Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(3):307-316

Counter-Reformation landscape of the Baroque Ore Mountain foothills

Jakub Bachtík, Kristýna Drápalová

The article deals with the Baroque history of the Ore Mountain foothills, specifically the area roughly bounded by the Duchcov dominion and Osek holdings at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. The basic starting point of the article are passages from the German translation of the Marian atlas from the Osek Cistercian monk Augustine Sartoria from 1717, in which the Ore Mountain foothills area, specifically the northeastern extremity of the Most basin, is identified as Marian country. The same metaphor then appears in the contemporary works of other contemporary preachers. The article examines the question of which roots this interpretation of the local landscape comes from, primarily focusing on surviving architectural monuments, namely Marian shrines, which, according to Baroque texts, make up the support of the imaginary Marian country.
After a brief presentation of three Baroque literary monuments that mention the argument on Marian country, the article briefly outlines the historical and geographical context of the area at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. In addition to a list of important families and builders who worked in this area during the Baroque period, the text primarily focuses on the interpretation of its position in Bohemia. The Ore Mountain foothills were located on the border with Protestant Saxony, which, although being a political ally of the Empire, was religiously ranked among opponents - this fact was indisputably reflected on the concept of a Marian country, termed by Sartorio as "an encroaching wall and castle" against the Lutherans.
In its second half, the article details the three main places of pilgrimage, whose importance was emphasized in Baroque texts - Marianské Radčice, Horní Jiřetín, and Bohosudov. It highlights the important coincidence that at the end of the 17th century, there were three major ecclesiastical authorities that managed the land and the pilgrimage sites with them (Archbishop, Jesuits, Cistercians), who significantly invested in their estates in connection with efforts to restore the dominion after the Thirty Years' War. This was also reflected in these places of pilgrimage. The Cistercians in Marianské Radčice and the Archbishop Johann Friedrich von Wallenstein in Horní Jiřetín built new churches designed by Jean Baptiste Mathey - both buildings have a quite unusual plan with a single nave and transept in the center, crowned with the motif of symmetrically placed towers in the faćade, unusual in Bohemia in the early Baroque. Both buildings complemented the cloister, designed by G. Broggio, defining the pilgrimage site symbolically as a Marian fortress. The complex in Bohosudov is also unique, in whose decisive phase the Broggios were also involved. While the church is traditional, the cloister - founded in the 60's by G. D. Orsi - is the only one in the Czech Republic with an oval plan.
These exceptional complexes were completed essentially simultaneously, thanks to which they represent "architecturalized" proof that the concept of Marian country was not only a literary metaphor, but relied on the unusually expressive and focused development that this area passed through at the end of the 17th century.

Keywords: Baroque architecture; Ore Mountain foothills; historical landscape; Osek monastery; Duchcov; Jean Baptiste Mathey

Published: September 1, 2016  Show citation