From a Terrace in Prague

by B. Granville Baker

We have to thank Ottokar for several picturesque flashes which brighten up the gloomy picture of this period. So for instance, he took a trip to Maintz, where he was solemnly crowned as King. No doubt Prague would have been a more suitable setting for this function, but Ottokar had so timed his arrangements as to come in for a double event, for Philip of Suabia with assistance from Bohemia's ruler, secured the German crown at the same time. Then again this thoughtful Přemysl Ottokar provided Bohemia with yet another patron saint of the blood royal, and not by the old-fashioned family method of killing a relative. Ottokar had married Constance of Hungary, and it was their daughter Agnes who next joined the distinguished and hallowed company of Ludmilla and Wenceslaus. Agnes, educated by St. Hedwig, early distinguished herself by refusing to marry Emperor Frederick II. She decided to become a bride of heaven instead, founded the Order of Clarissa, entered it herself and eventually died as abbess in the odour of sanctity. Frederick consoled himself with one wife after another (a wife seems to have lasted no time in those days), his third and last being Isabella, daughter of King John of England, whose son, Richard of Cornwall, also comes into the story a little farther on in this chapter. St. Agnes was held in great reverence by the citizens of Brüx, is still so held, I hope, for she did them a good turn in 1424. The Pragers had been indulging in a feud with the Brüxers, and had taken a bad beating on one occasion. The former prepared a surprise attack and marched on Brüx hoping to take it by a midnight assault. St. Agnes happened to be watching while the fat burghers slept; she roused them from slumber, drove them to the walls and aided them in beating off the attacking Pragers, Then the Brüxers went to sleep again. It is also pleasant to reflect that Agnes's refusal to marry Frederick did not mar the excellent relations that sprang up between that monarch and Ottokar whenever the latter happened to want something out of the former. It is true that Ottokar had changed about a good deal between one rival emperor and another, but he remained loyal to Frederick in the end, and the latter outlived him by some thirty years. The relations between the two must have been quite pleasant and comfortable, as you may judge from the concessions made by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to Bohemia's King. A pretty and tactful compliment it was on the part of Frederick to allow Ottokar's heralds, when preceding their royal master to the Imperial Diet, to carry lighted torches on poles before him, and this to signify that the Bohemian excursionists were at liberty to burn down anything they had a mind to. It is these little considerations that have ever played such an important though unrecognized part in the diplomatic relations between nations. The Bohemians are still quite nice about accepting little acts of kindness and consideration from anybody.

Přemysl Ottokar I had reigned for twenty-eight years when his son Wenceslaus, first King of that name, succeeded him, and, strange to say, practically without opposition. By this time Bohemia had risen to a position of importance in the councils of Europe not only by the skilful, not to say artful, policy of its rulers, but also owing to the growing prosperity of the country which was reflected in the life of Prague its capital.

Prague consisted of three distinct settlements each apparently under separate administration. There was the old original settlement on Vyšehrad which seems to have been under the sway of the abbot presiding over the monastic institutions on that hill. Then there was Libuša's foundation on the Hradšany and extending down to the river, probably under the rule of the King's lieutenant or burgrave, and finally the Old Town on the right bank with its own municipal institutions. These three parts of Prague were separately walled in, but little remains of any architectural work earlier in date than the Kings of Bohemia of whom this Wenceslaus is generally counted as the first though his father's royal rank had been recognized by the Pope and at least two emperors.

By the time Wenceslaus I came to the throne, the changes were in full swing which were to lead up to the golden age of Prague a century or so later. We have already noticed a tendency of German immigrants towards Prague and other cities of Bohemia. The Germans, mostly tradesmen and artisans, came with the civic instinct well developed, whereas the sons of Czech were, and still are, more of the fields and forests and the free life without walls. The Germans, bringing with them the appreciation of walled security, were responsible in great measure for the fortified cities of Bohemia and Moravia. It cannot be said of the later Přemysl rulers preceding the Kings of Bohemia that they were inspired by the founder's ardour. Then again the Bohemian nobility had risen to a strong sense of its own importance encouraged by the lamentable dissensions in the reigning house, and not uninfluenced by an infusion of German blood; they also had taken to walling themselves in on convenient hill-tops. As these nobles were become increasingly troublesome, it is not surprising that Přemysl rulers induced more and more Germans to settle in the cities of Bohemia and Moravia, thus starting a steady-going middle class which might be expected to pay for peace and protection and which when walled in was conveniently in hand for the tax-collector's operations. That this scheme was beginning to succeed even in the early days of the twelfth century is proved by the fact that Jews were flocking to Prague in ever increasing numbers, so there must have been business doing in the capital and other cities of the land, under conditions of reasonable security. It may be taken for granted that improvements and additions to the defences of Prague, the decoration of the town by stately churches and other monuments, however much directed by the sovereign, were paid for by the burghers.

The story of the Jews in Prague makes very interesting reading; it is, however, beyond the scope of this work to give more than an indication of the part that the Children of Israel took in the development of the city. You will remember that a travelling commercial gentleman of Semitic origin, one Ibrahim Ibn Jacub, had visited Prague in the tenth century and had noted the place with approval. As far as I can make out he makes no reference to a colony of his co-religionists already in existence here, so the story that Jews settled here before the destruction of Jerusalem seems little likely. It was, indeed, averred by the Jews of Prague that they had their settlement here long before Libuša launched her prophecies, before the birth of Christ in fact, so that they at least might be considered guiltless of the Divine Tragedy on Golgotha. Their legend calls the place Buiarnum, which suggests some acquaintance with the Celtic tribe that rested for a while in Bohemia, gave its name to the country and then wandered to Bavaria, where it repeated the performance. I find this legend of the Jews difficult to believe despite my earnest endeavour to find something of truth in Saga's ebullitions. How, for instance, is it possible that the gifted lady Libuša did not discover the advantages of a Jewish colony and that she omitted to prophesy a contribution out of the sons of Israel towards her new foundation? No, if there had been any Jews within signing distance of this city when it arose, Praha would have started with a mortgage on her, and the entertainment tax would probably be double what it is this day.

You may take it as a general principle that every country has the Jews it deserves. If you oppress them, trample them in the mud as was customary in pre-war Russia, they will turn and rend you when their turn comes round; this is happening in Russia at present. If you despoil a Jew by violence, he will do the same to you by guile, and you may or may not be left with your full complement of cuticle. If you treat the Jew as one entitled to equal rights with equal responsibilities, you will find him an excellent citizen.

As elsewhere in the Europe of the Middle Ages, the Children of Israel in Prague were confined to certain quarters of the town. We have heard how a number of them were ordered to leave the Hradsšany side of the river and settle in the Old Town. The quarter allotted to the Jews was in that part of the Old Town known as Josefov, and the Old Ghetto stood approximately in that complex of narrow streets between the river at the Rudolfinum Bridge and the broad thoroughfare Mikulašska Třida. I could point out the place from my terrace if I were minded to give its locality away and to depart from my principle of making every man choose his own point of view.

The life of the Ghetto centred round the old Jewish Town Hall, with its quaint, indeed rather unsightly, tower on which is a clock that you are expected to treat as one of the sights of the place. On the face of this clock the numbers are marked by Hebrew letters and the hands of this clock move from right to left. The fact that the Jews had a Town Hall to themselves in ancient Prague is significant; it stood for the semi-autonomous constitution of the Jewish community which was subject to the sovereign as a corporate body with its own municipal institutions and responsibilities. This peculiar segregation of the Jewish community as an imperium in imperio, apart in matters of local administration as in matters of religion, from their fellow-citizens, must have done a great deal towards forming the character of its members, and the result has been of advantage to the city of Prague in times of stress.

Close by the Jewish Town Hall stands another yet more ancient landmark of cultural history, the "Staronová Škola", or Old New School. Close by the side of that broad thoroughfare the Mikulasška Třida, with the electric trams clanging along it, stands this strange temple. Dr. Jeřabek, in his excellent booklet on Beautiful Old Prague likens this ancient building to a gigantic hand of Aaron held up in blessing over the Ghetto; I think you will agree with me that this is a very happy simile. Built in the severe style of transition from Romanesque to Gothic, of massive stone walls heavily buttressed, with steep red-tiled sloping roof, blackened with age and the grime of the walled-in Ghetto, this temple served not only as a place of worship for the sons of Israel, but also as a casket for the remains of a yet older one said to date back to the sixth century and probably the oldest temple on the Continent of Europe. The present fane itself is of venerable age and aspect; its building fell into the reign of King Wenceslaus I and Ottokar II, and took ten years, from 1250 to 1260. Men only are allowed to worship in the inner temple, dingy and dark; whatever light penetrates through the narrow windows calls forth reluctant glints from the many brass candelabra, work of long centuries ago. Women may look on from an outer court through glazed openings that look like gun-embrasures.

The Jews required strong defences in the dark days of the Middle Ages; their Ghetto was shut off from the rest of the city by heavy iron gates, but even these proved of no avail when once the mob got loose and undertook a raid. On several occasions organized massacres took toll of the "Children of the Ghetto," who on other occasions were banished, bag and baggage, from Prague and driven out into the country. Though now and again they suffered intolerably, yet were they on the whole better treated than in many other parts of Europe, were allowed to develop along their own lines, and produced many men of mark and learning, and women of distinction, among the latter one who was raised to the nobility by a Habsburg Emperor and King of Bohemia, Bas-Schevi called "of Treunberg." Among the prominent men whose light shone out beyond the Ghetto of Prague, I may mention the poet-Rabbi Abigdor Caro, the bibliophile Rabbi Oppenheim whose library is now in Oxford, then the chronicler and mathematician David Gans, a friend of Keppler and Tycho de Brahe, and Solomon de Medigo de Candia the pupil of Galileo Galilei.