Читать книгу Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 - C. Edmund Maurice - Страница 7

CHURCH BUILT BY ST. ADALBERT AT PRAHATICE.

Geysa, the leading chief of the Hungarians in that district, was a hospitable and large-minded man, who welcomed strangers heartily. Adalbert used the opportunity to teach Christianity, and many of the Hungarians were converted. Amongst other converts was Geysa himself, who consented to have his son Stephen christened by Adalbert. Over this child Adalbert’s influence was evidently great; and when Stephen grew up, he became the first Christian king of Hungary, recognised as such both by Pope and Emperor. From the reign of St. Stephen the Hungarians themselves reckon their beginning as a settled monarchy; and thus they owe their change from the condition of a marauding horde to an orderly and progressive nation, to the teaching of the Bohemian saint.

Twice Adalbert was recalled to Bohemia, and twice he again left it in disgust. On the last occasion he took refuge with the King of Poland, and from thence went to convert the heathen Prussians, by whom he was killed. His body was brought back by the Poles and buried at Gnesen. Next to the actual memory of his life, his most notable legacy to his country is the hymn which he wrote in the native language, and which soon became, and long remained, a kind of war-cry of Bohemian independence.