The friars' rows
In habits on brick pillows as they died — centuries untouched.
Jerzy Strzelecki — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jerzy Strzelecki — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Morgan Davis from Seattle, USA — CC BY 2.0 · Morgan Davis from Seattle, USA — CC BY 2.0
Franz Trenck, commander of the terrifying Pandour cavalry in Austria's wars — war hero and atrocity defendant at once, ending a Špilberk prisoner where he wrote memoirs that swept Europe in editions and legend — dying in his cell in 1749, willing himself buried with the Capuchins in humility. The Brno circle closes: his prison in the castle above, his rest in the crypt below — the two visits completing his story.
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'As you are, we were — as we are, you will be': the crypt's famous greeting at its entrance is its summary — beneath the modest Capuchin church near the Vegetable Market lie the friars of the eighteenth century as complete natural mummies: the vault's dry air and drafts embalmed the bodies untouched, so the brothers rest in rows in their habits on brick pillows, as they died. With them lie the friary's lay benefactors in glass-topped coffins — most famous the legendary Baron Trenck: adventurer, rogue, and author of Europe's most-read prison memoirs, his body a visitor's destination here for centuries. The Capuchin philosophy displays without adornment: death as everyone's equality, its daily remembrance a virtue — the place a true lesson in friar humility, not a thrill show: a half hour of silence you leave strangely calmer.
In habits on brick pillows as they died — centuries untouched.
Europe's most famous adventurer at rest under glass — his story its own book.
Kapucínské náměstí 5, 602 00 Brno