Břevnov Monastery in Prague-Břevnov is, according to the monastery administration's website, the oldest men's monastery in Bohemia. It was founded in 993 by the Prague bishop St. Adalbert and Duke Boleslav II.[1] Its Baroque complex from the 18th century has the status of a national cultural monument. In 1993 Pope John Paul II raised the monastery to the rank of archabbey.[1]
Foundation
St. Adalbert drew inspiration from the Benedictine monasteries where he had stayed in Italy, and he brought the first community of monks to Bohemia from Niederaltaich in Lower Bavaria. According to legend, the monastery was founded at the spring of the Brusnice stream. St. Adalbert is said to have removed a beam there that had prevented animals from drinking, and Břevnov is said to have taken its name from this. [1] The monastery became a centre of spiritual life, learning and economic activity.[1]
The Romanesque monastery in the 11th century
The first monks probably lived in simple wooden buildings. Under Abbot Meginhard (1035/43–1089), with the support of Duke Břetislav I, these were replaced by stone structures. From the mid-11th century the complex consisted of a three-aisled Romanesque basilical church with an eastern crypt and a choir above it. The cloister lay to the north of the church, while the abbot's residence and operational buildings probably stood to the south.[2] The eastern end of the church with its crypt was built by 1045 at the latest, when the monks buried in the church the body of their brother from Niederaltaich, the later hermit St. Günther.[2]
After the Hussite Wars and the Baroque building works, little survived of the Romanesque and Gothic architecture. The new construction in the 18th century significantly altered the terrain, particularly by levelling the building site, and the Baroque structures covered the remains of the older buildings. The medieval appearance of the monastery is therefore known mainly from archaeological research, carried out at the end of the 1950s, in 1965–1974, and in the 1990s. These investigations followed the lines of reconstruction work, so knowledge of the medieval monastery remains partial.[2] In 1964–1965 Vladimír Píša discovered the foundations of a Romanesque and Gothic well, graves beneath the sacristy, and masonry from the Romanesque crypt. The crypt, built of small limestone blocks, was a three-aisled hall space with an eastern apse and a low groin vault resting on two rows of columns.[2]
Baroque reconstruction
The most important Baroque abbot, Otmar Zinke (1700–1738), began the reconstruction of the entire monastery in 1708. The construction was initially led by Pavel Ignác Bayer, whom the abbot dismissed. In 1709 he hired Kryštof Dientzenhofer, and from 1716 Kryštof's son Kilián Ignác also took part in the work.[3] The decoration of the church and its interiors was carried out by leading artists of the time, among the painters Petr Brandl, Jan Petr Molitor, Jan Jakub Steven ze Steinfelsu and Cosmas Damian Asam, and among the sculptors Matěj Václav Jäckel, Karel Josef Hiernle and Richard Jiří Prachner.[3]
Zinke purchased Lehnické Pole in Lower Silesia, where he had another provostry built. Because of the Wars of the Austrian Succession, it later lay within Prussia. The network of subordinate Benedictine houses also included the parish in Orlová in the Těšín region. The abbot's efforts to exempt the Bohemian Benedictines from the authority of the Archbishop of Prague ended, after decades of dispute, in the archbishop's victory. Nevertheless, the archabbey's website describes the period around the mid-18th century as the peak of the community's flourishing.[3]
Wars and the 19th century
The monastery lay on the main approach road to Prague from the west, and so in every military campaign it bore the costs of billeting troops, treating the wounded, and war taxes. In 1741–1742 it was plundered by the Saxons and the French, and in 1744 it housed a hospital for the Prussian army. There was again a Prussian hospital there in 1757, when the damage required the monastery church to be reconsecrated.[3] The restoration was overseen by Abbots Benno II Löbl (1738–1751) and Bedřich Grundtmann (1752–1772).[3] During the Josephine reforms, which sought to reduce the number of monasteries, its dissolution was averted by Abbot Štěpán Rautenstrauch (1773–1785).[3]