John Nepomuk Canonized

JAN 01 1729 · 12:00

St John of Nepomuk, the seal of the confessional kept under torture. Baroque devotional image, the saint with his five-star halo, drowned in the Vltava in 1393, canonised by Benedict XIII in 1729. Place: St Peter's, Rome; the celebration at St Vitus, Prague Figures: Pope Benedict XIII · Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia · the relic of the tongue, enshrined in silver John Nepomuk's cause has run since 1715, urged by the Bohemian clergy, the Habsburg court, and the Jesuits, who supply the documents. The Roman Sacred Congregation requires proof of two miracles and, crucially, an incorrupt relic. The tomb in St Vitus is opened on 15 April 1719 in the presence of seven witnesses, including the imperial physician. A reddish, fibrous mass the size of a small fist is found in the position of the skull's mouth and identified as the saint's incorrupt tongue. Benedict XIII canonizes Nepomuk on 19 March 1729, the third Sunday in Lent. The mass at St Vitus that summer lasts five days. A new chapel is built around the tomb; a silver casket of two tons of bullion (donated by the empress Eleonora Magdalena's bequest) encloses the relic. Bohemia has its first native saint canonized in a century and a half.