Alphonse Mucha's Slavic Epic – Painting XIII: George of Poděbrady, King of Both Peoples.

Image Thirteen. Seeing this image evokes the feeling that the very ground beneath your feet is trembling. Not because it is collapsing, but because it is being born. This moment, in which Czech history straightened itself and, for the first time, deeply inhaled the previously meager freedoms, and that without the consent of Rome, is something that inevitably shakes the elevated sense of every present and even long-absent person. I know the years, the names, and all those dates – but here, in this image, they cease to be mere history and become a broad concept of the living conscience of a nation. I see King George of Poděbrady, strong, determined, firm, calm, unwavering, and victorious.

Not as a ruler with a crown, but as a man with responsibility. The papal envoy brings the old world – a world of claims, threats, and presumed superiority. And standing against him is a king who does not hold a sword, but a word. A sentence that sounds like the tolling of a bell: "On this earth, there is no one worthy to judge my conscience." In that moment, I feel a chill and a will that is given only to the chosen. Not only because it is defiance, but because it is truth spoken without fear. My gaze drifts to the details. To the boy in the lower right corner, who is closing a book with the inscription "Roma finita." What a powerful, simple, and yet fateful gesture. No destruction, no anger – just the quiet, resolute closing of one of the unfree chapters of history. In that movement, there is more than a revolution, more than a thousand battles. I realize that something is being born here that transcends all our religions: freedom of conscience, the right to doubt, the right to decide for oneself.