Category Archives: Prague

12th Night, Part I

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Czech doors inscribed with Epiphany blessing

Czech doors inscribed with Epiphany blessing

Western Christians observe a twelve-day festival, starting on December 25, and ending on January 5, known as Christmastide or the Twelve Days of Christmas. Christmas ends with the celebration of Epiphany (January 6), the end of the Twelve Days.

On the Feast of the Epiphany, the priest, wearing white vestments, will bless the Epiphany water, frankincense, gold, and chalk. Chalk is used to write the initials of the three magi over the doors of churches and homes. The letters stand for the initials of the Magi (traditionally named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar), and also the phrase Christus mansionem benedicat, which translates as “may Christ bless the house”.

According to ancient custom, the priest announced the date of Easter on the feast of Epiphany. This tradition dated from a time when calendars were not readily available, and the church needed to publicize the date of Easter, since many celebrations of the liturgical year depend on it. The proclamation may be sung or proclaimed at the ambo by a deacon, cantor, or reader either after the reading of the Gospel or after the post-communion prayer. (In New York City, the only church I know to do this according to the proper chant is the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square.)

The Roman Missal thus provides a formula with appropriate chant (in the tone of the Exsultet) for proclaiming on Epiphany, wherever it is customary to do so, the dates in the calendar for the celebration of Ash Wednesday, Easter, and other holy days that will mark the following liturgical year.

Good King Wenceslas!

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The shrine-chapel of St. Duke Vaclav (Wenceslaus) in St. Vitus' Cathedral (Prague).

The shrine-chapel of St. Duke Vaclav (Wenceslaus) in St. Vitus’ Cathedral (Prague).

Good King Wenceslas is a popular Christmas carol that tells a story of Good King Wenceslas braving harsh winter weather to give alms to a poor peasant on the Feast of Stephen (the second day of Christmas, December 26). During the journey, his page is about to give up the struggle against the cold weather, but is enabled to continue by following the king’s footprints, step for step, through the deep snow. The legend is based on the life of the historical Saint Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia or Svatý Václav in Czech (907–935).

In 1853, English hymnwriter John Mason Neale wrote the “Wenceslas” lyrics, in collaboration with his music editor Thomas Helmore, and the carol first appeared in Carols for Christmas-Tide, 1853. Neale’s lyrics were set to a tune based on a 13th-century spring carol “Tempus adest floridum” (“The time is near for flowering”) first published in the 1582 Finnish song collection Piae Cantiones.

Wenceslas was considered a martyr and a saint immediately after his death in the 10th century, when a cult of Wenceslas grew up in Bohemia and in England. Within a few decades of Wenceslas’s death, four biographies of him were in circulation. These hagiographies had a powerful influence on the High Middle Ages conceptualization of the rex justus, or “righteous king”—that is, a monarch whose power stems mainly from his great piety, as well as from his princely vigor.

Although Wenceslas was, during his lifetime, only a duke, Holy Roman Emperor Otto I posthumously “conferred on [Wenceslas] the regal dignity and title” and that is why, in the legend and song, he is referred to as a “king”. The usual English spelling of Duke Wenceslas’s name, Wenceslaus, is occasionally encountered in later textual variants of the carol, although it was not used by Neale in his version. (Wenceslas is not to be confused with King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia [Wenceslaus I Premyslid], who lived more than three centuries later).

Edward Kelley

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Edward Kelley, English alchemist, died inPrague after attempting to escape by jumping out a window and breaking his leg (and other bones).

Edward Kelley, English alchemist, died inPrague after attempting to escape by jumping out a window and breaking his leg (and other bones).

Sir Edward Kelley, also known as Edward Talbot (August 1, 1555 – November 1, 1597), was an ambiguous figure in English Renaissance occultism and self-declared spirit medium who worked with John Dee in his magical investigations. (See the previous post on John Dee here.) Besides the professed ability to summon spirits or angels on a crystal ball, which John Dee so valued, Kelley also claimed to possess the secret of transmuting base metals into gold.

Legends began to surround Kelley shortly after his death. His flamboyant biography, and his relative notoriety among English-speaking historians (chiefly because of his association with Dee) may have made him the source for the folklorical image of the alchemist-charlatan.

Kelley approached John Dee in 1582. Dee had already been trying to contact angels with the help of a scryer, or crystal-gazer, but he had not been successful. Kelley professed the ability to do so, and impressed Dee with his first trial. Kelley became Dee’s regular scryer. Dee and Kelley devoted huge amounts of time and energy to these “spiritual conferences”. From 1582 to 1589, Kelley’s life was closely tied to Dee’s. In those seven years, they conducted these conferences, including “prayers for enlightenment… in the spirit of Dee’s ecumenical hopes that alchemy and angelic knowledge would heal the rift of Christendom”.

Kelley married a widow, Jane Cooper of Chipping Norton (1563–1606). He later helped educate her children and she described him as a ‘kind stepfather’ and noted how he took her in after the deaths of her two grandmothers. Kelley had also hired a Latin tutor for her, named John Hammond.

About a year after entering into Dee’s service, Kelley appeared with an alchemical book (The Book of Dunstan) and a quantity of a red powder which, Kelley claimed, he and a certain John Blokley had been led to by a “spiritual creature” at Northwick Hill. (Accounts of Kelley’s finding the book and the powder in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey were first published by Elias Ashmole, but are contradicted by Dee’s diaries.) With the powder (whose secret was presumably hidden in the book) Kelley believed he could prepare a red “tincture” which would allow him to transmute base metals into gold. He reportedly demonstrated its power a few times over the years, including in Bohemia (present Czech Republic) where he and Dee resided for many years.

By 1590, Kelley was living an opulent lifestyle. He received several estates and large sums of money from Rožmberk. Kelley was able to access gold and silver mines, and he took advantage of this, working on his alchemy until various noblemen thought that he was able to produce gold. Rudolph II knighted him as Sir Edward Kelley of Imany and New Lüben on February 23, 1590 (but it is possible that this happened in 1589). Rudolf had Kelley arrested in May 1591 and imprisoned him in the Křivoklát Castle outside Prague, supposedly for killing an official named Jiri Hunkler in a duel, but it is also likely that he did not want Kelley to escape with his rumored alchemical secrets. Rudolf apparently never doubted Kelley’s ability to produce gold on a large scale, and hoped that imprisonment would induce him to cooperate. Rudolf may also have feared that Kelley would return to England. Elizabeth I was trying to convince him to return to England at the time. In 1595, Kelley agreed to cooperate and produce gold; he was released and restored to his former status. Again he failed to produce, and was again imprisoned, this time in Hněvín Castle in Most. His wife and stepdaughter attempted to help him by means of an imperial counselor, but Kelley died as a prisoner here in late 1597 or early 1598 of injuries received while attempting to escape (jumping out a window and climbing down the wall, he fell and broke several bones, including his leg).