Emperor Karel Charles IV

1316 - 1378  (62 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	, Karel Charles
  Prefix	Emperor
  Suffix	IV
  Birth	14 May 1316	Praha, Prague, Czechoslavakia
  Gender	Male
  Death	29 Nov 1378	Praha, Prague, Czechoslavakia
  Burial	Dec 1378	St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, Czechoslavakia
  WAC	8 Apr 1946	SLAKE
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I47917	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Family ID

  F24736

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  Family	VALOIS, Queen Blanche Marguerite de ,   b. 1317, Paris, Seine, France Paris, Seine, Franced. 1 Aug 1348, Praha, Prague, Czechoslavakia (Age 31 years)
  Family ID	F24735	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

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  Charles IV 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378, born Wenceslaus,[2] was a King of Bohemia and the first King of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor. He was a member of the House of Luxembourg from his father's side and the House of Přemyslid from his mother's side, which he emphasised, because it gave him two saints as direct ancestors. King of Bohemia Reign26 August 1346 – 29 November 1378 Coronation2 September 1347, Prague PredecessorJohn SuccessorWenceslaus IV King of the Romans Reign11 July 1346 – 29 November 1378 Coronation26 November 1346, Bonn PredecessorLouis IV SuccessorWenceslaus IV Holy Roman Emperor, King of Italy Reign1355 – 29 November 1378 Coronation 6 January 1355, Milan (Italian) 5 April 1355, Rome (imperial) PredecessorLouis IV SuccessorSigismund Born14 May 1316 Prague Died29 November 1378 (aged 62) Prague BurialSt. Vitus Cathedral, Prague Spouse Blanche of Valois Anna of Bavaria Anna von Schweidnitz Elizabeth of Pomerania Issue Wenceslaus, King of the Romans Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor John of Görlitz Margaret, Queen of Hungary Catherine of Bohemia Elisabeth, Duchess of Austria Anne, Queen of England Margaret, Burgravine of Nuremberg HouseLuxembourg FatherJohn of Bohemia MotherElisabeth of Bohemia Religion He was the eldest son and heir of King John of Bohemia, who died at the Battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346. Charles inherited the County of Luxembourg from his father and was elected king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. On 2 September 1347, Charles was crowned King of Bohemia. On 11 July 1346, the prince-electors chose him as King of the Romans (rex Romanorum) in opposition to Emperor Louis IV. Charles was crowned on 26 November 1346 in Bonn. After his opponent died, he was re-elected in 1349 and crowned King of the Romans. In 1355 he was crowned King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor. With his coronation as King of Burgundy in 1365, he became the personal ruler of all the kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire. Life Charles IV was born to King John of the Luxembourg dynasty and Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia of the Czech Premyslid Dynasty in Prague. 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. He received French education and was literate and fluent in five languages: Latin, Czech,[3] 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).[4] 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. King of the Romans 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 chosen 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. 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 died unnoticed and unmourned after a few months. 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. 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. 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.[5] 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. 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. 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.[6] 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.[7] 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. 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. 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 Brandenburg; after two years of conflict the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1373 became part of the Czech lands. 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. 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.