Bethlehem Chapel

[1] The chapel is named for the Innocents massacred in Bethlehem by Herod the Great in an attempt to kill the newborn Jesus Christ.

The Bethlehem Chapel was founded in Prague in 1391 by Wenceslas Kříž (known as 'the Merchant'), and John of Milheim, and taught solely in the Czech vernacular, thus breaking with German domination of the Medieval Bohemian church.

After Hus's excommunication in 1412, the Pope ordered the Bethlehem chapel to be pulled down, although this action was rejected by the Czech majority on the Old Town council.

[5] Asteroid 90892 Betlémská kaple, discovered by Czech astronomer Miloš Tichý at the Kleť Observatory in 1997, was named after the chapel.

[1] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 3 February 2015 (M.P.C.