Pagan priests and competing Christian traditions vie with each other in a brutal world of warring tribes as rulers face their own personal and spiritual challenges.
The Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" is beloved throughout the English-speaking world, but the true story of Saint Wenceslas is tragic—a tale of jealousy and murder, loyalty and betrayal, and mankind's universal need for spirituality.
Journey with the characters in this epic adventure through holy glades and along roads that lead to the ends of the earth. Witness works of the patron saints of millions, and the ancestors—blessed and damned—of Europe's greatest families.
Based on years of research, the author weaves a fact- and legend-based saga of a primitive land in the throes of becoming Christian, as it struggles to awaken from a dark age.
Pagan priests and competing Christian traditions vie with each other in a brutal world of warring tribes as rulers face their own personal and spiritual challenges.
The Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" is beloved throughout the English-speaking world, but the true story of Saint Wenceslas is tragic—a tale of jealousy and murder, loyalty and betrayal, and mankind's universal need for spirituality.
Journey with the characters in this epic adventure through holy glades and along roads that lead to the ends of the earth. Witness works of the patron saints of millions, and the ancestors—blessed and damned—of Europe's greatest families.
Based on years of research, the author weaves a fact- and legend-based saga of a primitive land in the throes of becoming Christian, as it struggles to awaken from a dark age.
He Named Me Dreadful
I write this record six years after the meeting I herein describe. I am older now, and can see more clearly. Long years of study are ahead of me, yet I must take time to document these days of my youth when my father told me the reason for my life’s mission, and to reflect on faith, love, justice, and duty.
***
In the cold winter of the year of our Lord 947, I was called to meet with my father before my journey from our capital of Prague to the Church center of Regensburg. I had been raised in a different town, where I was tutored by a Christian priest to dedicate my life to Godly work. And I was to continue learning the ways of the Faith, my letters, and how better to pray—especially for Father.
His summons filled me with apprehension. I had heard dark whispers of his youth.
My father is Boleslav, Duke of all Bohemia, ancient land of the Czech people. He strove to live a Godly life, and still continues to, but in his anguish and despair he was given to excesses and, in his soul’s agony, drank more from his winecup than he should.
He was tortured in his heart and soul despite years of good works to establish churches and monasteries all over Bohemia. He feared when he died he would never see Heaven. He told me he needed my prayers to help him enter that blessed land when his time on earth was done.
I lived at the castle of Tetín with my mother, where my grandmother Ludmila had lived, and where she died. My visit to Castle Prague would be our final meeting before my journey to continue my education, and eventual consecration in the Church. I expected the duke’s kind blessing, but he gave me something else.
***
Winter had come on our land, and the dark, early days of the year were upon us. I set out at first light with two servants and a horse loaded with my books, my traveling goods, letters and funds.
The ground was frozen, and all was still on the evening we arrived at Hrad Prague. Lights in the castle shone from the windows on the evening we arrived and were visible from the city. Our horses carefully climbed the icy street, and we walked through the gates into the home of my father.
The house servants welcomed us from the cold into the somewhat warmer castle. I was fed in the warm kitchen, and I was shown my room. My serving man and the groom were sent to eat with the palace servants and would sleep in the stable. We would stay at the hrad for three nights before beginning our journey to the lands of the Franks. I was eager to see the city of Regensburg, but I knew the journey would be cold and unpleasant.
My older brother, named after our father, greeted me when I entered, and we shared a brief conversation. He was entering his prime years now and had a fine beard. My brother would become duke in his time, when Father died. He would become Boleslav II. His words to me were courteous, yet he seemed more stern than I remembered him, and his eyes peered into mine in curious inquiry. He put his hand on my head, gently and firmly, as if to show he was stronger and taller. And he wore a large knife on his belt.
Father’s page Tira came for me. He was a serious man, about Father’s age or a little older.
Young Boleslav turned to leave, and after two steps paused and gave a brief backward glance at me.
***
Tira led me to the main hall where Father was conferring with counselors and clerics. Candles and an oil lamp lit the room. The men sat by the fire discussing the land’s business. Father’s fur robes were folded back over his chair, not needed in the room’s warmth. His small dog was curled in his lap.
Father saw me and waved me over. He looked tired and worn. He was in his thirty-eighth year, the twelfth of his rule, and his face was still firm, if lined with care. His beard was streaked with gray, and he still had most of his teeth. I expected that I would look much like him twenty-six years later.
He told his counselors to leave. My audience was to be private. Old Tira gave me a wan smile as he left. I did not feel at ease in the duke's presence.
This evening he had not yet drunk much, and his mood was somber. He directed me to a place by the fire and had me sit. After a draw from his flagon, he spoke to me.
“Hello, Dreadful Feast,” he said.
He had not called me that name in years. I felt the hair rise on my neck.
I am called Kristián now.
“I want to speak with you before you begin your journey. We are denied any future we can see, and for all we know, we may not meet again in this world.”
This was an ominous greeting.
I sat before him. His small dog leapt from his lap and sniffed my hand.
“I gave you the name ‘Dreadful Feast’ twelve years ago because of an old custom: ‘Give a child a false name so a demon won’t find him.’ I hope no demon finds you. Demons certainly found me.” He paused and sipped from his cup.
“Sometimes I am sorry I named you that, but in another way I am glad I did. It minds me of my sins. We all call you ‘Kristián’ now, because you must be more Christian than all of us. Especially more than I. But never forget your original name!
“It is time I told you why I named you that.”
He set his flagon on the table near his hand, and when a slave had fed the fire behind him, he turned his head and gazed into the embers. His right hand rested on his breast, over his heart.
He recited a few lines from a psalm he had memorized as a child:
“Sins of my youth remember not,
Neither my trespasses…”
He glanced again into the glowing coals.
“I want you to know your ancestry, and how we came to be leaders of the Czechs, of our land of Bohemia. In some future time, our blood may grow great beyond this land.
“I will be frank with you, because you must grasp the complete tale of how I came to my distress. If you know all, you can better intercede for me, with God.
“I will be honest.
“You will not like much of what you hear.”
So began his tale, and in it he bared his life to me. He spoke as if I were a priestly confessor instead of his twelve-year-old son. I did not interrupt my father’s story, even when his words were disturbing.
Though I was in awe of him, the life task he placed on me was to save his soul from Hell. He began to tell me why.
**—*****—**
Kristián my son, I became duke when my older brother Václav died, who some now call by a Latinized name, “Wenceslas.” The tale of his death is bound up with your name. My mother’s tale is bound up in me, and my grandmother’s too. We are all the sums of our fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers, and of the very earth itself.
We do not choose our ancestors, our families, nor the land where we are born. Ours is a wonderful land. Never doubt it.
I have finally learned I can choose my friends. Perhaps I learned too late, or almost too late. History will decide. Choose your friends well!
I know you have spent your childhood learning the ways of the Church. I can’t tell you our entire history, but I’ll tell you a bit of it. All that has happened before was told to us by our forbearers, from what was spoken to them. What happens now, and after, may be written for all time. Our generations are on the edge of history.
When I look back on my life, I wonder what it was for. Is it the lot of a man to do what he must to overcome others in the world or perhaps to just survive? Some say we are set on earth with a purpose, to help our fellow man. That’s what my brother thought, what he taught our people.
His final act was to teach me that as he died. I took up his purpose to bring Christianity to this land.
As duke, or king, or ruler, my days may be ended at any time, by blade or poison, disease, or something unknown. God may just call me home. So, sit here with me, Son, and hold my little dog, Mazel. I named him because he likes to cuddle.
I had a different sort of education than you. Much different.
***
They told me I was born in mid-winter, the year after the great invasion by the Magyars. They didn’t invade us here in Prague because my father’s king was already paying tribute to their king, as we were invaded before and had to make peace. But the Frankish kingdom hadn’t been invaded in a long time, and they were surprised. The forces of their Christian god were no match for those horse-riding pagans.
We had our own gods then, different from those the Magyars worshipped, but more like them than the god the German-speaking Franks were forcing on us. The same Christian god Who I build churches for now.
The Franks to our north and west had long pressed us here in Bohemia and sent armies against us and the rest of the Kingdom of Great Moravia. We could hold them off sometimes and even raid their lands. But those Magyars with their far-shooting bows didn’t fight like Franks. Unlike them, the Magyars were lightly armed and moved quickly. They ruined the strength of the Franks at the Battle of Lechfeld by fooling the Franks into chasing them into ambush, where the might of the Franks was destroyed. Then the Magyars rampaged for weeks, far into Frankish lands before returning to their home country.
There was lots of raiding in those years, by Franks, Magyars, Varangians, and by other Slavic tribes like our own Czech people. Things are peaceful now, though we must pay tribute to the Franks. Our part of the Moravian kingdom was at peace then, though impoverished by payments to the Magyars. And so, that’s the world I was born into.
I was named Boleslav, which means “Greater Glory.” My older brother was named Václav, born three years earlier, whose name also means “Greater Glory.” I used to wonder which of us was to be greater.
Oh, I know.
I want to share with you the foundation of our story. You may know some of it from your Frankish tutor, but you should get a Czech view of it.
Our lands first became Christian when my grandfather, twenty-two years old and in the prime of his manhood, journeyed with his escort to visit the Moravian king. The new king of Great Moravia held a banquet and invited all his vassal dukes, including Grandfather, a royal descendant of our humble ancestor Přemysl the Plowman.
The Christian faith had come to our land centuries before with Irish and English missionaries, but people mostly ignored it and kept to their older religion, the one I was raised in. We worshipped mighty Svantovít and the other gods. The kings of the Franks along with their church bishops sought to gain greater power over us and sent their Christian missionaries to convert us.
The Frankish priests spoke their German language among themselves. They told our people we must obey their new Christian rules because it was the Word of God, and they condemned those who disobeyed to Hell. They could describe Hell in German and in our language. That was no problem for them.
We Czechs have always been reluctant to give others power over us, and our Moravian king petitioned the Church of Rome for a bishop who was not under Frankish control. He was refused. Then he sent to the Eastern Church in Constantinople to ask the Greek Christian Church for help. There had been increasing friction between Constantinople and Rome for decades, and the Church of Christ was in the throes of an irreversible split.
The prelate of that church, the old empire of the Caesars, was head of the Christian church in Constantinople. He set in play a miracle still living today, which may continue for a thousand generations.
The Byzantine Empire’s lands included those with a language similar to ours and other Slavic peoples. Two brothers, proven missionaries, had grown up in a city at the northern edge of their empire, bordering on Slavonic speaking lands. They were Greek speakers themselves, but many in their town spoke a Slavic tongue, and the brothers leaned both languages.
The brothers were sent to Great Moravia, and they took with them the Gospels, written in Greek.
There was no written alphabet for any Slavic language. The brother we know as Cyril developed writing for the Slavic peoples by adapting the Greek phonetic alphabet to our language, adding new letters where Greek ones did not approximate sounds we use. The brothers translated the Gospels and the Psalms into writing in our tongue, the first such written language for uncounted thousands of Slavic peoples. Their alphabet for our language or ones based on it is now used in many nations.
Inventing a way for people to read the Bible for themselves did not please the Frankish priests. People who could read would understand the holy words from more than eight hundred years ago and learn their meaning, without foreign priests translating for them just bits they wanted them to hear—the very words of Christ Himself.
This creation of Cyril helped us and other nations begin a written literature and to share ideas, to become more modern. Before this, our non-Christian priests used only runes and symbols for their magic and worship. Now, those who learned to read could study the Bible, and could write their thoughts in our own language.
Well, my grandfather the duke, your great-grandfather, arrived at the Moravian king’s capital and was invited to dine. In the hall, the king and his court were seated at a table, but the Bohemians were directed to sit on the floor.
The king told the duke that custom—apparently a new custom—was for Christians to eat at the table and non-Christians—pagans, as they called our people—must eat on the floor. The duke protested this, and the brother of Cyril, the blessed Saint Methodius himself who was attending, felt pity for him, or perhaps opportunity. He came to speak to the duke and explained the difference between Christians and pagans—more than just where we eat!
The duke asked why he could not become Christian. Methodius told him nothing stood in his way, and he must accept the message of Christ with his whole heart. The next day Grandfather and his thirty-man escort undertook the ritual of fasting, heard the Gospels, and he and his men were baptized into the new faith.
Grandfather brought that Christian faith back to Prague. His wife, my grandmother Ludmila, was baptized some months later by Svatý Methodius.
Grandfather and Grandmother saw the power of the new religion and the benefits it would bring our people. It meant giving some power to whatever Eastern bishop would be over our church, which would not be the Frankish bishop. But it also meant closer relations to a great nation, one with wider trade, with inventions and advantages we did not have here.
Grandfather and Grandmother Ludmila became enthusiastic missionaries of Christianity to the people of Czech. In a passion they rushed to bring people of our lands into the new faith. They started the work of converting people, and they destroyed statues and shrines of the old gods. Many were not pleased. A big change is a shock to people, and they weren’t ready to throw out all their beliefs for a new and foreign religion.
The people of Bohemia revolted and drove the duke and Grandmother away to the court of the Moravian king. The people chose another to reign, a cousin of Grandfather’s, but he ruled by whim and was too harsh. They put him out and brought back Grandfather and Grandmother Ludmila with the understanding they should be more gentle regarding the people’s old religion. My grandparents then ruled more wisely; they slowly brought forth Christian beliefs. But there was no stopping the changes for the people of Bohemia. A religion of written scripture has great power.
When the Frankish king saw the influence of Constantinople’s missionaries among the people of Moravia, he deposed and killed the Moravian king. He put a relative of the dead king on the throne, who promised to more closely follow Frankish commands.
Killing and replacing a country’s leader is sort of a tradition in this part of the world. Oh, probably everywhere else, too. That act eventually shattered what power Moravia had and forced Bohemia to stand up as an independent duchy. We now rely on our own strength and alliances to defend ourselves.
Here in Prague, the Franks drove out priests of the Greek church and made the Roman church dominant among the converted. The most able of the ousted clerics emigrated to the land of Bulgars, where they were welcomed. They spread their version of Eastern Christianity and their alphabet to other Slavic tribes, to the Rus and beyond. From that time forward in Bohemia the Czechs worshipped in the rites of the Roman church, though many read the Slavonic Gospel translations of Cyril.
Kristián, I am telling you this background so you will see the tensions that gripped this land. The land I am shaping into a modern nation must withstand the challenges all rulers must face. Your brother must hold this land someday.
My grandfather continued his work preparing for defense of our lands. He helped Ludmila found churches and schools to spread the Word, still using the Slavonic translations of Methodius and Cyril, which the Church in Rome recognizes as one of its ecumenical languages.
My grandparents’ marriage was a good one. When Grandfather became a Christian, Grandmother Ludmila took to the new religion with a passion. She saw the appeal of the religion, its order, and its message of peace and love. And it has a nice story behind it, at least in the Gospels.
This is the greatest reason the religion was successful. Its principal message of love and forgiveness is what most people want.
Ludmila was a pious student of the Bible and the message of Christ Jesus. She was active in other fields as well.
Our Czech land is mostly forested, with scattered towns and small clearings where people tend their barley, millet, beets, wheat, poppies, flax. I’m sure you have seen some of that. Our land makes lots of honey, too. Ludmila learned of new crops and shared them with the people. She encouraged the tending of fruit trees and all manner of beneficial crops. It was as if Ludmila embodied the person of Kazi, one of the three daughters of Krok of generations before, with her ancient knowledge of plants, trees, and herbs.
Some people in the towns converted to Christianity, some pretended to because it pleased my grandparents. But the people weren’t pleased with new rules that came with the faith. Many still kept more than one wife, and worshipped their traditional gods deep in the woods. They would feign Christianity in the towns, but still gather beneath holy Linden trees and Oaks in sacred groves to burn sacrifices and sing hymns to the old gods. In hallowed clearings in the wild forests they would dance the kolo and freely share their bodies with each other. They made sacrifices and fires, and prayed and practiced magic. They sang hymns to gods and goddesses who lived in the sky and forests and rivers and mountains.
The pagan priests were important, and not just for soothing people afflicted by a god’s displeasure or someone’s curse. For important services, the priest sacrificed wild boars at holy springs, or at the junction of rivers to let the blood mix with the water to bless it. At harvest they put food about the foot of the image of their god Svantovít and filled his horn with mead. The god was sometimes portrayed with multiple heads to show his different powers, and that he is ever watchful.
If the honey wine in his cup lasted for several days, they believed the next year would have good harvests.
The people built bonfires and danced in a circle around it in celebrations for the goddess of fertility. They lusted in dales and hollows and practiced ancestral magic, and they reveled and sang.
Another pagan custom is at the death of a man, his body is burned on a great pyre. The fire’s ashes and smoke mixes with his as it rises to the moon and stars—where all properly burnt souls go to live forever in the sky. As Christians people learned to bury their dead, though some still wanted to crush their skulls. Dead bodies that weren’t burned could retain their souls and walk again without this precaution, or so the old customs said.
Many in our land held on to habits of our ancestors even as we were being drawn into the demanding influence of Christendom, with its promises of glory, a message of peace, rules for good behavior—and with a firm hand from the Frankish priests.
When the duke finally died, his eldest son took the throne, and when he died without heirs, the ducal throne fell to his younger brother, my father. He was already married to Mother, a princess of a tribe of Slavs to the north. Her name was Dragomira.
Father was given the haircutting ceremony, shown the work boots of our ancestor Přemysl the Farmer, and was invested as duke.
Dragomira means, well, peace and love, or “love of peace.” She didn’t, though. Our household was not peaceful.
Mother beat the servants, including my wetnurse Saskia. I always saw scars on her shoulders while she was nursing me. Mother had her nurse me past what most mothers do. She made her feed me her body’s milk until my ninth year—and then later once more...
Mother held absolute control over Saskia, and used her and others to control me. Eventually, I committed the act that made me name you, my son, my unblemished, blessed and cursed son, “Strachkvas,” or “Dreadful Feast,” to remind me of my heinous sin.
But I don’t call you that now. I call you “Kristián.”
Call a servant to refill my cup. I want to tell you more.
*—***—*
My father turned back to the fire as I stood up. The little dog followed me to the door, where a maidservant was waiting. I gave her the duke’s order, and she left for the kitchen.
I walked over to a window and looked out on the plaza.
The night was dark and cold beyond the castle walls. In the distance, a few bundled figures moved at the edge of the trees. They were shadows, black against a snowy starlit ground. I wondered if they were traveling toward their homes, or scavenging what they could find along the edge of the forest.
Some of the history that Father told me I had learned from my tutor, but my teacher is a Frank, and told me more about the German lands than my own. The legends of Czech and of Krok’s daughters are part of our land’s history, and Mother and her maids had told me those. I cared little about the politics of religion at my age then. There was peace, and I enjoyed it without knowing I should worry about it.
My older brother stayed with Father and was being groomed for rule. He learned swordcraft and Czech history. I studied Latin letters.
Before returning, I looked at Father sitting by the fire. His hand was rubbing his chest again, just over his heart. He gazed into the fire’s embers and seemed to ponder a memory, or perhaps the eternal punishment he feared.
The maid returned with a jug, and Mazel and I followed her back into my father’s company.
Father leaned back in the chair and straightened his shirt. He began more of his tale.
**—*****—**
Kristián, my grandmother Ludmila saw the draw of Christ’s words, a message that could lead the entire world of humanity to peace and love. I think she was innocent and naïve enough to believe it.
My elder brother Václav, heir to the Czech lands, was born at the ancient castle Hrad Stochov near Libušín, where our ancestors ruled in ages past. While he was still very young, Mother took him to visit Grandmother Ludmila at her castle of Hrad Tetín, where Ludmila had planted trees. One oak is said to have been watered with by brother’s bathwater. I’m sure you have seen it. It’s large, and growing vigorously.
Father was called “duke,” but to all purposes he was king. The ruler of Great Moravia, of which Bohemia was a part, was weak.
When Father married Dragomira, she converted to Christianity—or told Father she had. But Mother was not a Christian.
One thing Mother hated about the Christian religion was Jesus wanted people to be peaceful, to show love to everyone. She believed peaceful people could not survive in the world. She also saw it as a way for outside prelates to have control over our people, which it surely is.
The new religion has rules and beliefs our old religion does not have, such as a man should keep only one woman as a wife. The act of physical intercourse is itself sinful under most conditions, and we are born sinful and must ask the Church for forgiveness and salvation. So by adopting the Christian religion, our children are already obligated to the Church at birth! I am not sure I believe that. I have known sinless children who did not know Christ.
Christians say there is only one god, not many, though God has three parts. I still don’t quite understand that part of it. They say the world was created over a period of several days, not all at once. They tell the people when a man dies, his soul and all feeling leave the body upon death and don’t linger there, or at least not long. These are some differences, and many did not want to change from the ways of our fathers. And accepting Christianity includes the belief in damnation.
The new religion was all written down and confirmed through the Church’s hierarchy. The old religion had only symbols, runes interpreted by priests who could bend them to say anything. That happens with Christian priests, too, but if one can read, you can always go back to the words in the Book.
Václav learned to read young. I never really did. I have a clerk tell me what the marks mean in documents I receive or must sign.
The holy books of the Frankish Christian religion are written in Latin, a language unintelligible to common people. They had to rely on Frankish priests to interpret the new rules of Christianity. Czechs speaking Slavonic must hear Germans interpret Latin translations of the original Greek and Hebrew. And of course, they interpreted them to support the Frankish laws.
Your uncle Václav learned his studies and languages, Latin and Greek, and how to read the alphabet given to us by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, so he could read the bible in our language. Those are holy words the Teacher spoke Himself, not interpreted by Frankish tools of empire, nor petty priests seeking dominance over sheepish people. They were words spoken by Jesus to his disciples and to the throngs in sermons he gave to common folk, and were meant for everyone. His actual words. Continue your studies, and read them yourself!
When I was an infant, my older brother Václav was already beginning to learn his letters, and was learning his Christian catechism too, in simple rhymes. Father was away at the wars again, and Václav often lived with Grandmother in her home in Tetín. When I was old enough, I sometimes visited. We spent weeks there, just a few hours’ ride south and west of Prague. I think Mother was glad to get us out of her house for a while.
Mother had a strong will. She was a daughter of an important chieftain, and she was married to my father to make an alliance between Bohemia and his tribe, even though she was about ten years his senior. When I married your mother, she was older than I was by more than that.
Raids from many competing tribes and kingdoms meant we had to form arrangements for mutual defense, and often ties of blood are the best way to secure bonds of mutual protection, if not friendship.
As I grew, I learned blood does not guarantee mutual protection, or even survival. Sometimes it just means blood. Oh, Kristián, I’ve seen too much of it!
When my father—who was a good Christian—and Mother married, she and her servants were baptized, and all wore a cross pendant when she thought they should. But she continued to meet with priests of Svantovít and with holy women in sacred groves near our castle. She often took me with her.
I learned of the god of light and thunder, Svantovít upon his white horse, and Veles, god of waters and cattle, of wealth. My friends and I watched their priests sacrifice wriggling pigs, and cast grain on waters where a stream joined the Vltava. We sang hymns while a priest burned sacred herbs to ensure a good harvest of honey. And we learned the other tales, about ogres and fairies, of tree spirits and about the Eternal Green Hunter Lord walking deep woods with his fang knife in his belt and his wolf-dog ranging about him.
Sometimes deep in the forest we even saw him, or believed we did.
Father ruled well, though not long enough. He built the Christian basilica in Prague and helped draw Bohemia away from the crumbling Great Moravian kingdom, now losing its power and land to outside attacks, and to the Franks. Father sought to bring unity to his realm.
Mother gave him six children, including Václav and myself.
Today many call Václav by the Latinized style of his name, “Wenceslas.” I wonder what they will call me after I’m gone.
Despite having children together, I don’t think Father much enjoyed being around Mother. She tried to command him—I guess because she was older and very strong willed. He was often away at war, or on diplomacy missions, or just staying at another home away from her.
When Father was home from other towns in our land or from the wars, Václav, hungry for knowledge, asked him for more books and for more instruction than Grandmother Ludmila and her priest could give. Václav seemed to want to learn everything about the world.
The wars seemed constant. Father’s name, Vratislav, means “Return with Glory,” a name he wanted to live up to. He continued the wars, defending and raiding against our enemies, until finally he was killed in battle. That meant my older brother Václav, raised largely by our Christian grandmother Ludmila, would become duke when he reached his majority. Unless he died.
***
As dowager widow of Grandfather, Grandmother Ludmila was known as “Christ’s Handmaiden,” because of all her good works. She still lived in the Tetín palace where she and Grandfather retired when my uncle assumed the throne. Her Christian priest ministered to her spiritual journey.
Grandmother spent much effort to bring new farming methods to our people. She brought new ways of making cheese, and spread viticulture to our lands for winemaking, where in the past people had drunk only mead and beer. She brought new varieties of wheat and other plants and flowers and trees.
When Václav was older, he traveled with her and helped plant vineyards. The vines would produce grapes and wine for future generations. They expanded cultivation of barley and hops.
Everyone spoke of how Václav loved learning, and how bright and kind he was, that he was such a beautiful child. I grew weary of hearing how wonderful my older brother was, and that I should be more like him.
He would be duke one day. I was the second son, so I would not.
In those days, Grandmother Ludmila’s home wasn’t called a “palace.” It was a simple wood and thatch house like everyone else’s, except it was on the hill above the town, and had a second story and many more rooms, some with whitewashed walls. When I became duke, I built the stone foundation castle we have today here in Prague.
It was a simpler time then. Simpler in many ways.
My beautiful older brother was favored, and was given lots of attention by our Grandmother Ludmila, whose name means “love of the people.” And she did love her people, and she loved Václav. And she loved me too, I suppose. But she took Václav to live with her.
She became an influence of Christian goodness on Václav, and he followed her example.
Grandmother taught me those ways as well when I was with her. We would go to her chapel and pray to God, and learn the Gospels and Psalms. Like Václav, I was baptized at birth and Grandmother ensured, when she was present, we both were brought up learning the words of Jesus and teachings of the Psalms and Gospels.
Václav’s first words were rhymes taught him by our Grandmother Ludmila, drawn from the Gospels and Psalms translated by our saints Methodius and Cyril.
One he taught me is:
“The Lord to me a Shepherd is, and want shall not I,
He in the folds of tender grass does make me down to lie.
To waters still He gently leads and restores my soul does He;
He does in paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake lead me.”
Grandmother had lots of those verses converted into rhyme for him to memorize. He taught me some of them. That was early though, before the great change in my childhood.
Of course, as princes we also had our martial studies, and we learned to ride and fight. I looked up to my brother, older and stronger than I was.
Our sisters were brought up differently than Václav and me. They were raised to become wives, to be married to future chiefs and leaders of tribes and countries, those the duke wanted to court for alliances. That is how Mother came to marry Father. Our youngest brother died as an infant, but my sisters were married off to dukes and lords to the east. This helped firm up alliances and trade, and I married your mother, who was a daughter of a noble from a tribe of Mělník.
Generations ago, girls grew up doing most everything men could do. They hunted, rode, plowed, and made decisions for their families. But some men, perhaps fearing weakness in themselves, thought women should act differently. Many women were not happy being ordered about by men.
Once some women took arms and rose up in war to drive away all the men around them, the “War of the Maidens.” They built a castle for themselves and lived in it, swearing oaths of loyalty to each other. Men marched to the castle and were driven off, but finally they stormed the castle and killed most of the women. They made the rest slaves and wives. Women have since remained enslaved in some way, and will always remain subservient to men, I suppose. Or they may rise again. Some have a nature that resists servility.
My Grandmother Ludmila was a remarkable woman, strong in her Christian way, a natural leader of people.
Mother Dragomira had a different sort of strength, and taught us other ways.
Unknown to Grandmother, when Václav was living with us, Mother took us to the ancient sacred glade in the forest where we joined services by the local priest, not a Christian. His name was Dušan, which means “Soul.” The Church calls these ceremonies “satanic,” but no, they were mostly peaceful and fun, with bonfires and circle dancing, songs and feasting, sometimes with sacrifices of chickens or goats, lambs or pigs.
Rites for the gods can make a big impression on a child. Mother knew this.
Václav went to these services with Mother and me, but he didn’t participate much. He held to Grandmother’s faith.
***
Václav continued to ask for books, and finally, at Mother’s urging, Father agreed to send Václav away to school at Budeč. There was a learned priest who would teach him the basics of letters in Latin, so he could better learn and share the ways of the greater world. There were few books in the translations of Cyril at the time. My brother became proficient in Greek as well, and continued his Bible studies in all three languages throughout his whole life.
Before he left, Grandmother Ludmila took him into Prague. Václav was about ten years old, and he told me of this day when I was older.
Grandmother and my brother walked by the Jewish quarter to where captured slaves were being bought and sold. A company of Magyar raiders had captured a village of heathen Poles near our borders. Every hut in their village was burned, and all livestock herded to villages and farms of the raiders. They completely eradicated the hamlet except for the blackened pits in the earth where their homes had been.
They led captives from the village to Prague. When prisoners are brought to our city, if they are not Christian, they are often sold at the slave market.
Václav and Grandmother watched the procession of women and children without passion.
These captives were not the duke’s subjects and there was no reason to deny the sales. They had been taken in a foreign land by other men, then brought here. All those sold at the market are pagan, though there are exceptions and lax enforcement, especially regarding peasants bound to the land. When a man’s property was appropriated or sold, those slaves went with it. Prague and the duke receive a bounty of gold and silver or other wealth from sales of slaves. So it is profitable, if not really a “good” business.
Kristián, this is my opinion. You will find others who believe holding people in slavery is good as the natural order.
Prague is known throughout the region for its slave market. Many Christians see these practices as brutal. The god Svantovít seems to approve.
Prague was nominally Christian then. Jews, Christians and Muslims, all members of Abrahamic faiths, generally keep no slaves who share those Old Testament traditions. Trading of pagan captives holds no such restrictions, and there has always been a demand for slaves. Christians and non-Christians buy them, and many are bought and sold for the rulers of Spanish Andalusia and Syria, followers of the prophet Mohammed.
Jewish traders have established routes of commerce all over the known world. They trade all manner of goods, including slaves. Prague is a stop on a branch of the Great Road leading from Europe to the ends of the earth, where people and animals are strange.
Several times, I saw very dark-skinned merchants from Spain or Venice. They choose from the captured fair-skinned boys and women those they bring back to Moorish masters.
There is something curious about male slaves wanted for the Spanish Caliphate of Cordoba, or Syria, or Egypt and other Mohammedan places. The emirs, princes, leading citizens and wealthy traders desire boys and young men who are altered so they cannot produce children, and so won’t strongly resist enslavement. Some captive boys are so completely castrated that they have no male organ left at all, and most of these do not survive the operation. But those who live fetch a premium price, higher than beautiful women.
In some households, if a slave takes up the religion of his master, he may be granted more rights than unbelieving slaves. Girls and women are sold for concubines and household servants. Many are eventually freed and continue to serve in faraway lands, and some marry and make a life. Some enslaved women bear children for their masters and are considered wives, and when the master dies, they have their freedom.
Of course, many of the male slaves cannot make children.
I sometimes wonder where we will find slaves, after all Slavs become Christian. There are still pagan folks in the far north of Finland, and lands of the Rus. Or perhaps they will be captured in strange lands far to the east, in India, or perhaps Africa far to the south.
Several boys between twelve and sixteen years old were sold as laboring slaves. Some captives were younger boys, pulled from the rest to be taken to the house of surgery where they would become eunuchs, and likely die.
Two boys who were only four years old looked exhausted, but still shocked by seeing their baby siblings, fathers and grandparents killed and their houses looted and burned, and their mothers and sisters roughly violated and taken away. They had no concept of what lay before them, and their tears were of helpless and childish ignorance.
The others were between seven and ten years old. These knew their world had ended. Most silently submitted and were led to the house of surgery, and likely death.
One seven-year-old, tall for his age, had a clear eye and a stronger heart, and looked about him to seek an escape. His captors had bound his hands and hobbled his ankles. There was no avoiding his doom.
Ludmila and Václav came to the line of prisoners and looked into the faces of the captives. Many women had seen their infant children killed. They had already been ravished and were resigned to whatever sad fate awaited them.
Lives of women have always been hard.
The girls of all ages would learn of life in faraway lands. They would learn a new language and skills, and live in Tunisia, or Syria, or with Spanish Moors. Many would produce children and leave a line of Slavic descent in the lands of Arabs. I hear of blue-eyed Egyptians descended from such unions.
The seven-year-old captive continued to seek escape, and he looked in to Václav’s eyes. The young duke pitied him.
Václav asked of Grandmother Ludmila, “Will you buy that child for me?” She assented and sent her young servant to approach one trader named Jakob. He and Grandmother had long known and respected each other. The servant carried some cloth squares of value Grandmother had given him. He handed one to Jakob with words from his mistress, and the purchase was made.
The other sons and daughters of former free peasants were now destined to live lives of service in distant palaces of kings.
***
They brought the purchased child to the castle, and Václav insisted he dine with them.
His name was Podiven, and he had never been in such a place: a house with more than one room, with candles and lamps, and a table meant only for eating. His language was rustic, and he had many different words and queer phrasing, but he could speak to be understood. In a nervous release of emotion he did speak.
He told of his village, named Dobra Wioska, “Good Village Home,” across mountains to the east, where his family had worshipped in the religion of Perun with their village priest. Raiders had attacked the village a year earlier. The people ran into the woods seeking shelter beneath sacred oaks and holy linden trees. They planned to return to their burned farms and rebuild, and await the next raid. They were not warriors, but simple herders seeking to live in peace in the world capricious gods had given them.
These people were not happy with the state of affairs. They wanted some protection, so they petitioned their rustic priest to use his magic to keep them safe. The priest wanted desperately to help his people. He went into the forest and prayed. The holy man burnt offerings and inhaled fumes of burning hemp. He brewed potions of henbane and belladonna, or whatever herbs those priests use to enter into the state where they can speak with gods.
Into the night he prayed and chanted and chewed henbane until he swooned. The priest experienced dreams, and his dreams told him what he must do. He traveled for most of a day to a town farther upriver, where he had a craftsman create amulets of lead and place in each a chip of a dark crystal. He brought them back to the village of Good Home.
The priest built a great fire in the holy place near the settlement and he spoke. He gave each household an amulet to hang over the threshold of their huts. Beneath each family’s threshold they buried a bitch with one of her puppies to represent continuation of life. The priest sang a hymn to Perun and assured the village each household so prepared would never suffer an enemy carrying a blade across the threshold. He told them to continue their sacrifices and prayers to the gods.
A few months later, raiders from a Magyar tribe rode their ponies into the village, and though the Magyars expected combat, each household withdrew into its hut and waited for the warriors to withdraw.
But they did not withdraw.
From house to house, the Magyars burst in and crossed the threshold with their swords. Men, old women and babies were killed. They raped young girls and fertile women, and then the females and young boys were bound and led to their camp. After two days, they came to Prague. So, Václav and Ludmila found Podiven and saved him from mutilating surgery and death—or if he was lucky, a vapid and wasted life.
The girls and young lost women—including the mother and sisters of Podiven—were sold into their own form of bondage and carried away to far lands.
You are young Kristián, and I know you have heard some of the world’s cruelty. There are always fresh horrors that will surprise you. They will throughout your life.
Our priest Dušan bought two older surviving boys of the burned village of Good Home, one with reddish hair and a single black eyebrow across his forehead. They were fed and taken to labor in the town’s iron works east of the city. It is hard and dangerous work, and many workers there do not live long, though some do.
Václav asked Podiven if he had heard the message of Jesus or knew anything of Christianity. The child was ignorant, so Václav, under the approving watch of Grandmother Ludmila, told him of Jesus, quoting, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” He shared the Word with him, and told him the sorcery of pagan priests meant nothing, as was proven in the house of Podiven’s own father.
Podiven had seen what putting faith in amulets of pagan gods could lead to. So, he accepted the teachings of Christ the Savior from the mouths of his own personal saviors and became wholly Christian. He was baptized and dedicated his young life to serve Ludmila and to her grandson Václav, and to their faith.
Podiven grew to be a strong young man, taller than most, the loyal page of Václav. Later in his life, he traveled with him and helped him in his missions. He served his lord even after Václav‘s death, as I will tell you later.
So, Václav with his servant Podiven went away to his education, accompanied by a learned priest and two of the duke’s men-at-arms. They went to Budeč to learn the ways of the world and those of heaven.
I would not see him again for more than three years.
I stayed with Mother. And Mother had plans.
*—***—*
Father stood and told me that was the end of the night’s history. He called a serving man to take me back down the dark hall to my room.
An elderly servant lighted my way to my chamber, next to my older brother’s. It was about four paces long, about three wide, stone walls, with rushes on the floor and a platform cradling a straw-stuffed mat. The room was dark of course, but the servant lit a candle on a small shelf. I now had enough light to practice reading some Beatitudes after my prayers. I was still learning my Latin letters, though I could read them in Slavonic quite well by then. Latin letters are replacing Cyril’s Slavonic alphabet in Bohemia.
Whenever I prayed, I always ended beseeching God to love Father and grant him mercy. I’ve been taught to do it since I could speak, and in the next days at Hrad Prague, Father told me why.
I lay down, and before I closed my eyes, I heard the door to my chamber latch from the outside.
I was locked in the room.
I had no fear of enemies there. If Father had enemies, I expected they would make a lot of noise before I was in any danger, and the house was full of his servants and retainers. Father’s page Tira, even at his age, looked like a worthy fighter and would defend his duke well, and there were other men within the castle walls.
Perhaps someone might think of me as a threat? I was twelve years old and not to my full height yet. My traveling companions were sleeping, separate from me. Strong and armed as the two men were, there were many more serving the duke in his home.
Father told me something of the brutality of our world that night, and would tell me more in the coming days. But I believed the influence of the Church and the words of Jesus would temper the cruelty of mankind.
At least I did at the time.
So I lay inside my dark locked chamber, bundled against the cold. I was tired from my travels and Father’s histories. I slept, and escaped from tales of burning villages and mutilated boys.
***
The next morning, I awakened at the sound of the latch being lifted from my door. A serving woman carrying a candle on her tray brought me cheese, bread with honey, fruit, and warm, watered wine.
She was an older woman, probably more than three decades old, and used to palace service. Her long hair was graying in streaks, and she wore a simple kitchen dress and apron, not fine clothing like Father’s or my brother’s, or even Tira’s. No doubt she had her own history to tell, perhaps serving visitors in this very room in several ways, though I did not ask and she did not volunteer.
I mentioned to her the latch, and she nodded. She said, “Your brother, young Boleslav, he knows your father’s story and is not taking risks.” I had not yet heard the tale of how a younger brother might behave to a duke’s heir.
When I finished eating, Tira came to the door and told me my father would see me when he was done with his council, before noon.
Tira was a serious man, lean and quiet. He wore a dirk at all times, and I noticed a chain vest beneath his tunic that bore the mark of a duke’s page.
So I cleaned myself and prayed, then went to his hall’s entrance. I waited until Father sent away his men. He waved me to my chair of last night, and the little dog Mazel sniffed my hand. He jumped into my lap, giving us both some warmth in the drafty room.
The duke took up his story where he left it the night before.
I wasn't sure what to expect of The Good King by George W.B. Scott when I first came across the novel, but after reading it, I am so happy that I decided to read it. I wasn't familiar with the legend of the Good King Wenceslas, so this novel was my introduction to it, and the author did a good job when it came to keeping my attention.
Furthermore, I am known for struggling with books written from the first-person point of view, but Scott's writing kept me intrigued from beginning to end. I love finding novels like this, especially within this genre that I love so much. This book is truly a hidden gem in the genre, and if you are anything like me and have no knowledge of the story behind the Christmas Carol, I urge you to read this novel. It is genuinely interesting and, as I previously mentioned, well written. Something else that I loved about this novel is that it introduced me to Bohemia (an area in Central Europe in what is now the Czech Republic) in the 10th Century. I don't know much about that subject, and this novel got me intrigued. I want to learn more about 10th-century Bohemia. Not only that, but I want to learn more about the characters in this novel. It's safe to say that this novel spoke to the historian in me.
As I mentioned before, I am not familiar with the history, but from the little research I've done since finishing this novel, I can say that George W.B. Scott did a great job when it came to researching the true story of Wenceslas, and I love that. If you are a fan of the genre, add this book to your To-Be-Read List, and even if you are not that into historical fiction, The Good King by George W.B. Scott gives us an insight into a famous Christmas carol.