The Quest for a Symbol — Wenceslas and the Czech State

Abstract

Few states can look back on a continuity of such personified state symbolism as the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, now the Czech Republic: Wenceslas (Vâclav/Wenzel) was looked upon since the eleventh century as protectorin-battle, an eternal ruler, and a symbol of the Bohemian state.¹ The Bohemian prince Wenceslas urged the spreading of the Christian faith in the tenth century and defended his country against invasions by the Bavarians in 922.² He became a martyr on 28 September 929 (or 935), when he was slain in a clash with his conspiring brother Boleslav at Starâ Boleslav (Altbunzlau). In the background of this bloody conflict apparently stood both the forced conversion to Christianity and Wenceslas’s readiness to submit to the rule of the Saxon kings in 929, paying a tribute of 500 pounds in silver and 120 oxen. It is the fratricidal Boleslav, who successfully ruled the country for over 30 years, who went down in history as the real founder of the state. Historically, Wenceslas can only boast of having converted to Christianity nothing more than his small territory, and of a limited knowledge of Latin. But ever since the tenth century, he has been venerated as a martyr and, as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, he has been revered as a most powerful ruler. His vita was first written in the tenth century both in Old Church Slavonic and Latin (commissioned by Emperor Otto II). Although there is little historical evidence to support this joined Slav and German tradition of worship, Wenceslas’s cult continued unbroken until after 1945.