Gone Medieval - Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

If you’ve ever been to Prague, you’ll have noticed that there are many places and institutions that bear the name Charles - all of them because Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV was responsible for their creation. Furthermore, almost every great medieval building you’ve seen in Prague was commissioned by him. But Charles IV was also an incredibly skilled politician, and a devoted religious man who sought relentlessly to restore the glory of the Empire, and the papacy to Rome from Avignon.In this explainer episode, Dr. Eleanor Janega tells the story of this man whose rise to power was a bit of a surprise, given his humble origins.Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘MEDIEVAL’You can take part in our listener survey here > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. Dobri den, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, and you're Gone Medieval. Today, I'm very much nadshina. Or, for those of our listeners who haven't learned Czech yet, Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and this is Gone Medieval. Today, I am very excited because we are talking about my favorite Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV.

Don't worry, I promise by the end of the episode, you are going to want to learn. learn Czech too. If you have ever been to Prague, you will probably have noticed that there are a great many places and institutions that bear the name Charles. There's the Charles Bridge, Charles University, or Charles Square, just to name a few. All of these places bear the name Charles because he was responsible for their creation. Further, almost every charming medieval building you've ever seen in Prague was commissioned by him. The Tin Cathedral? That was him. The old royal palace? Oh, you better believe that was him.

The fact that we are still living among and using the works of a Holy Roman Emperor really helps to cement his legacy. And as a newly arrived immigrant to the Czech Republic a few decades ago, I am afraid I never stood a chance. I was on my way to building an obsession. However, it's not just his public works that mark Charles out as interesting. He was also an incredibly skilled politician. He worked relentlessly to attempt to try to restore the glory of the Holy Roman Empire. While he would eventually scale the heights of power in 14th century Europe, his ascension to the imperial throne, let alone that of the Kingdom of Bohemia, was a bit of a surprise given his origins. By this I mean that Charles was born into the Luxembourg.

dynasty who had their roots in, you guessed it, Luxembourg. Over in Bohemia, one of the richest and most important kingdoms in medieval Europe, a different house had been ruling for as long as we have written records. These were the Pchemislitz, a powerful dynasty who traced their ancestry to the mythological founders of Bohemia, the fairy Le Bouget and the ploughman-Phemesel. According to this legend, the two met, fell in love and had ruled from the old Vichirad Castle at the southern point of Prague from the time of the Slavic migrations. It's a great story. However, just to bring us back slightly down to earth, the earliest recorded Bcemiczlid ruler was Béjavoy I, who had died at some time around 888. Bouchervoy was the grandfather of the Bchemislet you have probably heard of,

St. Ventuslaus, or Bokslav in Czech, who had lived in the early 10th century. At any rate, the dynasty had been ruling for at least four centuries when the male line came. to an abrupt end under Charles' uncle, Venselas III, when he was murdered. Suddenly, there was a succession crisis, as the only surviving Femislids were both women. These were Charles' mother Elizabeth, or Alshbeta, and her sister, Am. In Bohemia, as in most other kingdoms in Europe, the nobility were at almost constant odds with the royalty. And they saw an opportunity to get a king on the throne who was inclined to let them do more less as they wanted after the death of Venchislas.

As a result, they were first inclined to support the assumption of Anne's husband, Henry of Corinthia, because he promised to affirm the independence of the nobles and their right to elect their own king, which was established in the 2012 Golden Bull of Sicily, if you're keeping track. Henry was duly elected in September 1306, only for the nobles hopes to be dashed by then-Roman king Albrecht Ipsburg, when he bulldozed into town and insisted that his son Rudolf Habsburg, who was literally just some Austrian guy, take the throne. Since this made absolutely no sense,

they marched an army into Prague, expelling the very surprised Henry. Luckily for the Czechs, said Rudolf died the following year in a battle with a disaffected nobility. With the seat vacant, Henry then got called back in as King of Bohemia. But soon, he proved to be a pretty weak and ineffectual rift. ruler, which probably shouldn't be a surprise given that he had quite literally promised to be one. Under his rule, the kingdom was beset by military unrest, with individual nobles at times attacking the towns which were Henry's power base. Even worse, Henry allowed the administration in the realm

to languish, failing to collect taxes from the rich silver mines at Kutnaura, the largest then in Europe, allowing the kingdom to fall into a period of economic stagnation. With their first choice of ruler proving to be a disappointment, noble support soon swung towards John of Luxembourg, who had married Charles' mother in 1310. By December of the same year, John had captured and disposed Henry, who returned to Corinthia vanquished. Now, this was all very impressive.

However, surprise! Soon John fell out with the locals as well. Unable to speak Czech and uninterested in the day-to-day running of the kingdom, John basically saw Bohemia as a bank account that he could draw from while traveling around on the tournament circuit. His prolonged absences earned John the derisive titles John the foreigner and the foreign king back in Prague. This wasn't exactly a promising situation for the infant Charles to be born into in 1316. Though, just to be clear, he was born with the good Czech name Vauxlov, like his uncle and saintly ancestor. To be fair, the infant afforded John a much better claim to legitimacy via his wife's shemislyd bloodline,

but the issue wasn't exactly settled. In fact, it was about to get even spicier. In 1319, a plot between Charles's mother Elizabeth and the nobles William Zayich of Labeck and Yinjich of Lipa was uncovered. The plan was to throw the deadbeat John off the throne and replace him with the infant Charles. His mother Elizabeth as the rightful Chemy Slid heir and a good Czech girl would act as regent during her son's minority. John, furious with his wife, banished her to Melnick Castle along with their children. By 1323, however, John finally realized that it was probably not a great call to leave his heir with his openly rebellious wife. He removed his son and sent him to the French courts to be raised by his uncle Charles IV, the King of France.

Charles would never see his mother again. It was at the French court that Charles had his storied Czech name stripped from him and had his new name bestowed upon him by the King of France. Then he was educated in French and Latin and learned Italian and German for good measure. He had, however, forgotten his native check. John had managed to make a foreigner of his son as well. This isn't to say that everything about France was terrible. By all accounts, Charles flourished and was much loved at court.

He was tutored by cardinals who would one day be popes, and he showed an academic ability that made the future Pope Clement VI remark that he would one day be emperor. When he reached the age of 15, John decided that that was quite enough fancy education for his son, and he called him in to help with a series of military campaigns in Tuscany, where they were pressing hereditary claims to the throne. As a part of this in 1333, Charles built an impressive fortress on a mountain in the prophets of Luca, Monte Carlo, or Charles' mountain. That's right, checks we get everywhere.

John was pleased by Charles' aptitude for warfare. Given that Charles was also a quick study, John realized that he could use his son as a stopgap measure. John hated actually ruling anywhere, let alone Bohemia. But he loved that sweet, sweet bohemian silly. John realized he could send Charles there and get him to administer the kingdom that he would, after all, one day, rule. Genius. Charles then made his first return to the lands of his birth since he was seven, and he was named Margrave of Moravia, which was the traditional title for heirs to the throne, something like Prince of Wales in England. Unfortunately for Charles, his return to Prague was an all triumphal. According to him, he was a true.

According to him, he had completely forgotten check by this point. Further, it turns out that having an absentee king who uses the kingdom like an ATM is a bad thing. And there were serious issues in Bohemia. Charles, in his autobiography, wrote that, There was not one castle which was free and not mortgaged, together with all its royal property. The Ratchini in Prague, for example, was incredibly dilapidated, with no additions having been made since the the 13th century. It was in such bad shape by this point that Charles had to stay in a townhouse on what is now the old town square instead of in his proper royal residence. This was a bit of a

come-down from the grandeur of France. Further, the nobility were not exactly happy to see the return of a Luxembourg. Firstly, they weren't exactly impressed with John's track record. And secondly, they had used his absence and lack of interest to increase their own power and influence. A classic case of the mice playing while the cat was away. Or, as Charles put it, The majority of the barons had ruled tyrannically and did not fear the king as they should, for they had divided up the kingdom among themselves. This had terrible consequences for the general Czech population.

If you didn't live in an impressive noble Rhad, You couldn't protect yourself from the thieves and robbers that one contemporary chronicle reported as having overrun the kingdom. Further, unnoted and important landlocked trade city was severely hampered from, you know, trade, if people felt it was dangerous to use the roads. Charles wasted a little time putting this situations to rights, and one of the first things he did was get back to grips with Czech so he could better liaise with his noble counterparts. He commanded a rebuilding of the castle and the cathedral. He sent out royal patrols on the roads to curb thieves.

All of this was noted by Charles' fellow rulers around Europe, and it was perhaps a part of what catapulted him into his next role, that as King of the Romans. You see, in 1346, the church had a problem. To be more precise, they'd had one since 1314, and his name was Louis the Bavarian. Louis was the Holy Roman Emperor, and the church was extremely unhappy about it. In fact, if you ask the papacy, Louis wasn't the emperor at all.

If you remember our Holy Roman Empire explainer, the emperorship was an elected position. At the time, you had to be elected by all seven of the imperial electors, the archbishops of Mines, Trier, and Cologne, as well as the Count of the Palatinate and Rhine, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. When it came to Louis' election, the situation was tense. The previous emperor had been John of Luxembourg's father, Henry the 7th, but everyone thought John was too young to take over. So, an election was held, and Louis received the votes of everyone except John.

Not good enough. The next day, a second election was held. and this time five electors voted for Louis, which was even worse. Louis, meanwhile, was perfectly happy with a simple majority and immediately started cutting about and calling himself the king of the Romans. In 1328, he marched to Rome with an army and had himself crowned emperor by an old senator, which was absolutely not the done thing.

Popes usually crowned emperors, or failing popes, cardinals. Go back and have a listen to our explainer if you want a little bit more information on it. Not content with outraging the church by cutting them out of the coronation process, Louis then announced that Pope John 22nd, noted Avignon Guy and General Big Spender, was a heretic. And he then elected his own anti-Pope. This did not go down well. Even when John died, the following popes found themselves constantly battling the emperor,

and so when Clement the 6th reached the papal throne, he had a solution. He would put his old student Charles on the throne instead. As far as he was concerned, Louis's election was invalid. Even further, Louis had been excommunicated since 1324, making his claim to the imperial throne invalid. So far as Clement was concerned, he could just get a new emperor. So he called an election in 1346 where Charles, Charles was proposed as the candidate. Charles received four votes,

from each of the bishops and his dad. The remaining three secular electors were unmoved. So the church pulled a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, and declared that four out of seven electors was suddenly good enough, and Charles was the King of the Romans. Pretty much no one else agreed, though, and they looked at Charles as a sort of anti-King-of-the-Romans. He was mocked and declared the priest's king by the theologian William of Ockham, who was then

at resident at Louis' court, and his claim to the throne was generally regarded as spurious. According to German chronicles at the time, Charles was such a laughingstock that after the root at the Battle of Cressy, where he and his father had fought for the Fredgeside, and his father died for his trouble, Charles was forced to return home in disguise and stay in monasteries to avoid detection. This is probably an overstatement, but it shows us how deeply unpopular Charles was as an imperial candidate initially.

Eventually, Charles returned to Prague one way or another, and then Louis proposed a way of settling the score, a pitched battle. However, none of this would ever come to pass, as instead Louis died of a stroke while on a bear hunt in 1347. By this time, the imperial electors were sick of fighting and happy enough with, or at least not angry enough to prevent, the ascension of Charles. He was now fully accepted as King of the Romans.

The election fiasco makes it clear that the papacy had been the primary force behind Charles' election, and Clement very much expected that in return Charles would use his position to work towards the political aims of the papacy. In fact, he specifically said as much at Charles's elevation ceremony in 1349, declaring, He shall rule for me when he reigns for my honour and that of my sea. When he reigns on my behalf, he will wholly direct his rule to the honour of God and the Holy See. Another part of Clement's plan was that electing a man who had been raised at the French court would mean an emperor who didn't pressure the papacy to return to Rome from Avignon. Louis the Bavarian had been big on a return to Roman papacy,

equating the Pope's decision to live in style in the south of France, rather than in a burning husk of a city torn by civil war, with generalized profligacy and unholyness. To be fair, this was an opinion shared by pretty much everyone outside of French circles, and Clement was tired of hearing about it. Unfortunately for Clement, Charles immediately began to do the opposite of what the papyrs as he had wanted. His friendship with Clement began to erode when he married Anna Wittlesbach of the Platonet in that same year. The issue here is that Clement wanted him to marry a French

princess. The second was that he had made Charles swear an oath in 1346 that he would not marry a relation of Louis of Bavaria without the consent of Avignon. And Anna was his great niece. Oops. Further, it turns out that now that. that Charles wasn't in competition with Louis for the imperial throne, he sort of agreed that the Pope shouldn't really meddle as much in imperial affairs as he had been doing. For example, he didn't think it was particularly chill that Clement had made him promise before his election that he would involve Avignon in any affairs between the Holy Roman Empire and France. Even worse for Clement,

Charles was a genuinely very religious man, and he very much did think papacy should return to Rome. He wrote letters constantly to that effect, visited with the Pope attempting to press the point, and sponsored popular pro-Roman preachers in Prague, who expounded on the necessity of a triumphant Roman revival for the papacy. Now, it wasn't a surprise to anyone that the Papacy and Emperor were in a tight spot. This is something that the two offices had been arguing about for centuries. In the 12th century, the papacy created the allegory of the sun and moon

to express what they felt their position was. In it, the popes described spiritual justice as light. God had created the sun to be the body from which all light in the world flowed. This was like how he had created the papacy, the source of all spiritual power. While the sun was the main body of light in the sky, there were other sources of light as well, in particular the moon. But the moon, while a source of light, only reflected that of the sun and possessed no actual luminescence itself.

This was meant to be understood as the Holy Roman Emperor, who reflected the spiritual power of the papacy, but had none of his own. Charles hated this, and wanted us to know it so badly that he wrote about it in a charter, where he expressed his view that both the sun and the moon were of equal importance, and simply inhabited different spheres of power. Further, Charles also worked against the church's wishes and was very adept at getting the bishops that he wanted put in positions of power. This was essentially the issue around which the investiture controversy,

which you may remember from our earlier episode, hinged. He came up with a really clever way of doing this. He said that the concordat of Worms, which had ended the investiture controversy, had allowed rulers to invest bishops with the staff of power. And he was simply doing that, and then letting the papacy know that he had done so. That meant that they could go ahead and invest them with the ring and staff of spiritual authority

after he had made his decision. When Charles wasn't busy giving the papacy headaches, he was back in Prague, carrying out massive building works to make sure that the city was a worthy imperial capital. As a part of this, he brought in architects, initially from France, to build in the French reenant or Gothic style, proving that he understood how architectural tastes were changing in refined circles. The French architect, Matthias Varas, then trained local ones, notably the master Peter Parlor,

who was the mind behind much of St. Vitus and Tin Cathedrals. Charles also undertook a massive civic replanning of Prague. He ordered the construction of three and a half kilometres of new city walls, which would enclose an additional 360 hectares of land to be called the new town. The new walls doubled Prague's size and made it the largest city north of the Alps, overtaking Paris. In the same year, Charles petitioned Pope Clement VI to grant a charter for the establishment of the University of Prague. Its founding granted the city a new prestige as a center of learning, as well as of government.

In 1357, construction of the Charles Bridge began. The new bridge replaced the older Judith Bridge, which had been washed away in 1342, and provided a much-needed link between the castle, the Rajani, and the main town. He also made some very shrewd moves to prove to anyone who was paying attention that he might be the king of the Romans,

but he was still the king of Bohemia and a part of storied Czech succession. He ordered that the legendary home of the Pchemislids, the castle at Vichirad, be rebuilt, proving that he understood his ancestors and respected them. He had the historic crown of St. Venchislas remade. It was used in his coronation as King of Bohemia, the ceremony for which he completely rewrote himself. He claimed it was drawn from old Pchemislid traditions

and included a procession from Prague Castle to the newly rebuilt Vichirad. After the ceremony, Charles' venchislath crown was left on the head of a statue of the saint, his royal ancestor, in the cathedral. The statue, incidentally, was in the lavishly decorated new Venchislav's chapel that Charles had commissioned. While he was very busy doing serious work in Prague, Charles never took his eye off of the imperial crown. He had been elevated to King of the Romans, but it took a while for him to actually be crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

mostly because the Pope didn't want him to get crowned. As far as the papacy was concerned, this intelligent and politically savvy man could best be kept in check if they could just keep dangling the promise of an imperial coronation over his head. This did not work out for them. In 1355, six years after he was initially elevated

to King of the Romans, Charles decided to press his point, and he marched down to Rome to secure his crown. On the way, however, he collected another one, stopping off in Milan to collect the Iron Crown of Lombardy. This was a big deal as the Lombard lands had been in question for years, and the Iron Crown was considered a precursor to imperial coronation. If you couldn't hold Lombardy, how could you hold Italy? He made it to the Eternal City, where he was crowned not by the Pope, who was loath to leave the safety of Abignon to oppress. which was torn by civil war and filled with plague.

But by a cardinal. Having secured the crown, Charles left only a few hours later and returned to the safety of Prague where he began to formulate his most audacious move yet. Why, thought Charles, should emperors jump through these hoops to attain imperial coronation be at the whims of the papacy? He was going to do something about that. That something was the Golden Bull of 13th century. The bull codified the electoral and coronation process of future emperors, severing the electoral

processes ties with the church. In it, he declared that a simple majority was enough for anyone to be declared king of the Roman, and that anyone who was elected had to be crowned emperor, no matter how the Pope felt about it. More importantly, well, to me, anyway, he also declared that all the imperial electors and their sons had to learn Czech. Hell yeah. I mean, okay, most of them didn't, but they should have. The Golden Bowl, you will be unsurprised to learn, absolutely enraged the new Pope, Innocent the 6th. In fact, he was so angry that he actually began to make plans to attempt to depose Charles

and replace him with a more tractable Habsburg, Rudolph IV, the Duke of Austria. He had to abandon in this plan, however, because Charles was simply too popular. He had relatives in most of the highest courts across Europe. The imperial clergy loved him, and so did his subjects. It would take a lot of military power to get rid of him, and the papacy simply couldn't support what would be a protracted dispute. So, Innocent stayed mad. Charles' popularity across the empire was down to a number of factors, the first of which was that he actually bothered to try and administrate it. He would worked to secure peace throughout the empire by organizing various confederations. Within these, imperial cities, which were usually subordinate only to the emperor, hence the name, featured strongly.

If there was a chance that hostilities would open up, the local league would swing into action and try to start a peace process. To persuade them to take on these roles, Charles would offer them various perks, like tax breaks and self-government, stuff that cities absolutely loved. He was also one of the few late medieval emperors who actually traveled widely, seeing what people's concerns were. This man was constantly on the move. In 1365, he met with the Pope in Avignon. In 1370, he was in Italy.

Procuring the peace and tranquility of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1373, he and his entire curia traveled to the marches of Brandenburg. As late as 1375, just three, three years before his death, even while suffering from gout, he continued to move about, and he became the first and last emperor since Otto IV in the 13th century to visit the Hanseatic city of Lubek. This trip was considered even by contemporaries to be absolutely incredible. But this was a man who understood the empire and the importance of the wool trade. He would go to Lubek and he would see what they needed.

If Charles traveled widely, he still always returned back to Prague, and he spent a lot of time trying to make sure that other imperial subjects would as well. After all, what was the point in making a brand new ultra-Gothic imperial capital if no one knew you had it? In order to spark tourism, Charles embarked on a massive campaign to get other people interested in pilgrimage to Prague, which meant that he had to make the case for it as a uniquely religious city. one way he did this was to spread the cult of Czech saints in cities specifically linked to the empire. If he showed up in an imperily important city, he would establish an altar in important churches dedicated to key bohemian saints.

So, for example, when he arrived in Rome to receive his coronation in 1355, as a gift, he founded a St. Ventreslaas' altar in St. Peters. This would signal to any pilgrimates that St. Ventrislosius' altar in St. St. Ventrishlaus' altar in St. was a very big deal. After all, he was in the most important basilica in Christendom. Other imperial cities got the same treatment. Aachen, Charlemagne's imperial capital, received an altar dedicated to St. Venchislas, as well as the important Slavic saints, Cyril and Methodius.

This was a move not just to make Venchislaus look extremely cool, which he is, but to also underline to any worshippers that the Slavs had a lot of holiness to offer the right. of Europe, if they cared to look. Finally, in Nuremberg, an extremely important imperial city where the diets were often held, Charles established not only a Venchislas altar, but an altar to his grandmother, Saint Ludmila, another Pramislid saint as well.

These altars planted seeds. They were the equivalent of seeing a Visit Prague ad pop up on your browser now. If the Czech saints weren't enough of a draw on their own, Charles had plenty of other reasons for pilgrims to show up. During the process of Prague's rebuilding, he had seen to it that every one of Europe's religious orders was represented. To this end, he founded nine new churches, the most exotic of which was the Amos Monastery,

which relocated a group of monks from Dalmatia, in what is now Croatia, who used the Slavonic right. You know, just in case you hadn't figured out that the Slavs were cool and holy yet. Further, during his travels through Europe, he had been amassing a huge collection of relics. His modus operandi would be to show up in a location, say that he wanted to attend mass or pray, and then say, he heard you had a really amazing relic and that he would love to pray over it. So basically he made it socially impossible not to offer him, said relic, after he had seen it.

He was, after all, the emperor, and you should be ecstatic that he was visiting you in the first place. According to Charles, he was doing this for The comforting of the entire realm and the kingdom of Bohemia and the salvation of our subjects. And he was massively successful in it. Soon Prague boasted the largest and most rare collection of relics in any European city outside of Rome, which totaled some 450 pieces,

over 60% of which had been collected by Charles himself. Lastly, to celebrate how he had a superiors, super sweet collection of relics growing? Charles established a holiday, the feast of the Holy Lance and Nail. The feast was created to celebrate the so-called imperial relics, including the Lance of Longinus,

which had pierced Christ's side at the crucifixion, and Charlemagne's symbols of Imperial Office. In 1355, after his coronation, Charles petitioned the Pope to designate the celebration as an official feast day, with an attendant three-and-a-half-year indulgence granted to those who saw the relics on that day. Now, if there's two things that are catnit for medieval people,

one is relics and the other is indulgences. A get-out-of-jail-free card for three and a half years of sins, that's an incredibly tempting offer. And according to contemporary chronicles, it worked. Benish-Cabritzai of Weitmel, who wrote one chronicle, attested that the feast day drew, Such a multitude of people from all parts of the world that no one would believe it unless he had seen it with his own eyes.

So, if you wanted to do a big pilgrimage and commune with the saints and couldn't make it to Rome, which was a violent mess at the time, you could instead visit Prague, which was peaceful and booming. And this is the thing. All of Charles's interventions worked. The 14th century is usually thought of as one of the worst periods in European history. After all, during its span, people suffered through the great, famine, then the Black Death, and if you were in France or England, the Hundred Years' War. The Great Famine hit Bohemia, just like everywhere else. But the Czech populace had nothing to do with the Hundred Years' War, even if their King John did occasionally get killed in part of it, much to their

relief. And for some reason, which we still can't completely identify, Bohemia simply didn't face the same level of devastation during the black death that the rest of Europe did. As a result, while populations were collapsing elsewhere, Prague was booming. It's always difficult to pinpoint exact populations in the medieval period, but estimates for Prague under Charles's reign put it somewhere between 40,000 to 85,000 people, which is probably a little bit wishful. However, this would mean that Prague was one of the largest cities anywhere. and possibly as large as London if we accept the larger estimate.

Charles had played an absolute blinder in a century when most other rulers couldn't offer their subjects much more than an opportunity to die overseas in a field. This isn't to say that everything Charles did was a success. He seems to have had better outcomes when budding heads with the papacy than he did with the nobility back in the Czech lands. Case in point was his attempt to increase the powers of the Bohemian, crown with the Maestess Carolina, a system of laws intended for use within the kingdom

written from 1350 and 1351. The Maesthetes contained about 109 articles which were meant to shore up all the issues that had occurred within the kingdom when Charles' dad was busy gallivanting about. It established the duties of the kings to his subjects in the church, essentially saying that the king couldn't just run off and leave his subjects to the mercy of beggars. However, in his attempts at creating an actual documented system of laws, as opposed to relying on custom, Charles also consolidated a lot of rights and privileges under the crown that had traditionally belonged to the nobility. This limited the ability of the nobles to define their own penalties for breaches of law in the land court,

as had been customary up until that point. Even worse from their point of view, the code established that any evidence that, Esquite property, the property of people who died without an established heir, whether peasant or noble, would now fall to the king. Before the maestas, the nobility had absorbed the lands of all peasants who died without a male heir. The nobles were absolutely incensed by these developments, and from the beginning they fought their implementation, both figuratively and at times literally. This soon made it clear to Charles that it would be impossible to enforce these new laws. as he intended. So, at a General Assembly in 1355, Charles made a formal withdrawal of the Maestas, asserting that the kingdom would return to the old and customary law. Later, he would

claim that the code itself had been burnt and therefore couldn't be employed. This was a pretty obvious attempt to save face, framing his loss as an accident as opposed to an inability to get his way within his own kingdom. Further, while Charles was a huge advocate for for a return of the papacy to Rome, that didn't exactly happen. Yes, for the last two years of his life, Pope Gregory the 11th had returned to Rome. But his death in March 1378, nine months before Charles, meant the election of the odious Urban the sixth, and the last two months of Charles' life saw the beginnings of the great schism.

Thus, not only was he unable to secure a true return of the church to Rome, he had to witness the beginnings of one of the most serious rifts that the church had ever experienced. Still, if more than 700 years after his death, I need to dig out a process of legal codification which was ultimately abandoned, or point out that the emperor, a secular ruler, couldn't stop the church from tearing itself apart in order to give examples of failure. Charles did pretty all right, all things considered.

Upon his death in November 1378, Charles had revivified one of the most important imperial cities, giving it a new architectural character which continues to attract visitors to this day. He had established new precedence for the Holy Roman Imperial election and assured that his sons were next in line for the crown after his death. I mean, both his sons were turned out to be massive disappointments, without even half of Charles' skill and sensitivity, and they would squander the opportunity. But that's another story for another day and it has a lot to do with Hussites. Charles was able to lock horns

with popes and come out on top, where his predecessors fell subject to excommunication and war. This then was a man whose legacy loomed large over late medieval Europe, and it's still one very much with us. I could quite

literally go on about Charles IV for hours, but unfortunately we need to end somewhere. So thank you so much for listening to me talk about one of my favorite ever subjects. And thanks to those of you who wrote in asking for it. You have excellent taste. I hope it inspires you to take a trip to check

and maybe learn the language too. Thank you for listening to Gaughan Medieval from History Hit. As always, Matt Lewis will be back on the Gaan Medieval throne on Friday. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and ad-free podcasts by signing up at History Hit and we're offering 50% off your first three months when you use the code medieval. Since I know you're going to miss me until I return on Tuesday, there are some fabulous films that we've made for you to enjoy,

including my recent series Meet the Normans. Remember, you can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family about us. If you have a moment, please drop us a review or rate us everywhere you listen to podcast. It really does help new listeners find us. Thank you. Until next time.