The story of Saint Ludmila was soon overshadowed by the legend of her grandson Wenceslas. Over time, the latter became one of the most important stories of Bohemian history, elevating the main hero to the patron saint of Bohemia and later its eternal ruler. But even the earliest texts about Saint Wenceslas mention Ludmila whom Wenceslas honoured, explicitly called her the saint, and prophesied her violent death at Tetín. The two stories mingled from the very beginning and perhaps shortly created a single unit which is known with certainty only from Legenda Christiani: vita et passio sancti Wenceslai et sancte Ludmile ave eius (The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas and His Grandmother Saint Ludmila) that dates from the late 10th century.
Legenda Christiani includes information that after Vratislav’s death his two sons Wenceslas and Boleslaus were entrusted to their grandmother Ludmila. In the 14th century, this motif became part of Saint Wenceslas’s legend depiction painted on the Great Tower staircase at Karlštejn Castle. The scene with the education of Saint Wenceslas covers the façade field of the staircase right before the tower’s exit. It chronologically completes the narration about the female saint and introduces the Wenceslas legend. But in the Velislav Bible, a pictorial manuscript from around 1340, Vratislav entrusted the education of his first-born son to Priest Innocent, and it dedicated only a single scene to Ludmila showing her martyrdom as part of the Saint Wenceslas legend.
The Utraquist literary sources provide evidence of the close connection between Ludmila and Wenceslas especially in liturgical texts, first of all the legends and their interpretation in church service texts, sermons, and songs. The interest in the connection of the cults of Cyril and Methodius, Ludmila, and Wenceslas with the Utraquist practice could be observed at the close of the Hussite Revolution. The texts of Old Czech Passional were also highly influential; after the Passional was published, it played the crucial role in the preaching and liturgical practice as well as during the formation of the Utraquist specifics within historiography. The Lutheran Tobiáš Závorka Lipenský provides late evidence of the joint Wenceslas and Ludmila tradition of non-Catholics at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.
During the post-White Mountain period, the cult of Saint Wenceslas inter alia emphasised the Catholic tradition of Old Bohemia that represented the supporting historical argument for the process of the Counter-Reformation of all of the Bohemian lands. Wenceslas’s grandmother Saint Ludmila held a significant position in this area because she was at the beginning of Christianity in Bohemia and as an educator of her grandson strongly contributed to his piety. There were several motifs of Saint Ludmila in the Baroque legends of Saint Wenceslas. She was presented as the initiator of Saint Wenceslas’s baptism and his Christian education. Furthermore, Ludmila’s martyrdom appeared there as well as the transfer of her remains to Prague that was assumingly done at Wenceslas’s command.
Images
- Legenda Christiani – an edition prepared by Eliáš Sandrich (Athanasius a S. Josepho)
Vita S. Ludmilae et S. Wenceslai, Prague: Jana Průšová: factor Václav Rantzendorff, 1767
NKP 21 F 1004, title page - Braun’s Sculptural Group of Saint Ludmila and Little Wenceslas
Charles Bridge, c. 1729
© Rober Káčer - The Legend of Saint Ludmila
Passional, 1395, Bohemia
NKP XVII C 52, fol. 201r - The Baptism of Saint Wenceslas
Jan Tanner: The Holy Journey from Prague to Stará Boleslav, Prague: Jesuit Printing Works, 1679
NKP 54 F 204, I. [2 b]
