Charles IV

14 May 1316, Prague – 29 November 1378, Prague

Charles IV was the son of John of Luxembourg and Elizabeth Přemyslid. He was baptised as Wenceslaus, but when he was seven he was sent to be raised at the French royal court, where at his confirmation in 1323 he received the name of his uncle Charles the Fair. In France, he acquired excellent education and experience with sophisticated court culture. Between 1331 and 1333, he represented his father in Luxembourgish countries in northern Italy, where he gained valuable political and military experiences. After that, he returned to Bohemia at the request of Bohemian lords and with the consent of Jan of Luxembourg took over the administration of the country, for which the king gave him the title of Margrave of Moravia in 1334. He tried to improve the conditions in the country and return the royal estates that had been sold.

When he became King of Bohemia, he had already achieved many political successes. In 1344, he won consent to elevating the Diocese of Prague to an Archdiocese and in July 1346 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor. After ascending the Bohemian throne, he made the country the basis of power of the Luxembourg family and the future capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus he sought to improve its economy and prestige in many different ways. In 1348, he united individual territories into the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which was the first ever concept of the Czech state. He paid special attention to Prague, where apart from Archdiocese he also founded a university and an entirely new part of Prague, the New Town, which was one of the most ambitious city-planning projects of the time.

Systematic care for Bohemia did not mean that Charles IV neglected imperial matters. On the contrary, he was a capable diplomat who applied flexible policy and managed to weigh between different power interests and maintain stability. In 1355, he received the imperial title and a year later issued the so-called Golden Bull of Charles IV, which represented the first ever constitutional document of the Holy Roman Empire. His ingenious marriage policies and hereditary contracts annexed to the Bohemian Kingdom Lower Lusatia, a part of the upper Palatinate of the Rhine, Brandenburg and many smaller territories in the Empire, most of which were, however, lost during Charles’s sons’ reigns. Charles IV’s long-time aspiration was to end the Avignon Papacy and return it to Rome. He succeeded only towards the end of his life, in 1378, when after complicated negotiations Pope Gregory IX moved from Avignon to the Eternal City. Charles IV was married four times, with Blanche of Valois, Anne of the Palatinate, Anna von Schweidnitz and Elizabeth of Pomerania. He had twelve children, the most famous of which were Bohemian kings Wenceslaus IV and Sigismund of Luxembourg, and his daughter Anna.

Charles IV’s reign has been perceived for a long time by Czech society and many historians as the Golden Age of Czech history. Under his rule, the country gained unprecedented prestige and economic and cultural prosperity. Prague in particular became an important centre of European education, architecture and culture for the first time in its history. Many art works and buildings created during Charles IV’s reign are still some of the most famous of their kind on the territory of the Czech Republic.