Saint John Nepomucene

Saint John Nepomucene was a priest of the Archdiocese of Prague and vicar general of the archbishop of Prague. In 1393, by order of King Wenceslas IV, he was tortured and drowned in the Vltava. The Church venerates him as a martyr, and the Roman Martyrology commemorates him on March 20, the day of his death.

He was born at Pomuk, today’s Nepomuk near Pilsen in Bohemia. The year of his birth is not known: sources give various dates, from 1330 to about 1350. He worked as a notary in the archbishop’s chancery in Prague, was pastor of the Church of Saint Gall in Prague, and a canon. He studied law in Prague and in Padua, where in 1387 he received a doctorate in canon law. In the jubilee year 1390 he went on pilgrimage to Rome.

Archbishop John of Jenštejn made him his vicar general, and so his closest collaborator in governing the archdiocese. A sharp dispute was then under way between the archbishop and King Wenceslas IV. When the abbot of the monastery at Kladruby died in 1393, the king wanted to turn the abbey into a new bishopric and give it to a man he trusted. The monks, however, elected a new abbot, and John, in keeping with Church law, confirmed the election without delay.

The angry king had John and several other collaborators of the archbishop imprisoned. They were tortured; John Paul II wrote that the ruler himself took part. The others yielded, John did not give way. On the night of March 20, 1393, he was thrown into the Vltava from the bridge in Prague now known as the Charles Bridge. The Roman Martyrology states that he was still alive at that moment. His body, recovered from the river, was buried first in the Church of the Holy Cross and later in Saint Vitus Cathedral, where his tomb is to this day.

That same year the archbishop, in a complaint to the pope, called him a holy martyr. Some decades later people began to say that John had died because he would not reveal to the king what the queen had confessed. Sources contemporary with the events speak of the dispute over the abbey and not of confession, yet it was this account that shaped his veneration. The bull of canonization calls him a martyr of the seal of confession. John Paul II put it this way: the martyr of the Church’s freedom came to be venerated also as a witness to the sacramental seal.

In 1721 Pope Innocent XIII declared him blessed, and on March 19, 1729, Benedict XIII canonized him in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. An examination of his relics, carried out by a commission of scholars from 1971 to 1973, confirmed the marks of torture on his bones.

Saint John Nepomucene is the patron of Bohemia and of the Archdiocese of Prague, and the faithful invoke him as protector of confessors and of a good confession. His statues stand by bridges and rivers in Bohemia, in Poland, and in neighboring countries. In Bohemia his feast is kept on May 16, and in Poland he is commemorated on May 21.