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This volume explores one of the most creative periods in Central European history. At its core is the medieval city of Prague, which became the seat of the Luxembourg dynasty in the 14th century and was fashioned as the political and cultural capital of the Holy Roman Empire. That dramatic change in the fortunes of Prague and Bohemia — from Romanesque roots to Late Gothic heyday and the religious uncertainties of the Hussite era — is examined through fifteen essays written by scholars from Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and the USA.
An important place is given to the re-evaluation of Czech medieval heritage in the 19th century, much of it shaped by Josef Mocker’s tireless and often controversial campaign to restore and document Gothic monuments. The volume offers important new insights into key buildings such as Prague Cathedral and Karlstein Castle. By bringing together their expertise in architecture, archaeology, painting, stained glass, manuscript illumination, textiles, sigillography and epigraphy, the authors also present a rich and complex picture of connections and influences stretching across the region from the small town of Košice in the east, to major centres such as Vienna, Cracow and Nuremberg, as far as the royal seats of Paris and London at the western extremities of Europe. Much of that vibrant cultural exchange took place in the climate of economic prosperity that attracted itinerant artists and supported prolific workshops, but some of the most astonishing examples of it came about amidst intense dynastic rivalry and religious strife.
This collection is also a lasting record of the British Archaeological Association’s conference held in Prague in 2006, the first such meeting east of the Rhine in its long and distinguished history.
CONTENTS
Introduction. Medieval Prague, Bohemia and Their Neighbours: New Perspectives and Connections
ZOË OPAČIĆ
England and Bohemia in the time of Anne of Luxembourg: Dynastic Marriage as a Precondition for Cultural Contact in the Late Middle Ages
MAREK SUCHÝ
The Church of St Bartholomew at Kyje
ERIC FERNIE
Romanesque Prague and New Archaeological Discoveries
ZDENĚK DRAGOUN
The House at the Stone Bell: Royal Representation in Early-Fourteenth-Century Prague
KLÁRA BENEŠOVSKÁ
Our Lady in Nuremberg, All Saints Chapel in Prague, and the High Choir of Prague Cathedral
PAUL CROSSLEY
The Choir Triforium of Prague Cathedral Revisited: the Inscriptions and Beyond
MILENA BARTLOVÁ
Peter Parler’s Choir of St Bartholomew in Kolín and the Art of ‘Articulation’
MARC CAREL SCHURR
Prague – Vienna – Košice: The Church of St Elizabeth in Košice and Vault Design in the Generation after Peter Parler
TIM JUCKES
‘The Example of Prague in Europe’? The Case of the ‘Habsburg Windows’ from St Stephen’s in Vienna in the Context of Dynastic Rivalry in Late-Fourteenth-Century Central Europe
ANDREAS PUTH
Paysage moralisé: The Zderad Column in Brno and the Public Monument in the Later Middle Ages
ACHIM TIMMERMANN
Karlstein Castle as a Theological Metaphor
MILADA STUDNIČKOVÁ
Vying for Supremacy: the Cults of St Wenceslas and St Stanislas in Early-Fourteenth-Century Cracow
AGNIESZKA ROŻNOWSKA-SADRAEI
Arbor vitae and Corpus Christi: An Example of Chasuble Iconography in Late Medieval Central Europe in the Context of the Mass
EVELIN WETTER
Some Remarks on the Aristocratic Patronage of Franciscan Observants in Jagiellonian Bohemia
JAN CHLÍBEC
Josef Mocker and Prague’s Medieval Landscape (1872–1899)
TAŤÁNA PETRASOVÁ