JAN NEPOMUK NEUMANN V ZRCADLE ČESKÉ BIOGRAFICKÉ PRODUKCE. ŘÍMSKOKATOLICKÁ RELIGIOZITA 19. STOLETÍ A VÝVOJ JEJÍ REFLEXE
JAN NEPOMUK NEUMANN IN THE MIRROR OF CZECH HAGIOGRAPHY: ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGIOSITY OF THE 19TH CENTURY AND SOME DEVELOPMENTS OF ITS REFLECTION

Summary/Abstract: The beatification process of John Nepomuk Neumann started already in the late 19the century. Today however his popularity in the Czech lands is still very low. The article offers an analysis of hagiographic and other biographic texts of Czech provenience. Firstly, of the texts about history of Czech settlement in the USA. Secondly, of the Czech hagiography, both the official and the published in samizdat or in exile only. Particular attention is paid to the attempt of Petr Piťha to create an “intellectual hagiography”. The apparent lack of individual and original traces in all the portraits of J. N. Neumann is a consequence of the hidden agenda of the Church policy in the late 19th century. Neumann was intended to be beatified as a model representative of the “Restoration”, anti-modern Catholicism of the 19th century, in the implicit polemics against the movement of “Americanism”, the American form of Catholic Modernism. However, Neumann appears to be popular in a different context: As a local saint patron in the region of his origins, while his double, Czech and German identity is emphasized.

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