Category Archives: Prague

Good King Wenceslaus and the Apocalypse

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The casket containing the relics of St. Wenceslaus in the chapel of the Prague cathedral. (photo by S. Morris)

Looking across the St. Wenceslaus chapel in the Prague cathedral; note the wooden door taken from the church where St. Wenceslaus was murdered . (photo by S. Morris)

Looking into the chapel of St. Wenceslaus in the Prague Cathedral. (Photo by S. Morris)

The chapel of “Good King Wenceslaus” in the Prague cathedral is a dazzling display of both royal and apocalyptic glory! The good king–perhaps best known for his Christmas carol was actually the duke of Bohemia but he was the functional equivalent of a king–was murdered by his pagan brother Boleslav in AD 935. Wenceslaus (in Czech, his name is “Vaclav”) was murdered by hired killers as he was arriving at a country church for the baptism of his nephew, Boleslav’s son; Boleslav had invited Wenceslaus to be the boy’s godfather as a pretext to get Wenceslaus out into the country so that he could be more easily murdered. Boleslav seized the throne and was a cruel, hedonistic ruler. He died in AD 967, after ruling for more than 30 years. But he was forced by popular opinion to have his brother Wenceslaus’ body brought back to Prague in AD 938 and buried in a small church near the castle. Wenceslaus was acclaimed as a saint.

The famous emperor Charles IV–who built the great Charles Bridge as well as many of the beautiful buildings that we still see in Prague–had a chapel built for the relics of St. Wenceslaus in the new cathedral of St. Vitus that was being built in the 1300s.

The design of the chapel is based on the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in the Apocalypse, commonly known as the Book of Revelation. The chapel is square, just as the heavenly city was described, rather than rectangular. The walls of the chapel are studded with the precious jewels the walls of the heavenly city were said to be built with. There is a small door in one corner which leads to a stairway which leads to a small room in which the crown jewels are kept; this door has seven locks and the seven keys–held by various important officials in the government and cathedral staff–are needed to open it. These seven locks and keys are based on the locks and keys held by seven archangels in the Book of Revelation. The windows of the chapel fill the square room with light just as the Heavenly Jerusalem was said to be filled with light. The massive doors to the chapel are the same doors of the country church that Wenceslaus was entering as he was murdered by his brother.

The chapel of St. Wenceslaus reproduces the splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem because the saints are thought to be the first citizens of the New Jerusalem. The first saints said to inhabit the heavenly city are the martyrs–those killed for their faith–and St. Wenceslaus is the first martyr of the Czech region. He was also thought to be the perfect model of a good king who cares for his people more than for himself and the living image of Christ the King who gives up his life so that his people might live. When I was in Prague in early April, I was struck again by the stunning beauty of the entire cathedral and of the chapel of St. Wenceslaus in particular.

Chapel 1

Chapel 2

Chapel 3

Chapel 4

Chapel 5

Now is Your Chance! PRAGUE? Here We Come!

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Prague, currently among the cheapest vacation spots in Europe, is waiting for YOU!

Prague, currently among the cheapest vacation spots in Europe, is waiting for YOU!

Quick! Book your tickets! If you have not seen Prague yet, NOW is your chance! The Prague Post reports that because of the strength of the US Dollar in currency markets, Prague is currently among the cheapest European vacation destinations in Europe. You can use the Come Hell or High Water books as guides to the local historical sites (the Old Town Square, the Little Town across the river, the spectacular Charles Bridge, the castle-cathedral complex of buildings — including Golden Alley — overlooking the city) as well as the WONDERFUL self-guided walking tours that you can find here.

I will be there for a week in early April that is part-vacation and part-research for a new novel set in 1600s Prague. At that time, Prague was one of the main business contacts between Western Europe and the Moslem Turks; it was also one of the most important “black markets” of castrated European men sold to the Turks as eunuchs. There are several tales in Prague about Turkish ghosts from that period. A novel set in that period will give me the chance to explore Turkish and Muslim folklore and magic as well as Czech folklore and magic.

I have never been disappointed by Prague’s beauty, no matter what time of year I arrived. This is your chance to stay in the Biskupsky Dum hotel (where Elizabeth, the Dearg-due killed a victim or two), walk along the Charles River (where both a tourist and an Evil Conference professor each met a bad end), and stand in the plaza at the apse-end of the cathedral where Svetovit was worshipped with the sacrifice of black rooster.

Or just bring me along with you as your private tour guide!
🙂

St. Antony

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Coptic icon of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the 3 angels at Mamre; dated AD 1497. An inscription along the bottom asks the Lord to remember an archpriest’s son named Antony.

My partner Elliot was recently in Egypt and brought me home a beautiful book of Coptic icons as a gift. (I took these photos from the icons in the book. So gorgeous! Thank you, Elliot!)

Although many saints from Egypt have played fundamental roles in establishing basic Christian understandings of God and Christ (such as SS. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria in the 4th and 5th centuries), another saint from Egypt has been nearly just as important: St. Antony, the first monk to found a monastic community. His life story, written down by St. Athanasius, has been said to have been nearly as popular as the New Testament and to have had nearly as big an impact on Western civilization.

Antony was not the first monk that we know of–that was St. Paul the hermit, who also lived in the Egyptian desert. But St. Antony was the first to establish a community of monks living in the desert. (There were also communities of nuns living in cities already when he went out into the desert for the first time.) There were soon thereafter huge “cities” of monks living in the deserts of Egypt and then across the Middle East and then across Western and Eastern Europe. The monastic centers that sprang up helped preserve ancient books and civilization and philosophy as well as spread Christian theology, literature, and liturgical practice.

St. Antony is the patron saint of butchers and pig farmers. His feast day, January 17, is an important date in Come Hell or High Water, Part 1: Wellspring.

In this chapter, a young man attempts to steal donations from a church in medieval Prague but it is the parish church of the butchers’ guild. The butchers find the young man and cut off his arm and hung it near the front door of the church as a warning to anyone who would attempt to steal from the church in the future. The arm is still hanging there in St. Jakub’s church, near the Old Town Square.

Coptic icon of Apostle Peter in the Coptic Museum (Egypt).