Charles IV

And so some of this is an acknowledgement of that geography.

But then, you know, Prague had two golden periods, as they like to say, when it was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and that was, of course, during the reign of Charles IV in the 14th century and then again during the reign of Rudolf II in the 16th into the early 17th century.

And those were periods of time where you had two emperors who were very determined to make Prague a political but also a cultural center, um, for Charles also a s- a center for church and state.

So he brings an archbishopric through his contacts with the, the current pope who had been his tutor when he was a priest as a young man, um, in Paris, and he's able to bring the university, he's able to establish an archbishopric and then bring artists from all over, from Italy, from German lands.

And again, like everyone, he had his flaws, but, but I think that he was so determined to be a representative of peace.

You know, he famously said, "We won't go to war with Slovakia in the way that we saw in Yugoslavia." So I would put the early '90s in there too.

too.Can we say Charles IV was the greatest ever influence on Prague, if you consider he brought the, uh, the Archbishopric, as you say, the university, there's the bridge, he created the new town, the horse market which became Wenceslas Square.

Is he the greatest ever influence on Prague?

Mark has left Prague for the first time in almost 700 years.

Brought to the Czech lands by Charles IV, the fragment has now returned to Italy, where it will be reunited with the other surviving parts of the manuscript.

Ruth Frankova has the story.

The manuscript known as the Forogullian Gospels was probably written near Ravenna in the first half of the 6th century.

The part containing the Gospel of Mark was eventually removed from the manuscript because it was venerated as the actual writing of the evangelist Mark.

However, modern research has since ruled out that attribution.

Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, acquired several pages during his journey to Italy in 1354 and 1355.

Lenka Kluková, an archivist at Prague Castle, explains how the fragment came to Prague.

It is quite possible that if the icy hand of plague hadn't snatched young Edward of Angoulême out of history, the Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors never would have happened.

Anne of Bohemia was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.

While most royal brides brought rich dowries with them, Richard II had to pay for the honor of marrying Anne.

They were both 15 and forged a loving bond, which was probably not sexual as he was attracted to men.

Jeanne loved to read and translate manuscripts.

She ensured that her nine children received exemplary educations, even the girls.

The family lived happily for 15 years, but in 1328, King Charles IV died without an heir, and Jeanne's husband became King Philippe IV.

Edward III of England claimed the French throne through his mother Isabella, but the French did not accept royal lines that passed through female heirs.

For Queen Margaret, who had not yet come over from France to join her husband in his prosperity, at length landed with a body of frenchmen at weymouth on the very day her great ally was defeated and slain at barnet next day she proceeded to cerne abbey where she was visited by the duke of somerset and other lords of her party who assured her that notwithstanding the reverse sustained by their side she would still be able to raise a power especially in the western counties where she had landed by their advice she accordingly proceeded with her son the prince to exeter the people of cornwall and devon rose to do her service and in a very few days she again moved eastward by glastonbury to bath here learning that edward was approaching with his army she turned aside to bristol and afterwards bent her course northward by gloucester where the gates were shut against her and after a fatiguing day's march of thirty-six miles arrived at tewkesbury that same evening king edward passed cheltenham and lodged within three miles of them next morning may fourth fourteen seventy one he gave them battle in this action the lancastrians were utterly defeated queen margaret was taken prisoner her son edward by some accounts was slain on the field according to others he was murdered after the battle in the presence of king edward himself the tradition in a later age was that he was murdered by richard duke of gloucester but the fact may be that when richard in after years horrified the world by a crime still more revolting a number of earlier deeds of violence were attributed to him of which he was really guiltless richard although he had led the van of edward's army at barnet was at this time only in his nineteenth year and though doubtless he was receiving an education in ferocity from the unnatural character of the wars in which he was engaged it may perhaps be questioned whether the writers of the next age were right in thinking he had begun his career of violence so early king edward's own conduct at this time was cruel and unscrupulous enough he himself sword in hand pursued a number of the defeated party into the abbey church of tewkesbury a priest bearing the host in his hand came out to meet him at the door and obtained from him a promise that he would spare the lives of the duke of somerset and fourteen other persons who had sought refuge there but in violation of this pledge they were all beheaded two days later the utmost that can be said to extenuate edward's perfidy on this and other occasions is that he had recourse to it at the most critical period in his fortunes when beset with difficulties at every turn his natural disposition does not appear to have been cruel but at barnet he gave no quarter feeling that all was lost for him if he did not deal that day a decisive blow against the enemy he was victorious yet he was immediately called to contend with a new enemy in the west and now while he was away in gloucestershire one of warwick's sea captains named the bastard falconbridge landed in kent to make another diversion in favour of king henry in kent he procured a certain number of followers and coming up to london endeavoured to force an entry into the city with the view of liberating henry from the tower but having set aldgate and london bridge on fire he exasperated the citizens so that they made a more resolute resistance than they would otherwise have done and he found it necessary to give up the attempt king edward returned with his army to london on may twenty first he was received in triumph by the mayor and citizens who went out to meet him between shoreditch and islington and on the highway before he entered the city he made knights of a number of the aldermen three days later he marched into kent in pursuit of the bastard falconbridge but during his brief stay in london an event occurred which throws the deepest shadow of suspicion upon edward's conduct on the very night of his arrival king henry died in his prison within the tower his body was exhibited at st paul's the following day and it was given out that his death had been owing to pure displeasure and melancholy but the coincidence of the event with edward's arrival in the capital and the too obvious advantage to the king of getting rid of a rival whose adherents gave him so much trouble convinced the world at large that this was only a pretence henry had now no son to avenge his death or to claim succession to his kingdom and from what we have already seen of edward there is very little reason to doubt that he caused the poor feeble monarch to be secretly assassinated the suspicion indeed is hinted even by a writer friendly to the king who wrote within the security of a monastery from this time at all events edward was no longer troubled with rebellions in favour of the house of lancaster the sudden and extraordinary changes of fortune experienced by the two rival kings during those unhappy commotions were shared by their adherents among the nobility some of whom during the adverse circumstances of their party suffered the most severe distress and poverty Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, who though he had married a sister of Edward IV, took part with the House of Lancaster, was seen at one time in the low countries, barefooted and bare-legged, begging his bread from door to door, till he was recognised and pensioned by the Duke of Burgundy.

Queen Elizabeth Woodville, when her husband was driven into exile, was obliged to take refuge in the sanctuary of Westminster, where she gave birth to her eldest son, afterwards Edward V.

As for Margaret of Anjou, she remained a prisoner in England after the Battle of Tewkesbury, until, on Edward making peace with France in 1475, she was ransomed by Louis XI and returned to her own country.

End of section 34.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami.

Chapter 9.

Edward V Edward, the son and heir of the deceased king, was at Ludlow on the borders of Wales when his father died.

He had been sent thither as Prince of Wales to hold a court and keep the country in good order, for which purpose a council had been assigned to him, consisting originally of his uncles the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, his maternal uncle Anthony Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings, and several others.

He withdrew from it in despair only when it became evident that local jealousies would make it impossible to carry out his project of so combining the power of England and of the empire as to compel the submission of the pope and the recognition by France of the claims of Edward III.

Charles IV, who succeeded Louis in 1347 and was crowned emperor in 1354, took no part in European politics.

He was in fact a very good ruler of his own kingdom of Bohemia, but he left the interests of the empire to take care of themselves.

The anarchic condition of the far east of Europe began toward the close of this epoch to assume shape and consistency by the growing importance of Moscow and its recognition as a center of national life and national aspirations for Tartar-ridden Russia, as well as by the union of the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary under the scepter of Louis the Great.

Hostilities between England and France had been imminent toward the close of the last reign.

The French army had indeed withdrawn from the actual occupation of the English territory of Aquitaine, but an agreement respecting the restoration of the Agenois not having been fulfilled, war was about to be declared between the two nations when the deposition of Edward II changed the policy of England.

It will be remembered that one of the earliest acts of Edward III's Council of Regency was to send an embassy to Charles IV of France to negotiate a treaty of peace.

A principal condition of which was the restoration to England of certain lands recently seized in Aquitaine.

Thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from HistoryHit.

If you are interested in some of the topics I mentioned in this episode, you might want to go back and check out our past episodes on the Investiture Contest, the Holy Roman Empire, Matilda of Tuscany, and of course, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.

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The ransomed King was everywhere received greatly and nobly, and when he arrived at Paris, beautiful gifts and rich presents were bestowed upon him, and he was waited upon and feasted by all the chief prelates and barons of the kingdom.

But though the ceded provinces were, with many a heart-burning and threat of rebellion, handed over to the nominal sovereignty of England, the renunciations under the treaty were never made, and this unfortunate omission furnished both Charles V of France and Henry V of England with a formal justification for reviving a war which brought a succession of disasters to both kingdoms.

The events which took place in France between this date and the fresh outbreak of war in 1369 may be briefly dismissed.

Reviving prosperity was checked by the fact that the country had been deliberately portioned out among themselves by organized bands of freebooters.

It is true that nothing could have seemed more unpromising than his earlier essays at government.

He had shown himself selfish, treacherous and vindictive, a reckless indifferent spectator of the miseries of his country and had done his best to thwart the patriotic efforts of those who might then have saved France by reforming the abuses of her administration and reawakening her national energies.

But Charles V had already lived long enough to earn and deserve the epithet of the wise and indeed to accomplish himself though at a terrible cost of suffering to his country most of the great and beneficent objects for which Marcel had sacrificed his noble life in vain.

He had lived to see repaired many of the disasters of the first two Valois reigns, to see the foreigner checked in Brittany and thrust out of Aquitaine.

The death of Frederick in 1322 left Louis the undisputed emperor as far as nearly all his subjects were concerned, and he would fain have purchased peace with the pope on any reasonable terms that he might apply himself to the internal improvement of his dominions.

But John XXII was implacable and continued to wage against him and his adherents a deadly warfare not closed until his successor, Charles IV, submitted to all the papal demands and to every indignity imposed upon him.

One of the most fearful consequences of the enmity between John XXII and Louis of Bavaria to the unfortunate subjects of the latter was the interdict under which his dominions were laid in 1324, and from which some places distinguished for their loyalty to the emperor were not relieved for six and twenty years.

Louis, indeed, desired his subjects to pay no regard to the bull of excommunication, and most of the laity, especially of the larger towns, would gladly have obeyed him in spite of the pope.

john 22 yeah

i'll tell you what john 22 is a real piece of shit um in my opinion um the only thing i kind of like that he does is um he canonizes uh thomas aquinas um i think that uh that is good just because i like thomas aquinas i mean i don't fucking know and i'm sure he would have liked that um I think it's funny to beef with Louis the Bavarian and also beefing with Louis the Bavarian is important to me because that's how Charles IV kind of like gets his foot in the door in the first one.

But it's like, he's just one of these like fucking, he's just like a bureaucratic nightmare.

And as a result of that, he ends up doing all these things that I just think are like morally repugnant.

But actually he seemed to handle it about as well as I think any... pope could he issued two bulls to protect jews um he consecrated the rhone river so people wouldn't feel like they were endangering their mortal souls by dumping bodies in it uh for the lack of consecrated ground uh graves and priests he granted remission of sins to everyone who died of the plague due to lack of competent clergy um which is a big deal yeah that's a big fucking

deal actually that is

that's a huge deal i mean that's like a you know i mean that's a bunch of people and i don't know if he said europe but if he's just like granting like a blanket remission of sin that's a lot like that's a lot of uh a lot of people who were not christians who you know got in under their belief about heaven but uh And he also fought with Charles IV, but also he fought more with Casimir or something from Poland.

And he made Prague an archbishopric.