The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters: Noblewomen in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia. Translated from Czech and German with Introduction, Notes and Interpretive

Medium Aevum, Spring, 2003

by John M. Klassen with Eva Dolezlova and Lynn Szabo (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001). x 134 PP. ISBN 0-85991-612-X. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. Anezka and Perchta of Rozemberk were the daughters of Ulrich of Rozemberk, the leader of the Catholic-Austrian party in south Bohemia in the mid-fifteenth century, and thus members of the most influential noble family in the region.

The elder of the sisters, Anezka, an unusual example of a great noblewoman who chose to remain unmarried, resided in the castle of Trebon, whereas Perchta was married to John of Lichtengtejn, lord of Milkulov (and had a great dispute about her dowry). They were brought up at their father's seat of Cesky Krumlov. This volume in the Library of Medieval Women series provides English translations of a selection of the personal letters written by the sisters, in Czech and German, to their menfolk, preserved in a letter collection in the State Archive at Trebon, and of particular interest for the light they shed on the lives of women at the very top of the social scale in late-medieval Bohemia. The translators are Czech specialists. When handling the (unpublished) German letters they make such ignorant and embarrassing mistakes that one feels that the publishers should have involved someone with a knowledge of that language. Letter no. 57 written on "Erichtag [i.e. 'Tuesday'] before Martin's' (10 November) 1472 is interpreted as a reference to the day of a certain St Eric on 26 October. The consummation of Perchta's marriage, which requires that the couple 'eelichen ['in marriage] beieinander gelegen sein', is translated as an 'honourable' [=erlichen] lying together, as if it could be anything else!