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| Dragomira, Saint |
The warrior nun of Bosnia and patroness of edged weapons [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 18, 26]. Converted from paganism by the Fidgettine missionary Anfractua....She was clubbed to death by her pagan brother Bogeslaw. The Prayer Against Enemies is attributed to her. Member of the Order of Faithful Fidgettines (O.F.F.).
Bellairs probably found the name appropriate because of the 'dragon' echo, says Bowen. "I don't think he made up the name; many Slavic names have 'drag-' in them though I don't know the meaning. Other names end in 'mir' which means 'peace,' at least in Russian. No Dragomir in my encyclopedia, but again I bet the history of the South Slavs contains a few of them."
Myers points out that the drawing of Dragomira was obviously heavily influenced by Sergei Eisenstein's famous movie Alexander Nevsky. "Prokofiev's great cantata drawn from his score for the film was a favorite of Bellairs and mine both."
Definition of anfractuous: full of windings and intricate turnings; tortuous.
Bowen wonders if Bellairs was thinking of a play on fractious ("inclined to make trouble; peevish"), "which might be a good satirical name for a missionary."
Bowen also believes there were real Bogeslavs. "The name ought to be 'Bogeslav' in the Balkans (the -w is Polish spelling), but the meaning is something like 'God's word.' The root of the Slavs' name for themselves means "speech;" "in other words, they called themselves 'the people who can talk.' Such ethnocentrism is common in history, of course. Witness the origin of the Greek word that gave us 'barbarian'-- 'barbar' was an imitation of the meaningless babble that the original Greeks conceived all foreign languages to be. Americans do the same thing: 'I don't know what the hell he was trying to say - it was just a bunch of foreign jibber-jabber.'"
There seems to be a bit of historical similarity between the story of Dragomira and the family of Wenceslaus, the Duke of Bohemia. First, Dragomira's name echoes that of Wenceslas' mother, Drahomíra. Second, and more noteworthy, both saints were murdered by their brothers – Dragomira by Bogeslaw and Wenceslaus by Boleslav. Good King Wenceslas is remembered as one of the patron saints of the Czech Republic and the subject of the Christmas carol that bears his name.
This would not be Bellairs's first foray into the murky historical records of Central Europe (also see Nepomuk Prynne). |
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| Saint Dragomira. |
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