CHAPTER V
Churches and Monasteries
THE churches of Prague are, and always have been, very numerous. We read that at the funeral of King Ottokar, in 1278, the bells of nearly a hundred churches pealed. The oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Prague were small round chapels of a Romanesque character, three of which are still in existence, though they were formerly far more numerous. Many churches were destroyed during the Hussite Wars, and many were restored, in deplorably bad taste, during the Catholic re-action that followed the Battle of the White Mountain. I shall in this chapter refer only to the most important churches and monasteries, though I may allude to a few others when writing of walks in and near Prague.
The Cathedral Church of St. Vitus, near the Royal castle of the Hradcany, deserves first mention. It has already been noted that the gift of a relic of St. Vitus induced Prince Wenceslas| to erect a church in honour of that saint. This small church, built in the Romanesque style,[1] was not finished when Wenceslas
was cruelly murdered by his treacherous younger brother Boleslav. When Wenceslas’s body was transported here the church became known as the Church of St. Vitus and St. Wenceslas, and after the second
- ↑ ‘Ecclesiam Sancti Viti quam Sanctus Wenceslaus construxerat ad similitudinem Romanae ecclesiae rotundam.’—Cosmas Pragensis|.
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