Píseň písní v mariánské úctě českého baroka
The Song of Songs in Czech Baroque Marian veneration

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with the reception of the Song of Songs in Czech Baroque literature, particularly in works associated with Marian pilgrimage sites. The introductory chapter is a brief summary of the three main lines of canticle exegesis; for the subject of this study the most important allegorical exposition of the figures of the bridegroom and the bride from the Song of Songs is as God and Mary. The flourishing of canticle expositions and the influence of this book of the Bible on national literatures may be documented in particular in the 12th century within the Bohemical environment and then two centuries later, and the reception of the Song of Songs peaks again in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Song of Songs was quoted by preachers at this time, and we find its verses in the names of pilgrimage guidebooks and the like. The main part of this study consists of an analysis of three works that are paraphrases of this book of the Bible or that perform substantial work on it in a different manner. The anonymous Marian song Pojďte, chvalte, ó, křesťané (Come, Praise, Oh Christians) turns the verses of the Song into the text of a collective pilgrimage song, in which elements of high literature combine with those of simple folk song. Jan Ignác Dlouhoveský quotes substantially from the Song in his pilgrimage books on the Stará Boleslav Virgin Mary, often interpreting it very unconventionally and using it to create a Marian love lyric of a courtly nature. The third work, a pilgrim’s meditative book Vera effigies by Daniel Doležal, uses the Song of Songs as a primary compositional element. This work, dedicated to the St James Pietà, is particularly notable for its application of principles of modern-period poetics (visualization and emblematics). These examples illustrate a not too well-known aspect of Baroque Marian piety and document the confrontation between fashionable poetic principles and the medieval exegetic and literary tradition.

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