Plasy: the ups and downs of the Cistercian monastery - Horydoly.cz - Outdoor Generation

Plasy: the ups and downs of the Cistercian monastery - Horydoly.cz - Outdoor Generation

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The National Technical Museum has opened a Building Heritage Center in the renovated area of ​​the monastery's economic facilities in Plasy.

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Archaeologists discovered the oak foundations of the oldest convent in the marshes below the Baroque monastery. The unique monument has been preserved thanks to the properties of oak wood, which hardens in a humid environment. After all, medieval builders of buildings and bridges already knew this.

Medieval flourishing

Abbot Ivo began the construction of the Romanesque stone basilica of the Assumption in 1154. The church was consecrated in 1204 by Bishop Robert of Olomouc.

The economy grew so much that Pope Innocent IV. confirms in 1250 eleven farms, adjacent villages and churches.

During the reign of Wenceslas I, who stayed in the monastery several times, the Plasy monastery was at the peak of its power. In 1260, the two-story Royal Chapel was built according to the French Gothic pattern. The frescoes, which were painted around 1300, have been preserved to this day.

Luxemburg gave the first blow, followed by the Hussites

In the second half of the 14th century, the monastery ran into financial difficulties, like practically all Cistercians north of the Alps. The monastery was further burdened by King Wenceslas IV when he raised taxes. Monks therefore also began to collect taxes, leased their properties to subjects and thus became a secular lord. However, the Plask monastery still held 70 villages. He even owned land and houses in Malá Strana in Prague.

In the second half of 1419, the monks sold several villages, which was a signal to the surrounding nobility that the monastery was not strong enough. By 1421, he had lost five-sixths of his real estate - some of it was sold or exchanged, but most of it was taken by noble families without compensation. At that time the monastery was burned down by the Hussites.

Until 1425, King Sigismund pawned most of the monastery's goods to the Kolovrats, Gutštejn and Švamberk. He sold the rest.

Abbot Gotfríd survived in nearby Manětín, some of the monks went to the monastery in Pilsen. They returned in 1438.

The Habsburgs, estates, Turks and Protestants wanted money

In the 16th century, the impoverished monks were left with only five villages and several abandoned villages. However, Abbot Bohuslav also stopped them in 1543 so that he could pay benefits for the war with the Turks. Emperor Rudolph II tried to help the Plask monastery and assigned it the provostship in Česká Lípa. However, this did not help financially and in 1608 there were only two Cistercians left in the monastery.

Abbot Jiří Vašmucius sided with the Habsburgs during the Estates Uprising. He helped the Prague viceroy Jaroslav Bořit from Martinice to escape after the Prague defenestration, at the request of Emperor Matthias he financially supported Pilsen besieged by General Mansfeld's troops, he joined the defense with the monastery's armed men and commanded the artillery right on the walls. After the capture of Pilsen, he was captured and sentenced to death, but the monastery paid him off. However, this was not enough for the Protestant troops and they looted Plasy and the surrounding villages. Part of the monastery estate was also confiscated and sold to the surrounding Protestant nobility.

At the turn of 1619 and 1620, the monastery was looted again by the Dutch army. In autumn, there was only one shepherd left in the entire monastery complex.

In 1623, after the Battle of White Mountain, the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II returned the property of the monastery when the previous confiscation seized. In addition, Plasy received the confiscated estate of the Grysperks.

Thus, the monastery recovered economically. On the old Gothic foundations, the construction of a massive Baroque convent was started. When the monastery was habitable, the abbot resumed the reception of novices after a long hiatus.

However, those times were far from idyllic. The Thirty Years' War was going on, the regular army and paramilitary units were moving around, the villages were deserted, it wasn't even safe in the monastery. After all, the monks left in 1638, where they were protected by the city's military garrison and good walls.

Baroque upheaval: architects Santini and Dienzenhofer

Only after the end of the war in 1660 under Abbot Tengler was the basilica demolished by the Hussites two centuries earlier restored. This is the first Baroque building in Western Bohemia.

The Plasy monastery prospered again. A peasant uprising in 1680 against the monastic authority was a complication, but even that ultimately benefited the Cistecians. After suppressing the rebellion, Abbot Trojer forced the convicts to work on the construction of the monastery in Plasy, the expansion of the Mariánský Týnec church and to plant a linden avenue from Kralovice, the last remnant of which is now Radim's linden.

Abbot Evžen Tyttl followed his predecessor and built as much money as he could afford. He was an architect himself, so he knew exactly who to hire. The most brilliant Czech architect Jan Blažej Santini - Aichel, who worked for the monastery between 1707 and 1723, undertook the work in Plasy. However, first he had to show his mastery in the chapel of the Names of the Virgin Mary in Mladotice. He then built the church of the Miraculous Virgin Mary with a new rectory in Mariánské Týnec and a convent building with a temple right in Plasy.

Santini had the old Gothic convent demolished and began to build a magnificent Baroque building in its place. The whole is built, just like its Gothic predecessor, on an oak grid, which is laid on a gravel base. The grate is reinforced with 5100 oak piles, which are driven deep into the mud through the gravel. The durability of the wooden grate is ensured by a system of channels from the surrounding springs and from the Střela, which keep the oak wood in constant moisture. A table at the eastern end of the staircase (architects call this element a mirror) shows the designer's message that without water the building will collapse. The water system of the monastery is an important European monument.

Joseph II. he abolished the monastery as well as many others

The architect Santini did not live to complete the construction of his convent in 1740. After all, the monastery was not completed in the planned scope, although the famous Dienzenhofer family of architects also worked on it, because in 1785 the monastery was ordered by Joseph II. canceled and his property seized by the Religious Fund administration. It happened in the same way as with most monasteries in Austria at the time.

The last abbot, Celestin Werner, tried for many years to restore the monastery, but he failed mainly because of the reluctance of the former monks to return. Land estates after the death of Emperor Joseph II. they demanded the restoration of those abolished monasteries that were led by abbots with representation at the regional assembly, so that the death of the abbots would not weaken the voice of the clergy. In 1790, the Land Committee submitted to the new Emperor Leopold II. a proposal to restore monasteries that were not used for public purposes. However, the emperor decided that for the next time such proposals would not be accepted at all.

Abbot Werner tried to settle the Trappist order in the monastery in 1798, but failed. (We specify that in the order's history the first were the Benedictines, the Cistercians separated from them and the Trappists even later). Another request for the restoration of the monastery was addressed directly to the emperor by the abbot. In January 1803, he was invited to submit a written statement from the living members of the convent that they requested the restoration of the monastery. Of the original sixty monks, only fourteen answered positively. So the monastery was not restored.

Metternich's residence, castle and family tomb

The monastery estate was bought from Austria-Hungary in 1826 by its most politically powerful man, Chancellor Klement Václav Lothar Nepomuk Metternich. He rebuilt the Plasy monastery into a castle, built an iron smelter and a brewery, removed the dead monks from the crypt and set up a family tomb in it. In 1828, he had the remains of family members transported here, and in 1859 he himself was buried there.

A large part of the Plasy castle, outbuildings and church was destroyed by fire in 1894. A box with fingers and ashes of the grave of St. John of Nepomuck and religious writings was saved from the collapsed dome of the chapel of St. Benedict. Within a year, the damage was paid by the insurance company and the castle was repaired, but above all the valuable frescoes went to waste.

After World War II, Plasy Monastery served as many church buildings. The Red Army was housed here, as the demarcation line between the victorious American and Soviet troops stretched across Plasy. After that, it housed offices, an archive, a civil defense shelter was built underground, and a folk art school operated here. In 2004, castellan Martin Mejchar stole five dozen old prints from the convention that belonged to the National Museum and sold them. Some of them were not found.

It has been a national cultural monument since 1995. Today, the monastery is under the administration of the National Institute of Monuments and is undergoing extensive reconstruction. Commercial buildings gradually acquire exhibition, educational and artistic functions. One exhibition shows the history of the Plaša pharmacy, another is a gallery of local natives - painters and restorers of the Stretti family, and the Building Heritage Center operates here. Visitors can see the Baroque Granary, the Gothic Royal Chapel, the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and the Empire Cemetery with the Church of St. Wenceslas.

The Plaska organ in the church is famous. They are among the largest in the Czech Republic, they are newly reconstructed and their baroque sound was set as at the time of their creation.

INFO: Plasy Monastery

The Cistercians were defeated by the economic crisis

Plasy Monastery was the most important seat of the Cistercian order in the country. A place in a valley and in a remote countryside was traditionally chosen for the establishment of a new monastery. A sufficient source of water was very important. This provided driving power for saws, mills and hammers, but also for drinking and washing in the fountains. An advanced specialty of the Cistercian monasteries was the supply of drinking water directly to the kitchen.

The Cistercians were an economically oriented order and, in addition to prayers, they also considered the improvement of the landscape with their own work to be a service to God. In this they differed from their close relatives the Benedictines, who also prayed and worked (Ora et labora), but emphasized contemplation. Benedictine monasteries are therefore mostly built on hills in contrast to valley Cistercian settlements.

In the Middle Ages, the Cistercians were a wealthy order. The wealth came mainly from the mother monasteries in France. The General Chapter was based in Cîteaux.

But in the 13th century, a crisis came to Central Europe. In Bohemia, several years of looting by Brandenburg troops, which did not stop even in front of church property, manifested itself. At the same time, it became clear that the Central European Cistercian monasteries could not handle the economic activity for which they were set. Large economies were unified throughout Europe, but in Bohemia the state of laymen and civil servants was never actually fulfilled. The conditions here were simply not as good as in the fertile lowlands of France or Italy. Then a few years of crop failure and war disruption were enough for the Cistercian monasteries to collapse like giants on clay feet.

When all this went too far and the Cistercian housewives were standing on their own feet again, another misfortune struck. At the beginning of the 15th century, there was a small ice age, several years of crop failure, pestilence, and this triggered the Hussite rampage. Monks were massacred, monasteries were burned and wealth was stolen.

In the Baroque period, the order managed to restore several monasteries and build grandiose buildings. In the era of the enlightened absolutism of Joseph II. monasteries that were not dedicated to teaching or caring for the elderly or sick were abolished without distinction of order.

Cistercian monasteries in the Czech lands

1142 - Sedlec Monastery1144 - Plasy Monastery1145 - Pomuk Monastery1145 - Hradištěcca Monastery 1150 - Svaté Pole Monastery1199 - Osek Monastery1204 - Velehrad Monastery1225 - Oslavany Monastery1233 - Porta Coeli Monastery1233 - Nížkov Monastery1252 - Žďár Monastery1259 – Vyšší Brod Monastery1261 – Vizovice Monastery1263 – Zlatá Koruna Monastery60. years of the 13th century – Pohled monastery 1265 – Sezemice monastery 1292 – Zbraslav monastery 1323 – Staré Brno monastery 1347 – Skalice monastery

Cistercian monasteries in Vyšší Brod and Porta Coeli are currently operating.

Show the place Turistika on a larger map

Horydoly monasteries

Hradiště Monastery (Cistercians)

Plasy (Cistercians)

Vyšší Brod (Cistercians)

Fontfroide (Cistercians)

Waldsassen (Cistercians)

Saints (pavilians)

Saint John under the Rock (Benedictines)

Island near Davle (Benedictines)

Sázava Monastery (Benedictines)

Pesquie (Benedictine nuns)

Nový Dvůr (Trappists)

Peony (Augustinians)

Prague, Charles Bridge (cruisers with a red star)

Prague, Kampa (Johnites, Knights of Malta)

Vadstena (Brigitte)

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