Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor
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Charles IV (German: Karl IV, Czech: Karel IV, Hungarian: IV. Károly; 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus, of the House of Luxembourg, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1355 until his death.
He was the eldest son and heir of John the Blind, from whom he inherited Luxembourg and Bohemia on 26 August 1346. He was elected King of Germany (rex Romanorum) in opposition to Louis IV on 11 July that year and crowned on 26 November in Bonn. In 1349, he was elected (17 June) and crowned (25 July) King of Germany without opposition. In 1355 he was crowned King of Italy on 6 January and Holy Roman Emperor on 5 April. With his coronation as King of Burgundy, delayed until 4 June 1365, he became the personal ruler of all the kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire.
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[edit] Life
He was born to John and Elisabeth I of Bohemia in Prague as Wenceslaus (Václav), the name of her father, but later chose the name Charles at his confirmation after he went to France, at the court of his uncle, Charles IV of France, where he remained for seven years.
Charles received a French education and was literate and fluent in five languages: Latin, Czech, German, French, and Italian. In 1331 he gained some experience of warfare in Italy with his father. From 1333 he administered the lands of the Bohemian Crown due to his father's frequent absence. In 1334, he was named Margrave of Moravia, the traditional title for the heirs to the throne. Two years later he undertook the government of Tirol on behalf of his brother John Henry, and was soon actively concerned in a struggle for the possession of this county. In consequence of an alliance between his father and Pope Clement VI, the relentless enemy of the emperor Louis IV, Charles was chosen German king in opposition to Louis by some of the princes at Rhens in July 1346. As he had previously promised to be subservient to Clement he made extensive concessions to the Pope in 1347. Confirming the papacy in the possession of wide territories, he promised to annul the acts of Louis against Clement, to take no part in Italian affairs, and to defend and protect the church.
Meanwhile he had accompanied his father into France and had taken part in the battle of Crecy in August 1346, when John was killed and Charles escaped wounded from the field. He was subsequently crowned King of Bohemia on 2 September 1347, as Charles I. As king of Bohemia he returned to Germany, and after being crowned German king at Bonn in November, he prepared to attack Louis. Hostilities were interrupted by the death of the emperor in October 1347, and Gunther, Count of Schwarzburg, who was chosen king by the partisans of Louis, soon abandoned the struggle. Charles, having made good use of the difficulties of his opponents, was recrowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on 25 July 1349, and was soon the undisputed ruler of Germany. Gifts or promises had won the support of the Rhenish and Swabian towns; a marriage alliance secured the friendship of the Habsburgs; and that of Rudolf II of Bavaria, count palatine of the Rhine, was obtained when Charles, who had become a widower in 1348, married his daughter Anna.
In 1350 the king was visited at Prague by the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo, who urged him to go to Italy, where the poet Petrarch and the citizens of Florence also implored his presence. Turning a deaf ear to these entreaties, Charles kept Cola in prison for a year, and then handed him as a prisoner to Clement at Avignon.
In 1354 he crossed the Alps without an army, received the Lombard crown at Milan on January 1355, and was crowned emperor at Rome by a cardinal in the April in the same year. His sole object appears to have been to obtain the imperial crown in peace, and in accordance with a promise previously made to Pope Clement he only remained in the city for a few hours, in spite of the expressed wishes of the Roman people. Having virtually abandoned all the imperial rights in Italy, the emperor recrossed the Alps, pursued by the scornful words of Petrarch but laden with considerable wealth. On his return Charles was occupied with the administration of Germany, then just recovering from the Black Death, and in 1356 he promulgated the famous Golden Bull to regulate the election of the king. Having given Moravia to one brother, John Henry, and erected the county of Luxemburg into a duchy for another, Wenceslaus, he was unremitting in his efforts to secure other territories as compensation and to strengthen the Bohemian monarchy. To this end he purchased part of the upper Palatinate of the Rhine in 1353, and in 1367 annexed Lower Lusatia to Bohemia and bought numerous estates in various parts of Germany. On the death in 1363 of Meinhard, duke of Upper Bavaria and count of Tirol, Upper Bavaria was claimed by the sons of the emperor Louis IV, and Tirol by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria. Both claims were admitted by Charles on the understanding that if these families died out both territories should pass to the house of Luxemburg. About the same time he was promised the succession to the Margravate of Brandenburg, which he actually obtained for his son Wenceslaus in 1373. He also gained a considerable portion of Silesian territory, partly by inheritance through his third wife, Anna, daughter of Henryk II of Świdnica. In 1365 Charles visited Pope Urban V at Avignon and undertook to escort him to Rome; and on the same occasion was crowned king of Burgundy at Arles.
His second journey to Italy took place in 1368, when he had a meeting with Urban at Viterbo, was besieged in his palace at Siena, and left the country before the end of the year 1369. During his later years the emperor took little part in German affairs beyond securing the election of his son Wenceslaus as king of the Romans in 1376, and negotiating a peace between the Swabian league and some nobles in 1378. After dividing his lands between his three sons, he died in November 1378 at Prague, where he was buried, and where a statue was erected to his memory in 1848.
Charles IV suffered of gout (metabolic arthritis) a painful disease quite common in that time.
[edit] Evaluation and legacy
His reign was characterised by a transformation in the nature of the Empire and by the coming-of-age of Bohemia. He promulgated the Golden Bull of 1356 whereby the succession to the imperial title was laid down: it held for the next four centuries, but had the disastrous effect of causing minor princes who were left out of the electoral process to loosen their allegiance to the empire. He made Prague the imperial capital, refusing even at the insistence of Petrarch to move to Rome, and he was a great builder in that city, which bears his name in so many spots: Charles University, Charles Bridge, and Charles Square. The Prague Castle and much of the cathedral of Saint Vitus, by Peter Parler, were completed under his patronage. Finally, it is from the reign of Charles that dates the first flowering of manuscript painting in Prague. In the present Czech Republic, he is still regarded as Pater patriae (father of the country or otec vlasti), a title first coined by Adalbertus Ranconis de Ericinio at the his funeral.
Charles' imperial policy was focused on the dynastic sphere and abandoned the lofty ideal of the Empire as a universal monarchy of Christendom. In 1353, he granted Luxembourg to his nephew Jobst. He concentrated his energies chiefly on the economic and intellectual development of Bohemia, where he founded the university in 1348 and encouraged the early humanists. Indeed, he corresponded with Petrarch, whom he invited to visit his residence in Prague, but the great Italian hoped — to no avail — to see Charles move his residence to Rome and reawaken tradition of the Roman Empire.
Charles's sister Bona, married the eldest son of Philip VI of France, the future John II of France, in 1335. Thus, Charles was the maternal uncle of Charles V of France, who solicited his relative's advice at Metz in 1356 during the Parisian Revolt. This family connection was celebrated publicly when Charles IV made a solemn visit to his nephew in 1378, just months before his death. A detailed account of the occasion, enriched by many splendid miniatures, can be found in Charles V's copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France.
[edit] Family and children
Charles was married four times. His first wife was Blanche, 1316–1348), daughter of Charles, Count of Valois, a half-sister of Philip VI of France. They had two daughters:
- Margaret (1335 - 1349), who married Louis I of Hungary
- Katharina (1342 - 1395), who married Rudolf IV of Austria and Otto V, Duke of Bavaria, Elector of Brandenburg
He secondly married Anne (Anna), (1329–1353), daughter of the Count Palatine Rudolph II and they had one son,
- Wenceslas, who died young.
His third wife was Anne of Świdnica, (1339–1362), daughter of Duke Henryk II of Świdnica and Katharina of Anjou (daughter of Charles I Robert, King of Hungary), by whom he had two children,
- Wenceslaus (1361–1419), Charles's successor as Emperor and king of Bohemia, and
- Elisabeth (19 April 1358–4 September 1373), who married Albert III of Austria.
His fourth wife was Elizabeth of Pomerania, 1345 or 1347–1393), daughter of Duke Bogislaw V of Hind Pomerania and Elisabeth, daughter of Casimir III of Poland. They had six children:
- Anne of Bohemia (1366–1394), who married Richard II of England
- Sigismund (1368–1437), emperor, king of Hungary and Bohemia and margrave of Brandenburg.
- John, Duke of Görlitz (1370–1396).
- Charles (13 March 1372–24 July 1373).
- Margaret (1373–1410), who married John III, Burgrave of Nuremberg.
- Heinrich (1377–1378)
[edit] Named after Charles IV
Several things outside of Prague have also been named after Charles:
- Karlštejn
- Karlovy Vary
- 16951 Carolus Quartus
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
| Preceded by John |
Count of Luxembourg 1346–1378 |
Succeeded by Wenceslaus |
| King of Bohemia 1346–1378 |
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| Preceded by Louis IV |
King of Germany 1349–1378 |
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| King of Italy 1355–1378 |
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| King of Burgundy 1365–1378 |
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| Holy Roman Emperor 1355–1378 |
Succeeded by Sigismund |
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| Preceded by Otto V |
Margrave of Brandenburg 1373–1378 |
