The Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Nové Město,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, the Czech Republic, is the principal

Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia ( cs, Pravoslavná církev v Českých zemích a na Slovensku; sk, Pravoslávna cirkev v českých krajinách a na Slovensku) is a self-governing body of the Eastern Orthodox Church that territ ...

History

Early history

According to oral tradition, the site where Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral stands was the site of a small church built by Bořivoj I, Duke of Bohemia, and dedicated by Saint Methodius himself. This link is based historically upon early and continuing reference to the name "Na Zderaze" for the existing church building. In 1091, the Czech lord Zderad was killed during the siege of Brno, and was buried in the earlier church which was near

. Zderad's name was then immortalized in the name of the street "Na Zderaze" which is adjacent to the cathedral, thus establishing a connection to this site that was hallowed by St. Methodius. From 1115, the church of

Saints Peter and Paul Peter and Paul may refer to: * Saint Peter and Paul the Apostle considered together ** Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, 29 June in the Catholic liturgical calendar ** St. Peter and St. Paul's Church (disambiguation) * ''Peter and Paul'' (film), 1 ...

stood on the site of the present church, around which the Knights of the Cross built the Zderazsky monastery. During the

Hussite Wars The Hussite Wars, also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, were a series of civil wars fought between the Hussites and the combined Catholic forces of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the Papacy, European monarchs loyal to the Cat ...

, the church was largely destroyed, leaving only a part of the choir standing. In 1705, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Prague, Breuner, established a retirement home for priests on the site of the monastery next to which a church was later built.

World War II

In 1942, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the cathedral was where a last stand was made by

SOE SOE may refer to: Organizations * State-owned enterprise * Special Operations Executive, a British World War II clandestine sabotage and resistance organisation ** Special Operations Executive in the Netherlands, or Englandspiel * Society of Opera ...

-trained Czech and Slovak agents involved in the assassination of '' SS-Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich. SS and Police Leader of Waffen-SS

Karl Fischer von Treuenfeld Karl Freiherr von Fischer-Treuenfeld (31 March 1885 – 7 June 1946) was a German Waffen-SS commander. A brigade commander during the Nazi era, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, he commanded the 2 SS Infantry Brigade and the 1 SS Infant ...

commanded the Nazi forces that stormed the church on 18 June 1942. After a fierce gun battle, two of the Czechoslovaks were killed and the rest committed suicide to avoid capture. There is a museum in the church crypt dedicated to them as national heroes.

References

Footnotes

Sources

External links

* {{Authority control ''This article incorporates text from " Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral" at OrthodoxWiki under a

CC BY-SA 2.5 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

license.'' Cathedrals in the Czech Republic Churches in Prague Eastern Orthodox cathedrals History museums in the Czech Republic Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer buildings Museums in Prague Operation Anthropoid World War II museums