A Sanctuary of Christian Kabbalah

At the initiative of Žďár's abbot Václav Vejmluva, the pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk was built in 1719–1722 beside the monastery on Strmá hora, or Černý les, to designs by J.Santini. Artistically it is Central Europe's most valuable example of so-called Baroque Gothic. Its concept derives from the saint's symbol: legend says a crown of five stars appeared in the Vltava above his drowned body. A star supposedly marked his birthplace and appeared at noon above the hill being prepared for the church, thereafter named Zelená hora after the hill above Nepomuk. The church has a five-pointed star plan incorporating the saint's miraculous tongue. The sacred pentagram sits within the cloisters' ten-pointed star; six-pointed stars and another symbol, the letterX, also recur. In hermetic interpretation the star's appearance canonically confirms the right path, promising successful completion of the Work. Together with the fiery tongue, understood here as a generative organ, it refers to logogenesis, creation by the word. Numerical symbolism plays an important role in this centrally symmetrical composition, in the proportions of its whole and its details, and is still not fully explained. An important guide to interpreting it was the sermon given by Měřín's parish priest J.F.J.Pacher at the church's solemn consecration, published shortly afterwards.