WHAT’S IN A NAME?

REDEMPTORISTS THIS YE AR 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 18 th 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. 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

some French. He would spend the middle 20 years in Warsaw ministering in both German and Polish. GROWING UP IN POVERTY Maria was expecting her twelfth child when Paul Hofbauer died relatively young and Maria was left to care for the children. She was a woman of deep faith, and the day her husband died, she brought the seven-yearold Clement to look at the crucifix hanging in the family living room. She explained in simple words what dying meant, and then added “Son, from now on, this is your father, be careful to follow the paths that please him.“ He never forgot those words. Today in his native village of Tasovice, a stone cross inscribed with these words stands on what was once part of the Hofbauer farm.

If family life had been relatively comfortable when Paul ran his own business, the situation changed dramatically on his death. The three eldest were teenagers but all the children learned the lesson of hard work. Clement, who served Mass and felt an early call to the priesthood, attended class in the village school. The local pastor offered to help him learn Latin, but that was cut short by the priest’s death. It is said that young Clement Hofbauer heard some neighbours talk about ‘killing time'. This was a new phrase for the boy and he asked what it meant. Even when it was explained to him, it still puzzled him. “If people have nothing to do,” he said, “they should pray at least!” The next few years took their toll on the Hofbauer family. Apart from his father, seven siblings died, leaving three brothers and a sister, all of whom had already married and left home. Clement was left in a rented apartment with his mother but by his 14 th birthday, the time had come to find him an apprenticeship. BAKER AND STUDENT Clement found an apprenticeship to a baker called Franz Dobsch in the town of Znaim, a little more than five miles from Tasovice. Apart from his father, seven siblings died, leaving three brothers and a sister, all of whom had already married and left home

The family were kind to him and towards the end of his apprenticeship, he found work as a journeyman baker in the Premonstratensian monastery of Klosterbruck, just outside the town. Klosterbruck was a medieval foundation, dating back 600 years. Like many of the great abbeys of the Canons Regular, it was a wealthy foundation and it owned extensive land, including the area around Clement’s native village. It also ran a school for boys.

Aware of Clement’s secret ambition to become a priest, the abbot rearranged his working hours in order to leave more time for study, In many ways Klosterbruck was an ideal place. The solemn sung office and Mass of the canons gave him an ideal experience of sung worship which he would later reproduce at a more popular level in his first small church in Warsaw.

He managed to complete the four-year programme at the abbey school. If he were to begin the professional studies of philosophy and theology needed for the priesthood, he would have to look elsewhere as the abbey did not provide these. Money was of course a problem: his job in the abbey had covered bed and board, but there was little left that would enable him to begin studies in one of the centres of theological learning either in Moravia or further afield.

He was by now in his mid-20s. The next ten years or so of Clement’s life are relatively difficult to entangle. Still driven by a sense that he was called by God but with few means to put the call into practice, this decade will be marked by two contrasting calls. The first is to the life of a hermit, and the second is to the wandering life of a pilgrim. We shall look at Clement, pilgrim and hermit, in our next article.

The road leading into the tiny village of Tasovice, the Czech Republic. Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR is editor of Reality. He has published The Redemptorists in Ireland (1851 – 2011), St Gerard Majella: Rediscovering a Saint and histories of Redemptorist foundations in Clonard, Limerick and Clapham, London.