Saint John of Nepomuk

Wenceslau Wenceslas Emperor and King of Bohemia, persecutor of the saint. s, son and successor of Charles IV, residing in Prague, heard the servant of God spoken of with praise; he desired to meet him and appointed him to preach Advent at court. Although this commission was difficult and perilous, with a young prince intoxicated by supreme power, given over to the most shameful passions, corrupted by flattery, and who later bore the nickname of the slothful and the drunkard, John accepted; and his zeal was so successful that Wenceslaus momentarily halted the course of his disordered inclinations, and, to mark his esteem, offered him the bishopric of Leitmeritz, which had just become vacant; but it was not possible to make him accept it. As it was imagined that his refusal was perhaps based on the dangers and labors inseparable from the episcopate, he was offered the provostship of Wischeradt, which, after the bishoprics, was the first ecclesiastical dignity of Bohemia, with an income of one hundred thousand francs attached to it along with the honorable title of hereditary chancellor of the kingdom. But it is hardly knowing the Saints to make them such offers; if they refuse great positions, even when they present labors for their zeal and crosses for their virtue, what must they think of those which, for all their attraction, show them only treasures to collect and honors to receive? This virtuous canon was as unshakeable on this occasion as he had been on the previous one. If, subsequently, he accepted the position of chaplain to the emperor, he did so only to place himself in a position to instruct the court with more authority and consequently with more fruit: he also saw himself, by this means, better able to satisfy his tenderness for the poor. This position, moreover, did not expose him to distractions, and it offered him neither the riches nor the honors that had so greatly frightened him in the prelacies; thus it was humility that fixed him at court, where ambition leads almost all men. He had the same company there that he knew how to have everywhere: Our Lord and the poor. His apartment soon became their meeting place, and he himself their advocate and their father. Peace and charity overflowed from his heart, and led him to reconcile the disputes that arose at court and in the city, to calm quarrels, and to stop lawsuits, of which we still have authentic monuments. If one is astonished that he could find time for all these works, let one remember that the Saints, forgetting themselves, have much more time to devote to the interests of their neighbor.

But it is time to arrive at that which will above all make for the immortal glory of ou r Saint. Empress Joa L'impératrice Jeanne Wife of Wenceslaus and penitent of Saint John of Nepomuk. nna, daughter of Albert of Bavaria and wife of Wenceslaus, who was a princess adorned with every virtue, touched by the unction that accompanied the discourses of John Nepomucene, chose him as the director of her conscience. Heaven, in order to sanctify this virtuous woman by detaching her from everything that could divide her heart, permitted her husband, who loved her with passion, to become jealous, suspicious, and to use all sorts of brutalities toward her; she therefore had great need of our Saint to console and guide her. All the virtuous people of the court, following this example, placed themselves under the guidance of a man so versed in the interior ways. One admired in him the talent for forming Saints on the throne, for creating happiness in suffering, and for making virtue loved in the midst of the high society, where it is so often unrecognized as a stranger. He was also obliged to direct the nuns of the castle of Prague, and he led them so well in the exercises of the spiritual life that their house became a model of ascetic perfection.

But the counsels of our Saint bore especially great fruit in the person of the Empress: she inhabited almost nothing but the churches, where she remained on her knees and in a recollection that was the admiration of everyone. Her prayers were interrupted only by the time she spent in the relief of the poor, and she considered it an honor to serve them with her own hands. Her conversations with the ladies of the court, which were the only relaxation she allowed herself, revolved only around eternal truths, and she poured into them an unction that could only come from a soul entirely filled with the love of God. She maintained this sacred fire through the frequentation of the sacraments, through great austerities, and through mortifications of every kind.

The fear of displeasing her beloved Jesus made her flee even from the shadow of sin, and, if she fell into those faults from which even the holiest are not exempt, she would quickly wash away, in the waters of penance, a stain that might have diminished the delights that the heavenly Spouse finds in souls that are entirely pure. She never left this sacred pool without her heart broken with contrition and her eyes bathed in tears; thus she wept, as for her own sins, for the wanderings of the emperor; she asked God to bring him back to Him; she herself tried to win him over with every mark of tenderness and submission: this cruel man responded only with the most outrageous suspicions; he had her holiest actions spied upon to discover some appearance of guilt. Finally, the demon that obsessed him pursuing him incessantly, he formed the project, as novel as it was extravagant, to have John Nepomucene reveal to him everything the empress had told him in the tribunal of confession. He first asked him indiscreet questions, then, dropping the mask, he explained himself more clearly. Our Saint, seized with horror, represented to him in the most respectful manner how much such a project shocked common sense and wounded religion; but this wicked prince, accustomed to seeing all his whims respected as laws, was outraged by this resistance, which he should nevertheless have expected; however, concealing his resentment, he dismissed the Saint with a gloomy silence that left him no doubt that his ruin was resolved.

Some time later, a roast that was spoiled was served at the prince's table: by a trait worthy of Caligula and Heliogabalus, he ordered the unfortunate cook to be put on the spit and roasted over a slow fire. The courtiers turned pale with horror; but as they knew their master, they kept a shameful silence. Our Saint, being informed of this, ran like a new John the Baptist to stop the crime of this other Herod, who, for his only response, had him seized and thrown into a dungeon, where he left him for several days, without allowing him to be given any food. But hunger was as powerless over the courage of the servant of God as were promises: it was in vain that they told him he would only recover his freedom by declaring what he knew of the empress; he showed himself always ready to prefer a thousand deaths to this sacrilege. However, after a few days, the emperor had him released, begged him to forget the past, and even invited him to come dine with him the next day, as a public testimony of his esteem and friendship. John having therefore gone to the palace the next day, was very well received there, and, after the meal, Wenceslas having dismissed everyone, kept him all alone: he spoke with him at first about indifferent things; he then opened up and employed every possible means to engage him to discover the confession of the empress: "You can," he said to him, "count on an inviolable secret; if you defer to my desire, I will shower you with riches and honors; but if you refuse, you must expect everything, even death." — "I will never consent to it," replied the holy Martyr; "and you yourself, Sire, remember that you are encroaching upon the rights of God, to whom alone belongs the discernment of consciences. In all other things, command, and I will obey you; but in this, I dare say to Your Majesty what Saint Peter answered to the chief priests: 'We must obey God rather than men.'"

The Emperor, seeing the futility of all the measures he had employed, could no longer contain the outbursts of his fury: he ordered the Saint to be taken back to prison and treated with the utmost inhumanity. The executioners stretched him on a kind of rack; they applied burning torches to his sides and the most sensitive parts of his body; they burned him over a slow fire and tormented him with the most horrible barbarity. In the midst of this torture, John Nepomucene uttered no words other than the sacred names of Jesus and Mary, the weapons with which the Christian is always victorious in the most painful struggles. In the end, he was taken off the rack, but he was almost expiring. The Lord, who never abandons his children when they suffer for his glory, visited his beloved Martyr in prison and filled his soul with the sweetest consolations.

However, the Empress, informed of what was happening, went to throw herself at the feet of Wenceslaus, whom she managed to soften with her tears and prayers; she obtained the release of her pious director. He reappeared at court as a persecuted Saint, we mean with that serenity and air of contentment which showed that his sufferings seemed to him a favor from heaven; but, foreseeing well that the calm would not be of long duration, and having known by revelation that he would soon die, he prepared himself to receive the crown of martyrdom. He began to preach again with more zeal than ever, so that the last moments of his life might be consumed as a holocaust for the glory of God, in the fire of heavenly love. Having one day taken for the text of his discourse these words: "A little while and you will not see me," he repeated so often these other words: "I have little time left to speak with you," that the audience easily understood that his goal was to teach them that he was reaching his final hour; he even added, says his historian: "I am finishing my career, my end is approaching, I will die for the laws of Jesus Christ and his Church." Then, casting a tearful look into the future, which God revealed to him, he predicted, while sobbing, the evils that hell would vomit upon Bohemia with heresy: altars profaned, the sanctuary annihilated, the use of the sacraments abolished, the evangelical counsels despised, monasteries reduced to ashes, religious slaughtered,

wolves entering the sheepfold to devour the flock of Jesus Christ, divine and human laws trampled underfoot.

Thirty years later, these words were only too well fulfilled; John Huss and his followers infected the sources of doctrine and morality, the sources of happines s, with t Jean Huss Reformer whose heresy was predicted by the saint. he poison of their heresy; the pagans, bursting into Europe, pushed their fury as far as Prague; finally, later, the face of Germany was changed by Luther; never had hell spread more darkness than through his mouth. Our Saint, before descending from the pulpit, said a final farewell to his audience; he asked the canons and the clergy for forgiveness for any bad examples he might have given them. From that day on, he thought only of obtaining the grace of a good death; persuaded that this grace, above all, is obtained through Mary, who is the channel of all graces, he went to Bruntzel to visit the famous image of this divine Mother, which Saints Cyril and Methodius had brought with the Christian faith to Bohemia; he asked her that, having obtained his birth from God, having watched over his cradle, and having led him as if by the hand along the difficult paths of his mortal life, she would be willing to support him still at this hour, to help him cross through death and take him with her into the bosom of Jesus, his Savior, his love, his immortal felicity.

As he was returning to Prague in the evening, the cruel emperor, who was at his window, caught sight of this holy victim, and, the fire of jealousy rekindling in his soul, he had him brought before him. Without giving him time to collect himself, he told him abruptly that he had only to choose between dying or revealing the confessions of the empress. The Saint looked at his executioner with a calm and severe face, without deigning to answer him, awaiting with intrepidity the crown that was being prepared for him.

Wenceslas, outraged with spite and no longer keeping any measure, cried out: "Take this man from my sight and throw him into the river as soon as the darkness is thick enough to hide the execution from the people." The holy Martyr used the few hours that remained to him to prepare for his sacrifice. He was thrown, hands and feet bound, into the Vltava, from th e brid Moldaw River flowing through Prague in which the saint was drowned. ge that joins the great and the small Prague. This bridge still exists: one only crosses it with great veneration, and the inhabitants of Prague still maintain today the pious custom of uncovering their heads before the place where the glorious martyrdom was consummated, on the eve of the Ascension, which was May 16 of the year 1383. Immediately, fires appeared on the river; one saw an infinity of stars, of marvelous brightness, rising as if from the midst of the waves, reflections of the glory with which the soul of our Saint shone in heaven. Meanwhile, his sacred body descended gently down the course of the water, accompanied by new lights even more astonishing; it seemed that luminous torches followed and preceded him, arranged in an admirable order, as in a funeral procession. The whole city rushed to be a witness to this prodigy; the empress hastened to ask Wenceslas what it meant: the prince, struck with terror, knew not what to answer; he went to hide his shame in the countryside, with a prohibition for anyone to follow him there; it seemed to him that he had the body of his victim constantly before his eyes, illuminated by the fires of heaven. A few years later, the divine wrath weighed heavily upon him; he was deprived of the throne and the imperial crown, and died of apoplexy in the midst of his disorders, without having had the time to return to grace with God. The empress, inconsolable for a crime of which she was the involuntary cause, wept for the Saint until her death, which occurred in 1387.

However, the precious remains that the waters had respectfully brought to the shore had been collected; they were first deposited in the Church of the Holy Cross of the Penitents, then transported with great pomp to the cathedral, amidst a prodigious gathering. It was necessary to reopen the coffin to satisfy the pious tenderness of the people, who wished to contemplate the features of the Martyr one last time. Several sick people, whose recovery was despaired of, regained their health through his intercession; all those who recommended themselves to him with faith obtained the favor they requested. An admirable odor, which emanated from the coffin, clearly showed the holiness of the precious deposit it contained: when the earth was opened to entrust this heavenly treasure to it, it offered a treasure in exchange, as if heaven, which had begun the funeral of its new inhabitant, had wished to bear the expense to the end. This epitaph was engraved on his tomb, which can still be read there today: Here lies buried the most venerable John Nepomucene, doctor, canon of this church, confessor to the queen, illustrious in miracles, who, for having kept the sacred seal of confession, was cruelly tormented and thrown from the bridge of Prague into the Moldau River, by the orders of Wenceslas IV, in the year 1383. It would be too long to recount all the miracles with which God has been pleased to honor the memory of his servant. We will cite only a few: A woman, named Catherine Frolenta, having fallen at night into a very deep well, felt herself lifted out of the water up to her chest by our Saint, whom she invoked, and saw the edge of the well all illuminated; by the favor of this light, she perceived a beam that served as a support for her until her cries caused her to be delivered. Here is another prodigy no less admirable: a lady of distinguished rank, unjustly condemned in a lawsuit, had a memorandum written for Emperor Leopold, and, before sending it to Vienna, she placed it on the altar of Saint John Nepomucene, in whose honor she was having a mass celebrated. But, at the moment of taking it back, she noticed that it had disappeared. Four days later, she placed a second note on the altar, and when she came to take it back, she found the first one signed by the hand of His Imperial Majesty and provided with his seal, which ordered that justice be rendered to the petitioner and that all the documents of the trial also be sent to Vienna. The judges she went to see, not believing it possible that one could go to Vienna and return in such a short time, made inquiries, and they learned that the note had been presented and the lady's cause pleaded in Vienna before the emperor by a venerable ecclesiastic, who was none other than Saint John Nepomucene. The most illustrious families of Germany were indebted to our Saint for a host of graces: through his intercession a fire was extinguished in the castle of Count Wratislaw; through his intercession Charles d'Althan, Archbishop of Bari, was preserved from all harm in the collapse of a balcony of the Colonna palace; Cardinal Frederick d'Althan, Viceroy of Naples, was indebted to him for his recovery. The emperors of Germany, of the House of Austria, regarded him as their protector; Ferdinand I never entered the metropolis without kneeling before his tomb and praying there with fervor. This illustrious house long showed itself grateful to its holy Patron for the victory he obtained for it, in 1620, under the walls of Prague, a victory which allowed it to recover the kingdom of Bohemia. The night that preceded the battle, Saint John Nepomucene and the other patrons of the country appeared in the cathedral all radiant with light; the imperial army, supported by this happy omen and by the protection of the holy Martyr, won the battle and reconquered Bohemia. In gratitude, the princes of the House of Austria finally obtained the canonization of Saint John Nepomucene: Benedict XIII published the Bull in 1729.

The tomb, which covered such precious remains, was saved by a special protection of Providence from the profanations of the Hussites; it was saved again, in 1618, from those of the Lutherans, who have always attacked the Saints as their greatest enemies. Having undertaken to demolish it, they could never execute their sacrilegious design; there were even several who died suddenly on the spot, among others an English gentleman. This tomb was opened in 1719; the holy body was stripped of its flesh, but the bones were still whole and perfectly joined to one another; his tongue, which God wished to honor par ticularly sa langue Notable relic found incorrupt in 1719. for having so faithfully kept the seal of confession, was found without any corruption, as fresh, as vermilion, and as supple as the tongue of a living man. It is still venerated in the same state today, enclosed in a rich reliquary. It is like a monument to the particular care that God has always taken to prevent confessors from revealing the secrets of the holy tribunal; He allows it so that sinners are not turned away and deprived of the only hope of salvation that remains to them; for we would no longer be bound to accuse our sins if we were not morally certain that the one to whom we accuse them will not reveal them. Let the ministers of the sacrament of Penance therefore take for themselves this maxim of a Father: "What I know through confession, I know less than what I do not know at all!"

The veneration of his compatriots for this great Saint led them to build a church on the site of his paternal home, and an altar marks the place of his cradle.

At the Cathedral of Strasbourg, an altar is dedicated to Saint John Nepomucene. Above the altar is placed a very beauti cathédrale de Strasbourg City that Bennon leaves at the beginning of his narrative. ful painting representing the death of the Saint, and in place of the tabernacle is a reliquary that contains some of his bones. Furthermore, on many bridges in Germany and Alsace, his statue can be found, which passersby greet, as in Prague, with great respect.

He is invoked against floods, for the crossing of bridges and rivers, for a good confession, and against indiscretions and slander.

The attributes of the Martyr of the confession are: 1st, a padlock and a closed letter, which are given as symbols of the secret to be kept; 2nd, the crucifix, which is generally placed in the hand of preachers; 3rd, a bridge. In many German engravings, one sees on the upper level the magnificent bridge of the Moldau, whose majestic arches, surmounted by an elegant roof, form one of the ornaments of the ancient city of Prague. Below, the Saint is lying down, gently carried on the waters. Stars surround his head; water lilies are woven into a garland around his body; 4th, finally, a last attribute is that of a tongue which he sometimes holds in his hand, and which is sometimes placed near him in a halo: this attribute signifies both that the Saint kept silence when he had to, and that this organ was preserved from decomposition.

Acta Sanctorum and especially the German hagiographers: Russi and Weiss, A. Stalz, etc.