Vojtěch

In the spring of 997, the former Bishop of Prague, Adalbert (Vojtěch in Czech), is killed by the pagan Prussians, his Christian mission coming to a martyr's end. How he evaluated his life we do not know. As a relatively young man, he became the second bishop of Prague. Throughout his episcopate, however, he kept running into a contradiction between how he imagined Christian society to be and what Bohemian society actually was. He was unable to resolve his disillusionment with the lack of Christianization and evangelization of Bohemia except by going to Italian monasteries. The end of Adalbert's life was grim; in the autumn of 995 almost all his relatives were murdered at Libice, and he could not return to Prague. So he set out on a mission, perhaps with the thought of martyrdom in mind.