Legend · České Budějovice
There will be more of them
Přemysl Otakar II is said to have promised to found a monastery wherever news of a child’s birth reached him. A messenger caught him on a meadow between the Vltava and Malše, where nothing then stood. According to the legend the king cried three words from which the name of České Budějovice arose.
It is told that when Přemysl Otakar II was expecting a child, the king made a special vow. Wherever the first news of the child’s birth reached him, there he would found a monastery.
It was not a light vow. The king did not spend his life in one place. He rode from castle to castle, town to town, on dry roads and muddy ones, across fords, forests and open fields. When he spoke his vow, he could not know where he would be when the messenger arrived.
One day the king and his retinue stopped in the country at the confluence of the Malše and Vltava. The rivers ran broad and quieter than in the mountains, but the land around them was soft, wet and in places heavy going. Nothing of a town stood there yet.
There the messenger found him. According to the legend the king cried out three words — “Bude jich více!” (“There will be more of them!”) — and on that spot ordered a monastery, and beside it a town. Folk memory kept the cry as an explanation of the name. Historians keep Budivojovice and Budivoj. Both stories meet at the same water.
How it really was
The name of České Budějovice comes from the older settlement Budivojovice, named after Budivoj of Železnice, a royal court judge; the legend of the cry “There will be more of them!” is a later folk explanation of that name.
The year and place hold. České Budějovice was founded by Přemysl Otakar II in 1265 at the confluence of the Malše and Vltava. On 10 March that year the burgrave of Zvíkov, Hirzo, handed the Dominicans a building site for a monastery in the king’s name, and a day later the king is attested in the newly founded town or close by. A vow about a monastery is not attested, but a monastery on that spot really arose.
The cry “Bude jich více!” is folk etymology. The real name-line runs through Budivojovice and Budivoj of Železnice.
Where to follow the legend
Confluence of the Vltava and Malše. Best seen from the Iron Maiden or from Sokolský ostrov.
Where we know it from
- KOVÁŘ, Daniel. Fundatio civitatis: zrození královského města Českých Budějovic. České Budějovice: Veduta, 2015
- Encyklopedie Českých Budějovic, hesla založení města, jméno města, Budivoj ze Železnice, Čéč z Budivojovic, Hirzo