Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (28 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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On March 20, 1393, another meeting of the king and the archbishop, and their retinues, was scheduled for further discussion at the monastery of the Knights of St. John, in the Minor Town, but the king, who had begun to drink early that day, was in no mood for prolonged negotiations. He screamed at the archbishop and his officials, including the vicar, Johann
of Pomuk, and two officials named Nicholas Puchnfk and Václav Knobloch, and commanded the royal guards to arrest all four. In the sudden confusion, the archbishop escaped (he may have been saved by his own men or by reluctant soldiers of the king), and the three remaining prisoners were first dragged up to the cathedral close, where the furious king demanded to hear more about the archbishop’s intentions, and later marched down from Hrad
any to the Old Town, to the town judge’s prison at the corner of Rytí
ská Street and the M
stek. The king may have hoped that his men would arrest the archbishop (all Vltava ships were checked); when evening came he called for the hangman and had the three prisoners put on the rack. Ultimately, the hangman applied a burning torch to the men, especially their hips and sides, and the king, it is said, took the torch from his hand to continue the torture. Then suddenly he became aware of what he was doing, relented, and gave the order to free the prisoners; a public notary was called, and Nicholas Puchník and Václav Knobloch had to sign a promise that they would never talk about their experience. But it was too late for middle-aged Johann of Pomuk; he expired while being taken from the rack, and his corpse was carried by the hangman and his assistants through the dark Old Town and thrown from the stone bridge into the Vltava River, at about nine in the evening. The heavens remained silent, Vít Vlnas quietly remarks in his recent and finely researched story of Johann of Pomuk and his later cult, and the corpse of the tortured vicar-general was found in the river a few weeks later.
of Pomuk, and two officials named Nicholas Puchnfk and Václav Knobloch, and commanded the royal guards to arrest all four. In the sudden confusion, the archbishop escaped (he may have been saved by his own men or by reluctant soldiers of the king), and the three remaining prisoners were first dragged up to the cathedral close, where the furious king demanded to hear more about the archbishop’s intentions, and later marched down from Hrad
any to the Old Town, to the town judge’s prison at the corner of Rytíská Street and the Mstek. The king may have hoped that his men would arrest the archbishop (all Vltava ships were checked); when evening came he called for the hangman and had the three prisoners put on the rack. Ultimately, the hangman applied a burning torch to the men, especially their hips and sides, and the king, it is said, took the torch from his hand to continue the torture. Then suddenly he became aware of what he was doing, relented, and gave the order to free the prisoners; a public notary was called, and Nicholas Puchník and Václav Knobloch had to sign a promise that they would never talk about their experience. But it was too late for middle-aged Johann of Pomuk; he expired while being taken from the rack, and his corpse was carried by the hangman and his assistants through the dark Old Town and thrown from the stone bridge into the Vltava River, at about nine in the evening. The heavens remained silent, Vít Vlnas quietly remarks in his recent and finely researched story of Johann of Pomuk and his later cult, and the corpse of the tortured vicar-general was found in the river a few weeks later.Many stories were told over the centuries about the enraged king and the archbishop’s lawyer, especially during the age of the Baroque when the long process of sanctification was going on. Johann of Pomuk was certainly not Queen Sophia’s friendly confessor, as was suggested in 1471 by Jan Žídek, a Catholic writer of Jewish origin; it was not his wife’s bedroom secrets that King Václav IV wanted to know, but the archbishop’s political plans. Johann of Pomuk was tortured and died silently, a martyr of loyalty to his legal office, not to the holy vows of a priest hearing a woman’s confession. There is nothing Baroque about his life. Johann of Pomuk was of German origin (his father, Wölfflin, was in the service of the Cistercian monastery of Pomuk, in southwestern Bohemia), and after studying in Prague and Bologna, where he was elected rector and received his doctorate in 1387, he was well qualified as a legal expert and “imperial notary”; he wrote in a wonderfully calligraphic hand. Steadily acquiring benefices and advancements, he held a minor post at Prague Cathedral, was appointed parish priest of St. Gallus, in the Old
Town, the richest and most conservative congregation of the Prague German patriciate, and later, by exchange of benefices, became canon at the Vyšehrad. By 1389, he was vicar-general in the archbishop’s office, responsible for all financial and legal matters, and was also involved in supervising the mores of the Prague clergy and investigating preachers accused of heresy and their local supporters and friends. He was, to judge from his benefices and a comfortable piece of Prague real estate which he acquired, not a man of high spiritual intensity, as the archbishop was, but an erudite and loyal lawyer who went about his daily business quietly and punctiliously. He was killed at a moment when the king could not lay hands on the archbishop himself, who escaped to one of his castles most distant from Prague. Jan of Jenštejn, that melancholy and elusive archbishop, may have been (almost) destined to suffer the fate of Thomas à Becket, but it was Johann of Pomuk who died in his stead.
Town, the richest and most conservative congregation of the Prague German patriciate, and later, by exchange of benefices, became canon at the Vyšehrad. By 1389, he was vicar-general in the archbishop’s office, responsible for all financial and legal matters, and was also involved in supervising the mores of the Prague clergy and investigating preachers accused of heresy and their local supporters and friends. He was, to judge from his benefices and a comfortable piece of Prague real estate which he acquired, not a man of high spiritual intensity, as the archbishop was, but an erudite and loyal lawyer who went about his daily business quietly and punctiliously. He was killed at a moment when the king could not lay hands on the archbishop himself, who escaped to one of his castles most distant from Prague. Jan of Jenštejn, that melancholy and elusive archbishop, may have been (almost) destined to suffer the fate of Thomas à Becket, but it was Johann of Pomuk who died in his stead.
Václav IV was not fond of Hrad
any Castle, where his father had resided, and construction of a new residence went on at a slow pace. In 1383 Václav IV shifted his residence to the King’s Court, a fortified place at the Old Town near the walls, and had two gates opened through the fortifications for easier access to the New Town. The kings of Bohemia were to reside there for a hundred years; Vladislav II, of the Polish Jagiello dynasty, in 1475 asked the Czech architect Mat
j Rejsek to build an adjacent New Tower (now called Prašná Brána, or Powder Tower) for reasons of security before deciding eight years later to move back up to Hrad
any to be better able to defend the royal residence. The King’s Court later became an army barracks and then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, gave way to a mansion for the Prague municipality (Representa
ní d
m, or “Repre” for short), built in a graceful Art Nouveau style. Václav IV also disliked his father’s ornate Karlštejn and, declaring his independence, built himself a hunting castle at To
ník; he did not do much, if anything, to support new architecture or contemporary painters who, perhaps on the archbishop’s insistence, excelled in creating late Gothic Madonnas in the “beautiful style.”
any Castle, where his father had resided, and construction of a new residence went on at a slow pace. In 1383 Václav IV shifted his residence to the King’s Court, a fortified place at the Old Town near the walls, and had two gates opened through the fortifications for easier access to the New Town. The kings of Bohemia were to reside there for a hundred years; Vladislav II, of the Polish Jagiello dynasty, in 1475 asked the Czech architect Matj Rejsek to build an adjacent New Tower (now called Prašná Brána, or Powder Tower) for reasons of security before deciding eight years later to move back up to Hradany to be better able to defend the royal residence. The King’s Court later became an army barracks and then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, gave way to a mansion for the Prague municipality (Representaní dm, or “Repre” for short), built in a graceful Art Nouveau style. Václav IV also disliked his father’s ornate Karlštejn and, declaring his independence, built himself a hunting castle at Toník; he did not do much, if anything, to support new architecture or contemporary painters who, perhaps on the archbishop’s insistence, excelled in creating late Gothic Madonnas in the “beautiful style.”During the reign of King Václav IV, the question of Czech or German predominance in the Old Town, the most important urban corporation among the towns of Bohemia, for the first time makes political sense—if romantic, or rather metaphysical, notions of nationalities are avoided. We
have to accept the limitations of a sober historical analysis based on the count of Czech- or German-sounding names in public documents and also allow for the assumption that many Prague inhabitants then would have found it hard to say whether they considered themselves Czech or German in the modern sense. Over the course of the fourteenth century, the Old Town German patricians tended slowly to disappear from the scene, though it would be wrong to say that poor Czech artisans immediately took their place. The Czech scholar Jaroslav Mezník, who has calculated population changes from lists of taxes and real estate ownership, has shown that of twenty-eight families highly visible in 1325 only four were left a century later. The newcomers were not necessarily Czech; among craftsmen and artisans, those working with metal and wood, furriers, glove and saddle makers were usually German, clothes cutters and purveyors of food mostly Czech.
have to accept the limitations of a sober historical analysis based on the count of Czech- or German-sounding names in public documents and also allow for the assumption that many Prague inhabitants then would have found it hard to say whether they considered themselves Czech or German in the modern sense. Over the course of the fourteenth century, the Old Town German patricians tended slowly to disappear from the scene, though it would be wrong to say that poor Czech artisans immediately took their place. The Czech scholar Jaroslav Mezník, who has calculated population changes from lists of taxes and real estate ownership, has shown that of twenty-eight families highly visible in 1325 only four were left a century later. The newcomers were not necessarily Czech; among craftsmen and artisans, those working with metal and wood, furriers, glove and saddle makers were usually German, clothes cutters and purveyors of food mostly Czech.
On the eve of the Hussite revolution, national clusters distinctly appear on a map of the Old Town: Germans are solidly concentrated around the Old Town Square and the St. Gallus parish and radiate in entire blocks of housing to Celetná Street and to the east and northeast. In a few adjacent quarters, Germans and Czechs are still in balance. Czechs are strongly, if not absolutely, predominant toward the periphery—in the northwest, close to the Jewish Town, and in the southwest, where friends of religious reform resided.
Many reasons have been advanced for the withering away of Prague’s medieval German patriciate, and the least melodramatic may be closest to the historical circumstances. In business, the old families avoided spectacular risks and preferred stable returns; they began to buy property in the countryside and became landowners, joining the (mostly Czech) rural gentry; or, because of their learning and experience, they were appointed to high positions at the royal or imperial court and were gradually absorbed into the bureaucracy. In their stead, other German families, from Nuremberg and elsewhere, came to Prague, attracted by its commercial opportunities (perhaps more tempting under Charles IV than under his erratic son). Of course, town councils were shaped by the king, who held the undisputed power of appointment; it is possible that Charles strengthened the Czech element when, in 1350, he briefly appointed a majority of guild representatives to the Old Town council (he soon restored the patriciate to power, however) or when, in 1367, he tried to unite the Old with the New Town, in which the Czech element was traditionally very strong. In January 1408 the king appointed, for the first time, an Old Town council with a distinct Czech majority; a year later the
predominance of the Bohemian “nation” was decreed at the university; but within five years Germans were prevailing again, which they continued to do until the Hussites profoundly changed all Prague life—religious, social, and national.
predominance of the Bohemian “nation” was decreed at the university; but within five years Germans were prevailing again, which they continued to do until the Hussites profoundly changed all Prague life—religious, social, and national.
Among Prague intellectuals and burghers who longed for a reform of the church, Czech interests, as distinct from the universalist and transnational Caroline ideas, came increasingly to life, but the language of reform changed to the Czech vernacular slowly (even Jan Hus, who preached in Czech, wrote his notes in Latin). After the death of Mili
of Krom
íž and the closing of his New Jerusalem, which had brought together repentant women and socially committed young priests and preachers, the reform movement went into organizational decline, for it lacked a firm local center in Prague. Its ideas and claims, however, were strengthened and refined by two thoughtful men, the learned Mat
j of Janov and the solitary Tomáš of Štítný.
of Kromíž and the closing of his New Jerusalem, which had brought together repentant women and socially committed young priests and preachers, the reform movement went into organizational decline, for it lacked a firm local center in Prague. Its ideas and claims, however, were strengthened and refined by two thoughtful men, the learned Matj of Janov and the solitary Tomáš of Štítný.Other books
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