The side altar of St Wenceslas Cathedral contains two reliquaries with the remains of St John Sarkander (1576-1620), a native of Skoczów in the Duchy of Cieszyn, which at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries was still ruled by the Germanised princes of the Piast dynasty, fiefs of the Czech kings.

The story of St. John Sarkander

An ardent promoter of Counter-Reformation ideals, Sarkander spent his entire life in Moravia. In February 1620, during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which was ravaging the Czech lands to an exceptionally severe degree, as parish priest of the Moravian town of Holešov, near Olomouc, he saved the town from attack and looting by notorious mercenary Polish foxhunters who were fighting on the Catholic side. In order to convince the attackers that Holeszów was a Catholic town, he faced them with a procession carrying the Blessed Sacrament. This event gave the Protestants a pretext to accuse Sarkander of bringing Polish troops into Moravia. He was arrested and imprisoned in an Olomouc prison. As a result of cruel torture, he died, refusing to betray the secret of his confession until the end. A neo-Baroque chapel dedicated to the saint now stands on the site of the former prison in Olomouc's Upper Town.

The cult of John Sarkander

The event that marked the beginning of the cult of Jan Sarkander was his funeral, which took place on 24 March 1620. His corpse was placed in a coffin wearing a red chasuble, symbolising the blood shed for Christ. Already at that time, Jan Sarkander was regarded as a martyr for the faith, which was expressed, among other things, in the preservation of a number of objects associated with his death. Jan Sarkander's grave in the Church of Our Lady in Podgrodzie soon became a place of pilgrimage and his life became an inspiration for literature and the visual arts. The vivid veneration of the martyr was evidenced by the numerous votive offerings placed in the chapel opened on the site of the former prison in Olomouc's Upper Town, where Jan Sarkander died under torture.

After the start of Jan Sarkander's beatification process in 1715, his cult grew rapidly, and within just a few years the first altars were erected in his honour. Because the formalities for his beatification were not completed in the early days, in order to circumvent the ban on public veneration, the figure of John Sarkander was often depicted alongside St John Nepomucen.

The beatification of Jan Sarkander was sanctioned by a decree of Pius IX in 1859. For Moravia and Silesia, this event was of great importance. However, due to political turmoil, Sarkander was only canonised in 1995 by Pope John Paul II during his pilgrimage to the Czech Republic. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that for Czechs and Moravians, the Catholic martyr of the Thirty Years' War, whose most painful outcome was the collapse of the independent Czech monarchy, is a much more controversial figure than he appears from a Polish perspective.

Creation of a place of worship for Jan Sarkander in St Wenceslas Cathedral

Jan Sarkander's remains, deposited in 1620 in the Church of Our Lady in Podgrodzie, were moved to the Church of St Michael in 1784. After his beatification in 1860, they were placed in two reliquaries placed in the side neo-Gothic altar of St Wenceslas Cathedral, giving them the status of relics that could act as active actors to encourage the faithful to pray. The process of giving a new meaning to the relics of John Sarkander involved a number of steps: designating a symbolic place for the ceremony in the heart of the cathedral, designing and making two reliquaries that enabled the transformation and prayers, and saying the appropriate words and gestures in accordance with the formal rituals.

The skull of John Sarkander was then displayed in a special transparent display case placed in the top of the altar, while the other remains were placed in an elaborately decorated reliquary in the form of a church, made of gold and adorned with precious stones, in the predella of the altar. The accumulation of luxurious materials stimulated the reactions of the faithful, encouraging prayer and attention to the attributes and virtues of the blessed, while maintaining the memory of the martyr. By performing the appropriate rituals and enclosing the abject remains in precious reliquaries, bearing signatures clearly indicating their contents, the relics gained the power of religious influence.