GOŁĄB - FIGURA ŚW. JANA NEPOMUCENA

The figure of St. John of Nepomuk in front of today's Roman Catholic parish church in Gołębia (Lubelskie Voivodeship) is dated to the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth century. The figure shows St. John of Nepomuk - a Czech clergyman living in the fourteenth century, who was the confessor of Sophia of Bavaria and a minister in the cathedral in Prague. In connection with the priest's desire to keep his confession secret, he was imprisoned and tortured by Emperor Wenceslaus IV - the husband of Sophia of Bavaria. Finally, the future saint was murdered and his body was thrown into the Vltava River. The canonization of John of Nepomuk took place in 1729, and in the folk tradition of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and southern Poland, he became a saint of confessors, but also of bridges and flood victims. It is worth adding that the presented figure is one of the most famous so-called "Nepomuk" in eastern Poland, and the legend has it that it came to its present place during the flood of the Napoleonic wars.