Beyond the chalice: monuments manifesting utraquist religious identity in the Bohemian urban context in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries

Abstract

The article argues for the internal development of Utraquism towards ideological denominational stabilisation as revealed in urban monuments made for the Bohemian Utraquists in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The first hundred years of Utraquism was marked by the development of independent elements of its denominational imagery, mostly in an urban context. Even before the spreading of Luther's teaching in Bohemia, the Utraquists were able to operate various modes of denominationally-charged communication in urban public space. I look at the vestiges of Utraquist cultural production to demonstrate the subtle manipulation of religious and political symbols, and iconography in public monuments to illuminate their contribution to the construction of the town's imagined political and denominational identity. Using the example of two public monuments from Eastern Bohemian town of Hradec Králové, I demonstrate ways of communicating messages through monuments. The decoration of the Hradec Králové fountain and the anti-Brethren inscription on its city's gate represent two alternative approaches to public denominational expressions around 1500, mediated through cultural objects. Whilst produced by the same religious community and proclaiming Utraquist faith of Hradec Králové's citizens, they demonstrate different intensities of instruction on religious identity, the complexities of mediated messages, as well as the practice of using public media to communicate religious attachments. The two monuments illustrate the gradual internal confessionalising process of Utraquism: whereas the decoration of the first preferred “appeasing” public symbolic language and avoiding indignation, the second communicated Utraquist intolerance towards religious secessionist groups. Both monuments, however, using different means, delineate the meaning of Utraquism as the “right” faith and should be read as attempts to a denominational appropriation of urban public space.