On September 3, the City Council of Kromeriz approved the construction of a monument to the 17th-century bishop and philanthropist Charles II of Liechtenstein-Castelkorn, who contributed to the restoration of the city after the Thirty Years’ War. Local media reported on this.
It should be noted that the monument will be erected in 2025 on Parliament Square, opposite the Bishop’s Castle. At the same time, the authors of the petition tried to prevent the construction, recalling that Archbishop Charles’s activities were related to the forced re-Catholicization of Moravia, which meant the persecution of Czech Protestants and their forced conversion to Catholicism.
The name of the archbishop is also associated with the witch trials of the 17th century, when around two hundred people were burned to death in northern Moravia. Also in 1680, Bishop Charles accepted the trial of a Catholic priest. Christoph Alois Lautnerwho tried to combat such practices, and was later himself accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
