The most humiliating building for the Czech nation is located on Bílá Hora
It is difficult to find a building in Prague that would be more reminiscent of the shame that the Czech estate army suffered in the battle on Bílá Hora on Sunday, November 8, 1620.
The battle lasted only an hour and a few extra minutes, but its effects on the Czech nation, Czech statehood, identity and awareness were felt for the next three centuries. After the sad Sunday disaster, a huge number of dead bodies lay on the battlefield on Bílá Hora.
No one cleaned up the corpses
The decomposing bodies provided food for dogs, rats, cats and ravens. The smoldering body sank ignominiously into the ground until the climate bleached the skeletons of the unfortunates. The battle took place on a plain quite far from the settlement, so no one was bothered by the fact that it was teeming with corpses.
Finally, because of this, the first simple rectangular chapel was built on the site of the battle in the years 1622-24, where the remains that could still be found in the local fields were kept. This chapel is still part of the western wall of the monastery complex.
But Ferdinand II., by God’s will, Roman Emperor, always a breeder, German, Hungarian, and Czech, etc., King, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Chytria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Württemberg, Prince of Silesia and Luxembourg, Margrave of Moravia and Lusatia, Count of Habsburg, the Flemish and Tyrolean, as his full title sounded, wanted to get rid of the disgrace when the Czechs fell head over heels in the mud, so he decided to order the construction of a monastery with a representative church on this site.
The forward chapel is the oldest part of the Church of Our Lady Victorious on Bílá Hora. photo: Petr Kouba, PrahaIN.cz
And in order for the grounding to be one hundred percent, the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary the Victorious, so that the Czechs would remember it forever. The foundation stone was laid on April 25, 1628, and what with the fact that Europe had been crippled for ten years by the biggest war of that era, the money for the construction of such a symbolic church simply had to be found in the imperial treasury. And they found. It is completely understandable that the emperor did not miss the laying of the foundation stone and attended the ceremony, including with his wife Eleonora and son. There was talk of the supremacy of the Habsburg dynasty over others.
The Swedes avenged the Czech humiliation
However, the construction of the tabernacle dragged on very slowly. There were almost no more bricks, and when the Swedish army invaded the Prague Basin in 1634 as part of the Thirty Years’ War, it was very easy to cope with the unfinished church. He ended up demolished, destroyed, burned. Ferdinand II but he reached into the treasury again and again showered Bíla Hora with additional finances.
But in the next three years, the emperor died in Vienna at the age of 58, and the church on the White Mountain plain was still far from being completed. And the money ran out again.
What about a demolished church or a badly damaged chapel? The structure was hastily repaired and served for the next seventy years as an ossuary for the remains scattered across the wide Białohora plain.
However, not much was invested in that either, and the ravages of time began to bite into the building vehemently. The relatively unknown German mason Michael Hagen, who repaired it in 1704, is behind the rescue of the not very large building. In December of the same year, she was consecrated, also subsequently in the presence of the Prague bishop, as evidenced by the inscription and year on the entrance portal.
Who is the author?
The next year, the building of the new church began to be built. Her appearance is still stunning today and represents the pinnacle of Czech Baroque art at the time. It is octagonal, albeit with a low dome, but that makes it an even more interesting roof lantern. From the first look at the perfect execution, the lines of the curves and the decoration, I can tell that the author here could not have been an ordinary Bavarian mason.
The Church of Our Lady Victorious bears traces of the spirit of masterfully executed architecture and the handwriting of a truly gifted versatile artist. That is also why today the work is attributed to one of the greatest figures of the Czech Baroque, Jan Blažej Santini Aichel. However, evidence of this was never presented.
Aichel kept a careful list of his own construction projects and designs that someone else worked on. Although a small part of this list has been lost in the course of history and we cannot therefore consider this list as final, the work on the church of Our Lady Victorious on Bílá Hora is not found there. And this despite the fact that the building clearly bears clear elements of the famous architect’s handwriting, which no other architect has put into practice. But to this day it remains an unanswered question as to which architect is behind the similar church. In most publications, we will come across the name of Jan Blažej Santini Aichel, but it is appropriate to add at least a question mark to it.
There is a circular place in front of the corner chapel of St. Audrey near the church of Our Lady of Victory, which is a symbolic grave of soldiers from the battle on Bílá Hora. photo: Petr Kouba, PrahaIN.cz
The second “suspect of the artistic masterpiece” still remains in play, and that is the Hradčany painter Kristián Luna. Experts were mainly inclined towards his authorship until the mid-1980s.
As the most likely variant unraveling the mystery of the creation of the church, the fact that Kristián Luna could be behind the initial plan and design of the construction appears to art historians, but the building was most likely already created under the supervision of Aichl himself.
For several years, the church building with an interesting octagonal floor plan was left alone. Over a period of time, four corner chapels were gradually built. These were completed by 1720.
The highlight of the building is the ambitions
Even then, however, the Belohora church complex was not finished. The next peak phase of construction is coming. This became the connection of all four chapels with a common space that helped the faithful to meditate and pray even in bad weather.
However, at that time the historical puzzle regarding authorship enters the scene again. And maybe even more forcefully than in the first case. According to chronicles and church records, the ambitions will be nine long years. Everyone could say it was finished only in 1729. But who is the author, builder and architect of the ambitious court? An easy question that is hard to answer. The ambit corridor bears Aichl’s clear top creative handwriting, but Jan Blažej Santini Aichel dies already in 1723. So the well-known Hradčany painter Kristián Luna can come into play again. He dies in the same year as the ambitions are completed, i.e. in 1729, but he would have had to take a good look at Aichl’s manuscript. The answer to the historical puzzle regarding authorship will probably never be satisfactorily answered.
It was previously thought for some time that the construction of the amphitheaters did not actually take the full nine years, but that their completion was delayed by the exceptional painting decoration. This would add to the Aichl authorship theory. Because the cloister could only be painted after the architect’s death. But a closer examination of the frescoes blew this theory to pieces. The paintings did not reach the ambits until the 1840s.
The unique painting decoration is the crown of the church
However, the fresco decoration by Johann Adam Schöpf is today perhaps the most valuable part of the entire Białystok complex. Czech, Moravian and Silesian pilgrimage sites are depicted on the frescoes. another excellent work of art is the painting of the battle on Bílá Hora by master Václav Vavřinec Reiner.
The amphitheater around the Church of Our Lady Victorious is the work of Jan Blažetini Aichl. photo: Petr Kouba, PrahaIN.cz
An interesting fact is that originally Emperor Ferdinand II. the monastery on Bílá Hořa near the Church of Our Lady of Victory began to function only in 2007, i.e. almost four hundred years after the planned opening. The order of Benedictine sisters provides the church service here today.
Just in 2018, this one of the most important Czech pilgrimage churches became a national cultural monument.