What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 10 September 2023.

The Ordo Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum / Order of Friars Minor Capuchin was founded in 1525, when a friar called Matteo Serafini decided that friars should go back to behaving in a way which their founder, St Francis of Assisi, would’ve approved of.

Persecuted for this, they were granted refuge by the Camaldolese Hermits of Mount Corona, who wore a hood that the new order would also adopt.

The ‘hood’ can also be called a chaperon, or, in Italian, a cappuccio. The friars also wore (and still do wear) brown habits.

And that’s why the cappuccino you might be drinking as you read this is called what it’s called.

Around the year 1600, Saint Lawrence of Brindisi founded a monastery here. Gradually built up over the next 150 years, it got badly damaged in 1757 by Prussian artillery.

Its most famous part is the Kostel Panny Marie Andělské / Church of Our Lady of Angels.

The monastery wasn’t utilised for the best of purposes in the 20th century – the Nazis used it as a prison, and, from the 1950s, it was the site of communist counterintelligence operations.

However, after the Velvet Revolution, it returned to its original purpose. It also administers the nearby Loreta.

Capuchins are currently archbishops of Boston (Seán Patrick O’Malley) and Reykjávik (Dávid Bartimej Tencer). With the latter being from that well-known Icelandic stronghold, Slovakia.

Meanwhile, if that wasn’t enough of an unexpected turn for you, here’s Father Cesare Bonizzi giving it his all (about fifty seconds in):

He stopped performing in 2009 and says it’s all the devil’s fault.