The Council of Constance Part 2

The Council of Constance, which took place from November 1414 to April 1418, became a monumental event in history, not just for its pivotal decisions like the election of Pope Martin V and the execution of Jan Hus, but for the dynamic and often chaotic atmosphere it fostered among its diverse attendees.

Over the course of three and a half years, the city transformed into a melting pot of intellectual exchange, as leading minds from across Europe converged to debate pressing issues of the time, including the rights of indigenous groups and the justification of tyrannicide.

Amid cramped living conditions and a thriving entertainment scene, scholars exchanged ideas and manuscripts, paving the way for the Renaissance. The presence of 718 licensed sex workers also highlighted the social complexities of the gathering, reflecting the era’s attitudes towards prostitution and morality, even among the clergy.

The Council served as a critical juncture that would shape not only religious but also political landscapes in Europe for years to come.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 172 – The council of Constance Part II, also episode 9 of season 9 The Reformation before the Reformation

In November 1414 30,000 academics and aristocrats, bishops, blacksmiths and bakers, cardinals, counts and chefs, doctors, dancers and diplomats, princes, prelates and public girls descended on a town in Southern Germany built to house 6 to 8,000 people. They planned to stay a few weeks, 2-3 months max. But 3 and a half years later most of them were still there.

What did they get up to? The great tentpole events, the trial of John XXIII, the burning of Jan Hus and the election of Martin V is what the council of Constance is remembered for, but what about all that time in between?

When I began working on this episode, I had planned to move straight to the showstoppers. I think I said something to that effect at the end of the last episode. But when I dug deeper, I realised that this world event was so much more than a papal election and the trial of a dissenter. For 3 years Constance was at the same time a never-ending G20 summit, the greatest academic conference of the Middle Ages, a permanent imperial diet and the centre of the catholic church. Everybody who was anybody was there either in the flesh or had at least sent a delegation.

Issues and concerns were brought before the council that still plague people today. Is it ever right to kill a tyrant, and if so, when can it be justified? What rights should be guaranteed for indigenous groups, in this case Pagans, and how should their dignity be protected? Other attendees sought justice for crimes committed against them in a world where political murder had become commonplace. Others still demanded their reward for years of service or simply wanted their rights recognised.

Living cheek by jowl in tiny Constance the leading minds from across Europe, from the ancient universities of Paris, Oxford and Bologna as well as from the newly founded seats of learning in Krakow, Prague, Heidelberg and Vienna shared their ideas, opinions, books and discoveries, paving the way for the intellectual shift we call the Renaissance.

Enough, me thinks to provide 30 minutes of great historical entertainment….

But before we start here are the customary 90 seconds of pleading for support. Let me keep it short – no I do not own a mattress from the internet, or have a razor subscription, nor do I put my precious mental health into the non-existent hands of a disembodied voice on Zoom. And if I did, you would not hear about it. Because the History of the Germans is advertising free. And to keep it that way many of you have already made a one-time donation or have subscribed on historyofthegermans.com/support. In particular we thank Thomas Barbeau, Robert K., James P., CC, Mit S., and Beau W. for having signed up already.

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Constance: A Cultural Hub

The Council of Constance lasted from November 1414 to April 1418. All this time the participants had to live in incredibly cramped conditions. The great cardinals and imperial princes stayed in the splendid mansions of the patricians, Bishops and counts in the local inns or living with the more prosperous members of the artisan’s guilds. But the 5,000 prelates and hundreds of knights had to move into bedsits and further down the food chain we hear of simple folk moving into empty wine barrels.

Much of their time was taken up with building consensus within and between the nations, a process that was drawn-out and laborious. Position papers were exchanged, academic essays published, sermons reported, letters sent back and forth between the representatives and their principals and much backroom work undertaken, not dissimilar to modern day political gatherings.

But that still left room for other pursuits. The city and the various princes and prelates called on the hundreds of buglers and pipers, dancers and acrobats to put on entertainments. Tournaments were held.

But sometimes one had to breathe some fresh air. Many ventured out of the overcrowded city in their spare time, often to the spa town of Baden near Zurich. There, you could find hot springs that had been enjoyed since Roman times. And much like today, foreigners would write home in astonishment that the locals enjoyed their sauna in the buff.

Talking about the delights of disrobing, there is one topic that comes up in the lore of the council again and again and even made it into a symbol for the city of Constance, and that are the sex workers coming to service the councillors. I think this needs to be seen in context. Prostitution in the Middle Ages was largely tolerated, even by the church, and for simple pragmatic reasons. It was better men went to prostitutes than ending up messing up marriages or even worse raping women. Ok, the church also thought that it was better than masturbation and homosexuality, but let’s leave that to one side. Thomas Aquinas put it best when he said that if you remove the latrines from the palace, the staterooms will start to smell. There is the well documented case that the bishop of Winchester ran the brothels of Southwark  in London. Clergy too used prostitutes, for instance in Dijon, about 20% of the brothel customers were members of the clergy. Attitudes to clergy using prostitutes are hard to gage. We have preachers who railed against the hypocrisy of priests demanding moral standards of their flock whilst building a special gate to facilitate their tete a tetes. But there are also reports of people believing that sex was a natural urge and that it was better the vicar went to the bathhouse than seducing the members of the congregation. And we have to remember that a lot of men and women had taken vows of chastity who weren’t necessarily that pious. Many a second son or daughter were sent to monasteries because there weren’t enough funds to provide a living or a dowry. For ambitious men from humble backgrounds the church provided the only route to wealth and status and many an archbishop had been lifted into the post by his princely father purely for political reasons. None of these had signed up to the lifestyle that Bernhard of Clairvaux or St. Francis expected. That is why Rome had one of per head largest populations of prostitutes.

What made the story of the whores of Constance so famous was for one the sheer scale. 718 licensed sex workers in a town of 6-8,000 are pretty visible. It would be the similar to the Las Vegas night entertainment crowd coming in force down to Bismark, North Dakota for a  the National Party Conference. Nothing against Bismark. I have been there and loved it, even got myself an UffDa hat, but if such a thing happened, we would talk about it for a century.

And then the story of fornicating prelates made good copy in support of the Reformation agenda, further embellished by prudish 19^th century writers.

What definitely did not happen was that there was a great courtesans called Imperia who steered council proceedings from her bedchamber as Balzac imagined. The reality was more likely grim. When I mentioned people living in upturned wine barrels for three years, that story referred to one of these prostitutes.

Constance was more than a place for powerful lords and bishops to gather (sometimes naked). It was first and foremost a place for the leading intellectuals of the Late Middle Aged to congregate. The universities sent their most prominent professors, the theologians and canonists of the papal court were out there in force and the chancellors and lawyers of the temporal princes joined in as well. And they did what intellectuals do to this day, they researched, they wrote and they debated.

But one thing was different. In a world before printing, intellectuals also came together to swap books. Not just to read, but also to copy, or to have copied by one of the hundreds of scribes who now lived in the city. Smart entrepreneurs quickly realised that this was a great opportunity and brought in books from all across Europe. Council participants went to the local monasteries to sift through their ancient libraries. Two of the oldest and greatest were nearby, Reichenau and St. Gallen, centres of learning, art and culture since the 9^th century.

These works were read and copied over and over again, so much so that the libraries of europe filled with manuscripts that bear the postscript “Compilatum Constantii tempore generalis concilii”, compiled during the general council at Constance.

The Swedish prelate Tore Andersson copied theological works for his monastery at Vadstena as well as Cessolis’ book on chess. The city scribe of Brunswick copied legal documents, the bishop of Ermland in Prussia collected copies of the classics, of Florus and Vitruvius that are now in the library of Krakow. The cardinal Filastre, who we met before, developed a passion for cartography. He obtained a copy of Ptolomy’s Geography from Manuel Chrysoloras, the envoy of the Byzantine emperor. Later Filastre would encourage the Dane Claudius Clavus to create his map of the Nordics, the first map ever to show Iceland and Greenland, places Clavus had actually visited.  

Leonardo Bruni who had arrived with the now deposed pope John XXIII made a living from his translations of the works of Plato and Plutarch.

Early Humanists finding ancient Roman and Greek texts in monasteries

But more than writing and copying, book hunting was the supreme discipline that early humanists engaged in. What they sought was the wisdom of the ancients, the long lost Greek and Roman texts that would open up a new perspective on the world, a world that was to replace the medieval certainties that were gradually fading away.

The reason so much of the ancient texts were lost was simply the material they were written on. Plato, Aristotle, Ovid and Virgil wrote on papyrus and parchment, organic materials subject to decay unless they are preserved in the dry soil of Egypt.

The only reason we can still read the works today is because for hundreds of years monks in their scriptoria or Islamic scholars in their libraries had copied them, not once but four, five , six times over the millennium since the fall of Rome.

Hence, for a 14^th century humanist the only place where he may hope to find, say Catullus poem 16 or Ovid’s metamorphoses was an ancient monastery or a cathedral library. One can only wonder what these pious scribes must have thought when faithfully copying some lurid tale or materialist philosophy. But we must be grateful that they did revere these ancient works enough to not let them disappear for ever. That being said, they did not put them on the eye level in their libraries, forcing the book hunters to bend down in the search for the  intellectual treasures. Echte Bückware.

Book hunters have been uncovering these works since Charlemagne seeded the idea that ancient civilisations could hold the key to knowledge. And much has been recovered. You may remember Einhard wo used Suetonius “Lives of the Caesars “ as a model for his life of Carolus Magnus in the 9^th century, Widukind who drew on a wide range of Roman sources when he produced his chronicles in the 10th, the scholastics dug up Aristotle and took inspiration from Muslim scholars in the 12^th. By the late 13^th and early 14^th century hounding Italian monasteries in the search of relics from the Roman or Greek past had become a preoccupation of the likes of Petrarch and Dante. The aforementioned poems of Catullus for instance came to light in 1305 at the cathedral library of Verona.

One of the most prolific book hunters was Poggio Bracciolini. He had come to Constance in the service of John XXIII, but once his master was convicted and deposed he found himself at a bit of a lost end. He was a notary and had worked in the papal chancery for 11years. Since his career was tied to the church and the church had pretty much in its entirety decamped to Constance, he had to stay to find a new job.

And in between jobhunting and networking, he visited monasteries all across the German speaking lands and even in France. And my god did he bring in a great haul: lost speeches by Cicero, Quintilians 12 volumes on rhetoric, poems by Statius Silvae, the histories of Ammian, handbooks on civil architecture, grammar and early theology.

Two finds made him famous across europe, the first was Lucretius De Rerum natura, a didactic poem explaining the main tenets of epicurean philosophy. Lucretius wanted to release humanity from its fear of the wrath of the gods. He postulated that the world was made of atoms that veer randomly through time and space, leaving it up to us humans to use free will to determine how we wanted to live our lives. As I said, not very much in line with the faith of the copyist who might have spent months writing these 7,400 hexameters down thereby preserving a whole school of Greek philosophy.

The other find was a complete copy of Vitruvius the Roman architectural writer and theorist. One of Bracciolini’s copies ended up in the hands of Leon Battista Alberti. Alberti then used Vitruvius as a basis to write his De re aedificatoria that became the textbook of Italian renaissance architecture. In 1459 he was commissioned to build the first planned city in Europe since antiquity, the city of Pienza for Enea Silvio Piccolomini the pope Pius II. The circle was closed by the personal physician of pope Pius II, Andreas Reichlin von Meldegg. Meldegg picked up his patient’s architectural ideas and when he returned to his hometown of Űberlingen just across the lake from Constance, he built his family palace, arguably Germany’s first renaissance building.

The elevation of Friedrich of Hohenzollern as margrave of Brandenburg

Talking about palaces, what made life in Constance during the council so uncomfortable for even the most eminent cardinals and bishops was that they had to compete for suitable accommodation with the imperial princes, the dukes, counts and even lesser nobles.

What brought them there was in part the church council. Since there was no acting pope for almost two years it was the council that decided whether their younger sons would get into an attractive benefice, how to resolve a long-running conflict with the neighbouring bishop or whether to place the local monastery under their direct control.

But it wasn’t just matters of the church that brought them there. Constance had also become the seat of the imperial court. Sigismund stayed in Constance from December 1414 to July 1415 and then again from January 1417 to the end of the council in April 1418.

The Holy Roman Empire famously never had a formal capital. The ruler was perennially on the road and would occasionally call the princes to an imperial diet that would last a few weeks and would take place on different locations.

But when Sigismund was in Constance, he had most of the participants of an imperial diet right on hand. As we mentioned last week, all of the Prince-electors not only the three archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier but also the duke of Saxony, the king of Bohemia and the count palatinate were in the city either in person or represented by an envoy. On top of that we have various dukes, of Bavaria, Austria, Schleswig, Mecklenburg, Lothringia and Teck as well as hundreds of lesser nobles who had taken up residence in the city.

So whenever an issue relating to the empire came up that would normally require a full assembly, one could be called immediately. As we heard last week, Sigismund was able to place duke Friedrich of Austria under the imperial ban and raise an imperial army within just 10 days, not in months as would normally be the case. These few years were by far the most proactive of Sigismund’s reign as emperor.

One of the main roles for an imperial administration to perform was to enfeoff vassals and to receive their oath of allegiance. These were splendid events that celebrated the power of the empire and the emperor, all lavishly depicted in Richental’s illustrated chronicle.

One of these elevations would have implications far out into the future. Smart observers may have notice that there was someone missing in my list of prince electors – the Margrave of Brandenburg. That was not an oversight. Because the margrave of Brandenburg was Sigismund himself. You may remember that he had received the electorate in his inheritance and then pawned it to his cousin Jobst to fund his wars in Hungary. Jobst died in 1411 and that was when Sigismund took his margraviate back.

But he did not keep it. Instead he enfeoffed a certain Frederick, Burgrave of Nurnberg with  the mark of Brandenburg. Why give it away.?  His father had paid the astronomic sum of 500,000 silver mark for this precious principality that came with one of the seven votes in the election of an emperor and was to be the second centre of Luxemburg power alongside Bohemia. And then why give it to Friedrich, the Burgrave of Nurnberg.

His family name was Hohenzollern, I guess you have heard that name before. Just a recap on who the Hohenzollern were. They are originally from Swabia, where they were first mentioned as counts of Zollern in the 11^th century. Their ancestral castles at Hohenzollern and Sigmaringen still stand.

They had a knack of staying close to the imperial family, whichever it happened to be. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa rewarded their loyalty by making them burgraves of Nurnberg, the city they had so actively sponsored. You heard that another Frederick of Hohenzollern had been instrumental in the election of Rudolf of Habsburg as king of the Romans in 1272. This brought rich reward in Franconia, the area surrounding Nurnberg.

In 1331 they acquired Ansbach and in 1340 Kulmbach, gradually building a asizeable land holding in Franconia. That brought them on the radar of emperor Karl IV who was keen to build a land bridge from Bohemia to Nurnberg and from there to Frankfurt and Luxemburg. The land of the Hohenzollern was right in this corridor. Hence Karl IV regularly offered marriage alliances to the Bruggrave and even though these never materialized, the two houses remained closely associated. This alliance survived the death of Karl IV and was inherited by both Wenceslaus and Sigismund.

Therefore, it was not a surprise that when Sigismund regained the margraviate of Brandenburg after his cousin Jobst had died, he turned to Frederick of Hohenzollern to be his governor in these lands. At the time Brandenburg was still an absolute mess. Though in Luxemburg hands for nearly forty years, the owners had rarely visited and left the place to its own devices.  Local families had taken over the countryside, without being able to suppress the robber barons or becoming robbers themselves. The cities had thrown off any semblance of princely overlordship and bishops and abbots hardly took notice of the margrave.

Frederick of Hohenzollern embarked on a campaign of reconquest that would take his family a good fifty years to complete. From Sigismund’s perspective Brandenburg was a money sink. Whatever revenues these lands generated – all was ploughed back into Frederick’s military campaigns. And as long as the Hohenzollern was just a governor, Sigismund was the ultimate bill payer. And paying bills was not his strong suit.  So, in April 1417 Sigismund could no longer prolong the inevitable. He enfeoffed his friend and governor with the margraviate. Making him not just an imperial prince but a prince elector in one fell swoop.

The Hohenzollern had arrived in the top flight of imperial society. From here they would build out their lands, become archbishops and grand masters of the Teutonic Order. The latter post was most important since Albrecht of Brandenburg ended up being the last of the grandmasters. He turned Prussia into a secular state in 1525 that would later be inherited by the margraves of Brandenburg and the rest is a history we will spend a lot of time with in the future. If you want to double check on the transition of Prussia from the Teutonic Knights to the house of Brandenburg, check out episode 137.

The feud between Heinrich the rich of Landau and Ludwig the Bearded of Ingolstadt

Having all these imperial princes to hand meant that Sigismund could also convene the imperial lawcourt, the Hofgericht much more often. The court went through more cases in this period than it did during the remainder of Sigismund’s long reign.

One case became notorious. The duke Heinrich of Bavaria-Landshut had fallen out with his cousin Ludwig of Bavaria Ingolstadt, over – what else – but the inheritance of another cousin, the duke of Bavaria-Straubing. If there was one tradition amongst the Wittelsbachs, it was to constantly squabble amongst their cousins.

These two took family feuding to new heights, even by Wittelsbach standards. Heinrich who everybody called ‘the Rich’ tried to put together an alliance of interested parties against his cousin Ludwig, who everybody called the Bearded.

This creation of a league against him irritated Beardy and he went before the entire imperial diet in Constance and said something exceedingly rude about his cousin’s mother that cast serious doubt about him being his cousin in the first place.

You can imagine how that went down. The rich duke hired 15 henchmen to attack the bearded one on his way home from a council meeting. Ludwig the Bearded was severely injured but survived. The imperial court was ready and on hand and was willing to convict Heinrich the Rich of attempted murder. Only by paying a fine of 6,000 guilders to king Sigismund and the intervention of his son-in-law Friedrich of Hohenzollern could he retain his freedom. Heinrich and Ludwig did get their war in the end, which devastated their lands and destroyed any future hopes of putting a Wittelsbach on the throne for the next 400 years.

Heinrich the Rich’s attempts to murder his opponent wasn’t an isolated incident. As the 14^th century gave way to the 15^th political violence had become a fact of life. Hungary had always been a particularly rough place where the killing even of anointed kings had happened on regular intervals. But not only there. We have encountered attempts at poisoning several times in these last few episodes. You remember king Albrecht of Habsburg who was saved from poisoning by hanging upside down for days until his eye had popped off? Our friend Sigismund had to undergo a similar treatment but luckily kept his eye. Then there was the last of the Premyslid kings of Bohemia, Wenceslaus III who was stabbed to death by an unknown assassin, and Sigismund’s half-brother Wenceslaus IV who was also poisoned but survived.

Political murder was even more common in Italy where the local lords had taken power in military coups. That made them vulnerable to both internal rivals vying for their position, idealists who wanted to revive the institutions of their ancient commune and outside forces trying to dislodge them. This is the world that bred a Cesare Borgia and his admirer, Machiavelli.

In England we even had a genuine regicide when Richard II ran into a red hot poker – backwards – allegedly.

The tyrannicide decision on Jean Petit

But it was a political murder in France that became the case that triggered a debate over tyrannicide, the question under which circumstances it was acceptable to murder the ruler of a country. The murder in question was the killing of Louis of Orleans, the brother of King Charles VI on November 23^rd, 1407 by henchmen of the duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless.

You remember John the Fearless, famous for a feckless foray into the fierce fire of the Janissaries at Nikopol. And you may remember Louis of Orleans, one of the many rivals of Sigismund for the inheritance of Hungary

The disagreement between these two men had however nothing to do with Hungarians of Ottomans. This was over control of France itself.

The reigning king Charles VI had experienced ever more severe bouts of mental illness. He once attacked his own men, forgot who he was or who his wife and children were and towards the end famously believed he was made of glass, terrified to shatter at the lightest touch.

France was ruled by a regency council made up of the royal uncles of Berry, Anjou and Burgundy, the queen, the gorgeous Isabeau of Bavaria, and Louis of Orleans, the brother of the king. To say the members of the regency council struggled for consensus does not quite cover it. They constantly tried to outmaneuver each other, used the hapless king, the royal children, the administration of France, the schismatic church, even the English enemies, anything they could get hold of to get one over their opponents. And on this fateful November night, in the rue Vielle du Temple in Paris backstabbing became front-stabbing. The duke Louis of Orleans lay dead in a ditch, courtesy of his cousin John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy.

John’s plan did however not work out and the party of Louis of Orleans, the Armagnac’s regained supremacy in the council. But the infighting had weakened the French side so much that King Henry V, Bolingbroke of England saw his opportunity and attacked. The result was the battle of Agincourt that took place in 1415, in the middle of the Council. And that was followed by the Burgundians allying with the English against the king and then the dauphin of France, who was saved by Jeanne d’Arc..etc., etc., basically 100 years war Shekespeare and all that.

What brought this case before the council of Constance was that immediately after the attack on Louis of Orleans a Dominican friar, Jean Petit, had publicly proclaimed that the murder was justified because it was a tyrannicide. In consequence the court granted an amnesty to John the Fearless for the killing. That was later withdrawn when the Burgundians had lost influence and a synod of the French church condemned Jean Petit’s defense of the murder. The Burgundians then appealed to pope John XXIII which is how the council in Constance found itself discussing one of the most famous political murders of the Middle Ages.. 

One of the great voices at the council, Jean Gerson took a strong interest in this question. He believed the church had to take a stance against this proliferation of political murder and in particular against those who defended it. He asserted that the killing of a ruler, in particular a legitimate ruler was always prohibited, even if the ruler may have acted as a tyrant.

This thesis was opposed for obvious reasons by the Burgundians, but also made many other delegates feel queasy. After all the son of the man who had Richard II killed was now king of England. Equally many Italians had supported the murder of the duke Gian Maria Visconti of Milan a few years earlier.

The Council of Constance was too divided to make a clear decision. It refuted the statement of Jean Petit that tyrannicide was not only allowed but demanded by faith, but even that decision was later withdrawn.

So the church failed to weigh in on political murder as Jean Gerson had hoped. It is doubtful whether they would have been able to reign in on the brutality that was ever faster spiraling out of control. But it would have been nice if they had at least made an effort, in particular because the topic came back before the council concluded.  

The debate about the Teutonic Order

The reason the council had to look at tyrannicide again had to do with the Teutonic order. In 1410, four years before the council opened, the Knight Brothers had experienced the utterly devastating defeat at Tannenberg /Grunwald.

Being defeated by the Poles was bad enough. But what turned it into a life threatening calamity was that the chivalric brothers had also lost their raison d’etre the moment Jogaila, the grand prince of Lithuania, had converted to Christianity in order to become king of Poland. The now Christian ruler of Lithuania made it his job to convert those of his subjects who were still pagan. And reports were reaching Constance that his peaceful approach had been a lot more successful than the conversion by fire and sword propagated by the Teutonic Knights.

That meant there was nothing left of their mission to defend Christendom in the Baltics. Moreover, the Reisen, the chivalric adventure trips they had organized for the European aristocracy to play at crusading had stopped. And with it the warm rain of cash and free soldiers the order had enjoyed disappeared.

Sigismund had offered them to relocate to the Hungarian-Ottiman border to defend Christianity there, but the brothers declined.

Instead, they went all out on Jogaila and his cousin Witold. They argued these Lithuanians were fake Christians, their conversions had just been a show and their souls still black with pagan beliefs. And that they had made alliances with heretics, aka the orthodox rulers of Moscow and Novgorod. And then the usual rundown of depravity and cruelty that was the stock-in-trade when talking about people of a different faith.

Sigismund was trying to find a compromise between the Poles and the Teutonic order, both of which had sent large delegations to Constance. But the discussions led nowhere. There was no real compromise possible. If the order admitted that Lithuania was now being converted peacefully by the Jagiellons, then they had to either find a new job or call it a day. If the Jagiellons admitted that they had only converted to gain the crown of Poland, then they had to give it all up again.

And even a negotiation genius like Sigismund could not build a bridge between these positions….

But there was a second leg to it. Another Dominican, a somewhat deranged man called Johannes Falkenberg had fully embraced the Teutonic Knight’s position, even though he was neither a brother nor did he have a close relation with the order before 1412. For some reason he published a treatise where he called Jogaila a worshipper of false idols, all Poles he declared were idolaters, shameless dogs who had returned to their ancestral pagan religion. Hence it was an obligation for all good Christians to oppose these vile stains on the mantle of the faith, all the princes were called upon to raise armies to wipe them from the face of the earth.

This was plain silly. It did not need the extraordinary skills of the rector of the recently founded university of Krakow, Paulus Vladimiri to refute this pile of false accusations. In February 1417 the council formed a commission investigating Falkenberg’s claims and easily dismissed them as heretic. Falkenberg was captured and put in prison.

Meanwhile his opponent, the Polish envoy Paulus Vladimiri made an impressive speech to the council where he argued that pagans and Christians shared the same humanity. Their beliefs he argued was no justification to kill, hurt, or destroy their lands, as long as they lived peacefully alongside their Christan neighbors. And then he cited multiple cases where the Teutonic knights had killed, hurt or destroyed the lands of the Lithuanians and Samagitians without provocation.

If that had become church law and the atrocities could have been proven, the Order of the House of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem would have had to be dissolved. Which is why that did not happen.

If you want to get deeper into the Teutonic Knights and the issue of their behavior in Prussia and Lithuania, we have produced a whole series on their story. Check out episodes 128 to 137.

A hundred years later the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in South America and destroyed the Mayan and Aztek civilizations, Paulus Vladimiri’s ideas of peaceful co-existence had by then been comprehensively forgotten outside Poland. The Dominican Bartolomea de Las Casas who pointed out the horrific crimes committed against the indigenous population did not reference Paulus Vladimir’s attempts at getting the church to do the right thing.

Conclusion

And that is all we have got time for today. Next week we will go on to the two events that have made the Council of Constance famous, the election of pope Martin V that ended the Western Schism for good. And the crucial moment in Czech history that is commemorated in the dead centre of their capital, the Teyn square in Prague’s Old Town, I speak of course of the condemnation and execution of Jan Hus and Hieronymus of Prague which triggered the Hussite uprising and paved the way for a very different approach to organize religion. I hope you will join us again.

And before I go, just a last reminder that if you want to support the show, go to historyofthegermans.com/support where you can make a one-time donation or link to the Patreon website where you can make a longer term commitment – jus make sure to not do it on the Patreon iPhone App.

Council of Constance Part 1

The Council of Constance marked a pivotal moment in the history of the Catholic Church and the history of Europe in general.

One issue on the agenda was the ongoing schism that the council of Pisa had failed to resolve. Another the reform of the increasingly corrupt clergy all the way up to the pope himself. And then there were a number of individual questions this gathering of thousands had to address.

Whilst all these were crucial questions, the way the council constituted itself foreshadowed a fundamental change in the way European saw themselves.

This part 1 deals with the establishment of the council and the removal of the popes, most importantly the pope who had convened the council on the first place, John XXIII and his counterpart, the emperor Sigismund.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 171 – The Council of Constance Part 1 – Cleaning House, which is also episode 8 of season 9 “The Reformation before the Reformation”.

On a cold night in October 1414 a most unusual procession appeared near the village of Klösterle on the Arlberg pass. Not an army but almost as large. 600 men, some soldiers and bodyguards, a few high ranking aristocrats but mostly men of the cloth. Clerics, doctors of theology but also abbots, bishops and archbishops as well as the true princes of the church, cardinals, dozens of them. And at the center of the procession an enormous cart and in it the true lord of all of Christendom, the bearer of both swords, pope John XXIII.

The roads they had travelled on for days were terrible. Whatever was left of the old roman infrastructure had long been buried underground or had deteriorated so badly, it had gone out of use. So through the autumn mud the processions ploughs on. Just as they were passing the hamlet of Klösterle, in the holloway that masked as one of Europe’s busiest north-south connection the attendants watched in panic as the right hand side wheels of the papal wagon climbed the bank of the road. Before anyone could reign in the horses and prevent disaster, the carriage rose, went past the point of vanishing stability and with a terrifying thump landed on its side. The holy father was thrown out of his vehicle and lay buried deep in the snow. His lords and bishops run to him and ask: “Oh Holy father, has your holiness been harmed?” and he responded “here for devil’s sake I lie”.

Shaken but unharmed the vicar of Christ kept going. As the panorama widened and he could see the city of Bludenz down in the valley that leads to the lake and the city of Constance he uttered, full of premonition “So this is where they catch the foxes”.

And the old fox was right to be worried. For a year later he will find himself in prison in Mannheim, then just a solitary tower by the shore of the Rhine. How that happened and why he is now resting in a magnificent monument in the Baptistery of Florence paid for by the Medici family and bearing the inscription: John the XXIII former pope, Died in Florence A.D. 1419, on 11^th day before the Calends of January is what we will look at in this episode!

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And with that – back to the show

Here we are, the pope John XXIII is travelling across the Alps to go to a general church council in Constance. Which begs just one question – why? Why would Baldassarre Cossa, elected pope and recognized as head of the church in dozens of lands, born on the sundrenched island of Procida near Naples call a church assembly to discuss the schism and in a foggy mid-sized town in the German lands to boot?

Well, the answer is, he didn’t. Or at least he did not call a church council to debate the schism. As far as John XXIII was concerned, the schism was done and dusted. The Community of the Faithful had come together in Pisa in 1409 and had deposed the two competing contenders, Gregory XII and Benedict XIII and had replaced them with his predecessor Alexander V. And he, Baldassarre Cossa had been canonically elected as the successor of Alexander V. The fact that Gregory XII and Benedict XIII were still around claiming supremacy was a logistical and maybe military problem, but not one we need a church council for.

So the reason he did still call a church council had to do with one of the provisions of the previous council the one in Pisa. The Pisan gathering had made pope Alexander V swear he would call another council within the next three years to deal with the open issue of church reform. Because in all that debate about how to put an end to the schism, the important issue of how can we make a church a little less corrupt had fallen off the agenda.

That was why John XXIII found himself in a bind to call a church council. And he wasn’t opposed to the idea. Presiding over a major reform council would elevate him on to the level of the great popes Innocent II &III, Alexander III and  Gregory X. That would make everybody forget his – how can  say that politely – somewhat checkered past.

But as so often, Pope John XXIII struggled to find a suitable venue for his grand ecumenical council. Initially he wanted to do it in Rome, after all his capital and a categorical statement that the time when the Pope had to live away from the eternal city was now well and truly over.

The problem was that John XXIII had to live away from the eternal city except for very brief periods. His neighbor, King Ladislaus of Naples kept conquering papal lands and sacking Rome on regular intervals. That is the same Ladislaus who had inherited and pursued a claim on the crown of Hungary from his father Charles the Short who was made even shorter by Elisabeth of Bosnia. If that last sentence was complete gobbledygook for you, listen back to episode 169.

A lasting peace with Naples was unlikely. Pope John XXIII did not like Ladislaus of Naples very much ever since Ladislaus had his two brothers hanged as pirates. Ladislaus did not like the pope very much, because he could.

With Rome off the list of suitable venues, John needed to find a neutral place in Italy. But by then, the peninsula was in the grip of near perennial war. Many of the former communes have become principalities ruled by local strongmen. And strongmen do what strongmen are wont to do, they go after other people’s lands, cities and treasure until there are armies crisscrossing the land from early spring to late autumn.

Enter stage left our old friend Sigismund of Luxemburg. By now this extremely intrepid man had not only secured his reign over Hungary but had finally achieved his great ambition and had become king of the Romans. And best of all, his hated half-brother Wenceslaus was still around to see it happening.

How did he become King of the Romans, that was simple. Nobody really wanted the job any more. The reign of Rudolf of the empty pocket had shown beyond any doubt that there was no money left to establish any kind of imperial authority. Only the very, very richest could afford to don the imperial coronation mantle. And even after 4 decades of infighting and mismanagement, the house of Luxemburg was still the richest of the great eligible families of the empire. And being a squabbling lot, two Luxemburgs put their hat in the ring, Sigismund, king of Hungary and Jobst, margrave of Moravia. Weirdly, Jobst had the inferior title but a lot more money. But what he lacked was longevity. Both were elected by a mixture of correct and incorrect prince-electors but Jobst died in 1411. Sigismund had the election repeated and was confirmed by all.

Being king of the Romans and future emperor came with the role supreme protector of the church. And whilst John XXIII may think the schism is over, Sigismund did not see it like that. He had to deal with the fact that some imperial principalities, the Palatinate and Baden for instance kept their allegiance to the deposed pope Gregory XII. So this needed to be cleaned up. And he knew that one way to gain true control over the empire and with it the leverage to initiate much needed imperial reform, was to rescue  Holy Mother church.

That is why Sigismund pops up in Lodi in Northern Italy in December 1413 to discuss the long overdue church council with the pope. By now John XXIII had considered Bologna and even Avignon of all places, but both had been turned down by his advisors as either too dangerous or totally inappropriate.

At which point Sigismund suggested they all come over to his yard. Yard being the word my teenage son uses to describe a home and I thought I use it since I am a bit tired of using the same words again and again.

To tell what happened next, I have to introduce the chronicler Ulrich Richental. He was a citizen of Constance and he wrote a very detailed account of the council that – despite some biases – is still the #1 source for the events during that period. Richental is a big fan of Sigismund not so much of the popes. So he does make things up occasionally, like the road accident at the start of the episode. But he does it so nicely, I couldn’t stop myself pretending it did actually happen.

And here is Ulrich’s account of the two heads of Christendom discussing the venue for the most momentous event of the 15^th century:

When Sigismund proposed to come to Germany John XXIII responded: “I cannot convince my cardinals to travel north across the Alps”

Sigismund: “In that case I cannot get the princes and electors to travel south across the Alps”

Gridlock

Sigismund then turns to one of his entourage, the duke of Teck: “Isn’t there an imperial city close to the Alps?  Teck: “Sure Sire, the city of Kempten”. At which point a count of Nellenburg intervenes: “nah, there is not enough food in Kempten. But there is another city, just an hour’s ride away, Constance on the lake. They have a bishopric and everything”

Sigismund: “Holy father – do you like Constance?”

John XXIII: “Oh my beloved son, I do like Constance”

That’s it – That is how that went down – Richental told us so, so definitely true!

That is why on the 27^th of October Pope John XXIII and his entourage of 600 entered the city of Costance under a golden baldachin carried by four eminent burghers of the free imperial city. The Imperial bailee performed the service of the groom and a group of schoolchildren sang appropriate hymns. The pope grateful for the friendly welcome blessed the congregation.

Everything was going swimmingly. The pope and his immediate entourage was given accommodation in the bishop’s palace opposite the cathedral. The others were distributed amongst the homes of the locals who were all too happy to AirBnB their spare rooms for outrageous rents.

Because it wasn’t just the 600 papal delegates, which included humanists like Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini as well as the various prelates. There were also a total of 3 patriarchs, 23 cardinals, 27 archbishops 106 bishops, 103 abbots, 344 doctors of theology, all of whom came with their scribes, procurators and administrators of various kinds. Then there were the princes, a full complement of the prince electors, the dukes of Bavaria, Austria, Schleswig, Mecklenburg Lothringia and Teck as well as  a further 676 noblemen Those who did not come themselves like the kings of France, England, Scotland, Denmark, Polen, Naples, Castile and Aragon, sent representatives, as did the patriarch of  Constantinople and the emperor of Ethiopia. And then there were all these people who came hoping to make some money of this incredible gathering, goldsmiths, cobblers, furriers, blacksmiths, bakers, shopkeepers, apothecaries, moneylenders, buglers, pipers, entertainers, barbers, heralds, merchants of any kind and the often mentioned whores and public girls. All of them needed to stay somewhere and somehow all of them did.

The city museum at the Rosgarten hosts a wonderful model of Constance from around the time of the council which gives a great idea of its size or lack of it. Constance had maybe 6-8,000 inhabitants at the time which isn’t huge now and wasn’t even at that time. Places like Augsburg or Nurnberg were more than twice the size. How many people came in total to the council is hard to determine, in particular since our friend Richental tends to exaggerate a bit. Plus not everyone stayed all throughout the 3 years and some the council lasted. In one of my secondary sources they talk about 5000 monks and 16,000 priests which would suggest a total number of 25,000-30,000 new arrivals. I struggle to believe that but it is likely that the population at least doubled during that period and maybe more than tripled in the initial phase.

Given there is so much information available about Constance during that period, I may dedicate a future episode to the conditions not just during the council, but more generally. We have not done a Germany in the year 1400 episode yet, so this may be a good one.

But for now we leave the cramped conditions behind and go back to the high politics.

The pope was here, but the emperor had not yet arrived. The reason for the delay was that Sigismund had been elected three years earlier but had not yet been crowned, not even as king of the Romans. That had to happen before he went toe to toe with the pope. So on November 8, 1414 he was crowned in Aachen and then progressed south towards Constance. In Strasburg he told everyone that he and John were like totally aligned on everything. From there he took the road along the Neckar valley to Stuttgart and then down to the lake where he arrived in Űberlingen at midnight on the 24^th of December.

He had called ahead and asked for transport to cross the lake. So in the middle of Christmas eve the boatmen of Konstance set off across the lake to bring their emperor into their city. It was  3 in the morning when he finally arrived with his wife, several princes and their attendants all loaded up on torchlit boats. The city council came to the harbor to greet him and led him to the town hall where he was given a drink. And then they dashed across the square to the cathedral where – and that is still hard to believe – the pope was waiting for him. John XXIII had halted Midnight Mass for the emperor. And not only that, he had allowed Sigismund to do what the Luxemburg rulers have been doing since Karl IV, he let him read the gospel according to Luke where it says “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.” He read this whilst wearing his crown and holding the imperial sword. No previous pope, not even the king of France had allowed such a display to go ahead. Nobody wanted to be reminded that even the bible acknowledged that the empire was an institution older than the papacy and one that was meant to rule the whole of the Roman world.

John XXIII left no record of his thoughts that night.

The council had started debating before Sigismund had arrived, but as the cardinal Fillastre noted, nothing of substance had yet been discussed, because nobody aka the pope himself, wanted to touch on the actual subject, the unity of the church and the continued schism.

That being said, the council wasn’t stalling. If you think about the sheer scale of what was going on. These thousands of delegates are pushed together into this mid-sized medieval town. The grand debates take place in the Münster, the cathedral, but few delegates get the chance to address the whole council. So they start to meet in smaller groups to debate specific issues, initially spontaneously and after a while in a formal structure of committees and working groups. But what also happened was that factions were forming. And these did not form around political programs or theological perspectives, but along geographic and cultural lines.

The council was establishing nations. The idea of nations came from the way medieval universities were organised as we have heard about Paris and Prague in previous episodes. And since most delegates had studied at university or were practicing academics, these divisions appeared natural. They were also a way to break up the hierarchy structure of the church that monopolised decision making in the hands of the pope and his college of cardinals.

But is not just that, it is also a sign of a changing world. Whilst on the outset it looked as if the council was resurrecting the idea of a unified Christendom under one pope and one emperor, the reality was that this concept was fading away not just as a political structure but also as a cultural entity. Instead the peoples of europe were developing separate identities. We are still centuries away from people seeing nationality as one of their primary defining characteristic and source of belonging, but there is clearly something shifting.

The vernacular has taken over from Latin on much of the cultural and administrative output of the times. For instance our chronicler Richental writes his work in German, more precisely in his native dialect. It’s not that he does not know Latin, more that he does not feel he needs to use it to be taken seriously. In Italy we have Dante and in England Chaucer who elevate the vernacular to a literary language, whilst French has become the language at the court of the Valois. I am not that familiar with developments in Poland and Hungary, but as we have seen last week, the Czech language has become a crucial marker of belonging in Bohemia.

Still the nations that form in Constance were not yet as rigidly defined by etymology and culture as modern nations are. The conciliar nations are created through a mixture of political significance, compass orientation and language. There were in the end five. There was Italica, Gallicana, Germania which included Scandinavia, Poland, Lithauania, Croatia, Hungary and Bohemia, Anglca which was England, Scotland and Ireland and Iberica, which comprised the various Spanish kingdoms and Portugal.

There were discussions about the structure of these nations, but interestingly from the Iberian side. Aragon wanted to be its own nation. That was turned down because in that case Castile and Portugal would also have their separate nations. And if that happened the Germanica nation would splinter as well, making the whole concept of nations unworkable.

Do you remember the cardinal Fillastre, the one who had been moaning that nothing was moving forward in this great church council? Well, in January 1415, two months into the debates he had had enough. He issued an treatise stating that all three popes should resign. And that the council had the power to force all three popes to step down if that was in the interest of the unity of the church.

The response from John XXIII and his supporters was the obvious. Sorry, last time we did that and deposed two popes, we got three. Why do you think by deposing three you will not end up with four? And what was wrong with me as pope?

Well on the last question, quite a lot, an awful lot. Most it were rumours at the time, but still. He might have been a pirate in his youth, after all his brothers had definitely been. Pope Alexander V, the one the council of Pisa had chosen had died only days after having lunch at the house of the man who became his successor. Then the bribes that were paid to the cardinals at his election were legendary, almost as legendary as his income from the sale of church benefices once he was made pope.

John XXIII’s opponents put together a list of 18 accusations, each one of them pretty damning.

But that would not have meant that he was done for. He had made sure that the majority of the participants at the council were Italians and the Italians would be very wary to opening up the ballot again, potentially ending up with a Frenchman who could take the church back to Avignon.

But that line of defence crumbled when Sigismund used his immense charm and power of persuasion to introduce a change in the voting process. No longer should it be by heads or by rank, but by nation. Each of the five nation was to have one vote, as would the college of cardinals.

Voting by nations totally undermined the church hierarchy, because suddenly the archbishops and bishops find themselves acting alongside the priests, monks and doctors of their nation, rather than with their brother bishops. And where it was even harder to take was for the cardinals. They had become accustomed to being a sort of cabinet of the church that would make all the major decisions along with the pope. But here in the council, they were relegated to having just one vote that ranked equal to any one of the nation’s votes.

John was a smart politician and he realised the non-Italian nations had a majority. His line of defence had crumbled and the game was up. So to avoid the publication of the 18 accusations he agreed to resign. Conditions were negotiated over for another 2 weeks but then, at the end of February 1415, three months after he had seen the fox trap from his vantage point above Bludenz, that trap had snapped shut. Pope John XXIII declared his resignation.

Immediately after that Sigismund put Constance into lockdown. The deposed pope must not be able to escape. Because if he escaped and gathered new supporters he could dissolve the council that he had called in the first place. And if he did that, the horror scenario of four popes would almost certainly materialise.

And what happened, well, what do you think? The pope escaped. Disguised as a groom and sitting on – for added humiliation – on a tiny horse.

As we heard at the beginning, John had had had his premonitions when he crossed the alps. So he took out life insurance. With Frederick of Habsburg, the duke of Austria. Frederick promised to help and protect him should the worst happen.  And the worst had happened. So it was to neighbouring Schaffhausen, one of the duke’s possessions that ex-pope John XXIII or to give him his correct name, Baldassare Cossa went. The helpful duke immediately came to his side to face down Sigismund and the council members.

Sigismund did not waste a second. He gathered the imperial princes who were in Constance anyway and formed an imperial court. The court gave Frederick 3 days to show and defend himself and when he failed to come they condemned him. They put duke Frederick of Austria in the imperial ban. He was made an outlaw, his vassals released from their oaths and an imperial army was gathered. 10 days after the spectacular flight of the pope, Sigismund’s forces oved on the gates of Schaffhausen.

Baldassare Cosssa fled on to Laufenburg another 30 miles down the Rhine but that was no solution, so on he ran towards Basel. But before he left Laufenburg, he issued a papal bull revoking his resignation and dissolving the council.

At that point the future of the church and the future of Sigismund hung in the balance. If the majority of the council attendants recognised his dissolution order it was over.

At that point the church and the universities had been discussing the role of the council and its relationship with the pope for decades. The schism created by the selfishness of cardinals and popes had undermined Holy mother church to a point a Gregory VII or an Innocent III would barely have recognised her any more. It was time for the congregation of the faithful to put their foot down. The council agreed the decree Haec Sancta which became a sort of Magna Carta of the church. Its opened with (quote)

“First [the council] declares that, legitimately assembled in the holy Spirit, constituting a general council and representing the catholic church militant, it has power immediately from Christ; and that everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith, the eradication of the said schism and the general reform of the said church of God in head and in members.” (end quote)

It banned the pope from dissolving the council, from moving the curia from Constance or to do anything that would undermine its power.

The ecumenical council continued and Baldassare Cossa kept running. Until he could run no more. He was caught near Radolfzell and brought back to Constance to stand trial. The ruling was no surprise. He was convicted and declared unworthy, useless and dangerous and stripped of all his church offices. The next four years he spent as a prisoner of the count Palatinate in a customs tower at Mannheim. In 1419 he paid an enormous ransom and was allowed to return to Rome where he submitted to the new pope Martin V  who made him a bishop and cardinal again. He died shortly afterwards in Florence. His memorial in the great Baptistery is a spectacular piece created by the renaissance masters Donatello and Michelozzo. Who paid for it? Not Baldassare Cossa, but Florentine bankers including the Medici family who one can only assume owed the pope their rise to the top of the financial industry in Italy. And yes, the name John XXIII was taken off the official list of popes, which is why we have two popes called John XXIII, the last one reigning from 1958 to 1963 as one of the most popular and sympathetic figures of recent church history and – ironically – a pope who presided over a church council.

That left the council with still two false popes, Gregory XII and Benedict XIII, who needed to be removed before a new, universally recognised pope could be elected and unity of the church could be restored.

Gregory XII was relatively easy. He was already a thousand years old, had lost all support in Italy and had been elected with the explicit provision to resign when asked. All he demanded was that he would not be deposed by a council that had been called by his enemy, the no longer pope John XXIII. So a weird charade took place. Two of Gregory’s ambassadors arrived in Constance and formally called a council in the name of Gregory XII. The council then reconstituted itself, now as one called by Gregory XII. It endorsed all previous decisions. And then they read a letter from Gregory resigning as pope. That was it. Gregory XII stepped back into the college of cardinals and died two years later. His much more modest memorial is in the small town of Recanati in the Marche. But he remained on the list of canonical popes.

One effect of this strange castling was that Sigismund was no longer the president of the council. He had taken that role during the proceedings against Baldassare Cossa, but now that a viable pope had resumed the reigns, if only for a technical second, he was no longer needed.

The task he took up instead was to rail in the last of the popes, the Avignon pope Benedict XIII. This was the most stubborn of the whole lot, who never yielded, not even when he had lost the support of the French. By 1415 he was living in Aragon, enjoying the support of his last remaining ally, king Alfonso V.

Benedict XIII agreed to meet with Sigismund who had come to Perpignan to speak to him directly. But this time the legendary charmer failed. Yes, Benedict XIII promised to resign but only under one condition. Since he was the only surviving cardinal who had participated in the election of Urban VI, back in 1378, he was the only truly legitimate cardinal in the whole world. All other cardinals have been appointed by contested popes. Therefore he was the only person in Christendom entitled to elect the new pope. He promised would do so within 24 hours and promised not to elect himself. Let’s say, argument was compelling, but there wasn’t the resounding support that Benedict might have expected.

Sigismund gave up on the stubborn Spaniard. Instead he worked on the Iberian monarchs and by December 1416 King Alfonso V of Aragon abandoned his pope and submitted to the council of Constance.

And that was all that really mattered. Benedict went to Peniscola a town and castle overlooking the sea between Valencia and Barcelona where he would spend the next 8 years ranting and raving against the council, the king and everybody else. When he died his ragtag band of cardinals elected a new pope they called Clement VIII. It took until 1429 before this pope finally resigned. The last negotiator who brought this sorry tale to an end was an Aragonese bishop by the name of Alfonso de Borgia. He would later rise to become pope Calixtus III who paved the way for his nephew Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI the most notorious of the Renaissance popes.

Hurrah – we have done it. The Schism is over. Three popes are gone. But we still need a new one, and ideally one that everybody will agree on. Spoiler alert, they will find one. But the council is not done. There are still many other matters to discuss, including the matter of a certain Jan Hus, a complaint from the Teutonic Knights and some Frenchmen wanting clarification on the term Tyrannicide. So, there will be a part 2 of the Council of Constance which I hope you will join us again next week.

And before I go just a quick reminder, the website to make a one-time donation or sign on for Patreon is historyofthegermans.com

Jan Hus and the Seeds of Reformation: A Tale of Faith and Revolt

Jan Hus emerges as a pivotal figure in the early Reformation, representing the clash between the burgeoning calls for reform and the entrenched power of the Catholic Church. Born around 1372 in what is now the Czech Republic, Hus began his journey as a humble student at the University of Prague, eventually becoming a prominent preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel. His growing influence was fueled by his criticisms of clerical corruption, particularly the practice of simony and the Church’s exploitation through indulgences. As tensions escalated between the Czech reformers and the German-speaking clergy, Hus found himself increasingly at odds with both the Church and the monarchy, leading to his eventual excommunication. The episode delves into how Hus’s teachings and the socio-political climate of Bohemia set the stage for a rebellion that would reverberate through the subsequent centuries, culminating in his fateful summons to the Council of Constance.

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TRANSCRIPT

Quote “Master Jan Hus, preacher of the Holy Scriptures from the chapel of Bethlehem, was also present at this council, who in his preaching continuously criticized and exposed the hypocrisy, pride, miserliness, fornication, simony, and other sins of the clergy, in order to bring the priesthood back to the apostolic life. He was immensely hated by these pestiferous clerics.”

This is how Laurence of Brezova introduced the great reformer and Czech national hero Jan Hus in his 15^th century chronicle of the Hussite uprising.

Why should we care about the trials and tribulations of another holy man railing against corrupt prelates and the subsequent “quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing”.

Well, that quote itself should be reason enough. It is from Neville Chamberlain speech of September 27, 1938 weighing the importance of protecting Czechoslovakia against an expansionist Nazi Germany.

But Jan Hus is interesting beyond his status as a towering figure in Czech history. When he came to Prague in 1390 he was just another ambitious young man from a modest background who wanted to rise up in the world on the back of intelligence and hard work. But by the time he leaves for his fate at the Council of Constance in 1414 he has been excommunicated, exiled and unwillingly or willingly become he face of a brewing revolt against king and clergy. This is a story about collapsing certainties and emerging truths, about individual beliefs and institutional order. About what the community of the faithful is supposed to be and who is in and who is out.  And its tentacles reach deep into the next centuries…

Before you can meet master Jan Hus and his fellow Bohemian reformers I will now subject you to a brief treatise on history podcasting. There are now 3.5 million podcasts, though only 380,000 are classed as active. That means if you were inclined to give every one of these active shows a 5 minute listen you would be listening all day all night for 3 years and 7 months, 11 days and 8 hours and 42 minutes. And that is why so many great shows give up, they simply cannot find anyone willing to invest five minutes to find out whether it is any good. So how do people find podcasts? Simple, 30% of podcast listeners come to a show on a personal recommendation from friends and family. So, if you know anyone in your wider circle who may enjoy the History of the Germans, tell them about the show. It makes a huge difference. As does the generous support of our patrons who have signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support. This week we thank Ryan B., Mick, fan of my singing voice, Mark G., Tim T of knightly crusader stock, Tiia Reinvald and CS.

And then we have a few corrections. Last episode I said that Wenceslaus IV was Sigismunds stepbrother. That was obviously wrong, they were half brothers. An even more significant error was picked up by listener Raluca and some others. Vlad the impaler, aka Dracula was Mircea the elder’s illegitimate grandson, not his son as I stupidly claimed. And it was also not Mircea’s honor but Vlad’s father’s membership of the order of the dragon that brought about the nickname “little dragon”. I should just stop trying to pointlessly spice things up with random facts I picked up from secondary literature. Again I promise to do better next time and will fail again.

And with that – back to the show

Jan Hus was born probably around the year 1372. His father was called Michael, but we do not know what he did as an occupation. Of his mother we do not even know her name. Even his own name is an invention, he called himself after his home village of Husice, Goosetown which is why his surname is actually goose, uncomfortably prophetic.

In 1390 he started his studies at the university of Prague. He would later say that he spent far too much time playing chess and that he occasionally participated in carnival processions. That is the medieval equivalent of running through a field of wheat – a reference for our British listeners. For the rest of you, Jan Hus was a bit of a swot. Not that much of a surprise given he was a poor boy from the provinces trying to get a job in the church. An ambition he was certainly not alone in. After all, the church was one of, if not the largest employer in a city like Prague and many coveted a comfortable vicarage or – even better – just the income from a parish without doing anything. And he had come to the right place.

Prague in 1390 was a city on the move.

Thanks to emperor Karl IV’s grand plans his capital of Prague had grown from about 10-15,000 inhabitants to one of northern Europe’s largest cities with a population of nearly 40,000. Building work on the New Town had begun in 1347 but was still ongoing in 1390.

The emperor had endowed the new city’s churches with some of the greatest pieces of his immense collection of relics. These included such items of reverence like a fragment of the staff of Moses, a finger of St. Nicholas, the head of St. Wenceslaus, half of St. Sigismund and the most venerated of them all, the breastmilk of the Virgin Mary. That was on top of the imperial regalia that included the holy lance and purse of St. Stephen to name just two.

These holy objects attracted pilgrims by the thousands, even tens of thousands. Praying before a holy relic was one of the few ways one could cut down the thousands and thousands of years in purgatory the average sinner had to endure. But it also attracted a lot of permanent residents who sought not just work and advancement but also spiritual nourishment from the presence of so many objects of veneration. Prague had become a holy city, a second Rome, just as Karl IV had intended.

The other major draw of the city and the reason Jan Hus had come to the shores of the Vltava was its university, the first to be founded in central Europe. Thanks to the sponsorship of Karl IV and then even more significantly, his son Wenceslaus IV, it had become one of the great centers of learning in Europe. Students from the lands of the crown of Bohemia as well as Germans and Poles came to train with some of the great doctors of theology and law.

The purpose of the university had been two-fold. One was simply to elevate the status of the city of Prague. If Paris, the capital of the French monarchs had a university then the home of the emperor needed one too. The other, more prosaic objective was to produce a class of well-educated bureaucrats and clergymen that could be deployed in the increasingly sophisticated management of the Bohemian state. As for Jan Hus, he was very much in this latter category.

Organizationally, the university of Prague, like all medieval universities, was split into different nations. These nations were usually established along linguistic and cultural lines. In Prague there were four of them, Bohemians, Bavarians, Poles and Saxons. Since the Polish nation was mainly staffed with German speaking Silesians, three out of the four nations were actually German speaking, giving them dominance over the Czech speaking members of the university.

The situation at the university was replicated across much of Prague. German-speaking immigrants had come on the invitation of king Ottokar II in the 1250s and had gradually obtained leadership positions in civil society. They dominated trading and manufacturing, as they did across much of central europe. The German speaking merchants had developed efficient trading networks based on trust and cultural affinity, if not intermarriage. Goods and money moved across these networks comparatively efficiently based on a system of mutual trust and social control. We did a couple of episodes about that in the season on the Hanseatic league, particularly Episode 119 if you want more detail on how these networks functioned. Access to the network was extremely difficult for anyone not speaking German and not being immersed in the culture. And competing against these networks as a sole trader was even more difficult.

Beyond just trading, these German merchants also provided loans to the government and the church. These loans were secured by pawns, often estates, mines and other money generating assets, which then gradually shifted into the hands of this German-speaking upper class. Being the source of finance, the bankers also had ready access to the king who would bend the state to their will.

Bottom line, many Czechs outside the nobility, felt as second class citizens in their homeland and language was an important marker of this division. That occurred despite both Karl IV and Wenceslaus IV making a point of speaking Czech as well as German and French at court.

If you combine these three things, a religiously motivated citizenship, a university that churns out progressive ideas and a population chafing up against a linguistically and socially superior group and you have a medieval powder keg.

The long fuse that will ultimately explode the device was lit a long time before Jan Hus first set foot into the golden city. It all began in a notorious brothel on a street called Venus street. That is where John Milic, a canon of St. Veits cathedral who had an epiphany, began dissuading the prostitutes from their illicit lifestyle and offered them shelter. Milic became a very popular paster, much admired for relentlessly laying out the hypocrisy of the official church. Having good contacts amongst the ladies of the night, he exposed their clerical customers, one of whom had even built a separate entrance to his house to facilitate his partying. But where he really hurt the clergy was when he exposed the rampant simony in its ranks, the purchase of spiritual appointments for money. That was something the population hated even more than the lack of sexual probity.

Despite or maybe because of his relentless criticism and demands for reform, Milic was popular with the highest ranks of society, even with the emperor himself, so popular indeed that Karl overlooked that Milic had once called him the antichrist.

Under imperial protection, Milic built up a community of preachers, often laymen rather than trained clergy who spread his ideas. This community moved into the brothel where Milic had started preaching and that had now become a home for rescued women. He called this community his new Jerusalem and acquired more and more of the surrounding buildings.

Milic preached not just in Latin as was commonplace at the time. He firmly believed that the faithful should understand the word of god and should hence be preached to in their own language, namely Czech and German, the two main languages used in Prague. Milic also demanded that the bible should be translated into Czech, though he never got round to doing it. Another of his ideas was that everyone should receive the sacraments as often as possible, in particular the eucharist, to be closer to the spiritual body of Christ. This focus on the spiritual body then led him to question whether all these dusty relics had any real relevance, and even the veneration of saints was in his eyes a distraction from the true faith.

His community of the new Jerusalem did however not survive its founder’s death in 1374. But his ideas continued to circulate. One of his disciples, a certain Matthew of Janov pushed Milic’s ideas even further. Matthew was another one of those ambitious men who had studied at university, in his case, even at the famed university of Paris, and had returned to Prague in the hope of a plumb job with the church. But that did not work out and instead he became a radical critic of the holders of such offices.

He embraced Milic’s criticism of the worldly clergy, the focus on regular prayer, the eucharist and the use of the colloquial language. But by now the schism had happened and many of the ideas we discussed in our episode about the impact of the schism on European thought had begun circulating. When he was in Paris he witnessed the debates at the university about whether a church council was superior to the pope and by 1390 he had heard that the French church had subtracted itself completely from papal obedience.

This terrified him and he was looking for reasons why the church had ended up in such a calamitous place. He zoomed in on the year 1200 when the church abounded in the greatest riches and glory and when “magna Mulier formicaria” the whore of Babylon took her seat upon the scarlet beast, and antichrist extended his swollen body throughout the church. What he meant was the pontificate of Innocent III , the most powerful of the medieval pope and convener of the fourth Lateran council – and initial sponsor of emperor Frederick II – Episode 75 if you are interested.  

According to Matthew of Jenov the primitive church of the apostles who had been poor and dedicated to the people had been distorted by “Greek rules, Aristotelic justice and Platonic sanctity”. What he meant by that were the rules and regulations of canon law and scholastic theology that obfuscated the true faith and in the process made its practitioners rich and powerful. His opposition was against the lawyers who had taken hold of not just the papal administration but the papal throne itself.

Into this already febrile climate of anticlerical, anti-papalist sentiment dropped the teachings of John Wycliff. Wycliff was an Englishman, a professor in Oxford whose theories we have already encountered in episode 168. His thoughts travelled down to Prague through the entourage of Anne of Bohemia, the sister of Wenceslaus and Sigismund who had married King Richard II of England in 1382.

Wycliff’s ideas poured oil on the fire of the Bohemian reform movement. Bohemian scholars would travel to Oxford and bring back treatises that members of the Prague university debated, translated into Czech and adapted into their own thinking.

They zoomed in on one particular element of Wycliff’s investigation, the question of what the church was. The sanctioned view was that the church was the community of the faithful and that Christ had put St. Peter in charge of this community when he said that Peter was the rock on which he built his church. And St. Peter had thereby inherited all of Christ’s powers in the temporal world, to bind and to loose. And that power passed through him to every one of his legitimate successors. That was the justification for Gregory VII’s claim that all monarchs are to kiss his feet and that he could depose them, even the emperor and Boniface VIII statement that there was no salvation outside the Roman church.

This stringent argument fell apart when the Western schism appeared. We now have two popes, but only one could be the true successor of St. Peter. As the schism progressed and the popes refused to yield as we discussed, the only viable solution was to call a church council that would decide who was the true pope and depose all the false popes, which is what they did in 1409 in Pisa.

Now by doing this the church council claimed to represent the community of the faithful, the holy church itself, that ranked above false and corrupt popes. If these popes could be ousted on account of their sinful claim on St. Peter’s throne, then they weren’t members of the Holy Church any more. Which leads to the next question, which is – who is a true member of the holy church?

That will only be conclusively revealed at the last judgement, when the faithful are admitted to heaven and the sinful are cast down to hell. That does not help because we need to find out right here and now who is one of the faithful and hence a member of holy church with a vote on who should be pope and who is a black sinner who can be ignored. And that runs into a major problem. It would not be just preposterous but outright blasphemous to preempt the final judgement by stating that John was a faithful and Jack was a sinner. So the only thing we can do right now is to look for the signs. Someone whose demeanor and actions emulates the teachings of Christ is more likely to be predestined to heaven, whilst someone living a dissolute life was more likely to end up in hell.

That makes a lot of sense, but is totally explosive. Because if you come across a drunken, fornicating bishop, who acquired his post through simony,  well that guy is unlikely to be one of the faithful. If he is not one of the faithful, then he is not a member of the church. If he is not a member of the church he cannot tell me what to preach or who to preach to. Meanwhile someone with an impeccable lifestyle and deep faith but no church license would be not just entitled to preach but should be listened to above the debauched prelate.

What Wycliff proposed would lead to a complete dissolution of discipline in the church in its current state of corruption, which is why he proposed a fallback. The temporal authorities, the kings and princes were to maintain the discipline in the church until such time that it was completely reformed.

That was grist to the mill of the Bohemian reformers, who had been looking for the theological justification for their rejection of the corrupt prelates at the top of the church.

Jan Hus was one of these Bohemians who picked up and digested Wycliff’s theses. There is a tremendously complex debate about what of Wycliff’s theses Hus exactly endorsed and which ones he did not. That mattered for the legality of the judgement that led to his execution at Constance, but did not matter much for what went down in Bohemia. Bohemia embraced much of Wycliff’s theses.

But I am jumping ahead.

Last we saw Jan Hus the person was in 1390 when he arrived in Prague. He studied at university and by 1401 was ordained as a priest and took holy orders. He preached in a number of churches in the Old Town before he was appointed the main preacher at the Bethlehem chapel. The Bethlehem chapel was an unusual set-up. Though called a chapel, it was huge, able to take 3,000 worshippers. The reason it wasn’t a full church was because it was a private chapel created and funded by two pious Prague merchants. That made it on the one hand less prestigious than a full parish appointment, but left Jan Hus with a  lot more freedom than an ordinary priest.

When he took up the role in 1402, Jan Hus was well within the mainstream of the Bohemian clerical set-up. Though many ideas the reformers promoted were radical and not in line with general church doctrine, the majority of the established church, all the way up to the archbishop were supportive of their demand for reform. They even tolerated the preaching in Czech practiced by the reformers and something Jan Hus did very much from the beginning.

But though he had helped translate some of Wycliff’s works, his theological writings of that time were fairly tame.

What radicalized him were a sequence of events that unfolded over the coming decade.

In 1405 he became part of a commission to investigate a miracle a parish priest of a burned down church claimed to have witnessed. Something about a bleeding host. What Hus uncovered was a greedy priest who had made the whole thing up to raise money for the rebuilding of his church and the recovery of his main income stream. That investigation led him then to doubt not just the veracity of some of the relics but also whether any relics, in particular those directly physically related to Christ himself were compatible with scripture.

At the same time his career as a preacher was going great. Bethlehem chapel filled up with worshippers not just on Sundays but also on workdays. Jan Hus was a gifted orator and had a knack to convey rather complex theological ideas in a way the common people could understand. His most famous quote is: “Seek the truth, hear the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, hold the truth and defend the truth until death.” And at another point he said “Love the truth. Let others have their truth, and the truth will prevail.” This made it even into the national motto of the Czech Republic “truth prevails”.

When I first read this I stumbled over the term “their truth” which is one of my bugbears. There is no such thing as my truth. There a facts and fiction. But then I do not think that Jan Hus was talking about the modern idea of “my truth”. For him, like his contemporaries faith was truth and truth was faith. There was no differentiation between scientific truth and faith as we see it today. So the correct interpretation of these statements would be to replace the word truth with faith. And then these statements take on a different and a much more amenable connotation. Hus was prepared to die for his truth, his faith, when he said “defend the truth until death”but he did not want to do harm to those who held different beliefs. He demanded “Let others have their truth, their faith”. Because he believed that they would come around to his beliefs sooner or later. And there is another one of his statements I like: quote “From the very beginning of my studying I made it a rule that whenever, in any matter, I heard a sounder viewpoint, I abandoned the one I had – since I know well that we know far less than what we do not know.” Or to say it with Keynes, if the facts change I change my opinion, what do you do? So whatever his teachings are later used for, he himself was no fanatic.

I like that and so it seems did many inhabitants of the city of Prague. And what they also liked was that he would celebrate the eucharist almost every time as Milic and his reformers had demanded. That went straight against church rules that wanted to restrict the sacrament to only once a month.  Hus responded quote: “if ever a pope should command me to play on the flute, build towers, to mend or weave garments, and to stuff sausages, ought I not reasonably judge that the pope was foolish in so commanding” end quote.

Alongside this thriving business, Hus kept a role at the university. He published further treatises which now incorporated elements of Wycliff’s thinking. How much and how far away from the official doctrine these views were is again ultimately irrelevant. What mattered was that Hus was increasingly seen as one of the followers of Wycliff.

In 1409 tensions at the university boiled over. The Czechs who were the most numerous nation kept getting voted down by the three German-speaking groupings. And this was not just a linguistic and social conflict but also a theological one. Whilst the Czechs embraced Wycliff and became increasingly radical, the Germans stuck with the orthodoxy. When it became clear that the squabbling parties could not reach compromise, they brought their case before King Wenceslaus IV. By now Wenceslaus had succumbed to full on alcoholism, so it is unclear how much of the proceedings he really understood. But his wife Sophia was very much on the side of the Czech reformers. The crown also needed the university’s support as they wanted to transfer their allegiance from the Roman pope Gregory XII to the Pisan pope Alexander V. The Germans were leaning to the Roman pope, the Bohemians to the Pisan. So the crown passed a decree that from now on the Czech nation’s vote would count as much as the vote of the other three nations combined. That outraged the German-speaking nations and they simply walked out. Many of these doctors and students left for the recently founded universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg, which propelled these schools up the European academic rankings, whilst the university of Prague turned into a more provincial institution catering for Bohemians only.

What also happened was that the king appointed Jan Hus as rector of the University. And since the university was now free to embrace Wycliff’s theories, Jan Hus as its rector became the face of Wycliff’s theories in Bohemia, irrespective of his personal conviction.

Over the next 3 years the university doctors embraced more and more radical ideas. That triggered a backlash by the archbishop who referenced 45 Wycliffian theses that had been declared heretic. In this debate the king sided again with the reformers against the archbishop. This time it was mainly for monetary reasons. In the tradition of Matthew of Janov, the reformers supported the idea that the king should not only maintain discipline in the church, but should also cleanse it from the swollen body of antichrist, aka take away all the church’s lands and estates. And that was exactly what Wenceslaus did. He took the reins of the church, forced the archbishop into submission and diverted the church funds into his own pocket.

This alliance between king and reformers fell apart, as one would expect, over the same thing it had kept it together in the past – money. The new Pisan pope, John XXIII had declared a crusade against king Ladislaus of Naples, the one who had attempted to take the crown of Hungary from Sigismund and whose father had died trying. To fund this most Christian effort John was selling indulgences all across the lands of his obedience, including Bohemia. As we mentioned in episode 168, indulgences had become key to papal finances now that the church was split into three and many obediences regularly refused to pass through tithes and other incomes. The  indulgences of 1412 were so egregious, they truly shocked Jan Hus. Already deeply skeptical of saints and relics, this blatant money grab pushed him over the edge. He began to equate John XXIII with antichrist and declared all prelates selling these papers corrupt. And when he found out that Wenceslaus was supporting the indulgences because he had been promised a cut of the profits, he condemned his king as well.

The pope immediately excommunicated Hus. The king was still more interested in continuing the cooperation and first tried to calm him down. But Hus kept preaching against indulgences, called the archbishop a Simoniak, which was true, and just generally turned from a useful tool of royal politics to a genuine nuisance.

After Wenceslaus had tried several time to get Hus back on side, he sent a brutal message. Three of Hus’ young supporters had protested against the selling of indulgences and stopped the pardoners from going about their business. The king had them arrested and the next day, he had them hanged. Meanwhile the  pope had declared an interdict over the city of Prague, banning all church services and sacraments for as long as Jan Hus was allowed to preach.

That was too much for Jan Hus. To protect his friends and fellow citizens, he went into exile.

In the following 2 years, from 1412 to 1414 he did write like a man possessed. He published no fewer than 15 books, the culmination of the previous decade of thought. The most important one was de ecclesia, about the church.

There he compared the church to a field where wheat and weeds grow together. But only the wheat, the good parts belongs to the actual church. And if the church itself was unable to pull out the weeds, it falls to the king to do that, and if the king was unwilling or unable to do it, it was down to the laity to clean up the field. And since most of the weed, the corruption in the church stems from the property they had obtained over time, that should be all be given over to the secular authorities.

This is where the rubber hit the road. Dietrich von Niem, a German chronicler called Hus’ ideas as great a threat to Christendom and papal power as the Qur’an. And it was this book that the judges in Constance used most extensively to prove the heresy of Jan Hus.

These books, but even more the relentless persecution by the church had made Hus the face of the Bohemian dissent, a dissent that was about to tip over into revolt. As early as 1412 pamphlets were circulating that mixed religion with violence. They declared that all those intended to be Christian were to take up swords and be prepared to wash their hands in the blood of God’s enemies. Jan Hus they declared was no longer a timid goose, but a ferocious lion prepared to confront the papal antichrist and all its wickedness. There is no evidence that Hus endorsed or encourages such talk, nor is there evidence that he made efforts to stop it.

It is in late 1414 that Jan Hus is summoned to the council of Constance that had gathered since November of that year. He was asked to come and subject his teachings to review by the doctors and senior clergy at the greatest of church councils. Sigismund, by now elected king of the Romans and presiding over the council promised Hus safe conduct.

One cannot know whether Hus believed Sigismund’ promise or whether he willingly walked straight into his martyrdom. This again mattered as much or as little as the question whether or not he was guilty of heresy. Because what mattered was what the people back in Prague believed happened and what actions these beliefs triggered.

Some of that we will find out next episode when we finally talk about the great council of Constance. I hope you will join us again.

In the meantime, should you feel so inclined, listen back to some of the older episodes when we talked about Bohemia, for instance way back in episode 26 when we look at the murderous Bohemian succession crisis in the early 11^th century, episode 54 when a Bohemian ruler tilts Barbarossa’s campaign in Italy in favour of the Germans, or some of the more recent ones, like episode 140 about the fight between Rudolf of Habsburg and the Golden King Ottokar II. And what you could also do is make a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support, just in case you feel like it.

Sigismund of Luxembourg emerges as a pivotal figure in the late Middle Ages, grappling with the dual crises of the Schism and the Ottoman threat while navigating a complex web of political intrigue. Born into the powerful House of Luxembourg, his journey is marked by ambition, charm, and a significant lack of funds, which shapes his tumultuous rise. The episode delves into his early life, including his education and the challenges he faced within his family, particularly the rivalry with his brother Wenceslas. As Sigismund seeks to secure his position through marriage to Maria, the heiress of Hungary and Poland, he encounters fierce opposition, especially from his mother-in-law Elizabeth. The narrative unfolds with Sigismund’s relentless pursuit of power, ultimately leading to his coronation as King of Hungary, albeit under precarious circumstances that reveal the intricacies of 14th-century politics and the personal struggles he faces along the way.

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TRANSCRIPT

The late 14^th and early 15^th century was a period of upheaval, the certainties of the Middle Ages, that the pope ruled the world and that knights were invincible were crumbling away, the long period of economic growth, of eastward expansion and conversion of the pagans made way for war, plague and famine. The church was split in half and the Ottomans were coming.

This was an age that called forth larger-than-life characters: Joan of Arc, fierce and holy; Henry Bolingbroke, seizing a throne; Jadwiga and Jogaila, uniting kingdoms; the audacious Gian Galeazzo Visconti and fiery Cola di Rienzo; the ever-scheming John the Fearless and Jacob van Artevelde; the tragic Ines de Castro and the unflinching Jan Žižka.

Into this glittering and turbulent lineup steps a man whose reputation has not exactly been polished by time. Despised in his kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia and even Constance, the city that owes him so much, decided to remember him as a fat naked crowned guy with skinny arms and legs, worn-out face, forked beard and disproportionate genitalia balancing on the hand of a nine-meter-tall sex worker. No, I am not making this up.

Sigismund, because that was his name, was a true enigma of the late Middle Ages. He had inherited his father’s charm and ruthless cunning, his knack for negotiating compromise in impossible situations, and his unshakeable belief in his role as the head of Christendom. But what he hadn’t inherited was his father’s performative piety, his zeal for relics, his asceticism—or his wealth. Instead, Sigismund was left with a volatile mix of ambition, enormous self-confidence, a lust for life, and, crucially, a chronic shortage of funds.

Yet despite his flaws, he took on Christendom’s two greatest crises—the schism and the Ottoman threat—and in doing so, managed to create a third…This is his backstory.

But before we start let me tell you that adverts on podcasts have now reached 7.2% of the total length of shows and in the most popular shows reached 10%. That means if this episode had podcast ads, you would have to skip through 4 minutes of a mix of me droning on about VPNs or dodgy mental health services. I guess you know how to prevent that. Do what Yordi V., Adam F., Risch S, John R., Karen G. and Edward R. have done, go to historyofthegermans.com/support and make a one-time donation. For that you gain my eternal gratitude but most importantly the thanks of all your fellow listeners who you protect…

With that, back to the show.  

Sigismund was born on February 15^th, 1368, the second surviving son of emperor Karl IV. We have heard enough about his father, so he needs no introduction, but his mother was no less remarkable.

By most accounts, she was a striking beauty, a full thirty years younger than her husband and, by all testimonies, deeply devoted to him. Though her frame seemed slight—”of weak appearance,” as one chronicler delicately put it—her strength was legendary, the kind spoken of in awe-struck whispers. She could twist horseshoes as if they were mere ribbons, shatter swords as easily as snapping a twig, and rend chainmail with her bare hands. Her son, Sigismund, was no stranger to physical prowess himself, though even his strength paled when measured against hers.

How much he saw of her is unclear, but probably not a lot. Like most princely children during this period he was likely raised by wetnurses and servants in one of the imperial castles, like the magnificent one at Karlsteijn, whilst his parents pursued the itinerant lifestyle of medieval monarchs.

By the mid-14th century, princely education had taken on a new dimension. Young aristocrats and future rulers still learned the essentials—swordsmanship, jousting, hunting—but this wasn’t the whole picture anymore. Sigismund, along with his brothers, was taught to read and write—a skill not taken for granted among nobility a hundred years earlier. Being groomed for a leadership role in the multicultural realm of the house of Luxemburg, languages were a priority. He was fluent in Latin, German, Czech, Hungarian, French, Italian, and possibly Polish as well. His education even included a respectable grounding in theology and both canon and Roman law, giving him a broad base of knowledge that would serve him well as a ruler.

Though he did neither became a writer or embarked on grand building projects like his father, Sigismund’s contemporaries couldn’t help but notice—and remark upon—his relentless curiosity, sharp intellect, and remarkable drive. Even from a young age, he was known for probing questions and an eagerness to master every topic placed before him.

Sigismund appeared in the historical records for the first time in 1373 when he was enfeoffed with the margraviate of Brandenburg, alongside his two brothers. In 1376 he showed up at his brother Wenceslaus coronation as king of the Romans. As Margrave of Brandenburg and Arch Chamberlain of the empire the eight year old was entrusted with carrying one of the imperial regalia, the sword of St. Maurice at the head of the procession.

Sigismund was still only 10 and his brother Wenceslaus 17 when their father must have noticed that the two of them were not getting in. Where Sigismund was full of energy, ambition and ideas, Wenceslaus was pondering and slow. A terrible constellation in a system of Primogeniture, where the obviously less qualified was to inherit everything and the smart one is left with nothing.

Karl IV tried to pre-empt potential conflict by giving Sigismund both a task and resources to achieve it. The task was for him to acquire the crowns of Hungary and Poland through marriage to Maria, the eldest surviving daughter of Louis the great the king of Hungary and Poland.  And the resources to push through his claim was the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the territory Karl IV had only recently acquired from the house of Wittelsbach for the astronomic sum of 500,000 Mark and Sigismund now received in sole ownership.

And he made the brothers exchange letters in which they pledge to forever honestly and truly support each other, exercise their vote in the college of Electors jointly and that under no circumstances would they attack each other’s castles and cities.

Not exactly watertight, but the best Karl could do in the few months he had left.

Let’s have a look at where Sigismund stood in November 1378 when his father breathed his last.

Being margrave of Brandenburg sounds great, after all future holders of the title would indeed build an empire out of this poor soil. But in 1378 it had 200,000 inhabitants most of them battered and impoverished after the decades of feuds and civil wars that had followed the death of margrave Waldemar, the last of the descendants of Albrecht the Baer who had founded the principality way back in 1157 (episode 106 if you are interested).

As for his claim on the Hungarian and Polish crowns, that wasn’t nailed down pat either. Karl had agreed with king Louis I of Hungary that Sigismund would marry his daughter Maria. That was in 1372 and 1375, when Maria’s elder sister Catherina had still been alive. And Catherine was to marry Louis of Orleans, the younger son of King Charles V of France. King Louis of Hungary had even got his vassals to swear fealty to Catherine, not Maria in case of his demise. In one of his last acts, Karl IV resolved that issue in a secret pact with the king of France that granted the French crown de facto control of Provence and the Rhone Valley in exchange for letting Sigismund and Maria succeed Louis of Hungary. We discussed that bit of skullduggery in more detail in episode 163.

I hope you understand why there are so many episodes about all these goings on in the late 14^th century. It is just unspeakably complex with dozens upon dozens of players in the empire, in Poland, Hungary, France, Naples, Rome, Avignon, Constantinople, all with their own backstories. It is like Balzac’s novels where protagonists show up here and then there and then their get their own novel where others from previous plots show up, or for the modern listener, it is like the Marvel Universe. But do not worry, the Avengers endgame is in sight.

But first we need to get through Sigismund’s backstory.

By some miracle this complex web of arrangements between Prague, Paris and Buda survived the death of its creator Karl IV. In August 1379 Louis of Hungary and Wenceslaus, king of the romans hosted the official engagement of 11-year old Sigismund and 8-year old Maria heiress of the crowns of Hungary and Poland. The actual marriage was planned for 1382 when Sigismund would be 14 and hence and adult and Maria 11, apparently old enough for conjugal duties. Louis publicly recognised Sigismund as his chosen successor and took the young man in to live at his court.

That arrangement suited all concerned. For Wenceslaus, it was the perfect opportunity to send away his little brother, whose charm, good looks, and boundless energy were beginning to grate against his own surly, lethargic disposition. And for Louis, the greatly admired  chivalric king of Hungary, this was a golden chance to shape his young son-in-law into a fitting heir, grooming him with the skills and values that would one day serve as the backbone of his vast realms.

Just to recap where Louis came from and more importantly, what Sigismund hoped he would bring to him. Louis was from the house of Anjou, the cadet branch of the French royal family that had wrestled Sicily out of the hands of the Hohenstaufen – and had killed young Konradin.

Louis’ father had become the first Anjou king of Hungary pretty much the same way Sigismund was aiming to gain the crown, in the horizontal. Louis succeeded him in 1342 and reigned for 40 astonishingly successful years. He pursued broadly speaking three main policy aims.

The first was to expand Hungary southwards into the Balkans and along the Dalmatian coast. This worked really well. He picked up parts of Stefan Dusan’s  Serbian empire after the great ruler had died in 1355, established suzerainty over Transylvania and Walachia, became king of Croatia and took on the overlordship of Ragusa, modern day Dubrovnik. His zone of Influence comprised modern day Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania, Moldova and parts of Bulgaria.

His second ambition was to regain his family’s homeland, the kingdom of Naples that was ruled by the childless queen Joanna I he accused of having killed his brother. But that effort was not quite as successful. He did invade a couple of times, burned and plundered but could not oust queen Joanna against the opposition of the papacy. All he left behind was a shedload of bad blood between the Neapolitan side of the family and his own.

The third leg of his policy was Poland. Its king, Kasimir the Great had consolidated the once fragmented kingdom but found himself without a male heir. Louis supported Kasimir in multiple campaigns and formed an attachment that convinced the Polish king to name him his successor. And in 1370 he was crowned king of Poland in Krakow.

Louis realm was in other words huge and thanks to its mineral wealth that the clever Nurnberg merchants were exploiting, extremely rich. (for how they managed that, check out episode 153)

This sounds almost perfect. Young Sigismund lives at one of the most splendid courts in europe under the wing of his father in law, one of “great kings” of the 14^th century who is willing to hand him all of it on a silver platter. What else can a bright, ambitious 11 year old want.

But there is no such thing as a free royal banquet. Whilst Louis really liked him, not everybody shared the kings enthusiasm for the bouncy little prince. And those who did not were all called Elisabeth.

The first of these Elisabeths was king Louis’ mother, a sister of the much beloved king Kasimir III of Poland. As much as her son was shrewd and capable, she had a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way until they lashed out. Her intervention in the kingdom of Naples cost her youngest son Andrew his life and her attempts at establishing a regency in Poland after her brother’s death nearly cost her hers. Not even her son Louis liked her very much and she retaliated by hating his chosen successor, young Sigismund.

That problem resolved itself when Elisabeth of Poland died just a year after Sigismund had arrived in Hungary. But her disaffection of the young man passed on to the next Elisabeth, Elisabeth of Bosnia, the wife of king Louis and therefore Sigismund’s mother in law.

Why she first disliked him, then despised him and finally fanatically hated him has never been properly explained. He might have slighted her in some way or done something foolish in the exuberance of youth. Or she simply hoped for something better for her daughter. After all, the couple was only engaged, not yet married. And better could mean a man who would be more caring and respectful to her darling daughter, or someone less forceful and younger who would allow her to establish her own regency once king Louis was dead.

What turned this from a bad 1960’s mother-in-law joke to full blown Greek tragedy was that Elisabeth passed her hate for young Sigismund on to her daughter Maria, the woman he was going to marry.

In 1382 King Louis declared Sigismund officially as his heir in Poland and  called on his vassals to swear an oath to serve him faithfully. Sigismund was given the command over a small contingent of soldiers and the task to calm down some minor disturbance and to prepare his ascension to the Polish throne.

Aged 14, Sigismund’s political career had begun

….Music?

And he was not given much time to settle in. He arrived in Poland in July 1382. The country was in chaos. Though properly crowned and everything, his father in law had not really gained much of a foothold in Polish politics. The regents he had deployed there were universally hated and were confined to the few castles they held. The magnates fought them and also amongst themselves.

The Polish nobles did not like the idea of an absentee landlord king who regarded Polish affairs as secondary. Polish affairs meaning getting the lands back the Teutonic knights had acquired over the years (episodes 130-138 if you are interested) .

They all agreed Louis wasn’t the king who would do it, but hoped things would improve once the old man had shuffled off his mortal coil. What they did not agreed on was what should happen then. One group was broadly amenable to Maria and Sigismund taking over, provided they would live in Poland. Others believed Poland should break with the house of Anjou and choose its own dedicated ruler.

This question became a lot more acute a lot earlier than anybody expected – because king Louis the Great of Hungary died in September of that same year.

Sigismund immediately demanded that the magnates of Poland recognise him as their lord, which some did before really thinking about it. The nobles of Wielkopolska had considered the situation more thoroughly and said, yes they would happily swear allegiance, but only if Sigismund promised to permanently reside in Poland. That was a no go for Sigismund, since it would mean abandoning the hope to ever becoming king of Hungary. And Hungary looked a lot easier since his future wife, Maria had just been recognised and crowned as king, not queen of Hungary without the slightest delay or hick-up.

Sigismund’s refusal prompted the nobles to form an alliance that demanded that if they were to recognise any of Louis’ daughters, it would be the one who was prepared to reside permanently in Poland. If neither were prepared to do that, well then – they would choose someone amongst themselves to be  their king.

If Sigismund ever had a chance to push back against the Polish nobles’ demands, it was taken away when his enemy mother -in-law Elisabeth pulled the rug from under him. She wrote to the Polish nobles, thanked them for their loyalty to the house of Anjou and promised them to select one of her daughters to come to Poland very soon. But in the meantime she urged them not to do anything rash, in particular not to recognise Sigismund as king.

So  much for familial loyalty. Sigismund sat down with the grand master of the Teutonic Knights who told him that the idea of becoming king of Poland was for the birds. You better go back to Hungary.

Oh yes. Let’s go back to Hungary. That is where his bride would be waiting for him and now that he had turned 14 and was an adult, the marriage could finally proceed. And once married he would be crowned king and everything would be as old king Louis had wanted.

But, not so.

There were three main parties amongst the Hungarian nobles and only one of them could see Sigismund wearing the holy crown of St. Stephen.

The Garai family wanted Hungary to align more with France, basically revive the old plan of bringing in the French duke of Orleans as the new king. The equally powerful Lackfi family preferred a closer alignment between Hungary and the empire as a way to fend off the ottoman threat that was slowly but surely coming up the Balkans. And finally there were the Horvati who preferred the king of Naples, Charles III, called the Small as their new ruler. Charles was a pretty ruthless man who had grown up in Hungary and had at some point been Louis’ designated successor.

Whilst Sigismund had been detained up in Poland, the queen mother Elisabeth had made herself regent on behalf of her 11-year old daughter. And she had sided with the pro-French party of the Garais. Envoys were on their way to Paris to negotiate a new marriage for little Maria, replacing Sigismund with duke Louis of Orleans.

If Maria married Lous of Orleans that would have been curtains for our friend Sigismund. Without a marriage to Maria he was just a foreign prince with no claim on the Hungarian or Polish crown, and not even a particularly wealthy one at that.

Elisabeth would have loved to call off the engagement right away and send Sigismund back home to Brandenburg, but did not dare to do it yet since the two other factions, the pro-imperial Lackfis and the pro-Neapolitan Horvatis were stirring up revolt. So she did the second best thing and sent him to Poland.

Sigismund went in the hope he could still convince his mother-in-law of his suitability as ruler and win the heart of little Maria. That wasn’t a great plan, but at least it was a plan.

What is less clear is what game Elisabeth was playing in Poland. Elisabeth knew she had no resources to force the Poles into recognising Maria as king unconditionally. So it was either sending her younger daughter Jadwiga up to Krakow or to give up on the Polish crown entirely. But she did neither, she tried to stall the Poles. That gave the anti-Hungarian party in Poland the justification to strike and they proposed one of their own as king. A full-blown civil war broke out in Poland. The pro-Hungarian party asked Elisabeth for help and she sent Sigismund with an army of 12,000 to put thing back in order in the north.

Sigismund burned and pillaged the oppositions lands but failed to take Krakow. So negotiations resumed and Elisabeth finally promised to send Jadwiga after all. A time was set for Jadwiga to be handed over, but then Elisabeth stalled again. And again she sent Sigismund to deal with the Poles, but this time without an army.  

Sigismund met the members of the Sejm who were now seriously angry and even those loyal to the Hungarian royal house had enough. If Elisabeth does not want to let Jadwiga become king, that is fine, we will just go with the Polish candidate, thank you very much.

It was Sigismund who talked them around. This is the first time his charm and diplomatic skill came to the fore. After long and arduous negotiations, and – knowing Sigismund probably including some serious partying – he and his mother in law is given one last and absolutely, completely final extension.

So, on October 15^th, 1384 the beautiful Jadwiga is crowned king, not queen of Poland. Shortly afterwards she married Jogaila, the grand prince of Lithuania, creating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The amazing thing is that this great political juggernaut would never have come into being had Sigismund taken the Polish crown and promised to stay in Krakow.

Having saved the kingdom of Poland for the house of Anjou, having proven his allegiance to Elisabeth and her daughters by forsaking the Polish crown he once believed should be his, Sigismund returned to Buda to rapturous applause, his mother-in-law offering him the kiss of peace and young Maria getting excited about her upcoming nuptials.

Oh no, none of that. You completely underestimate how much the queen mother Elisbeth hated Sigismund. In 1385 she struck what she thought was the final blow that would rid her of that pesky Luxemburger. She called the engagement between Sigismund and Maria off. Immediately thereafter Maria married Louis of Orleans by proxy.

Now the chips are really down . Sigismund is outplayed, his grand plan is in tatters. But then  Sigismund, still only 16, can be very, very determined if he wants something badly. And he wanted the crown of Hungary very, very badly.

So badly, he did go for help to the man he never ever wanted to be dependent upon, who he not necessarily despised but regarded as mediocre and undeserving of the wealth and honours he had received, his stepbrother, King Wenceslaus.  Wenceslaus, as it happened, was riding high at this point in his reign. He had concluded the general peace of Eger, the great project their father had never managed to achieve, and was preparing his journey to Rome to obtain the imperial crown. Wenceslaus had the military resources to help.

And there were their cousins, the margraves of Moravia, Jobst and Prokop. They had inherited a very well run principality that was throwing up cash like nobody’s business. They had the means to bankroll Sigismund’s claim on the Hungarian crown.

Looks like the Luxemburg family is pulling together to put one of them to obtain the holy crown of St. Stephen…well, that is what the Habsburgs would have done. The Luxemburgs – different kettle of fish. Yes, dear brother and cousin, we are happy to help, but it’ll cost you. And dearly. Sigismund had to pawn them big chunks of his margraviate of Brandenburg and hand over some of his various rights, castles and income streams.

Having been stripped down by his relatives, he did at least gets his army and with that he returned to Hungary to force the queen regent to give her daughter over in marriage to him. Not the most romantic move, but then love did not really get into this.

Whether the plan would have worked on its own, we will never know. Because events outside his control pushed little Maria into his bed anyway.

You remember there were three political parties in Hungary, the Garai who were pro French and allied with evil mother-in-law Elisbeth, the Lackfi who supported Sigismund and the Horvati who wanted Charles the Small of Naples on the Throne.

This Charles of Naples was a tough nut. Once he had been dismissed as Louis of Hungary’s heir presumptive he went to Naples where he captured and then killed his cousin Queen Joanna I. This effort had been sponsored by pope Urban VI. But Urban found out that Charles had double crossed him when he was casually torturing a brace of cardinals. So Charles attacked the pope and besieged him in Nocera from where the pope escaped by a hairs breadth. The late 14^th century is no time for sissies and Charles may have been small, but he was definitely no sissy.

In 1385 this very much not a sissy Neapolitan landed on the Dalmatian coast to stake his claim on the Hungarian crown. His supporters, the Horvati raised their banners and they marched on Buda.

Elisabeth is panicking. Her regime had become quite unpopular for all the usual reasons, taxes, favourites etc. And her allies, the Garai alone weren’t strong enough to fend off the other two parties. She had no choice but to seek support from the man  who happened to be just about to muster a military force, even if that was the man she hated more than anyone else, our friend Sigismund. And Sigismund’s price was simple, marriage to the heiress Maria. In November 1385 the not very happy couple stood before a hastily prepared altar and were finally married.

Sigismund returned to Bohemia to take command of his troops whilst Elisbeth and Maria prepared the defence of Buda against Charles of Naples. As part of that they called an assembly of the Hungarian nobles, promised them remediation of all their grievances and asked for their support. But they refused. Instead they told her to make an arrangement with Charles of Naples.

So it happened that a month later Charles the small was crowned king of Hungary at Fehérvár where Hungarian kings have been crowned since time immemorial. But he did not stay king for very long though. Two months later, on February 7^th, 1386 his cupbearer attacked him, injured him severely. He was thrown into a prison where the queen regent who presumably had paid the cupbearer had him killed. Not nice but effective.

That kicked off a civil war between the Neapolitan party and the party of the queen regent. And the queen regent also went back on her deal with Sigismund, refusing to support his coronation as king. Sigismund had to go back to his relatives and ask for even more money and even more troops. Which they provided, pulling even more chunks out of his inheritance.

Sigismund took his troops into Hungary and occupied the western part of the country to force Elizabeth to hand over his bride and get him crowned. At this point the queen regent called upon Sigismund’s brother, Wenceslaus to mediate in the conflict.

Wenceslaus did pass judgement as one would expect. Hungary was to pay some astronomical sum to pay for the cost of the war, Maria was to accept Sigismund as her husband for real now and he was given some property to live off. But what Wenceslaus did not demand, what he even precluded, was his brother’s coronation as king of Hungary. These two really did not get on that well.

Sigismund was now broke. He was only nominally margrave of Brandenburg, but all the income from the territory was going to his cousins. He even passed over the right to inherit Bohemia should Wenceslaus die without an heir. And for what – no coronation, a wife who hated him so much, even he did not want to enforce conjugal rights and no real position of power in Hungary.

But in this super volatile environment things can sometimes brighten up in rather unexpected and unpleasant ways. This way was paved by the foolishness of the queen regent. Her paladin, Miklos Garai felt that after Charles’ of Naples death and some successes against the Horvati, it was possible for the queens to come down to Dalmatia and to inspect their lands. But he was wrong. The land was not yet pacified. When the ladies travelled along with a small bodyguard, Janos Horvati came out of the bushes, killed the Garai and the rest of the guards and then carried the queens away into captivity.

Hungary was now without ruler and in the midst of a civil war. To fill the vacuum, the Hungarian magnates declared themselves the guardians of the realm and took control of the kingdom. And these guardians of the realm recognised Sigismund as captain of the Hungarian cause, though not as king.

The ladies’ position was very precarious. The widow of king Charles, the one Elisabeth had murdered bayed for her blood. Not being able to kill Elisabeth with her own bare hands, the queen of Naples ordered the Horvati to do the deed on her behalf. In mid-January 1387 Elisabeth, the daughter of the king of Bosnia, widow of king Louis the Great of Hungary, Poland and lots more was strangled before the eyes of her daughter and her body thrown in the castle’s ditch. Maria was 15 years of age when that happened. Sigismund had months to mount a rescue, but did not send his army to the castle where they were kept.

Elisabeth’s death convinced the Guardians of the realm that to properly incentivise him, they had to crown him king of Hungary after all. Still Sigismund had to make far reaching concessions to the nobles, including the promise only to appoint Hungarians to  key positions and to pardon everyone who had risen up against him or opposed him. The already quite modest royal power was further undermined by these promises, making Hungary more of an aristocratic republic than a kingdom. Sigismund had to reward his supporters after his coronation with expensive gifts. 85 of the 150 royal castles and manors passed on to the magnates. This financial and political weakness meant that Sigismund remained hampered in his rule of Hungary for decades. The way he tried to wriggle out of the clutches of the barons was by building up his own parallel bureaucracy that gradually took over tax collection and the management of the defence of the country against the Ottomans.

That being so, at least after 5 years of fighting and frustrations, Sigismund is finally king of Hungary.

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The first item on the to do list of the freshly elected and crowned king was to free his wife Maria from the clutches of the Horvati. This took until the end of 1387 and a month-long siege.

The married couple were finally united, but the relations remained cold, professional until her death in a riding accident in 1395. Sigismund may be charming and all that, but wooing a young girl who had just seen her mother getting killed due to her suitors reluctance to come to her aid would go beyond the capabilities of even the most accomplished of seducers.

The subsequent 5 years from 1387 to 1393 were taken up with defeating the Horvati and the reconquest of Dalmatia, which again was extremely costly. The Hungarian estates and magnates did not provide the funds he needed despite regular assurances. Sigismund finally bit the bullet and pawned all that he had left to his cousin Jobst for the astonishing sum of 565,263 Guilders. By doing that Sigismund had severed all his links to the Holy Roman Empire. He was now 100% committed to his kingdom of Hungary.  

The funds were enough to muster an army capable to defeat the Horvati and regain Dalmatia. Janos Horvati was captured, brutally tortured, pulled through the streets of the city of Pecs tied to the tail of a horse and then drawn and quartered.

This success did however not mean that Sigismund could now kick back and enjoy being king. As we heard last week, the Ottomans were coming. In 1389 they had defeated and then incorporated the despotate of Serbia. They were standing at the Hungarian border.

Sigismund’s predecessor, the great king Louis of Hungary had not worried too much about the Ottomans. He had fought and won a couple of battles against them and remained unconcerned. What he had not realised was that the Ottomans had learned from their early defeats against armies made up of armoured knights and had developed their unique combination of light cavalry and janissary infantry that prove so successful. After the battle on the Kosovo field in 1389 where the whole Serbian army perished, the major players on the Balkans woke up to the power of the Ottomans.

Sigismund was a player on the Balkans and he did understand that the Ottomans would be unstoppable unless he could muster an army far larger than anything Hungary alone could raise. Hence his involvement in the crusade that ended in the battle of Nikopol we discussed in the last episode.

After the crushing defeat at Nikopol Sigismund was rescued by two of his closest supporters, count Johann von Zollern and Count Herman of Cilli who commandeered a ship on the Danube to take him away.

From there Sigismund could have easily returned home to Hungary, but instead decided to take a little detour to see the famous sites of Constantinople. This was borderline on madness given the Ottoman army was standing undefeated on the Hungarian border, thousands of Christian knights had been captured and either enslaved or killed and his opponents in Hungary had gone  on manoeuvres.

That was the other side of Sigismund’s character. Whilst he could doggedly pursue an objective for years and bet everything in the outcome, sometimes he would suddenly drop everything and just give up, looking for adventures and opportunities elsewhere.  

Hence the spa trip to Constantinople where he was received with great honours by a deeply disappointed emperor Manuel II. Whilst his host was falling into despair, Sigismund dreamt up grand plans to defeat the Ottomans. He embarked on a journey across the levant, taking in Rhodes and the Greek islands before returning to Buda via Ragusa and Split.

Back home he had the magnate Istvan Lackfi and his nephew killed for barely provable treason. This act, together with his previous brutality against the Horvati made him despised by the Hungarians, a sentiment that continued to this day. And that sentiment was at least for a time mutual. The concessions Sigismund had granted at his coronation and the vast wealth he had to transfer to the Guardians of the Realm left him with very limited room to exercise actual power in Hungary. Tired of being pushed around by the magnates he began looking for new opportunities abroad.

..Music

His next project was to gang up with his cousins to unseat his step-brother Wenceslaus. We did discuss Wenceslaus demise in episode 165 so there is no point going through all of this complex story once again.

Wenceslaus was dealt a tough hand upon his father’s death and turned out being pretty bad at playing it. Between the simmering resentment of Bohemian nobles, discord with the church, his absence from the Empire, and his utter failure to address the schism in the papacy, Wenceslaus was left isolated, vulnerable, and ultimately a perfect target for Sigismund’s ambitions.

Sigismund had his hand in every one of the various conspiracies and uprisings that made his brother’s reign even more untenable than it needed to be. His comrades in crime were his cousin Jobst of Moravia and various Habsburg dukes. These guys would backstab and betray each other in a wild merry go around I simply cannot be bothered to recount. To call this self-destructive is an understatement of epic proportions. The house of Luxemburg, which once held a quarter of the empire and provided order and peace had formed an orderly circular firing squad.

By 1400, they’d managed to strip Wenceslaus of the rule of the hre, and they  nearly cost Sigismund his Hungarian throne as well.

The magnates of Hungary were disappointed with Sigismund’s constant trips to Bohemia and the mostly foreign administrators he left behind in Buda. So when he came down for a short visit, they seized him and locked him up in a castle. But then they had no idea what to do next. Some wanted to get Ladislaus of Naples,  the son of the murdered king Charles to return, others favoured a union with Poland, whilst a third party preferred a Habsburg duke. And cousin Jobst came down with an army claiming the Hungarian throne for himself. That was even by 14^th century Hungarian standards an awful mess.

In the end they decided it was better to stick with their disappointing monarch than to embark on a civil war. Sigismund promised to do better, to fire his foreign advisers and spend more time in Hungary and in exchange, the Hungarians let him be.

Sigismund said, thanks. That was great fun and buggered off back to Bohemia where he spent another 2 years trying to oust his brother, double cross his cousins and merrily signing and breaking alliances with nobles and neighbouring monarchs.

In 1403 the Hungarian magnates had again enough of their absent monarch and rose up. King Ladislaus of Naples landed in Dalmatia. Sigismund came back with an army, and now it was the final showdown. His followers gathered support and Ladislaus – in fear if ending like his father – rushed back to Naples. Sigismund acted the magnanimous victor for once and received the members of the opposition back into the fold. But this time he did not apologise or promise to do better. Instead he removed the magnates one by one from their positions of power claiming, quite accurately – that they lacked loyalty to their lord. Meanwhile more and more Hungarians realised that the incessant infighting was seriously undermining their ability to defend the kingdom against the Ottomans.

For almost 7 years Sigismund gave up o wild goose chases and focused on his job in Hungary. He expanded the state apparatus, reorganised taxes and the church, introduced military reform that created the famous Hussars, suppressed the robber barons and unjust feuds and generally rebuilt the country. His most notorious reform was the creation of the order of the Dragon he bestowed on local magnates and allies, including Mircea the elder, the Voivode of Walachia. Mircea was so proud of the honour he asked people to call him Draco, Latin for dragon and his son Vlad became little dragon or Dracola in Latin, a name you may have heard before.

This period of benign rule in Hungary lasted until 1410 when King Ruprecht of the empty pocket, the rather ineffectual ruler of the Holy Roman Empire unexpectedly died. And with that the throne of the empire became vacant. And Sigismund, always on the lookout for another crown, another adventure another grand plan, put his large ermine hat in the ring.

But that is a story for another time. Next week we will meet the next and last important participant in the Council of Constance, Jan Hus, professor at the university of Prague, follower of John Wycliff and radical preacher. And I promise, once we have talked about him, we will finally come back into Germany, get to the shores of lake Constance and watch pope John XXIII, 3 patriarchs, 23 cardinals, 27 archbishops, 106 bishops, 103 abbots, 344 doctors of theology, 676 noblemen of high birth, 336 barbers, 516 buglers, pipers & entertainers and 718 whores and public girls determine the fate of Christendom.

Just before I go just a quick reminder about the website where you can support the show – it is historyofthegermans.com/support.

Hope to see you back here next week.