Hello!
The late great author and contrarian Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying that “There are no secular gothic cathedrals”.
Hitchens was a vocal atheist – one of the ‘Four Horsemen of The New Atheism’, no less – but he was happy to acknowledge the role which religious faith has played in inspiring some of the world's greatest architecture.
I’ve been thinking about that this week as I wander around beautiful Prague, looking up and going “Ooooh” at its architectural elegance.
Prague is often called “the city of a hundred spires” (though I'm sure the total number is a lot higher), and the pic below demonstrates why. If you took away those spires, along with the buildings they’re attached to, there’s no doubt that you’d impoverish the cityscape – and a good many of them were built for 'devotional' purposes.
Still, although Hitchens definitely had a point, in my view religion isn't the only thing that spurs architects on to greatness. You can point to any number of 'secular buildings' around the world to support that idea.
One building which definitely doesn't support it, though, is Prague Castle.
According to the Guinness Book of A Few Significant World Records and A Whole Bunch of Ridiculously Marginal Ones, Prague is home to the largest castle complex in the world.
I think part of the problem is that the architects here basically kept the trappings of monumental Christian architecture, took their deity out of the equation, and simply replaced him with a monarch. I’m sure it doesn’t strike every visitor this way, but for me, the whole "Here's our king's house, and he's so awesome that we made it look like the house of a god" theme resulted in a crude and hollow emptiness.
Architects, please don't do that. It's tacky.
Also part of the castle complex is a church called St. Vitus Cathedral, occupying the courtyard adjacent to the main building. Like the castle, it seems a bit phoned-in, though it has all the stuff that a gothic cathedral is supposed to have – imposing height, ornate buttresses, gargoyles and so forth.
WORD NERD Vs. ST. GEORGE
The St. George myth has always kind of annoyed me. My objection is partly intellectual / theological, but much more than that, it's visceral. And it comes down to this: I do not want to see dragons being triumphantly killed. Sorry; I just don’t.
The late great author and contrarian Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying that “There are no secular gothic cathedrals”.
Hitchens was a vocal atheist – one of the ‘Four Horsemen of The New Atheism’, no less – but he was happy to acknowledge the role which religious faith has played in inspiring some of the world's greatest architecture.
I’ve been thinking about that this week as I wander around beautiful Prague, looking up and going “Ooooh” at its architectural elegance.
Prague is often called “the city of a hundred spires” (though I'm sure the total number is a lot higher), and the pic below demonstrates why. If you took away those spires, along with the buildings they’re attached to, there’s no doubt that you’d impoverish the cityscape – and a good many of them were built for 'devotional' purposes.
Still, although Hitchens definitely had a point, in my view religion isn't the only thing that spurs architects on to greatness. You can point to any number of 'secular buildings' around the world to support that idea.
One building which definitely doesn't support it, though, is Prague Castle.
According to the Guinness Book of A Few Significant World Records and A Whole Bunch of Ridiculously Marginal Ones, Prague is home to the largest castle complex in the world.
Large it may be, but inspired, it is not. I don’t think I’ve ever been dragged through such a perfunctory ensemble of meaningless architectural puff. It was truly dull.
I think part of the problem is that the architects here basically kept the trappings of monumental Christian architecture, took their deity out of the equation, and simply replaced him with a monarch. I’m sure it doesn’t strike every visitor this way, but for me, the whole "Here's our king's house, and he's so awesome that we made it look like the house of a god" theme resulted in a crude and hollow emptiness.
Architects, please don't do that. It's tacky.
Also part of the castle complex is a church called St. Vitus Cathedral, occupying the courtyard adjacent to the main building. Like the castle, it seems a bit phoned-in, though it has all the stuff that a gothic cathedral is supposed to have – imposing height, ornate buttresses, gargoyles and so forth.
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Judgy
St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague Castle Complex, 21.07.15
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As you round the cathedral and encounter its side wall, things go from 'Yeah, it's ok' to 'Oh dear, that's a bit tragic!'.
The wall was modified at some point and a huge door added, because one of the Czech kings had asked for a special entrance, so that he could feel like a VIP whenever he came in. (I think the king in question was Charles IV, but I can't remember and it's not interesting enough to look up.)
The wall was modified at some point and a huge door added, because one of the Czech kings had asked for a special entrance, so that he could feel like a VIP whenever he came in. (I think the king in question was Charles IV, but I can't remember and it's not interesting enough to look up.)
Here again, you've got this devotional style mixed with the veneration of an earthly person, and again it falls flat.
To make matters even worse, the painting over the entrance shows Jesus determining the fate of souls on Judgment Day. Our guide told us that the intention here is to remind us that “Only God can judge people. If another person tries to judge you, you can tell him to get lost.”
To make matters even worse, the painting over the entrance shows Jesus determining the fate of souls on Judgment Day. Our guide told us that the intention here is to remind us that “Only God can judge people. If another person tries to judge you, you can tell him to get lost.”
Not a bad message on one level, in terms of discouraging people from being judgemental towards one another – except that, when St. Vitus was built, it wasn't only God passing sentence on people in Europe. It was God's 'representatives on Earth', namely the Catholic Church. And it was also any monarch who conferred Divine Right upon themselves, which was basically all of them, including (no doubt) the guy who commissioned this horrible bit of 'art'.
All of this stuff put me in kind of a sour mood, especially as the temperature was over 35C and the guide insisted on lingering outside to point out every little thing in the whole complex and beyond. So when, in the centre of the yard, I spied a statue of St. George slaying the dragon, I knew that a rant on The Manor was pretty much inevitable.WORD NERD Vs. ST. GEORGE
The St. George myth has always kind of annoyed me. My objection is partly intellectual / theological, but much more than that, it's visceral. And it comes down to this: I do not want to see dragons being triumphantly killed. Sorry; I just don’t.
I mean, even if a dragon has done something particularly terrible like, say, devouring a young maiden or stealing some cows, how can anyone get off on killing it? It’s just being a dragon, ffs, as surely as the crocodile who makes supper out of a German tourist unwisely skinny-dipping in a northern Australian river is just being a crocodile.
Can we really get any satisfaction from 'punishing’ or ‘getting revenge’ on either of them, when both were just acting in accordance with their natures?
Can we really get any satisfaction from 'punishing’ or ‘getting revenge’ on either of them, when both were just acting in accordance with their natures?
On top of that, if you put yourself in the path of a hungry dragon, your action pretty much defines you as an idiot, doesn't it? I mean, when it’s known that a certain area of coastal water is infested with Great White Sharks, what people generally do is this: they go away and swim elsewhere. In most versions of the St. George myth, old Sainty Pants and/or the people in the community he was ‘rescuing’ could’ve quite easily done exactly that (or found another solution, as we'll see in a sec). The fact that they didn't just makes them all eligible for Darwin Awards.
And as for George himself ... well, dragons are beautiful, primal creatures, to be admired and respected, whereas George basically seems to have been a big strong guy with a glorified kebab skewer. He was, in essence, the Steve Irwin of his day, courting the world's attention by chasing fierce, giant-toothed beasties and deliberately trying to piss them off.
Excuse me if I find it difficult to admire such a desperate bid for celebrity.
Excuse me if I find it difficult to admire such a desperate bid for celebrity.
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Steve Irwin Statue
St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague Castle Complex, 21.07.15
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Aside from which, one might legitimately ask "What the heck is he doing in Prague anyway? Or in the Christian story at all, for that matter?"
I mean, depending on your preferred interpretation, that story is about the words and deeds of either a Palestinian Gandhi or a sort of revolutionary Jewish Martin Luther. Where does this other medieval guy fit in, sitting on his horse and poking his spear into a dragon's belly?
Short answer: he doesn't. He's a sprig of English parsley garnishing a sumptuous Middle Eastern mezze: marooned in foreign surrounds that leave him utterly irrelevant, and arguably in as much need of 'rescuing' as anyone.
Sorry ... where was I? Oh yeah, Prague :-)
So the tour ended with a little river cruise and a brief wander through the Jewish quarter, both of which were quite enjoyable.
Afterwards I grabbed some dinner and then headed off to my new favourite bar just outside the centre (downmarket but friendly, working wi-fi, and a smoking section – shine on, you crazy smoking bar!).
Sitting with my bottle of Finnish cider, I kept coming back to this whole St. George thing. A certain amount of googling happened, and at the end of it, I had a bit more of an idea of where Mr. Irrelevant had come from, and how he'd insinuated himself into so much statuary and stained glass across Europe and elsewhere.
So just for you, here's the lowdown ...
George seems to have first appeared in stories around the seventh century AD in Georgia*. He was initially conceived as just a soldier who served under the Emperor Diocletian, with kind of a noble streak.
References to George's dragon-slaying habit don't come until a few hundred years later, when they appeared in both Georgia and Turkey's Cappadocia**. However, his first encounter with the dragon didn't happen in either of those places – it happened, randomly enough, in Libya.
The story goes like this: the dragon lived in a lake just outside a city called Silene, and the people there found they could placate it by feeding it sheep. But then, one terrible day, the sheep supply ran out. Soon after that, the townsfolk also exhausted their supply of spare children, who they'd been using as substitute dragon food while they waited for back-up sheep to arrive.
At this point – aside from a kind of general Old Testament bloodthirstiness – there really doesn't seem to be much connecting this tale to Christian theology, does there? Not to worry, though ... it's coming in a minute.
So with all the sheep and all the kids gone, the King of Silene was forced to send his own daughter to the lake, where the ravenous dragon awaited with a napkin tied around its neck and silver cutlery in its scaly hands. But just at the point where the young maiden was about to be eaten, George happened past on his horse.
Observing the terrible scene, he blurted out "What's all this, then?", like a London Bobby in a Monty Python sketch (or at least, that's how I picture it). A fight ensued, he wounded the dragon with his kebab skewer, and then he led it into town, where he promised to kill it for the townsfolk's entertainment. There was one condition, though: everyone in Silene has to convert to Christianity.
So you see ... there is a link! And what a logical, rational one it is, eh?
At this point, I think it's pertinent to remark on just how freakin' weird people were in those days.
To illustrate, imagine this for a second. You're coming home from work one day, taking a shortcut which leads through a sports oval. As the oval comes in sight, you notice there's a giant squid lying in the middle of it. Next to the squid is a guy dressed in protective clothing, sitting at the driver's seat of a small crane. Obviously he's somehow caught or acquired the beast, subdued it and transported it here.
The guy motions you over to him and asks you a question:
"Hey bro, have you accepted Jesus Christ into your life as your personal Lord and Saviour?"
"Er, well not exactly. I mean, I'd probably consider myself a spiritual person, but as far as organised relig-" ...
"Well", he interrupts, "If I murder this enormous squid, then will you accept Jesus?".
You know how we'd react to this in the 21st Century. The guy would arrested and charged, he'd enter an insanity plea in court, and he'd spend the rest of his life heavily medicated in a psychiatric facility.
In the world of early and medieval Christianity, though, his fate would've been rather different. If you could come up with a stunt like the giant squid capture back then, you had a good chance of effecting a mass conversion to whatever religion you happened to believe in, and possibly even becoming a hero whose insignia people would choose to put on their flags centuries later.
As I said: weirdos.
Amazingly, though, even this tableau of bizarreness – the original St George & Dragon story, I mean – wasn't enough for later storytellers. They had to make it even more strange and random, by inserting a magical orange tree.
Yep, that's right. In a prominent later version of the story, the dragon is bigger and fiercer, with scales that act as armour plates and can shatter spears on contact. (In some renditions, it's actually the dragons disgusting toxic spit that shatters armour – which seems to me a bit more fun. But anyway ...).
When George fought this dragon he was wounded, but by rolling under a Magic Orange Tree that just happened to be nearby, he became completely impervious. While lying there on the ground he spotted a newly ripened orange and decided to pause for a quick snack, at which point he underwent some kind of instant healing process and was restored to full strength.
(Amazing that no orange juice company has managed to weave this into an advertising campaign yet ... don'tcha think?)
Then, feeling all re-invigorated by his mystically enhanced Vitamin C hit, Sainty Pants manages to get the upper hand in the fight, and he subdues the dragon.
There's a problem, though: the dragon's innards are also highly toxic, and unbelievably copious. When George finally slashes its belly, the earth around them both becomes "drenched in the moisture that exploded from the monster's venomous bowels" ***.
It seemed like the bowel goo would never stop coming ... and yet, as we know, George did eventually drag himself out of the river of dragon gore and into the popular imagination.
Historians disagree on exactly how he managed to do that. Some say that the story of the dragon chimed in well with pagan stories native to England and other European countries, and/or with the Greek myth in which Perseus slays a Sea Monster; others say that the dragon represented the Emperor Diocletian, since he had a bit of a beef against Christianity.
To me, though, none of these things cancel out the irrelevance or George, or persuade me to forgive him for slaying the dragon.
The people of Silene always had options, and a true hero would've pointed that out.
They could've gone, for example, and negotiated with the dragon (who, in most accounts, can understand human language). Just explain: "Look, we've got a bit of a sheep shortage, but we're gonna sort it out by buying some sheep from neighbouring settlements. You might have to make do with chickens for a couple of weeks, though." Easy.
On the other side of the argument, not every community and not even every 'hero' can be counted upon to make the best decisions all the time. So maybe I'm being tough on George here. Arguably, it's not his solitary act of brutality that's so horrifying; rather, it's the fact that
a) he became a saint partly on the strength of his dumbass dragon-slaying;
b) dozens of countries saw it as sufficiently heroic to warrant having a St George feast day every year (which many still observe); and
c) he still turns up in places like the Prague Castle Complex, sticking a giant fork into a dragon's belly for reasons which most people aren't even aware of.
And with that, I think I'll finish my little George and The Dragon rant.
I mean, depending on your preferred interpretation, that story is about the words and deeds of either a Palestinian Gandhi or a sort of revolutionary Jewish Martin Luther. Where does this other medieval guy fit in, sitting on his horse and poking his spear into a dragon's belly?
Short answer: he doesn't. He's a sprig of English parsley garnishing a sumptuous Middle Eastern mezze: marooned in foreign surrounds that leave him utterly irrelevant, and arguably in as much need of 'rescuing' as anyone.
Sorry ... where was I? Oh yeah, Prague :-)
So the tour ended with a little river cruise and a brief wander through the Jewish quarter, both of which were quite enjoyable.
Afterwards I grabbed some dinner and then headed off to my new favourite bar just outside the centre (downmarket but friendly, working wi-fi, and a smoking section – shine on, you crazy smoking bar!).
Sitting with my bottle of Finnish cider, I kept coming back to this whole St. George thing. A certain amount of googling happened, and at the end of it, I had a bit more of an idea of where Mr. Irrelevant had come from, and how he'd insinuated himself into so much statuary and stained glass across Europe and elsewhere.
So just for you, here's the lowdown ...
George seems to have first appeared in stories around the seventh century AD in Georgia*. He was initially conceived as just a soldier who served under the Emperor Diocletian, with kind of a noble streak.
References to George's dragon-slaying habit don't come until a few hundred years later, when they appeared in both Georgia and Turkey's Cappadocia**. However, his first encounter with the dragon didn't happen in either of those places – it happened, randomly enough, in Libya.
The story goes like this: the dragon lived in a lake just outside a city called Silene, and the people there found they could placate it by feeding it sheep. But then, one terrible day, the sheep supply ran out. Soon after that, the townsfolk also exhausted their supply of spare children, who they'd been using as substitute dragon food while they waited for back-up sheep to arrive.
At this point – aside from a kind of general Old Testament bloodthirstiness – there really doesn't seem to be much connecting this tale to Christian theology, does there? Not to worry, though ... it's coming in a minute.
So with all the sheep and all the kids gone, the King of Silene was forced to send his own daughter to the lake, where the ravenous dragon awaited with a napkin tied around its neck and silver cutlery in its scaly hands. But just at the point where the young maiden was about to be eaten, George happened past on his horse.
Observing the terrible scene, he blurted out "What's all this, then?", like a London Bobby in a Monty Python sketch (or at least, that's how I picture it). A fight ensued, he wounded the dragon with his kebab skewer, and then he led it into town, where he promised to kill it for the townsfolk's entertainment. There was one condition, though: everyone in Silene has to convert to Christianity.
So you see ... there is a link! And what a logical, rational one it is, eh?
At this point, I think it's pertinent to remark on just how freakin' weird people were in those days.
To illustrate, imagine this for a second. You're coming home from work one day, taking a shortcut which leads through a sports oval. As the oval comes in sight, you notice there's a giant squid lying in the middle of it. Next to the squid is a guy dressed in protective clothing, sitting at the driver's seat of a small crane. Obviously he's somehow caught or acquired the beast, subdued it and transported it here.
The guy motions you over to him and asks you a question:
"Hey bro, have you accepted Jesus Christ into your life as your personal Lord and Saviour?"
"Er, well not exactly. I mean, I'd probably consider myself a spiritual person, but as far as organised relig-" ...
"Well", he interrupts, "If I murder this enormous squid, then will you accept Jesus?".
You know how we'd react to this in the 21st Century. The guy would arrested and charged, he'd enter an insanity plea in court, and he'd spend the rest of his life heavily medicated in a psychiatric facility.
In the world of early and medieval Christianity, though, his fate would've been rather different. If you could come up with a stunt like the giant squid capture back then, you had a good chance of effecting a mass conversion to whatever religion you happened to believe in, and possibly even becoming a hero whose insignia people would choose to put on their flags centuries later.
As I said: weirdos.
Amazingly, though, even this tableau of bizarreness – the original St George & Dragon story, I mean – wasn't enough for later storytellers. They had to make it even more strange and random, by inserting a magical orange tree.
Yep, that's right. In a prominent later version of the story, the dragon is bigger and fiercer, with scales that act as armour plates and can shatter spears on contact. (In some renditions, it's actually the dragons disgusting toxic spit that shatters armour – which seems to me a bit more fun. But anyway ...).
When George fought this dragon he was wounded, but by rolling under a Magic Orange Tree that just happened to be nearby, he became completely impervious. While lying there on the ground he spotted a newly ripened orange and decided to pause for a quick snack, at which point he underwent some kind of instant healing process and was restored to full strength.
(Amazing that no orange juice company has managed to weave this into an advertising campaign yet ... don'tcha think?)
Then, feeling all re-invigorated by his mystically enhanced Vitamin C hit, Sainty Pants manages to get the upper hand in the fight, and he subdues the dragon.
There's a problem, though: the dragon's innards are also highly toxic, and unbelievably copious. When George finally slashes its belly, the earth around them both becomes "drenched in the moisture that exploded from the monster's venomous bowels" ***.
It seemed like the bowel goo would never stop coming ... and yet, as we know, George did eventually drag himself out of the river of dragon gore and into the popular imagination.
Historians disagree on exactly how he managed to do that. Some say that the story of the dragon chimed in well with pagan stories native to England and other European countries, and/or with the Greek myth in which Perseus slays a Sea Monster; others say that the dragon represented the Emperor Diocletian, since he had a bit of a beef against Christianity.
To me, though, none of these things cancel out the irrelevance or George, or persuade me to forgive him for slaying the dragon.
The people of Silene always had options, and a true hero would've pointed that out.
They could've gone, for example, and negotiated with the dragon (who, in most accounts, can understand human language). Just explain: "Look, we've got a bit of a sheep shortage, but we're gonna sort it out by buying some sheep from neighbouring settlements. You might have to make do with chickens for a couple of weeks, though." Easy.
On the other side of the argument, not every community and not even every 'hero' can be counted upon to make the best decisions all the time. So maybe I'm being tough on George here. Arguably, it's not his solitary act of brutality that's so horrifying; rather, it's the fact that
a) he became a saint partly on the strength of his dumbass dragon-slaying;
b) dozens of countries saw it as sufficiently heroic to warrant having a St George feast day every year (which many still observe); and
c) he still turns up in places like the Prague Castle Complex, sticking a giant fork into a dragon's belly for reasons which most people aren't even aware of.
And with that, I think I'll finish my little George and The Dragon rant.
Tomorrow I’m leaving Prague behind and heading off into the wilds of Moravia. Well, the quasi-wilds at least. I’ve bought a bicycle, which was a whole fun process in itself, and I’m planning to ride it most of the way to Warsaw. I’ve only got 15 days to get there and start the process of applying for visas at two separate embassies, so I’ll undoubtedly do some train-hopping to help me keep to schedule. But I’ll cycle as much as possible.
The next few entries will probably either be about Bike Love or Truck Hate; those are bound to be big themes in the coming days. Until then ... take care!
Anthony.
Anthony.
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