Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 / With a short summary of later events

by C. Edmund Maurice

The first work which his Imperial position imposed on him was the effort to restore order in the Church, by putting an end to the divisions between the rival Popes. In this point he wisely followed the policy of his father, and supported the claims of Pope Urban VI., who was actually living at Rome. The assembly of German princes accepted the decision of the Emperor; and at Prague he received the support both of the University and the Archbishop. But a difficulty at once arose. The Pope of Avignon was, as a matter of course, supported by the King of France; and the old traditions of the House of Luxemburg were in favour of friendly relations with the French kings. Greatly, therefore, to Urban’s indignation, Wenceslaus insisted on renewing his alliance with Charles in the next year to that in which he had recognised Urban as pope; he also refused to support that Pope in his quarrels with the House of Anjou for the possession of Sicily; and an even more vital cause of difference between Urban and Wenceslaus was the determination of the King to assert his authority over the clergy of Bohemia.

It was in these quarrels with his clergy that Wenceslaus first showed that tendency to violent methods, which undermined his own power and inflicted great injury on the cause of Church reformation. In 1385 he was involved in a quarrel with the Dean of Breslau. It appeared that a cask of beer sent to the dean by his brother had been intercepted by the Town Council, on the ground that no foreign beer should be admitted into the town. The dean, therefore, laid an interdict upon Breslau. Wenceslaus came to inquire into the matter, and demanded that the religious services should be celebrated, as long at least as he stayed in the town. The dean refused; and thereupon Wenceslaus banished the whole Chapter of Breslau from the town for two years, and handed over a large part of their property to the citizens.

But the most dangerous of his clerical enemies was the Archbishop of Prague, John of Jenstein. The Archbishop, himself of noble birth, had had a quarrel with the Marshal of the Court about certain rights of fishing on the Elbe; and, in asserting these rights, he had destroyed a weir which the marshal had made. Wenceslaus took the side of his official, and demanded that the Archbishop should make compensation. Jenstein refused; and Wenceslaus thereupon confiscated his property. But these acts, however arbitrary, might possibly have been forgotten, had they not been followed by a more celebrated quarrel.

In the year 1393 the Vice Chamberlain, who was the chief judge of the royal law-court, had put to death two priests. It is uncertain what their offences were; but the Archbishop claimed them as under his jurisdiction, and asserted that they should only have been tried in his court. About the same time, the Archbishop had wished to seize and punish certain Jews, who, after being baptised as Christians, had relapsed into Judaism. As the Jews were under the special protection of the King’s court, the Vice Chamberlain refused to surrender them to the Archbishop. For these two acts of opposition to his power, the Archbishop excommunicated the Vice Chamberlain, and denounced him as a heretic. The King received this news with great indignation; and his anger was still further quickened by a more personal insult. Not long before this time, he had recommended a special favourite to a bishopric in Pomerania; but, as the rulers of Pomerania had resisted the appointment, Wenceslaus had been unable to establish his claim. He was therefore resolved to endow a new bishopric in Bohemia, to which his nominee could be appointed; and the death of the abbot of a monastery in Prague suggested to the King the advisability of suppressing the monastery in order to obtain funds for the endowment of his new bishopric. The Archbishop opposed the creation of this bishopric as a diminution of his own diocese; and he may very likely have considered the suppression of the monastery as an act of injustice. In defiance, therefore, of the King’s order, the Archbishop directed the monks to proceed to the election of a new abbot, which they accordingly did. Wenceslaus hastened back to Prague in great indignation; and the Archbishop fled to the Castle of Raudnice. The King claimed this as a royal castle; and he therefore considered the Archbishop’s flight thither as conclusive proof of an organised conspiracy against the royal authority. Finding that Jenstein would not return to Prague, the king summoned before him the two chief officials of the archbishopric, Puchnic, and John Nepomuc. When they persistently refused to give any evidence against the Archbishop, Wenceslaus ordered them to be tortured. As they continued to defy him, he had them burnt on the hand; and, at last, fixing upon Nepomuc, either as the most defiant or the most important of his victims, he ordered him to be bound hand and foot, and thrown into the Moldau.

This crime was to produce even greater triumphs for the clerical party than those which had followed the murder of Becket; and Wenceslaus seems to have repented of it almost as soon as it was committed. He set Puchnic free, and gave him money compensation for his sufferings; and he recalled Jenstein to Prague. The Archbishop came; a sort of reconciliation was patched up, but its unreality was evident from the first. Jenstein secretly fled to Rome and demanded that the Pope should lay an interdict on Bohemia. At the same time all the clergy appealed to Sigismund, King of Hungary, the brother of Wenceslaus, to come to Bohemia to avenge their wrongs. Strange to say, this second appeal was the only one which produced a result. The new pope, Boniface IX., was eager to obtain the support of Wenceslaus, and therefore took his part against the Archbishop. Sigismund, on the contrary, was always ready to plot against his brother; and he easily found allies among the Bohemian nobility.

For, though the offences of Wenceslaus against the clergy had attracted the most attention, his injuries to the secular nobles had been not less keenly felt. In his desire to weaken the more powerful members of the aristocracy, he had formed a private Council among the small nobility and citizens; and, by their help, he had opposed and counteracted the greater nobles. He had further offended their sense of dignity and decorum by playing the part of Haroun Alraschid, and paying secret visits to the houses of his various subjects, to discover any offences which might have escaped the notice of the ordinary tribunals. This conduct had made him so unpopular with the nobles that, even before Sigismund’s intervention, they had formed a conspiracy against him. The ostensible leader of this conspiracy was the king’s cousin Jodok, the Margrave of Moravia; but perhaps its most powerful member was Henry of Rosenberg. This nobleman, like so many of his time, was a distinguished patron of literature and art; though his influence in such a movement was no doubt due to the more material considerations of his high rank, wide connections, and large territorial influence.

KRUMOV, ONE OF THE CHIEF SEATS OF THE ROSENBERGS.

The Rosenbergs were the members of a very powerful group of families called the Vítkovici, who were the practical rulers of the south and south-east of Bohemia. There they exercised an authority which was little short of regal. They had bodies of soldiers at their command; they coined money and built fortresses at their pleasure. They professed to trace their origin to the Italian family of the Orsini; and they had played almost as important a part in the thirteenth century as the Vrs̆ovici had played in the earlier history of Bohemia. Of these Vítkovici the Rosenbergs were the most important branch; and their name shows that they had to a large extent Germanised themselves, even in the time of Ottakar. They had strengthened their position in Bohemia by founding towns and monasteries, planting woods, and building churches; and their fishponds became so important that the town of Prague was mainly supplied from them. So deeply-rooted was their power that the signs of its past greatness are visible even at the present day, in the towns of Krumov, Tr̆ebon̆, Prachatice, the monastery of Hohenfurt, and the castle and village of Rosenberg. It will easily be understood that the leader of so powerful a clan would deeply resent such attempts as those of Wenceslaus to infringe the privileges of the nobility, and to call men of lower rank to his Councils. Nor did the nobles rely solely on Bohemian support. Jodok of Moravia had taken counsel with the Duke of Austria and the Margrave of Meissen, who were always ready for any opportunity of weakening the Bohemian kingdom. Such a combination as this would have been dangerous even to Charles; and Wenceslaus was quite unable to stand against it.