The Life of St John Sarkander

Sarkander, a zealous proponent of Counter-Reformation ideals, spent his entire life in Moravia. In February 1620, during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which ravaged the Czech lands with particular severity, as parish priest of Holeszów in Moravia, situated near Olomouc, he saved the town from attack and plunder by the notorious Polish mercenary troops known as the ‘Lisowczycy’, who were fighting on the Catholic side. To convince the attackers that Holeszów was a Catholic town, he went out to meet them with a procession bearing the Blessed Sacrament. This incident gave the Protestants a pretext to accuse Sarkander of bringing Polish troops into Moravia. He was arrested and imprisoned in Olomouc. As a result of cruel torture, he died, refusing to the very end to betray the secret of the confessional. On the site of the former prison in Olomouc’s Upper Town stands a neo-Baroque chapel dedicated to the saint.

The Cult of John Sarkander

The event that marked the beginning of the cult of John Sarkander was his funeral, which took place on 24 March 1620. His body was laid to rest in a coffin clad in a red chasuble, symbolising the blood shed for Christ. Even at that time, John Sarkander was regarded as a martyr for the faith, as evidenced, amongst other things, by the preservation of a number of objects associated with his death. Jan Sarkander’s grave in the Church of Our Lady in Podgrodzie quickly became a place of pilgrimage, and his life served as an inspiration for literature and the visual arts. The living cult of the martyr was evidenced by the numerous votive offerings of thanksgiving placed in the chapel opened on the site of the former prison in Olomouc’s Upper Town, where Jan Sarkander died as a result of torture.

Following the commencement of Jan Sarkander’s beatification process in 1715, his cult experienced rapid growth, and within just a few years the first altars in his honour were erected. Due to a failure to complete the formalities associated with beatification in the early stages – and in order to circumvent the ban on public worship – Jan Sarkander was often depicted alongside St John of Nepomuk.

Jan Sarkander’s beatification was ratified by a decree of Pius IX in 1859. This event was of great significance for Moravia and Silesia. However, due to political turmoil, Sarkander was not canonised until 1995 by Pope John Paul II during his pilgrimage to the Czech Republic. It is worth noting, however, that for the Czechs and Moravians, this Catholic martyr of the Thirty Years’ War – the most devastating consequence of which was the collapse of the independent Czech monarchy – is a far more controversial figure than he appears to be from a Polish perspective.

The establishment of a place of worship for John Sarkander in St Wenceslas’s Cathedral

The remains of Jan Sarkander, interred in 1620 in the Church of Our Lady in Podgrodzie, were transferred in 1784 to St Michael’s Church. Following his beatification in 1860, they were placed in two reliquaries situated in a side, neo-Gothic altar of St Wenceslas’s Cathedral, granting them the status of relics capable of acting as active agents, encouraging the faithful to pray. The process of giving new significance to the relics of John Sarkander involved a series of steps: the designation of a symbolic site for the ceremony at the heart of the cathedral; the design and construction of two reliquaries that facilitated this transformation; and prayers, as well as the utterance of appropriate words and gestures in accordance with formal rituals.

John Sarkander’s skull was then displayed in a special, transparent display case situated at the top of the altar, whilst the remaining relics were placed in an intricately decorated reliquary in the shape of a church, made of gold and adorned with precious stones, in the altar predella. The accumulation of luxurious materials stirred the faithful, encouraging them to pray and to focus on the attributes and virtues of the blessed, whilst preserving the memory of the martyr. Through the performance of appropriate rituals and the enshrinement of the sacred remains in precious reliquaries, bearing inscriptions that unambiguously indicated their contents, the relics acquired religious significance.