The story of St Wenceslaus, patron saint of Prague and of the Czech lands as a whole, is one of the stories I am beginning to get a hold of. I have neither read nor watched Game of Thrones, but I understand the fascination with medieval power struggles, and as with all other stories, it is the story itself that carries the quality, not its historical accuracy.
St Wenceslaus’ father was a king. His grandmother and grandfather had converted to Christianity and were baptized by the two important missionaries who came to Bohemia at the end of the first millennium to these “Czech lands,” as they are called in English, the area where Czech language and culture have their roots. Was there a state called the Czech Republic that Wenceslaus’ father was king of? Probably not.
Incidentally, Wenceslaus is called something much simpler in Czech. This long version, which is impossible to guess how to pronounce, must be a Christian version of the Czech Václav, with a long “a” and an “s-sounding c.” That certainly does not tie any knots!
So let us just call him Václav the Good. Like all other legendary figures from the early Middle Ages, he has a byname for identification, and this Václav is, then, the good one.
But in contrast to whom?
The legend says he was killed by his brother, who quite fittingly gets the byname the Bad. That settles things neatly. But perhaps there was other forms of evil at play in Václav’s life story.
His father is a king, and his grandfather was a king. His paternal grandparents are part of the European power elite, having converted to the great religion spreading with the Roman Empire. Charlemagne has converted and is crowned emperor in 800 in Aachen (arguably the most beautiful cathedral in the world, overlooked and truly remarkable), and these grandparents are only a generation later.
When Václav’s father dies, his grandmother becomes regent. Throughout his life she has been positioning him for the role, but he is too young, only thirteen years old. He is still studying, and on his grandmother Ludmilla’s initiative he has received the finest education, and he is not finished. His mother, Drahomá, on the other hand, is somewhat tired of the snobbery. A moment ago she was queen, a title she converted to Christianity to obtain, and now her mother-in-law has not only taken the attention and power; she also has full control over the boy’s upbringing.
Tired of it all, Drahomá hires an assassin and has Ludmilla killed; she is strangled with her own veil, in her holiness, her elevation, her distance? The symbol is strong, to be strangled by the veil, and the conflict is fundamental between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, the boundless, all-consuming, unconditional love for child and grandchild, and the struggle for royal power. All the themes are present in the story of Václav’s path to power.
Drahomá takes power after her mother-in-law, becomes queen, and drives the Christian upper class away, so that when Václav is eighteen, his mother is sent into exile after the remaining Christian princes unite against her.
Does Václav ever truly become king? It is somewhat difficult to grasp, and perhaps not essential to the story. It continues with pressure from the Franks, from the Magyars, from the Saxons; with alliances and attacks, intrigues and wars, back and forth. What matters, I think, is that Václav gathers what was scattered, creates a form of governance that unites the Czech rulers, and strengthens Christianity and thereby also the intellectual community, introducing Latin and German as both language and church tradition.
In one of the aftermaths, one of the conflicts, Václav is killed at a feast. By his brother. Boleslav the Bad conspires with some slighted princes who attack Václav, who according to the legend receives the fatal spear thrust from his own brother. Perhaps the stories have been shaped in honor of archetypes; it is the ultimate betrayal.
And what are we to do with that? Kings, mothers, veils, castles, lances, killings, and queens in the early Middle Ages are material for legends, stories, drawings, novels, and yes, TV series I do not feel like watching. I look out the window at a morning runner with a swinging ponytail and think about how, at the end of September, one of the church’s men takes Václav’s skull out of a box or a reliquary; wrapped in a veil it is carried on a cushion through the streets of Prague so everyone can see it. Held up. Held sacred.
It does not matter whose skull it actually is, it does not matter whether the stories are historically accurate. What matters is that these stories lie in the very foundation of the city. An early morning walk across Charles Bridge will lead from the medieval center to almost the last statue on the left side, of Václav with his hat, standing with folded hands and looking toward the sky, the symbol of a humble and holy man. A patron saint who holds his hand over the city in which modern Czechs go for their morning run.
One can make countless interpretations.
The legend continues with heroic stories of religious and symbolic meaning: angels appear on each side of Václav on horseback on a battlefield and call out to the opponent to withdraw, and the story that he rose from his bed every night to wander among the city’s churches to give alms to widows, orphans, the sick, and the poor was later ratified by the pope as historical truth.
I love Catholic truths.
They are completely in line with my favorite quote about stories from The Name of the Wind: “All stories are true, but this one really happened, if that is what you mean.”
The story of Václav as the king who is just and knowledgeable, who has God on his side, is flanked by angels on the battlefield, and walks barefoot for those in need at night, is the story of the king we all need.
That is why Václav sits on horseback in front of the National Museum and is understood as the most important medieval king of Bohemia, the central figure in the story of the kingdom here, even though he was neither the first nor necessarily a king at all. These stories that stand at the center of cultures tell us who we would like to be, point to how we can understand what life is and where the Good comes from. They speak of motives, psychologies, dreams, ideals.
The story of the patron saint king who emerged from the early Middle Ages, received the finest education, and had to live with the conflict between grandmother and mother before ultimately taking power and uniting his land in an alliance based on a religious community, is the story of who we would like to be.
The word “Christianity” today can throw many people off; there are thoughts of manipulation, abuse of power, and distortions of freedom, gender roles, and power structures, and if you look at evangelical America you can feel physically uneasy. For me, the story of Václav as the Christian king who united a people and had angels at his back and his morality in the right place is not part of that story. It is a story about being spiritual, well educated, and standing by one’s convictions; about giving what one can and doing what one can for the common good. Perhaps it is a projection, but I think it is a shared human projection. We reach for these stories because they matter, because they define and calibrate; they fine-tune our focus and help us become who we want to be.
We can mirror ourselves in them, use them as bedrock, find direction in their symbols, understand ourselves against their backdrop. There are more heroes in Czech culture, more names to place on the inner wall. St Václav was a good place to begin. So while the trees burst into leaf in Prague, we move on to Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, to Tycho Brahe and Kepler, to Kafka and Kundera, on to Havel and Černý, and who knows what will appear in that starry sky Prague has become?
If Wenceslaus, Václav, is the Good King, then he is like a tarot card, the ultimate king symbol; the king we would all like to have, perhaps the human being we would all like to be: the one who, with what he has, sides with the good, helps where he can, and defies all forms of evil, wherever they come from, well then that is the only truth we need to extract from this story; then we can on a much deeper level enjoy the sculptures, paintings, street names, all the cultural referencens, all the way down to understand the looking at the skull when they take it out to worship it.
That, perhaps, is what this story is all about.
Whether it is true or not.
The Good King is a true and sound ideal, a star we would like to follow in any sky anywhere.
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