What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 8 April 2023.

Gorazdova was built in 1870.

Before 1947, this was the northern part of Podskalská: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/26/prague-2-day-122-podskalska/

Matěj Pavlík was born in Hrubá Vrbka, near Hodonín, in 1879, and attended the Faculty of Theology in Olomouc from 1898 to 1902, after which he was ordained.

During these studies, he took a particular interest in Cyril, Methodius and Eastern Orthodoxy, taking a trip to Kyiv in 1900 to learn more and make connections with the clergy there.

He then performed priestly duties in several locations, including Kroměříž, where he worked at the church of St Cyril and Methodius at the town’s mental institution.

He drafted a reform programme for the Catholic clergy, which was soundly rejected by Rome; he would end up being excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1920.

In 1921, he joined the Serbian Orthodox Church. He was consecrated in Belgrade as Bishop of Moravia and Silesia in the same year, taking the name of Gorazd (the Slavic form of ‘Gilead’), who had succeeded Methodius as Bishop of Moravia in 885.

After a trip to the US in 1922 to spread Orthodoxy among Czech immigrants, he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1924, where fourteen Orthodox places of worship would be built under his supervision between 1928 and 1942.

On 27 May 1942, Czech resistance members carried out an assassination attempt on Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, who would die of his injuries on 4 June.

The Orthodox Church allowed the paratroopers, including Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, to hide in the crypt at the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius on Resslova (see https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/22/prague-2-day-89-ciklova/).

Gorazd only found out about this on 10 June, and urged that the paratroopers be transferred; they were found by the Nazis on the 18th. All those hiding in the crypt were either killed or committed suicide.

Gorazd was arrested on 27 June; on 4 September, he was shot at the Kobylisy shooting range.

The Church would be dissolved in the same month, its property was confiscated, and twelve further representatives of the church in Prague 2 were executed.

Gorazd would be awarded the Czechoslovak War Cross posthumously in 1945, and was canonised in Olomouc in 1987.