Page:The Story of Prague (1920).djvu/31

 though the earliest building devoted to Christian worship was at Levy Hradec. According to some accounts a church on the Hradcany was dedicated to the Virgin by Borivoj, the first Christian ruler of Bohemia. It was in this church that St. Wenceslas received the tonsure. The earliest church on the Vysehrad probably dates from nearly the same time. Prince Wenceslas—afterwards sainted—built several churches, and also laid the foundations of the first buildings on the spot where St. Vitus’s Cathedral now stands. Wenceslas was induced to build this church by the gift of an arm of St. Vitus, a precious relic that he received from the German King, Henry I. The first church of St. Vitus, like all the earliest religious buildings in Bohemia, was in the Romanesque style. In 939 the remains of St. Wenceslas were conveyed here from Stará Boleslav, where he had (in 935) been murdered by his treacherous younger brother, Boleslav.

The successor of St. Wenceslas, Boleslav I., whom Palacky calls ‘one of the most powerful monarchs that ever occupied the Bohemian throne,’ greatly extended the frontiers of his country, a fact that necessarily largely increased the importance of his capital; but of yet greater importance for the development of Prague was—in accordance with the ideas of the time—the foundation of the bishopric in 973. It took place during the reign of Boleslav II., the son and successor of Boleslav I. Bohemia had formerly belonged to the diocese of Regensburg or Ratisbon. At the time of the foundation the Bohemian princes ruled not only over Bohemia and its sister lands (Moravia and Silesia), but also over Southern Poland, Galicia and a large

5