The Case of Public Veneration of Sancta Maria de Victoria in Prague : An Episode of Czech History Condemned to Sink into Oblivion?
Abstract
Since the 17th century, there have been two Churches of Our Lady of Victories in Prague owning a copy of the imago miraculosa from the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. Unexpectedly, neither of the Prague churches can be currently regarded as a place of public veneration of Sancta Maria de Victoria.
The first is the Carmelite Church in the Lesser Town and it is well-known for the statue of the Infant Jesus. The second is the pilgrimage site in the White Mountain. Since 2007, it has been a site for Benedictine community of women endeavouring to transform the original pilgrimage site into a place of the reconciliation. In a certain way, the Benedictine nuns respond to the interpretation of the battle at the White Mountain in 1620: this battle was seen as the beginning of the greatest tragedy of the Czech nation and as a starting point for a systematic Germanization and Re-Catholization of the Czech nation. This image dominated the Czech collective memory in the 19th and the 20th centuries. Thus, there was an attempt to completely erase the cult of Sancta Maria de Victoria in the Bohemian Lands, alongside with a related interpretation of the battle at the White Mountain as a God's salvation of Czechs.
However, veneration of Santa Maria de Victoria in Prague from the 1620s to ca. the 1820s is well-documented in preserved texts, images, sacred objects, and shrines. The article presents the sermons, hymns, prayers, and hagiography related to both of the Prague churches of Santa Maria de Victoria. We analyse their key metaphors and rhetorical strategies and show how the collective memory actually co-shaped the reality. In addition, it shall turn out that the later anti-Catholic interpretation of the battle at the White Mountain is in fact strongly dependent on the earlier pro-Catholic interpretation.