(b ?Libice, Bohemia, c956; d nr Danzig [now Gdańsk], 23 April 997). Czech bishop, missionary, martyr and saint. He belonged to the powerful Slavník family and was baptized Vojtěch, taking the name Adalbert at his confirmation. Educated at Magdeburg, he was consecrated Bishop of Prague in 983. Owing to opposition he twice resigned the see and travelled to Rome, returning each time to Prague. In Italy he became a Benedictine (989) and visited Monte Cassino; he founded the first Benedictine houses in Bohemia (Břevnov, 993) and Poland (Międzyrzecz, c996), and visited Hungary as a missionary. He was canonized in 999 and venerated particularly in Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and Prussia; for a list of Offices, hymns and sequences connected with his cult, see Morawski.
The early biographies (ed. in MGH Scriptores, iv, 1841/R, pp.574-620; xv/2, 1888/R, pp.705-8, 1177) offer no conclusive evidence that Adalbert was a musician. He has been credited, nevertheless, with the earliest vernacular religious songs of both Bohemia (Hospodine, pomiluj ny) and Poland (Bogurodzica). Both songs are invocations ending with ‘Kyrie eleison’ or an equivalent and were sung at state occasions in the late Middle Ages; the ascriptions are, however, doubtful.
An Exposicio cantici sancti Adalberti (CZ-Pu III D 17, dated 1397) by a monk of Břevnov, often but uncertainly attributed to John of Holešov, contains the earliest surviving version of the melody of Hospodine, pomiluj ny, claimed to be more authentic than other surviving versions and ascribed to Adalbert, the founder. The text also survives in a version of 1380, and the song may be meant in a 13th-century reference to a ‘hymnus a sancto Adalberto editus’. In the 17th century the song was used within public devotions by Czech ‘literati’ brotherhoods (see Cantional, §I); Bolelucký in 1668 defended its use and Adalbert’s cult, as he did the Catholic orthodoxy of the brotherhoods, and printed the 1397 treatise (including the original melody) as well as the early biographies.
The earliest known version of Bogurodzica dates from 1407; its text contains Bohemian expressions but resembles other early Polish vernacular material in this respect. Feicht has suggested that the melody dates from the 13th century. It was ascribed to Adalbert by the 16th century. Bolelucký, who repeated the ascription, provided a source for Gerbert, on whom Sowiński drew to project Adalbert as the first Polish composer; Sowiński also composed a patriotic oratorio in Paris, Saint-Adalbert martyr (?1847), in which the Bogurodzica melody and text feature prominently.
MGG1 (J. Morawski)
M.B. Bolelucký: Rosa boëmica sive vita sancti Woytiechi agnomine Adalberti (Prague, 1668), esp. the pars altera
M. Gerbert: De cantu et musica sacra (St Blasien, 1774), i, 348–9
A. Sowiński: Les musiciens polonais et slaves anciens et modernes (Paris, 1857/R)
H.G. Voigt: Adalbert von Prag (Berlin, 1898)
Z. Nejedlý: Dějiny husitského zpěvu, i: Zpěv předhusitský [A history of Hussite song: Pre-Hussite song] (Prague, 1954), 42, 45, 312, 319ff
M. Uhlirz: Die älteste Lebensbeschreibung des heiligen Adalbert (Göttingen, 1957)
H. Feicht: ‘Polskie średniowiecze’ [The Polish Middle Ages], Z polskiej kultury muzycznej, i: Kultura starapolska [From the history of Polish musical culture: Early Polish culture], ed. Z. Szweykowski (Kraków, 1958), 39, 144
J. Karwasińska, ed.: Les trois rédactions de ‘Vita I’ de S. Adalbert (Rome, 1960)
O. Králík: Filiace vojtěšských legend [The filiation of the Adalbert legends] (Prague, 1971)
GEOFFREY CHEW