Hidden dangers of the medieval ritual of deditio and inglorious end of Přemyslid duke Jaromir

This paper seeks to rethink one well-known event in the medieval history of German-Bohemian relations, i. e. the court assembly in Magdeburg in 1012. The mentioned gathering of nobility held by Henry II., king of Germany, is usually assumed to have sentenced Přemyslid duke Jaromir to custody in Utrecht as a result of his command to slaughter a suspicious Bavarian delegation, travelling through Bohemia to the Piast court. In contrast to the traditional interpretation, it is suggeted to treat Magdeburg incident as a failed or „bad“ ritual of submission and reconciliation (so-called deditio), performed by Jaromir but rejected by Ottonian ruler. Arguments for such an assumption are provided by the conceptual analysis of the chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg as of our main historical source for that period.