186 Marco Mostcrt regions of East Central Europe 44 Yet, with the exception of the Slovaks, there seem to be enough texts to make a comparative study possible. There seem to be indeed East Central European perspectives worth taking seriously. f 44 Cf. the excellent summaries in: Wattenbach-Levison. Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter. Vorzeit und Karolinger. IV. Heft. ed. H. Löwe (Weimar. 1963). pp. 470-480 (Moravia); W. Wattenbach and R. Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter. Die Zeit der Sachsen und Salier. 1. ed. F.-J. Schmale (Darmstadt. 1967). pp. 46-52 (on the Lives of St. Adalbert of Prague), pp. 321-322. 338 (Bohemia); ibid.. 2. ed. F.-J. Schmale (Darmstadt. 1967). pp. 798 ff. (Bohemia). 810 ff. (Poland). 815 IT. (Hungary); ibid.. 3. ed. F.-J. Schmale (Weimar. 1971). pp. 18*-21* (-Nachträge’ on die Lives of St. Adalbert of Parague). 214* ff. (Bohemia). 225* ff. (Poland). 232* ff. (Hungary). For Polish hagiography see also Hagiografia polska. Early Christianity in Central and East Europe, ed. P. Urbańczyk Warsaw 1997, 187-202 THE ROLE OF SAINT LUDMILA, DOUBRAVKA, SAINT OLGA AND ADELAIDE IN THE CONVERSIONS OF THEIR COUNTRIES (The Problem of Mulieres Suadentes, Persuading Women) Martin Homza1 What we are going to deal with in this article is a specific phenomenon of the female gender which can be described as the psychological ability women have to influence their male partners in spiritual matters. In our opinion, this particular phenomenon is very likely to have played a crucial role in the conversion of Bohemia, Poland, Rus’ and Hungaiy to Christianity. This is best reflected in the stories of four Princesses who lived in these countries in the tenth century and who persuaded their husbands, sons, and eventually their whole community about the necessity of accepting a new religion. The first of them was Saint Ludmila. She was the wife of Boŕivoj, Prince of Bohemia and the first nominally known Christian ruler. She is supposed to have been baptized together with him becoming one of the first Christians in Bohemia. After the death of her husband, sometime before 890, it was her who, according to later hagiographie sources, played the most significant role in the conversion and development of Christianity in Bohemia at the beginning of the tenth century. In 965, Princess Doubravka, the daughter of Ludmilas grand- son Boleslav I., married Mieszko I, Prince of Poland. Before this could happen, he had to accept Christianity. Almost at the same time, Olga, the Princess of Rus (who was eventually to become a Saint), accepted baptism from the hands of Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII. In spite of the fact that her son Svjatoslav never accepted the new belief, it was again her example which was so decisive in Rus official conversion to Christianity by her grandson Vladimir in 988. According to the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle , the same happened in Hungaiy sometime in the seventies of the tenth centuiy. Adelaide, the sister of Mieszko I, married Gejza, Grandduke of Hungaiy, and persuaded him to accept baptism. That is how Hungaiy was Christianized. Was it a coincidence that these women played almost the same role in their countries or this has to be seen as a sophisticated plan of later hagiographers who wanted to give the 1 Komenský University, Bratislava