Vita Wenceslai (Legenda Gumpoldi)
A Father's Vow of Thanksgiving
A pagan freed from death by Wenceslaus's merits converts to the Catholic faith and vows his only son to clerical service, then lives out his remaining days in faithful devotion.
Among them was a certain pagan, not yet cleansed by the grace of baptism, who, when he realized that he had now been freed from death through the merits of the blessed Wenceslaus, was devoutly brought to the true acknowledgment of the Catholic faith. He was purified by the saving washing, and with his faith confirmed and God's love fixed firmly in him, he promised that he would give his only son—whom he had loved as his own life—to the office of clerical service to God at the church of the blessed martyr. After this had been accomplished, he himself, believing and serving God, lived long enough.
Read the original Latin
Inter quos gentilis quidam, baptismi gratia nondum mundatus, cum se iam per beati merita Vencezlavi morte liberatum senserit, ad fidei catholicae veram agnicionem devotus convertitur, salubri lavacro purgatur, firmataque fide, ac dei in se confixo amore, natum unicum, quem aeque propria vita dilexit, in clericatus officium dei servitio ad beati martiris aecclesiam se daturum promisit. Hoc postmodum impleto, credens ipse deoque serviens, satis longam perduxit aetatem.
Gumpold of Mantua's Vita Wenceslai (Legenda Gumpoldi) companion
Read the full Vita Wenceslai, a chapter a day
All 30 chapters are in Chosen Portion as daily readings, free on iOS, with 77 more royal devotional texts
Gumpold portrays a ruler whose devotion was a fixed daily discipline amid duties; Chosen Portion's brief daily chapter makes reading his life the same kind of fixed daily practice
- Finish the complete vita in a month at one short chapter a day
- Chapters average 1-7 sentences - readable in 2-4 minutes
- Move on to the lives of other royal saints when you finish