Leseprobe

167 Damnatio memoriae The events that triggered the Thirty Years’War include the Defenestration of Prague in May 1618 and the subsequent uprising of the Bohemian Estates.Their defeat in the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620 opened the way for radical change in the political, religious and cultural condi- tions in the Bohemian lands of the early modern period. In the field of the visual arts, the first task of the victors was to transform cultural memory and eliminate visible signs of the country’s non-Catholic past.1 Authority in this respect was exercised by the holders of secular power, especially the governor, Karl von Liechten- stein, who in 1634 issued two orders addressed to the mayors, town councillors and all citizens, according to which “figures and other things” that were a “great disgrace and disparage- ment to the Catholic religion” had to be removed from houses (including their interiors) and from the town gates. The orders also recommended replacing inappropriate images with “traditional pious paintings” and representations of “divine suffering”, i.e. the Crucifixion.2 Both decrees con- cerned pictures in public spaces as well as in private houses. In addition to the governor, local representatives also spoke out in this connection. On 29 August 1624 the town of Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) was issued with an order from the local mint master,VilémVřesovec z Vřesovic (Wilhelm von Wrzesowetz), listing specific undesirable subjects for images—depictions of Jan Hus and Martin Luther, grave monuments to non-Catholic clergymen and the chalice on the façade of St Barbara’s Church; all of these were to be removed because they were offensive to the Catholic reli- gion.3 For the church environment in general, the norm for- mulated as early as 1605 by the Prague Synod, the Synodus Archidiocesana Pragensis , was to be applied, including a chap- ter entitled De Sacris Imaginibus ,4 which contains extensive passages on inappropriate images: “No sacred images should be painted which suggest to uneducated people any false dogma or offer the opportunity for dangerous heresy; nor any which do not conform to sacred Scripture or Church rites or traditions; nor those which depict apocryphal stories or contain anything false or superstitious, or which could in any way offend the eyes of pious people.” Rather, pictures were called for that “in an admirable way stimulate and inflame the soul of the faithful to Christian piety if they are painted or carved in a reverent and pious manner”.5 Thus, a legislative basis for combating inappropriate images already existed in the early seventeenth century, but in the era before Prague and Bohemia during the Thirty Years’War MICHAL ŠRONĔK · KATEŘINA HORNÍČKOVÁ FIG. 1 Hieronymus and Melchior Barthel, Maria Assumpta , 1626, marble, gilt,Western façade of the Church of Our Lady before Týn in Prague