Vinicius Cesar Dreger de ARAUJO

Original title: Dux et Rex: poder e legitimidade nas representações imagéticas dos governantes boêmios na Idade Média Central

Published in

Keywords: Duchy of Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia, Middle Ages, Political Iconography.

In the vast anthology of Minnerlyrik (now known as Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift or more commonly Codex Manesse), compiled during the first decades of the fourteenth century, commissioned by Rüdiger Manesse and his son, we can highlight the presence of the single author (from the 137 catalogued there) proven as a non-German: the King “Wenzel von Behein” (in Hochmitteldeutsch) or, more appropriately, Václav II of Bohemia. Our study begins with the analysis of iconographic representation in the consolidated state. Next, we will perform an analysis of the key elements of power, authority and legitimacy of power of the Bohemian dukes. Then we will start an “Archaeology of Representations” from a imagery corpus based primarily on Numismatics and Sigillography, whose pieces are included in a chronological arc extending from 1086 to 1278, from which we will draw a critical study of the development path both of images as the power and legitimacy of these rulers and expressed by them in the same representations. Increasingly, the use of analysis of iconographical representations allows the medievalists to reassess the political history of the Middle Ages, enabling us to have deeper insights on the Political Culture developed in many different European regions. The images and sources discussed here aim to develop a study about Bohemia, the region which is roughly the territory of the Czech Republic today: a duchy, then a kingdom of great material wealth and great political importance between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, but virtually unknown by the Brazilian medievalist historiography.