From a Terrace in Prague

by B. Granville Baker

OLESLAV II had left dominions more extensive than any Slavonic State before or since could boast of; moreover, he left the name of Přemysl in high repute for piety and ability. Boleslav III, his son, undid all the good his predecessors had brought to their dominions and their reputation; in fact, within a few years of his accession he found himself stripped of all his belongings save Bohemia, and his hold on even that country was under dispute at times. It appears that Boleslav III was constitutionally unable to agree with anyone; contemporary chroniclers describe this Prince as cruel, avaricious and distrustful. The sons of Czech have always had a strong objection to paying for what they do not want, and that is what Boleslav was always expecting of them. He became so unpopular among his own people, who were called upon to finance him in his troubles with his brothers, that they invited their Duke's cousin, Prince Vladivoj, brother of Boleslav the Brave of Poland, to intervene. Vladivoj died young, so his brother took charge of all that had been the Bohemian realm, and incorporated it with his own; Boleslav of Poland, it is said, even contemplated making Prague the capital of his Empire. There is no trace of anything he did for the city, so we must assume that he did not carry out his intention: he was probably prevented by the inevitable friction with the Germans, who always found some excuse for putting down any attempt at founding a strong Slavonic Empire. In this instance King Henry II intervened on behalf of Boleslav III, who had stooped to becoming a vassal of the German King, with the title of Duke. After the usual fighting, Boleslav III was restored to his country for a short period in which he distinguished himself by wholesale assassination of his opponents. He eventually died in Poland as prisoner of Boleslav the Brave. Meanwhile, what with his cantankerous brothers, with Polish ambitions and German ill-will, Bohemia was having a sorry time.

In all this unseemly wrangling among the members of the Přemysl family I find only one bright spot of human interest, and that is the little affair of Ulrich and Božena. All three brothers, Boleslav III, Jaromir and Ulrich, the last surviving Přemysls, were childless, and, failing heirs, their inheritance would pass to Poland, to the children of Dubravka. A Přemysl successor was wanted; Ulrich and Božena provided one. It is undoubtedly true that Ulrich was already married when he encountered Božena, the beautiful village maiden, while she was washing the family linen at the village pump. It was a picturesque event, this meeting of the young prince and the village maiden, and has been satisfactorily illustrated by a patriotic Bohemian painter. You will find highly coloured reproductions of that artist's work in a shop window on the Narodni Třida, all illustrating events in the history of the Přemysl family, and when you see what Božena looked like you will not blame Ulrich. Anyway, Ulrich married Božena. How he managed this without causing complications is not our affair; the ancient chroniclers were satisfied; they insist on the legality of this union, and as we know them to have been very particular in such matters, it is not for us to discuss the point. You must also remember that Christianity was yet young among the Czechs and that they had been strongly addicted to the amiable habit of polygamy. You may also gather what was the attitude of Bohemian chroniclers from the remark which Dalimil, the contemporary of Ulrich, puts into the latter's mouth: "Rather would I entrust myself to a Bohemian peasant girl than that I should take a German queen for my wife. Every heart clings to its own nation; therefore would a German woman less favour my language. A German woman will have German servants; German will she teach my children." From this remark you will understand that the Bohemians thoroughly appreciated their neighbours.

Ulrich reverted to type, and once again the stout peasant stock of Czech came to the rescue of a fading dynasty; the son of Ulrich and Božena, Břetislav I, was destined to restore the house of Přemysl to a position more in keeping with its great traditions. Before succeeding his father, Břetislav was given an opportunity of proving what good stock he came from. Boleslav of Poland had died, his sons quarrelled over their heritage, and their dissensions gave the neighbours an excuse for interfering. One of these neighbours was King Stephen of Hungary, afterwards called "the Saint." He had only recently been converted from paganism, but he took part in this Polish dispute just as if he had been a ripe old Christian monarch of some standing. Stephen had the happy thought of taking Moravia for himself, no doubt in pious memory of his ancestor who first stole it. The same idea occurred to Ulrich of Bohemia, who sent young Břetislav into Moravia, where the latter defeated the Magyars rather badly; Moravia thereupon was added to Bohemia, whereas Slovakia remained with Hungary.

Břetislav failed to realize his ideal of forming a strong national Slavonic State, independent of German rule—he had too strong an Emperor against him, Henry III; but he certainly restored Bohemia and the Přemysl dynasty to a position of some importance in Europe. He was, however, unable to shake off the German grasp of his country; German armies had arrived before Prague and threatened that city with destruction, so Břetislav submitted to the inevitable, paid tribute to the Emperor and spent the last and peaceful years of his reign in restoring order and prosperity to his country. The city of Prague benefited by the bravery of Břetislav, for as a result of that Prince's successful campaign against the Poles the body of St. Adalbert, whom you have met before as Bishop of Prague, was captured by the Bohemians and restored to their capital. There was, I believe, some trouble about this operation of Břetislav. The ruler and people of Poland had appointed Adalbert as their patron saint; he had been killed in their country, had been buried there some time, and had even a cathedral to himself at Gnesen. The Pope launched a bull or two at Břetislav over this business. I do not know whether any of them took effect. The Bohemians were ordered to return Adalbert to the Poles, but I do not know that they did so, neither have I seen him lying about in Prague, probably because I have not looked for him. Adalbert is the patron saint of Emaus in Prague among many other churches in Bohemia, but no doubt he can find time to patronize Poland as well. Anyway, I do not anticipate any strained relations between the Republics of Czecho-Slovakia and Poland on this account; both countries are more interested in a yet older fossilized form of creation—coal to wit.

With the best will in the world it is difficult to rise to any enthusiasm over the majority of Bohemia's rulers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There seems to have been nothing of beauty or interest in individual Přemysls to break the monotony of endless quarrels between brother claimants to the throne and appeals of unsuccessful rivals to their German neighbour, whose decision would be entirely guided by the desire for a further weakening of Bohemia. Prague has little to show in the way of architectural interest dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but what there is is good. I doubt whether any other city in Europe has much to show of that period of transition from Romanesque to Gothic: whatever there was has generally been pulled down or built over when the great flood of Gothic poured over Europe some century or so later. But if there is little to see in Prague which can be clearly traced to the two centuries under discussion, it is of interest in showing the expansion of the town since Libuša's prophecy concerning it. The Hradšany came in for some attention. Another church, dedicated to All Saints and built up very near the Basilica of St. George, dates back to the eleventh century. There are, or were till recently, distinct traces of work dating from that century to be found in the Karmelitska Ulice, that thoroughfare which leads from the Malo Stranské Náměsti towards Smichov. We have already noted that the Jews had settled in this part of Prague towards the end of the tenth century and that some of them had been ordered across the river to another settlement of their kind, so there must have been good steady business to be done in Prague. I have often wondered how and where people crossed the Vltava previous to 1167 when Judith, Queen of Vladislav II, built a bridge very near the site of the present Charles Bridge. Judith's bridge was eventually carried away by floods, but the Mala Strana bridgehead tower remains; you see it with its squat tower and broad chisel-shaped steeple, rising up beside the more graceful and ornate tower of the present bridge, which was new in the early years of the fourteenth century. The stout tower built by Judith is a very interesting study of architecture; it has had a long life of usefulness, having been used for many years as a lock-up for the froward youth of the neighbourhood, and it is still inhabited. This sturdy remnant of Judith's bridge, which you can see from my terrace, is the only trace I have found of means of communication between the two banks of the river. There must have been considerable traffic, as we know, for instance, how St. Wenceslaus was in the habit of going to and fro between Hradšany and Vyšehrad. The river was probably fordable in several places, but it is rather a treacherous stream with a swift current and an uncertain bottom; some Hungarian troops attempted to cross it by a ford on a certain memorable occasion, and were swept away to perdition. Yet even before Judith's time there must have been need of a bridge. The town and various settlements around it were growing up, as is proved by the number of churches which were considered necessary or appropriate. The Hradšany was very well off in that respect. Then there was the Church of St. Cosmas and Damian, where you now see the towers of Emaus, and in the twelfth century, if not at the end of the eleventh, the foundations of the Tyn Church were laid. This period also has left three quaint little Romanesque chapels in various parts of Prague. They are very well preserved, these little round chapels, and the fact that they are pretty far apart suggests the extent to which Prague had expanded by the end of the twelfth century. There is one of these chapels dedicated to St. Martin, on Vyšehrad, another to St. Longinus, rather difficult to find, some half-mile north-east of Emaus; and a third, the oldest of all, the Chapel of the Holy Cross, stands near the old Town Tower of the Charles Bridge. There is also a seventeenth-century baroque imitation of these Romanesque chapels under the riverside slope of the Letna Hill, which is not worth troubling about.

While Christianity was striking its roots yet deeper into the soil of Bohemia, the rulers of that country were being drawn into the quarrel between the spiritual and the would-be temporal head of the Church; the "Investiture Strife" gave Vratislav, son of Břetislav I, an opportunity of strengthening his independence and increasing the importance of his country. He took sides with Emperor Henry IV against one of the strongest of the Popes, Gregory VII. The Emperor's Bohemian allies took part in many of that monarch's battles, chiefly against the Saxons, who appear to have been hereditary enemies of the sons of Czech, and the victory at Hohenburg on the Unstrutt in 1075 is attributed to the bravery of the Bohemian troops. Six years later Bohemian troops helped Henry IV in his attack on Rome, and their leader, Wiprecht of Groitch, was one of the first to scale the walls of the Eternal City. The Czechs have always been good hearty fighters, and of the three hundred who set out to help the Emperor against Rome only nine returned home to Bohemia. The Germans, even in those early days, were thorough utilitarians.

As reward for his many and great services Henry IV promoted Vratislav to the rank of King. It appears to have been, as it were, brevet-rank only; it was not hereditary. Nevertheless it was a great day for Prague when the ruler of Bohemia was crowned with the golden diadem, presented by the Emperor himself. There was no doubt that King Vratislav had earned the distinction—he had done well by himself, by his country and by his ally the Emperor—so no doubt the Basilica Church of St. George on the Hradšany and its congregation did all honour to the crowning of Bohemia's first King. It is also interesting to note that Vratislav had "contributed to the party funds"; he had lent money to the Emperor. This should strike a homely, familiar note among us.

The frescoes in St. George's Church probably date from the time of King Vratislav; there was a distinct revival of love for things beautiful in those days when the peoples were beginning to see the light that was rising, gently but persistently, over the subsiding chaos that had claimed Europe for the past three centuries and more. True, the world was still a confused and worrying sort of place to live in; apart from the soul-sickening public quarrels between Rome and the Empire, there was a good deal of private enterprise in that line between all manner of petty potentates. Nevertheless there was some improvement to be noted, first in the tendency of fostering national feeling in place of a confused cosmopolitanism, secondly by the effects of the Cluny movement in its endeavour to reform the Church. The tendency of the time expressed itself in beautiful illuminated manuscripts, and Prague is lucky in the possession of many such. It is probable that Duke Břetislav II, grandson of the first prince of that name, encouraged the expression of his people's religious and national sentiments, in those illuminated manuscripts of the Bible, of Missals, and the "Cantionales," those works so beautiful in design, so loyal and sincere of execution, their colours as fresh as when the artist's hand withdrew reluctantly from the finishing touch.