This morning Jim and I snuck down to St. Martin/a's while waiting for our Uber driver to arrive to take us to the train station. Note: Martina IS the Slovak version of Martin. Mystery solved.
The church is named for St. Martin of Tours who did things and stuff in the mid to late 300s.
He was born in what is now Hungary, spent much of his childhood in Italy, and spent his adult life in France. He is considered a spiritual bridge across Europe. He is best known for the account of using his military sword to cut his cloak in two so that half could be given to a beggar, clad only in rags, in the winter. I think that's what's being depicted in this statue of St. Martin.
So a little more about the cloak and some word history for you - the cloak half that Martin kept became a reliquary (at least it's not his hand or something like so many of the reliquaries). During the Middle Ages the cloak reliquary was carried into battle by the king for holy protection and was used as holy relic upon which oaths were sworn. In the late 700's/early 800's the carrying of the cloak duty was turned over to a priest. This priest was known as the cappellanu; ultimately all priests in the military were referred to as cappellani - in Latin anyway. The French use of this word is chapelains which gives us the English word chaplain. It means "little cloak." Now you know,
The church was originally part of Bratislava Castle, but in 1221 it was moved to its currently location. The current church is not the 1221 structure though, it was deemed too small for the needs of the growing city and starting in 1311 a new church was constructed. Construction continued into the 1500s, with stops due to lack of funds and wars and the other usual medieval reasons.
During the years 1563-1830 St. Martin's was used for the coronations of 11 kings and 8 queens.
Here is the beautiful rose window peeking through the organ pipes.
So this is the Chapel of St. John the Merciful, complete with the body of St. John - it's above the two big angels. St. John the Merciful was active during the early 600s in Cyprus and Alexandria (Egypt). So he's been dead for a long time. Like....1400 years. Yet here's his mummified remains. It's weird. Also, I'm not sure why he's here in Slovakia and not in Egypt or Cyprus.
And a last look down the main aisle before we left.
Because I forgot to get a photo of it the first time,
this is the clock museum or the "House of the Good Shepard."
Our Uber driver had some trouble finding us, but we finally found him and we got to the train station with no problems. We ended up having an awkwardly long time to kill.
There weren't really any ground level places to sit and wait.
And it was cold outside. So we sat on our luggage and hung out inside.
Bye Bratislava!
This concludes our adventures in Bratislava, but not for today.
