On the accession of Wenceslaus I the relations between his house and
the German King were strained. This, we have seen, was due to
Dragomira's anti-German foreign policy. Wenceslaus, however, as we know,
had occasion to send his mother into exile; she cannot have gone very
far, as according to popular belief the earth swallowed her up before
she had had time to get clear of the Castle Hill. Later generations put
up a chapel over the spot where Dragomira vanished; I consider this
conduct lacking in tact.
Anyway, Wenceslaus had to face a guileful, determined and quite
unscrupulous adversary, who had even called at Prague with an army; so,
being a man of peace, he came to terms with King Henry for a slight
consideration, namely, an annual tribute of six hundred silver marks and
one hundred and twenty head of cattle. This warded off trouble from the
west, but there remained the danger of barbarian invasion from the east
and there was every reason for erecting strongholds in Bohemia as in
other countries of Europe. I have found no trace of any such work by
Wenceslaus. He surely must have done something towards strengthening the
Hradšany, Hrad S. Vaclav or something like that, as it seems to have
been called at the time. Wenceslaus had built a chapel here in which to
house the relic of St. Vitus; I cannot imagine him leaving such a
treasure quite unprotected. This precious relic, namely, the arm of St.
Vitus, had been presented to Wenceslaus by King Henry which was handsome
of him, as he only got a trifling annual contribution of money and
cattle out of Bohemia, whereas that country was started off with
something of sufficient value to account for that noble fane the
Cathedral of St. Vitus. Bohemia did very well in the way of saints and
sacred relics; some of her kings were enthusiastic collectors, and we
remember that Christianity among the Czechs started with a royal martyr,
the saintly Ludmilla, who was shortly to be joined by another, as you
will be told later on in this chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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