The Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas

JAN 01 935 · 12:00

Folio 18v of the Wolfenbüttel Codex (before 1006), illuminating Gumpold's Legend of Saint Wenceslas. Place: The church door at Stará Boleslav, on the Elbe north of Prague Figures: Václav I (Saint Wenceslas), duke of Bohemia · Boleslav I, his younger brother · Drahomíra, their mother · the assassins Tira, Česta, and Hněvsa Václav has been raised by his grandmother Ludmila and educated, by the standards of a tenth-century Bohemian court, well. He reads Latin and Slavonic. He founds the rotunda of Saint Vitus on the castle hill (the small predecessor of every later cathedral on the same spot) and imports relics from Saxony to consecrate it. He pays tribute to Henry the Fowler at Worms in 929 (some chronicles say 935) to keep the Saxons off his borders, and is given an arm of Saint Vitus in return. He is, by all accounts, devout and conciliatory. Both qualities have their enemies. His younger brother Boleslav has been given the appanage of the Elbe lands, with a seat at Stará Boleslav. He keeps a war-band. He is older, in a sense his brother is not. He resents the tribute, the Saxon connection, and the priests.