The The Martyr of the Baltic: Adalbert of Prague (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798235584365)

The Martyr of the Baltic: Adalbert of Prague

Born into the noble Slavník dynasty of tenth-century Bohemia, Adalbert of Prague lived one of the most consequential and contradictory lives in the history of medieval Europe. Formed by the finest intellectual minds of the Ottonian world at Magdeburg, where he witnessed the philosophical debates of the future Pope Sylvester II, he returned home carrying a vision of Christian civilisation that his world was not yet ready to receive. Twice appointed Bishop of Prague, twice driven out by the structural resistance of a church embedded in the customs of polygamy, clerical marriage, and the slave trade, he retreated to a Roman monastery before finding his true vocation on the missionary frontier. He baptised the future Saint Stephen of Hungary, befriended the Emperor Otto III, and shared with him the grand vision of a Renovatio Imperii, a community of sovereign Christian nations united by a shared faith. In April 997, he walked into the territory of the Baltic Prussians and was killed with seven spear-blows and an axe-stroke, his head mounted on a spike as a warning. His martyrdom achieved what his ministry could not: the ecclesiastical independence of Poland, the Christianisation of Hungary, and the foundation of Central European Christian civilisation. His bones have been disputed between Prague and Gniezno for a millennium. His legacy has never been in dispute at all.