Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Bohemia Sacra. Liturgy and History in Prague Cathedral under Charles IV.

This lecture explores the relationship between the architecture of the choir of Prague cathedral and the patronage of the Emperor Charles IV and his court. In particular, it assesses the planning and decoration of the cathedral in the light of Charles's special preoccupations with Bohemian history, and the cult of St Wenceslas. It attempts to relate the sequences of spaces in the choir, and the relationship of the cathedral to the whole city of Prague, to the demands of the Bohemian coronation liturgy, and the 'memoria' which mark out the city's and the cathedral's sacred topography. It is an exercise in 'holistic' interpretation which, in this case, assumes some kind of integrated 'programme' between cathedral, liturgy, urban design, and the invention of national myth.

Paul Crossley
is Professor of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute and a Fellow of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published, 'The Architecture of Kazimir the Great: Gothic Architecture in Lesser Poland 1320-1370' (Krakow 1985), and has just completed a new edition, with much re-writing, of Paul Frankl's classic text, 'Gothic Architecture' in the Pelican History of Art series. He is also the editor, with Georgia Clarke of 'Architecture and Language. Creating Identity in European Architecture 110-1650'. Paul Crossley specializes in the history of Gothic architecture, particularly in Central Europe and is the author of a number of articles on Polish, Bohemian and German Gothic architecture. He is an editor of the 'Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes'.