The Church at Klimentská 5 – the early years
A church, if not the Church, has stood at Klimentská 5 since as early as the end of the 10th century, with a foundation document issued by the Břevnov Monastery in the year 993 referring to a building there. Why St. Clement? Perhaps because St. Clement is the patron of all those who navigate the waters which may be the reason why this particular church, so close to the River Vltava, is named after him.
A new Romanesque-style church was built on the same site at the end of the 12th century, and from 1225 it served the Dominican order as a monastery church, to which it was dedicated by the Bohemian King Přemysl I. Over time the building was deemed insufficient and it was demolished at the end of the 14th Century, with the construction of the Gothic building we see today beginning at that time.
The Hussites
With the rise of the proto-Protestant Hussite movement in the first years of the 15th Century the parish Priest at the church, Jan Protiva, was a great opponent of the Hussite leader Jan Hus, and for this reason the church was looted during the ensuing Hussite wars. With the return of peace, the church subsequently passed into the hands of the moderate Hussites or Utraquists, and the church was again rebuilt, during which time wall frescoes were added to the church interior, probably depicting the Stations of the Cross. Fragments of these paintings were only discovered in the late 1970s during renovations.
One of the medieval frescoes uncovered by restoration work in the 1970s
Klimentská 5 becomes a grain store
The Utraquists gave up the church in 1621 and after this the church was managed by Catholic priests from the nearby church of St. Peter until 1784, when it was decommissioned and bought by a wealthy local miller by the name of Michalovic, to be used as a granary.
The building remained the property of the Michalovic family until 1850, when it was bought by a Protestant priest, Bedřich Košut, for 27,500 florins, funds which he obtained through a collection. Protestantism was becoming more and more tolerated in the Catholic Habsburg empire, and now the building was stripped of the granary floors and extended with a choir and a small chapel in the presbytery. A neo-Gothic pulpit was added, the west portal modified, and the church received a new organ. At the end of the 19th century a spiral staircase to the tower, now raised by one floor, was newly bricked and it was at this point that late Gothic buttresses on the exterior of the building were removed. The church escaped any further renovation until 1975, when the porch in the presbytery was removed in renovations that lasted until 1981 and were part funded by foreign churches.
Klimentská 5 after 1918
With the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918 full religious freedom was implemented and the Czech Protestant Reformed Church and the Czech Lutheran Church joined to form a church which took the name of Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. This is the Church which St Clement’s serves today and which we use on a rental basis and we are very grateful to those whose kindness makes this possible.
Today, the portal in the south wall of the building serves as the main entrance to the church and the entire main nave is dominated by an impressive Gothic vault with stone ribs, the lining of the vault itself being brick and the ribs and buttresses bearing the remains of neo-Gothic painting from the end of the 19th century. The pentagonal presbytery is noticeably narrower, its distinctive feature being the fragments of frescoes that were commissioned by the Utraquists.
Klimentská 5 today
The interior of the church, in accordance with the customs of Protestant churches, is very austere. Painted white, this allows the vault to stand out. The furniture of the church also does not attract special attention, the only significant element being the very decorative neo-Gothic pulpit. In the northern wall of the presbytery is the entrance to the sacristy and the church tower, and here the doors are richly carved, inscribed with the year 1609. From the sacristy, a spiral staircase leads to the church tower, where the bell is located. At the western end of the nave a narrow wooden staircase leads to the chancel where the organ is located.
The Franz Josef I bridge (1870s)
An early daguerrotype photograph from the 1870s looking across the Vltava River from Letna Hill, with the old Franz Josef I bridge (now the Stefanikuv bridge) that stood from 1868-1898 in the foreground. The spire of the Church at Klimentska 5 can be seen behind the first tower. Also to be noted is that there was no embankment yet and no roadway running along it like today.
The church at Klimentská 5 is a building steeped in history and we are honoured to be able to be part of its present and it future. Come and join us!
