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The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2012, No. 2 (3), Readings of the Past

Przemysław Pazik
A Tale about the Suicide of a Knight from Chapter 26, Book III of the Polish Chronicle of Master Vincent

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Keywords: suicide, treason, kingship, knighthood, Judas

Abstract:
This paper analyses the 26th chapter of the III book of Magister Vincentius’s Chronica Polonorum which tells the story of the Bolesław Krzywousty (Wrymouth) campaign to Hungary in 1132. The culmination point of Vincentius account is the scene in which the prince Bolesław is first, betrayed by his knight, and then saved by the simple peasant. The scene is complemented by a description of the honours the peasant received and the terrible death of the traitor who was forced to commit suicide in his private chapel. This narration draws attention, first of all, because it was not usual for the chronicler – as it was pointed out by Alexander Murray - to write about suicide. Secondly because the act was triggered by a triple gift of yarn, spindle and spinning wheel. Inspired by Roland Barthes’s model of structural analysis of the narrative, this article aims to identify, why the author of the chronicle decided to include this scene and to reconstruct the possible justification for such shocking figure to appear in the medieval text. With reference to two other accounts – the 155th chapter of the Great Poland Chronicle and Cosmas’s Chronica Bohemorum I, 13 – a link between the treason, kingship, suicide and the evangelical and apocryphical figure of Judas - the suicide can be established. The study of the Vincentius’s suicide scene is a case in point of how the biblical image provided medieval chroniclers with a semantic framework to understand the historical process.

About Author:
PAZIK PRZEMYSŁAW - student at the College of Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities at the University of Warsaw.

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