Church of Saint Benedict: A Gothic Parish Church in Prague
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page18 sections
History
The Church of Saint Benedict stands in Czechia on the southwestern side of Hradčany Square in Prague, beside the Radniční Steps. Built as the parish church of the newly established town, it probably dates from the first half of the fourteenth century and was first recorded in 1353. Its surviving perimeter masonry belongs to the Gothic building, although later rebuilding has obscured the division between its two construction stages.
Parish church of medieval Hradčany
A cemetery surrounded the church by 1377. A parish building and a gate stood opposite it, forming part of the early urban setting. The church’s condition during the Hussite Wars, a series of fifteenth-century religious and political conflicts in Bohemia, is not known. An alteration probably took place around 1494, the date carved above the portal in the entrance vestibule. The earliest known depiction of the Gothic church also dates from that year.
Fires and Renaissance rebuilding
In June 1541, a major fire devastated Hradčany and Malá Strana, and the Church of Saint Benedict was subsequently repaired with support from the stonemasons’ guild. In 1542, the guild established an altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Saint Barbara, Saint Catherine, the Four Crowned Martyrs, and the Holy Cross.
In 1577, the townsman Šimon Hahule paid to underpin the adjoining church wall, which reportedly lacked foundations. Because the work required a small window to be blocked, he commissioned a larger replacement with glass and a grille. The church was repaired again in 1595, when a new bell tower was added. A second fire damaged the building in 1619. The rebuilding that followed gave the church much of its later form, including a new vault, altered or thickened walls, and larger windows placed higher than the earlier openings.
Barnabite administration
Emperor Ferdinand II gave the church to the Barnabites in 1627. This Catholic order, formally known as the Clerics Regular of Saint Paul, was founded in the sixteenth century and devoted to pastoral work, education, and reform of religious life. The Barnabites built a college beside the church in several stages during the 1650s and 1660s. They also enlarged their property by purchasing the neighboring Lobkowicz house, although their intended enlargement of the church itself was never completed.
The Barnabite period shaped the adjoining buildings and the church’s interior furnishings. The entrance wing facing Hradčany Square was later reconstructed in 1958 to 1960, while parts of the former college became the present entrance area and the sacristy on the southwestern side.
From storage place to Carmelite convent
The Barnabite order was dissolved in 1786. For the next six years, the Prague archbishopric used the church to store furnishings removed from suppressed monasteries. In 1792, Emperor Leopold II gave the church and former monastery buildings to a community of Discalced Carmelite nuns. Discalced Carmelites are a reform branch of the Carmelite order whose members follow a stricter interpretation of Carmelite religious observance. The nuns had previously lived at the Church of Saint Joseph in Malá Strana.
The community’s founder and first prioress, the superior of a women’s religious community, was Marie Electa of Jesus, who lived from 1605 to 1663. After her death, she was buried in a coffin. Her grave was opened in 1666 because of alleged miracles, and her body was found in an uncorrupted, mummified condition. It was dressed, crowned, given a cross, and venerated.
When the Malá Strana convent was suppressed in 1782, Marie Electa’s body was carried to the nuns’ new residence at Pohled. Following the renovation of Saint Benedict’s in 1812, it was brought to Hradčany. The seated body of the prioress was displayed beside the high altar in a niche protected by a grille. Empress Marie Anna of Savoy and Empress Marie Louise of Habsburg-Lorraine repeatedly visited it.
Suppression, return, and present religious use
The Carmelite convent was suppressed in 1950. Communist authorities forcibly cleared the buildings and required the nuns to take secular employment. They were not allowed to move Marie Electa’s body, so workers enclosed the niche behind the high altar.
After the fall of communism, the Carmelite nuns requested the return of their former convent. The buildings were returned, and the community moved from Jiřetín to Hradčany in 1992, although it later left. In 2018, the nuns purchased land and an estate at Drasty and moved there. Marie Electa’s body was transferred to Drasty in spring 2021.
Since spring 2020, Discalced Carmelite friars have occupied the complex and established the Fortna monastery under the leadership of the prior from the Church of Our Lady Victorious. The church and monastery are associated with the Roman Catholic Church, the Prague Archdiocese, and the Discalced Carmelite community. The complex is protected as a cultural monument of the Czech Republic.
Remains
The church has an approximately square ground plan ending in a five-sided apse, a polygonal termination behind the principal altar. Its perimeter walls belong to the medieval Gothic building, while later rebuilding altered the interior and openings. The adjoining spaces to the north and south are parts of the former Baroque Barnabite college, giving the church a compact relationship with the monastic complex.
Gothic plan and later exterior
Ground plan and masonry
The square plan could have supported an early vault over the nave, the principal central space for the congregation, carried by a central pillar. A three-aisled arrangement also remains possible. Later work prevents the two Gothic construction stages from being distinguished clearly. The rebuilding after the 1619 fire introduced a new vault, rebuilt or thickened sections of wall, and larger windows set higher than the blocked medieval openings.
Roofs and entrance wing
The nave is covered by a tent-shaped roof with a small sanctus turret, a roof turret traditionally associated with the bell used during the Eucharistic liturgy. The turret ends in an onion dome, a bulbous form characteristic of Baroque architecture, while the presbytery, the part of the church reserved for the principal altar and clergy, has a lower gabled roof.
The entrance wing facing Hradčany Square was reconstructed between 1958 and 1960. Its Early Baroque portal opens into a vaulted vestibule. Double-sided painted doors in the vestibule bear images of Barnabite patron saints, and the date 1655 is carved into the lintel. The present entrance area occupies part of the former college, while the southwestern sacristy was also formed from the college building.
Altars and devotional furnishings
High altar
The Baroque high altar is dedicated to Saint Teresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite reformer, mystic, and writer. Its columned structure contains Josef Hellich’s 1863 painting The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila, in which Christ gives Teresa a nail from his cross. A smaller upper painting of Our Lady of the Snows, shown holding a scapular associated with Carmelite devotion, is probably also by Hellich. Gilded Baroque statues of Saint John of the Cross and the prophet Elijah stand beside the altar. John of the Cross was a Spanish Carmelite mystic and reformer who worked with Teresa, while Elijah is regarded in Carmelite tradition as a prophetic spiritual predecessor.
Two windows open from the upper level of the presbytery walls into galleries. One was used by the Carmelite nuns during worship, while the other served noble participants.
Altar of Saint Charles Borromeo
On the northern side of the nave, the altar of Saint Charles Borromeo bears a principal painting of the saint kneeling before an altar and praying for deliverance from plague. Victims of the disease appear in the background. The lower section of the altarpiece, called a predella, contains a copy of the image of Our Lady of Passau. Baroque statues of Saint Joseph with the infant Jesus and Saint Joachim with the child Mary stand beside the altar. Charles Borromeo was a sixteenth-century Catholic cardinal associated with religious reform and pastoral responses to plague.
Altar of Saint Joseph
The altar on the southern side of the nave is dedicated to Saint Joseph. Its faded painting depicts the Presentation in the Temple, with Saint Joseph, the infant Jesus, and the kneeling Virgin Mary. Other altar paintings and furnishings once listed in the church inventory were moved to safer locations or taken by the Carmelite nuns to Drasty. A monumental Baroque crucifix was moved from the presbytery to the southern wall of the organ gallery.
Burials and interior structures
Grave slabs and crypts
Several grave slabs from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries survive in the presbytery and in the nave floor. The probably oldest, set before the presbytery steps, belonged to Albrecht Vojtěch Libštejnský of Kolowrat, who died in 1648. He served as vice-chancellor to Emperors Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III. His family coat of arms has been cut away.
Another uninscribed slab commemorates Filip Krakovský of Kolowrat, who died in 1773, and his wife Barbora, née Michnová, who died in 1772. The church also has two crypts, chambers used for burial or veneration. The southern crypt served for the burial of Carmelite nuns, and its entrance is covered by a metal slab.
Pulpit and organ gallery
The pulpit has a Baroque statue of Saint Wenceslas on its sounding board. Saint Wenceslas is regarded as the patron saint of the Czech lands. The unusually large organ gallery occupies much of the church’s limited interior space. Its plastically curved Baroque gallery has a wooden balustrade, and the Baroque organ case retains statues of angels. Two side angels blow trumpets, while a central angel beats a kettledrum.
Paintings from the Barnabite period
Three Early Baroque paintings from the Barnabite inventory hang on the walls of the organ gallery. The most visible, on the northern wall, shows bandits waiting for prey, robbing and killing a traveler, and one of them later praying to Saint Barbara in a cave beneath a mountain. Saint Barbara was regarded as the patron saint of condemned persons. The subject, like that of a second painting, was reportedly drawn from a description by Václav Hájek of Libočany.
A third painting from the former high altar depicts Our Lady of Montserrat adored by Saints Benedict and Paul and by Emperor Ferdinand III and his wife. Benedict of Nursia was a sixth-century Christian monastic leader traditionally regarded as the founder of Western Benedictine monasticism. Beneath the gallery on the southern wall hangs a separate Baroque painting of Saint Luke painting the Virgin Mary. It originally formed the upper section of an altar.
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