Medieval Synagogue of Brno

The Jewish community

The first records of Jews in Brno date from the reign of King Přemysl Otakar II. The Jewish Virtual Library cites a charter of 1254 protecting Jewish lives and property, renewed in 1268 and taken into the town statutes in 1276, and a further charter of 1345 that encouraged Jewish settlement. The Jews were chamber serfs of the ruler under his protection, and the regulations governing them formed part of the town law. Around 1345 the community numbered about a thousand people, and refugees from the plague pogroms of 1348 were admitted under a promise of protection from the town council, which made it necessary to enlarge the Jewish quarter. A school is recorded by 1378. Members traded in wool and leather, lent money and practised some crafts, and in the second half of the fourteenth century their payments covered a considerable part of the town budget. The community was headed by a parnas who represented it before the town and the provincial authorities.

Architecture and design

No description, plan or picture of the medieval Brno synagogue has been found, and its date of construction, its builder, its size and its form are unknown. What can be said rests on its later history and on archaeology. Since the building was taken over as a church after 1454, it must have been a substantial free-standing masonry structure suitable for use as a chapel. It stood on the plot now occupied by the church of St Mary Magdalene, at the corner of Masarykova and Františkánská streets, inside the Jewish quarter near the Jewish Gate. According to the Czech Wikipedia article on the church, remains of the synagogue's north wall, on the side of today's Františkánská street, were uncovered during an archaeological survey. No report of that excavation was read, so the wall's date, thickness and course, and whether it shows the synagogue's full length, are unknown. The present single-nave church dates from 1651-1654 and was rebuilt after 1852, and nothing of the synagogue is visible above ground.

Life inside the synagogue

No record of services, furnishings or individual events inside the medieval Brno synagogue was found in the sources consulted. The community that worshipped there was a large and largely self-governing one: it maintained a house of study and a school, recorded by 1378, its own court and a hospital, and buried its dead in a cemetery in front of the Jewish Gate, where tombstones dated from 1373 onward have since been found. The best-known scholar connected with the congregation is Rabbi Israel ben Hayim Bruna, who was born in Brno and held his first rabbinical post there in the first half of the fifteenth century before moving to Regensburg. His presence suggests that the synagogue and house of study served as a place of rabbinic learning in the decades before the expulsion, but no source read describes his teaching in Brno in any detail.

Destruction

The synagogue was not destroyed at the expulsion of 1454 according to the fullest account read. The Czech Wikipedia article on the church of St Mary Magdalene says that the building then began to serve as a small church dedicated to that saint, and a 2025 student newspaper of a Brno grammar school likewise says the synagogue became the church. Its end came two centuries later. During the Thirty Years' War the town pulled down the Franciscan friary and church of St Bernardino outside the walls in 1643, to prepare its defences against the Swedish siege, and gave the Franciscans the little church of St Mary Magdalene and four houses in exchange. The Franciscans rebuilt the old church from its foundations: the foundation stone was laid on 14 February 1651 and the work, probably directed by the builder Ondřej Erna, was finished three years later. The building that had been the synagogue therefore disappeared in or shortly after 1651, apart from foundations. Jüdische Gemeinden gives a shorter version, saying that the synagogue was pulled down after the expulsion and that the church was built on the same spot later, without a date.

The community’s fate

On 27 July 1454 King Ladislaus the Posthumous ordered the Jews to leave Brno by St Martin's Day, 11 November 1454. Sources link the decree to the preaching of the Franciscan John of Capistrano, who had stirred hostility against the Jews in Brno, to the king's clerical advisers and to pressure from the burghers. The Jews of Brno and of other royal towns in Moravia had to leave their property behind, and the king gave their houses to the townspeople. Rabbi Israel Bruna is recorded as settling in Regensburg in 1454. The cemetery outside the Jewish Gate was destroyed after the expulsion; it was later covered by Baroque fortifications and a railway embankment, and only a few tombstones were recovered during twentieth-century building work. For centuries Jews were not allowed to settle in Brno, and a new community could form only after 1848. Where most of the expelled families went is unknown.

The site today

The Baroque church of St Mary Magdalene, Masarykova 31, at the corner of Masarykova and Františkánská streets in the centre of Brno, stands on the site of the synagogue. Built for the Franciscans in 1651-1654 and consecrated in 1673, it received its present appearance after a fire in 1852 and is a protected cultural monument. Its friary was dissolved in 1787. After serious structural damage caused by a leaking water main, the church was closed in June 2019, and a full restoration was announced for 2022 to 2024. Remains of the synagogue's north wall have been found by archaeologists along Františkánská street, but nothing of the medieval building is visible.

Notable names