which was far more detailed than Cosmas’s version, says on the matter of Libuše’s death is that it happened: “Skončila svůj život Libuše, / pohřbili ji ve vsi, jíž říkali Libice.” Česka Kronika (Dalimil), 8.1-2.

[11] Ibid., 8.3-4.

[12] Cosmas of Prague, Chronicle of the Czechs, Mutlová and Martin, trans., 39.

[13] Ibid., 41.

[14] Rychterová proposes the fertility rite interpretation in “Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil,” 181. The connection to the rape of the Sabines is mine. The rape of the Sabines refers to an origin myth about the founding of the Roman republic, in which a group of exiled criminals and runaway slaves, led by Romulus, abduct women from various other tribes, including the Sabines, under the pretense of hosting a festival. Roman author Livy (59 _BCE – 17 _CE) details the events in Ab urbe condita 1.9. The incident would have occurred in the eighth century _BCE, approximately a millennium prior to the Czech Maidens’ War.

[15] Pushkareva, “Woman in the Ancient Russian Family,” 106.