Sazava Monastery

Sazava was founded around 1032 by Prokop, a hermit living in a cave above the river, and for its first sixty years it was something no other Bohemian house was: a Benedictine monastery using Old Church Slavonic rather than Latin in the liturgy, continuing the tradition brought by Cyril and Methodius and maintaining links with Kyivan Rus. The Slavonic monks were expelled in 1096 and the house went over to Latin. What survives is a mix: excavated foundations of the Romanesque church, a fourteenth-century Gothic chapter house with wall paintings including a rare depiction of the Virgin in a Byzantine manner, an unfinished Gothic church whose pillars stand roofless in the open, and a baroque range. Prokop is a Czech patron saint, and the legend of him harnessing a devil to plough a furrow is a fixture in Czech folklore. The Sazava valley below is walked and paddled.

History

The monastery stands on the site of the hermitage of Procopius of Sázava, who died in 1052 and was canonised in 1204; he gathered a community of hermits that became the Benedictine monastery established around 1032 by Duke Bretislaus I, some 40 years after Břevnov. Unusually for a Benedictine house, Sázava celebrated the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic: Duke Spytihněv II expelled the monks in 1056, Duke Vratislaus II brought them back from Hungary in 1061, and the first stone church, of the Holy Cross, was built in 1070, its excavated ruins visible north of the monastery. In December 1096 Duke Bretislav II expelled the monks for a second time, ending the Slavonic rite in the Czech lands; Latin Benedictines from Břevnov under Abbot Diethard replaced them, and in the 12th century the Romanesque basilica and monastery buildings were completed. In the late 13th and 14th centuries the basilica was rebuilt as a monumental three-aisled Gothic church that remained unfinished, and the Madonna of Sázava, a 14th-century fresco in the chapter hall, unusually shows Mary walking beside the child Jesus. Hussite troops sacked the monastery in 1421, it decayed under secular owners, and in 1664 the abbot of Břevnov and Broumov revived it; Vít Václav Kaňka rebuilt it in Baroque style, Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer restored it after a fire in 1746, and Joseph II closed it in 1785, after which from 1809 its owners used the cloister as a chateau (Wikipedia, Sázava Monastery).

What to look for

• A Slavonic-rite foundation - the only one in Bohemia, from about 1032 to 1096.
• Gothic wall paintings - in the chapter house, including a Byzantine-manner Virgin.
• An unfinished church - pillars standing roofless in the open.
• Prokop's legend - the hermit who is said to have ploughed with a harnessed devil.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Good to know

Guided tours only, seasonal, with a short winter season. Much of the medieval fabric is fragmentary. The paintings are dim and photography is restricted. The town has limited services.

Nearby

Cesky Sternberk is upstream; Konopiste is west.

Key facts