IN THE F OOTSTEPS OF CLE M E N T
WHAT’S IN A NAME? REDEMPTORISTS THIS YEAR WILL BE CELEBRATING THE SECOND CENTENARY OF THE DEATH OF ST CLEMENT HOFBAUER, THE CZECH-BORN BAKER’S APPRENTICE WHO BROUGHT THE REDEMPTORISTS NORTH OF THE ALPS. HE EXERCISED HIS APOSTOLATE IN WARSAW AND VIENNA AT A TIME WHEN EUROPE WAS FALLING APART IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC WARS. BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR
He
was known as Jan Dvořák . When he died, he was known to friends and critics alike as Clement Hofbauer. It was by that name he was canonised, and is today honoured as the great propagator, and second founder of the Redemptorist congregation and the patron of the city of Vienna. The story of the change of name is virtually a summary of Clement’s life and his world. BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD Jan Dvořák was born on St Stephen’s Day, 1751. He was the ninth of twelve children of Maria Steer and Pavel Dvořák in the small town of Tasovice. Maria was of relatively wealthy family. Her father was the local judge
who had a profitable sideline as the village butcher. Pavel Dvořák had arrived in the town some 20 years before and had begun to replace his native Slavic language with the local German dialect. Tasovice today is virtually perched on the border separating the Czech Republic from Austria. This border was at one time the 'Iron Curtain' that physically separated the countries of Russian-controlled Eastern Europe from the West. In the 18th century, Tasovice belonged to the dukedom known as Moravia and it formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, a vast territory that covered much of present-day Germany and Austria and stretched into Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
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Despite its small size, Tasovice was a region of mixed language. It was probably for family reasons that Pavel began to call himself Paul Hofbauer. Dvořák is the fourth most common Czech name. It means something like a house with a courtyard; Hofbauer means much the same in German. His son, Jan Dvořák, became Johannes (Hans) Hofbauer. His choice of another first name, Clement, belongs to a later period in his life, but for the sake of continuity, we shall call him Clement from now on. Young Hofbauer would spend much of his life moving from one language to another. In addition to his native dialects of Czech and Moravian German, he picked up some Italian on his travels and apparently also
