Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic. The people of the city see its castle as not a monument of the past but as still very much in use. It lives in their hearts. There is a Gothic cathedral in the castle grounds. St. Vituss Cathedral took 600 years to complete. It is built on the burial site of King Václav who reigned in the 10th century. The bishop here carries King Václavs skull. Václav is regarded as a patron saint who resisted outside invasion and is said to appear on a white horse in times of national crisis.
A statue of Charles IV who reigned in the 14th century stands directly above the cathedral altar. He ordered the construction of the Cathedral and the city of Prague. But the city became a victim of religious and international disputes and it was only after the First World War that people were able to win back their independence.
The castle was used for the Office of the first President, Thomas Masaryk. He ensured that the castle was open to its citizens. The castles Great Hall was built by the Hapsburgs of Austria History swept by – The Hall saw Hitlers invasion and served as the venue for the Communist National Party Assembly during the post-war years. Soviet troops crushed Czechoslovakias liberation movement during the Prague Spring of 1968. Then, in 1989, half a million citizens took to the streets calling for freedom. The Velvet Revolution liberated Czechoslovakia without bloodshed. Václav Havel was the leader of the movement for democracy. The crowds sent their President to the castle, and the Castle was returned to the Czech people. The words mean: Truth prevails The flag expresses the hopes and beliefs of the people of Prague.
17 Apr 2010 Tags: Czech Posted in Videos | Comments Off
Urbanisation of high-medieval Moravia during the 13th century contribution of archaeology
By Rudolf Procházka
Medieval Europe Paris 2007, 4th International Congress of Medieval and Modern Archaeology (2007)
Introduction: It was about fifty years ago that the modern archaeological research of high (late)-medieval towns and early town agglomerations of the 11th – 12th/13th centuries started in Moravia and the associated part of Silesia. For a long time it looked like gathering stray finds and digging out some scattered trenches of rescue character (2nd half of the 19th century to the mid-20th century). The second stage (until the beginning of the 1990s) brought a gradual development of field activities already in accordance with the evolution of archaeology as a science; in the 1970s and 1980s the first systematically investigated towns appear as well as some large-scale exposures of entire plots or plot parts, the excavations of civil engineering networks are being documented and so on. All the archaeological excavations are performed by state authorities.
The third stage running down to the present day brought an unprecedented development of archaeological rescue excavations in towns, because of the most developpers being obliged to pay the excavation costs. A relatively complicated structure of organisations emerged, which are engaged in the research of historical towns. The leading role is played by specialised departments at the institutes of preservation of historical monuments and by non-state archaeological organisations, mostly the so-called non-profit companies or civil associations.
The town excavations considerably increased in number after 2000, however, only ca 10 sites with the biggest building activity are being monitored systematically, in the true sense of the word (mainly Brno, Olomouc, Jihlava, Opava, Ostrava, Znojmo). The archaeologists still pay a fully insufficient attention to the intravilans of small towns and townships. The biggest pain of urban archaeology (and not of that alone) are the opening scissors between field excavations and cabinet processing.
By Lisa Wolverton
Catholic University of America Press, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8132-1570-9
The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague (d. 1125) is a masterwork of medieval historical writing, deeply erudite, consciously researched, and narrated in high rhetorical style. Regarded as the foundational narrative of Czech history, it is the source of the oldest stories about the land, people, and rulers of Bohemia and Moravia. Lisa Wolverton provides the first annotated English translation of this eminently enjoyable and teachable work.
The first of the three books of the Chronicle describes the earliest people to arrive in Bohemia, the first rulers and the origins of the Premyslid dynasty, the founding of Prague, and the early phases of Christianization. Book Two covers the period from 1037 to 1092, the age of Duke Bretislav I and his five contentious sons. Book III treats events contemporary with the author’s writing, a time of great political upheaval, both internally and in relation to neighboring Germans, Poles, and Hungarians. Preeminently concerned with rulers and political life, the chronicle is striking for its narrative brilliance, vivid characters and scenes, dramatic dialogues, evocative soliloquies, and deep classical and Biblical erudition. In composing it, Cosmas sought to define the Czechs as a nation through history, compel them to think about their political culture, and urge reform, justice, and responsibility.
The oldest history of a Slavic people written by a Slav, the work rivals any medieval chronicle in its verve, accessibility, and insight into the very nature of political power. The Chronicle of the Czechs will be indispensable for medieval specialists wanting to extend their reach into Eastern Europe, as well as for college instructors in search of a lively and insightful text on medieval political life generally.
The Role of the Town in the Bohemia of the Later Middle Ages
By Frederick G. Heymann
Journal of World History / Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale, Vol. 2 (1955)
Introduction: There is more than one reason why the early history of Bohemia’s cities, and of the middle class that developed them during the later Middle Ages, should be an object of interest. Already in the 14th century those cities – with Prague at their head – reached a state of economic and cultural prosperity hardly surpassed anywhere in Europe. And in the following century – an era of tremendous upheavals that shook all Europe – the cities, for a while, took over the leadership of the nation in forms otherwise unknown in European history.
Tornadoes within the Czech Republic: from early medieval chronicles to the ‘‘internet society’’
By Martin Setvaka, Milan Salek and Jan Munzar
Atmospheric Research, Vol. 67– 68 (2003)
Abstract: This paper addresses the historical documentation of tornadoes and the awareness of tornadic events in the area of the present Czech Republic throughout the last nine centuries. The oldest records of tornado occurrence in the region can be found in chronicles from the first half of the 12th century—the two most interesting of these are presented here in translation from the original Latin texts. Several other cases of possible tornadoes and waterspouts can be found in chronicles from the 12th and 13th centuries. However, from the descriptions of the events, it is not always clear if the phenomenon was a tornado, waterspout, dust swirl, or if it was of a non-tornadic nature. From the 14th to 19th centuries, tornado records are rather scarce for the region. However, this is likely to have a non-meteorological explanation. Gregor Mendel’s essay ‘‘Die Windhose vom 13. October 1870’’ can be considered as a distinctive ‘‘breakpoint’’ in the documentation history of tornadoes in the territory of the present Czech Republic, followed later by the work of Edler von Wahlburg and Wegener. During the ‘‘socialist’’ period, the term ’’tornado’’ was seldom used and they were poorly understood, producing a view that ‘‘tornadoes do not occur in Central Europe’’. The situation began to change with the works of Munzar, and new records showed that about one tornado per year occurred between 1994 and 1999. Finally, between 2000 and 2002, the number of documented tornadoes in the Czech Republic was five to eight cases per year.
Medieval Crafts, Guilds and Industrial Development: Central-Western European Comparison
By Ian Blachard
Lecture given at the Medieval Economic History of Hungary as reflected by archaeology and material culture
(Institute of Archaeology, Budapest, 2005)
Introduction: For a brief moment at the end of the thirteenth century the Central European population’s interest suddenly focussed on a remote mountain region of Bohemia as news percolated throughout the region of a fabulous silver find. Nor were the expectant rumours unfounded for a small band of miners working on the lands of the Abbey of Sedlitz had struck a lode, which was to sustain an output a production unrivalled in contemporary Europe. The whole area, upon the slopes of the Bohemian silver mountain was soon littered with prospectors as the sbeh ke Kutné – the rush to Kutná began. At this time Kutná Hora or Kuttenberg was said to have “attracted crowds of foreign people drawn by avarice to this abyss of sin”. The story of the mine’s wealth spread throughout Europe and the further it spread the more it became exaggerated. At the end of the fourteenth century it was reported in Styria that some 10,000 had been attracted to the Kutná workings from Poland, Pomerania, Meissen and Upper Hungary. On the Rhine it was related that there were 60,000 miners working day and night at the Bohemian mine. The stories, according to contemporary chroniclers, evoked amongst many the desire to control this “gem of the kingdom” but such were the conflicting interests involved that whilst the small mountain village grew in importance it never became an urban community. Many of the producers, because they formed part of the patrician elements of other places, opposed such a move. Nor did the neighbouring towns of Kolin and aslave, which enjoyed a functional relationship with Kutná Hora, show any interest in its securing urban status. The small mountain village accordingly remained subject to the jurisdiction of Jihlava, which had dominated mining activity in the 1270s but was now in high decline, but still remained the supreme arbiter of mining activity within the kingdom. Activity at the Kutná Hora workings, however, was intense and all the main ore deposits there were known and worked in the early fourteenth century. These workings fell into two groups – copper pyrites and silver bearing galena – the most significant silver zone being the Oselský vein. Initially on the basis of these deposits from 1298-1306 the new mine produced the prodigious quantity of some 6.5 tonnes of silver per year. Output, however, soon declined to about 1.5 tonnes in 1311-1318, thereby reducing the average annual output of the overall period 1298-1350 to two tonnes. Supplemented, however, from 1311 with silver from the newly opened Bohemian mine at Píbram the pace of silver production decline was slow during the fourteenth century and was in part counterbalanced by an increase in gold output.
Introduction: The economic and social factors which made conflicts between China on the one hand and the pastoral empires of Mongolia on the other almost inevitable did not normally favor westward expansion. The Mongol conquest of western regions – including Iran and Eastern Europe – may be regarded as a by-product, as it were, of personal ambitions, of mistakes made by rulers of limited abilities, of armies left to their own devices to determine their course of action. In what follows, an attempt will be made to present the main features of Mongol history in the West with a minimum of digressions. This is a field which has been tilled over and over again by scholars good and bad, in voluminous books and short articles. It has been my feeling for a long time that a short, straightforward narrative may be needed, one that can be used for general orientation while, at the same, containing sufficient new material and views to warrant publication in a scholarly periodical. It will be up to the readers to judge whether either of these aims has been achieved here.
