Episode 156 – What Price a Crown
Another election, another succession crisis in the Holy Roman Empire – will Karl IV find a way to put an end to this?
Episode 155– The Youth of Emperor Karl IV
The emperor Karl IV has divine visions. Not quite what you were expecting, but as it happened a good window into his way of thinking. But do not worry, Karl wasn’t just an excessively devout collector of relics, he was at the same time an astute and often ruthless politician who gave the Holy Roman empire its constitution and placed his heirs on the throne for the next centuries.
Episode 154– The Blind King John of Bohemia
John of Bohemia wasn’t the last knight, but he was a figure of a world that was slowly fading away. A world where armoured men on horseback were invincible and hence had to be tamed by a complex set of rules they called the chivalric code.
Episode 153– The Rise of Nürnberg
How did this city grow within 200 years from an imperial castle far from the main transport links, without a harbour and on famously poor soil into one of the three most important urban centres in Germany whose merchants were well regarded in all corners of the world, whose printers published the works of Europe’s leading intellectuals, whose artists were and remain of global renown and whose engineers produced breakthrough after breakthrough.
Episode 151 – Kurverein zu Rhens
This week we look at the central intellectual debate of the 14th century, did Jesus own property? If yes, then it was right and proper that the church owned land, privileges, entire counties and duchies, yes that the pope was not just the spiritual but also the secular ruler of all of Christianity. And if not, then the pope as a successor to the apostles should rescind all worldly possessions and all political power.
Episode 150 – The Last Chivalric Battles
How the conflict between the three dominating houses, the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs and the Luxemburg pans out, and whilst the mighty lords believe it is all about marriage alliances and knights dominating the battlefield, the ground on which their mighty warhorses are galloping is shifting….