Ako rozumieť slovenskej interpretácii kráľa Svätopluka v súčasnosti: Niekoľko poznámok na okraj chápania svätoplukovskej tematiky v slovenskej historiografii
(How to Understand the Slovak Interpretation of King Svätopluk at the Present: Some Notes on the Margin of Understanding the Subject Svätopluk in Slovak Historiography)
Martin Homza
Download PDFHOMZA, Martin. How to Understand the Slovak Interpretation of King Svätopluk at the Present: Some Notes on the Margin of Understanding the Subject of Svätopluk in Slovak Historiography. In Historický zborník, Vol. 33, 2023, No. 1, pp. 13 – 23.
Abstract: According to the words of the historian Matúš Kučera, the tradition of Svätopluk is the only continuous historical tradition of Slovaks lasting from the Middle Ages to the present. The development of the understanding of this issue in Slovak historiography also corresponds with this idea. Many questions were raised about the placement of the King Svätopluk statue at Bratislava Castle, especially about the inscription that this statue should bear. The author is inclined to believe that it should be the inscription SVENTIBALDUS GRATIA DEI REX SCLAVORUM, derived from a letter of Pope Stephen V to the King of the Slavs, Svätopluk, from 885. He explains the reasons that led him to this conclusion. The starting point was an earlier article by Quido Matejko on the political thinking of Slovaks in the Middle Ages and his reflections on the clash of various particularisms at the beginning of our history with the two main tendencies in Europe of that time – both Roman (papal) and Imperatorial (imperial) universalism. He concludes that Svätopluk was the first to find a compromise between belonging to the sphere of the Latin Occident and the derivation of his legal identity not from the empire, but from the papacy.
Keywords: Svätopluk; king; Latin Christian universe; universalism; particularism; Gesta regum Sclavorum; papacy; empire.