Dan Snow's History Hit - The Real 'Good King' Wenceslas

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Click here to vote for Gone Medieval at the Signal Awards.At this time of year, many of us will find ourselves singing about a royal personage who braves the snow on the Feast of Stephen – the Second Day of Christmas – so that he can distribute alms to a poor peasant. But who was the real Good King Wenceslas and was he as pious and saintly as the Christmas song suggests?In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman is joined by Czech historian Dr. David Kalhous to learn about the tenth-century Bohemian Duke, posthumously declared to be a king and patron saint of the Czech state.This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is an episode, a seasonal episode, from our sister podcast on the real good King Wenceslas. It was first broadcast on Gone Medieval, fantastic pod, go and check it out. And it's also been nominated for a Signal Award, so please, if you have time, we'd really appreciate it if you go and vote at historyhit.com slash signal. But in the meantime, enjoy this. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr Kat Jarman. Now, this time of year, many of us will find ourselves singing about a certain royal character who braves the weather so that he can distribute alms to a poor peasant on the

feast of Stephen, that's the second day of Christmas, in snow that, deep and crisp and even, Brightly shone the moon at night, though the frost was cool. Have you ever stopped to wonder who exactly good King Wenceslas really was? Did he exist? And if so, when and where? And why has his story become a staple of our Christmas carols? To find out, I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr. David Calhous, who's Associate Professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. David, thank you so much for joining me on Gone Medieval today.

Thank you, Kate, for your invitation. It's a pleasure to meet you and your audience. And I will be happy to tell you more about St. Benceslas and his real life or context in which we should understand the text. Fantastic. So that, I mean, the first question really is, was he actually a real person? Well, 99% of experts is convinced he really existed because we have some contemporary evidence for his life or at least for his death. or at least for his death. However, what might be interesting is that one expert in religious studies tried to interpret all characters of early medieval Bohemian history as personification of some pagan gods and goddesses. Yeah, so we can be fairly confident then that he was a real character. Well, there were always doubts, but I think they are not well

substantiated. And what sort of time period are we talking about? He lived a little bit later than Alfred the Great. So when Alfred the Great died 899, it was the time approximately when St. Wenceslas was born. It was about 905 and he was martyred 935 by his brother. So the beginning of the 10th century. Okay, well, I definitely want to dig into that family story a bit later on. But you mentioned Bohemia briefly. What sort of territory are we talking about? Where exactly is that? And what territory do that cover in the 10th century? If you are a bit familiar with European geography, Bohemia is now a western part or western historical region of the Czech Republic. And if I shall compare Bohemia, it's about half of England, about 50,000 square kilometers. And its capital was even in St. Vincent's last time, Prague.

Now, I know that in the song he's referred to as a king, but actually at the time of his life, that's not quite accurate, is it? What sort of status did he have in 10th century Bohemia? That's a very interesting question. Because he lived in the times where those old rituals that changed the status of the person to be a king were not fully petrified. So not all kings of the 9th or 10th century had been crowned or anointed like it was usual in later centuries of the Middle Ages.

St. Wenceslav definitely was not crowned and was not anointed. And in contemporary sources, he was called Duke or Prince of Bohemia. And you hinted at some quite interesting family dynamics there earlier on. But in terms of his background, I know there's quite a bit of drama in the stories about him in terms of his parents, or certainly his mother and grandmother. What's the background before he becomes the Duke and later King? Well, Bohemia and later Moravia were, since the end of the 9th century, ruled by a dynasty called Przemyslac. It's difficult to pronounce for any foreigner

because it includes specific Czech consonant. They ruled Bohemia until the beginning of the 14th century and most royal dynasties in Europe are related to them. The era of St. Wenceslas, he was just the third known generation of the dynasty who even did not rule whole Bohemia at the moment he was born. They just ruled Prague and its surroundings. And when he should become prince of Bohemia, he was too young to accept the throne. And in that time, there was a struggle between his grandmother and mother who will rule for him until he gets adult.

At the end, his mother, Drahomira, killed his grandmother or asked her retinue to kill her mother-in-law for her to become ruler of Bohemia. So that was the first martyr in his family we know about. And later he came to the conflict with his own brother, Boleslav I, and it cost him his life. He was martyred as a young man in the seat of his brother in Boleslav. Yeah, it's quite a dramatic start really to his life and to his rulership. Now, I know that religion was quite an important aspect of all of this, wasn't it? Was he a Christian? Did he grow up a Christian? Were his ancestors, his family, Christians as well? How was that in his rule?

It seems that his grandfather was baptised in Moravia. At the beginning of the 9th century, Moravia was more important than Bohemia, and its ruler, Svatov, was deeply involved in the Frankish Empire, and he was an important figure at the east of the empire. And he had also an archbishop to his disposal, Methodius, was a missionary who came from Byzantine Empire in 860. So it seems that Wenceslas' grandfather was baptized by that Methodius at the court of Svatopluk. At least the dynastic legends insist that Wenceslas' family was Christian. His grandparents were Christians, his parents or uncle were Christians, or at least they founded churches in Prague and its surroundings. And it's also quite sure that even his brother was

Christian as well. The contemporary texts introduce Wenceslas and his mother Drahomira as pagans, or at least part of those texts, it's not very probable that they really were pagans. They were all Christian family. Now, in terms of when he comes of age, so he can take over and be the ruler, what sort of challenges did he meet in his time as a ruler? Well, in the time when his rule started, the central Europe was attacked by Magyars, who were quite dangerous nomads coming to that area at the end of the 9th century. At the beginning, they were used by different contesting parties as soldiers, fighting for someone else's interests.

But at the end, when they were well settled in Central Europe, they started their own politics and they pillaged Balkan, but also Italy, today's Germany, Bohemia, Austria. Some of the raids even reached France or northern part of Spain. So this was one danger he had to face. He also lived in the time when the Carolingian dynasty at the east of the Frankish empire died out by Louis the Child. There was a struggle for throne and new kings from the Saxon dynasty had to settle their affairs and they decided to build an army and not only defeat those Magyars but also subdue their Slavic neighbors and Wenceslas and his

principality was one of their targets. In 929 Henry I, king of Eastern Francia, took his army and he went through different Slavic principalities. And at the end, he came to Prague, where Wenceslas subdued to him and promised to again pay the tribute. So it was another challenge Wenceslas had to face. And last thing was how important will the Przemyslids be in Bohemia? I've mentioned that they did not rule the whole Bohemian area. They just ruled Prague and its surroundings. And they were, of course, interested in widening their power, at least for whole Bohemia. So there is a question if St. Wenceslas started that process or how the authority of his parents and of his uncle was defined generation before, or if it was his brother Boleslav, who managed to conquer whole Bohemia, but he had to convince the elites and

other princely families in Bohemia that the Przemyslids will be the ones who will rule it in future. So was he quite successful then in the end as a ruler? Is he sort of considered a good and successful, well, I was going to say king then, but a duke or whatever we call him? well, I was going to say king, then the duke or whatever we call him? Well, that's the question, because we know just one story from a dynastic legend written three generations after his death. And there is a mentioned one local prince who denied obedience to Atus and Wenceslav. So Wenceslav collected his army and came to him and then because he didn't want to spill blood of his own warriors he proposed to his enemy that they can fight just two of them

and who wins will be just the winner of the battle instead of cruel fight and at the end that again pagan enemy kneeled before him. And when they asked him what happened, he insisted that he had seen an angel above St. Wenceslas who fought with him, didn't dare to stay against him with weapon. So it might be that he was also quite successful warrior, but we only have that evidence. So we're a bit limited in what we can know. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were.

By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. So I do need to get onto then how he died, so how his brother came to murder him. What exactly happened and what was the background to that story? Yeah, one theory was that his brother didn't want to sign the peace with Henry I, didn't want to pay the tribute because he struggled for independence of Bohemia and Czechs, which is a bit anachronistic. In the Middle Ages, it was quite usual paying the tributes. Even Henry I paid the tribute to Magyars first, before he managed to defeat them. And it was just one tool of politics, so it's not very probable.

We have also heard that both were Christians, so religious reasons were probably not in play either. One possible explanation is that it was Boleslav, Wenceslas' brother, who pushed him to the conflict because in the Middle Ages, every prince was kind of Lord of the Rings and he had to provide his retinue with influx of gold and weapons and silk and other luxuries. And the higher you stand in society, the better chance you had to provide your retinue with those luxuries. And asian, Václav could have expected that he will rule for a long time and that the throne will be inherited with Václav's family. And his retinue probably lost his nerves and decided to take the prize earlier. So it might be a reason.

the price earlier. So it might be a reason. There's also a possibility that they just had some struggle when they were drinking. And St. Manasaslas said something not very diplomatic to his brother or to his routine. It could not have been a long-term plot, but immediate decision to protect your integrity as a high-positioned person. Yeah. So he dies. And then at what point does he become Saint Ventuslus? It seems that it was up to bishops. And it was enough when, with the bishop's approval, the body of the same person was moved from the place where the person died to a church. And they're put under the altar. And it seems that something like that happened to Wenceslas. It seems that he started to be venerated quite early. And it's possible that one of the oldest legends was written in the following decade.

And at least since 960s, we have quite a lot of legends written in Latin, as was usual in that time, and in Old Church Slavic, which was not that usual, but that's in Anglo-Saxon England, the vernacular language was a firm part of the literacy, so it was similar in Bohemia in the same time. And so it seems he became signed quite soon, and it might be it was with the support of his brother and mother who had seen in it also an opportunity to use the fame of his brother to strengthen his own principality. That's interesting, isn't it? Because these things are very much used and manipulated, aren't they? And in fact, there's a bit of a cult springing up around him and it spread

away from Bohemia as well, didn't it? Well, it seems that some of the texts were written in Bohemia, but it also seems that many of the copies of those texts, or most of them until the end of the 12th century, were made in today's Austria. For example, I've tracked those manuscripts and paradoxically they are more from the neighbouring regions than from Bohemia. It depends on the level of literacy in Bohemia, which was quite low until the beginning of the 14th century, I'd say.

And one of the things that's often written about him and that he's sort of famous for is that he had this great piety. He was a very righteous king. Do we know if that was actually true, if that was real, or was that something that sort of later legends really ascribed to him? In many aspects, the time when St. Vincis last lived was revolutionary. We have heard that the Carolingians, who ruled for two centuries, most of the Europe, were replaced in many regions. But the royal anointing I mentioned was slowly introduced.

And they also tried to think what to do with the holy men and women who were not directly related to the church, because most of the saints were bishops and monks and since the century you had some kings especially in England which were somehow related to conversion and you have to think how to style them to make them proper holy men. You often borrowed some elements from the holy bishops and from the monks, and you somehow puzzled it together, and you created a kind of collage which seemed believable and useful, let's say, because those texts about the signs were not written just propagating cult

of one holy man or holy woman, but they also taught people how to behave. They presented an ideal of the person, the best king ever you could have imagined, or the best bishop you could have imagined. In the case of St. Wenceslas, it was a mixture of different ideas of the Holy King who takes care about his retinue, who provides it with the ruptures that's written in the legends, who is also a successful warrior. Again, that's word by word in the legend, but who also was a pious man who made a penance even if he wore princely clothes, but under that rough clothes that helped him to make a penance.

And how about in the Czech Republic? What sort of reputational legacy has he left there? Is he a bit of a hero? Is he very well known? Or how is he seen there today? known or how is he seen there today? He's definitely very well known because his statue you would find in St. Wenceslas Square, center of historical Prague, where many things happen. For example, it's closely related with Velvet Revolution. Several times, it's a kind of assembly place where the people gather when something important happened, change of the regime, or we won the Olympic Games in hockey, or that kind of stuff. But his legacy is quite complex. Some people think about him in those historical categories. Some people insist that, okay, he paid the tributes to those bad Germans.

We have difficult history with Germany. So he was a traitor and we don't like him, which is nonsense. Because first there were no Germans in 10th century. It's too early. There were Saxons and Bavarians and Swabians. and Swabians. The only argument that supports that vision is the fact that Nazi regime used the symbol of St. Wenceslas when they came to the Czech lands in 1939. They introduced a medal of St. Wenceslas and they used them for those people who supported their regime. So that's the bad thing for St. Wenceslas' fame. But what's interesting is the fact that St. Wenceslas

could have somehow united the people in Bohemia despite the language differences. Because Bohemia in the past was inhabited by Czech-speaking people, Slavic-speaking people, but it was also inhabited by a large German minority. There were about 10 million Czech-speaking people, but more than 3 million German-speaking people. And for both of these communities, St. Wenceslas was an important figure. So when there was a celebration of a thousand years from St. Wenceslas' martyr, it helped to unite both of these elements because they both celebrated it together. It was probably the last moment when they did. So yes, St. Wenceslas

is still important. He started to be important in the 10th century and the continuity we can follow upl princes see themselves as stewards of St. Wenceslas, who do not have the rule on their own, but who receive it from St. Wenceslas and from God. So he was a mediator between the dynasty and God. And Charles IV, emperor and king of Bohemia, And Charles IV, emperor and king of Bohemia, when he created a coronation ritual, he decided that the crown of Bohemia, St. Wenceslas' crown, will be put on his head just during that coronation. But that crown will be stored in St. Wenceslas' and St. Adalbert's cathedral. St. Wenceslas and St. Adalbert Cathedral. St. Wenceslas had a great importance throughout the Bohemian history for now nearly a millennium. Fantastic. So actually really quite a lot more to him than I think we might try and squeeze out of that Christmas carol. That's fantastic. Yes. David, thank you so much. That's been really fascinating. And I'm definitely not going to

listen to that in the same way again. I really appreciate your coming in and sharing that with us. Thank you. And a nice Christmas to you and to your audience and have a great time. Thank you. And same to you as well. So that brings us nicely to the end of this episode. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman and this has been an episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget to subscribe to the end of this episode. I'm Dr Kat Jarman and this has been an episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. Do feel free to leave us a little review wherever you get your podcast. It really helps other people find the podcast.

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