The Capuchin Linden

The Cistercian monastery originally called the Golden Holy Crown of Thorns, which kept a thorn from Christ's crown as a relic, was founded by Přemysl Otakar II in 1263 to commemorate the Battle of Kressenbrunn and counterbalance the growing power of the Vítkovci in southern Bohemia. In 1420 the Hussites captured, burned and damaged it. The monks tried to flee, but few escaped. Legend tells of three who slid down a wooden waste pipe from the second floor and escaped at dusk. Most others died in the flames; seven, with Abbot Rudgen, were hanged on a linden between the main Church of the Assumption and St Margaret's Church, now flats. Their bodies were later buried in the cloister. Blood supposedly seeped from the ground there for two hundred years. From then on, some leaves on the linden where the monks were hanged grew joined into cones resembling monastic hoods.