From Srbsko to Tetin

St Jan

Tetin was the ancestral home of the Czech ruling family and the seat of St Ludmilla and St Wenceslas. Also closely related to Tetin is the myth of St Jan under the Cliff who is often represented in art and architecture as the hermit with the stag.

 the house under the Barrandov Cliffs on northern side of Beroun

 Libuse was one of three daughters of Krok who built the castle at Vysehrad which became the seat of Bohemian government until the Prague Castle was built above Petrin. Each of the daughters  had special gifts. Kazi lived in her own castle at Kazin where she was known as wise in healing and medicine. Libuse  lived in Vsehrad and followed her father's footsteps as the leader of the Czech people; but Teta lived in Tetin, just west of Karlstejn on the southern bank of the river atop a cliff where she was known as a priestess of the pagan religion.

The myth of the three sisters can be found in the Chronicle of the Bohemians by Dean Cosma from the early 12^th century. He depicts the three sisters as representing different spiritual aspects. Kazi is a good witch as she is a healer and  knowledgeable of herbal lore; Tetka is evil as she represents pagan history and Libuse is the good because she  uses feminine strength and wisdom to lead a people rather than force.

 looking east to Karlstejn

Historical battles are often based on the struggles of supramacy of  one culture over another. The history of the Czech Republic is a long series of continuous battles between religious beliefs: pagan versus Christianity and the factions of Christianity against each other. Tetin stands  at a critical point of the Berounka River which guards the passage to Prague. Six kilometers to the east on the north side of the river lies Karlstejn which was beseiged for eight months during the Hussite Wars. History is broken into dukedoms and fiefdoms as they competed against each other for control of a region or dependent on the religious persuasion of the locl leader. Tetin is one of the earliest recorded settlements of Christianity beginning in the 10^th century with the Saints Ludmilla and Wencelas. It was also the seat of the Czech nobility, the home of Tetka, the daughter of Krok, but she was a priestess of a pagan religion.

St L:udmilla atop the cliff

St Ludmilla wsa the wife of the Duke Borivoj. She was born in Melnik around 860 and died in Tetin on 15 September 921.  She and her husband were baptized by St methodius in 871,  but were driven out by the local pagans who did not want the enw religion.  They returned to the area and continued their rule, but abdicated in favor of their son, Spitignev. Thereafter, they retired to Tetin.  Ludmilla and Borivoj hasd a second son, Wratislaw (Vratislav) who was married to Drahomira who simulated Christianity, but was a practitioner of the old religion.  Drahomira  was the  daughter of the Lusatian prince in  Germany.   Wratislaw and his wife had twins, Wenceslas and Boleslas the Cruel.  Wratislaw died in 916 leaving the throne empty for the young Wenceslas, who was eight or thirteen by different accounts.  Wenceslas  was entrusted to the guardianship of his Christian grandmother  for his upbringing. This embittered and Boleslas who wished to preserve the old religion as well as gain control of the throne. Drahomira incited two noblemen to murder Ludmilla, thinking that  she would be able to control Wenceslas. According to legend, Ludmilla wa strangled with a scarf and buried in the Church of St Michael at Tetin. later her remains were removed to St George  upon the hill at the Prague Castle by her grandson, St Wenceslas. St Ludmilla's Feast Day is September 16.

 Cloister of St Katherine 19th century

The Duke Borivoj became the first  nobleman to convert to Christianity
local myth ties him to  St Ivan / Jan (John)  under the Rock. This is how it came about.

St Ivan (Jan or John)  was the son of Charvatian Duke Gostimysl. He  turned away from the wealth of his family to become a hermit of the woods and  took up dwelling in the river gorge of the Beroun River. He wandered about in this area, one with nature. Legend has it that God sent him a roe deer to nourish him with her milk. When he was tempted to leave the area, St John appeared to him on the Rock and gave him a small cross to repel the demoniac forces.  He remained at the foot of the cliff at the spring, but one day  his roe returned to him critically injured with the hunter in pursuit. It was the Duke Borivoj who held a castle on the southern side of the river at Tetin.

The Count Borivoj grew up in the area dominated by pagan faith, but when he came upon Ivn in his cave and saw the great harm he had done in wounding the roe, he repented and begged Ivan to live with him in his castle on the other side of the river. For Ivan, this was impossible because he was accustomed to being alone and at one with nature so he remained in his cave. After his death, the Duke was so moved that he promised to build a chapel to honor Ivan under the cliff where the Benedictine Monastery stands today. Moreover, the Duke also dedicated a Benedictine Monastery on an island south of Prague, the Ostrov Monastery whee the monks sought refuge during the Hussite Wars.

Cloister of St Katherine and Chapel of St Ludmilla

Today in Tetin, you can see the Chapel of St Ludmilla and the 10th century  cloister of St Katherine.  From these myths you can see the development of struggle between rival religions for the control of political power.

chapel of St Ludmilla

When Wenceslas took the throne, he tried to create peace between the Christian and nonChristian factions of his people. He was known for his compassion towards his people and translated the gospel of St John into Czech. In 929, Bohemia was invaded by the German king, Henry I. Rather than subject his people to a bloody war and probable defeat, King Wenceslas conceded. In doing so, he also established the dominancy of Christianity in Bohemia and obtained a holy relic from the German king, Henry I?the arm of St Vitus. This was probably done because the name, Saint Vitus is very similar in sound as the Czech sun deity, Svantevit. Wenceslas constructed a  rotunda church to honor St Vitus in 925 on the castle hill, converting a pagan religious site into a Christian church.  He interred the  remains of his gandmother, St Ludmilla there. This angered his brother, Boleslav, who, by tradition, had Wenceslas murdered.  According to legend, miracles happened at the King's tomb which frightened Boleslav and he had  Wenceslas' remains transferred to  St Vitus in Prague. The rotunda was replaced by a basilica commissioned by prince Spythinev II in 1091 to commemorate the bishophry of Prague.  In turn, St Vitus Cathedral was commissioned by Charles IV in 1344 with Matthias of Arrau and Peter Paler as the architects to replace the older basilica to establish his seat as the Holy Roman Emperor and Archbishropy of Prague. To that time, Prague remained under the Archbishropy of Regensburg, Germany.

The struggle is not only pagans versus Christianity, but German versus Bohemian and that of emerging national identity. Later  such conflicts became more complex with the development of Protestant beliefs and the reaction against the corruption within the Catholic Church which pervaded all aspects of life through religion, land, finances and daily life of the common struggling peasant.

The struggle was to continue to this day as Hussites assaulted  Catholics and Catholics retaliated by the persecution of  hussites after the Battle of White Mountain and lastly the Nazis with their  systematic persecution of Jews, Romany and anyone else who protested their brutal regime and the succeeding implementation of the communist regime which  banished God from  heaven and  earth and probably sent him to hell as well.

Tetin, Srbsko and Karlstejn lay in an area well-known for the ancient mines. This area is a virtual paradise for hikers, climbers, bikers and fishermen. On one side of the river, happy campers bring their climbing equipment to scale the sheer walls of the gorge and the vacated mines. On the south side of the river, Czech cowboys head for the woods to their  little cabins to sing country western songs to the frogs under the humid summer moon, and the fishermen have it all. They wade out in cool waters of the Berounka to fly cast or sit along the edges casting their lines laazily out into the fast-moving current while the beer keeps cold in the river.

Walking maps can be bought in any large department store or bookstore in Prague. Special topography maps can be obtained at camping shops which  sell climbing gear, surplus army gear and fishing tackle. Tetin is just 3 kilometers east of Beroun, so if you miss the local train to Srbsko, its just a short walk from Beroun.  From Srbsko, it is a steady climb up the hill, but well worth the effort for the view and exploration at the top.