John of Nepomuk or John Nepomucene (Czech: Jan Nepomucký)
(1340 – March 20, 1393) is a
national saint of Bohemia. In his fully developed legend he was
the confessor of the Queen of Bohemia and refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional. On the basis of this story, John of
Nepumuk was made a saint, the first martyr of the Seal
of the Confessional, a patron against calumnies and, because of the manner of his death, a protector from floods. Eventually, in 1961 the Vatican declared this traditional account as unfounded.
The historical starting-point of the Nepomuk legend is the person of John of Pomuk (Jan z Pomuk), a small market town of
Bohemia later renamed Nepomuk, which belonged to the nearby Cistercian abbey. He was born around 1340, and he first studied at the new University of Prague, then followed a course in Canon
law at the University of Padua. In 1393 he was made the vicar-general of John of Jenštejn
(1348-1400), Archbishop of Prague from 1378 to 1396. Among his contemporaries, the new vicar-general enjoyed no special
reputation; he was rich, possessed houses, and lent money to noblemen and priests. In the same year, March 20 he was thrown into the river Vltava from Charles Bridge in Prague at the behest of Wenceslaus, King of the Romans and King of Bohemia.
The issue was an old one, and its peremptory solution was traditional (compare the Defenestrations of Prague). At issue was the appointment of a new abbot for the rich and powerful Benedictine Abbey of Kladruby; its abbot was a territorial magnate whose resources would be crucial to
Wenceslaus in his struggles with nobles. Wenceslaus at the same time was backing the Avignon
papacy, whereas the Archbishop of Prague followed its rival, the pope at Rome. As the Hussite reform movement, denounced as "heresy", divided Bohemia, Archbishop John
of Jenštejn ably represented the conservative or even reactionary faction of ecclesiastical universalism, which was not
favourably inclined to any radical social changes. Contrary to the wishes of Wenceslaus, John confirmed the Archbishop's
candidate for Abbot of Kladrau, and was thrown off the Charles Bridge at Prague on the Emperor's orders, March 20, 1393.
John of Nepomuk is seen by Catholics as a martyr to the cause of clerical immunity, by
Romantic nationalists as a Czech martyr to Imperial interference, and by historians
as a victim of a late version of the inveterate investiture controversy between
secular rulers and the Catholic hierarchy. He is portrayed with a halo of
five stars, commemorating the stars that hovered over the Vltava River on the night of his
murder. His tomb, a Baroque monument cast in silver and silver-gilt that was designed by
Fischer von Erlach, stands in St Vitus Cathedral, Prague.
The connection of John of Nepomuk with the inviolability of the
confessional is part of the development and transformation of the legend, which can be traced through successive stages.
The archbishop, who hastened to Rome soon after the crime, in his charge against Wenceslaus,
called the victim a martyr; in the vita written a few years later miracles are already
recorded, by which the drowned man was discovered. The uncritical Bohemian annalists from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century
fostered the fable. About the middle of the fifteenth century the statement appears for the first time that the refusal to
violate the seal of confession was the cause of John's death. Two decades later (1471), the dean of Prague, Paul Zidek, makes
Johanek the queen's confessor. The unscrupulous chronicler Wenceslaus Hayek, the "Bohemian Livy," speaks in 1541 (probably owing
to carelessness in the use of his sources) of two Johns of Nepomuk being drowned; the first as confessor, the second for
his confirmation of the abbot.
The place on the bridge parapet where John of Nepomuk was thrown into the
Vltava.
The legend is especially indebted for its growth to the Jesuit historiographer Boleslaus
Balbinus the "Bohemian Pliny,", whose Vita beatae Joannis Nepomuceni martyris was published in Prague,
1670.[1] He was, however, as credulous as he was patriotic,
and even became a forger to honor his saint. Although the Prague metropolitan chapter did not
accept the biography dedicated to it, "as being frequently destitute of historical foundation and erroneous, a bungling work of
mythological rhetoric," Balbinus stuck to it. In 1683 the Charles Bridge was adorned with
a statue of the saint, which has had numerous successors; in 1708 the first church was dedicated to him at Hradec Králové; a more famous Pilgrimage
Church of Saint John of Nepomuk was founded in 1719.
Meanwhile, in spite of the objection of the Jesuits, the process was inaugurated which ended with his canonization. On May 31, 1721, he was
beatified, and on March 19, 1729, he was canonized under
Pope Benedict XIII. The acts of the process, comprising 500 pages, which cost more
than 180,000 crowns, distinguish two Johns of Nepomuk and sanction the cultus of the one who was drowned in 1393 as a martyr of the sacrament of penance.
The ingenious suggestion has been made that the historical kernel of St. John Nepomuk is really Jan
Hus, who was metamorphosed from a Bohemian Reformer into a Roman Catholic saint; and that the Nepomuk legend is based on
Wenceslaus Hayek's blending of the Jan who was drowned in 1393 and the Jan who was burned in
1415. The resemblances are certainly striking, extending to the manner of celebrating their commemorations. But when the
Jesuits came to Prague, the Nepomuk worship had long
been widespread; and the idea of canonization originated in opposition not to the Hussites, but
to Protestantism, as a weapon of the Counter-Reformation - though his cultus was also intended to supplant Hus in the hearts of
the Bohemian people. In the image of the saint which gradually arose, the religious history of Bohemia is reflected. This much is
historically certain, that the vicar-general John of Pomuk was drowned in 1393 because of the choice of the abbot, and that Rome,
making use of a forged biography, has canonized a man whose cultural role has become shifted.
Nepomuk is the name of a figure of Saint John of Nepomuk, to be often encountered in Central and Eastern Europe,
including Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Poland and Lithuania.
Notes
- ^ It was reprinted in the Bollandists'
Acta sanctorum III, May, pp 668-80.
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The Drowning John of Nepomuk bas-relief on the monument in Otyń, Poland
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