Wenceslaus

King of Bohemia (r. 1378-1419)

• Born: February 26, 1361
• Birthplace: Nuremberg (now in Germany)
• Died: August 16, 1419
• Place of death: Prague, Bohemia (now in Czech Republic)

Wenceslaus encouraged the development of a Czech national consciousness, but through his incompetence and hesitation he also contributed to the weakening of central authority in Germany and Bohemia.

Early Life

In the early 1300’, the counts of Luxembourg added to their titles and territories the kingdom of Bohemia, the march of Brandenburg, and the duchy of Silesia. The dynasty’s high point came under the father of Wenceslaus (WEHN-seh-slaws), Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1355-1378), one of the greatest rulers of European history. He presided over a Bohemian golden age, transforming Prague into a major center of Gothic civilization as well as a political capital for both Bohemia and the empire.

Charles’s eldest son, Wenceslaus, was born in the important imperial city of Nuremberg. He grew up in the creative atmosphere of Prague, where his father crowned him Wenceslaus IV, king of Bohemia, at the age of three. He received the best education, becoming fluent in German, Czech, and Latin. According to the chroniclers, his father often had Wenceslaus attend court, where the emperor taught his royal son both pragmatic politics and honorable justice. Hoping also to secure his son’s succession in the empire, Charles approached the seven electoral princes. They decided who would become the next “king of the Romans” in Germany, who then could be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope in Rome. Emperor Charles’s prestige led to the young Wenceslaus’s election as king in 1376.

Yet the brilliance of Charles IV’s later years hid serious weaknesses in imperial Germany. The crown had lost much prestige, with power slipping away into the hands of territorial princes such as the duke of Bavaria and the archbishop of Cologne. Tensions were rising between the princes and both the towns and the petty nobles. In Bohemia itself, Charles faced growing opposition from nobles who wanted both to resist royal power and to dominate the growing independent-minded towns and restless free peasants. Finally, just before his death, Charles faced the Great Schism of the Papacy. In 1378, two popes, one in Rome and the other in Avignon in southern France, each claimed to be the rightfully elected pontiff of the Christian Church in the West.

Life’s Work

On Charles IV’s death on November 29, 1378, many expected the young Wenceslaus to continue his father’s successes. A slender, handsome youth, he had an easy affability, even playfully mimicking members of his court. His interest in culture led him to continue his father’s patronage of the arts. Likewise, he expanded the University of Prague and support for its students. Unusual for a king, he liked to disguise himself and go among everyday people, for whom he retained affection throughout most of his reign.

Rather than building on his father’s success and generally good reputation, however, Wenceslaus became renowned for his failure to govern. Some authorities blame this incompetence on certain negative aspects of his character. His worst enemies have even portrayed him as a monster, surpassing even the legendary excesses of the Roman emperor Nero. While such a view is clearly exaggerated, Wenceslaus did alienate friends with a mercurial temperament that could spark sudden rages. Instead of showing diligence in his royal duties, moreover, he indulged his passions for hunting and alcohol. Sometimes called Wenceslaus “the lazy,” he regularly avoided tough decisions.

Additionally, the Luxemburger family contributed strongly to Wenceslaus’s failures. His inheritance from his father left him politically enfeebled, since many territories and titles went to other relatives. Indeed, he inherited only Bohemia and Silesia. A half uncle received Luxembourg proper. His half brother Sigismund, the later emperor (r. 1433-1437), got Brandenburg, with its electoral vote, as well as the kingdom of Hungary through an arranged marriage. Nephews gained other important border provinces around Bohemia, giving them influence with the local nobility. Even worse, these family members would often pursue their own interests, rather than those of the Luxembourg dynasty, the German empire, or the Bohemian kingdom.

Still, Wenceslaus’s early years seemed promising. In his first imperial diet, he united support behind the Roman pope, who encouraged him to come to Rome for the imperial coronation. Wenceslaus also arranged the marriage of his sister Anne with King Richard II of England (r. 1377-1399), who lent money to Wenceslaus to finance the trip. Wenceslaus never bothered to go to Rome to be crowned emperor, however, so he remained weak and dependent on the electoral princes. Challenging his authority, the cities of the empire began to ally themselves together formally in leagues to protect themselves from the continual warfare. Although Wenceslaus successfully promulgated an imperial peace, or Landfriede, in 1383 and again in 1389, he wound up unable to appease either the princes or the towns.

He withdrew into Bohemia, where he quarreled with the archbishop of Prague in 1393. Reputedly, he even took part in the torture of several clerics, killing John of Pomuk, the general vicar, and dumping his body in the Vltava River. Years later, after the victim was canonized as Saint John of Nepomuk, his veneration promoted the Counter-Reformation, elevating him to be the new patron saint of Bohemia. In Wenceslaus’s own time, this heinous act spurred the nobility into an alliance with both Luxemburger relatives and the Austrian Habsburgs. On May 8, 1394, this fronde, or noble conspiracy, even arrested the king. Surprisingly, Wenceslaus’s youngest brother, John, duke of Görlitz (north of Bohemia), came to his defense, briefly pursuing the captors and their prisoner into Upper Austria.

Following the protests of the Roman pope and the princes in Germany, the nobles released Wenceslaus on August 1. The conflict continued, however, as Wenceslaus tried to delay, buy off one side or another, and outmaneuver his eager relatives, including John, who turned against him before his death in 1396. Finally, his half brother Sigismund and his nephew Jobst, margrave of Moravia, forced Wenceslaus to agree to terms that gave the nobles control of many royal prerogatives.

After a long absence from Germany, Wenceslaus tried at an imperial diet in 1397 to promote a territorial peace for Franconia. His failure there, together with an increasing disaffection by and rivalry with the princes, led an organized opposition to remove him from power. On August 20, 1400, the electoral princes deposed him, citing him for not resolving the papal schism and not preserving the empire’s peace. The next day, they elected Rupert III, elector of the palatinate, as king (r. 1400-1410). Fortunately for Wenceslaus, Rupert lacked the power to force him to renounce his title. Unfortunately, however, Wenceslaus’s own relatives yet again became his opponents. When Wenceslaus impetuously planned to go to Rome for the imperial coronation, he made his half brother Sigismund regent. Sigismund promptly took the king prisoner on March 6, 1402. Jobst came to Wenceslaus’s defense, as did some of the cities and nobility, but Wenceslaus had to escape on his own from imprisonment in Vienna on November 11, 1403. After further conflicts with the Bohemian nobles, Wenceslaus bought their support by handing over still more of his royal authority. The king’s effective rule was thereafter largely confined to his own personal lands.

A new problem arose at the University of Prague, where some professors were adopting the reforming ideas of the famous English theologian John Wyclif, whose writings the church had declared heretical. Wyclif called for a purified church hierarchy, especially demanding that priests ought to live a more simple and virtuous life. When the rector of the university, who was German, successfully banned Wyclif’s teachings there in 1403, he angered the large number of Czech supporters of those ideas. One native professor, Jan Hus, soon became the leading exponent of church reform in Bohemia, inspiring followers known as Hussites.

Theology was not the only controversy at the university. At the same time, the Bohemian professors had also been encouraging a new nationalistic frustration against the dominance of “foreigners.” The university administration had originally been divided into four “nations” the Czechs and three different kinds of Germans each with one vote on important issues. In 1409, Wenceslaus tried to reassert his royal title, gaining support from France at the price of recognizing the Avignon pope. When the university’s three nations of Germans resisted this proposition, Wenceslaus retaliated. With the Kutná Hora decree, the voting rights switched from three to one favoring the Germans to a system that favored the Czechs. In protest, many Germans left to found a new university in Leipzig, and the University of Prague took on a national, Bohemian character. Further, the remaining Bohemians more effectively championed Hus and his reforms. Wenceslaus’s subsequent policies toward the Hussites vacillated; his general toleration allowed them to flourish, while his occasional restrictions were ineffective.

Meanwhile, the divisions in Europe deepened. The Council of Pisa in 1410 elected yet another new pope, although the Avignon and Roman pontiffs both refused to resign. The death of King Rupert then required a new royal election in Germany. Wenceslaus tried both to assert his claim to the royal title and to support his nephew Jobst and half brother Sigismund, both of whom were elected. Thus three popes competed to govern the church, while three kings claimed to rule Germany. Jobst’s death after three and a half months led the electors to unite on Sigismund, who promised to support Wenceslaus’s expedition to Rome to be crowned emperor.

While Wenceslaus continued to put off any such trip, the initiative was gained by Sigismund. Under his patronage, the Council of Constance (1414-1418) convened to end the papal schism. Additionally, it summoned Hus for examination concerning heresy, arrested him (despite the safe conduct guaranteed by Sigismund), and burned him alive at the stake. Back in Bohemia, supporters of the martyred Hus thereupon openly defied church and council. By December, 1416, Wenceslaus finally rejected most accommodations with the Hussites and joined the archbishop in restricting them, but by then it was too late. In 1419, Wenceslaus’s enforcement of the papal order placing Catholic priests back into parishes unleashed rioting in Prague, as well as the first defenestrations the defiant tossing of government officials out of windows. Hiding from decision and responsibility, Wenceslaus died of a stroke on August 16, 1419. Thereafter, Bohemia dissolved into civil war and rebellion.

Significance

Perhaps no monarch could have completely mastered the difficulties facing Christendom, Germany, and Bohemia around 1400. In addition, Wenceslaus was certainly not the vicious tyrant portrayed by some critics. Ultimately, though, his indecision and inaction harvested a destructive course of events. The German monarchy under his successor Sigismund continued its precipitous decline. Moreover, the Hussite revolution convulsed Bohemia for most of the next century. Consequently, the Czechs gained increasing national and cultural independence from the German empire, although more in spite of Wenceslaus than inspired by him.

Bibliography

Betts, R. R. Essays in Czech History. London: Athlone Press, 1969. A collection of scholarly, readable articles, mostly about persons and events contemporary with Wenceslaus. Includes a select bibliography of works cited and other works by the author.

Bradley, J. F. N. Czechoslovakia: A Short History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971. In the context of a general, national history, the author surveys clearly and in some depth the failures of Wenceslaus that led to the Hussite revolution.

Klassen, John Martin. The Nobility and the Making of the Hussite Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. A detailed, complex examination of the Bohemian nobles and both their conflict with Wenceslaus’s royal authority and their divisions on religious reform issues. Includes a helpful map, appendices of noble families, and a bibliography.

Newcomer, James. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg: The Evolution of Nationhood, 963 A.D. to 1983. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984. This history of the grand duchy of Luxembourg over a thousand-year period includes discussions of the counts who became rulers of Bohemia.

Spinka, Matthew. John Hus: A Biography. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968. A standard biography of the religious reformer, although the king is only of secondary importance. Also features photographs, a map, and a select bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Stejksal, Karel. European Art in the Fourteenth Century. Translated by Till Gottheinerová. London: Octopus Books, 1978. The many color illustrations, including contemporary portraits of Wenceslaus, present the rich cultural milieu of the Bohemia of Charles IV. The text mostly focuses on artistic achievements and includes time lines and a map.

Teich, Mikulás̆, ed. Bohemia in History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. This anthology includes essays on medieval Bohemia and Moravia, Bohemian culture under Charles IV, and the Hussite movement.