| Popis: |
This bachelor's thesis deals with the history of Saint Gabriel's Benedictine nunnery at Smíchov, which made a part of beuron congregation. I focus on a few disputable issues, which haven't been sufficiently solved so far and often have been neglected by Czech literature. The crucial question is, why exactly did the nuns have to leave the monastery. To provide an answer to this problem I had to perform a thorough study of the Beuron phenomenon in the context of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the twentieth century, and, above all, I had to scrutinize the background of particular nuns. In this work, among other, I come to a conclusion that the reason for the nuns' departure, as well as for the overall specificity of the nunnery / monastery, was an unusual combination of extreme catholicism, German nationalism and their mostly aristocratic background. All the three aspects were in disagreement with the values acknowledged by the newly-emerged state of Czechoslovakia, whose apparatus didn't understand or didn't want to understand the mentality of the nuns and their commitments. This situation eventually culminates by the nuns moving out of the country and the building being sold to the Ministry of posts and telegraphs, with a real burden: a regular mass should be held in the church, which by... |
