St Agnes in the Garden

At the bottom of my garden an oak tree trunk is being transformed into a Bohemian saint and princess. The stillness of the evening is normally disturbed only by the call of my redstarts and the farmer's cows, but now there is the chip, chip, chip of a hammer on chisel.

My talented neighbour, Jitka, has been commissioned to carve a statue of St Agnes of Bohemia. Her house is built on a slope and there was no accessible level site where she could work. So she approached me and I of course said yes she could use my garden.

St Agnes was the daughter of King Ottakar I of Bohemia. As a medieval princess Agnes was a political pawn and at various times was betrothed to the son of the Holy Roman Emperor and King Henry III of England, but in the end as a nun Agnes was married to the King of Heaven, when she  became a member of the Poor Clares. Her life there was, as the order's name indicates, in total variance to her life as a princess.

Agnes built a religious complex in Prague, which included a monastery and a hospital, where she lived and died. The Convent of St Agnes is now part of the National Gallery and is home to a wonderful collection of medieval art from Bohemia and Central Europe, including some beautiful carvings of saints. Jitka is part of a long tradition.

Why I'm here. Part 2

I had two reasons when I bought my lovely derelict Czech farmhouse. The first as I said in my post of the 9th March was my friend Hannah Kodicek, the second was to create somewhere I could write.

The two reasons were not unconnected. Hannah always encouraged me to write. I think we really became close friends when she read a long poem I had written. She had known me as a manager, something that she respected but didn't love. At the time of the house purchase I was managing an inner-city regeneration programme working with the most disadvantaged. It was worthwhile work and I would have argued then that it allowed me to be creative in other ways than producing poetry that no one read. But Hannah begged to differ, she saw better than I did how one side of my personality was dominating the other, driving the poet and mystic underground. But when I came to visit her in the Czech Republic I found that side of me welling up in response to the landscape and history of Bohemia.

So I bit the bullet and bought the house. I said I wanted a hut in the forest, something that didn't need too much work, but my subconscious saboutaged that and I bought a huge farmhouse needing lots of work. I spent the next few years working hard at my job and pouring the money I earned into restoring the house, but still I did not write.

Things came to a head when one day I found myself crying in Hannah's study. It was soon apparent that I could not continue working in my wonderful but high pressured job. I said goodbye to my old career and came over to the Czech Republic and started to write. Not poetry but a children's novel. I loved the process. Even if my first book is now in a drawer in my desk never to see the light of day. The second one's there too. I am now on my fifth book. All of my books have been written in my Czech house.

Tabor

A few days ago I was in the South Bohemian town of Tabor. Tabor has to be one of the most remarkable historic towns in the Czech Republic and I realised that I had not blogged about it, so here we go.
 

Two names dominate the history of the town - Jan Hus, the church reformer who died at the stake before the town's foundation but who wrote some of his most important works in nearby Kozi Hradek castle and Jan Zizka - the one-eyed military genius who turned the Hussites into a fighting force to be feared. Zizka's statue stands in the main square and another of Hus in a neighbouring square. Both men deserve posts of their own, which I will give them soon.

Tabor is above all the town of the Hussites, created by them in the fifteenth century as a fortress town and soon the centre of their religious and military movement. Their presence is to be felt at every turn. On the main square stands the Hussite Museum - newly refurbished and hugely informative it is a must for any visitor. The Museum also allows access to some of the enormous network of underground tunnels built by the Hussites and extended over the years. Other attractions include the Tabor Treasure exhibition, the city fortifications including the Kotnov tower and the lovely Deanery church.

 When I visited last week the place was relatively quiet - the market on the square was just closing and there was hardly anyone around and certainly no tourists. I was able to view the beautiful facades and gables of the medieval and renaissance burgher houses at my leisure.

 
When I return the place will be transformed. We will be coming for the three days of the Tabor Meeting (Taborska Setkani), when the town celebrates its Hussite past. There will be a  torchlight parade through the town, fireworks, medieval market, the Old Bohemian market, performances by Czech and foreign ensembles, street theatre, concerts, children’s activities and a lot more. The Sunday will be devoted to European Heritage Day, when the doors of normally closed historic buildings are opened.

This is a major event in the European living history calendar made even more important by the fact that this will be the 20th Tabor Meeting. Every hotel room in the town will be full. And I  will be there.

The Real Good King Wenceslas

There are many myths and few facts about the original Good King Wenceslas.

Let's start with the facts. Wenceslas was Vaclav I Duke of Bohemia from 921 - 935 AD. He was born into the house of the Přemyslids, the first rulers of Bohemia, at a time when Christianity was only just beginning to take hold among the Slavs. His grandfather Borivoj was converted by St Cyril and St Methodius (the Apostles to the Slavs) and Wenceslas was brought up a Christian by his father Vratislav. When Vratislav died Wenceslas was only 13 and his care passed to his saintly grandmother Ludmila. But a power struggle ensued over control of the young king and his kingdom between Ludmila and Wenceslas' mother Drahomira, which resulted in Ludmila's death by strangulation. In 924 or 925 Wenceslas had his mother exiled and took control of his dukedom.

Under his rule Christianity was promoted in Bohemia and the chronicles attribute to Wenceslas great acts of piety. In 929 the army of  the Duke of Saxony, Henry the Fowler, attacked Prague and Wenceslas sued for peace and pledged allegiance to the German Duke. This action together with Wenceslas' support of the Christian church angered many Bohemian nobles who turned to Wenceslas brother Boleslav as an alternative duke. At some point later Boleslav invited Wenceslas to a religious feast and when Wenceslas was on his way to church Boleslav and his allies murdered him

So Wenceslas was actually Vaclav; he wasn't a king but a duke and we can't even be sure of the dates - he may have died in 929 or alternatively 935. History is also unclear about his enemies. Was Drahomira a pagan - the chronicles can't make up their minds. Was Boleslav - well he didn't exactly stop the growth of christianity after Wenceslas' death. What we have here is a pretty typical example of realpolitik in the Dark Ages, with the usual fratricide, invading armies, conspiracies and a dose of religion to boot.  After which we get the postumous and highly unreliable hagiographic royal biographies.

Now for some of the myths -

• The story of the old man seeking fuel appeared in 1853 - a piece of Victorian whimsy by John Mason Neale. The tune however is older - it's a medieval spring carol.
• Wenceslas is said to be sleeping with an army of knights under Mount Blanik waiting to ride out to save the Czech nation - though why you would want a leader who failed to defeat the Germans in his lifetime escapes me. 
• In an extension to the last myth Wenceslas will take the magical sword of Bruncvik from a stone in Charles Bridge, and with the sword he will defeat the country's enemies. Myths it seems are the same the world over.

Well there you go - the real Good King Wenceslas stays as illusive as ever.

Bohemian Baroque

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a big exhibition on Baroque opening on Saturday, which gives me an excuse to blog about the Bohemian Baroque.

In my post about the Ales Gallery I wrote of my love of Bohemian Gothic religious art; I am afraid this does not extend to Bohemian Baroque. I think it must be my English background that makes me so ill at ease with the baroque style of religious decoration. Czech churches are sometimes full of it and give me the creeps - those tortured or ecstatic saints looking upwards with elaborate hand gestures, those doves of the Holy Spirit like gilded guided missiles. In fact all together too much gold, marble, wealth and power. It's the in-your-face Counter-Reformation intolerance that the Catholic Baroque symbolises, that gets to me. For that matter I am not very keen on English church baroque either.

Now, I love a good carved medieval pieta or Last Judgement wallpainting, but then they are part of my English upbringing, something that would surprise many Czechs. On my first visit to the Czech Republic I was taken to a church service in Prague. “You probably won't like it, being a protestant,” I was told. Actually there was nothing in the service that I had not seen in Anglican church services – in fact there were if anything less “bells and smells” than in the High Anglican church in which I then had an office and where you had to open all the windows to get rid of the clouds of incense after the service. I was struck by how similar the Anglican Book of Common Prayer was to the Czech Catholic service I was listening to. Indeed my host would have been shocked to hear that on Sundays all over England “protestants” were giving witness in the Credo to a belief “in the one catholic church”.

But that is the point I think – the Anglican Church is catholic (with a small c), it is designed to be open and tolerant to all sorts of beliefs. When I tried to explain that the English Church was designed as a compromise to allow Catholics and Protestants to worship together, my Czech hosts laughed. It was another example in their eyes, I fear, of a lack of principle on the part of the English. I beg to differ. Looking at the religious fundamentalism of those Baroque churches and the Counter Reformation, it seems to me that pragmatic tolerance is actually a principle worth standing up for, now as much as ever.

Compare and Contrast

In my last post I was responding to my Czech friend's comments about the British and finished noting the anger I felt when a civil servant tried to fob me off. It struck me that my reaction - "Who does he think he is?" was a very British one. And I wanted to explore it further.

My historical heroine Queen Elizabeth I issued an edict along the lines that a slave arriving on English soil "upon breathing English air" was immediately freed from slavery. Now, whilst acknowledging that this didn't apply to the black slaves, it is an important concept for understanding the English (and later the British) - "Britons never never never shall be slaves," sings the Proms audience. Few if any leaders of this country have understood the national psyche nor played it as well as Elizabeth. Elizabeth's edict reflects a long established belief among her people.

Her Armada speech also appeals to this belief: "Let tyrants fear; I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects."

She is contrasting not only herself with the tyrant Philip of Spain, but also her free subjects with his. Her comment on her relationship with her people - they are her main source of strength and her safety - is revealing. For what would happen if the people withdrew their loyalty and good will? Only 40 years after her death England was to find out, when a civil war broke out that tested whether the King was answerable to his people in the form of Parliament. After a terrible and bloody war (recent research suggests a higher percentage of the population died in the Civil War than in either of the last century's World Wars), King Charles was tried and found guilty of high treason. The first few lines of the charge against the King read

"That the said Charles Stuart, being admitted King of England, and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise; and by his trust, oath, and office, being obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their rights and liberties; yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people."

As my old history teacher would say, let us compare and contrast with what is happening over the water in the Czech Republic (then Bohemia) at much the same time. There the Estates (made up of Protestant Bohemian nobility) had also taken on the power of their Hapsburg monarch Ferdinand II. But the outcome had been very different. At the Battle of White Mountain the army of the Estates was routed by the forces of the king. Thus began the period which the Czechs have called doba temna - time of darkness. The battle was a disaster for the semi independent nation.

Ferdinand set about forcibly converting the country back to Catholicism assisted by the shock troops of the counter reformation, the Jesuits. The persecutions and land seizures that followed the defeat resulted in the emigration of some 150,000 cultural and social leaders of the Czech nation including 85 noble families, as well as burgers, leading scholars and ministers. If you visit the Old Town Square in Prague you can see crosses for the 27 leaders of the rebellion who were executed in the year following the battle. Perhaps worst of all the Czechs lost their sovereignty - prior to the battle the monarch was elected by the estates, now for a period of 300 years the Czechs would be ruled through inheritance by a Hapsburg.

What contrasting fortunes! The Czechs always had one major disadvantage - they were at the centre of Europe. Their action was unlikely to be without international consequences. Their revolt was against a king with other kingdoms, able to call on armies from across the continent. As the Thirty Years War rolled on, it rolled over the Czech lands time and time again. England, protected by the sea and on the edge of the Europe, was able to have its civil war to itself. And prior to that when England was threatened by the powerful Hapsburg family - by Philip II and his armadas - the English were saved by storms in the Channel. Thus the destinies of nations are set.