This year we celebrate an important anniversary for the Prague archbishopric. 670 years ago, the original Prague bishopric founded in 973 was promoted to the status of an archbishopric. It was also placed in charge of the Olomouc diocese and the newly established diocese of Litomyšl.
The idea of making the Prague bishopric an archbishopric came from the heir to the throne – the Moravian margrave, later to become Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, Charles IV, who did not like the fact that from the international viewpoint the Bohemian state was not taken as a fully-fledged kingdom, as it lacked an archbishopric. For a sovereign Bohemian state, it was necessary that a foreigner did not crown the King of Bohemia and that that foreigners were not subject to the Bohemian bishops. These legitimate demands were therefore met by Pope Clement VI, who in Avignon on 30th April 1344 issued the foundation bull Ex superne providentia maiestatis, raising Prague from the status of a bishopric to an archbishopric. At the same time it promoted Prague to an ecclesiastical metropolis and freed the Prague and Olomouc archbishoprics from their previous dependence on Mainz.
Arnošt of Pardubice (1297–1364) was appointed the first Archbishop of Prague and Metropolitan of Bohemia. The Pope then issued the Romanus Pontifex bull, transferring the right to anoint and crown the kings and queens of Bohemia from the Archbishop of Mainz to the Archbishop of Prague, which definitively broke the last tie with Mainz. On 21. 11. 1344, in the presence of King John of Bohemia and his sons Charles and Jana Jindřich, Arnošt of Pardubice laid the foundation stone for the Metropolitan St. Vitus Cathedral.
The previous bishopric, the centre of the church administration and symbol of spiritual history, became an independent unit, as the Kingdom of Bohemia entered the community of European metropolises. This fulfilled the dream of the great reformers and shapers of the map of Europe, St. Adalbert, Pope Sylvester II and Emperor Otto III, but it was also Czech statehood, which appealed to the mission of Cyril and Methodius and the baptism of Methodius’s Prince Bořislav and St. Ludmila, which, in the spirit of a religious organisation, raised Prague up to fully fledged European status. Cardinal Dominik Duka OP Archbishop of Prague
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Nesouhlas se zpracováním Vašich osobních údajů byl zaznamenán.
Váš záznam bude z databáze Vydavatelstvím KAM po Česku s.r.o. vymazán neprodleně, nejpozději však v zákonné lhůtě.
