SVATY JAN POD SKALOU (Saint John under the Cliff) with its abundance of natural scenery and historical landmarks, is one of the most picturesque villages in the Cesky Kras natural protected area. The history of the village dates back to the end of the 9th century when, according to legend, the first Czech Christian hermit, Ivan, settled down in a cave under a large cliff.
THE SAINT IVAN LEGEND
The hermit Ivan, worshipped as a saint, lived in local travertine caves, which have been preserved up to the present day. Ivan was the son of the Charvatian duke Gostimysl. Legend has it that he turned away from secular life and retreated to this silent landscape where he lived for 42 years. He liked the local valley so much that he decided to live there. God sent him a doe to feed him with milk. The hermit was tempted by demons and decided to leave the area. On the day of his departure, however, St. John the Baptist appeared on the hillock under the St. John Cliff and gave him a wooden crosslet, which helped Ivan expel the demons. The legend further narrates about the hermit’s meeting with the first Czech Christian duke and leader Borivoj during his hunt for bears in the local deep forest. The duke accidentally wounded Ivan’s doe. The injured doe brought Borivoj to the hermit’s cave where she later died. The duke was sorry for killing Ivan’s provider and invited the hermit to Tetin, his nearby castle, where he offered him a place to live. Ivan, however, refused the generous offer and returned back to his cave. Before his death, he sent the duke tidings from St. John the Baptist: ‘It was you whom God ordered through St. John the Baptist to consecrate this place after my death as a church in honor of the Virgin Mary and the St. Cross, and to designate St. John the Baptist as its patron saint.’ According to the legend, after Ivan’s death, Borivoj built a chapel which in the 11th century fell under the administration of the Benedictine monastery (the Ostrov Monastery, located on an island in Vltava River, south of Prague).
THE HISTORY OF SAINT JOHN UNDER THE CLIFF
The first written references to Saint John’s cave can be found in the Czech king Premysl Otakar I. act of 1205. According to the document, Ivan’s cave along with the anchorage, grave and chapel was acquired by the Ostrov Monastery of the Benedictines from the Czech duke Bretislav I. in 1037. In 1310 the Probostry was established and the monastery’s possessions were significantly augmented. The mother cloister of the Benedictines in Ostrov was conquered and destroyed by Hussite troops in 1420 and the surviving monks moved to St. John, then known as ‘Saint Ivan in the mountains’. Starting in 1517, the monks from Ostrov completely relocated to the St. John monastery. In 1584 St. Ivan remains, for centuries carefully hidden, were rediscove-red thus commencing the tradition of well-known pilgrimages to Saint Ivan in St. John under the Cliff.
CHURCH OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST AND ST. IVAN´S CAVE
The church is an early baroque building of massive proportions with opulent interior decoration. The main altar holds the 1695 painting of The Revelation of St. John the Baptist to the Hermit Ivan. A large cross, that used to stand on the venerable Charles Bridge in Prague and was donated to the church by the pilgrims from the Old Prague Town, rises above the altar. The choir loft holds the imposing baroque painting (3,5 x 6 m) The Lay of Cornerstone of the Local Church by Joachym Bachman. The scarce marble front dates back to 1576. The amply decorated tombstone of St. Ivan stands in the middle of the church where the silver-plated and gilded repository of the hermit Ivan’s relics is situated. The church is connected with the old rock church of Virgin Mary – e.g. St. Ivan’s Cave. Besides the hermit’s relics, there is also a crypt and old tombstones of some of the monastery’s abbots. Original stalactical formations, decora-ting the travertine cave, have been partly preserved.
Right next to the church, under the window of Ivan’s cave, rises a strong, curative, hot well - St. Ivan’s Spring. Water from local springs used to be bottled up and sold as the mineral water ‘Ivanka’.
PREMISES OF THE BENEDICTINES´ MONASTERY
The Church spire is the oldest preserved part of the complex of the Benedictine Monastery. The Abbott Matthew Ferdinand Sobek of Bilenberk began to build the cloister convent right after the finishing of the church in 1661. The construction was extremely challenging and was finished with the completion of the fourth - the west- side in 1726. The cloister was completely finished in 1731 by the Abbott Koterovsky by external alterations to the front side of the monastery. The refectory and the prelature are among the most prominent parts of the religious complex. The refectory (later a cafeteria for spa guests) is opulently decorated with baroque frescos and unique statues with scenes from St. Ivan’s life. A statue of St. George can be found in the main monastery hall and a statue of St. Ivan, which used to stand in the fields of Lodenice, is located in the convent courtyard.
CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS
Under the imposing cliff, which exceeds the level of the village square by 159 meters, on a protracted lower rocky shoulder one can find the Chapel of the Elevation of the Holy Cross. According to legend, the chapel stands on the place where St. John the Baptist met with Ivan and gave him a wooden cross to expel demons. In 1602, the field-marshal Herman Kristof Russworm (general of emperor Rudolf II. Habsburg) ordered a creation of a stone cross made of black marble and surrounded it with the statues of St. Ivan and St. John the Baptist. In 1714, the Abbott Koterovsky allowed a chapel to be built above the Statues. The chapel and the statuary were renovated in 1997 with the help of the St. John Foundation.
CHAPEL OF ST. MAXMILIAN
St. John’s cemetery contains a beautiful Neo-Gothic chapel, The Chapel of St. Maxmilian, designed by Bernard Grüber from Munich. Bernard Grüber was a professor of architecture at the Charles University in Prague. His stone-works were made by Prague stonecutter Frantisek Jedlicka. The founder of the chapel was Maxmilian Berger, a one-time owner of the building of the abolished Cloister of St. John. The village budget and the state budget helped make general repairs to the chapel in the 1970s.
ST. MARY´S STATUARY
In front of today’s hotel, Obecna skola, there used to stand an ancient rock statuary of the Virgin Mary, St. Ivan and St. John the Baptist. The latter two had adorned the monastery’s prelature since 1731. In 1801, they had to be torn down and put along the sides of the early baroque statue of the Virgin Mary. Out of the three, only St. John’s statue, which was restored in 1950, had been preserved.
EPILOGUE & ST. JOHN FOUNDATION
Svaty Jan pod Skalou is grouped together with the renown Karlstejn and the ancient Tetin Castle (the old strength of Czech rulers) as a trio of the most significant historical places west of Prague. The village, with its more than one thousand year old history, was kept secret during the communist regime, as since the 1950s the former Benedictine’s cloister served as a forced labor camp and a jail for citizens who resisted the totalitarian regime. Later, it also functioned as a special school for StB senior officers, feared guards of totalitarianism (the analogy to Soviet KGB). For reasons of secrecy, the name Saint John under the Cliff was even erased from maps. Its cultural treasures began to decay and in 1989 all the historical buildings were in a dismal state. However, it was financially impossible for such a very small municipality with only 71 inhabitants, that in St. John in 1989, to rescue these treasures or at least to prevent their further damage and decay.
This was the reason why in 1991 the local patriots founded the St. John Foundation, presently called the St. John Society. From its very beginning, the Foundation has worked success-fully in the area of cultural activities and restorations of local monuments Thanks to its existence and the effort of local authorities, over 6 million Czech Crowns ($ 350,000) has been invested into the salvation of local historical heritage. Several historical sights that have already been successfully saved and repaired prove this fact. The most important undertaking was the general overhaul of the renaissance Chapel of the Holy Cross, the general overhaul of the exterior of the baroque Church of St. John Baptist with its tower, and the challenging securing of its structural stability. Yet to be repaired are the very precious baroque Marian sculptural group and the richly decorated interior of the church, mainly its ceiling and old precious pipe organ.
Until now, the most important reward for all these efforts of the municipality, supported considerably by the St. John Foundations, was an award given to St. John under the Cliff in 1999 - it was rated as the third best village in the whole of the Czech Republic. Thanks to donations of thousands of small donators could have been achieved the grand masterpiece in the past 12 years.