Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/91
turesque Hradcany, the Archbishop of Prague, the Primate of Bohemia, accompanied by his retinue of Church dignitaries performed a religious ceremony in the ancient cathedral of St. Vitus. From many corners of the now independent Czechoslovakia, came pilgrims and knelt at the tomb of the national Patron, St. Wenceslaus.
What Sts. Patrick, Boniface, Louis and Edward are to their respective peoples, that is what St. Wenceslaus is to the Czechs.
The Story of His Life.
Divine Providence had laid the course of his short life at an age which marked the passing of paganism and the coming of Christianity into Bohemia. Forty years previous to his birth, in 863, two Slav Apostles, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, brought Christianity to the Czechs and Slovaks. From their hands Borivoj and Ludmila, the grandparents of St. Wenceslaus, received baptism and were the first Czech princes to be converted to Christianity.
Wenceslaus was born in the year 903. His father was the Duke Vratislav and mother the Duchess Drahomira. It was his saintly grandmother Ludmilla who undertook his early training. Since she embraced Christianity wholeheartedly, she was able to impart to her young charge true devotion and love of virtue. Wenceslaus often accompanied his grandmother on her rounds of Christian charity, visiting the needy and the sick and helping her to relieve their misery. Thus he early learned to sympathize with the unfortunate and the poor, and remained their faithful friend and benefactor till his tragic death.
When Wenceslaus was only a youth, his father died, and Drahomira ascended the throne. Circumstances compelled her to relinquish the reign of goverment in favor of her eldest son, Wenceslaus, when he was only eighteen years of age.
The great problems that confronted him as a ruler were: to complete the conversion of all his people from paganism to Christianity; to unite broken feudal groups into a national entity, and finally, to secure and maintain peace with his powerful neighbors. In his many difficulties he often sought the counsel of his saintly grandmother Ludmilla rather than from his mother Drahomira or his brother Boleslaus, who were out of sympathy with his principles and ideals.
While striving to bring about national unity as well as peace with his neighbors, he preferred to use kindness rather than the force of arms.
Wenceslaus was extremely anxious to provide his people with schools and places of worship and did everything in his power to supplant the pagan customs by Christian. He was the founder of many churches, the principal one being the present St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, In his zeal and foresight to improve the conditions of his people, Wenceslaus began a program of national education that made Bohemia four centuries later, under Charles the