Oh, Boii!

Extracted from “Oh, Boii! Bohemia and its cowboys, Bohos, Bobos, Bohoes, and Bonobos” from Melinda Reidinger’s “Regina Dentata” Substack 

When most people hear the term “Bohemian,” their first association is usually individuals or communities with an unconventional lifestyle that disregards conservative norms in work, sexuality, morals, and style, and which may also be associated with promiscuity and the use of mind-altering substances. 

On the other hand, “Bohemians” are also those who dwell in Bohemia: the western part of today’s Czech Republic (i.e., my neighbors).

If geography isn’t your strong suit, here’s a map to refresh your memory of where Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia lie:

Bohemian with a capital ‘B’ refers to the Czechs, while bohemian with a lowercase ‘b’ refers to the artsy types. 

So what does the word “Bohemia” have to do with the Czech lands? 

During the Iron Age, the presence of a Celtic tribe called the Boii has been attested in Central European regions including Cisalpine Gaul (today, northern Italy), Gallia Narbonensis (modern Languedoc and Provence), Pannonia (Austria and Hungary), Bavaria, parts of Slovakia and Poland, and—most famously—Bohemia, the western part of the Czech Republic. 

Perhaps a few adventurous Boii arrived in this territory as early as the 8th century BCE, but the most conservative estimates securely date their presence some four hundred years later. 

Polybius provides the first written attestation of the Boii around 150 BCE. He described their 390 BCE invasion of northern Italy in his Histories (Book 2.17): the cattle-rich Boii were among the Gauls who crossed the Alps to sack Rome. Afterward, they made the Etruscan city of Felsina into their new capital, which they called Bononia (Bologna).

Livy (ca. 59 BCE–17 CE) echoes this account in his History of Rome; Strabo (64 BCE–24 CE) describes the Boii occupying the Hercynian forest. This forest was only hazily defined by military commanders, and was rumored to be home to fantastical beasts as well as wild men.

The Roman historian Tacitus connects the Boii specifically with the Czech basin in his Germania, written in 98 CE. The Boii in today’s Germany established the city of Passau (Boiodurum), and Bavaria (Baiuvarii) is also named after them. 

However, the first writer to transform the ethnonym into a toponym that was pinned to the Czech basin was the historian Velleius Paterculus (c. 19 BCE–c. 31 CE). In his Roman History, written around 30 CE, he combined the Proto-Germanic *heimaz [home] with Boii to coin a new Latin word: Boiohaemum, the home of the Boii.

Cowboii culture

As mentioned above, the Boii were noted for their connection with cattle, and they were also connected with thick forests in Central Europe. Yet cattle do not thrive in woodlands. The connecting factor the Romans most likely overlooked was the use of oak-derived tannins for curing leather.

The tannins were sourced from oak bark and from galls, growths created on the trees’ leaves and branches by parasitic wasps. Ground up and soaked in water, bark and galls yield tannic acid, which can be used to convert hides into leather by tanners. All of these words: tan, tannic, and tanner are probably of Celtic origin, and so, most likely, is gall (in the sense of something growing on a plant).

The Boii were booted around the turn of the era: both Velleius Paterculus and Strabo record that the tribe was expelled from Boiohaemum by Germanic Marcomanni under Maroboduus. The Eastern Boii were defeated by the Dacian king Burebista, with survivors scattering, perhaps to Italy’s Bononia or low-lying territories in today’s Slovakia. Some 500-600 years later, Slavic tribes arrived, and there is no Celtic material record in the interim or later period, and the people living here today speak a Western Slavic language (Czech), and not Gaulish. 

How did “Bohemian” come to mean one who lives a lifestyle unconstrained by authority?

Reason #1: The Hussite Rebellion and the Adamites

Let’s fast-forward to the 14th century: the Bohemian theologian, professor, and academic administrator Jan Hus attempted to reform the Catholic Church about 90 years before Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenburg. Both men’s complaints were similar: Hus opposed the Church’s views on various theological issues; he also wanted the liturgy in the common tongue (Czech) and for communion to be served in “both kinds” (both wine and bread) to all congregants, but mainly he was concerned with ecclesiastical corruption. 

Naturally, the Church was not sympathetic to these critiques, and Pope Alexander V excommunicated him. Hus was summoned from exile by the Council of Constance with a promise of safe conduct, but his trust was violated. He was imprisoned, taken before the council, and ordered to recant. After refusing to do so, Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 for heresy.

This was not, however, the end of Hussitism: after Jan Hus’s execution, his numerous Bohemian and Moravian followers refused to elect another Catholic monarch, and they took up arms. Five papal crusades were sent into Bohemia between 1420 and 1431 in what became known as the Hussite Wars— and the Hussites won a series of stunning victories against them, turning them back and preserving the freedom for Czechs to believe and worship in the new style.

 

While the first Hussites were mainly concerned with theological reforms, over time many Hussites became much more radical. Besides calling for the abolition of well-established Catholic doctrines, such as veneration of saints and transubstantiation (the belief that the communion was actually and not only metaphorically the body and blood of Christ), some also aimed to establish a communal society without statuses of lords and servants, and where all people were equal. (Medievalists.net)

The majority of Bohemians and Moravians remained Hussite until the defeat of Czech-led Protestant forces and their native aristocracy by Catholics at the Battle of White Mountain. This epoch-defining debacle resulted in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown being subordinated to Habsburg rule for 300 years, and the people subjected to a full spectrum of counter-Reformation measures that spread far beyond just the format of worship, and touched nearly every area of life.

While this Bohemian Protestant revolt was ultimately unsuccessful, approximately two centuries of religious nonconformism dealt a powerful blow to the Church’s traditional authority and prestige in the Czech lands and farther afield. This is the first historical instance in which “Bohemians” became synonymous with free-thinkers (which was not considered a virtue by the Church).

However, the regular Hussites were still not the most radical sect in Bohemia. That honor belongs to the Adamite.

The term “Adamite” appears as early as the 2nd century CE: early Christian heresiologists referred to sects that practiced ritual nudity in the belief that it brought them to the prelapsarian innocence enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the incident with the snake and the fruit. The reality of these groups is not well attested, and may have only been theoretical.

Medieval heresiologists picked up the language and the old libels as polemical tools to attack alternative religious groups. Like their predecessors, they accused rivals of nudism in the context of mixed worship groups, and alleged that they indulged in orgies, consorted with witches, and held rites in the presence of Satan. In other words: it was mostly sensationalistic slander. 

The Bohemian Adamites were a spinoff group from the militant Taborite faction of the general Hussite movement. 

They established a commune on an island in the Nežárka river, and it is alleged that they were nudists, danced around fires, rejected marriage in favor of free love (in the belief that the chaste could not enter the Messianic Kingdom), and held all property in common.

The chronicler Lawrence of Březová wrote: 

Wandering through forests and hills, some of them fell into such insanity that men and women threw off their clothes and went nude, saying that clothes had been adopted because of the sin of the first parents, but that they were in a state of innocence. From the same madness they supposed that they were not sinning if one of their brethren had intercourse with one of the sisters, and if the woman conceived, she said she had conceived of the Holy Spirit. (Medievalists.net)

How much truth is contained in these wild allegations is unknown and unknowable, but the existence of the Bohemian Adamites is not in doubt: they were a historically attested faction of the Hussite movement. However, their movement was short-lived: the Hussites’/Taborites’ leader Jan Žižka set his forces upon the Adamites, killing them immediately, or else capturing them and burning them at the stake as heretics. Because a little freedom from dogma and authoritarian control is a good thing, but not too much, and not outside the parameters set by the last set of liberators.

For centuries, non-Czechs considered the land of Bohemia a hotbed of heresy, and “Bohemian” was a synonym for troublesome nonconformists who not only pursued a different way of life, but were willing and able to fight against much better-supplied forces. To this day, Bohemians continue to act in such a way to stay true to themselves and disturb others. 

[Come back to this blog for part two of Oh, Boii! to find out why more people, places, and things were named Bohemian.]

Writer and translator Melinda Reidinger is the author of The White Deer: Ecospirituality & the Mythic, a deeply researched and engaging exploration of science, history, myth, and dream.