Prague, Archdiocese of

PRAGUE, Archdiocese of. - Capital city of Czechoslovakia and archdiocese situated in the center of Bohemia on the banks of the Vltava, built on 7 hills. Because of its position and its very many churches it is called the "Rome of the north," because of its numerous towers the "city of a hundred towers," and because of its natural and artistic beauty the "golden city."

The archdiocese covers 15,000 sq km with a population of 2,943,868 inhabitants, of whom 2,052,154 are Catholics, distributed in 604 parishes, served by 607 diocesan priests and 314 religious; it has 43 male religious communities and 127 female ones (statistics from 1949: Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 328).

P., erected as a diocese in 973 by Benedict VI, was elevated to an archdiocese in 1344 by Clement VI. Its principal patrons are St. Wenceslaus and St. John Nepomucene. Suffragan dioceses: Hradec Králové, Budějovice and Litoměřice. In 1950 the communists confined all religious in concentration convents. After the suppression of all seminaries and theological faculties, in August 1950, the communists established in P. a general seminary for Bohemia and Moravia under their own control. The archbishop of P. has long enjoyed special privileges: he holds the title of Dux et Princeps S. Romani Imperii, of "Legatus natus of the Apostolic See in the illustrious dioceses of Bamberg, Meissen and Regensburg" (1365), "perpetual chancellor of the University of Charles IV" (1384), and he enjoyed the right to crown the king of Bohemia. The metropolitan Chapter of St. Vitus holds the title of "ever faithful" and its canons wear pontifical vestments (1390). Illustrious bishops served there: St. Adalbert the martyr (982-97), counselor of the emperor Otto III and founder of the first Benedictine abbey of P., Břevnov (993); Andrew (1214-24), a fighter for the freedom of the clergy against the oppression of the nobility. Among the archbishops the following distinguished themselves: Ernest of Pardubice (1343-64), co-founder of the University of P., counselor of the emperor Charles IV and first archbishop of P.; John Očko of Vlašim (1364-79), appointed the first Czech cardinal for his fidelity to the Holy See; John of Jenštejn (1379-1400), defender of the ecclesiastical rights of the papacy; Cardinal Frederick Joseph Schwarzenberg (1849-85), a distinguished member of the Vatican Council; Joseph Beran, elected in 1946, defender of the rights of the Church, expelled from his diocese in 1951 and interned. Centers of religious life are the Marian pilgrimage shrines of Svátá Hora near Příbram and Stará Boleslav, with the miraculous picture of the Madonna called the Palladium of the Czech lands, and the 17th-century church of St. Mary of Victory in P., where the Infant Jesus of P. is venerated.

The city arose between the castles of Vyšehrad and P., founded, according to legend, in the 8th century A.D. by Princess Libuše. The oldest document concerning P. dates back to 928, when the prince St. Wenceslaus, killed in 929 at Boleslav by his brother Boleslaus the Cruel, laid there the first stone of the rotunda of St. Vitus. After the union of the Czech tribes, P. became in the 10th century the capital of Bohemia and a destination for merchants, especially Jews, for pilgrims visiting the tomb of St. Wenceslaus, and for students attending its ecclesiastical schools. In the 13th century King Wenceslaus I (1230-53) surrounded it with walls, erected churches there and called German settlers to it. The city reached the height of its power in the times of Charles IV and Wenceslaus IV, having risen to become the center of the Roman-German Empire (1346-1400). Charles IV, Roman emperor, obtained its elevation to an archdiocese (1344), was crowned there king of Bohemia (1347) and founded the new city with the University (1348), the first in central Europe, intended for Czechs and for citizens of three foreign nations: Saxons, Bavarians and Poles. Under his reign the first stone was laid for the new cathedral of St. Vitus (1344) and many churches were erected. During the quarrel between Wenceslaus IV and the archbishop John of Jenštejn in 1393, the vicar general St. John of Nepomuk was drowned in the Vltava for having refused to betray the confessional secret to the king. In P. the Hussite movement began with the sermons, in the Bethlehem chapel, of the master John Hus. After Hus was burned in 1415 at Constance, agitations arose in P., which in 1419 reached their peak with the expulsion of the Catholic councilors from the town hall. The Hussite population then fell upon the convents and churches, which it plundered and burned, driving out the monks. In 1421 the archbishop of P., Conrad of Vechta, went over to the rebels. Only in 1436 did the emperor Sigismund become master of P., but after his death, in 1437, confusion again prevailed there for a long time. The opposition against Catholicism continued during the reign of Ferdinand I of Habsburg (1526-64). In 1561 the archbishop was again appointed, after 140 years of vacant see, during which the archdiocese had been governed by administrators, confirmed by the Holy See. Hussites and Utraquists had their own consistory called the lower one. The non-Catholic Praguers leaned toward Lutheranism and the Habsburgs moved to a radical Catholic reform. St. Ignatius sent the Jesuits to P., at the request of the latter, led by St. Peter Canisius (1555), and many other Italian and Spanish religious came there. Italian builders erected in 1573 in the "Lesser Town" of P. an Italian hospital and in 1602 established the "Italian Brotherhood." Rudolf II (1576-1611) made P. once again an artistic and commercial center, but in 1611 the citizens of Passau plundered it. In 1618 the Lutheran classes rebelled, who defenestrated the imperial lieutenants and in 1619 invited to P., as king, Frederick of the Palatinate, exiling the Catholic clergy and devastating the churches. On Nov. 8, 1620 they were defeated by Ferdinand II on the White Mountain near P., and on June 11, 1621, 27 of them were executed in front of the town hall. In 1622 the Jesuits were called to P., to whom the University was entrusted, which since the time of the Hussite wars had been in the hands of non-Catholics. During the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) P. suffered very great damage from various occupations, the last of which cost it the sack by the Swedes in 1648. From then on it was no longer the seat of the emperors and became a provincial city. During the Baroque period art flourished there and from 1729, after the canonization of John Nepomucene, it became the destination of great popular pilgrimages. During the government of Joseph II (1780-90) it suffered greatly in its cultural treasure with the demolition of 20 churches, 38 convents and libraries. Since 1918 it has been the capital of the Czechoslovak Republic, except for the period of the Nazi occupation (1939-45). Since Jan. 18, 1922 it embraces 37 municipalities under the title of Greater P.

ART

Prague is still today very rich in cultural and artistic treasures, although most of them were destroyed in the past by continual misfortunes. Architecture is represented there by various styles: in the Romanesque style, from the 12th century, the church of St. George at Prague Castle, the oldest in the city, and some stone rotundas are preserved. The finest flower of Gothic art is the cathedral of St. Vitus, which together with the monumental castle of Hradčany, once the seat of the kings and now of the president of the Republic, forms a characteristic and evocative panorama of the capital. The Cathedral is erected on the site of the rotunda of St. Wenceslas of 928, on which in the 11th century a basilica had already been built. Its first stone was laid in 1344 and the construction was carried out by Matthias of Arras (1344-52) and by the German Peter Parler (1353-99). It was completed only in 1929 by K. Hilbert and is one of the largest churches in the world, 124 m long. The chapel with the tomb of St. Wenceslas constitutes its most precious monument; moreover, the jewels of the coronation of the kings of Bohemia, the silver sepulchral monument of St. John Nepomucene (1736) and the tomb, from the Renaissance period, of the kings of Bohemia and the archbishops of Prague are preserved there. Architecturally important are the shrine of Our Lady of Karlov (1350) with its bold Gothic dome and the distinguished church of Our Lady of Týn of the 15th century, which during the Hussite period served the Ultraquists. Among civil buildings, attention is due to the Charles Bridge (1357), with its two Gothic towers, richly decorated with sculptures, and the 15th-century powder tower, with sculptures of the kings of Bohemia. In 1945 the Benedictine convent of Emmaus, founded in 1347, was destroyed by a bombardment, and the Prague town hall of 1336 was set on fire by the Nazis. The Renaissance buildings are the work of Italian architects, such as the Belvedere (1534) by the Genoese Paolo della Stella, the finest example of the Italian Renaissance north of the Alps, or were inspired by southern art. In the 16th and 17th centuries vast palaces were built there, among which the most important are that of Valdštejn, erected by Giovanni Marini, the Tuscan Palace, that of the Schwarzenbergs and that of Černín (1669-87). The Baroque style too, which for so large a part adorns Prague with its beauty, is often inspired by the works that flourished under the Italian sun. Vincenzo Scamozzi worked in Prague and, among the local architects, Christopher (father) and Kilián (son) Dientzenhofer (1669-1751); the latter enriched Prague with the monumental church of St. Nicholas, with the chapel of Loreto, a faithful copy of the Italian Marian shrine, with its characteristic concert of bells and its magnificent Treasury. Baroque decorations are also displayed by the ancient Premonstratensian church of Strahov, with the adjoining conventual Library, which preserves precious manuscripts and incunabula. Among Baroque civil buildings Prague counts many bourgeois houses, palaces and gardens with small castles. In the 18th century the Charles Bridge was decorated on both sides with Baroque sculptures. In the second half of the 19th century Prague was enriched with some large churches, the Museum and the National Theatre. In the 20th century some churches in the modern style arose on the outskirts of Prague. - See pl. CXXVIII.

Jaroslav Pole