The Real 'Good King' Wenceslas

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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At this time of year, many of us will find ourselves singing about a royal personage who braves the snow on the Feast of Stephen – the Second Day of Christmas – so that he can distribute alms to a poor peasant. But who was the real Good King Wenceslas and was he as pious and saintly as the Christmas song suggests?

In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman is joined by Czech historian Dr. David Kalhous to learn about the tenth-century Bohemian Duke, posthumously declared to be a king and patron saint of the Czech state.

This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History It. This is an episode, a seasonal episode.
0:06.5	From our sister podcast on the real Good King Wenceslas, it was first broadcast on Gone
0:12.0	Medieval, fantastic pod, go and check it out. And it's also been nominated for a signal
0:16.3	award. So please, if you have time, we'd really appreciate it if you go and vote at historyhit.com
0:21.3	slash signal. But in the meantime, enjoy this.
0:31.2	Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr Cat Jamon. Now, this time of year, many of us
0:37.8	will find ourselves singing about a sudden royal character who proves the weather so that he
0:43.2	can distribute arms to a poor peasant on the feast of Stephen. That's the second day
0:48.2	of Christmas in snow that's deep and crisp and even.
1:18.2	The heavy ever stopped to wonder who exactly Good King Wenceslas really was. Did he exist?
1:43.6	And if so, when and where? And why has his story become a staple of our Christmas carols?
1:50.9	To find out, I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr David Carlos, who's Associate Professor
1:55.9	at Masteric University in the Czech Republic.
2:07.0	David, thank you so much for joining the Gone Medieval today.
2:10.2	Thank you, Gett, for your invitation. It's pleasure to meet you and to our audience. And
2:16.4	I will be happy to tell you more about San Benceslas and his real life or context in which
2:23.1	we should understand the text. Fantastic. So that, I mean, the first question really is,
2:27.9	was he actually a real person? Well, 99% of experts is convinced he really existed because
2:37.0	we have some contemporary evidence for his life or at least for his death. However, what
2:43.1	might be interesting is that one expert in the religious studies tried to interpret all
2:50.4	characters of our medieval Bohemian history as a personification of some pagan gods and
2:57.3	goddesses. Yeah, so we can be fairly confident in that. That he was a real character.
	...

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