Václav, kníže Čechů:
Gespeichert in:
| 1. Verfasser: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Buch |
| Sprache: | Czech |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Praha
Vyšehrad
2011
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| Ausgabe: | Vyd. 1. |
| Schriftenreihe: | Historica
|
| Schlagworte: | |
| Online-Zugang: | Inhaltsverzeichnis Abstract |
| Beschreibung: | Zsfassung in engl. Sprache |
| Beschreibung: | 196 S. Ill., Kt. |
| ISBN: | 9788074291685 |
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Datensatz im Suchindex
| _version_ | 1804148514644557824 |
|---|---|
| adam_text | OBSAH
Předmluva
... 9
Poděkování
... 12
PROSTŘEDÍ: Do jakého světa se zrodil?
... 15
Hospodářství až na prvním místě
... 15
Stát desátého století a jeho původ
... 20
Prvotní přemyslovský rod a jeho partneři
... 25
Družiny
... 35
Zahraniční politické vztahy
... 41
Duchovní život
... 42
OSOBNOST: Jaký byl?
... 53
CÍLE: Oč usiloval?.
..69
Vztah knížete
k Bohu
... 85
Vztah
к
císaři
... 94
Vztah
к
vlasti
... 95
Rané křesťanství v Čechách:
sic volo,
sic iubeo
... 95
Pražský hrad, vší
zemè
srdce a duše
... 97
A opět peníze až na prvním místě
... 118
Závěry: Jakou strategii tedy Václav volil?
... 125
PROSTŘEDKY: Co dokázal?
... 127
Doslov
... 141
Summary
... 145
Citovaná díla
... 163
Seznam vyobrazení
... 178
Rejstřík.
. . 182
SUMMARY
This is a book on the life and deeds of the
Přemyslid
duke Wen-
ceslas
(9077-935),
later Saint Wenceslas of Bohemia.
At first, let us sketch a brief review of the situation of Bohe¬
mia at the dawn of the tenth century, the „age of iron of Euro¬
pean history. At the risk of a guess, however educated, we may
estimate the population of tenth-century Czech-speaking lands at
about three hundred thousand to
halfa
million souls. The people
lived both by sedentary agriculture and by various nomadic pur¬
suits, among which cattle- and especially horse-breeding, most
significant from the viewpoint of formation and organization of
army cavalry units, backbone of the armies of the early Middle
Ages, occupied an important place. The land s economy was able
to produce a surplus which the elites siphoned off the general
circulation, using it to „finance projects deemed to foster the
common good. To these belonged the buildup of specialized de¬
fence facilities in the form of armed retinues or entourages of the
country s „big men (and women, of course), but also creation
and upkeep of eternal institutions, especially establishments of
the ecumenical Catholic church.
The land s elites constituted a rather colourful and varied
picture. Most visible among these were, of course, the
Přemysl-
145
-dynasty
dukes who administered their ancestral domain in cent¬
ral Bohemia. Wenceslas s grandfather, Duke
Bořivoj
(? -
before
890),
was the first Bohemian sovereign to have embraced the
ecumenic Christian faith, together with his consort
Ludmila.
Wenceslas came to power after the rather short reigns of
Bo¬
řivoj
s
two sons,
Spytihněv
(895 -
between
905
and
915)
and
Vratislav
(between
905
and
915-921),
as the latter s son. The
Přemyslids
ruled their lands as a patrimonial holding, with the
lineage s eldest male member residing at the Prague Castle and
holding the sovereign s office, and junior members of the house
seated at their own residential places within the lineage domain.
The extent of the original
Přemysl-dynasty
holdings is now
being debated. It was supposed formerly that the
Přemyslids
held
no more than a rather limited-size realm in the midst of Bohe¬
mia, roughly between the castles of
Mělník
and Tetin in the N-S
direction and
Libušin
to
(Stará-) Boleslav
in the
W
-Е
disrection.
At the time being, questions about the dating, and thus contem¬
poraneity, of the castles purportedly built by the
Přemyslids
wi¬
thin this central Bohemian domain are being asked. At the same
time, historical reports concerning clashes between Bohemian
and Hungarian troops in what is presently western Slovakia, tra¬
ditionally considered unreliable by modern historians, are being
pondered upon. The problem, to which all this is ultimately going
to boil down to, is the position of tenth-century Moravia, once
the seat of the glamorous Old Moravian state, but a „land wi¬
thout an overlord (as far as we know now) in the tenth century.
If the Moravians had sworn allegiance to the
Přemyslid
dukes,
Bohemian warriors could well have operated far from the central
Bohemian hills.
However that may be, there seems to have been room for
non-Přemyslid
elites in tenth-century Bohemia as well. Their
numbers, importance, roles and relations to the
Přemysl-dynasty
dukes remain entirely in the dark, as no written evidence is offe¬
red by sources at our disposal currently.
146
As has been already said, the
Přemyslids
exercised their so¬
cial functions thanks to the collection of surplus produced by
the country s population and submitted to the fiscal entry points
in the form of supplies of varied character, all of them in kind
or in services. Out of these revenues the land s dukes financed
both the building of armed retinues and of the ecumenical Chris¬
tian institutions, for the support of which both Saint
Ludmila
and Saint Wenceslas have reaped so many words of praise from
their Christian biographers. The creation of both
Přemyslid
and
non-Přemyslid
armed forces may be elucidated by modern ar¬
chaeological research pointing to the ever increasing quantity of
articles of military gear, especially weaponry- and horse-harness
ornaments, executed in the Hungarian style and found in tenth-
century archaeological sites of Bohemia. These items might have
been brought thither by warriors, trained in the Hungarian milita¬
ry strategy and tactics and bearing Hungarian-style arms, armour
and outfits, in the service of both the
Přemyslid-
and
non-Pře¬
myslid
overlords as their age s best-quality fighting men. Such
„Hungarian legion(s) might have represented an efficient power
tool in the hands of elites of tenth-century Bohemia.
Some data outline the possibility of tracing down settlements
of other foreign specialists in
Přemyslid
service, such as Jewish
merchants, for instance, but their interpretation is far from cer¬
tain.
The spiritual situation of tenth-century Bohemia presented
a no less colourful picture. It may be reasonably supposed that
most of the land s population happily lived in their ancestral, pre-
Christian faith, probably a version of a binary-structure religion,
based on the idea of conflict between the Good and the Evil and
related to various creeds linked presently with the Indo-Iranian
heritage such as Mazdaism
(=
Zoroastrism) and Manicheism. In
addition to this, the Prague court of the
Přemyslids
apparently
hosted specialists who preserved the lineage s traditional lore,
147
created probably sometime in the fifth-to-seventh century at the
intersection of Indo-Iranian ancestral motifs and impulses ema¬
nating from the
Longobard
and Alamannic spheres. Of course, in
the tenth century all this was overlain by advent of ecumenical
Christianity in its two ritual forms
-
Church-Slavonic and Latin.
The presence of clergy of the Church-Slavonic rite has been re-
cetly underestimated in Bohemia, but we definitely dispose of
texts indicating that priests of this orientation not only celebrated
Mass, but also heard confessions of laymen and laywomen in ear¬
ly medieval Bohemia. The Latin-rite clergy seem to have held vi¬
sible, if not privileged, positions at the
Přemyslid
court; here we
must acknowledge not only their excellent education and culture,
but also their dedication to the welfare of contemporary Bohe¬
mia. Interconnections between Bohemia and the Bavarian eccle¬
siastical centre of
Regensburg,
to the ecclesiastical-jurisdiction
area of which Bohemia had belonged until the establishment of
the Prague bishopric in
969-976,
harked back to nearly a century
of contacts in Wenceslas s times, and in the tenth century,
Re¬
gensburg
belonged to the foremost Latin Church establishments
of medieval Europe, as is borne out, for instance, by the earliest
inventory of the library of the local St. Emmeram monastery.
The ducal son Wenceslas
(=
Veceslav, presently
Václav)
himself saw the light of day as son of the then ruling duke
Vra¬
tislav
(I) and his consort
Drahomíra,
a scion of the Stodorani-
Havolani tribe of what is presently the core area of East-Central
Germany in the Elbe region, one of the highest-prestige grou¬
pings in contemporary Slavdom, as authentic sources tell us. Ac¬
cusations of paganism, raised against
Drahomíra
by later legend
writers are difficult to substantiate, as her family was most pro¬
bably Christian. Legends say that the young Wenceslas was sent
to the
Přemyslid
castle of
Budeč
and submitted to a learned priest
with whom he studied Sacred scriptures. This might well be true,
148
though Wenceslas
s
„studies probably amounted to hardly more
than learning the psalter by heart and then possibly mastering the
art of reading according to the text the knowledge of which he
already possessed.
Parallels for this procedure are known from the Carolingian
empire, and we even have a Christian mother s manual for the
education of her son, written in
841-843
by a lady named Dhu-
oda
(Dodana
or Hodana in German-language literature). Having
married Bernard, duke of Septimania in southwestern Gaul, on
29th June
824,
she bore him two sons, William (*29th Novem¬
ber,
826)
and Bernard (*22nd March,
841).
As the lady Dhuoda
sorely missed the boys who were taken by Bernard, their father,
to the court of Charles the Bald of the Western Frankish empire,
she decided to provide them with a manual of exemplary Chris¬
tian behaviour and manners. In this manual, lady Dhuoda coun¬
sels her son not to ponder too much upon the deepest mysteries
of the Christian faith, as this could lead to heresy, and to entrust
himself in such matters to the expert knowledge of learned and
pious men who have treated these questions at length
-
bishops,
priests and abbotts of Christian institutions. Lady Dhuoda also
provides advice on social questions such as loyalty and adherence
to the oaths once sworn, respect for family ties or mercy for those
under the nobility on the social scale. William received from her
also instruction in practical everyday matters, such as the number
of prayers to be said each day, or the specific psalms in which he
might find consolation and strength when falling into dire straits.
The instruction that young Wenceslas received sounded probably
similar to this.
Sources of this kind, valuable as they are, do nonetheless
not give the complete picture, as may be plainly seen. Educa¬
tion is one thing and real life another. Witness the informations
that we have on another personage whom we know rather well
from Bohemian and Moravian history of the ninth century, Louis
149
the German, overlord of the East Frankish empire (in office
843-876).
In the artistic finish of his surviving psalter book and
especially in the choice of psalms to be especially emphasized by
large and ornate initial letters, Louis presents himself as a para¬
gon of Christian faith who punished conceit and pride and helped
the poor and destitute, abstained from evil and regretted the blo¬
od shed in internecine fighting. Historical sources show him as
a warlord who treated his Slavic-speaking neighbours to feasts of
iron and fire nearly every year, and who did not shirk from gains
obtained by low and dirty intrigue, though he himself was not the
author and instigator thereoff.
But now back to young Wenceslas. In
915,
the legends re¬
cord a hair-shearing ceremony which he underwent, carried out
probably by Notherio II, bishop of Verona in Italy, present in
Prague perhaps for diplomatic reasons. This ceremony, marking
probably the end of boyish age of the prince, appears both as
a pagan- and as a Christian custom in written sources for the ear¬
ly Middle Ages of central Europe, and thus presumably appealed
to the entire political community of contemporary Bohemia. Of
course, our sources explicitly say that what Wenceslas underwent
represented a strictly Christian ceremony.
In his adult age, when Wenceslas assumed the ducal seat (pro¬
bably in
925
or so), his court naturally expected him to marry and
sire sons and daughters. One of our sources, the Second Church
Slavonic legend of St. Wenceslas (Nikolsky legend) actually
refers to the marriage which, upon the unfaithfulness of Wen¬
ceslas s consort who resented the Wenceslas s pious behaviour,
the duke himself dissolved, giving his wife as consort to one of
his courtiers. Actually, the Arab geographer al-MascudT writing
in
947,
refers to the Stodorani-Havolani tribe as being ruled by
a prince named
Basqlãbié,
in which name we can recognize the
patronymic „son of Vaclav
(*Václavič).
Due to the fact that
Wenceslas s son stemmed from one of the leading families of the
150
Stodorani-Havolani
by his grandmother, it seems reasonable to
suppose that after the killing of his father, Wenceslas s son dee¬
med it expedient to leave his native land and to claim his ancest¬
ral heritage from the grandmother s kin.
To a certain extent, the everyday life that Wenceslas led may
be discerned from the medical examination of his bodily remains.
These show him to have grown into a tall adult man of athletic
stature, possibly displaying light complexion (fair hair and blue
eyes). Wenceslas s skull displays traces of a healed wound from
a pointed weapon, most probably a sword- or a spear-tip, as well
as a spot which sustained a violent attack by a heavy and blunt
instrument (a mace?). This clearly shows that the situation in
which he found himself on September 28th,
935,
at his brother s
castle at
Boleslav
was not new to him. Apparently, Wenceslas had
gotten out of embroilments of this kind twice before; for the third
time, however, he did not manage to pull himself out.
What of the strategy of government pursued by Wenceslas?
Answering this question involves the analysis of sources which
evoked and still evoke numerous discussions, sometimes „spil¬
ling over to non-academic spheres, namely the legends written
about Saint Wenceslas some one to two generations after his
death.
To make a long story short, let us observe at the very onset of
this chapter that the Saint Wenceslas legends have little in com¬
mon with the historical Wenceslas, and nearly nothing at all with
tenth-century Bohemia. Walther Berschin has aptly observed that
the Saint Wenceslas legends, opening a new phase of European
Christian biography after a pause lasting roughly for the second
third of the tenth century, reflect the consolation of writers wi¬
thin the Latin Catholic church who, well within the „century of
iron full of aggression, ruthlessness and selfishness, joyously
acknowledged the fact that even then, martyrs ready to die for
151
Christian causes
(at least as it seemed then) were still to be found.
Legends of St. Wenceslas also give expression to the Christo-
centric attitude of tenth-century Christianity, and to the belief
prevalent by then that the best and most certain way to attain the
salvation of souls and eternal blessing was through martyrdom.
As such, the legends constitute sources for tenth-century ecume¬
nical Christian doctrines and literature, and must be viewed with
great caution in terms of their historical value. Indeed, the most
recent academic works express the scepticism of their authors as
to whether any reliable facts of Wenceslas s life can be culled
from them at all.
With this proviso, it is clear that we must look elsewhere for
any information concerning the exercise of profane government
by Wenceslas. If we cannot rely on the legends, it might still be
possible to read the ideals proposed for secular princes off the
tenth-century sources mirroring both the theoretical foundations
of, and practical recommendations for, the exercise of profane
power.
Such sources clearly show that Wenceslas and his peers were
in a privileged position in carrying out the daily tasks of admi¬
nistration of their realms. Contemporary authorities told them
repeatedly that God was on their side (close to the mighty as He
is mighty himself), and that anyone who failed to „render unto
Caesar what was Caesar s put himself thereby into the position
of an enemy against whom sanctions were not only permissible
but desirable. Though tenth-century authorities stressed the social
obligations that had to be met by the princes, they made it plain
that anyone denying sovereign power or even rising in arms aga¬
inst his lord and master marked himself as one of the
presciti
ad
damnationem, those foretold for perdition, who invariably ended
up in Hell, as against the
predestinati ad
salutem,
those singled
out for salvation, whose ultimate destination was the Paradise (in
the words of Saint Augustine).
152
In terms of relations between Wenceslas and the greatest
power of this part of tenth-century Europe, the Saxon king Henry
the Fowler, the mechanics of government clearly made them into
allies and partners, irrespective of their momentaneous wheelings
and dealings. Both Wenceslas and Henry saw Christianization as
one of the major items on their agenda, and thus must inevitably
have felt the urge for cooperation. In practical terms, this resul¬
ted in Henry s donation of the relic of St. Guy (Sanctus Vitus) to
the Prague duke, who built his church over this sacred relic. In
actual fact, no contemporary sources refer to this donation, but
all the historical circumstances suggest that the Prague church,
to become an episcopal and ultimately archepiscopal cathedral,
really received the particle of St. Guy s body in the initial century
of its existence.
How did Wenceslas contribute to the history of his own count¬
ry? First and foremost, he seems to have been a prince very much
conscious of the visible symbols of statehood of the then very
young duchy. One of the emblems of the early medieval state of
Bohemia was St. Wenceslas s lance. This was not the imitation
of St. Longinus s lance which had once pierced Christ s side on
the cross, and the copies of which were issued by the imperial
administration to faithful vassals. Bohemian warriors captured
one such copy in the battle of Flarchheim in
1080,
when duke
and king
Vratislav
supported the cause of emperor Henry IV
against adherents of pope Gregory
VII
during the so-called In¬
vestiture conflict. The Prague court possessed its own genuine
St. Wenceslas s lance, for which our sources are constituted by
depictions in illuminated manuscripts and on Bohemian ducal
coins since about
1000
AD. Both sources show the lance to have
borne a banner, or gonfanon, in the Western European manner,
bearing no visible symbol or emblem. In this it differs from con¬
temporary gonfanons on lances of mounted warriors going to
battle as shown, for instance, on graffiti from the stone revetment
153
of the
Libušin
castle rampart (most recently dated into the period
930-1070);
these banners display a symbol like unto the letter X
(St. Andrew s cross). The identifying feature of St. Wenceslas s
lance thus appears to have been the colour, which the images in
manuscripts give as golden.
An even more important action has been undertaken by duke
Wenceslas with respect to the stone throne standing in
medio
castri Pragensis,
on which dukes of Bohemia were inthronized.
This involves some explanation. Some time in the early ninth
century, the middle part of the rocky promontory in the midst of
the land of Bohemia, looming above the Vltava river, where the
Prague Castle stands now, witnessed a most particular ceremo¬
ny. In a sacred area (delimited by a trench?), the representatives
of the communities of Bohemia, probably led by paramounts of
the old and venerable grouping which we know from the Latin
sources as
BOHEMI
(and whose indigenous name is hidden from
us), carried out a traditional Indo-European rite of claiming su¬
zerainty over the land of Bohemia. The ceremony involved first
an offering to the great gods (possibly
Indra
and
Varuna,
probab¬
ly Mithra) in the western segment of the sacred area, where the
sacrificer sollicited the favour of the deities for the success of the
ritual act. Subsequently, a stone upright,
columna
mundi,
was rai¬
sed at the eastern end of the sacred area, embodying the suzerain¬
ty claim over the land and dedicated to war gods and especially to
Mithra (Mihr in the Middle Persian pronunciation
=
Slavic
mir).
This ceremony, however, almost fell into oblivion during the
long and bitter civil war that opposed the defendants of the old
order, and the partisans of social and political innovations, during
most of the two last thirds of the ninth century. It was only in the
eighties of the same century when power in central Bohemia was
seized by one of the junior(?) branches of the
BOHEMI
grouping,
who appropriated the traditional family tree of the
BOHEMI
rulers beginning with the mythical
Přemysl.
This lineage, begin-
154
ning
with
duke
Bořivoj
(? -
before
890),
returned to the old suze¬
rainty-raising ceremony, but in a new garb. The western offering
place now became a cemetery site where at least one prominent
male was laid to eternal rest in the midst of his followers. In its
turn, the eastern
columna
mundi,
abode of Mihr (Mithra), became
the stone throne upon which lineage members were inthronized
as rulers of Bohemia.
The first
Přemyslid
dukes, inaugurated on the stone throne,
built Christian shrines on rocky tops around the central rock with
the throne
-
Bořivoj
and
Spytihněv
on the west and
Vratislav
on
the east. Duke Wenceslas did, however, carry out a most impor¬
tant change. He built his church of St. Guy directly on the central
rock between the old western and eastern offering places, close
to the abode of Mihr in the stone throne. Thus he subjected Mihr
to himself, became his lord and master, and inserted the whole
inthronization ceremony into a Christian coordinate system. This
act was so important that from about this time on, every duke of
Bohemia, assuming office on the old stone throne, took in his
hand the
„mir =
Mihr of Saint Wenceslas , as declared by the of¬
ficial suzerainty formula on Hth-to-
13th-century
ducal and later
royal seals (Pax
sancii
Wencezlai in
manu
ducis/regis XY, or Pax
ducis/regis XY in
manu
sancii
Wencezlai, Pax being equivalent
to
mir
and modern
mír,
a word originating from the name Mihr
in its Middle Persian pronunciation).
In this manner, duke Wenceslas assured a smooth transition
between the old, Indo-Europen form of the core of the early-state
doctrine of Bohemia
-
the dynastic inthronization ritual
-
and its
new, Christian version. He thus guaranteed that all the compo¬
nents of the Bohemian state would have, from that moment on,
functioned much as before. In addition to that, he provided for his
realms new
legitimity
in terms of the power structure of Christian
Europe. For this reason, duke Wenceslas, Saint-Wenceslas-to-be,
may be viewed as one of the most important political figures of
155
the early medieval Bohemia, indeed, as a „second founder of
the Bohemian state.
As to the round church of St. Guy built by Wenceslas in the
Prague Castle, modern research has shown that this was origi¬
nally a simple, albeit large, round building with one single apse,
probably the eastern one, with an altar dedicated to St. Guy.
Another altar of this church bore the dedication to St. John the
Baptist. After the
Boleslav
murder, Wenceslas s body rested in
a second, southern apse of the church, close to the alter dedicated
to the Twelwe Holy Apostles. This is interesting insofar as the
Twelwe Apostles title points to Constantinople where a church
of this dedication entombed the remains of Byzantine emperors;
indeed, the mausoleum of emperor
Constantine
himself assu¬
med the shape of a nearly circular annex to the main body of the
church, much as the southern apse of St. Guy of Prague, added
for the eternal rest of St. Wenceslas s body. We know that at le¬
ast one ruler of Late Roman Europe built a shrine of this title as
his own burial church. This was none other that Khlodowekh of
Gaul whom the French name Clovis and the Germans
Chlodwig
(died in
511
AD), who thereby imitated the imperial usage. Was
this also the case of those who were burying St. Wenceslas of
Bohemia?
A fact of capital importance is constituted in this aspect by
Wenceslas s translation of the dead body of his grandmother,
Ludmila,
murdered in
921,
reportedly at the instigation of the
then duchess-in-charge,
Drahomíra,
which happened in the year
925.
In the Middle Ages, translations of bodies into new burial
places constituted a clear prelude to the declaration of such per¬
sons as saints of the ecumenic Christian church, and sometimes
such translations, if carried out in the presence of bishops, suffi¬
ced to make the translated relics those of a saint. In this aspect,
the somewhat reticent attitude of the
Regensburg
bishop
Tuto,
incumbent of a Church office to which the Christian administra-
156
tion
of Bohemia belonged, can be understood; he commanded the
authors of the translation to keep the body above ground, „until
the glory of Christ be discerned (which, in fact, duly happened
soon). This act, the very first one in the recorded history of Bo¬
hemia, does show how Wenceslas was aware not only of his own
right to carry out such an act, but of the importance of such mat¬
ters. It seems probable
-
and modern specialized literature has
already hinted at this
-
that Wenceslas undertook this translation
with the intention to multiply the collection of sacred relics of the
Prague Castle which could help him and his successors to elevate
the site into residence of an episcopal see.
An interesting detail may throw a sidelight in relations of
Wenceslas s court to Byzantium. Some legends record an event
when, shortly before his death, Wenceslas indulged in „games
with his retinue. How are these passages to be understood is now
shown by analysis of frescoes in the St. Sophia cathedral of Kiev
in the Ukraine. These display obvious connection with the tradi¬
tions of horse races in the hippodrome of Constantinople, held
until the 13th century. They constituted statutary confirmation of
continuity with the Roman imperial tradition in a Christian garb,
presided over by the emperor as embodiment of sovereign power.
In these games, victory came through the emperor s person but
from God himself, the emperor playing neither the role of judge
nor that of a referee. Wenceslas s „games may thus be understo¬
od as his declaration of a position of God s elect through whom
divine
legitimity
and blessing come to the visible world. Indeed,
such interpretation would fit the context of the situation prece¬
ding the murderous attack on Wenceslas quite well.
Let us now take up a question perhaps somewhat unusual but
relevant in our context. Duke Wenceslas appears to have set out
on a path of conquest of adjacent territories of Bohemia, and,
shortly after his death, the Pfemyslid duchy clearly disposed of
157
numerous, well-trained, well-commanded and motivated troops.
How can we explain all this?
Let us try to see whether the military power of the
Přemyslid
dukes was applied to a goal that may lie within the horizon of
our sources. In this aspect, let us focus on one of the sources of
wealth of the early state of Bohemia visible in later documents,
namely on the slave trade. Within Europe, this is most eloquently
documented by the presence of numerous
saqãliba
slaves on both
sides of the Mediterranean but especially in tenth-century Mus¬
lim Spain. As against the Tunisian realms of the Aghlabid dy¬
nasty, where we know of one thousand
saqãliba
employed by its
overlords at the close of their power, five to fifteen thousand such
slaves probably worked for the Cordoba emirate and then kali-
phate in times of cAbd ar-Rahman III
(912-961).
This is a most
remarkable figure and we have to ask whether at least some of
these Slav(?) slaves, the bulk of whom undoubtedly came from
the Slav wars of Henry the Fowler and his nobles, were not sup¬
plied by the Wenceslas administration. An indication in favour
of this could be the very first reference to Wenceslas in Arabic
sources, namely in the treatise of
al-Mascudï
where Wenceslas is
referred to as a lord of the
Dulabã,
presumably the
Doudlebi
of
southern Bohemia. The geographer is supposed to have obtained
information about Bohemia from a person who actually visited
the country, as well as from others who probably knew it from
hearsay. What did the Muslim commercial agents come to obtain
in faraway Bohemia? Is it not reasonable to suppose that they
were interested in the acquisition of slaves?
In fact, Wenceslas s purchases of slaves are directly menti¬
oned in the
Christianus (=
Kristián)
text, the most important
double legend of
SS.
Ludmila
and Wenceslas. All these data thus
converge to an indication that duke Wenceslas of the
Přemysl
dynasty might have been one of the first sovereigns of Bohemia
to have contributed to state revenues by the gains of slave trade.
158
Duke Wenceslas may thus be seen as a sovereign who,
bearing in mind traditions of his own realms, chose nevertheless
a path leading into the world of ecumenic Christianity. Firmly
convinced that therein lies the future of the young nation entrus¬
ted to his care, he employed advisors knowledgeable in matters
heeding both West and East to help his people to land in a haven
which would make them into one of the political bodies respec¬
ted as part of the ecumenical Christian sphere. He possessed both
a clear vision of the future political and spiritual trajectory of Bo¬
hemia, and a sufficiently strong will to put his designs through.
Finally, let us pass in review the actual history of the ten
years of duke Wenceslas s reign. He obviously launched his po¬
litical career by the solemn translation of his grandmother Lud-
mila s body to the Prague Castle, which we already mentioned.
The early years of Wenceslas s reign might have been spent
in conquests within Bohemia. It is now commonly assumed that
the Prague duke brought under his sway (parts of?) southern,
and probably also east-central Bohemia. How did matters in nor¬
thwestern Bohemia stand is still being disputed, especially with
recourse to the original dendrochronological dating of the first
fortification of the castle of
Zatec
into Wenceslas s times, which
had been recently cast into doubt by some scholars.
Soon afterwards, however, the prince had to face danger on
the northwestern frontier. After a Hungarian attack on Saxony
in
924,
with the eastern troops clearly passing en route through
Bohemia, Henry the Fowler of Saxony concluded an armistice
of nine years with leaders of the Hungarian host. Henry then set
to work to put up a barrier withholding incursions from the east.
He built up a series of defence facilities on the eastern border of
his realms and organized his army, including the infamous Mer-
seburg legion staffed by penitent highwaymen convicts willing to
take up arms agains the barbarians (i.e. Slavs). When he felt the
159
urge to test the strength of his measures, Henry went into action.
In the winter of
928
to
929,
he at first attacked and took Brenna-
burg, a castle of the Stodorani-Havolani „tribe fame
ferro /ri¬
gore,
as our source says, behaving rather mildly to the losers and
demanding only hostages from them. Then, however, he turned
southeast and marched against the Daleminci „tribe . These pe¬
ople, sitting north of the place where the Elbe river flows out of
the Bohemian-Saxon border hills, on the very Bohemian frontier,
had repeatedly opened up the passage of Hungarian troops to Sa¬
xony in previous campaigns. Henry s army laid siege to, and con¬
quered, their castle named
Gana.
Saxon troopers divided among
themselves the booty, all the adult inhabitants of the castle were
killed and children sold into captivity. In a short time after this,
Henry established his own castle, present-day Meissen, in the vi¬
cinity, and staffed it with a loyal garrison. By this he showed his
firm intention to keep this vital region under close surveillance.
The Saxon king meant this obviously as a demonstrative action,
a most eloquent warning to all those who might intend to scheme
and plot against his rule, allying themselves with foreign powers.
We may imagine the pale faces of Wenceslas, his advisers and
his military commanders when news of this horror reached them.
It is thus no wonder that when Henry s troops appeared before
Prague, reinforced by invading contingents from the Bavarian
duke Arnulph, Wenceslas deemed it advisable to pay homage,
and took upon himself the duty to pay a (yearly?) tribute to Sa¬
xony. This satisfied the conquering Henry who then returned to
his native land.
Though Bohemia and Wenceslas came off all this with but
minor damages, the capitulation is likely to have cast a shadow
over the duke s prestige. He might have tried to ransom his faults
by the initiation of building of St. Guy s church on the Prague
Castle, and he might even have considered laying down his ducal
office and leaving on pilgrimage to Rome where, according to
160
the legends, he desired to end his life in a monastery. Such things
had actually happened before, and it is hard to say whether the
legends do not contain a kernel of truth in this aspect.
Nevertheless, Wenceslas s political career closes with an event
that hardly serves his honour. In
933,
exactly after the terminati¬
on of the nine-year truce, the Hungarian troops invaded Saxony
and Thuringia anew
-
apparently via Bohemia again
-,
asking
their allies of old, the Daleminci, to help them. Remembering the
manner in which Henry the Fowler treated them, the Daleminci
refused, which is hardly surprising. Facing thus the Saxon troops
on their own, the Hungarians suffered a devastating defeat in
a battle at a place called
Riade,
whereupon they left Saxony and
took refuge in their own country.
My impression is that this was the proverbial last drop
that sealed Wenceslas s fate. He might have wronged the hopes
of
Boleslav,
his younger and much more ambitious brother and
his heir apparent, with his unfulfilled vow to lay down the ducal
office and go to Rome. He might have angered his nobles by his
resolutely Christian policy and especially his decision to pay ti¬
thes to the Church, whereby he diminished their own revenues.
He might have frustrated his armed retinue troops, the „Hungari¬
an legion(s) , by not coming to the aid of Hungarian invaders of
Saxony and Thuringia in
933.
And finally, his action might have
caught the eye of Henry the Fowler, who probably recognized
that Wenceslas s oath of allegiance did not carry much weight
and that Bohemia will hardly constitute a staunch ally.
All this frustration, ambition, anger and suspicion might have
ultimately flared up in a murderous attack on the life of duke
Wenceslas, perpetrated by his younger brother
Boleslav
and his
armed men on the morning of 28th September
935.
On that day,
duke Wenceslas died but Saint Wenceslas, the heavenly incarna¬
tion of Bohemia, was born.
161
|
| any_adam_object | 1 |
| author | Charvát, Petr 1949-2023 |
| author_GND | (DE-588)142472441 |
| author_facet | Charvát, Petr 1949-2023 |
| author_role | aut |
| author_sort | Charvát, Petr 1949-2023 |
| author_variant | p c pc |
| building | Verbundindex |
| bvnumber | BV039654240 |
| classification_rvk | NM 6650 NM 9600 |
| ctrlnum | (OCoLC)760141526 (DE-599)BVBBV039654240 |
| discipline | Geschichte |
| edition | Vyd. 1. |
| format | Book |
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| id | DE-604.BV039654240 |
| illustrated | Illustrated |
| indexdate | 2024-07-10T00:08:21Z |
| institution | BVB |
| isbn | 9788074291685 |
| language | Czech |
| oai_aleph_id | oai:aleph.bib-bvb.de:BVB01-024503834 |
| oclc_num | 760141526 |
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| physical | 196 S. Ill., Kt. |
| psigel | DHB_BSB_BVID_0012 |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publishDateSearch | 2011 |
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| publisher | Vyšehrad |
| record_format | marc |
| series2 | Historica |
| spelling | Charvát, Petr 1949-2023 Verfasser (DE-588)142472441 aut Václav, kníže Čechů Petr Charvát Vyd. 1. Praha Vyšehrad 2011 196 S. Ill., Kt. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Historica Zsfassung in engl. Sprache Václav Svatý 903-935 (DE-588)118806696 gnd rswk-swf Václav Svatý 903-935 (DE-588)118806696 p DE-604 Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen 2 application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=024503834&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen 2 application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=024503834&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Abstract |
| spellingShingle | Charvát, Petr 1949-2023 Václav, kníže Čechů Václav Svatý 903-935 (DE-588)118806696 gnd |
| subject_GND | (DE-588)118806696 |
| title | Václav, kníže Čechů |
| title_auth | Václav, kníže Čechů |
| title_exact_search | Václav, kníže Čechů |
| title_full | Václav, kníže Čechů Petr Charvát |
| title_fullStr | Václav, kníže Čechů Petr Charvát |
| title_full_unstemmed | Václav, kníže Čechů Petr Charvát |
| title_short | Václav, kníže Čechů |
| title_sort | vaclav knize cechu |
| topic | Václav Svatý 903-935 (DE-588)118806696 gnd |
| topic_facet | Václav Svatý 903-935 |
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