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Updated: June 24, 2025
In the first place it is maintained by ardent nationalists, and therefore followers of John Hus, that John Nepomuk never existed at all, that he was simply invented by the Jesuits in their successful efforts to bring back to Rome the Protestant people of Bohemia whose army had been defeated in the battle of the White Mountain in 1620.
Remember, John Nepomuk had been drowned; therefore to ask him to see to a further supply of water seems hardly tactful it is enough to send any ordinary saint off into a fit of hydrophobia. Anyway, John Nepomuk was duly canonized some three hundred and fifty years after his supposed immersion in the waters of Prague.
John Nepomuk was raised, they maintain, in opposition to the real national hero and martyr John Hus; therefore the whole story of the former John's death is all invention, and the tablet on the bridge over which he went to martyrdom is a brazen misstatement of fact.
There is a statue to John Nepomuk on the Charles Bridge, there is a tablet to mark the spot where he was thrown in, and there is his shrine in the cathedral which Lützow, by the way, describes as of "barbaric splendour."
Wine had also a good deal to do with the business; the wine of Mělnik, both white and red, was probably as pleasant to the taste then as it is to-day, and Wenceslaus thought so too. His Queen Sophie was a very good wife indeed, so Wenceslaus, wondering what such a very dear and gentle lady could have to confess, inquired of John Nepomuk about this.
The Government's attitude was interesting, if not amusing, in the matter of keeping the feast. Swarms of country folk flocked into the city of Prague to give John Nepomuk his due but there was also an agricultural exhibition going on at the time.
He had to fling his poor Queen's Confessor into the river Moldau Johann of Nepomuk, Saint so called, if he is not a fable altogether; whose Statue stands on Bridges ever since, in those parts. Wenzel's Bohemians revolted against him; put him in jail; and he broke prison, a boatman's daughter helping him out, with adventures.
Nepomuk was flowing down in 'lapidarig' letters to the kneeling figure the following Latin saying: 'Mi fili, ego te nunquam deseram." "I read the words." "An iron grating was placed before the picture, and covered the whole niche, that infamous hands might not be able to touch it." "A very wise idea."
Introduces well-known names of those who pass in filmy pageant across the old historic Charles Bridge John Nepomuk, John Hus, and others. Gives a fleeting vision of another native King, a great man, and of other rulers who had their day and passed on. Talks at some length of the river of Prague, the Vltava, and gives some of its reflections.
The Government was keenly interested in this exhibition; the crowds who came in out of reverence for John Nepomuk went to the exhibition out of curiosity. To the Government the late patron saint of Bohemia was of some economic value; what his spiritual value is time will tell. Holy Church can always afford to wait. John Hus has just been mentioned.
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