June 28 – Prague, Czech Republic. Today we are walking around Prague, or at least some walking. We started out riding up to Castle Hill and then walking to the Castle. This place has been home to many leaders, the Kings of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperors and presidents of both Czechoslovakia and not the Czech Republic have lived here. The Bohemian crown jewels are still kept in a secret vault here. According to the Guinness Book of World's Records it's the largest castle in the world. The building was started in 870 and has been modified and added to ever since. Between Vratislav and his son St. Wenceslas they built the three main churches, St Vitus, St George and The Church of the Virgin Mary by 950.
Fierce looking soldiers in Powder Blue uniforms guard the castle gates. Seriously, are they kidding? No one looks fierce in Powder Blue, just ask the UCLA football team. They do look cute though. They try to imitate the guards at Buckingham Palace but they just don't have it in them. They don't move much as far as the body is concerned, but just let a good looking girl walk by and their eyes track her like a heat seeking missile locking on to a hot jet engine. It's actually comical to watch.
We crossed the Powder Bridge to enter the castle at the Second Courtyard. This courtyard is bounded by offices and housing for soldiers and staff. One side, the internal wall, has the Castle Chapel jutting out into the courtyard. This space now serves as the castle treasury. We walked through the inner gate to get to the First Courtyard and the very ornate Main Gate. It has stone pillars with statues atop, spanned by wrought iron grillwork that has been partially gilded.
While we were out at the Main Gate the regular changing of the guard took place. Lots of marching and stomping but it was hard to take them seriously in the light blue duds.
I should probably have mentioned this before but we have a man traveling with us, Joe, who works at a children's facility of some sort. Apparently they have a Paddington Bear that the kids take turns taking home and then have to tell the class what Paddington did with them over the weekend. They have a second Paddington doll that Joe takes on vacation with him and photographs in various locations as we travel. Today he posed Paddington in the Second Courtyard and then walked back to take the picture with the castle wall, well and fountain in the background. Lots of people were watching and pretty soon you had tourists from all over taking Paddington's picture. In fact, they asked Joe to pose with Paddington when he picked it up as we were moving on. Paddington's going to be famous worldwide.
As we were leaving the Second Courtyard I thought I saw a golden bat over one of the doorways and I went to take a photo. Turns out it's a winged leopard or cheetah. Pretty odd.
From the Second Courtyard we went into the…, wait for it, Third Courtyard. Did you get that? I knew you did! (My homage to Mr. Rogers) This is where it's all happening. Saint Vitus' Cathedral and the Royal Palace are in this courtyard. The full name of St. Vitus is St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas and St. Adalbert Cathedral. St. Vitus was martyred by Diocletian in Rome so you may ask, "What's the connection with Prague?" Once again, I'm glad you asked. In 925 King Henry I of Germany gave Wenceslas, Duke of Bohemia, the bones of the hand of St. Vitus and Wenceslas installed the bones in the church he built for that purpose.
St. Wenceslas is none other than the Duke who received St. Vitus' bones. You probably already know him as Good King Wenceslas the subject of the Saint Stephen's Day song that's now a Christmas hit. Saint Stephen's Day is Dec 26 for us, Dec 27 for the Eastern Orthodox. However some parts of the Eastern Church do not recognize the Gregorian calendar. Since they still use the Julian calendar the day is celebrated on January 9 of the Gregorian calendar (Dec 27 Julian=Jan 9 Gregorian). Ain't organized religion fun? Gosh! Wenceslas was killed by his brother, the appropriately named Boleslav the Cruel. He never got to be king but was so loved that in 800 years when the song was written he got a posthumous promotion.
Saint Adalbert is less known to us. He was a Czech priest who became Bishop of Prague and was martyred during his missionary efforts to bring the Gospel to the Prussians. Before his death he did manage to evangelize the Poles and Hungarians. Even back in 997 those pesky Prussians were up to no good. I blame them and their leadership for both WWI and WWII. If it had been up to the Bavarians they would just have ordered another round of beer.
This church is really special. It's definitely Gothic in style but it benefits from the fact that there were two main architects involved. The first, Matthias, was a classic architect, trained in math and construction. The second, Parler, was trained as a wood carver and sculptor. He brought an whole new look to Gothic structure. He designed a new vaulting system, called Parler after him, that has double diagonal ribs instead of single like classic Gothic. These pairs of ribs cross in a net-like pattern that give rise to their other name "net-vaults". This strengthened the vaults considerably as well as provided a pleasing geometric design on the ceiling.
The tower of St. Vitus has a bit of an odd clock. The upper dial shows the hour and uses the Roman numeral IIII for 4 and not IV. This is the really old numbering system before stone carvers figured out that they saved quite a bit of work with the new system. The lower dial shows the minutes but is marked in quarter hours numbered I, II, III and IIII, as in I quarter past, II quarters past, etc. Pretty cool.
The south transept entrance is also unique. Usually main entrances, almost always in the western façade have three doors and St. Vidas' does too. But the southern transept has only two doors, but has three arches leading to them. The upper parts over the arches are decorated with golden tiles. The picture is of the last judgment. In the center panel, Jesus is calling forth the dead in the resurrection. Over the right arch the redeemed are coming out of their graves naked, assisted by angels, symbolizing that they have nothing to hide. They are bound for heaven. Over the left arch are the unredeemed rising from the grave clothed and heading to a flame filled underworld manned by grey demons. The mosaic is colorful and the sky is represented by golden tiles. Pretty impressive sight.
It was fun to see the symbolism used on the mosaics on the tympana at the side of the portico. On the right one are Adam and Eve being deceived by the Serpent, sin coming into the world. On the left is the Crucifixion, the possibility of that sin being removed from the individual. Between these two angled walls are the doors to the transept.
Around the corner, past Saint Vitus' and the Royal Palace, you come to Saint George's Square and are facing Saint George's Basilica. This is the oldest surviving church inside Prague Castle. It was founded by Vratislaus I of Bohemia in 920. They added Saint George's Abbey, a Benedictine convent, in 973. It was made over with a Baroque façade in the 1600s. It's now the home of the Bohemian Art Collection of the Prague Gallery. It has a unique color scheme, cream walls with dark red trim. There's so much trim that the predominant color is the red. Pleasing to the eye and yet it grabs your attention pretty aggressively.
We left the palace by going down Saint George's Lane and out the back gate through the Black Tower and onto the castle bastion. We had a good view over the city from there.
We walked down from Castle Hill, better than walking up, to meet Paul and our bus at the bottom. He drove us to the river at the New Town end of the Czech Bridge. This Art Nouveau structure is the prettiest bridge in Prague. The Charles may be older but it's an ugly relic next to the Czech. It was built in 1902 and has a 50-foot greenish yellow pillar with a gray marble angel on top at each corner where the bridge meets the rivers banks. The angels are striding forward holding a small golden branch aloft in one hand and the larger plain branch from which it was taken in their other hand. It's an arched bridge with three arches supported by 2 in river pylons. There are sculptures on each of these pylons. On the upstream side each has a woman, striding forward with a lighted torch in each hand. She's either walking very fast or there's a stiff wind in her face because the flame on the torch and her robe are being pushed toward the rear. On the downstream side the pylons have a coat of arms topped by a crown and flanked on each side by a three-headed, winged serpent. The pylons, the decorations on them and the angels are granite but the coat of arms, crown and serpents are bronzes. Absolutely stunning!!
We walked across the bridge and into the Jewish section of Prague. Our destination is the Jewish Quarter is the Old-New Synagogue. As I've mentioned before the terms 'old' and 'new' impart almost no useful information about a building's age in Europe. Here we have both of the terms applied to the same building, the first time I have encountered this phenomenon. When it was built in 1270 it was Prague's first Gothic style building and it was called the New Synagogue, as there was another even older one nearby. When a third synagogue was built in the 1500s this one became the 'Old-New Synagogue' and has remained so ever since. The 'Old' part of its name is deserved, as it is the oldest synagogue in Europe still used as a house of prayer. It was done in early Gothic style because, at the time it was built, Bohemia was under the control of the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire and Jews were not allowed to be architects. In spite of this Israeli symbolism is included in the interior design. For example, the tympanum above the door from the vestibule is carved with a vine and 12 bunches of grapes, symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Historical Religious Note: I may have lost some of you with the references above to Jews and Israel so I thought I'd include a short explanation. Although in common usage the terms Jews and Israel are often used as synonyms, they are not. There were 12 tribes in Israel: Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Reuben, Simeon, Gad, Ephriam, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher and Naphtali. "Hold on", you say "What about Joseph and Levi, they were sons of Jacob, later named Israel?" You are absolutely correct and move to the head of the class. Levi was disenfranchised and not given a property right in the Promised Land. They also marched dispersed and are not listed in the marching order of Israel. Joseph was given a double blessing by his father in which Joseph is identified as the "father of two tribes" and for this reason Ephriam and Manasseh, his two sons, are listed in the marching order and property rights in his place as he died long before the Exodus.
There are a few very unique things about this synagogue and its congregation. The first are the two flags that hang above the bimah (this is an elevated platform in the center of an Ashkenazim synagogue where the Torah reader stands for the readings. The Ashkenazim are Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland). We take flags for granted in our society; many people have various seasonal flags that they fly in front of their houses as well as the Stars and Stripes. In the 1300s European communities were represented by their flags and the right to display or carry one was jealously guarded. In 1357 Charles IV, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, granted the Jews of Prague the right to have their own city flag, a great honor. The flag bears a Star of David, the text of Shema Yisrael, and a hat that Jews were required to wear in the 1300s. Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, gave the second flag to the synagogue in recognition of the services of the Jews in the defense of Prague against the Swedes. Bet you didn't know that the Czech's and Swedes had ever had a war. Neither did I until now.
Historical Note: The Swedes attempted an invasion of Prague in 1648, near the end of the Thirty Years War, a religious war that was fought between Catholics and Protestants mostly on German soil. This was no small skirmish. The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany between 1618 and 1648, one-third of all German towns.
The second unique thing is that this is the synagogue that Franz Kafka attended when he lived in Prague. He celebrated his bar mitzvah here. On the west wall of the main hall there is a glass case shaped like the stone tablets of the ten commandants. The case contains many small bulbs that light up on the anniversary of a person's death. One of the lights memorializes Franz Kafka.
From the Jewish Quarter we walked three blocks down the main drag to the Old Town Square. It's one of the finest in any European city because it's completely surrounded by magnificent and very old buildings. The Church of Our Lady before Tyn dominates it on the eastern side. I talked about this church earlier but every time I see it I am struck by its appearance. The arrangement of the spires is unique to Prague and Tyn is the best example in the city. It's a very vertical church, that is not very wide in proportion to its height. It's also tricky to get into. That row of buildings you see in front of it, well the back wall of those buildings is the front wall of the church. You have to go through a little passageway in the buildings to get to the doors of the church. And it's not the largest of the four arches in the building but the second from the left. This inside is very ornate with individual 'chapels' in very corner and against every pillar. It has more chapels per square foot than any church I've ever seen. No photos allowed inside so I can't show it to you.
In the square is the Jan Hus (John Huss) Memorial. This early advocate of the Protestant Reformation, some call it the Pre-reformation. Most scholars accept that the Protestant Reformation began on 31 October 1517, in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Castle Church. Actually the movement is misnamed. It was an effort by Catholic clergy and monks to reform the Roman Catholic Church. The selling of indulgences and other heretical practices common in those days was too much for many of the clergy and laity of the church. It began with Hus and John Wycliffe as early as 1370 although it's really hard to say exactly when because Wycliffe did not intend to leave the church, nor did he. He wanted the church to behave more like a Christ follower should. He thought the Bible should be translated into English, he was in England, so the common man would have access to the Scriptures. Until this time the scriptures had been pretty much in the hands of the clergy and they could announce any sort of distortion and the members of their congregations were helpless to refute them or check their accuracy against the written Word.
Wycliffe also thought the church should be poor and use its money for the furtherance of the Gospel and assisting those in need. This got him in trouble with many of the rich monasteries. The short version of all this is that on Dec 31, 1384 he died. Later he was tried for heresy, found guilty, and, at the command of Pope Martin V, his body was dug up, burned and the ashes thrown into the River Swift. And people say that there were excesses in the Roman Catholic Church at that time. Yikes. Unfortunately, Jan Hus did not die naturally but was burned at the stake. Wycliffe had never even sought to 'reform' the church, Jan Hus did and to me he's the earliest reformer. He was a professor at Prague University and when some Boheian students brought a document from Oxford University in England to Hus that eulogized Wycliffe Hus read it in his classes. This ticked off the religiopolitical (my own word for religious decisions and policies that are made based on other than Scriptural considerations.) higher-ups and the end result was Hus' martyrdom. Like Wycliffe, Hus' ashes were thrown in a river, this time the Rhone. Yikes!! Don't get me started on human failings that try to hide behind God and the Bible.
Where was I? Oh yes, the Hus Memorial. Over the years the people of Prague thought of Hus as standing for freedom and used his monument to express their dislike of foreign rulers, and they've had plenty over the years. During the Communist years in Prague, students used to sit under the Hus Memorial as a silent protest against their rule. It was subtle and the Commies never knew it was a protest. They sat under the words, "I believe, that the anger thunders will cease and that the government of your affairs will return to your hands, Czech folk" a quote from Hus inscribed into the memorial. It's in Old Czech so it's unlikely any of the Russians could read it. The monument is currently being cleaned and restored so there's a little fence around it but students still sit here but now it's to get some sun.
Around the Old Town Square there's a lot of good food to be had. Sausages, gyros, large slices of wood roasted pork, a weird sort of doughnut that's dough wrapped around a spinning wood cylinder and baked over hot coals. They're about the size of a toilet paper tube but thicker and bigger around. They're good!! Of course they have shish-kabobs, ice cream and all sorts of goodies in the bakery department and of course beer. These food items are sold from individual stalls like you'd find at a county fair. There are also cafes around the square where you can sit and have a meal or a drink. It's a lively place.
Next it was time to go watch the Astronomical Clock in the Old City Hall Tower. The upper dial's movement was built in 1410 by Mikulas of Kadan (the Imperial Clockmaker) and Jan Ondrejuv (a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Prague University) during the reign of Wenceslas IV. This 600-year-old astrolabe mechanism is still in wonderful working order. The lower dial, a calendar, was added in 1490.
The upper dial is in the style of an astrolabe, a mechanical device used in medieval times to predict the location of the sun, moon and planets. Navigators used it to determine local time based on latitude and vice versa. It displays five different times among which are Ancient Czech Time (Bohemian Time), Babylonian Time (Lunar Year, like the Jewish calendar) and modern time. The Sidereal Time is indicated by a star tipped hand (this would take pages to properly explain) and the Sun's position in the Zodiac. It has lines that indicate the equator and both the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. There's a hand that shows the position of the sun relative to the constellations and the earth and a hand that shows the position of the moon and its phase. Suffice it to say that it's a complex instrument. Some people say that it is flawed because it shows the sun revolving around the earth. What you have to remember is that the center of the dial represents the position of the observer on earth and from that point of view the sun does appear to revolve around us.
The lower dial, installed in 1870, is a calendar with a pointer fixed at the top. The entire dial rotates so that the current day is at the pointer. The inner circle has medallions that represent the signs of the zodiac and the outer circle depicts scenes from medieval Bohemian life, one for each month. The slot for each day also lists the Saint that is celebrated on that day.
In addition to these two dials the clock has several other interesting features. At the very top is a golden rooster that crows as the bell strikes the hour. Just below the rooster are two blue doors, side by side. When the clock begins to play a tune before the hour chimes these doors open and the busts of the 12 apostles appear in the doors, one after the other.
The astronomical clock dial is below these doors and is flanked by four statues that represent things that were despised during the medieval era, vanity (represented by a rich man admiring himself in a mirror), greed (unfortunately represented by a man in the garb of a Jew holding a bag of money, death (represented by a skeleton holding an hour glass in his left hand and a rope in his right hand that he uses to ring the hourly chimes) and infidels (represented by a man in Turkish garb. All these figures are animated in one way or another during the clock's hourly performance.
The calendar dial is directly below the clock and is also flanked by four statues. These statues are not animated and represent the chronicler (or historian, shown with quill and scroll), an angel (holding a flaming sword in one hand and a shield with a cross in the other. Probably Gabriel or Michael), the astronomer (shown with a telescope) and the philosopher (shown holding a book). Can you tell that I'm pretty impressed by this mechanism? Yikes, it's 600 years old for crying out loud!!
Right next to the clock tower is a spot in City Hall reserved for weddings. There was a bride ad groom waiting to enter while we were there. After some shopping time I came back and the bride and groom were husband and wife and people were throwing red rose and golden petals at them. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.
From the Square we walked back to the river where we are having a lunch cruise. It's always nice to see a city from the water. You get a much better perspective on the buildings, not to mention better pictures.
The river lunch was very relaxing and we got to go through a lock on the river. Add another river to the lock list. The food was great.
Then it was back to the hotel to pack for tomorrows travel day.
No comments:
Post a Comment