I 190 Bildliche Repräsentation churches, and hence accessible for the whole local Christian community, not only for the friends and family of the lords. This seemingly trivial matter can be combined with iconographical comparisons. Was there a difference between the pictorial rendering of the legend of Saint George in the castle and in churches? To answer this question, a comparison is needed. The closest surviving example is found in the thirteenth-century murals in the parish church at St. Georgen ob Judenburg, some 300 km south of Hradec. This extensive narrative cycle depicting the life of Saint George in located in the sanctuary under the tower of the Romanesque church (fig. 5). As in Hradec, the scenes are rendered in two horizontal registers, one above the other. Here, however, the painting extends into the dome, with rows of prophets, apostles, evangelists, and an allegory of the Church in the centre of this hierarchical arrangement.7 A comparable structure is absent in Hradec, as the hall with the paintings has a flat ceiling. Some relevant differences can also be observed in the iconography of the two cycles. To evaluate the findings, it is necessary to analyse the paintings on at least two levels. First, it is important to see the traditional meanings and functions of individual scenes, which were present in both contexts. Second, it is necessary to ask if they could be regarded differently when read in the secular environment of the castle hall, as contrasted with the older paintings in the church. The shifting of the narrative from a church environment into the castle hall can be seen as analogous to the contrast between a hagiographic legend recorded in a legendary, or martyrology, and the narratives about the same saint found in a private prayer book, or even in a chivalric romance.8 In the secular context, the hagiographic legend could acquire ambivalent meanings. In part, the narrative concerned human relations to a transcendent and absolute being. Simultaneously, religious problems were shown being resolved by distinctly terrestrial beings, dressed in earthly attire and in mundane situations, thus creating a new level of meaning, partly independent of religious traditions.9 Fig. 4 Jindřichův Hradec, castle, great hall, north-eastern wall (photo: I. Gerát)
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