from the far-famed Bridge of Prague, for so it is still called, though its official designation is the Charles Bridge, and there are now many other bridges at Prague.
As already mentioned, there has been a bridge on or near the spot where the present edifice stands from very early times. Ancient chroniclers write that when, in 932, the body of St: Wenceslas was conveyed from Stará Boleslav, where he was murdered, to St. Vitus’s Church at Prague, those who carried the body, ‘hurrying to the river Vitava, found the bridge partly destroyed by the floods. They gave themselves up to prayer, and having raised the body on their arms they passed, as if they were carrying no burden, gladly and without hindrance over the half-ruined bridge.’ The fact that the body of St. Wenceslas was conveyed across the Vitava on March 4, at a time when the spring flood often damaged the Bridge of Prague, confirms, as Mr. Svatek writes, the correctness of this narrative, which contains the earliest mention of the Bridge of Prague. The account of the state in which the bridge was found also renders Mr. Svatek’s conjecture that it was then already very ancient very plausible. As the suburbium Praguese—as I have already mentioned—extended on both banks of the river, wooden bridges, such as the earliest ones undoubtedly were, soon became insufficient. When, in 1157, the floods had entirely destroyed the wooden Bridge of Prague, Queen Judith, consort of King Vladislav I., caused a new stone bridge to be erected at her own expense. It was said that she undertook this work because, being a German by birth, and having twice used her influence to place her German relations on the episcopal throne of Prague, she had incurred the hostility of the Bohemians. She hoped to regain the love of the Praguers by thus becoming a
