The Bethlehem Chapel () is a medieval religious building in the
Old Town
In a city or town, the old town is its historic or original core. Although the city is usually larger in its present form, many cities have redesignated this part of the city to commemorate its origins. In some cases, newer developments on t ...
of
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
,
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
, notable for its connection with the origins of the
Bohemian Reformation
The Bohemian Reformation (also known as the Czech Reformation or Hussite Reformation), preceding the Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom of Bohemia, Kingdom and Lands of the Bo ...
, especially with the Czech reformer
Jan Hus
Jan Hus (; ; 1369 – 6 July 1415), sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as ''Iohannes Hus'' or ''Johannes Huss'', was a Czechs, Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and t ...
.
The chapel is named for the
Innocents massacred in
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of . The city's economy is strongly linked to Tourism in the State of Palesti ...
by
Herod the Great
Herod I or Herod the Great () was a History of the Jews in the Roman Empire, Roman Jewish client king of the Herodian kingdom of Judea. He is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea. Among these works are the rebuilding of the ...
in an attempt to kill the newborn
Jesus Christ
Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
.
History
The Bethlehem Chapel was founded in Prague in 1391 by Wenceslas Kříž (known as 'the Merchant'), and John of Milheim, and taught solely in the
Czech vernacular, thus breaking with German domination of the Medieval
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...
n church. The building was never officially called a
church, only a
chapel
A chapel (from , a diminutive of ''cappa'', meaning "little cape") is a Christianity, Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. First, smaller spaces inside a church that have their o ...
, though it could contain 3,000 people; indeed, the chapel encroached upon the parish of Sts. Philip and James, and John of Milheim paid the pastor of that church 90
grossi as compensation.
Hus became a rector and a preacher in March 1402. After Hus's excommunication in 1412, the Pope ordered the Bethlehem chapel to be pulled down, although this action was rejected by the Czech majority on the Old Town council. After Hus's death, he was succeeded by
Jacob of Mies.
In the 17th century, the building was acquired by the
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
. It fell into disrepair and in 1786 it was partly demolished. In 1836–1837 the surviving masonry was incorporated into a new apartment building. Under the
Czechoslovakian communist regime the building was restored by the government to its state at the time of Hus. Most of the chapel's exterior walls and a small portion of the pulpit date back to the medieval chapel. The wall paintings are largely from Hus's time there, and the text below is taken from his work ''De sex erroribus'', and contrast the poverty of Christ with the riches of the Catholic Church of Hus's time.
[Spinka, pp. 48-49]
Asteroid
90892 Betlémská kaple, discovered by Czech astronomer
Miloš Tichý at the
Kleť Observatory in 1997, was named after the chapel.
The official was published by the
Minor Planet Center
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Funct ...
in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...
on 3 February 2015 ().
References
See also
*
List of Jesuit sites
This list includes past and present buildings, facilities and institutions associated with the Society of Jesus. In each country, sites are listed in chronological order of start of Jesuit association.
Nearly all these sites have be ...
External links
*
{{Authority control
1384 establishments in Europe
Churches in Prague 1
Roman Catholic chapels in the Czech Republic
National cultural monuments of the Czech Republic
Jan Hus