The Bethlehem Chapel is a preaching church in Prague in the Old Town. According to the website of the Czech Technical University, it was the first preaching church in Europe.[1]
Foundation
The chapel was founded by Hanuš of Mülheim, a courtier of King Wenceslaus IV, and Jan Kříž, an Old Town merchant and one of the few Czechs among the aldermen at the Old Town Hall. The foundation charter was signed on 24 May 1391, and the chapel was expressly intended for preaching in the Czech language.[1] It is dedicated to the memory of the newborn children whom King Herod had murdered in Bethlehem. According to the interpretation of the time, the name Bethlehem meant the House of Bread, in the sense of spiritual nourishment.[1]
Original form
The ground plan is an irregular quadrangle, and the main building material was quarried marlstone. In the time of Jan Hus the ceiling of the chapel was wooden, of beams, and three entrances led into it, none of them the main one. They were placed so that arrivals would not disturb the space in front of the pulpit. The chapel was deliberately plain, in contrast to the decoration of Catholic churches.[1] It was never a parish church and was always called only a chapel, although up to 3,000 people could fit inside.[1]
Jan Hus
The chapel gained its historical importance in 1402–1413, when Jan Hus served there as preacher and administrator. He was born in 1371 in Husinec, in Prague he received the degree of master of the liberal arts in 1396, was ordained a priest in 1400, and from March 1402 preached for ten years in the Bethlehem Chapel.[1] For seven years both the archbishop and the king supported his activity, but his views became contested. In 1410 the pope issued an order to close the chapel. Hus nevertheless went on preaching, and in 1412 he spoke out against the trade in indulgences meant to finance crusades. The king then also ceased to protect him.[1] He preached in the chapel for the last time in February 1413 and then had to leave Prague. He set out for the Council of Constance on 14 October 1414, was arrested on 28 October and burned on 6 July 1415.[1]
After Hus
In 1622 the chapel was taken over from Charles University by the Jesuits, who restored Catholic worship. After the order was dissolved in 1773 it passed into state ownership, and ten years later it briefly became a branch church of St Giles. In 1786 an engineering school, the first higher technical school, was established in the Jesuit St Wenceslas seminary. Its director František Herget, who lived on the site, surveyed the chapel and found dangerous cracks and the threat of the vault collapsing.[1]