'Charles IV' (
German: ''Karl IV'',
Czech: ''Karel IV.'',
Hungarian: ''IV. Károly'';
14 May 1316 –
29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus (
Václav), 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.
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.
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, which held for the next four centuries. 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.
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 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''.
Ancestors
Family and children
Arms of Charles IV.
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
Anna of Bavaria, (
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)
Named after Charles IV
Several things outside of Prague have also been named after Charles:
★
Karlštejn
★
Karlovy Vary
★
16951 Carolus Quartus
References
★
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español.jpg)
