Friar Cyprian was born on 28th July 1724 as Franz Ignatz Jäschke in the town of Polkowice, Lower Silesia, which in the 18th century was part of Prussia. He studied in Wroclaw, Częstochowa and Brno and acquired knowledge in several fields of study. He was particularly focused on botany, floristics, medicine and pharmacy, but also on alchemy, mechanics, physics, aviation and cosmology. He spoke German, Polish, Slovak, Latin and Greek.
The name Cyprian was given to him when he was at the Camaldul monastery on Zobor Hill in Nitra. He came to the Red Monastery in 1756 and lived there until his death (probably) in April 1775. He worked as a barber, bath attendant, steward and cook. He was able to manufacture glass tablets, mirrors and fireworks. His duties also included work as a healer and surgeon. He could bleed patients, he bred and used leeches and was able to put fractures back in place. He not only took care of the brothers in the monastery but also people from the surrounding area.
Cyprian’s name is associated with medicinal herbs from the Pieniny Mountains and the Belianske Tatras. He collected, dried, crushed and processed them to make infusions, decoctions, tinctures and salves that he used to treat people. His diagnoses were mainly based on body temperature and urine. He sought to find the cause of an illness in the individual organs of the body, the liver, spleen, stomach and skin. He classified and recorded his knowledge and experience with herbs in a unique herbarium, the oldest preserved document of its kind in Slovakia.
The herbarium has 97 pages and includes 284 plants. Each is identified with its Latin, Greek and German name. Some entries also include the name of the herb in the local Goral dialect or its place of collection. The herbarium specifies what the herbs were used for, their healing effects and is indexed in Latin. It includes precious notes, made in German Schwabacher, of Cyprian՚s experience and remarks from his practice as the administrator of the monastic pharmacy and hospital. The herbarium is part of the collection of the Natural History Museum of the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava.
Cyprian is also inseparably linked with the legend that he took flight. It is said that he made his desire for flight come true with a self-made machine and took off from the Peak “Tri koruny” (Three crowns) on moonlit nights. His reflection, in the lake water of the “Morské oko” lake (See eyes), on the Polish side of the Tatras, was spotted by an angel, who struck him with lightning and to punish him, he turned him to stone, the stone is still called Monk to this day. Nonetheless, Cyprian, his work and legacy still live on.
Milan Gacík
