The mystery of the Příbram emblem

Příbram's municipal coat of arms consists (from the first mention of it until the present day) of the main and only figure of the coat of arms - a silver church with two towers on a red shield. Only the colour of the roofs of the church and the towers - currently blue - and the lawn, which was sometimes drawn as a cloud on which the church floated, have been somewhat variable, and as such were silver in colour. The earliest surviving image of the church is on a seal dated 1531, and art historians have estimated the origin of the type for this seal to be 1480. Unfortunately, it has not survived.

The origins of the Pribram town emblem and its symbolism are still shrouded in mystery and will probably always remain so. However, we can try to find the most plausible explanation of this problem. Only the connection of the emblem figure - the church - with the church can be considered certain. This connection is offered several times with Příbram. First of all, Příbram was situated on church land and was the centre of a large church estate.

Attempts to concretise the church on the Příbram coat of arms and to connect it with a real church must be considered as armorial legends, which can sometimes have a real core. However, it is necessary to distinguish between a church - a symbol (heraldic figure) and a concrete church, depicted exactly according to reality. Any concretization by means of an artistic representation of reality in the form of an emblem, however, is against the spirit of the heraldic rules, and it can be assumed that at the time of the peak development of heraldry these rules would not have been violated. Nevertheless, for the sake of interest, let us look at these concretizations. A total of four theories have been developed.

The first of these was formed by quite logical reasoning. It likens the emblematic church to the Church of St. Vitus at Prague Castle. Bohuslav Balbín first came up with this claim in his work "Diva montis sancti..." It is no longer possible to find out from which sources Balbín drew, in his work he erroneously refers to unknown passages in the otherwise known privilege of Archbishop Zbyněk from 1406. This quoted passage states that the people of Pribram received the privilege of displaying the church in their coat of arms in return for their help in redeeming the archbishop's debts from the construction of the St. Vitus Cathedral. This theory pleased the people of Pribram so much that they adopted it as their own.

Other specifics are even more far-fetched. J. E. Brzák, a 19th century scholar from Příbram, saw the church of St. Jilja in Prague as the church of the emblem. In the pre-Husitic times, the Příbram parish was subordinated to it. Although the church of St. Jilja resembles the emblem church in its appearance, all connections end there. How could the patron of the local parish, who otherwise had nothing to do with the town itself, have granted the coat of arms to the town? Even more far-fetched is the connection of the emblematic church with the unspecified church in Švábská Falce, advocated by J. Janša, for example. This is where the founders of the Marian chapel on Svatá Hora were supposed to have come from.

As the last one I left the most plausible theory, namely the depiction of the dean's church of St. James in Příbram in the sign field. Leaving out the image, which obviously does not agree, let us note a few details that might lead us to believe that the ancient creator of the Pribram coat of arms was inspired by the local church. The fact that the appearance of the emblem church and the real church is different seems to me to be an important positive of this theory, because the emblem has always been understood mainly as a symbol and not as a representation of reality. The key point of this theory is the representation of the church in the sign. For the church is depicted from the side, while its spires are depicted from the front. This theory was first put forward by Dr. Pavel R. Pokorný.

According to him, the church can only be the nave of the church without the towers, while the towers can be ordinary defensive towers of the city fortifications, i.e. the most common urban figure to which the drawing of the towers on the coat of arms of Příbram corresponds. The objection that Příbram never had walled walls and therefore no towers could be refuted by the fact that it may have been an intended act or a great wish of the people of Příbram, which was prevented by some fact, such as Hussitism. Certain defensive functions of the church, which were also confirmed by the building survey, also testify to the importance of the church building for the defence of the town. Unfortunately, the late preservation of the Příbram coat of arms does not allow us to accept this theory without reservation.

Theoldest town emblem, which shows a church

I have found 18 town emblems whose main figure is a church or a larger chapel. After subtracting the towns that were proven to have received a coat of arms after the White Mountain and whose examination is not important for the present purpose, there are 11 town arms that bear a church as the main figure and were probably created before 1620. They are Golčův Jeníkov, Hnanice, Hošťka, Chlumec nad Cidlinou, Kostelec na Hané, Kostelec nad Labem, Nepomuk, Novosedly, Olešnice v Orlických Horách, Příbram and Sadská.

Only Příbram aspires to be the origin of the coat of arms before the Hussites, with some exaggeration one can also consider Nepomuk. If we compare these 11 towns according to the origin of the church in the coat of arms, we find that two of them have a speaking sign (both Kostelce), four of them point to an important church in their surroundings or directly in the town (Hnanice, Hošťka, Nepomuk and Sadská). The remaining five have a church of unclear significance. Of these five, however, only Příbram has a sign older than the end of the 16th century.

Some contemporary theories place the first use of the city's emblems before the accession of John of Luxembourg to the throne. At that time, cities had to be more careful about their security and put up city cash for their protection. The coat of arms was the ideal distinguishing sign for this cash. In its earliest forms, the coat of arms usually expressed the security and defensibility of the city by certain symbols.

In the 1970s, the crosses disappeared from the emblem

The emblem was used in an almost unchanged form throughout. Only the colour of the roofs of the church and the lawn were changed; from the second half of the 19th century onwards, the path through the lawn to the church gate still appears. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the church was depicted more like a castle, for example in the fresco by J. Mathauser in the St. Mary's Ambits. Another change came in the mid-1970s, when the then municipal national committee decided to drop all the crosses from the coat of arms.

The last modification of the coat of arms was the return of the crosses to the coat of arms after 1989 and the creation of the large coat of arms of the town of Příbram in 1992. While the return of the crosses was an easy modification, the expression of a hitherto neglected fact, namely the merger of Pribram and the town of Březová Hora in 1953, proved to be a difficult problem. The result was the alliance of the two emblems, held by the Březové hory shield bearers on a golden arabesque and under a common castle crown.

This form was not the first in an attempt to express the union of the two cities. An attempt to ally the two emblems was recently depicted in a painting on a wall in the interior of the Příbram town hall. An unknown artist, apparently inspired by the work of Jan Čáky, executed the two emblems, each held side by side by a Březohorské miner, without the characteristic tilt, and placed a mining tower between the emblems. The miners lack arabesques and the castle crown is carried only by the Březohorský shield.

Much more common is the association of the old Příbram emblem with the miners, as representatives of the mining past or present of the town, and as an expression of the connection with the Březové Hory after 1953. For example, Václav Šara's emblem from the corner of the town hall in 1932 is evidence of the relative age of these efforts. The miners also suited the communist regime much more than the crosses on the church and therefore did not resist such attempts.

■Daniel Doležal (editorially zkráceno)

The text was originally published under the title Příbram town emblem, its origin, development and current form in the collection Podbrdsko, Volume I - 1994.