John of Nepomuk - the sad story of a Czech saint. History of the Czech Republic - Jan of Nepomuk Life of Jan of Nepomuk

Prague rightfully bears the title of the mystical capital of Europe. It was in this city that Rabbi Leuven created the Golem; alchemists and magicians lived here. The city has amazing energy that attracts hundreds of thousands of people here. Charles Bridge is one of the places of attraction for tourists. People come here not only to admire the wonderful views of Prague, but also to touch world-famous sculptures and make a secret wish.
We learned exactly how to make a wish so that it comes true.

I want to say right away that we have been to Prague many times. And every time I made a wish. And every time my wish came true! Charles Bridge is a place of power and therefore a correctly formulated dream will come true if you ask John of Nepomuk about it. So what are these mystical sculptures and who is John of Nepomuk and why is he famous?
Of all the 30 sculptures on the Charles Bridge, only the statue of John of Nepomuk is cast in bronze, and the statue of St. Philip Benitius is made of marble. The rest of the sculptures are made of stone. The longest standing statue on the bridge is the statue of St. John of Nepomuk (since 1683). It is located between pillars 9 and 10. According to legend, Jan was thrown from the bridge because he appointed a new abbot against the will of King Wenceslas IV or refused to reveal the secret of his wife’s confession. At the place where the saint was thrown, they reinforced a board with a metal cross and five stars. It can be seen on the right side of the bridge at the 8th support on the railing.

Why is John of Nepomuk always depicted with five stars? This is also explained by legend. When he was drowned in the river, five stars appeared above the water. Their reflection helped find the body.
Of course, the saint now helps all lovers. They say that if lovers kiss on the Charles Bridge and make a wish, it will definitely come true. But not only lovers make wishes and ask St. John not only for family happiness. The main thing is that the desire is real!

How to make a wish correctly? We approach the sculpture of John of Nepomuk.

We see two bas-reliefs, rubbed by the hands of tourists until they shine. First we touch the right side, and then the left, namely, we put our hand on the image of the dog. But remember that the desire must be real and come true.

The second place is a grate with the image of Jan, indicating the place from where he was thrown into the Vltava. Here you need to put your fingers on the stars, of which there are five. This is quite difficult to do when there are hundreds of tourists with cameras around, so come make a wish at dawn or at night. It will be mystical and unforgettable!

Have your wishes made in Prague come true? Tell us!

Prague. Cathedral of St. Vitus, Wenceslas and Vojtech.

Perhaps the most popular saint in the Czech Republic, and in general throughout Eastern Catholic Europe, is John of Nepomuk.
He was born in the city of Nepomuk. In 1370 he became a notary for the Prague archbishop, and in 1380 he was ordained a priest. In 1389, Jan was appointed vicar general of the Prague archbishopric.
Jan performed his duties very conscientiously and honestly. This is precisely what did not suit King Wenceslas IV, who wanted to place one of his favorites in the Kladrub Monastery. The quarrel with the king ended for Jan in prison, cruel torture and martyrdom - bound and gagged, he was thrown from the Charles Bridge.
This is one of the versions. But in 1433, chroniclers put forward an assumption, very probable, but not definitely proven, that Jan refused to reveal to the king the secret of the confession of the queen, whose confessor he was.
The king, of course, was furious and tortured the poor fellow.

Prague. The Charles Bridge. Sculpture of John of Nepomuk.

The evil King Wenceslas IV is in the foreground. With a dog. According to legend, he set this dog on the saint.
As you can see, the dog is polished to a shine. The sign is that you need to touch the bas-reliefs under the sculpture of Jan and make a wish. That's why everyone touches the evil king Wenceslas's evil dog - it's a mystery. But I touched it too.
In the background, the Queen confesses to John of Nepomuk. And the king began to wait impatiently to find out the secret of confession.

Prague. The Charles Bridge. Sculpture of John of Nepomuk. Bas-relief.
Here we see Saint John being thrown off the bridge. Strange figures in the foreground. To all my questions I received the answer that these were townspeople depicted - witnesses to the crime. But somehow this answer did not convince me. It’s too painful for them to pull the entire composition onto themselves. And the guy on the right was clearly reaching for the dagger.

Everyone wants to touch the bas-reliefs. There are always almost queues for them.

Prague. The Charles Bridge. And this is the place where the Saint was thrown into the river. This bas-relief is also touched by everyone.

According to legend, five stars shone over the place where Ian fell into the river. Therefore, he is depicted with a halo of five stars.
Body of St. Jana was recovered from the Vltava and subsequently buried in the Cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague.

A series of intricate events connects the Charles Bridge with John of Nepomuk. Jan was born around 1345, just three years after a devastating flood washed away the Judith Bridge, the first stone bridge in the Czech Republic. The destruction of the old bridge served as the most compelling reason for the construction of a new, stronger, higher and more magnificent bridge.

In the year the construction of the Charles Bridge began (1357), young Jan was most likely a student in one of the Czech monasteries. The bridge was built and young Jan grew up, so that almost forty years later he would forever link his destiny with it and go down in history. On March 20, 1393 A.D., the deep waters of the Vltava swallowed the lifeless body of Vicar General Jan of Pomuk.

Death did not interrupt Nepomuk's connection with the Charles Bridge. 290 years after the tragic events, a statue was installed on the bridge. And this was a monument not to a saint or an angel, but to a great martyr who did not reveal the secret of confession. And who waited almost forty more years until Rome recognized the great merit of Nepomuk before God and canonized him. In 1729, John of Nepomuk was recognized as a saint and his statues began to appear on bridges throughout Europe.

The statue erected on the Charles Bridge was not the first example of the veneration of Nepomuk on Czech soil. Despite the fact that Jan had not yet even been blessed, already in the 17th century we find examples of veneration of the great martyr in almost all types of fine art.

The statue of John of Nepomuk on the Charles Bridge was commissioned by Matthias Bohumir Baron Wunschwitz as a sign of respect for the saint. In 1861, the Austrian sculptor Matthias Rauchmüller made the bozzetti of the future sculpture. Bozetti with the order for a monumental statue arrived at the Prague workshop of Jan Brokoff. A year later, Brokoff carved a wooden sculpture, which today can be seen in the Church of St. John on Skalce. In 1863, Wolfgang Hieronymus Gerolt cast a bronze statue in Nuremberg, which was installed on the railings of the Charles Bridge that same year. The pedestal for the statue was designed by Jean Baptiste Matei, who at that time worked for the knightly Order of the Red Star Crusaders. In memory of the installation of the statue on the bridge, a medal designed by Antonio Trapani was issued. The statue very quickly became not only a model for subsequent sculptures, often installed on bridges in the 18th century, but also an object of cult. On May 15, on the eve of the canonization of Nepomuk, the annual procession marched from the cathedral at Prague Castle to the statue on Charles Bridge. The whole evening there were celebrations that went down in history as Svyatoyansky.

Today, the statue of St. John of Nepomuk, along with the linden tree, is one of the most famous symbols of the Czech province. It can be found on hundreds of bridges and squares in cities and villages of the Czech Republic.

Having briefly examined the outstanding city monuments, guests of Prague rush to the main tourist magnet - the Charles Bridge. There, obeying mass instinct, tourists rush to join the queue to make a wish and rub John of Nepomuk. Having reached the rubbed place, people selflessly rub...

• Who is this on the pedestal?
• To whom do they rub the secret?
• And is it able to process terrabytes of Wishlist?
  

Among the 30 sculptures, the green figure of the bronze grandfather takes pride of place on the bridge. It is to him that the line of polishers lines up.

John of Nepomuk towers above the crowd and sadly looks into the sky. A five-star halo shines around his head.

It was here that the drunken feldkurat Otto Katz begged Schweik to cut off his head and throw it in a bag into the Vltava: “Stars around my head would suit me very well. Ten will be just right.”

So...

The 17th century was a time when Czech Catholics hilled up their Catholic tomatoes and uprooted Protestant weeds from the Czech soil. In the 20s, Catholic truth finally triumphed over Protestant falsehood and the loser had to disappear from the historical garden once and for all.

The PR people of the great Catholic idea urgently needed their curly-haired Ilyich. Doctor of Church Law and G General Vicar of the Archbishopric of Prague John of Nepomuk turned out to be in all respects the ideal candidate for the ideal saint.

The main task of the victorious Catholics is to learn to be friends in an organized manner against the main character of the vanquished – Yana Hus.

For marketers, John of Nepomuk is an ideal counterweight to the spiritual leader of the defeated Protestants, who lived around the same time as him.

A legend was quickly implanted into the people's brain about how the brave Jan of Nepomuk did not betray Jan Hus to the cruel and suspicious lobbyist. – to King Wenceslas IV the secret of confession of the queen, whose confessor Nepomuk allegedly was. For which, in fact, after a series of tortures he was thrown from the Charles Bridge into the Vltava.

The ideal saint took his worthy central place on the Charles Bridge almost 50 years before his official canonization...

But in life this was the case with him.

End of the 14th century. Archbishop Jan of Jenstein of Prague also served as royal chancellor. An acute conflict arose between him and King Wenceslas IV over the construction of a dam on church land. The archbishop dashed off an official “presentation” to the king. The monarch read it, lost his temper and deprived him of his chancellorship. Wenceslas IV decided to separate the monastery in the city of Kladruby, around whose lands a dispute arose, from the Prague diocese. The mischievous archbishop put a spoke in the royal wheel by appointing a new abbot from among his people. The Vicar General of the Archbishopric, Jan of Nepomuk, being a trusted archbishop's official, approved the chief's decision. The angry king really wanted to break Jan Yenstein's neck, but he fled from Prague in time. Jan of Nepomuk remained in Prague and turned out to be an extreme one. As a result, he was stuck mentally and physically, and at the end of the procedure on May 20, 1393, he was thrown into the Vltava from the Charles Bridge.

In Czech history there were many legendary personalities about whom the people of this country still make up legends. In Prague they erect monuments to them and make them available to the tourist community. Among such “superstars of the past” was one priest who was the personal confessor of the wife of Wenceslas IV (1378-1419) - (Jan of Pomuk 1340/50 - 1393).

As the historical chronicle says, the future holy father was born in the settlement of Pomuka. He spent his adolescence as a student at a school at the Church of St. Jacob. In 1370, Jan became a notary for the Prague archbishop, and already in 1380 he was ordained a priest. Then there was a service with King Wenceslas and a premature death, associated, according to legend, with the fact that Jan refused to reveal to the king the secret of the queen’s confession.

But there is a suspicion that another woman is to blame for everything - “politics”. Wenceslas IV constantly conflicted with the country's highest clergy, defended the priority of secular power and interfered in internal church affairs. It was during the reign of this king that the ideas of Protestantism arose in the Czech Republic, which were preached by Jan Hus, initially supported by the king and the nobility, and which later grew into the large-scale and destructive Hussite Wars (15th century).

In any case, whatever the cause of the priest’s death, in 1393, by order of the king, John of Nepomuk was captured and thrown into prison. After inhumane torture, he was stuffed into a sack and thrown into the stormy waters of the Vltava from the Charles Bridge, where today you can see the bronze sculpture of Jan, which is the most famous image of the martyr. Above his head there is a halo of five stars; according to legend, in the place where the body of the deceased plunged into the river, a glow appeared from just the same five sanctuaries.

In 1719, the relics of John of Nepomuk, kept in the Prague Cathedral of St., were examined. Vita, and it turned out that there was an intact tongue in his skull. Nowadays it is known that in fact it was a question of brain tissue decomposed into its component parts, which ended up in the lower part of the skull and was preserved there. But in those days, on the basis of this, Pope Benedict XIII declared John of Nepomuk a saint in 1729, and he soon gained almost unprecedented popularity among the common people. The Czechs perceived him not as a Catholic saint, but as a hero-martyr fighting an evil king. The entire Czech people raised funds for a huge funeral sarcophagus made of pure silver, which today is located in the Cathedral of St. Vita.

Russian tourists affectionately call the Czech saint Jascha. Finding themselves on the Charles Bridge near his sculpture, they diligently rub bronze reliefs with his image so that the long-awaited happiness will come in their lives!

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