kaple svatého Jiří (Litovel) Chapel

The Chapel of Saint George in Litovl, also called the Moravian or Czech Chapel, is a late Gothic building from the year 1484. It is registered as a movable cultural monument.

It originated in the ecclesiastical area around the parish Church of Saint Mark, which was adjacent to the city walls. Besides the church and chapel, it included a cemetery, rectory, school which was demolished in 1864, and a provisional bell tower. Archaeologists in the nineties of the twentieth century discovered that the chapel stands on an already existing cemetery, because graves extend beneath its foundations. They also found remains of an older building nine meters long with walls one hundred thirty centimeters thick. It was apparently an older chapel, perhaps a cemetery chapel of Saint Mark. This is mentioned in a deed of foundation of the Litovl cloth merchant Thomas Walhar from the year 1503.

The chapel first appears in writing in the city records in the year 1497. A year earlier, a literary brotherhood was founded at it and its founding charter has been preserved. It is traditionally said that the chapel was built for the Utraquists or for the Hussite Church. However, this is not documented and the decoration does not suggest it either. Later, Protestant services were held here, documented as recently as 1630. At the end of the sixteenth century, a musical gallery was added, and in the nineteenth century the window tracery was renovated.

After the floods in 1997, the chapel underwent reconstruction. During it, restorers uncovered wall paintings which were restored in the years 2009 to 2011. Thanks to them, the date of origin was clarified, which earlier estimates had placed between the years 1440 and 1513. An inscription on the gallery from 1580 mentions the construction from 1484 and its repair. An inscription on the fresco of Saint John gives the year 1485.

The builder is revealed by the coats of arms in the vault. On the central keystone above the sanctuary is the coat of arms of Charles the Elder of Vlašimi, surrounded by shields with Christ, King David, and other saints. Charles the Elder was in 1440 the royal captain of Litovl, in the years 1459 to 1466 the Moravian chamberlain, and in the Czech-Hungarian wars he sided with Matthias Corvinus. He did not live to see the completion of the chapel; he died around 1480. The line of the Lords of Vlašimi died out in the male line in 1520 with the death of his nephew George, and the estates were acquired by the Lords of Boskovice.

According to art historical analysis, the builder was probably inspired by the Great Refectory of the town hall in Wrocław. It was precisely there that in 1474 Charles's nephew Václav of Boskovice participated in diplomatic negotiations.