Conflict of Tradition and Modernity: Creation and Demise of Place of Memory on the Example of the Cave and Church of St. Prokop in the Prokopské Valley in Prague
Abstract
The presented text aims to describe the transformation of the place of memory - the cave and the church of St. Prokop in the Prokop Valley - from the Middle Ages to the present with emphasis on the modernization processes of Czech history (Industrialization, secularization, urbanization, nationalization).
The work traces the period from the beginning of the "artificial" creation of the pilgrimage's place in connection with the legend of St. Procopius, through the weaking of the religious feast in connection with new national-patriotic ideological program, to the desacralization of the landscape and gradual loss of identity of the place due to limestone mining. "The creation of image" of this place of memory in the topographical (ie. proper) sense is documented primarily on "narrative" sources of an artistic nature (literature, painting).