#kcd codex

MYSTERIA ECCLESIAE — Relics

Relics are material remains of the lives of saints, blessed persons, or Christ himself. They were attributed with protective and even miraculous powers and were therefore objects of deep reverence. They were often placed in richly decorated boxes - reliquaries - or even in entire altars. This served both to protect them and to make them accessible for display, as the places where relics were kept were often the destination of pilgrimages. Relics are primarily skeletal or other bodily remains, and secondarily objects significantly associated with the work or life of a saint. Because they were highly valued, there was also the criticized practice of fraud and the sale of fake relics. During the Reformation, opposition to the veneration of relics arose, and Protestant churches do not practice their veneration. Outside the Catholic and Orthodox churches, cults of relics are also present in other world religions.

TRIVIA

— Besides serving as objects of worship, relics played a great role in the medieval trend of pilgrimages. Churches and monasteries that possessed renowned relics could attract large numbers of visitors, whose offerings helped support not only the establishment itself but also the economy of nearby towns. Famous destinations such as Santiago de Compostela drew pilgrims from across Europe, while smaller churches promoted local saints in the hope of attracting visitors closer to home.

The growing demand for relics also helped to spawn a very profitable market. By the Late Middle Ages, relic collecting had spread from the church to royalty, and then to the nobility and merchant classes. On occasion guards had to watch over mortally ill holy men and women to prevent the unauthorized dismemberment of their corpses as soon as they died. The trade was also plagued by fraud, with many churches claiming to possess the same sacred objects.

Matthew Brown likens a ninth-century Italian deacon named Deusdona, with access to the Roman catacombs, as crossing the Alps to visit monastic fairs of northern Europe much like a contemporary art dealer. Pieces of the True Cross were one of the most highly sought-after of such relics; many churches claimed to possess a piece of it, so many that John Calvin famously remarked that there were enough pieces of the True Cross to build a ship from. In 1543, he said that the saints have two or three or more bodies with arms and legs, and even a few extra limbs and heads, according to the state of the relics market.

MYSTERIA ECCLESIAE — The Decameron

The Decameron is a collection of one hundred novels written by Italian Renaissance writer Giovanni Boccaccio between 1348 and 1353. The individual stories are written in the form of narratives by ten people, three men and seven women, who fled Florence to the countryside to escape the plague and pass the time by telling stories for ten days. The individual stories are often humorous, satirical, or romantic to the point of being erotic. The work is critical of medieval asceticism and mocks the church. It places greater emphasis on the individual. Despite its popularity, the book was later banned by the church for its anti-church stance and was one of the first books to be included in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of banned literature. In some cases, it was burned along with other books. It is one of the most important works of the Italian Renaissance, which influenced and inspired a number of other authors, including Geoffrey Chaucer with his book The Canterbury Tales.

TRIVIA

— Giovanni Boccaccio did not only chose the Black Death as a literary element for his book, he lived through the plague himself and drew his descriptions directly from what he saw in 1348 Florence. Because of these detailed descriptions, the Decameron serves as a valuable source for historians and natural scientists alike. Especially those of the symptoms and the progression of the disease – swellings in the groin and armpits, the dark patches of a sepsis on the skin, killing the infected within three days, the spread of the bacteria through clothes tossed onto the streets – have been used both to determine the course of Boccaccio's and of future pandemics. Just as his psychological insights into the behaviour of people within a plague: from turning to God to downplaying its severity to a complete denial, asking for the election of new officials, blaming marginalised groups, the nobility self-isolating, while the care of the sick rests mainly in the hands of the poor. Being born into a merchant family himself, in a time where the nobility was gradually replaced by a wealthy bourgeoisie, Boccaccio also weaved much of that power struggle and his criticism into the work. The stories told by the noble protagonists, whose flight from the city he portrays as a privilege of the rich and as cowardice, tell stories of people of all social strata, favouring the new mercantile values (practicality and wit) over old noble virtues. To address a broader middle class audience, Boccaccio also wrote in the Italian vernacular (Tuscan) instead of Latin, becoming the first (known) author to write an Italian text in prose, a genre previously reserved for Latin and Greek alone. Even when banned, the 100 novellas have therefore been widely received, and one of them, the ring parable, even set the foundation of Gotthold Lessing's play “Nathan the Wise” in 1779.

MYSTERIA ECCLESIAE — The order of Cistercians

The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098 by Saint Robert of Molesme. Robert was originally a member and even abbot of the Benedictine Order, but due to dissatisfaction with conditions in the order, he left with 21 other monks and together they founded a new monastery called Cîteaux in an abandoned valley in a place called Cistercium. In the new monastery, the monks wanted to return to a more ascetic life according to St. Benedict's motto "Ora et labora!" - Pray and work!, which the Benedictines had gradually abandoned. In 1100, Robert had to return to the monastery in Molesme, and Alberich, one of the first monks who accompanied Robert, became the new abbot. During his tenure, the monks from that monastery became independent and adopted a name derived from the place where the monastery was founded - Cistercians. Abbot Alberich wrote the rules of the order. The order was not allowed to accept church fees. In addition to the lay brothers, the monks themselves also had to work. A new black and white habit was also introduced. The third abbot, Stephen Harding of England, also contributed to the establishment of the order. Cistercian monasteries were often founded in remote areas so that the monks would not come into contact with other people. At the same time, there was uncultivated land around the new monasteries, which the monks themselves gradually cultivated. In this way, they colonized the previously uninhabited areas of Western and Central Europe. Cistercian monasteries quickly grew rich thanks to numerous donations from the nobility and lay people. As a result, the Cistercians began to stray from their original ideals of poverty and simplicity. In the 14th century, their influence declined as mendicant orders took over.

TRIVIA

— Besides their role in founding monasteries across Europe, the Cistercians also developed a distinct identity that set them apart from other monastic orders — primarily Benedictines. Their early constitution, the Carta Caritatis (Charter of Charity) emphasized simplicity, manual labour, and prayer. The monks abandoned the traditional black Benedictine habit in favour of white or grey robes, a symbol of their reformist ideals.

One of the most important figures in the order's history was Bernard of Clairvaux, who entered the monastery of Cîteaux in 1113 together with 35 relatives and friends. His influence helped transform the Cistercians into one of the most successful religious movements of the Middle Ages. Bernard also strongly opposed elaborate decoration in churches and manuscripts, arguing that fantastical beasts, carvings and paintings distracted monks from prayer. Under his influence, decoration was gradually restricted and eventually banned altogether within the order for a period of time.

Despite their reputation for simplicity, the Cistercians were often innovators in industry. In Burgundy they helped develop new methods of viticulture and created the earliest recorded system of dividing vineyards according to the qualities of individual plots. They also invented their own numeral system in the early 13th century, capable of representing any number from 1 to 9,999 with a single symbol.

The order spread rapidly across Europe. One of its most remarkable foundations was Rein Abbey in Styria, established in 1129. It remains the oldest surviving Cistercian monastery in the world.

LEGACY OF THE FORGE — Guild life

Starting in the 11th century, religious brotherhoods began to form around churches. These groups celebrated feast days together, and their members often practiced the same trade. Over time, the need for mutual protection gave rise to urban guilds - organizations that defended craftsmen's interests but also bound them with strict rules and obligations. Guilds controlled the prices of raw materials and finished goods within the city, effectively shielding themselves from rural competition. They set limits on how many apprentices and journeymen a master could have, defined the requirements for becoming a master, and restricted the number of workshops allowed in town. Members could rely on the guild for financial support in times of injury or illness, and for aid to widows and orphans. Life under the guild system was tightly regulated. Once an apprentice completed his training, he became a journeyman, free to open his own workshop - in theory. In practice, the number of trades in a city was capped, and unless a workshop was inherited, an aspiring master often had to marry into the right family or wed the widow of a deceased colleague. Others took their chances outside the city walls, moving to the countryside or entering the service of the nobility. Many remained journeymen for life, forming their own circles and traditions within the guild. Medieval town life was inseparable from social status. Even the smallest changes required official approval - for a fee paid to the town treasury or the guild. Building a house, adding extra floors, opening a new workshop, adopting new tools or methods, or taking on another apprentice all needed authorization. Prestige, good reputation, and, above all, personal connections often determined the outcome. In such a tightly bound system, change came slowly, and by the 19th century the rigidity of the guilds led to their decline and eventual abolition.

TRIVIA

— Privileges such as the mile law, which guaranteed a one mile radius around a guild's town to be free of any foreign trade, made guilds quickly rise in financial and political power, but they also came at a price. General guild fees had to be paid, journeymen had to acquire town rights for their mastership, some guilds had to pay rents for their facilities, such as the Prague New Town butchers who owed 56 groschen to the local abbey for each of their shops. Guilds were also bound to public service. They had to patrol their town, take care of its defence during an attack, and were often obliged to own buckets, hooks and later pumps to provide firefighting service. Next to external obligations, a guild's own rules would control its members' everyday life. Apprentices, journeymen and masters would often live, eat and work together under the same roof, some guilds, like the London Stellyard Merchants Guild, chartered in 1232, even asked their members to stay unmarried. High working standards and honesty were promoted, the journeymen of the Old Town cobblers of Prague punished every member who “lied, ate, drank or gambled with indecent persons” with a fine. For larger disputes guilds could call in their own courts – as when potters in the Český Krumlov region complained that too many masters in their area led to such an overproduction that they needed to sell at remote markets, resulting in their ware getting broken during transport. As a last result, journeymen would also organise strikes, though often with little to no success, achieving – instead of the better working conditions they demanded – only fines, public apologies to their masters, as well as lower wages and food ratios.

LEGACY OF THE FORGE — Astronomical clock

In the High Middle Ages, commoners measured time by listening to the regular tolling of church bells and observing the sun's position in the sky. Though these methods were sufficient for maintaining the daily rhythm of human society, they became unsatisfactory for burghers and nobles eager for new technologies and greater precision. Significant advances in clockmaking can be traced to the late 13th and early 14th centuries in larger European cities such as Westminster, Nuremberg, Paris, Florence and Bruges. This period saw the emergence of the first tabletop clocks and more complex timekeeping mechanisms, which swiftly captivated courtly circles. Particular attention was soon drawn to the so-called orloj (astronomical clock) (from Latin horologium). By means of rotating celestial spheres, they showed not only the time but also the motion of the Sun, Moon and stars. Various types of astronomical clocks existed, distinguished by different arrangements of mechanical components. Among the best-known was the Italian type, consisting of a system of three concentric wheels with a small sphere in the centre representing Earth. This invention was constructed in 1364 by Master Giovanni de Dondi for the Palazzo del Capitano in Padua and was the main inspiration for KCD2. Beyond their practical function in city life, clocks were admired for their craftsmanship, ornamentation, sound and impressive size. They were usually installed on key municipal buildings, often town halls, to be visible to citizens, although few could actually read them. Although there is no astronomical clock in Kuttenberg today, records in the oldest surviving municipal ledger from 1375 point to one, located on the tower of the old town hall and mentioned in relation to repairs.

TRIVIA

— Although the astronomical clock in Kuttenberg has not survived, one of the oldest astronomical clocks in the world can still be found in Prague, where it was first recorded in 1410. It has been preserved for over 600 years, subject of many reconstructions and reparations; because according to a local legend, if the clock is neglected and remains non-operational, misfortune will befall Prague. Another legend features a man, Jan Růže, mistakenly believed to have constructed the Orloj in 1490. It is recounted that he was blinded on the order of Prague Councillors so that he could not repeat his work; in turn, he disabled the clock and no one was able to repair it for the next hundred years. However, the clock stopped working many times in the centuries after 1552, and was repaired many times. Along with repairs and reconstructions, the Orloj features ornaments added in later centuries, such as the four wooden figures flanking the clock on each side. They represent traits viewed negatively in medieval society: vanity, shown by a man admiring himself in a mirror; greed, represented by a miser holding a bag of gold; lust and worldly pleasures, depicted as a Turkish figure; and Death, portrayed as a skeleton. On the hour, the skeleton rings the bell and immediately all other figures shake their heads side to side, signifying their unreadiness "to go". As for Giovanni de Dondi, besides his technological marvels of engineering, there is another wonder (mistakenly) attributed to him. Later sources frequently credited Giovanni Dondi dell’Orologio with bringing the Padovana chicken breed from Poland to Italy. However, the ennobled "Marquis Dondi" was in fact Francesco Dondi from the 17th century, and Giovanni Dondi has no documented link to Poland.

LOCATIONS — 263*/262 — Zimburg

Settlement in the area dates back to the late Stone Age (about 3000 BC). Today, however, only traces of an early medieval fortified settlement remain in the form of remnants of moats and visible ramparts. Some historians (as well as folk legends) claim that Zimburg (Cimburk) Castle, owned by the Lords of Zimburg, once stood here and was even perhaps their ancestral home. Later, the descendants of the family built two more castles with the same name: Cimburk in Trnávka and Nový Cimburk in Koryčany. Unfortunately nothing remains from the original castle. Hence why some historians claim that such a castle never stood here and the settlement rather got its name from the nearby mine that belonged to the Zimburg family. Nevertheless, we decided to depict it in the game.

TRIVIA

— The first settlement of Cimburk reaches back to Eneolithic times, perhaps as far as 3600 BC. A ditch with a gap for a gate shows that the fort was equipped with a 30 metres long rampart, as well as pits, storage rooms and kilns outside the fortification. In the 7th and 6th centuries BC, a new ditch with a moat and a palisade was built, and the same ditch was still used to protect a Slavic hillfort in the 9th and 10th centuries AD. Another remnant from this Slavic time is an ice cellar used to store food and keep it cool for summer. It wasn't until the construction of a shooting range for the local infantry regiment in the 19th century that the settlement was discovered – unfortunately only after the construction caused irreparable damage to the site. For how long the fort has carried the name Cimburk is hard to say, but it certainly lent the name to a mill down by the Vrchlice River, the Cimburk Mill, in old sources also referred to as "mlýn pod hradištěm", the mill under the hillfort. Records about the mill go back until 1682, although it might have existed since the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance. A little bit upstream, about halfway between Malešov and Kutná Hora, lies Velký rybník, the Great Pond (originally known as Lower King's Pond), used for the nearby mines since the Middle Ages and to power the mills in the Vrchlice valley. It was thus the responsibility of the Kutná Hora Millers' Society to restore the pond and fund a dam, and in the 1930s, to pay for said dam's repair. At this time, the Cimburk Mill was owned privately by a woman called Terezie, or Réza, Petránková, and it hadn't been used for grinding in a long time. Still, Réza Petránková was meant to pay her share. She sold her field, the last means for her livelihood, to afford it. Shortly after, the mill burned down. Réza Petránková died in a burgher poorhouse in Kutná Hora. Today the mill presents as a romantic ruin, overgrown by trees and ivy.

LOCATIONS — 261/262 — Villages of the Trosky region

Troskowitz The first mention is found in 1388 in connection with the nearby castle, but the village probably existed long before that. The village got its name from the rock on which the castle was later built, as the rock resembled the ruins of a castle from a distance. Tachov A small village 1.5 km north of Troskowitz, first mentioned in sources in 1388. A nameless stream flows through it, emptying into the Krčák pond, forming cascades along the way and a waterfall about 10 metres high. Today, the village is part of a protected area and the ‘Golden Trail of the Bohemian Paradise’ passes through it. Zhelejov There are only a few mentions of Zhelejov. Notably, in 1558, the three sons of Lord Semine sold the fortress and the village to the ‘Skalské panství’. The fortress was abandoned during the wars with the Swedes.

TRIVIA

— While archaeological finds around Trosky prove that settlements in this region date back at least to the Bronze Age, the medieval villages in the region are not mentioned before the construction of the castle, when they started to be linked to its noble politics. Yet, there is a persistent belief that written proof of Trosky's significance reaches back until 1203. In a time when King Ottokar I has left the country to engage in a war, the Saxons use this absence for an attack. They march through the Bohemian lands until they reache Trosky, leaving destruction in their wake, but here they are finally stopped by the noble hero Beneš Hermanov and his mob of peasants, who are able to defeat the Germans. The legend goes back to a poem in the Rukopis královédvorský, the Králové manuscripts, found within a sheaf of old arrows in a church tower in the town Dvůr Králové nad Labem by philologist, poet and librarian Václav Hanka in 1817. After examining them more closely, he determines that the manuscripts about this glorious Czech victory over the German invaders must have been written in the 13th century. Within the same year, Hanka even presents another manuscript to the public that has been given to him in an anonymous parcel, the Rukopis zelenohorský, with texts dating back to the 8th to 10th centuries.

This discovery comes just at the right time. Since 1620 and the Thirty Years' War Czech the protestant faith and the Czech language had been driven out of the country by a new ruling German aristocracy, and only since the late 18th century had a Czech National Revival slowly been taking shape. The manuscripts quickly gain a huge popularity, earning a similar status as Beowulf for the English or the Song of the Nibelungs for the Germans, drawing its circles also internationally to Goethe or the Brothers Grimm, and Bohemian histories are written based on the manuscripts. In 1858, a Czech newspaper publishes an anonymous commentary doubting the authenticity of the manuscripts. Hanka is outraged and sues the publisher. The scandal earns him so much new fame that his funeral in 1861 becomes a national event. Only in the 1880s, and with more probability in the 1990s, could thorough investigations confirm the (highly likely) forgery. Yet, many nationalists still cling to their validity, and Czech localities – such as the village of Troskovice – base their foundation myths on these texts. As they have been since their discovery, the manuscripts are still kept in the National Museum of Prague – now, however, in the section for manuscripts from the 19th century.