Barbara Celjska – Black Queen, mistress of Medvedgrad

Meet Barbara Celjska, the last Roman empress in folklore and legends, better known as the Black Queen. She ruled in the Medvedgrad burg on the small Plaza above Zagreb.

This woman of enticing beauty, mysterious and powerful will lead us through the labyrinth of Croatian and European history, the Middle Ages. In the interweaving of historical facts and legends, hidden and long-forgotten events will be revealed, covered by cobwebs and the mystique of ancient times.

Black Queen 1, 2, 3... legends are the most beautiful parts of history, the legend rests on a grain of truth

Barbara Celjska, (born in 1392, died in Melnik in 1451, buried in Prague in the church of St. Vitus) daughter of the Croatian ban Herman II. of Celje and Countess Anna von Schaunberg.

Barbara Celjska, whose character is shrouded in the veil of secrecy of many legends, is the most famous mistress in this region. A story is woven around her, whose characters are some of the most important actors of European historical events in the 15th century. Europe suffered terrible destruction during the Tatar conquests. The Croatian-Hungarian king Bela IV is rapidly fortifying cities and building new forts.

Only well-fortified cities could resist the invaders

The legends woven around Barbara of Celje or the Black Queen still arouse the imagination and fuel curiosity. From her earliest childhood, her life took place in a cold, merciless environment of the powerful in a constant struggle for feudal possessions, political influence and armed supremacy. She grew up and was brought up in that spirit. Even as a child, she was promised to the unscrupulous Sigismund of Luxembourg, the Croatian-Hungarian king and the future emperor of the Holy Roman and German empires. Her chosen one was unsuccessful in stopping the Ottoman penetration into Europe, but he was also successful in the intrigues and murders of Croatian nobles in the fight to preserve the throne and expand the ruling power.

This world is not a world of giving and caring except in rare oases of family and friendship. This is the world of taking, abducting, rudeness and imposing personal and collective political, religious, "civilizational" concepts with the ill-concealed aim of domination and predation. The conflict of these urges and some lighter impulses within one person is basically the context in which I am writing Barbara Celjska, regardless of the fact that she lived in the late Middle Ages. It is about an exceptional woman who was born, grew up and was brought up in an icy, feudal environment of contemporary luxury and unscrupulous struggle for new possessions, political supremacy and military supremacy.

From her earliest childhood, all Barbara Celjska saw in the people around her was an incurable and insatiable hunger for power, especially in her father and later, in her husband. She herself is "infected" with that virus that condemned her to lifelong conflicts with the powerful from her world. Her complex personality was determined not only by greed and the desire to dominate, but also by conflicting impulses and pressures that heralded the birth of a new Europe. Unusual people and many greats paved the way to a new view of reality... (through the mysticism of Joan of Arc, the printing revolution of Johann Gutenberg, the discovery of perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi...).

The historical context of her time was marked by a situation that led Europe into a religious schism at the beginning of the next century (sudden development of cities, a bourgeois class that wants freedom of movement, freedom of trade, freedom of mind). That time was bursting with Renaissance sparks of immense hunger for knowledge, rediscovery of antiquity, new aesthetic and philosophical paradigms...

In Barbara Celjska, there was a split between the desire to rule and intellectual curiosity, stimulated by new currents... She is credited with practicing magic and alchemy, which in the spirit of religious dogmatism represents a disqualifying label, but knowing that one of the greatest scientists of all time, Isaac Newton, practiced alchemy and through her search for ways to new discoveries for a whole century after Barbara, we can see that brave and free-minded spirits saw magic not as malicious witchcraft ritualism but as freedom and freshness of perception, fearlessness and curiosity of a mind ready to discover new worlds, enraptured by the smell of freedom hinted at by new knowledge.

The story of Barbara Celjska - the Black Queen is a combination of history and legend. Every legend has historical-biographical elements, real historical events on the one hand, and fiction, imagination, legend on the other...

Person: Barbara Celjska, historical person

This story is about a woman in the context of the time in which she lived (the Middle Ages), about her struggle to realize herself as a woman, mother, social and political being. A woman has the right and duty to testify with her life that she believes in the meaning of her role as a bearer and teacher of life, without fear and condemnation from family and society - public branding.

Reverse: Black Queen, legend and myth

Magic is the science of wisdom, the understanding of the deepest laws of nature and spirit. Magic borders on religion, philosophy and mysticism, it is closely related to astrology, so we can say that the Black Queen was ahead of her time. Because of a wrong image, and for the sake of mystifying something, which is shrouded in secrets and misunderstanding, the word magic, and all occult sciences have come into disrepute, behind which is hidden the fear of oneself, since every man has a devil in him, which is universally known proverb.

We invite all travel lovers, collectors of travel memories to the cities and places where Queen Barbara Celjska/ Black Queen lived and ruled.

Od Medvedgrada above Zagreb, Krapine, Samobora, Kalnika, Plitvice Lakes to cities in Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia...

Branding the name (protection in AA) Black Queen aims to achieve, first of all, recognition of the name (protection) but also networking of the city of Zagreb, Croatia with cities in the region and Europe.

Source: The text is a sublimation of excerpts from the book "Black Queen 1,2,3" (Semafor publishing house), and the script for the documentary-animated film "Selected Chapters of Croatian History", chapter: Barbara Celjska Medvedgradska", by Mirjana Novak Perjanec.