Epitaph for Johanna Eva von Martinitz

Munich, St. Peter, epitaph for Johanna Eva, daughter of Jaroslav Borsita von Martinic, red marble 104 × 55 cm, 17th century

The epitaph for Johanna Eva von Martinitz is in the oldest Munich parish church St. Peter on the wall behind the left choir pillar. It is not visible from the main nave.

Johanna Eva von Martinitz (* 1616 in Bohemia; † January 9, 1619 in Munich) was a member of the aristocratic Martinic family .

description

The family coat of arms and grave inscription, framed by a circumferential tape, are carved in red marble stone.

Inscriptions

In the frame text, an epigram in two elegiac distiches , the little baroness herself speaks in the first person.

EXVLIS HEIC EXVL PATRI [S] EVA IOANNA QVIESCO
EXILII PIETAS CAVSSA FIDE ‹S› QVE FVIT
TERRA POLVSQVE MIHI PATRIA EST LICET EXVL VTRAMQVE
NVNC TENEO TERRA (M) CORPO ‹R› E MENTE

Johanna, Eva Johanna, I rest here Refugee like my father.
The reason for our exile was pious belief.
My home is now earth and sky. Although I have become homeless,
I now have a double one, the earth with the body, the sky with the soul.

The main part of the inscription, written in Latin prose, refers equally to the deceased child and the father. It can be read that the girl died at the tender age of only two years, two months, two weeks and two days. January 9, 1619 is recorded as the date of her death, so her date of birth should have been October 24, 1616.

Johanna Eva von Martinitz came from the Bohemian aristocratic Martinic family . Her parents were the royal governor of Emperor Ferdinand II Jaroslav Borsita von Martinic and his first wife Maria Eusebia von Sternberg ( Marie Eusebie ze Šternberka ; * 1584; † April 3, 1634).

On May 23, 1618, her father, together with his fellow governor Wilhelm Slavata and the secretary of the royal chancellery Philipp Fabricius, was thrown into the moat by representatives of the Protestant insurgents from a window in Prague Castle and then fled with his family to Munich, where he provided protection Bavarian Duke Maximilian I , the founder of the Catholic League , was looking for. A few months after their arrival in Munich, the Johanna family met Eva's death.

coat of arms

The coat of arms, which occupies the upper half of the grave slab in an oval surrounded by laurel, indicates that the girl belongs to the von Martinic / Martinitz family. It is a shield carried by two griffins with two stems bent towards each other that grow from a rhizome and end in two heart-shaped sea leaves. The crest in the coat of arms is also covered with sea leaves.

meaning

The epitaph is reminiscent of the short life of the little daughter, comforts with the Christian thought in the words of the child, that his absurd fate in life in death profit, but above all it is an expression of painful dismay of flight and exile in the beginning of the Thirty Years' War , a Document in stone from contemporary witnesses of European history in the 17th century.

literature

RM Kloos: The inscriptions of the city and the district of Munich. Stuttgart 1958
W. Stroh: Latin from Old Peter. DASIU 1/83, pp. 10-13, Bamberg 1983
R. Kindelbacher: St. Peter's History - Tradition - Zeitgeist. From the parish archive of St. Peter in Munich, issue 9, Munich 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ W. Stroh: Latin from the old Peter. DASIU 1/83, p. 12
↑ R. Kindelbacher: St. Peter History - Tradition - Zeitgeist. From the parish archive of St. Peter in Munich, issue 9, p. 20 f.
↑ Abbreviations dissolved in round brackets, additions in square brackets at defective places, inadvertently omitted items put in angle brackets.
^ Genealogy Borsita von Martinic; Johanna Eva is not mentioned in this genealogy web link.
↑ A similar coat of arms can also be found in Passau, another point of contact for the von Martinitz family seeking asylum. Compared to the old coat of arms of Martinitz in St. Peter in Munich, the coat of arms in Passau has an additional octagonal star in the middle, an improvement in the coat of arms from 1622, which was made with the elevation of Jaroslav von Martinitz to the count status in 1621 by Emperor Ferdinand II. related. The coat of arms was affixed in Passau to one of the canon courts (today the St. Stefan seminary) when one of Johanna Eva's brothers, Count Ferdinand Leopold von Martinitz (1611–1691), was working there as canon.

[1] W. Stroh: Latin from the old Peter. DASIU 1/83, p. 12

[2] R. Kindelbacher: St. Peter History - Tradition - Zeitgeist. From the parish archive of St. Peter in Munich, issue 9, p. 20 f.

[3] Abbreviations dissolved in round brackets, additions in square brackets at defective places, inadvertently omitted items put in angle brackets.

[4] Genealogy Borsita von Martinic; Johanna Eva is not mentioned in this genealogy web link.

[5] A similar coat of arms can also be found in Passau, another point of contact for the von Martinitz family seeking asylum. Compared to the old coat of arms of Martinitz in St. Peter in Munich, the coat of arms in Passau has an additional octagonal star in the middle, an improvement in the coat of arms from 1622, which was made with the elevation of Jaroslav von Martinitz to the count status in 1621 by Emperor Ferdinand II. related. The coat of arms was affixed in Passau to one of the canon courts (today the St. Stefan seminary) when one of Johanna Eva's brothers, Count Ferdinand Leopold von Martinitz (1611–1691), was working there as canon.