Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles IV was born to King John of the Luxembourg dynasty and Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia of the Czech Premyslid Dynasty in Prague.[5] He was originally named Wenceslaus (Václav), the name of his maternal grandfather, King Wenceslaus II. He chose the name Charles at his confirmation in honor of his uncle, King Charles IV of France, at whose court he was resident for seven years.[6]

He received French education and was literate and fluent in five languages: Latin, Czech,[7] German, French, and Italian.

In 1331, he gained some experience of warfare in Italy with his father. At the beginning of 1333, Charles went to Lucca (Tuscany) to consolidate his rule there. In an effort to defend the city, Charles founded the nearby fortress and the town of Montecarlo (Charles' Mountain).[8]

From 1333, he administered the lands of the Bohemian Crown due to his father's frequent absence and deteriorating eyesight. In 1334, Charles was named Margrave of Moravia, the traditional title for heirs to the throne. Two years later, he assumed the government of Tyrol on behalf of his brother, John Henry, and was soon actively involved in a struggle for the possession of this county.[9]

On 11 July 1346, in consequence of an alliance between his father and Pope Clement VI, relentless enemy of the emperor Louis IV, Charles was elected as Roman king in opposition to Louis by some of the prince-electors at Rhens. 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 vast 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.[9]

The Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by Charles IV

Charles IV was in a very weak position in Germany. Owing to the terms of his election, he was derisively referred to as a "Priests' King" (Pfaffenkönig). Many bishops and nearly all of the Imperial cities remained loyal to Louis the Bavarian. Worse still, Charles backed the wrong side in the Hundred Years' War, losing his father and many of his best knights at the Battle of Crécy in August 1346, with Charles himself escaping from the field wounded.

Civil war in Germany was prevented, however, when Louis IV died on 11 October 1347, after suffering a stroke during a bear hunt. In January 1349, House of Wittelsbach partisans attempted to secure the election of Günther von Schwarzburg as king, but he attracted few supporters and was defeated by Charles at the siege of Eltville in May. Thereafter, Charles faced no direct threat to his claim to the Imperial throne.

Charles initially worked to secure his power base. Bohemia had remained untouched by the plague. Prague became his capital, and he rebuilt the city on the model of Paris, establishing the New Town (Nové Město). In 1348, he founded the Charles University in Prague, which was later named after him and was the first university in Central Europe. This served as a training ground for bureaucrats and lawyers. Soon Prague emerged as the intellectual and cultural center of Central Europe.

Bust of Charles IV in St. Vitus Cathedral, 1370s

Having made good use of the difficulties of his opponents, Charles was again elected in Frankfurt on 17 June 1349 and re-crowned at Aachen on 25 July 1349. He was soon the undisputed ruler of the Empire. Gifts or promises had won the support of the Rhenish and Swabian towns; a marriage alliance secured the friendship of the Habsburgs; and an alliance with Rudolf II of Bavaria, Count Palatine of the Rhine, was obtained when Charles, who had become a widower in 1348, married Rudolph's daughter Anna.[9] The empire he ruled from Prague expanded and his subjects lived in peace and prosperity.

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.[10] 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.[9]

Outside Prague, Charles attempted to expand the Bohemian crown lands, using his imperial authority to acquire fiefs in Silesia, the Upper Palatinate, and Franconia. The latter regions comprised "New Bohemia", a string of possessions intended to link Bohemia with the Luxemburg territories in the Rhineland. The Bohemian estates, however, were not willing to support Charles in these ventures. When Charles sought to codify Bohemian law in the Maiestas Carolina of 1355, he met with sharp resistance. After that point, Charles found it expedient to scale back his efforts at centralization.

The Golden Bull of 1356

In 1354, Charles crossed the Alps without an army, received the Lombard crown in St. Ambrose Basilica, Milan, on 5 January 1355, and was crowned emperor at Rome by a cardinal in April of the same year.[11][9] His sole object appears to have been to obtain the Imperial crown in peace, 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 re-crossed the Alps, pursued by the scornful words of Petrarch, but laden with considerable wealth.[12][9] On his return, Charles was occupied with the administration of the Empire, then just recovering from the Black Death, and in 1356, he promulgated the famous Golden Bull to regulate the election of the king.[9]

Charles' possessions at the signing of the Golden Bull of 1356.

Having given Moravia to one brother, John Henry, and erected the county of Luxembourg 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 of Meinhard, Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count of Tyrol, in 1363, Upper Bavaria was claimed by the sons of the emperor Louis IV, and Tyrol 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 Luxembourg. At about the same time, he was promised the succession to the Margravate of Brandenburg, which he actually obtained for his son Wenceslaus in 1373.[9]

Meeting with Charles V of France in Paris in 1378, from a fifteenth-century manuscript in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal

Casimir III of Poland and Louis I of Hungary entered a conspiracy against Charles and managed to persuade Otto V of Bavaria to join. After the repeal of the estate contract by margrave Otto, in early July 1371, Charles IV declared hostilities and invaded Margraviate of Brandenburg; after two years of conflict, in 1373 Brandenburg became part of the Czech lands. This was when he gave the order to measure his new territory, its villages, people, and income. This was recorded in the Landbuch of Charles IV, which was finished in 1375. Many villages were mentioned for the first time in this book, so it can provide information on how old they are. He also gained a considerable portion of Silesian territory, partly by inheritance through his third wife, Anna von Schweidnitz, daughter of Henry II, Duke of Świdnica and Catherine of Hungary. In 1365, Charles visited Pope Urban V at Avignon and undertook to escort him to Rome; on the same occasion he was crowned King of Burgundy at Arles.[9]

His second journey to Italy took place in 1368 when he had a meeting with Pope Urban V at Viterbo, was besieged in his palace at Siena, and left the country before the end of 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 of Cities and some nobles in 1378. After dividing his lands between his three sons and his nephews,[1] he died in November 1378 at Prague, where he was buried, and where a statue was erected to his memory in 1848.[9]

Charles IV suffered from gout (metabolic arthritis), a painful disease quite common in that time.

Charles and his first wife, Blanche

Charles was married four times. His first wife was Blanche of Valois (1316–1348), daughter of Charles, Count of Valois, and a half-sister of Philip VI of France.[5] They had three children:

• son (b. 1334), died young
• Margaret of Bohemia (1335–1349); married Louis I of Hungary.[13]
• Catherine of Bohemia (1342–1395); married Rudolf IV of Austria[14] and Otto V, Duke of Bavaria, Elector of Brandenburg.

He secondly married Anna of Bavaria, (1329–1353), daughter of Rudolf II, Duke of Bavaria; they had one son:

• Wenceslaus (1350–1351).

His third wife was Anna von Schweidnitz, (1339–1362),[5] daughter of Henry II, Duke of Świdnica and Katharina of Anjou (daughter of Charles I Robert, King of Hungary), by whom he had three children:

• Elisabeth of Bohemia (19 April 1358 – 4 September 1373); married Albert III of Austria.[5]
• Wenceslaus (1361–1419);[5] later elected King of Germany (formally King of the Romans) and, on his father's death, became King of Bohemia (as Wenceslaus IV) and Emperor-elect of the Holy Roman Empire; married firstly to Joanna of Bavaria in 1370 and secondly to Sophia of Bavaria in 1389.
• son (born and died 11 July 1362).

His fourth wife was Elizabeth of Pomerania, (1345 or 1347 – 1393),[15] daughter of Duke Bogislaw V, Duke of Pomerania and Elisabeth of Poland, daughter of Casimir III of Poland. They had six children:

• Anne of Bohemia (1366–1394); married Richard II of England[15]
• Sigismund (1368–1437);[15] later Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Margrave of Brandenburg; married firstly Mary of Hungary in 1385, and secondly to Barbara of Cilli in 1405/1408.
• John of Görlitz (1370–1396); later Margrave of Moravia and Duke of Görlitz; married Richardis Catherine of Sweden.[15] His only daughter and heiress was Duchess of Luxembourg.
• Charles (13 March 1372 – 24 July 1373).
• Margaret of Bohemia (1373–1410); married John III, Burgrave of Nuremberg.[15]
• Henry (1377–1378)

The reign of Charles IV was characterized by a transformation in the nature of the Empire and is remembered as the Golden 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 also organized the states of the empire into peace-keeping confederations. In these, the Imperial cities figured prominently. The Swabian Landfriede confederation of 1370 was made up almost entirely of Imperial Cities. At the same time, the leagues were organized and led by the crown and its agents. As with the electors, the cities that served in these leagues were given privileges to aid in their efforts to keep the peace.

He assured his dominance over the eastern borders of the Empire through succession treaties with the Habsburgs and the purchase of Brandenburg. He also claimed imperial lordship over the crusader states of Prussia and Livonia.

Castles built or established by Charles IV.[16]

• Karlstein Castle, 1348–1355 in Central Bohemian Region for safekeeping the Imperial Regalia, especially the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire (later the Czech Crown Jewels were also kept there)
• Kašperk Castle (Karlsberg), 1356 in Klatovy District
• Lauf (Wenzelsburg) – built on the way connecting Prague and Nuremberg in Bohemian Palatinate, inside survived 112 coats of arms of the Czech Kingdom
• Montecarlo in Italy
• Radyně (Karlskrone) – around 1360 in Plzeň Region
• Hrádek u Purkarce (Karlshaus) – around 1357
• Tepenec (Twingenberg, Karlsburg)
• Karlsfried Castle

Other places named after Charles:

• Karlštejn castle, Czech Republic
• Karlštejn (town), Czech Republic
• Charles Bridge, Prague (Karlův most)
• Charles University, Prague (Karlova Universita)
• Karlovy Vary spa, Czech Republic
• Charles Square, Prague (Karlovo náměstí)
• Montecarlo (Charles' Mountain) fort and village in Italy
• 16951 Carolus Quartus (an asteroid)