almost all the great Bohemian families. A crucifix, the gift of Cardinal Harrach, and a monstrance—said to contain 6580 diamonds—a foundation of Countess Kolovrat, are amongst the most interesting objects. The treasury contains also a very fine picture of the Madonna and Child, attributed in the catalogue to Albrecht Dürer, and said to have formed part of Rudolph collection.[1] It is more probably a work of Adrian of Utrecht.’
The monastery was founded somewhat later, and the Church of St. Mary was built in 1661, and greatly enlarged by Countess Margaret of Waldstein in 1718.
On the right bank of the Vltava in the Vysehrad Street is the Emaus Monastery and Church of the Benedictines. It was founded in 1347 by Charles IV. to take the place of the ancient Slavic monastery of St. Prokop on the Sazava,[2] where the Greek or Slavic ritual, which in Bohemia is more ancient than that of Rome, had been used. Charles had obtained the consent of Pope Clement VI. for his new foundation principally by stating that there were in Bohemia many dissidents and unbelieving men who, when the Gospel was expounded and preached to them in Latin, did not heed it, but who might be guided to the Christian faith by men of their own race. This foundation, as Palacky tells us, was, next to the University, the one that interested King Charles most. On his summons many Slavic monks from Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia assembled in the new monastery. Charles obtained for them the right of using the Slavonic language for their ecclesiastical functions, and employing the Cyrillic alphabet. The monastery possessed a valuable collection of MSS.
- ↑ Rudolph was a great collector of Albrecht Dürer’s pictures; this perhaps accounts for this picture being—undoubtedly wrongly—attributed to Dürer.
- ↑ See my History of Bohemian Literature, p. 93.
