_Churches and Monasteries_
The churches of Prague are, and always have been, very numerous. We read
that at the funeral of King Ottokar, in 1278, the bells of nearly a
hundred churches pealed. The oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Prague
were small round chapels of a Romanesque character, three of which are
still in existence, though they were formerly far more numerous. Many
churches were destroyed during the Hussite Wars, and many were restored,
in deplorably bad taste, during the Catholic re-action that followed the
Battle of the White Mountain. I shall in this chapter refer only to the
most important churches and monasteries, though I may allude to a few
others when writing of walks in and near Prague.
The Cathedral Church of St. Vitus, near the Royal castle of the
Hradcany, deserves first mention. It has already been noted that the
gift of a relic of St. Vitus induced Prince Wenceslas to erect a church
in honour of that saint. This small church, built in the Romanesque
style,[43] was not finished when Wenceslas was cruelly murdered by his
treacherous younger brother Boleslav. When Wenceslas's body was
transported here the church became known as the Church of St. Vitus and
St. Wenceslas, and after the second Bishop of Prague, the martyred
Adalbert, had been also buried here, it was for a time known as 'the
Church of St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas and St. Adalbert.'[44]
[Illustration: VIEW OF STRAHOV]
This first church, which was probably of very modest dimensions, soon
became too small for the pious visitors who wished to venerate there the
relics of Wenceslas and the martyred Bishop of Prague. The church which,
to use the words of Monsignore Lehner, had become 'the metropolitan
church of the whole Bohemian empire'--then extending further than at
almost any other period--remained insufficient even when a smaller
church or chapel adjoining it had been erected. Prince Spytihnev II.,
therefore, resolved to build a larger church on the Hradcany Hill, and,
space being very restricted, he demolished the old building of Wenceslas
to make room for the new church, which, like the previous one, was in
the Romanesque style. The new church was destroyed during the frequent
civic tumults of Prague. Shortly after the foundation of the
Archbishopric of Prague and during the reign of King John, it was
decided to build a new cathedral on the Hradcany Hill. Charles, through
whose influence the impecunious King John had given his consent to the
building, took the greatest interest in it, both during the lifetime of
his father and after he had succeeded him as King. As architect he chose
Matthew of Arras, whom he had met during one of his visits to Avignon.
After some years, the building was continued by Peter Parler and his son
John. The records of the cathedral tell us that in 1418 Master Peter,
generally known as Petrlik, was architect. The great buildings erected
in the Gothic style, which by this time was generally adopted in
Bohemia, progressed very slowly. The Hussite troubles caused a complete
interruption of the work. During the reign of Vladislav II. attempts
were made to continue the building, and it is probably rightly
conjectured that the King entrusted this task also to his favourite
architect, Benes of Loun. The Thirty Years' War again stopped all
endeavours to finish the building of the cathedral, and in the following
century the bombardment by Frederick the Great greatly damaged the
cathedral.
Within recent years patriotic efforts have been made to finish at last
this building, of which every Bohemian, independently of his religious
views and his political opinions, is necessarily proud. A society was
formed for this purpose in 1859, and the restoration and rebuilding has,
it must be admitted, very slowly proceeded ever since that date. The
work was at first entrusted to the architect, Joseph Mocker, who had
very successfully restored the bridge towers and the powder-tower at
Prague. Since his death (in 1899) the work has been entrusted to Mr.
Charles Hilbert. I shall now briefly refer to the cathedral as it now
is, and I may mention, as it is impossible to give here a full account
of the treasures which it contains, that an excellent guide book,
published in German as well as in the language of the country, can be
obtained in the church.
Entering the church, we first see at our left the famous Wenceslas
chapel, the most magnificent of all. We enter it through bronze gates,
on which is a brass ring, to which the saint is said to have clung when
murderously attacked by his brother. The walls of the chapel are inlaid
with Bohemian precious stones; above are curious frescoes of the time of
Charles IV. The chapel also contains a candelabrum with a statue of the
saint, said to be the work of Peter Fischer; a painting of the school of
Lucas Cranach, representing the murder of Wenceslas; and the armour and
helmet of the saint. From this chapel a secret passage leads to the room
where the Bohemian crown jewels are preserved. We next come to the
Martinic chapel, that of St. Simon and Juda, and then that of the
Waldstein family; opposite the last-named chapel is a wood-carving
representing the devastation of the church by Frederick of the
Palatinate, which has already been mentioned in these pages.
Between the Waldstein and the Vlasim chapels is the Royal oratory or
pew, which is connected by a covered passage with the Hradcany Castle.
The oratory was built during the reign of Vladislav II. by Benes of
Loun.
Opposite the Vlasim chapel--built by Ocko of Vlasim, Archbishop of
Prague, who died in 1380--is the shrine of St. John Nepomuk, which
greatly attracts the attention of the visitors to the cathedral, though
it has more barbaric splendour than artistic value. In
[Illustration: ST. VITUS FROM THE 'STAG'S DITCH']
the nave of the church is the monument to the Bohemian kings, erected
under Rudolph's reign by Colin of Malines.
Charles IV. and his four wives, Ladislas, Posthumus, George of Podebrad,
Ferdinand I., Maximilian, as well as Rudolph himself, are buried here.
Next to St. Vitus in importance is the Tyn Church in the market-place of
the old town. It has great historical interest as having been the
stronghold of the Hussite movement during its whole duration, as has
been already mentioned. Waldhauser and Milic, the precursors of Hus,
preached here, and here, also, Archbishop Rokycan delivered his fiery
sermons.
Of the many later preachers at this church, Gallus Cahera deserves
notice. A personal friend of Luther, he strove to transform the ancient
Utraquism of Bohemia into the Lutheranism that was then just beginning
to dawn on the world.
George of Podebrad proceeded to this church with the Bohemian nobles
immediately after they had elected him as their King, and was joyfully
received by Rokycan and the Utraquist clergy.
The Tyn Church was of very modest origin. It was originally a chapel
attached to the building known as the 'Tyn,' which German merchants who
traded with Bohemia erected to exhibit their wares.
The present building, begun in the fourteenth century, was finished in
the fifteenth, during the reign of King George. It has suffered less
from barbarous 'restorers' than most of the Prague churches. The fine
façade built by Podebrad remains, but the statue of that King, which
represented him as pointing upward with his sword to a chalice, of which
he was so valiant a defender, was removed by the Jesuits in 1623 as
being an 'Utraquist emblem.' They, at the same time, caused the two
great bells of the Tyn Church that had been known as 'Hus' and
'Hieronymus' to be removed and recast; but when they had been refounded
and the Jesuits had again placed them in their former position, it was
found, to the great delight of those who still secretly sympathised with
the ancient faith, that the sound was unaltered.[45]
The interior of the church contains some paintings by Skreta, a
handsome--though renovated--pulpit from which Rokycan is said to have
preached, and the tomb of Tycho Brahe.
One of the finest churches in Prague is that of St. Nicholas, on the
Malostranské Námesti, built in the seventeenth century in the style of
the Italian Renaissance.
Of the many monasteries of Prague, I shall first mention the
premonstratension Monastery of Mount Sion or Strahov. It is situated at
the extremity of the Malá Strana, and the name of Strahov is derived
from the Bohemian word 'straz,' guard, as a guard was formerly
established here to secure the safety of travellers arriving at Prague
by the Strahov gate.
The monastery was founded in 1142 by Bishop Zdik of Olmütz, during the
reign of King Vladislav I. The first building was of very modest
dimensions, and both the monastery and the church that belongs to it
were rebuilt several times before the present structure was erected by
Italian architects at the end of the seventeenth century. Considerable
changes have also recently been made in the monastery. The church
belonging to the monastery contains the tomb of Pappenheim, the great
general of the Thirty Years' War, and other monuments. A very handsome
railing divides the choir from the rest of the church.
In the small picture gallery is the much-repainted
[Illustration: THE TYN CHURCH]
Madonna by Albrecht Dürer, that once belonged to Rudolph, and a good
Tiepolo. But the most interesting part of the building is the library.
It occupies several halls, in one of which are the very handsome
bookshelves that were brought here from the suppressed Monastery of
Klosterbruck. In one hall we see over the doors small shelves with wire
grating, in which the books condemned by the Index, but which the monks
read by special permission, were formerly contained. The library is very
rich in Oriental MSS., incunables and early printed Bibles; among these
is the priceless Utraquist Bohemian Bible, printed at Venice, the first
edition of the celebrated Bible of Kralice, and a rare copy of the
_Biblia Pollyglotta Briani Waltoni_ in Latin, Hebrew, Samaritan, Greek,
Chaldæan, Syrian, Arabic, Æthiopian and Persian. Though printed in
London in 1657, it is dedicated to King Charles II. The view from the
gardens of the Strahov Monastery is one of the finest in Prague.
On the left bank of the river also is the Capuchin Monastery on the
Loretto Place and the church dedicated to St. Mary, which adjoins it.
The buildings occupy the spot where the town residences of several
Protestant nobles stood who were exiled after the Battle of the White
Mountain. Princess Catherine of Lobkovic purchased the ground in 1625
and built here a chapel in imitation of the Santo Casa, and a
treasury[46] which is the most valuable in Bohemia, and is far more
interesting than the better known treasury of St. Vitus's Cathedral. It
consists mainly of donations of the seventeenth century, and most of the
contents are in the rococo style.
'The treasury was first founded by Catherine of Lobkovic, and was
enriched by gifts of members of almost all the great Bohemian families.
A crucifix, the gift of Cardinal Harrach, and a monstrance--said to
contain 6580 diamonds--a foundation of Countess Kolovrat, are amongst
the most interesting objects. The treasury contains also a very fine
picture of the Madonna and Child, attributed in the catalogue to
Albrecht Dürer, and said to have formed part of Rudolph collection.[47]
It is more probably a work of Adrian of Utrecht.'
The monastery was founded somewhat later, and the Church of St. Mary was
built in 1661, and greatly enlarged by Countess Margaret of Waldstein in
1718.
On the right bank of the Vltava in the Vysehrad Street is the Emaus
Monastery and Church of the Benedictines. It was founded in 1347 by
Charles IV. to take the place of the ancient Slavic monastery of St.
Prokop on the Sazava,[48] where the Greek or Slavic ritual, which in
Bohemia is more ancient than that of Rome, had been used. Charles had
obtained the consent of Pope Clement VI. for his new foundation
principally by stating that there were in Bohemia many dissidents and
unbelieving men who, when the Gospel was expounded and preached to them
in Latin, did not heed it, but who might be guided to the Christian
faith by men of their own race. This foundation, as Palacky tells us,
was, next to the University, the one that interested King Charles most.
On his summons many Slavic monks from Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia
assembled in the new monastery. Charles obtained for them the right of
using the Slavonic language for their ecclesiastical functions, and
employing the Cyrillic alphabet. The monastery possessed a valuable
collection of MSS.
[Illustration: THE LIBRARY, STRAHOV]
that has been long dispersed. Its greatest treasure was an ancient
Slavic MS. containing the evangel, which had once belonged to St.
Prokop, the first abbot of the Sazava Monastery, and was traditionally
reported to have been written by him. This valuable MS. was brought to
France and--by one of history's little ironies--became the _texte du
sacre_ used at the coronations of the Kings of France.[49]
During the Hussite Wars the church and monastery were in the hands of
the Utraquists, but it was restored to the Roman Catholics towards the
end of the sixteenth century. We read that in 1592 riots near this
church occurred, because the abbot had allowed his labourers to work on
the 6th of July, which was then still a day sacred to the memory of John
Hus.
The monastery still shows some traces of its antiquity. It contains two
pictures that date from the time of Charles, and a Royal chapel, divided
by a railing from the rest of the church. Over the entrance of the
chapel is a portrait of Ferdinand III., who presented the monastery to
the Benedictines of Mont Serrat. In the cloisters are some frescoes that
also date from the time of Charles IV. Emaus was purchased in 1880 by
German Benedictines, who have restored it with much care and good taste.
[Illustration: MOST ANCIENT ARMS OF THE MALÁ STRANA]