Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (41 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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Hussite Prague was a modern laboratory of religious and social ideas and attitudes, as T. G. Masaryk suggested, and a grand theater of European history, like Paris in the 1780s or Petrograd in the 1920s. There were heroes and cowards, barons and radical poor, pious women and men fighting in the field, inventive theologians and brutal iconoclasts, English Wyclifites, German dissidents, French “Picardians.” There was Jan Hus, still strongly hesitant about the more radical beliefs of his followers; his gifted friend Jeroným, the true Renaissance man among the Hussites; studious and politically shrewd Jakoubek; bold and fiery Želivský; harsh Jan Žižka, who saved the Prague towns when the mighty crusaders attacked; and even Peter Chel
ický, the fiercely independent Christian thinker and pacifist who preferred to live and write in a lonely southern Bohemian village, who had been attracted to the Bethlehem chapel in his young days and may have returned to Prague occasionally to discuss his ideas (later much admired by Tolstoy) with the learned theologians of his age. Some
called Prague a New Jerusalem, others a sinful whore of Babylon; and proud of its new political strength, the community unabashedly asked the Venetian Republic to come to its support.
ický, the fiercely independent Christian thinker and pacifist who preferred to live and write in a lonely southern Bohemian village, who had been attracted to the Bethlehem chapel in his young days and may have returned to Prague occasionally to discuss his ideas (later much admired by Tolstoy) with the learned theologians of his age. Somecalled Prague a New Jerusalem, others a sinful whore of Babylon; and proud of its new political strength, the community unabashedly asked the Venetian Republic to come to its support.
In the course of events, new administrative structures developed; for a short time, the Old and New Towns united spontaneously, not by decree as had happened under King Charles IV, and essential affairs were decided by direct vote of the “Velká Obec,” the great community, bringing together all residents in open town gathering, foreshadowing the direct democracy of Switzerland or of New England town meetings. Yet it is also true that throughout the 1420s and early 1430s, Prague was a place of iron, alarms, and puritan discipline rather than laughter, playful art, exuberant sympathies, and joy. The Hussites collectively created magnificent songs of piety and war, but they raided and ransacked the royal palaces and destroyed and burned many churches and cloisters (if they did not turn them into arsenals). (On their scorched earth, triumphant Catholics of the seventeenth century built many Baroque marvels.) In an age of ideas tensely watched and of literature subservient to theology and teaching, it was one Master Laurence of B
ezová who retained at least a frail trace of an aesthetic, a rhetorical commitment largely absent in the stern writings of his time. He first translated a Latin book on the interpretation of dreams and a popular travelogue for the king; preferring a secular life to the priesthood, he showed himself in his
Hussite Chronicle
and
Victory Song
a man of moderate persuasion and unusually sensitive to the human suffering of a fratricidal age. He definitely disliked the radicals and, in turn, was disliked by their later defenders, but he kept his mind open and sober. As one of Prague’s talented and fragile intellectuals in a difficult time, he deserves to be translated and read with patience and care.
ezová who retained at least a frail trace of an aesthetic, a rhetorical commitment largely absent in the stern writings of his time. He first translated a Latin book on the interpretation of dreams and a popular travelogue for the king; preferring a secular life to the priesthood, he showed himself in hisHussite Chronicle
and
Victory Song
a man of moderate persuasion and unusually sensitive to the human suffering of a fratricidal age. He definitely disliked the radicals and, in turn, was disliked by their later defenders, but he kept his mind open and sober. As one of Prague’s talented and fragile intellectuals in a difficult time, he deserves to be translated and read with patience and care.
RUDOLF II AND THE REVOLT OF 1618
At the turn of the sixteenth century, the parish of St. Apollinaris, on a little hill of the New Town (close to where the medical schools are today), was administered by Jan Bechy
ka,
sub utraque specie.
In the last years of his life (he died in 1507), Bechy
ka, the son of a tailor, composed a little essay in Czech about his hometown; and while he insisted on calling it
Praga Mystica
, it was actually a highly polemical piece on the local sociology of the Christian religions, full of provocative if partisan insights and earthy views about social life in the age of the Polish kings who ruled Bohemia between 1471 and 1526. He was definitely not a man of mystical feelings, and his first sentence declared that all things should be made clearly known; even Gypsies, he suggested, had after all developed intriguing ways to find out what people wanted to hide in their thoughts. The Gypsies gaze at people’s palms, foreheads, faces, and at their dress and gait, and thus come to know more about the invisible stirrings of their hearts. God the omnipotent reveals to everybody who has eyes to see the invisible city of virtue and sin “in the material and visible architecture and landscape of Prague.” Jan Bechy
ka, a theological Gypsy, reads the urban topography as a text about its spiritual life. In doing so, he unfortunately also shows the limitations of an Utraquist point of view that was quickly hardening into a new orthodoxy.
ka,sub utraque specie.
In the last years of his life (he died in 1507), Bechy
ka, the son of a tailor, composed a little essay in Czech about his hometown; and while he insisted on calling itPraga Mystica
, it was actually a highly polemical piece on the local sociology of the Christian religions, full of provocative if partisan insights and earthy views about social life in the age of the Polish kings who ruled Bohemia between 1471 and 1526. He was definitely not a man of mystical feelings, and his first sentence declared that all things should be made clearly known; even Gypsies, he suggested, had after all developed intriguing ways to find out what people wanted to hide in their thoughts. The Gypsies gaze at people’s palms, foreheads, faces, and at their dress and gait, and thus come to know more about the invisible stirrings of their hearts. God the omnipotent reveals to everybody who has eyes to see the invisible city of virtue and sin “in the material and visible architecture and landscape of Prague.” Jan Bechy
ka, a theological Gypsy, reads the urban topography as a text about its spiritual life. In doing so, he unfortunately also shows the limitations of an Utraquist point of view that was quickly hardening into a new orthodoxy.Bechy
ka looks at Prague’s three towns—Old, New, and Minor—and argues that they form a trinity of communities believing in the essential importance of the Eucharist, and yet it is clear that he much favors the first two because they are both Hussite, solidly middle-class or artisan,
well built, and with a historical dignity all their own. He has misgivings about the strongly Catholic and German Minor Town, which has still not been entirely restored after the battles and ravages of the Hussite revolution (besides, there was a new fire as recently as 1503). Later Czech patriots, including the nineteenth-century composer Bed
ich Smetana, would have been shocked by Bechy
ka’s deprecation of the Vltava River, which he considers evil and poisonous. It flows from the south—that is, from the pernicious direction of Rome and the pope—and cannot bring anything good, quite apart from the bad habits of the Prague burghers, who, in spite of all city ordinances, throw their refuse into it and infect the water and the clime. Bechy
ka knows that the city has recently begun to introduce a new system of pipes and water towers to combat epidemic diseases feared by everybody, but, being conservative, he is not fond of newfangled technological developments; besides, he fears that new water taxes will be levied on his parishioners.
ka looks at Prague’s three towns—Old, New, and Minor—and argues that they form a trinity of communities believing in the essential importance of the Eucharist, and yet it is clear that he much favors the first two because they are both Hussite, solidly middle-class or artisan,well built, and with a historical dignity all their own. He has misgivings about the strongly Catholic and German Minor Town, which has still not been entirely restored after the battles and ravages of the Hussite revolution (besides, there was a new fire as recently as 1503). Later Czech patriots, including the nineteenth-century composer Bed
ich Smetana, would have been shocked by Bechyka’s deprecation of the Vltava River, which he considers evil and poisonous. It flows from the south—that is, from the pernicious direction of Rome and the pope—and cannot bring anything good, quite apart from the bad habits of the Prague burghers, who, in spite of all city ordinances, throw their refuse into it and infect the water and the clime. Bechyka knows that the city has recently begun to introduce a new system of pipes and water towers to combat epidemic diseases feared by everybody, but, being conservative, he is not fond of newfangled technological developments; besides, he fears that new water taxes will be levied on his parishioners.The preacher of St. Apollinaris has many reasons to speak of the Vyšehrad, not too distant from his little church, and Hrad
any Castle, both marked by the course of history. The Vyšehrad, already in disrepair and once so glorious, has not been demolished by an emperor or the devil but by the very people of Prague, and what is left of it is not pleasing to the eye. There are ruins and some shabby and widely dispersed wooden huts, and a few people, in rags, like peasants in a miserable village, all on the dole—a challenge to Christian charity. Hrad
any Castle offers at least a sign of hope. Some construction is going on, it is beautiful to look at, “bright, colorful, well built,” and yet since the Polish dynasty has moved its residence away from Prague, it is “empty without a king,” and the rather dubious members of the resident administrative council are not a real substitute for royalty. Devastated churches and monasteries are still to be seen here and there but, unfortunately, many returning monks are again welcomed by the people. Yet Prague citizens overwhelmingly lack religious feeling, have nothing on their minds but shady deals, and are busy filling their insatiable bellies from morning until late at night.
any Castle, both marked by the course of history. The Vyšehrad, already in disrepair and once so glorious, has not been demolished by an emperor or the devil but by the very people of Prague, and what is left of it is not pleasing to the eye. There are ruins and some shabby and widely dispersed wooden huts, and a few people, in rags, like peasants in a miserable village, all on the dole—a challenge to Christian charity. Hradany Castle offers at least a sign of hope. Some construction is going on, it is beautiful to look at, “bright, colorful, well built,” and yet since the Polish dynasty has moved its residence away from Prague, it is “empty without a king,” and the rather dubious members of the resident administrative council are not a real substitute for royalty. Devastated churches and monasteries are still to be seen here and there but, unfortunately, many returning monks are again welcomed by the people. Yet Prague citizens overwhelmingly lack religious feeling, have nothing on their minds but shady deals, and are busy filling their insatiable bellies from morning until late at night.Bechy
ka intensely dislikes Prague’s Jews and the Bohemian Brethren. The Brethren live in tightly organized communities, descendants of radical Hussites who, in love with the simple and spiritual life of early Christianity, had congregated in Prague and in the countryside since the 1450s and 1460s. He constantly praises Utraquist tolerance, but he does not show much willingness to understand Brethren or Jews; in his belligerent statements he relies on the most vulgar arguments against usurers and heretics and uses them interchangeably. Like the Jews, he says, the
Brethren, who want to separate themselves from the Catholics and from the Utraquist establishment, are intent upon robbing their fellow Christians (if these last should be ever foolish enough to trust them) of their souls and their spirituality. The Jews live in their own isolation in a corner of the Old Town, and so do the Brethren, at least in their theological introversion; if the Jews are busy devaluating precious coins by diminishing their weight in gold and silver, so do the Brethren devaluate the ideas of faith, charity, and love on a spiritual level: the Jews suck blood, the Brethren the soul. There is a strong note of envy in Bechy
ka’s diatribe against the Brethren, who, in spite of many royal edicts, steadfastly attract a loyal following from the ranks of theological dissidents, and in their conventicles and schools constitute an intellectual challenge to Utraquists and Catholics alike. Bechy
ka knows even less about the strong traditions of Prague’s Jewish community, which would flourish in spite of all danger toward the end of the century. He has little sense of the future.
ka intensely dislikes Prague’s Jews and the Bohemian Brethren. The Brethren live in tightly organized communities, descendants of radical Hussites who, in love with the simple and spiritual life of early Christianity, had congregated in Prague and in the countryside since the 1450s and 1460s. He constantly praises Utraquist tolerance, but he does not show much willingness to understand Brethren or Jews; in his belligerent statements he relies on the most vulgar arguments against usurers and heretics and uses them interchangeably. Like the Jews, he says, theBrethren, who want to separate themselves from the Catholics and from the Utraquist establishment, are intent upon robbing their fellow Christians (if these last should be ever foolish enough to trust them) of their souls and their spirituality. The Jews live in their own isolation in a corner of the Old Town, and so do the Brethren, at least in their theological introversion; if the Jews are busy devaluating precious coins by diminishing their weight in gold and silver, so do the Brethren devaluate the ideas of faith, charity, and love on a spiritual level: the Jews suck blood, the Brethren the soul. There is a strong note of envy in Bechy
ka’s diatribe against the Brethren, who, in spite of many royal edicts, steadfastly attract a loyal following from the ranks of theological dissidents, and in their conventicles and schools constitute an intellectual challenge to Utraquists and Catholics alike. Bechyka knows even less about the strong traditions of Prague’s Jewish community, which would flourish in spite of all danger toward the end of the century. He has little sense of the future.Other books
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