The late Middle Ages (1306–1526)
The Luxembourg dynasty
After a four-year struggle for the throne, in 1310 the Bohemian magnates decided for John of Luxembourg, son of Henry VII, the Holy Roman emperor from 1312. John, who married Elizabeth (Eliška), the second daughter of Wenceslas II, was only 14 when he was named king. He confirmed the freedoms that the Bohemian and Moravian nobles had usurped during the interregnum and pledged not to appoint aliens to high offices. Nevertheless, a group of advisers, headed by Archbishop Petr of Aspelt, tried to uphold the royal authority. In the resulting conflict, a powerful aristocratic faction scored a decisive victory in 1318. Its leader, Jindřich of Lípa, virtually ruled over Bohemia until his death in 1329. Meanwhile, John found satisfaction in tournaments and military expeditions. He succeeded in attaching to Bohemia some adjacent territories; the extension of suzerainty over the Silesian principalities was his most significant achievement. He was assisted late in his reign by his oldest son, Wenceslas, who was brought up at the French royal court, where he changed his name to Charles. In 1346 both John, then blind, and Charles joined the French in an expedition against the English, during which John fell at the Battle of Crécy.
John and Charles benefited from friendly relations with the popes at Avignon (see Avignon papacy). In 1344 Pope Clement VI elevated the see of Prague and made Arnošt of Pardubice its first archbishop. The pope also promoted the election of Charles as German king (1346). In Bohemia, Charles ruled by hereditary right. To raise the prestige of the monarchy, he cooperated with the nobility and the hierarchy. He made Bohemia the cornerstone of his power and, by a series of charters (1348), settled relations between Bohemia, Moravia, and other portions of his patrimony. He acquired several territories in the vicinity at opportune times by purchase or other peaceful means. At the end of his reign, four incorporated provinces existed in union with Bohemia: Moravia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia. Charles also confirmed earlier documents defining the position of Bohemia in relation to the empire. In 1355 he was crowned emperor in Rome as Charles IV. After consultation with the electors, Charles issued the Golden Bull, which remedied some of the political problems of the empire, especially the election of the emperor.
Under Charles, Prague became the headquarters of the imperial administration. He doubled the size of the city by attaching a new borough, Nové město (New Town), which increased the population to about 30,000. In 1348 he founded in Prague the first university in the empire. It consisted of four traditional faculties (theology, law, medicine, and liberal arts), and its members were grouped into four nations (Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon, and Silesian Polish). Prague attracted scholars, architects, sculptors, and painters from France and Italy and from German lands; the most distinguished among them was the architect Petr Parléř, a native of Swabia. The flourishing of the late Gothic architectural style left a deep mark on the city and its environs, as exemplified by the Charles Bridge, St. Vitus’s Cathedral, and Karlštein Castle.
During this period Bohemia was spared entanglements in wars and reached a relative prosperity, shared by the upper classes and the peasantry. Charles was eager to save the power and possessions accumulated since 1346. He succeeded in getting his son Wenceslas crowned as king of the Romans (meaning, essentially, Holy Roman emperor-elect) in 1376. He also made provisions for dividing the Luxembourg patrimony, with the understanding that its male members would respect Wenceslas as their head. After Charles’s death (1378), a smooth transition to Wenceslas’s reign appeared to be assured. The country mourned Charles as “the father of the country.”
Charles’s heir ruled Bohemia, without opposition, as Wenceslas IV. Although not without talents, he lacked his father’s tenacity and skill in arranging compromise, and in less than a decade the delicate balance between the throne, the nobility, and the church hierarchy was upset. In a conflict with the church, represented by Jan of Jenštein, archbishop of Prague, the king achieved temporary success; the archbishop resigned and died in Rome (1400). The nobility’s dissatisfaction with Wenceslas’s regime was serious; it developed mainly over the selection of candidates for high offices, which noble families regarded as their domain and to which Wenceslas preferred to appoint lower noblemen or even commoners. The struggle was complicated by the participation of other Luxembourg princes, especially Wenceslas’s younger brother Sigismund. The nobles twice captured the king and released him after promises of concessions. But Wenceslas never took his pledges seriously, and the conflict continued. Simultaneously with the troubles in Bohemia, discontent with Wenceslas was growing in Germany. In 1400 the opposition closed ranks; the German princes deposed Wenceslas as king of the Romans and elected Rupert of the Palatinate in his place.
Meanwhile, a religious reform movement had been growing since about 1360. It arose from various causes, one of which was the uneven distribution of the enormous wealth accumulated by the church in a comparatively short time. Moral corruption had infected a large percentage of the clergy and spread also among the laity. Prague, with its large number of clerics, suffered more corruption than the countryside. Both the king and the archbishop showed favour to zealous reformist preachers such as Conrad Waldhauser and Jan Milíč of Kroměříž, but exhortations from the pulpit failed to turn the tide. After 1378 the Great Schism in Western Christendom—the period when rival popes reigned in Avignon and in Rome—weakened the central authority. Disharmony between King Wenceslas and Archbishop Jan of Jenštein also hindered the application of effective remedies. By the late 14th century the reform movement was centred at Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel, where preaching was done in Czech.
The second, more dramatic period of the religious reform movement began with the appointment in 1402 of the Czech university scholar Jan Hus to the pulpit at Bethlehem Chapel. Hus combined preaching with academic activities, and he was able to reach the Czech-speaking masses as well as an international audience through his use of Latin. The university was split in its support of Hus; while Czech scholars tended to agree with his reformist agenda, foreign members followed the conservative line. Another cause of division was the popularity of the teachings of John Wycliffe, an English ecclesiastical reformer of the previous century, among the Czech masters and students. Hus did not follow Wycliffe slavishly but shared with him the conviction that the Western church had deviated from its original course and was in urgent need of reform. The atmosphere in Prague deteriorated rapidly as the German members of the university allied with Czech conservative prelates, led by Jan Železný (“the Iron”), bishop of Litomyšl. Because Wenceslas favoured the reform party, its opponents pinned hopes on the king’s half brother Sigismund, then king of Hungary; Wenceslas was childless, and Sigismund had a fair chance of inheriting the Bohemian crown.
In the winter of 1408–09, a strong group of cardinals convened a general council at Pisa and elected a third pope (or antipope), Alexander (V), in the hope of ending the schism. Wenceslas sympathized with the cardinals and invited the university to join him. When the German university members did not respond favourably, he issued, in January 1409 at Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg), a decree reversing the university’s traditional voting process, used to decide important issues. Thereafter, the three “foreign” nations of the university (Bavarian, Saxon, and Silesian) had one vote together, and the Bohemian nation had three. The German masters and students protested by moving to Leipzig, Germany, where they founded a new university. Some of them unleashed a polemical campaign attributing to Hus more influence on the king than he actually had and depicting Hus as the chief champion of Wycliffe’s ideas.
During this time the antipope Alexander (V) issued a bull virtually outlawing Hus’s sermons in Bethlehem Chapel and authorizing rigid measures against discussing Wycliffe’s ideas. Hus and his collaborators continued their activities nevertheless. Neither Wenceslas nor any of the Czech prelates was experienced enough to achieve reconciliation between the church authorities and the reform party, and Bohemia was drawn into a sharp conflict. In 1412 Alexander’s successor, the antipope John (XXIII), offered indulgences for contributions to the papal treasury. When Hus and his friends attacked the questionable practices of papal collectors in Prague, John put Prague under interdict. Hit by the sentence of excommunication, Hus left Prague and moved to the countryside under the protection of his noble friends.
In 1414 John, acting in harmony with Sigismund (who since 1411 had been the German king), called the Council of Constance (German: Konstanz). The aim of the council was mainly to abolish the threefold papal schism but also to examine the teachings of Hus and Wycliffe. Hus went there hoping to defend himself against accusations of heresy and disobedience. A safe conduct from Sigismund, however, did not protect him in Constance. Late in November he was imprisoned and was kept there even after John, who had lost control of the council, had fled and been condemned by the cardinals. In the spring of 1415, Hus was called three times before the council to hear charges, supported by depositions of the witnesses and by excerpts from his own writing. The council paid no attention to Hus’s protests that many of the charges were exaggerated or false. Hus refused to sign a formula of abjuration; he was then condemned as a Wycliffite heretic and burned at the stake on July 6.