P. Gorazd Cetkovský, O.Carm.
Allow me to indulge my passion for history once again and turn our attention to an anniversary from the history of Carmel in Bohemia, which is not well-known and perhaps not even significant, but is doubly round – with two zeros. And I firmly believe that the events in question are instructive. So let us transport ourselves in thought back to a time four hundred years ago...
While, after 1600, the Barefoot Carmel was beginning to spread from Spain to Italy and other countries, while St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi (+1607) was experiencing the last years of her life in the convent of the Carmelite nuns in Florence, and the first roots of the later significant Touraine reform were sprouting in the impoverished Carmelite monasteries in France, a gradual process of rejuvenation of the Catholic faith was underway in Bohemia. For a long time, the Carmelites had only left behind crumbling buildings of former monasteries in this country. Their two oldest monasteries, founded by Charles IV in Prague at Our Lady of Snow and in Tachov, had died out about forty years ago... After years of lacking local recruits, when new applicants came only from Poland,1 they were ultimately completely abandoned. The Tachov monastery sometime before 1554,2 and the Prague monastery around 1570. Two more convents of Carmelites, founded over a hundred years earlier in Western Bohemia (in Chyše and in Rabštejn nad Střelou), had already ceased to exist after about fifty years of existence, even before the aforementioned two monasteries.
The abandoned Prague monastery was assigned a steward from the ranks of diocesan or religious clergy who was to return their properties to the Carmelites in the event of their return. It is worth noting that some of these stewards performed their duties very conscientiously, even though the buildings were, of course, in very poor condition.3
However, all this did not signify a definitive end for Carmel in Bohemia. The initiative for a new beginning then came from the Carmelites abroad, specifically from General Superior Jindřich Sylvio himself. This man had led the order since 1598 and through his activities became one of its most prominent general superiors in terms of efforts to renew the order at that time. His reform efforts were founded on the implementation of papal decrees concerning religious life and on disseminating the instructions laid down by Pope Clement VIII during his visitation of the Roman Carmelite convent of Santa Maria Traspontina in 1594 to other houses and provinces. These instructions prescribed, among other things, half-hour meditation twice daily, spiritual reading, examination of conscience in choir, and a weekly conversation with the superior. A direct tool for promoting the reform was General Sylvio's official visits to individual order provinces and monasteries – visitations. For him personally, this meant a lot of exhausting travel. From 1598 to 1602, he visited the Italian provinces in this way, and in 1603, he turned northward:4 In the same year, he visited in France and then in Belgium, where, with his participation, the provincial chapter elected a provincial who then implemented the decrees presented by Sylvio. (The Belgian province was the home province of Father Jeroným Gracián, known from the life of St. Teresa of Jesus. After being expelled from the Barefoot Carmel (1596), he returned to his homeland and original order, became an ardent supporter of Sylvio's reform, and died in the Brussels convent in 1607.) In mid-December 1603, General Sylvio attended the provincial chapter of the Upper German province held in Rotterdam. But in the meantime, he undertook a journey in which he attempted to restore Carmel in our country. General Sylvio made a visitation to Poland and stopped en route – around the beginning of September 16035 – in Prague. He was looking for opportunities to restore the local Carmelite monastery.
Upon arrival in Prague, he could not turn to either the emperor or the archbishop, both were absent. He deferred the matter until his return journey. This delay proved to be fateful. At the same time, the General Superior of another order – the Franciscans "barefoot" – Francis Sosa arrived in Prague. He too sought permission for the new establishment of his order in Prague. "By establishing a new monastery directly in the imperial residence, the Franciscans could gain an important strategic center for the renewal of the order's life in the province.”6 He requested permission for his brothers to take over the former Carmelite monastery. Emperor Rudolf II agreed. He granted Francis Sosa a personal audience, and period testimonies mention the emperor as a pronounced supporter of this order. And so it happened. The church and monastery of Our Lady of Snow were transferred to the Franciscans, and General Francis Sosa officially took possession on November 8, 1603.7 The Franciscans were introduced into the monastery in 1604.8
General Superior Jindřich Sylvio returned from Poland to Prague perhaps a week or at most two weeks after November 8. When he found that the previous Prague Carmelite monastery had just been "allocated," he was undeterred. He stayed in Prague for seven days to achieve an audience with the emperor. However, he waited in vain. He tried to negotiate with the general of the Franciscans but without success. Because staying at an inn was too expensive, the general departed. However, he entrusted his matter to the most influential circles in the papal curia. Still in Prague on November 24, 1603, he addressed a letter to the state secretary Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini and asked him to take up the case. In addition to that, he also wrote in the same matter to the general procurator of his order (this is the term for a religious commissioned to maintain contact with the papal curia for the entire order), to Cardinal Protector Pinnelli, and to the congregation of cardinals for the matters of religious orders, which was headed by Cardinal Alexander Medici.
In Prague, he left the Italian Carmelite P. Jakobus Romandiolus, also known as Fontana, the prior from Jasło, to negotiate with the relevant authorities on his behalf. We do not learn more about this Carmelite from the sources, yet his person, mission, and how he fared during it represent the very subject of my reflection.
The Carmelite monasteries in Bohemia before their demise belonged to the Czech-Polish province (established in 1462). While the order flourished in Poland (between 1603 and 1620, twenty new monasteries were established),9 restoring its activities in Bohemia was not easy.
In Rome, diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Carmelites were developing from two sides. Cardinal Aldobrandini recommended the matter of the Carmelites to the new nuncio in Prague, Ferreri, and asked him to intercede with the emperor on their behalf. In addition, the general procurator of the order sought assistance from Cardinal Domenico Pinelli – the Cardinal Protector of the order – asking him to send a letter to Prince Bedřich Fürstenberg, the highest chancellor,(8) ((Note 8 / In M. Hösler's text, he is incorrectly referred to as "the highest chancellor.")) so that he would advocate for the Carmelites with the emperor. It seems that a different route was intentionally chosen rather than through the highest chancellor Zdeněk Vojtěch Popel of Lobkovice and Archbishop Zbyněk Berka. Their intercession with the emperor had particularly helped the Franciscans gain the church and monastery of Our Lady of Snow.
Cardinal Pinnelli did, in fact, soon write to the nuncio Fornari in Prague,10 whom Sylvio had not previously addressed, presumably not placing great hopes in him. Fornari promptly reached out with a request to both the archbishop and the highest chancellor but without success. He was advised that, instead of striving to achieve a change in the emperor's decision, the Carmelites should apply for another church in Prague. Both promised to accommodate them in that case.
Father Jakobus Fontana continually tried to reclaim the old convent in Prague, but without much success. He encountered indifference everywhere. Even Archbishop Zbyněk did not show much joy at the return of the Carmelites: in his opinion, the monastery and church of Our Lady of Snow had been lost to the Carmelites through their own fault.11 He reproached Father Fontana for his shamelessness and effrontery (insolentia et protervia).
On the other hand, reportedly Archbishop Zbyněk dissuaded Jakub Fontana from his intention to leave Prague and promised to provide him with living arrangements free of charge until the final resolution of the whole matter.12 He supposedly convinced Jakub to approach the emperor with a new request sometime at the turn of February and March 1604 – for another church in Prague for the Carmelites.
In April 1604, the nuncio proposed that the Carmelites be given another church, either of St. Cross the Greater in the Old Town or St. Apollinaris in the New Town. Yet this plan also did not materialize. At the same time, the Roman cardinals Aldobrandini, Pinnelli, and Medici – who were unaware that the subject of interest was no longer the original Carmelite monastery – sent again, at the prompting of the general procurator of the order, letters of recommendation to nuncio Ferreri for the Carmelites to regain their church.
Finally, in June 1604, another possibility arose: to give the Carmelites the Church of St. Spirit in the Old Town, along with the adjacent former convent of the Benedictines. The sisters in this convent had already not lived there for more than twenty years. When sometime in the 1580s the last abbess of this convent died and only two sisters remained in it, the abbess of the convent of St. George at Prague Castle, to which this convent was attached as a daughter monastery, with the consent of the archbishop, the nuncio, and the emperor officially relocated the two remaining sisters to their convent. In fact, in 1589, she managed to achieve that the church became a parish so that services could be held there for the Catholic citizens of the Old Town (the majority of the population and most churches belonged to the Utraquists), as the townsfolk requested, but the patronage right over the church remained with her convent. The convent at St. Spirit was attached to St. George's.
In a letter dated July 7, 1604, Emperor Rudolf II informed the St. George convent of his intention to give the Church and convent of St. Spirit to the Carmelites in compensation for the monastery of Our Lady of Snow. At the same time, he ordered Archbishop Berka to introduce the Carmelites to their new post. The Abbess of St. George, Žofie Albínka from Helfenburk, protested against this on behalf of the entire convent. Even the nuncio's insistence – who again received new letters of intercession from the Roman cardinals in August in favor of the Carmelites – and his connections with the archbishop and the highest chancellor at that moment did not move the sisters. The abbess even threatened to bring the sisters back to that convent, although it was clear to all that this would be a self-willed step lacking the approval of the necessary ecclesiastical and civil authorities and that the sisters could not lead a proper religious life there (which was moreover not in order even in St. George's convent). The nuncio promptly sent Fornari to convince her against her intention, but in vain. The very next day – August 31 – the abbess executed her intention: she personally brought two sisters into the convent of St. Spirit and "to ensure that the nuncio would find out immediately, she sent for a wagon to return home."13 Judging by the contemporary reaction, this act of hers caused a real scandal.
The nuncio protested with a letter to the emperor the very next day, as well as another letter to the archbishop. He requested not only the correction of the actions of the abbess of St. George but also the resolution of the Carmelite matter. Archbishop Zbyněk reacted only sluggishly, and over time, the nuncio became convinced that the archbishop had been on the side of the sisters from the very beginning of the dispute. From the court, he received confidential information that the emperor would not support the removal of the sisters from St. Spirit. However, in Rome, the nuncio succeeded in obtaining the issuance of a papal breve, which commanded the abbess to remove the sisters and additionally to strengthen religious discipline in the convent of St. George. However, the archbishop did not hurry to implement the requests of the breve. The nuncio's efforts to achieve a personal audience with the emperor were obstructed by the intrigues of the emperor's chamberlain Filip Lang. For an entire month, the nuncio did not achieve an audience. It was only then that Lang apologized to him, at the end of November, the abbess also apologized to him, placing the blame for the whole annoyance on the archbishop(!), and at the beginning of December, she returned the two sisters to the convent of St. George. Then the nuncio visited St. George's convent, settling the dispute even at the level of personal relations.
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| The Benedictine convent at St. Spirit was founded in 1346, and it is interesting that it was also called "of Divine Mercy" (six centuries before St. Faustina). According to the founding document, it is we who should always turn to Divine Mercy and ask for it especially on the day of our departure to eternity. |
Already during the dispute with the abbess of St. George, the nuncio saw that it would not be possible to obtain the convent of St. Spirit for the Carmelites. Another alternative seemed to him at that time to be the Bethlehem Chapel since the administrator of the Utraquist side, Václav Dačický, who worked with it, had been removed from office and ended up in prison. However, this plan also did not come to fruition; moreover, it would likely have faced strong resistance from the Czech non-Catholics. When General Superior Jindřich Sylvio returned from his visitation travels to Rome in December 1604, there even surfaced the idea of reclaiming the monastery of Our Lady of Snow from the Franciscans after all. In an effort to prevent further disputes, the papal curia urged the nuncio to quickly obtain a new church for the Carmelites. Ferreri did not idle, and it is documented that by the end of January a specific plan to grant them another church existed. We do not know exactly which church was in question, just that there were no obstacles standing in the way. Nonetheless, even this time the plan failed because Father Jakub, who represented the order during the negotiations in Prague, suddenly died. P. Matouš succinctly summarizes in his lecture: Father Jakobus Fontana, despite his great efforts, achieved little; he died in Prague and is buried in the local Capuchin church.14
For completeness, let us add: the Franciscan community in the convent of Our Lady of Snow was entirely massacred on February 15, 1611, during the invasion of the forces from Passau and the subsequent violence that broke out in the city. All 14 brothers. The Carmelites attempted to return to Prague twenty years later, in 1625, at the instigation of the Polish Carmelite Zikmund Gdowský. In 1627, they were then handed the Old Town Church of St. Havla, near which they could build a monastery and operate there until its dissolution by Joseph II in 1785.
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| The church of St. Spirit, now passed by, recalls God's invitation to the gifts of prayer and Spirit... |
Thus much for the historical events. "What of it today?" It is a piece of history from which our present grows distantly and from which we can draw lessons.
- Carmel is indeed a family in which both "great" and "small" people, superiors and subordinates, famous and forgotten, outwardly successful and unsuccessful, active and simultaneously mortal, have always had their place.
- Assuming that the actions of Jakub Fontana were underpinned by his prayer and life with God, we can reflect on his willingness toward God to be sent anywhere he is needed: his name is Italian, he was appointed prior in Polish Jasło, remained "indefinitely" in Prague, and eventually met his death there.
- There were situations where he closely recognized the weaknesses of people, including those in high positions, even in the church, experiencing the inexorability of various intrigues, human fickleness, and the overwhelming force of the machinery of the struggle for influence and power... This is a school that the Lord may sometimes subject us to as well, and it must not take from us Christian optimism.
- For the time in question, extensive written reports about individual events and the urgent requests directed to this or that "authority" are characteristic. They were often written almost immediately and addressed to several influential figures at once; if their resolution dragged on, they were frequently repeated. They accompany our whole matter. I believe this reflects the vitality of the people of that time, which astonishes us all the more, since we use "written expression" so reluctantly today. Meanwhile, the detailed recording of events that occurred could actually have been an opportunity for additional reflection and evaluation, for learning to express oneself accurately, even though the documentary evidence often reveals that it was an area for distorting what happened, for discrediting other parties involved, etc.
- But above all: what tenacity Brother Jakub Fontana must have had during his stay in Prague when, for months, he saw no other fruit of his efforts than continual new obstacles and failures...
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| The Capuchin Church of St. Mary of the Angels in Hradčany, in the crypt beneath which Jakub Fontana was buried, was then a new building. The Capuchins arrived in Bohemia in 1599 and received this place in 1600, they built the church themselves, and it was completed in 1602. |
Did all this have any meaning for the history of Carmel in Bohemia if the actual re-establishment of the Prague monastery did not happen until twenty years later? Such a question is certainly understandable. However, who can glimpse into the hidden prayers and sacrifices by which Jakub Fontana accompanied his efforts for the re-rooting of Carmel in this country back then? This too is the soil from which today – and the four centuries' distance does not signify much here – the Carmelite vocation of us today grows or is nourished.
