Material Culture and Daily Life in the New City of Prague, 1547-1611
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MATERIAL CULTURE AND DAILY LIFE IN THE NEW CITY OF PRAGUE IN THE AGE OF RUDOLF II MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM HERAUSGEGEBEN VON GERHARD JARITZ SONDERBAND VI James R. Palmitessa MATERIAL CULTURE & DAILY LIFE IN THE NEW CITY OF PRAGUE IN THE AGE OF RUDOLF II KREMS 1997 GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER KULTURABTEILUNG DES AMTES DER NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG Cover illustration: Detail of the New City of Prague from the Sadeler engraving of 1606. The nine-part copper etching measuring 47.6 x 314 cm. is one of the largest of any city in its day. It was a cooperative project of a three-person team belonging to the !arge and sophisticated group of artists at the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Aegidius Sadeler, the imperial engraver, commissioned the project and printed the copper-etching which was executed by Johannes Wechter after drawings by Philip van den Bosche. In the center of the illustration are the ruins of the Church and Cloister of Mary of the Snow (item no. 84). The broad thoroughfare Na pfikope (•im Graben�), item no. 83, separates the Old City (to the left) from the New City (to the right). To the right of the Church and Cloister of Mary of the Snow is the long Horse Market (today Wenceslaus Square), item no. 88. The New City parish church Sv. Jind.ficha (St. Henry) can be located just above the church and cloister (item no. 87). -ISBN 3-901094 09 1 Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters. Körnermarkt 13, A-3500 Krems, Österreich. Für den Inhalt verantwortlich zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. Druck: KOPITU G.m.b.H., Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10. A-1050 Wien. Table of Contents Foreword ........................................................ ...................... 7 1.1. Introduction ..... ... ..... .............. .................. ............ ......... 9 1.2. The New City of Prague ... ............. .................... ......... 26 1.3. The Structure & Function of the New City Prague Burgher Hausehold .......................... ........................... 45 1.4. The Range and Hierarchy of Choice .... ... ...... ..... .......... .. 78 1.5. The Bohemian Renaissance on the Horse Market ........ 110 1.6. Conclusions .................................. .................... ....... 137 11. The Anatomy of House & Horne ............................. ....... 142 II. 1. Reconstruction of Physical Structures and the Street Landscape ........ ............ ................................ 143 II.2. Localization of Households and Individuals ................145 II.3. Reconstruction of House 1nteriors ............................. 150 II.4. Figures ..... ...... ............... ........ ........................ ........ ...176 Il.5. Charts ..................................................... .. ........ ...... 190 Abbreviations ....... ... .......... ... ..................... .... ................. 272 Bibliography .................................. ............................ ..... ..273 Foreward This study is a shortened version of a doctoral dissertation accepted by the Department of History, New York University, in the Spring of 1995, entitled House, Home & Neighborhood on the Eve of White Mountain: Material Culture and Daily Life in the New City of Prague, 1547-1611. Research and writing of th1s dissertation were supported by grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). I would like to thank R. Po-chia Hsia, my mentor, to whom I owe my largest intellectual debt. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann provided continuous feedback, especially from the perspective of the history of art and architecture. Christopher R. Friedrichs and Miriam Usher Chrisman read earlier drafts and gave constructive criticism. Virginia Reinburg has provided long-time encourage ment. Richard van Dülmen met with me early on in my research, once in Prague and once in Saarbrücken, to discuss my sources and perspectives. Winfried Eberhard supported my attendance at a conference in Berlin after I had written drafts of the first chapters which helped me pull tagether my ideas. In the Czech Republic, I was graciously received and provided general support by the Department of Czech and Slovak History, and the Department of Archival Studies at the Charles University in Prague; and the Historical Institute and the Institute for the History and Theory of Art of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Zdenek Hojda provided continual assistance, advice and intercession of various kinds, which were invaluable to foreign scholars, such as me, doing research in Prague. Jiii Kudela gave me paleography lessons and corrected many of my transcriptions, supposedly in exchange for English lessons (which never took place), at frr st as a staff member of the City Archive and continuing into the period after he joined the Office of the President of the Czech Republic, Väclav Havel. Josef Peträii and Jaroslav Pänek both shared with me on a nurober of occasions their extensive knowledge of Bohemian history of the Pre-White 7 Mountain period . Lubos Lancinger provided me with files of the State Office of Landmark Preservation as weil as access to his handwritten notes, and assisted me through some of the tricky tacks of historical house reconstruction. Vä.clav Buuk offered constructive criticism on drafts of earlier chapters drawing on his own work in material culture. In addition to these individuals, I also benefited fr om discussions with Josef Janä.cek, Josef Vä.lka, Jifi Kejf, Jifi Mikulec, Jifi Pesek, Vä.clav Ledvinka, Zdenka Hledikovä., Noemi Rejchrtovä., Karel Maly, Zdenek Benes, Thomas Fröschl, and Karl Vocelka. This dissertation was undertaken between moves and places, partly amidst the transformation and chaos following the so called Velvet Revolution. A sense of community was created by a network of friends and fa mily in the United States, Germany and the Czech Republic: four generations of Bings (Kappel Grafenhausen), the Leibfrieds (Heidelberg and Seattle), Friedrich and Irmgard Thiessen (Frankfurt/ Main and Buchschlag), Stanislav and Judita Ülovec (Planä. u Mariä.nskjch Läzni), John and Joanne Concato (New York and New Haven), the Tamirian family (Allendale), and my parents and sister (Cliffside Park). My wife, Gabriela Ülovcovä.-Palmitessovä., put up with my charts, graphs, and constant complaining. Little did she know when she frrst met me that she would be forced to leave the idyllic setting of her native Bohemian forest to go to Brooklyn, Flint and beyond. Lastly, I would like to give special thanks to Gerhard Jaritz of the Institute for the Study of Material Culture of the Middle Ages and Early Modem Period who made it possible for this dissertation to be published in the series Medium Aevum Quotidianum. 8 1.1. Introduction 1. 1.1. PRAGUE IN THE LATE 16th AND EARLY 17th CENTURIES: HABSBURG RESIDENCE, URBAN COMPLEX OF FOUR CITIES, BILINGUAL AND MULTI-CONFESSIONAL POPULATION During the 16th century, Prague underwent a transformation from a small town an the eastem border of the Holy Roman Empire to the largest city in all of central and eastem Europe, an important Habsburg residence, and a major center of late Renaissance culture. This transformation was initiated by the residence in the city beginning in 1547 of Archduke Ferdinand, the son and regent of Ferdinand I (who had been elected fr rst Habsburg King of Bohemia in 1527); and culminated in 1583 with the arrival of Emperor Rudolf II and the imperial court from Vienna (where they remairred until 1612). In reality, Prague was not one but a complex of four legally independent, economically linked cities: the Castle Hili and Small Side an the left bank of the Vltava river, the site of the royal/imperial castle and noble palaces; and the Old and New Cities an the right bank, the center of commercial and artisanal life . [See fig. II.4. 1.] In addition to its political stature and distinctive administrative and topographical structure, Prague was bilingual and multi confessional, with native German and Czech speakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Jews, Utraquists and the Bohemian Brethren (the latter two being descendents of the Hussites). 1. 1.2. RUDOLFINE PRAGUE & "P RAGA CAP UT REGNr: TWO HISTORICAL PARADIGMS OF SOCIETY & CULTURE As with most large European cities, there is a vast secondary Iiterature an Prague, embedded in local tradition and in national and nationalist historiographies. Most of the Iiterature is in Czech, but there are also important English and German language works. Amidst the vast literature, two paradigms of the city during the late 16th and early 17th centuries stand out. Seen by contemporary chronicles and memoirs of burghers and nobles whose stories were later integrated into the Czech national historical tradition, Prague was Praga caput regni ("Prague Capit- 9 al of the Bohemian Kingdom"), a phrase that was gilded on the windows of the Old City Hall. As capital of the kingdom, Prague was the central stage of events in a growing national struggle which began in the mid- 1 5th century in the wake of the Hussite Revolution, and which led to the defeat of the Bohemian Estates at the Battle of White Mountain in 1621.1 The city's central political status as capital has served as an important framing concept for cultural developments as weil. In the late 19th century, Zikmund Winter, the father of Czech cultural history, wrote a series of cultural historical