Jan Nepomuk

Jan was born between about 1340 and 1350 in the village of Pomuk (modern Czech Nepomuk), near the monastery of the Cistercian Order at the Green Mountain. In the place where the church of St. John of Nepomuk today is located, earlier (according to oral sources) there was a house where Jan was born. Jan’s father, Velfin, was a burmist of the village of Pomuk in 1355–1367; nothing is known about his mother. Jan received his basic education at the school at the Church of St. James.

In 1370 he became the notary of the Prague Archbishop , in 1380 he was ordained a priest.

After receiving dignity, he continued his education, studied law, in 1381 received a bachelor's degree in Prague, and in 1387 in Padua - a doctorate.

In 1389 he became canon of the Vysehrad chapter and was appointed general vicar of the Prague archbishopric .

The Czech king Wenceslas IV (1378-1419) constantly clashed with the country's highest clergy, defended the priority of secular power and intervened in church affairs, believing the Prague archbishopric to be one of his main opponents in domestic politics.

On the morning of March 20, 1393, during a meeting between King Wenceslas IV and the Archbishop of Prague Jan from Jenshtein in the Temple of the Virgin Mary under the chain, the king ordered the prisoners who were in the retinue of Archbishop Jan Nepomuk, Mikulas Puhnik, probst Wenceslas Knobloch and Nepra to be captured and imprisoned. Soon, Yan’s comrades were released, and Yang died of painful torture. After that, his body was thrown in a bag from Charles Bridge to the Vltava . The murder of Jan Nepomutsky had a wide resonance, it was the reason for the overthrow of Wenceslas from the German throne, Jan Hus was asked about the attitude to the case of Nepomutsky during interrogations at the Constance Cathedral , who denied his sympathy to the king. The specific reason why the anger of the king fell on Jan Nepomuk is precisely not known. In 1433, chroniclers put forward an assumption, very likely, but not exactly proved, that Ian refused to reveal to the king the secret of the Queen's confession, the confessor of which he was.

According to legend, in the very place where the body of the saint plunged into the Vltava, a glow in the form of 5 stars appeared above the water, since then Nepomutsky has been depicted with five stars above his head. The place near which Yan was thrown over the railing can be seen on the right hand on the path along the bridge towards Mala Strana, this place is marked by a cross walled into the railing of the bridge and two copper nails near the cross.

Jan's body was removed from the Vltava and subsequently buried in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

The veneration of Jan by Czech Catholics as a saint and a martyr began in the 15th century . He was counted among the saints in 1729. Jan Nepomucki is considered the patron saint of the confessors, as well as the patron saint of Prague and the whole Czech Republic. Memory in the Catholic Church - May 16 .

The pilgrimage church of St. John of Nepomuk near the city of Zdar nad Sazavou is a UNESCO World Heritage Site . ^[one]

In the name of St. Jan in Spain was named the 74-gun warship San Juan Nepomuceno (year of construction - 1765), heroically fighting in the Battle of Trafalgar against four enemy ships.

Some Protestants believe that veneration of Nepomuk appeared in the Czech Republic to supplant the memory of Hus, and supposedly portraits of Hus were intentionally declared portraits of Nepomuk. However, there is no clear evidence for this, and the portraits could be mixed up erroneously.

Nepomuk appears along with other heroes of Slavic history (including Gus) in the poem of the Slovak poet Jan Kolar “Daughter of Glory”. He is mentioned in the novels by George Sand “Consuelo”, “Jacques” (a picture on the neck of Sylvia), Bozena Nemtsova “Grandmother”. In The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, the legend of St. John is parodied.

The most famous statue of the saint was created in 1683 (even before the official canonization) by J. Brockoff for Charles Bridge in Prague. Now the original has been transferred to the National Museum in Prague (like most sculptures of the Charles Bridge), and an exact copy is installed on the bridge.

In the XVIII century , a large number of iconographic cycles were created with scenes from the life of the saint. The most famous is in the Lateran Basilica in Rome .

Saint John of Nepomuk is depicted on icons with a palm branch and a crown of stars above his head.

• Catholic Encyclopedia. Ed. Franciscans. M., 2002.
• St. John Nepomucene (Catholic Encyclopedia )

•   Jan Nepomutsky : thematic media files on Wikimedia Commons
• Page dedicated to Jan Nepomucki (Czech, English, German)