Just off the Beaten Path: Emmaus

As city nicknames go, "City of a Hundred Spires," perhaps Prague's most famous epithet, at least has accuracy going for it, unlike some other city nicknames. I mean, "The Big Apple?"

Photo from Prague-pictures.cz, where people with skill far superior to my own post their photographs.

At the time of the phrase's coinage by writer Josef Hormayer at the beginning of the 19th century, a mathematician counted 103 spires in Prague. Now, apparently, there are over 500. Which...that's a lot. 

Anyway, I recently visited two of them.

All the rest of the photos are by me. That's why they're terrible.

In Prague 2, near the Karlovo náměstí metro station, there's a complex of buildings most noticeable for twin white modernist spires, one appearing taller than the other, tipped with gold. Supposedly, the spires are of equal height and it's just an optical illusion that makes one appear higher than the other, but I have my doubts.

Okay, maybe they are the same height. Maybe.

Anyway, these are the twin spires of the Benedictine Abbey of Emmaus, often called in Czech simply Emauzy. The monastery was originally chartered in 1347 at the personal urging of the newly crowned King Charles IV of Bohemia. By the time the monastery was officially consecrated in 1374, Charles was the Holy Roman Emperor, and his home city of Prague had entered a golden age of art and culture under his watchful eye. His name and influence are all over this city, so it's no great surprise to find it at Emmaus. Oh, and the monastery got the name Emmaus because, on the day it was consecrated, the Gospel reading was the Emmaus story.

Importantly for Church politics at the time, Charles chartered the monastery specifically as a place for the Slavic rite within the Roman Catholic Church. The original monks were from modern-day Croatia, with others joining from other Slavic speaking areas. In fact, the monastery, over the ensuing decades, become one of the preeminent centers of Slavic theology, counting the famous Czech reformer Jan Hus as one of its students.

As is often the case with structures which have seen essentially continuous use for 650 years, Emmaus is a bit of an architectural hodgepodge: some Romanesque elements remain on the grounds; the 1374 construction, including the cloisters, was Gothic; there was a Baroque renovation and a neo-Gothic one; and the twin spires are a Modernist addition (The cause for which is the subject of this weekend's Prague Cast--only available to my Patreon backers.)

It's just so...Gothic!

However, the core of the design is still that of the Gothic monastery, with a square courtyard surrounded by cloisters, with chapels and living quarters and the like attached. Most notably, the cloisters were decorated with frescoes during the initial building of the monastery, around 1370, and while the centuries haven't always been kind to them (weather damage, water damage, etc.), enough remains of the original paintings, thanks to amazing restoration work and touch-ups, to make Emmaus a very special place.

The four walls of frescoes, featuring 30+ sections of 80+ scenes, are known as the Emmaus Cycle, painted by an artist only known as the Emmaus Master. Centered on scenes from the prefiguring and life of Jesus, matched by appropriate Old Testament images, the Emmaus Cycle knits together dozens of separate stories and images to tell the epic history of Christ and his Church.

Damn you, electric light! That's *so* not Gothic!

The southern wall focuses on the events leading up to Jesus' birth, starting from Adam and Eve, showing their expulsion from Eden (below--Eden here looks like a medieval walled city) and ending with the Annunciation of the Virgin (above). The Adam and Eve fresco is quite damaged, with only some images clearly visible, but the Annunciation fresco is one of the best preserved in the monastery. At the top of the image, you can see the angel giving Mary the good news, as it were, while the dove of the Hole Spirit descends upon her. Below and to the left is Moses (shown with horns, due to a common translation error) listening to the Burning Bush, while on the right is the story of Gideon and the Fleece, the two Old Testament stories of divine communication and intervention giving added richness to the story of Mary.

"And STAY OUT!"

This fresco rated R for violence.

On the western wall are scenes of Jesus' private life, i.e, the time before his ministry, though many are heavily damaged, especially due to water damage from a fire in 1945--again, listen to the corresponding Prague Cast for details. The image above, however, is of the Killing of the Innocents initiated by Herod as an attempt to kill the Messiah--who he believed had just been born--and the Holy Family's Flight to Egypt. On the left side, you can see a man with a sword poised to kill a toddler. It's pretty gruesome stuff. On the right side is Mary, in her traditional blue, holding the baby Jesus as they ride out of Israel. The two bottom images of the triptych were destroyed before they even had the chance to be photographed.

There are also olive trees. 

The courtyard entrance is also found in the west corridor, and it leads to a small, well-kept area called "Paradise Court." At the center is a wooden sculpture reading on one side, "Behold, the Cross of the Lord sends enemies to flight," and on the other, "The Tree of Life in the Heart of Paradise." It's an interesting pair of statements, combining the material of the statue with its shape.

There are about four different architectural schools going on here.

Strom života -- Tree of Life

Hle, kříž -- Behold, the Cross

The sculpture, obviously, is quite a recent addition to the courtyard. 

Remember the fire and destruction I mentioned?

The drawing at the top is of the courtyard as it was in the early 1800s, the middle is a photograph from the late part of the 19th century showing a different sculpture in place, and at the bottom is a photograph from after the wartime bombing in 1945. It's rather amazing anything survived at all given the damage.

It was so big I literally couldn't get it all in the picture.

On the northern corridor, which borders the main chapel and details Jesus's ministry before the Passion, there are several alcoves which are double the size of standard. On these, the artist cleverly added a sort of trompe-l'oeil effect of architectural details to separate the two sets of scenes. The image above features six scenes; those on the left feature three tales of resurrection: Jesus and the youth of Naim, as well as Elijah and Elisha performing their own miracles. On the right are tales of miraculous feeding, including The Feeding of the 5,000 and the Israelites gathering manna from Heaven. Generally, the frescoes on this wall associate bread with life, wine with suffering, and water with forgiveness and healing. The northern corridor is also where you access the two chapels, but I wasn't running short on time, so I didn't get to properly explore.

We mustn't forget to look up sometimes.

The eastern wing, telling the story of Jesus' betrayal, death, resurrection, and assumption into Heaven, is the most heavily damaged, and only a few frescoes remain. However, the one that does most is this:

The painting of the Madonna and Child was added in the 1880s as part of a "Beuron" redecoration.
That's a whole other kettle of fish.

The final fresco in the cycle details, on the top, Jesus's Assumption; on the bottom left, Elijah's Ascension in a flaming chariot (the wheels almost look as if they're following the curve of the later Madonna painting); and on the right, Jacob's Ladder--the images of the ascent to Heaven that the Benedictines would have been trying to emulate in their own way as they walked through the cloisters to eat or pray.

On that note, the inscriptions on the paintings are all in Latin, which makes sense for a Gothic monastery, yes? No. This was a Slavic monastery, after all, so one would expect inscriptions in a old Slavic language, and, indeed, traces of such inscriptions have been found here and there. Actually, given that Benedictine monasteries aren't exactly *super* public places, it seems odd that the Emmaus Cycle of frescoes even exists. I mean, they wouldn't have spent all that money for only the monks to see, would they? Scholars now believe that the cloisters were likely opened from time to time--perhaps on certain holy days--to allow the rest of Prague to get a look at the splendor that Charles IV brought to every aspect of life in his royal city. His plan is still working, 650 years later.

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The monastery and chapel as seen from behind.