Famine and Plague in 1281

The chapel of Saint Lazarus is first mentioned in 1281. At that time, under the rule of Otto of Brandenburg, there was an immense dearth in Bohemia. Country people poured into Prague right into the houses and took whatever they found, even food from the fire. When the gates were closed against them, the wretched wandered about the walls and ate everything, even the carcasses of dogs and horses and other beasts; nor did they shrink from stealing hanged men by night and eating their bodies, only to fill their stomachs. Out of the famine came plague, and in Prague whole households died out until there was no one to bury the dead. The town council therefore hired many workmen and had great pits dug — one by Saint Peter's, two by Saint John's on the Battlefield, two below Vyšehrad, one by Saint John's in the Park and two here by Saint Lazarus. Into each of them about a thousand dead were thrown, and some twenty thousand people are said to have died in Prague at that time. Only the plentiful harvest of 1282 put an end to that dreadful affliction. There was then a hospital for lepers by the chapel, with a graveyard and a large yard; when the hospital ceased to exist during the Hussite wars, the little church of Saint Lazarus passed to the butchers of the New Town, who looked after it carefully.