Church of Saints Peter and Paul: A Renaissance Parish Church in Kralovice, Czechia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page12 sections
History
Medieval origins
The Church of Saints Peter and Paul is a Roman Catholic parish church in Kralovice, Czechia. Its origins reach back at least to 1250, when Pope Innocent IV confirmed its possession by the Cistercian monastery at Plasy, a Western Christian monastic community shaped by the Benedictine tradition. The church belonged to the ecclesiastical structures of the Diocese of Pilsen and the Pilsen-North Vicariate, and remains associated with the Kralovice parish.
The original building was a fortified Gothic church. Elements of that medieval structure survived later rebuilding, including the presbytery, the masonry along the north side of the nave, and the lower two levels of the square tower.
Renaissance rebuilding
Between 1575 and 1581, Florián Gryspek initiated a major reconstruction that gave the church its Renaissance form. The work probably followed designs by Bonifacius Wolmut, a Renaissance architect and builder active in Bohemia. The medieval presbytery was retained, while a large chapel was added on the south side. Beneath the chapel, a crypt became the burial place of the Gryspek family.
The Gryspek crypt
Burials in the crypt continued until 1620. It was then closed, protecting it from looting during the Thirty Years’ War, the European conflict of 1618 to 1648 that combined religious and political struggles across the Holy Roman Empire and neighboring lands. Air circulation within the crypt naturally mummified the bodies.
In 1666, Kryštof Tengler, abbot of the Plasy monastery, ordered the crypt to be reopened. The deceased were taken from their tin coffins and placed in wooden ones, while the tin was melted down and used to make an organ for the church at Plasy. The opening brought curious visitors, and the mummies were gradually damaged. Valuables and body parts were taken, sometimes as souvenirs, before renewed protection was provided more than two centuries later.
Later protection and remembrance
Interest in the remains grew during the nineteenth century, when romantic stories and legends about the Gryspek noble family circulated. In 1848, Antonín Fisher described five male and seven female bodies in detail, although the crypt had contained more mummies in earlier years. In 1889, the church’s patroness, Paulina Metternichová, arranged for the crypt to be closed and supplied new coffins with glass lids.
Dr. Eugen Strouhal conducted anthropological analysis and treated the mummies during the 1970s. Repairs to the church took place between 1995 and 2014 through the national architectural-heritage rescue program. The building is a protected heritage monument. Since 2008, the Gryspek association has cared for the church and tomb. On 19 October 2019, it arranged the unveiling of a memorial to Florián Gryspek beside the church, when Republic Square was also renamed Florián Gryspek Square. Members of the Austrian branch of the Gryspek family attended the ceremony.
Remains
Building and exterior
Nave and presbytery
The church is a large single-nave building with a narrower presbytery, the area around the main altar traditionally reserved for clergy. The presbytery closes on three sides and is strengthened by buttresses. Its masonry, the north wall of the nave, and the lower two levels of the square tower are Gothic, while the remaining parts belong to the Renaissance rebuilding. The span of the vault indicates the original width of the nave. Blind arcades run around the ground floor, with pointed windows above them.
The main and side facades are made of exposed brick. The other exterior walls were finished with sgraffito, a decoration created by scratching through one coating to reveal a contrasting layer beneath it. This treatment was restored on the presbytery and south chapel in 1894. A sundial occupies the area between circular windows on the south facade. The western portal has a semicircular arch, Tuscan columns, and a triangular upper section.
Tower and church setting
The tower is built into the northeastern corner of the nave and is capped by an onion dome. A small sanctus-bell turret, used for a bell sounded during the liturgy, rises above the presbytery. The tower once held three bells, but only a Renaissance bell by Brikcí of Cimperk survived wartime requisitions.
The church stands on a slight elevation above the left bank of the Kralovice Stream. Its associated Baroque rectory dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century. In front of the facade is a wooden cross carrying a painted image of Jesus Christ on sheet metal, while a cross stone stands among the trees. A statue of Saint John of Nepomuk, a fourteenth-century Bohemian priest and martyr, was moved from the square to the presbytery in 1928.
Chapel and interior furnishings
South chapel and Gryspek tomb
The south chapel contains the Gryspek family tomb beneath its floor and houses a wooden Renaissance epitaph, a commemorative monument for the deceased, dated 1593. Its makers were Hans Bule of Regensburg, Samuel Braun of Kadaň, and Hartwig of Wernigerode. Seventeen members of the Gryspek family, including Florián Gryspek and his wife Rosina, lie in glass-lidded coffins in the crypt. Florián Gryspek’s right shoe is preserved at the Shoemaking Museum in Zlín.
Presbytery and nave
The presbytery contains a Baroque wooden high altar from the mid-seventeenth century. It bears statues of Saints Peter, Paul, and Andrew, all early Christian apostles. A notable sculptural group of the Annunciation, the Christian scene in which the angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she will become the mother of Jesus, stands in a glazed case at the altar. This early-sixteenth-century work was transferred to the church from Mariánská Týnice.
Side altars stand in the nave beside the presbytery. A wooden cross with the crucified Jesus hangs on the pillar between the nave and the southern chapel, and a pulpit is mounted on the tower wall. The choir loft contains a functioning Baroque organ dated 1689. Carved angels decorate the instrument, which was transferred from the church at Plasy.
