Bohuslaus of Lobkowicz and Hassenstein. A Poet between Nations and Denominations

Bohuslaus of Lobkowicz and Hassenstein (ca. 1461–1510), a Bohemian nobleman and outstanding Latin poet, is remarkable for the rich and contradictory ways in which his personality was interpreted up to the twentieth century. Although a fervent Catholic, in the sixteenth century he became a model for Czech non-Catholic humanists of Wittenberg training, for whom he represented a hero who liberated his country from barbarism. The Catholics did not “take him back” until long after the defeat of the non-Catholic Estates, and in the second half of the seventeenth century the Jesuits presented a legend of him as a poet laureate of the Pope himself. In parallel, his legacy lived on in the German Lutheran lands, where his first brief monograph was written and reprints of his works were published. The Enlightenment provided a less polarizing view of Hassenstein, though paradoxically it was a Jesuit, Ignatius Cornova, who has written the most comprehensive monograph on Hassenstein to date. Although Cornova tried to take a balanced view, even he could not avoid using psychologizing conclusions to describe Hassenstein in a way that suited his pedagogical purposes, even if in so doing he had to suppress or distort some facts. After the Enlightenment, the confessional aspect lost its urgency, and another conflicting issue arose in the presentation of Hassenstein—his belonging to a certain nation. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars argued over whether he was Czech or German. These debates faithfully mirrored contemporary political developments, and only ended after World War II, when modern editions of Hassenstein’s works and the scholarly studies by their editors, Dana Martínková and Jan Martínek, provided an objective view of Hassenstein as a humanist writer and historical figure.