History of the Germans Podcast

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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.

So far I have:

Ep. 164: Council of Constance and Hussite Revolt (1378-1437) – Season Opener

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to Season 9 – Reformation before the Reformation – The Great Western Schism, the Hussite Wars and the rise of the Ottomans.

But before we start, I have to come to you cap in hand. The History of the Germans podcast is entirely free to anyone to enjoy, even to enjoy without advertising. Which means the funding has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is the generosity of our patrons who make either ongoing monthly contributions from £2 a month on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or through a one-time donation on historyofthegermans.com/support. And let’s all thank Jean Louis S., Jocelyn H-S, Marina H., Mark S. Michael E. and Miroslav D. who have made such generous one-time donations.

And with that – back to the show

Last season we kicked off with a 10,000 feet overview of where we were, what had happened before and where the tides of history were ebbing and flooding. I think that worked quite well and gives listeners who are coming new to the History of the Germans a chance to catch up. If you are one of them, welcome!

Our starting point for this season is November 1378, most precisely the 29^th of November, the day the emperor, king of the Romans, king of Italy and king of Burgundy, Karl/Charles/Karel IV breathed his last.

Why that date? Because we are at a point of transition from the Middle Ages to the early Modern period and Karl IV and his Golden Bull were in many aspects the end point of some key historical trends that had dominated the Middle Ages. But what does transition from Middle Ages to Early Modern actually mean? In what way is this new epoch different from what went on before? The answer is, in almost every possible aspect, economic, social, political and cultural.

Let’s start with the economy. The Middle Ages from the 10^th century onwards were a period of sustained economic growth driven by a combination of improving climate conditions, the so-called medieval warm period, and a series of improvements to agricultural techniques, for instance the use of heavier ploughs drawn by horses something made possible by the invention of the horse collar and the horseshoe. Another key innovation was crop rotation that hugely increased yields. And social change, namely the replacement of slavery with serfdom and then with tenancy agreement that pushed productivity.

These improvements drove a rapid rise in population, which in turn brought more and more land under cultivation. For Britain where we have reasonable data, the population rose from 1 million to 5-6 million between the post Roman period and the year 1300. By then about 10.5 million acres had been put under the plough, again a roughly 3-fold increase. At these levels most regions in western Europe had reached saturation levels which led to a huge migration eastwards where almost 10% of the population of the empire left their overcrowded homes in the Rhineland, Flanders, Holland and elsewhere to search for pastures new in what is today east Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechia, the Baltic states, Prussia and even further afield.

The medieval warming period ended in the middle or end of the 13^th century and by the 14^th century Europe was gradually getting colder, a process called the little ice age that peaked in the 16^th and 17^th century and lasted until the mid-19^th century. Severe famines as one has not seen for centuries began in the 1310s. Natural catastrophes became more common. The Grote Mandrenke, the great drowning of men in 1362 killed 25,000, sank the town of Rungholt in Frisia and turned 5000 square kilometers of land into a shallow sea on the Dutch coast, an area far larger than the Ijsselmer and Markermer that remain of it.

The biggest humanitarian disaster was however the Black Death, the plague that killed roughly a third of Europe’s population and kept returning in regular intervals for centuries.

The combination of these two effects, the climate and the plague meant that growth stalled and populations shrunk. Much of the land that had been cultivated in the 13^th century was no longer viable in the 14^th century. And it was also no longer needed as there were less mouths to feed.

This change in population and economics drove social change too.

The dramatic cull of people during the plague often hit the cities harder than the countryside as people lived close together. For some cities, the Black Death brought about rapid decline, some vanished completely. But those that survived quickly filled up again. They had not lost their economic advantages, which meant there were suddenly a large number of job openings. For many a peasant, tired of paying ever increasing rents to their landlord, life in the city became an attractive proposition. So, these surviving country dwellers left for the bright lights and freedom of the towns and cities. And that not just happen during the great Plague of 1348 to 1352 but again during the subsequent outbreaks that occurred every 10 to 15 years..

That in turn caused some serious problems for the landowners, in particular for the knightly class. They had so far benefitted from the population explosion that had created an almost inexhaustible supply of cheap labor to toil on their estates, either as tenants or as farmhands. But now that well had dried up, first through the disease and then the rural exodus that followed. If they wanted to keep their workforce they had to pay them a fair wage. The Bank of England did an analysis of wages going back to the 13^th century and the period of the Black death was the only time before the industrial revolution when real incomes increased. Great for peasant’s pockets but a severe cut to the baronial profit margins, profit margins already depleted by a decline in prices. Prices had dropped because there were simply less people around demanding foodstuff.

As the knights, these embodiment of the medieval world saw their financial resources shrink, they experienced another, even harsher hit to their social standing. For centuries the knight in his metal cocoon riding his mighty warhorse was the Leopard Tank of his day, a weapon so powerful, only another knight could stand up to it. But that time was coming to an end. The battles of Morgarten, Mühldorf and in Flanders had shown that infantry armed with halberds and cunning could inflict serious damage on armored riders. The success of the English longbowmen at Crecy and Poitiers should have penetrated the minds of the French nobility as much as it did their armor, though they still needed another reminder at Agincourt. Canons appear from the late 14^th century, at which point the hegemony of the Knights on the battlefield is well and truly over.

Moreover, tactics changed. The amateurish armies of volunteers that were the mainstay of the Middle Ages were replaced by bands of professional soldiers. The practice began in Italy where the city councils got used to hiring Condottiere to fight their wars rather than sending their precious sons out to the battlefield. The Hundred Years’ war saw the rise of the Compagnie of mercenaries offering their services to either party in the conflict and the civil wars of the Interregnum in the empire were decided by who could hire and pay the best mercenaries.

As the knights declined, their role at the top of the tree, in the councils of the princes and emperors, was taken by the merchants, bankers and lawyers. When in the 12^th century Frederick Barbarossa’s main advisers had been the duke Otto von Wittelsbach and Rainald von Dassel, the archbishop of Cologne, 200 years later emperor Karl IV’s chancery was staffed with lawyers from the lower nobility or the city patricians. He listened more to the advice of his Nurnberg bankers who could provide him cash to pay for mercenary armies or his acquisitions, and in whose mansions he rather stayed, than in some drafty castle.

The rise of the merchants and bankers was no coincidence. Trade networks expanded in the 13^th and 14^th century, ships had become larger, transport costs were falling meaning profits for merchants in the major centers were going up and up. Shipping bulk goods, wheat, herring, wood, ash, base metals even ore became viable businesses alongside the long established trade in spices, furs and beeswax. This was the height of the power of the Hanseatic League that gained a near monopoly on the East-West trade all the way from Novgorod and Bergen to Bruges and London.

A specific area of growth for the German cities, and Nurnberg in particular, were advances in metallurgy. Mining and smelting had always been a key industry in the German lands ever since the silver mines of Goslar opened in the 10^th century. But in the 14^th century new technologies were developed. One particular breakthrough exploited the fact that most copper ore in Europe contained traces of silver. The secret “Saiger” process developed by a Nurnberg merchant enabled them to separate the two metals. It made the copper purer and hence more valuable and left behind an amount of silver as a windfall. This process was extremely lucrative. Traders could make six times from the sale of the copper and silver than they had paid for the ore.

As economic activity in the cities thrived, they were able to translate this into influence and political independence. Under the feudal system that prevailed across Europe, cities were subject to the ownership rights of the prince on whose territory they were located and whose forefathers had often founded them in the first place. But over time some cities have been able to shake off their overlord. Places like Cologne, Regensburg, Mainz and Strasburg had paid off and chased off their bishops who had once ruled over them and had become free cities. The cities that were located on royal land benefitted from the weakness of the central power. They would proudly declare allegiance to the emperor and, under duress, pay him taxes, but in all other respects these imperial cities were as free as the free cities. And then you have places like Hamburg where the council simply forged a charter that had declared them a free and imperial city and pushed this claim through by force and fortune. But even where formal overlordship remained, as was the case with most members of the Hanseatic League, the cities enjoyed a large degree of freedom at least in the 14^th and 15^th century.

Which gets us to the political picture.

The great medieval dynasties of the Ottonians, the Salians and the Hohenstaufen had expired by 1268. A centuries long conflict with the papacy over leadership of Christianity and repeated attempts to bring Northern Italy to heel had ended with a comprehensive defeat of imperial power. The last of these emperors, Frederick II had died in 1250, excommunicated, militarily and physically exhausted and increasingly paranoid. His son, Konrad was never crowned King of the Romans and perished in the attempt to defend his kingdom of Sicily against Charles of Anjou, the papal champion. The last of the dynasty, Konradin, died aged just 17 on the executioners block in Naples, having failed to oust the usurper of the Sicilian crown.

After that the empire had no effective leadership for two decades. Two foreigners, Alfonso X of Castile and Richard of Cornwall were simultaneously elected as kings of the Romans, but neither could assert much authority.

In 1273 the prince electors, at that point a still somewhat fluid group, elected Rudolf of Habsburg, a count from the Aargau in modern day Switzerland. Rudolf was a truly impressive figure, a ruthless warrior but commensurate strategist and politician. He had profited enormously from the collapse of Hohenstaufen power, taking over lands and cities previously held by the imperial family. He was however still only a count and his family had been relative parvenues. That may have been the reason the electors chose him, believing he would be a weak ruler who would grant them whatever rights and privileges they desired.

As it turned out, Rudolf was nothing of that sort. He initiated a restitution policy forcing princes and bishops to hand back the formerly royal lands to the king. Peter Wilson estimated that roughly 2/3 of the former imperial resources were recovered.

Rudolf also embarked on a confrontation with the richest and most powerful of the imperial princes, king Ottokar II of Bohemia, the “Golden King”. Relying on the large silver mines in Kutna Hora, Ottokar II had expanded his realm by acquiring Austria, Styria, Carinthia and what is now Frioul and Slovenia. Rudolf outmaneuvered Ottokar and forced him to hand him the Austrian duchies. In a subsequent battle Rudolf defeated Ottokar II who died in the field. The Habsburgs took over Austria which over time became the center of their power.

Upon Rudolf’s death the electors refused to elect Rudolf’s son which would have created a new royal or even imperial dynasty. Instead they chose another little count, Adolf von Nassau. Adolf tried the same trick, this time going after the Landgraviate of Thuringia. But that failed, he irritated the Prince electors who deposed him and called back Albrecht von Habsburg, the son of Rudolf they had previously rejected. Albrecht defeated and killed Adolf and took control of the empire.

Albrecht’s main interest was now to further expand his and his family’s possessions. The golden opportunity was the kingdom of Bohemia where king Ottokar’s family, the Premyslids had died out. There was lot of back and forth, and just when Albrecht was preparing for another invasion of Bohemia he was murdered by his nephew.

Adolf and Albrecht represent a new approach to the role of the King of the Romans. These men looked at the title only as a way to expand their personal wealth, in particular using the royal prerogative to claim fiefs that had become vacant upon the extinction of the vassal’s family. The empire and its interests were clearly secondary.

Their successor was another “little count” in inverted commas, Henry of Luxemburg. And the calculation of the prince electors was again the same as before, let’s get someone with limited resources on the throne and push him around. And again, their gamble did not work out.

Henry VII was cut from a different cloth. He had grown up at the French court and had a much broader perspective. He saw that unless he gained the imperial crown through a coronation in Rome, the imperial title and with it political power over the empire would inevitably fall to the French king.

Henry VII therefore set off for Italy, the first emperor to be crowned in Rome for almost a century. But apart from the coronation, his stay in Italy was a terrible failure. Like his predecessors he was dragged into protracted Italian domestic conflicts that he could not resolve. His army perished before the walls of Brescia, his beloved wife succumbed to disease, and so did he a year later.

But the house of Luxemburg did receive a windfall profit they did not even aspire to. And it was the most valuable of them all, the kingdom of Bohemia. The Bohemian nobles who retained the right to choose their ruler offered the crown to John, the son of Henry VII. Though Henry saw it as a distraction from his main objective, the Roman coronation, he was persuaded to let the Bohemians take his son home as their new king. John of Luxemburg would later become famous as the Blind King of Bohemia whose pointless chivalric deeds at the battle of Crecy gained him the respect of Edward, the Black Prince of Wales.

After Henry VII death, we have another simultaneous election of a king of the Romans, Ludwig of Wittelsbach, duke of Upper Bavaria and Frederick of Habsburg, duke of Austria. In 1322 Ludwig did emerge victorious at the battle of Mühldorf. But by then imperial power was already so diminished, the title, its resources and prerogatives added only marginal advantage to its holder.

The political landscape had become a system of three roughly equal sized power structures. The house of Habsburg centered round Austria and their holdings in South-west Germany, Alsace and Switzerland, the Luxemburgs as kings of Bohemia and counts of Luxemburg and the Wittelsbachs as dukes of Bavaria and Counts Palatinate on the Rhine.

During the 30 year long reign of Ludwig the Bavarian, the three parties carved up all vacating fiefs between each them. The Habsburgs received Carinthia, the Wittelsbachs Brandenburg and Holand Hennegau and the Luxemburgs Silesia.

Where they clashed was over the county of Tyrol which controlled the important transalpine routes, including the Brenner pass. John of Luxemburg got there first, gaining the hand of the heiress of these lands, Margarete Maultasch for his son Johann Heinrich. However that relationship broke down and Margarete threw the Luxemburger out and married the son of Ludwig the Bavarian, without prior divorce. In the end, after the Margarete’s only child had died, she handed the county to the Habsburgs.

Ludwig managed to keep a lid on all these conflicts until in 1347 the kettle boiled over. The Luxemburg party elevated Karl, the son of the blind king of Bohemia to king of the Romans. Karl managed to overcome his opposition, partially because both Ludwig the Bavarian and the next champion of the Wittelsbach cause died, but mainly through bribery. These bribes were astronomical, adding up to 1.6 million gold florins.

To raise theses funds Karl sold, pawned and granted away almost all that was left of the royal lands and rights. Though he bought some of it back later, the net result was that from now on any holder of the royal or imperial title had to fund almost the entirety of their administration from their personal fortune.

Karl IV reigned for 30 years, a period during which he stabilized the situation in the German lands and issued the most significant constitutional document in the 14^th century empire, the Golden Bull.

The Golden Bull did not say anything fundamentally new. It set out that the king of the Romans was elected by a majority of the seven electors, these being the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the duke of Sachsen-Wittenberg, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine and margrave of Brandenburg. These electors had been set more or less since the election of Rudolf of Habsburg in 1273. All the Golden Bull did was to clarify exactly which branch of the respective houses was allowed to vote, the voting process, location and the like. It also granted the Prince Electors king-like status in their own lands. They enjoyed all formerly royal rights and privileges in their lands, like the establishment of tolls, the raising of taxes, minting of coins, building of castles and establishment of cities. Their subjects had only limited recourse to imperial justice. Basically they were completely autonomous though still part of the empire. Again, not really a change from the status quo, but a written confirmation of it.

The significance of the Golden Bull lay less in what it said than in what it did not say. The Golden Bull makes no mention of the pope at all. And by this omission it asserts that the pope has no role in the choice of the future emperor. Hitherto the popes had declared an explicit right of approbation, i.e., they reserved the right to reject an election they did not agree with. This was one of the manifestations of the superiority of the popes over the emperors that had been the key intellectual and political battleground of the Middle Ages.

Pope John XXII and Ludwig the Bavarian had clashed over exactly this question, the approbation. This conflict resulted in the excommunication of Ludwig, his family and in the end the entire empire. Ludwig managed to hold on to his throne and gained the support of the imperial bishops, abbots and clergy in his defiance of the papacy. He even got crowned in Rome, not by the pope or a cardinal, but by the people and senate of Rome, much like the pagan emperors of old. At the Kurverein zu Rhens the electors asserted their right to elect the future emperor without any interference from the papacy. This statement was obviously not recognized by the papacy. But when Karl IV issued the Golden Bull, which in a more elegant way said the same, the pope did not object too loudly.

And that brought the long lasting papal-imperial conflict, that central axis of medieval politics, to an end and laid the foundations for a new constitution of the empire, as yet unknown.

If we sum up the political situation over these 125 odd years from 1250 to the death of Karll IV in 1378, one question should come up, which is, how could the empire afford a hollowed out central authority, squabbling princes, excessive bribery and a papal interdict on top. Why did it not get invaded? Any other state with that level of dysfunction would not have been able to maintain its territorial integrity.

And that gets us to something that nobody ever seems to mention. For almost 300 years, ever since the battle on the Lechfeld in 955, there had not been any external threat to the empire’s borders. This is truly astounding. If you look at France and its constant wars with England, Spain’s Reconquista, the never ending wars between the Scandinavian kingdoms, Poland’s conflict with the Lithuanians and the Teutonic Knights, it becomes clear that in this respect the Holy Roman empire in the 13^th and 14^th century was an exception.

Basically the empire was exceedingly lucky. On its eastern border Poland had disintegrated into dozens and dozens of smallish duchies ruled by descendants of king Boleslaw III, the Wrymouth. The powers to the east of Poland had been wiped out by the Mongols who themselves made only one brief effort to move west before their urge for conquest died down. So instead of being a threat to the empire, Poland and the east became an area of conquest and emigration for the empire. First the buffer states of the Slavic Wends between the Elbe and the Polish border was taken over by Saxon nobles who founded Brandenburg and the various Saxon duchies. Some of the Slavic elite like the dukes of Mecklenburg and Pomerania were coopted into the empire. The Teutonic knights were called in by a Polish duke to deal with the pagan Pruzzi and established the order’s state in Prussia.

Equally the Hungarians had integrated into the West and Bohemia was part of the empire. The Scandinavians in the North were preoccupied with their constant wars of succession, often finding themselves dependent upon the counts of Holstein or the Dukes of Mecklenburg or dealing with the Hanseatic League.

Finally in the west, the kings of France had focused on their internal consolidation rather than outward expansion. Their two 100 years wars with their largest vassal, the king of England left little resources for forays eastwards. As for the south, Italy was a key battleground for medieval imperial politics, but that was always a civil war between the papal and imperial faction, not a war of conquest.

As we head into the end of the 14^th and the 15^th century this picture changed considerably. The kingdom of Poland recovered from centuries of total fragmentation. Under Wladyslaw the elbow-High and Kasimir the Great the Piast duchies united back into a kingdom and took an ever more aggressive stance against the Teutonic Knights and the encroaching Margraves of Brandenburg.

At the same time king Louis the great of Hungary led a renaissance of Hungarian power and played a key role in imperial politics. And all that happened on the doorstep of Bohemia, the main powerbase of the imperial family.

Equally the French monarchy had started nibbling away at the French-speaking imperial bishoprics of Cambrai, Toul, Verdun, Metz and Liege. Further south Provence, still part of the kingdom of the Arelat and hence imperial territory was ruled by a cadet branch of the French royal family. The Franche-Comte, once home to Barbarossa’s wife Beatrice was gradually transferred to France in the 14^th century.

The issue of French encroachment became an increasingly important topic, in particular under the Luxemburg emperors Henry VII and Karl IV who hailed from the area. Karl IV used the weakness of the French monarch after their defeat at the battles of Crecy and Poitiers to reassert imperial authority by holding a massive diet in Metz in 1356 where the Golden Bull was finally proclaimed. However, once France had regained the territories ceded to the English in the treaty of Bretigny, they turned their gaze again eastwards to the empire.

In the last year of his life emperor Karl IV travelled to France to find a compromise with Charles V of France over the former kingdom of Burgundy which included Provence, the Rhone valley and Piedmont as well as the succession to the Hungarian and Polish thrones. In this deal, the details are unknown, it seems as if Karl IV handed over de facto control of Provence and the Rhone valley to the French crown in exchange for his son’s succession in Hungary.

What we can conclude from that is the main political axis had shifted from north-south to east-west. In the Middle Ages, emperors were focused on Italy and on the papacy, but by the end of the 14^th century most of time and effort is spent on France, Poland and Hungary.

And just generally, the center of power in the empire has shifted east. The medieval emperors had their main landholdings and support base in the south and along the Rhine river. Now, under Karl IV, imperial power relies on Bohemia with its satellites, Silesia and Moravia and the recently acquired margraviate of Brandenburg.

With external pressures mounting fundamental reform of the empire becomes ever more pressing. To put that into perspective, king Edward III of England had borrowed 1.1 million gold Florin to fight the 100 Years’ war against the French. The total income of the emperor from his imperial resources was 20,000 Gold Florin. If he wanted to raise exceptional taxes, the only place he could do that was in the imperial cities that would occasionally head his demands, but not always. The other source of funds were the merchant bankers in these cities who lent considerable amounts against huge interest and only upon handover of valuable collateral.

Despite their importance in the functioning of the empire, by 1378 the cities were most unhappy with the state of affairs in the kingdom. Being dependent upon trade, their main concern was the safety of the roads and rivers, the tolls charged and the stability of the currency. When Karl IV designed the Golden Bull he initially wanted to address all three subjects. He aimed for a communal policy on coinage, guaranteeing the levels of precious metal content, restrictions on tolls and a general peace, a Landfrieden. The Landfrieden would have been a permanent ban on private violence, requiring the princes to eradicate the robber barons and recognize a system of law courts that based their decision on the written laws. In exchange the cities would have to refrain from forming leagues and associations for mutual support, i.e, doing all these things by themselves.

But these provisions were never passed. In the negotiations the princes managed to water the rules on mints, tolls and the peace down to practically zero. All that was left in the Golden Bull was the ban on the formation of city leagues.

No points to Griffindor for figuring out what happened next. With the central government unable to guarantee safety from illegal and legal robbery, the cities defied the Golden Bull. The Swabian cities, most of them imperial ones, formed a league led by the city of Ulm. They refused to swear allegiance to Karl’s son Wenceslaus which resulted in a war. The imperial army failed to scale the walls of Ulm and the emperor had to reach for a compromise that sanctioned the Swabian league. And the war boosted the confidence of the citizens of Ulm to the point they gave their parish church, the Ulmer Muenster, the tallest church tower in the world, or at least they tried. The tower was only completed in the 19^th century.

Another, even more unusual league formed in the South West. The imperial cities of Zurich, Bern and Lucerne joined the forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden in an agreement of mutual support against their not really very oppressive overlords, the house of Habsburg.

But it is not only the economic, social and political picture has fundamentally changed by the middle of the 14^th century. There is also a huge cultural shift.

When we talk about culture in the Middle Ages, what we are talking about is religion, and even more specifically, the church and at its head, the papacy.

Ever since the 10^th century religious history was driven by the constant demand to reform the church. Given the importance the afterlife played in the mind of people of the Middle Ages, the quality of the church personnel who performed the holy sacraments was of crucial importance. A sinner wanted to be sure that his absolution was valid so that his time in purgatory was shortened. And for the sacrament, be it eucharist, baptism, confession, confirmation and last rites, to be valid, it had to be performed accurately, something only a competent and properly anointed priest could ensure. Even though the papacy had confirmed many times that even sacraments administered by unworthy clergymen in an inaccurate manner were valid, the people still demanded better.

These reform efforts had come in waves. Once disappointment with the established church reached boiling point, reformers gained traction proposing changes. The Cluniac abbots, St. Peter Damian, Anselm of Canterbury preached reform in the 11^th century, Bernhard of Clairvaux in the 12^th century and St. Francis in the 13^th century. For most of this period the papacy was able to retain control over the reform process. They usually achieved that by co-opting the movements into their system, be it as Cluniacs, Cistercians or Franciscans. This, combined with relentless persecution of those reformers they branded heretics kept the pope in charge.

In the 14^th century the papacy lost control of the reform agenda. They had moved to Avignon where they spent their days under the watchful eye of the French monarch and doing their bidding, even when it was to sanction a raid on the templar order. In this period the church became much more efficient as an organization, gaining more and more control over the local bishoprics and even individual clergymen. At the same time it also improved its fiscal capabilities, collecting tithes more consistently, drawing the first year income of newly elected bishops and issuing indulgences as a way to monetize their store of holiness. This process made the Avignon papacy appear greedy and worldly to the common man. Moreover it made it unpopular with local clergy whose autonomy and income they had seized.

Pope John XXII, a lawyer more than a theologian, put oil in the fire when he pressured the Franciscan order to give up its vow of poverty. He reasoned that the image of a poor Franciscan habit next to a bejeweled cardinal made the latter look bad. This debate t- hat quickly became a debate over whether the church as a whole should be as poor as Jesus had been – had a devastating impact on the perception of the papacy. The pope was seen as endorsing the worldliness of the church rather than fighting it. And worldly the church had become. Teenage archbishops, drunk parsons, dissolute monks and lustful nuns returned not just as tropes in folk tales and bawdy songs.

Having lost the moral high ground the popes saw their hold on political power wane. When pope John XXII excommunicated the elected king of the Romans, Ludwig IV, the move backfired badly. Ludwig marshalled a coalition between the Franciscan dissenters and the imperial church against the pope. For almost 30 years did the church in the German lands live outside the reach and in defiance of the papacy. Even when the papal candidate Karl IV replaced Ludwig, he quickly shed the mantle of papal protegee. Nobody wanted to be a Pfaffenkönig, a pet of the church.

Karl IV did formally reconcile the empire with the Holy See and the interdict was lifted but the hold of the pope over the empire was broken as the Golden Bull made clear.

The calamities of the papacy did not end with the Golden Bull. In 1377 pope Gregory XI returned to Rome from Avignon. But there he died just months later. The cardinals elected a new pope, Urban VI. How free and fair this election was depends on what impact one ascribes to the Roman mob that had gathered outside, threatening to kill everyone inside unless they chose a Roman pope. Once back in Avignon the cardinals declared the election of Urban VI invalid and elected a new one, Clement VII. We now have two popes. Urban VI was recognized by several powers, including the emperor and the king of England, whilst Clement VII relied mainly on French support. The Great Western Schism was born. As the two popes were preoccupied with their internal squabbles, hope for church reform receded further and further.

The inability of the papacy to lead a successful reform program left a void. Whenever that had happened In the Middle Ages the emperors had occupied this empty space, claiming universal responsibility for Christendom. But that claim has moved so far from the political realities of the day, even pious rulers like Karl IV could not really take up the mantle any more.

Which meant the reform debate was left to the laity and the intellectuals. Men like Dante, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua and Petrarch developed entirely new concepts of how the church should be organized. Marsilius who is one of the most unfairly overlooked political thinkers in European history was the most radical. In his Defensor Pacis, the Defender of the Peace he declared that all laws that bind men in the here and now derive their legitimacy from the acclamation of the people. A ruler rules only on the support of the ruled, not by divine right. Hence in the empire, it is the emperor who makes the laws in agreement with the ruled, represented by the Prince-Electors. The pope on the other hand has no power in the temporal world, his realm is the spiritual world.

Marsilius’ writings gained a lot of traction. They were translated into French, Italian and German which indicates they were read not just by the Latin-speaking intellectual elite, but much more broadly. Other thinkers, namely John Wycliff who we have not yet talked about, developed these ideas further.

What helped the spread of new concepts were the new universities that had sprung up across central Europe. Prague University opened in 1348, Krakow in 1364, Vienna in 1365, Pecs in Hungary in 1367, Heidelberg in 1386, Leipzig 1409 and Rostock in 1419.

Charismatic preachers spread their message of the sinfulness of the official church and the urgent need for reform.

In particular in the empire, which had been detached from the papacy for decades under Ludwig the Bavarians, the population was already very skeptical of the ability that reform could be achieved inside the church.

And that is where the story begins.

Next week we will kick off by looking at Karl IV’s successor, king Wenceslaus IV who inherited what looked like a stable and well sorted reign even though several key reform projects are still unfinished. Will he be able to continue in his father’s footsteps, deliver the Landfrieden, protect the empire against its external foes and resolve the Great Western Schism? Well, let’s see.

And whilst you wait you may want to brush up on some of the earlier episodes that go into a lot more depth on some of the topics we just discussed. In particular the episodes 149 to 151 where we discuss the reign of Ludwig the Bavarian, which was a crucial period when the empire and the church drifted apart. Or if you need a refresher on how imperial power fell apart, the episodes 73 to 77 trace the story of the civil war between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV that brought a free for all for the imperial princes and then the early years of Frederick II who had to accept the status quo. Or if you like to hear more about the Hanseatic League or the Teutonic Knights, you can find these as a separate podcast unimaginatively titled the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights wherever you find the History of the Germans.

You can listen to all of these on historyofthegermans.com where you can also support the podcast by signing up as a patron or by making a one-time donation.

Episode 163 – Succession and Legacy

by History of the Germans Podcast on 12th September 202417th December 2025

Emperor Karl IV gets his son Wenceslaus IV crowned king of the Romans

This is the last episode of this season and it is time to say goodbye to Karl IV, Ludwig the Bavarian, Henry VII, Albrecht of Habsburg, Adolf von Nassau and Rudolf of Habsburg. These have been some eventful 138 years.

When Karl IV died in 1378 he left behind an impressive list of achievements but also a number of failures. And he left behind a son, Wenceslaus he had invested with so much hope and so many crowns, it not only broke the bank but even chunks of the political edifice he had so patiently built.

How and why is what we will discuss in this episode.

As always:

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Ep. 163: Karl IV (1346-1378) – Succession and Legacy

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 163 – Succession and Legacy, also episode 26 of Season 8 “From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull”.

How and why is what we will discuss in this episode.

But before we start the usual reminder that all this advertising-free German history fun is funded by the generosity of our patrons who have gone to historyofthegermans.com/support and signed up as Patrons or have made a one time donation. And today I want to thank Jim V., Chris E. J, Gilles, John Thompson, Peter McCloskey and Martin E. who have so lavishly endowed us.

And with that, back to the show

These last three episodes we have looked at Bohemia, the Empire, the expansion of the Luxemburg possessions and the international successes of Charles IV. Now it is time to talk about his Achilles heel, his obsession with his son and heir, Wenceslaus.

The last time a son had followed his father on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire had been in 1191 when Henry VI took over from Frederick Barbarossa. One could claim that Konrad IV took over from Frederick II in 1250, but Konrad IV was never crowned and his reign in the empire was confined to his duchy of Swabia.

Spoiler alert, Karl IV will be the first emperor who gets his son elected and crowned during his lifetime. But that came at a price.

Before we can get into this we need to take a quick recap of Karl IV’s family history. He had been married a total of four times. His first marriage was to Blanche of Valois, the sister of king Philip VI of France, a marriage arranged whilst he lived in Paris. The couple were married for 18 years, but had only two children, both girls, but no son and heir.

Her death in 1348 came at an extremely opportune moment for Karl, because he was now free to marry Anne of Bavaria, the daughter of the Count Palatinate on the Rhine who brought him a crucial electoral vote as well as strategic positions in the Upper Palatinate. This relationship produced a much desired son, but the child died in infancy. Anne too died soon after.

Wife #3 was Anna of Schweidnitz, daughter and heiress of one of the Silesian dukedoms that Karl wanted to integrate into the Lands of the Crown of Bohemia. Anna was just 14 at the time they got betrothed and lived to age 23. In that time she got crowned Queen of Bohemia, Queen of the Romans and finally in 1355, she was crowned empress in Rome. But most importantly after first giving birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1358, in 1361 she delivered the long awaited heir, a boy called Wenceslaus.

Like so much of Karl’s activities, the birth of Wenceslaus was an elaborately designed spectacle. Karl had his heavily pregnant wife brought to Nürnberg, by now one of the three symbolic cities of the empire, alongside Frankfurt and Aachen. And he had invited the electors, imperial princes and representatives of the great cities for a diet at the same time.

On previous visits the emperor had stayed in the comfortable mansions of one of the great Nürnberg bankers where he could enjoy all creature comforts. But that would not do for the birth of an imperial child. So the family moved up the hill into the drafty castle once built by the Hohenstaufen emperors.

By ensuring his son was born in the imperial castle above the great imperial city, in the presence of the whole of the empire, Karl projects a clear message. This child, his son, was not just the future king of Bohemia, but he was also destined to be the future emperor.

My god is he a happy father. This is what he wrote to the Bohemians: quote: “Rejoice in the hearts of all our faithful! rejoice, our dear subjects, let the whole nation hold a great festival of joy. All Bohemia, and all its provinces, rejoice at the great happiness that has befallen you. You rich and poor, you young and old, rejoice, for behold the royal lineage has brought forth a scion! Heaven has finally granted our ardent wishes, and the Empress, our consort, has given birth to our heir to the throne, as promised by God! His appearance was like the rising sun dispelling the fog, for this newborn also dispelled the fickleness, indecision, fear and hope from the hearts of our subjects, and brought back their previous happiness, serene confidence and love.” End quote.

He may be laying it on thick, but then he was already 45 years old and until then without a male heir. This lack of a successor left the entire political structure he had built fragile. And that fragility impacted not just him, but the whole of his empire that could still remember the endless sequence of civil wars that had followed an imperial vacancy. Therefore it is likely that there were indeed celebrations of joy across the empire, welcoming the long awaited heir.

Karl’s excitement culminated in the weeks that followed. He had the baby weighed in gold, which he sent to Aachen in recognition for the miracle he attribute to the intercession of the saints and relics in this other great imperial city. He then called for the imperial regalia to be brought over from Prague to Nürnberg to be exhibited to the public.

For the christening 2 weeks later 5 electors, 18 bishops and numerous princes came to the church of St. Sebaldus in Nürnberg. Having just been to the christening of my niece and nephew, I know that children can sometimes be less than co-operative in religious ceremonies. Reports about young Wenceslaus christening tell of the little boy being more than obstinate. Stories circulate that in his revulsion he had soiled the holy water and even the fouled the altar, a bad omen for what may be coming.

Bad omen or not, these celebrations did not go down well with the Habsburgs and the Wittelsbachs who saw their chances of returning to the imperial throne vanishing. The events may therefore have triggered their attempt to overthrow Karl in alliance with the kings of Poland and Hungary. This conspiracy as we have heard, failed, in part because Anna of Schweidnitz was kind enough to expire in childbirth a year later, making way for Karl’s fourth marriage to Elizabeth of Pomerania. Elizabeth was the granddaughter of king Kasimir the Great of Poland and this union underpinned a new arrangement between Poland and the emperor, which in turn let the Habsburg conspiracy crumble into dust.

The marriage to Elisabeth of Pomerania lasted until Karl’s death and produced 6 children, 4 of which survived. The eldest of the two surviving sons, Sigismund will feature heavily in our next season, so keep him in mind.

But back to Wenceslaus. Karl is unperturbed in his urge to promote his precious little boy. First he creates a new altar for the coronation church in Aachen, dedicated to St. Wenceslaus where a Czech speaking priest is to pray for the now deceased members of the House of Luxemburg, including for Wenceslaus mother.

As soon as little Wenzeslaus could walk, he was crowned king of Bohemia. Karl’s advisers had tried to dissuade him from this, in large part because they feared it would be almost impossible to guide the child once crowned. After all, sending an anointed king on to the naughty step was fraught with complex issues of “lese majeste”. And as you probably know, the naughty step was not introduced until the early 2000s, so we are talking about much more hands-on punishments here.

Then, to paraphrase Jane Austin, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a crown, must be in want of a wife. The young man in question being unable to even form the words “I do” was no obstacle for him to be promised in marriage to a daughter of the Burggrave of Nürnberg. That engagement ended when a better opportunity arose to get him a Wittelsbach bride, and a little later a Hungarian princess. Finally it is 14-year old Johanna von Wittelsbach who snatches the nine-year old heir.

3 years later Wenceslaus becomes the elector of Brandenburg, making him an imperial prince alongside his royal Bohemian title.

When Wenceslaus turns 15, the emperor gets going on his most ambitious project for his precious son, getting him elected and crowned king of the Romans. And ambitious it was.

Let’s start with the legal obstacles.

All the provisions of the Golden Bull are based on the implicit assumption that the previous emperor had died. There are no rules about electing a king of the Romans whilst the predecessor is still alive.

Plus, the Golden Bull had explicitly set out that an elector was only able to cast his vote when he had become 18 years of age, which suggests an emperor should also at least be 18 years old.

But regulation, schmogulation, if only enough bribes are paid, the Electors ewre all too happy to set aside these judicial niceties.

Ah, enough bribes. That was a bit of a problem. For one the bribes required came to a stunning quarter of a million florin. A princely sum that already but coming just in the wake of the 500,000 florin Karl had promised the Wittelsbachs for the margraviate of Brandenburg. Where to find such a princely sum? The imperial lands, cities, castles, tolls and so forth had already been pawned, sold and otherwise alienated in the run-up to Karl’s own election and coronation. Karl had bought back some of it during the course of the last 20 years, focusing mainly on freeing the imperial cities from the control of the territorial lords.

But these imperial cities were difficult to pawn again. Because in the intervening period Karl had ever so often asked the cities to fund his projects such as the journeys to Rome, his various coronations and acquisitions. And in exchange for payment of these taxes the cities had made Karl promise that he would never again pawn them away or diminish their privileges.

But needs must. So, Karl goes about pawning and selling imperial cities to territorial lords as if there had never been any such agreements. The crassest treatment was suffered by the city of Cologne, still Germany’s largest. To obtain the vote of the archbishop of Cologne, Karl had to revoke a number of privileges for the city. the problem was that he had just recently issued a charter granting Cologne a wide range of privileges and almost complete independence from the archbishop’s control. The only way to solve this conundrum was for the imperial chancellery to blatantly declared that they had never issued such a charter and that whatever paper the good citizens of Cologne held in their hand was not worth the parchment it was written on. When the baffled citizens protested pointing out their long track record of loyalty to the empire, Karl placed the whole city under the imperial ban.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The cities had already been quite upset about the Golden Bull that prevented them from forming city alliances for mutual protection, whilst at the same time not producing a general peace, a Landfrieden, for the whole empire. How were the roads going to be made safe if they could neither do it themselves nor rely on the government. In their eyes the emperor had not only failed them but was now charging excessive taxes, and worse, placing them under the control of territorial lords who wanted to dismantle their freedoms.

18 Swabian cities, led by the city of Ulm formed the Schwäbische Bund, a league of defense against imperial overreach. When Wenceslaus was finally elected and crowned in 1376, the cities refused to acknowledge him as king unless he vouched not to pawn them to anyone, ever.

Wenceslaus responded by declaring an imperial war against the cities and brought an army before the walls of Ulm. But that was as far as he got. His forces were – as so often in this period – unable to overcome the city’s defenses.

The success boosted the citizens of Ulm’s self-confidence and they began work on the Ulmer Muenster, a parish church that was to outshine all other churches in the land, even its cathedrals. Its tower was to rise higher than any other in the land, even in the whole of Christendom. Their architect was none other than the Father of Peter Parler the master builder responsible for St. Vitus cathedral and the Charles bridge in Prague. The great tower was only finished in the 19^th century, but at 161 meters became the highest church tower in the world.

The other outcome of the defeat was that Karl and Wenceslaus had to agree a ceasefire that wa supposed to turn into a lasting agreement. Negotiations were protracted. In a rather blatant twisting of the facts, Karl declared that he had never thought of pawning any of his most loyal imperial cities. The cities did not believe a word of that and by 1377 the Schwäbische Bund had grown to 28 members. Even the staunchly loyal city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber joined the alliance. They had even entered into negotiations with Karl’s enemies, the Habsburgs and count Eberhard of Württemberg.

At that point the emperor and his son realized that they were in a bit of a pickle. The cities had been not just an important source of taxes and soldiers funding the imperial tasks, but they had also been a counterweight to the power of the princes and in particular the prince electors. By alienating them, there was a genuine risk that the cities, even the still loyal ones like Nürnberg and Frankfurt could switch sides and leave the Luxemburgs isolated.

This point was likely made most forcefully by the members of Karl’s chancellery, many of whom were members of the educated elites of the cities. The same argument was made by his closest advisers and financiers, the great bankers of Nurnberg, Augsburg and Regensburg.

In 1377, father and son cave and solemnly promise that the imperial cities of the Schwäbische Bund cannot ever be pawned. Having rewarded the rebels, this privilege was then extended to the imperial cities that had remained loyal.

Making the imperial cities unalienable was certainly politically opportune, but it also removed the very last asset an emperor could use to fund any imperial infrastructure. From this time onwards, anyone carrying the crown of the Holy Roman Empire will have to depend predominantly on his own financial and military resources for whatever projects he -and very rarely she – wants to pursue.

Rebuilding his dynasties’ relationship with the cities preoccupied in his last years. In the summer of 1378, after return from his trip to France we discussed last week, he was in Nürnberg to hold a diet and was shocked to find still so many of the Swabian cities not attending. The problem had clearly not gone away despite all the assurances.

One final act was to write his testament. And as much as he wanted to pass all his possessions plus the lands of his half-brother, the duke of Luxemburg to his beloved Wenceslaus, he concluded that this would cause too much friction in the family. Therefore, he split this enormous territory that made up almost a quarter of the empire north of the Alps between his sons. Wenceslaus did get the lion’s share, i.e., the kingdom of Bohemia with Moravia and Silesia. But Brandenburg went to Wenceslaus half-brother Sigismund. A third brother, John was made duke of Görlitz, but as a vassal to his older brother. Apart from his sons, Karl had to also consider his nephews, the children of his brother Johann Heinrich of Moravia. The eldest of them, Jobst, went on to inherit Moravia, technically as a vassal to Wenceslaus, but we will see how that pans out.

On November 29, 1378 Charles IV passed away in his splendid capital, the city of Prague, aged 62, probably from general exhaustion and the severe gout he had suffered from for decades. He had ruled the empire for 30 years, not counting the first 2 years of civil war against the Wittelsbachs.

In this time, he had profoundly changed the empire. The Golden Bull became the bedrock of a newly defined empire, the Holy Roman Empire forever ridiculed by Voltaire. But as we discussed in the Golden Bull episode, there wasn’t much room for Karl to do anything other than recognizing the power of the princes. And, quite frankly, living in a country where a centralized monarchy has sucked all economic, cultural and political activity into a 607 square mile plot of overpriced land, I do see great advantages in the more fragmented structure of Germany where multiple cities host world leading industries, where one can have dozens of internationally recognized museums spread across the country, where towns have literary and theatrical traditions going back centuries and still thriving and where the states elect their own parliaments and governments – for good and for bad.

His other achievement was to bring the relationship between pope and emperor onto a new plane. This was not all his own work, his predecessor Ludwig the Bavarian had already cut a path here, and the weakness of the Avignon papacy was a major factor as well, but the fact remains that after 300 years of conflict literally to the death, from here forward pope and emperor acted in unison. Whether that was a good idea is something we will discuss by my estimate for the next at least 12 months.

And the most recognizable legacy of his reign is no doubt the city of Prague, its famous bridge, its cathedral, the extension that more than doubled its size, the astoundingly large squares, its university and the various monasteries and churches he founded. We have not talked much about his other great project, like his intended capital for Brandenburg in Tangermuende and the castle of Karl Steijn near Prague. If you ever get to Czech Republic, make sure you go there. Few medieval buildings exist that still breathe the spirit of its creator, as much as this does.

But despite his great achievements, he also failed to deliver in some crucial dimensions. The Golden Bull has always been a stripped-down version of a much larger legislative concept. What he had initially hoped to achieve is usually summarized under the title of general peace or Landfrieden. The Landfrieden is quite a bit more than just the idea of an agreement between princes and cities to keep the piece.

The way Karl thought about it was set it out in the Majestas Carolina, his abandoned project to create a new legal framework for Bohemia kingdom. This concept incorporated a lot of the provisions from the Constitutions of Melfi (episode 80) that Frederick II had implemented in his kingdom of Sicily.

Under a general Landfrieden, there would be an obligation for all parties to refrain from violence and instead bring their disputes before a judge. The judges would base their decision on the provisions in the law code and their decision was final. Anyone who would take up arms against that decision would become and enemy of the state and be persecuted by the state authority.

This would have given the emperor a monopoly of violence, as it was gradually been implemented in France and England. Trial by combat and feuding was to be replaced by written law implemented by institutions, resulting in a dramatic increase security and in consequence of communications and trade. It is a concept we find pretty basic and normal today but for medieval aristocrats it was an unacceptable infringement of their political rights. They had become used to being able to mold the law according to their personal preferences, and to use force in the pursuit of their perceived rights. In particular as it related to people of lower social standing, i.e., peasants and burghers, aristocrats did not believe to be bound by any rules. Only the interaction between aristocrats was to be governed by the chivalric code but again, not by a law made by the monarch.

These reforms failed on the resistance of the barons in Bohemia and Karl was smart enough not to try it in the empire where his position was weaker.

With the general peace being a no-go, the other reforms, such as common standard for coinage also fell by the wayside. It will be Karl’s successors who will spend the next 100 years dragging the elites of the empire kicking and screaming into a system of law and institutions that provides a general peace.

This story and the other big issue, the schism in the church and the recurring demands for church reform will be the subject of our next season. I have not yet decided on the title, so stay tuned. Next week I have lined up an interview with Vaclav Zurek, researcher at the Prague Academy of Sciences who has just written a biography of Karl IV, which is coming out in English translation this autumn. I am sure you will enjoy hearing this story from a Czech perspective.

See you on the other side.

Episode 162 – Schisms and Deals

by History of the Germans Podcast on 5th September 202419th February 2026

International policies of Emperor Karl IV

For more than a hundred years the Holy Roman Empire was a mess of constant infighting between and within the great princely families. But by the 1360s the consistent policies and elaborate diplomacy of emperor Karl IV had produced a degree of stability not seen by anyone alive.

With the home front calm, the emperor can again assume a role on the European stage, setting in train seminal events that will reverberate across the centuries…

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Ep. 162: Karl IV (1346-1378) – Schisms and Deals

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 162 – Schisms and Deals, the international policies of Emperor Karl IV, also episode 25 of season 8 “From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull”.

With the home front calm, the emperor can again assume a role on the European stage, setting in train seminal events that will reverberate across the centuries…

But before we start it is once more time for me to come before you like an Avignon pope in search of an armed escort to Rome. You know that keeping this show on the road is already a whole lot of work as it is. Now that we move into the early modern period the research effort required is growing exponentially, which is why I am contemplating adding some support to the team. And that will come at a cost, a cost that is borne by our generous patrons who have signed up on my website historyofthegermans.com/support where you can make a one-time contribution or subscribe on Patreon. Please remember that if you own an iPhone, do not sign up on Patreon from the phone since Apple will charge you a whopping 30% for nothing. And thanks a lot to Richard J, Guenter R. fan of the Simplicissimus, Madeleine S., Stefan K., Tom J. and Patrick A. who have already made the plunge.

These last two episodes we have focused on domestic policy, specifically the Golden Bull and how it shifted the political structure of the empire without saying anything fundamentally new. Now it is time to look at Karl IV’s role in a European context.

And the first point to make is that there was a role in a European context at all. For the last 100 years the kings and emperors had been preoccupied holding on to the bucking Bronco that was the Holy roman empire. When they ventured abroad it was to get to Rome to be crowned and ideally coming back without succumbing to disease, excommunication or attempted murder.

Karl’s clever policies and generous offers of marriages and military support, neither of which ever arrived kept his enemies divided and the empire free of major civil wars. And so he was the first ruler since Frederick II to cast his eye beyond the borders of the empire.

And cast afar he does. In 1370 he develops an interest in the Hanse and in Denmark. Yes, all the way north. No emperor had given a thought to these far flung places for centuries. Yes, Frederick Barbarossa had been in Lübeck in 1181 as part of the campaign to topple Henry the Lion. But that was an exception to the rule. Since Henry IV the emperors had stayed well clear of Saxony, unless they were Saxons themselves like Lothair III and Otto IV.

If you have listened to the series about the Hanseatic League, the year 1370 is the year when the Hanse in general and Lübeck in particular reach the absolute pinnacle of political, not economic, reach. They have just defeated king Waldemar Atterdag, the morning dawn who had reconsolidated the Danish kingdom. As a consequence the Hanse had gained a de facto monopoly on Baltic trade, namely the furs and beeswax from Novgorod, the grain from all along the Baltic coast and Poland, the metals from Sweden and most importantly the herring from Denmark, the staple food during the over 200 fast days catholic europe observed at the time.

One indicator how important the imperial court had become was that when Waldemar Atterdag fled Denmark after his defeat, he came to Prague. He lobbied the emperor to punish the Hanse cities for daring to attack an anointed monarch. But Karl had no intention to go after Lübeck. The city and its Hanse associates featured highly in his plans to foster the economy of his lands. One of his many projects was to divert trade from the traditional North south route along the Rhine to a new route from Venice via Vienna, Prague and Brandenburg to the Baltic and the North Sea.

Karl did not only refuse to help king Waldemar of Denmark, he actively supported Lübeck. He appointed the Burgermeisters of Lübeck as his imperial vicars, making them the most senior representatives of the empire in the North. This is the first time such a role was granted to anyone who wasn’t a senior aristocrat. And on the 20^th October 1375 he showed up in person. For a full 11 days the city of Lübeck celebrated an imperial visit, a celebration that wrecked the city’s already fragile public finances. In return he formally addressed the members of the council as “Herren”, or lords, which must have felt great.

And then he did the other thing he was so good at, keeping people guessing. Whilst the emperor was wined and dined by the great merchants of the Hanse, king Waldemar Atterdag had finally passed away without a male heir. The result was a war of succession between the duke of Mecklenburg and Waldemar’s daughter. Margaret. The Hanse very much supported Margaret as they did not want to be surrounded on all sides by a ruler of both Denmark and Mecklenburg. Karl let slip that he preferred the Mecklenburg succession. Did he really or was that just another bargaining chip in his constant complex game of give and take? My guess it was the latter.

Whilst Lübeck was the northernmost end of his travels, he also travelled south again. And this time on a pan-European mission.

The reason for this journey lay in Avignon. By 1365 the popes had resided outside of Italy for 60 years already. The reigning pope, Urban V was the sixth pontiff to live in Avignon. They had made themselves comfortable in the splendid papal palace, they had bought the Comtat Venaissin, the county surrounding Avignon from the house of Anjou and Karl had released it from imperial overlordship.

But still the popes chafed under the influence of the French kings. Ever so often the popes had to make decisions in the interest of the house of Valois they would not otherwise have made. And this bias was making the church lose ever more prestige amongst the other monarchs across europe. Feeling the pinch, the successors to St. Peter had been looking for ways to get out of the clutches of the French. There was one obvious way to do that, and that was returning to Italy, and if possible returning to Rome.

The popes had tried to lay some groundwork by sending the energetic cardinal Albarnoz to rebuild papal influence in Rome. By the way Albarnoz was the cardinal who had accompanied Cola di Rienzi and then helped topple him. But despite hiring mercenary armies and fighting his way across what used to be the papal states, Albarnoz’ resources were simply insufficient to secure a safe return for the pope to Rome.

Given that none of the Italian republics and autocracies wanted the pope back, the only power in europe that could secure a return of the pontiff was the emperor. So when Karl came to Avignon in 1365 to discuss various other subjects to do with the plague of unemployed soldiers rampaging across the countryside, pope Urban V steered the conversation forcefully towards a second journey to Rome.

We do not know whether Karl embraced the idea joyfully out of his profound piety or whether he believed it to be a massive waste of time and money. But he could not refuse Urban’s demand. As emperor he was the protector of the church and Christians all across europe longed for the pope to return to Rome. One famous propaganda image of the time shows Saint Bridget of Sweden cowering amongst the ruins of a desolate Rome praying for the return of the pope.

Pope Urban V sets off for Italy in 1367 and miraculously made it to Viterbo. But then he runs out of puff. There is no way he can get into the Holy city by hook or by crook. The pope now demands Karls help most urgently.

Karl had been delayed by another outbreak of the Black death, the reluctance of princes and cities to provide money and soldiers and the usual complexity of Italian politics. Finally in April 1368 did he set off with a sizeable army, mostly comprising mercenaries. He entered Italy from the North East via Friuli and Aquilae and made his way to Milan. Barnabo Visconti, the ruler of Milan is not only a longstanding opponent of the emperor but also reluctant to let the pope get back into the papal states. As usual, there is a bit of moderate fighting before Karl got everybody to sit down around a table and hammered out a deal. The Visconti agreed to let the imperial army pass, provided a 1,000 additional helmets in exchange for being made imperial vicars of Lombardy.

Next stop is Tuscany where Karl gains free passage by approving whichever party had just recently seized power in whichever bloody coup and is now in need of some legitimacy.

In October 1368 Karl IV entered Rome and on the 29^th of this month he welcomed pope Urban V at the gates of the city. Honoring an entirely made up ancient tradition Karl dismounts his charger and leads the papal horse with the pope on top to the Lateran palace. This service of the groom had been a point of contention for popes and emperors since forever. Some observers, like for instance the great Nurnberg banker Ulman Stromer described this act as a humiliation for the Reich. Others, like the Italian humanist Coluccio Salutati sees it as an image of hope, the two leaders of Christendom acting in unison, returning the church to its natural home.

It is the latter image that finds more currency across europe. And it is backed up with further displays of unity. Pope and emperor spent the next two months in close proximity, discussing how Italy in general and the papal states in particular could be stabilized.

Tuscany was a particularly complicated part of the conundrum. They tried to instigate a coup in Siena, but that failed. The next focal point was the Lucca. Lucca had fallen under Pisan control, something the Lucchese found unbearable. So in spring 1369 Karl took his army to Lucca and declared it a free and imperial city, thereby cancelling the Pisan overlordship. The Pisan could not do much about that, in part because of Karl’s army and in part because they were caught up in brutal infighting between the elites and the middle classes. Lucca still commemorates this day with a great parade on every Sunday after easter, the day the city threw off the Pisan yoke.

All good stuff, but now summer is approaching and with it the risk of disease goes up stratospherically. Karl took his army and returned across the Alps. So much for ever lasting unity between pope and emperor.

Poor pope Urban V realized quite quickly that there was no way he can hold out in Rome by himself. He packed his bags and returned to Avignon, no doubt cursing the inconsistency of the emperor. Urban V died a few months later, passing the baton on to Gregory XI.

The old pope may be gone, but the fundamental problem has not gone. The popes still needed to go back to Rome. After Urban V’s debacle, his successor Gregory XI did not rely on the emperor to pave the way to Rome. Instead of oaths and loyalty, Gregory XI and his legate, Robert of Geneva, believed in the power of money. The pope hired even more mercenaries including the famous company of John Harwood who forged a way to Rome with fire and sword. It was a hard fight since almost all north Italian cities had joined a league intended to stop the pope from returning. But return he did. He entered Rome on January 17^th, 1378. By March 27^th of that same year he was dead.

At that point things get a bit out of control. When the cardinals who had come along to Rome met to elect a successor, a mob gathered outside and demanded the election, not just of an Italian, but of a Roman. The cardinals inside were almost to a man, French. So they chose the next best option, Bartolomeo Prignano, the archbishop of Bari and vice-chancellor of the church. He was at least Italian, if not Roman. The new pope took the name Urban VI and was duly presented to people. The mob dispersed believing they had got their wish granted. It took them a little while to figure out that Urban VI was Neapolitan rather than Roman, enough time for the majority of cardinals to skip town and flee back to the safety of Avignon. Once they had arrived back home, the Avignon cardinals declared the election of Urban VI null and void, due to the threats to life and limb they had experienced. And they then proceeded to elect Robert of Geneva, perpetrator of the massacre of Cesena and other godly deeds as pope Clement VII.

This is the beginning of the western Schism, the almost forty years when two and sometimes three competing popes tore the Christian world apart. One pope would reside in Avignon under French protection, another in Rome, supported by, amongst others, the Holy Roman Emperors, including Karl IV. We will hear a lot more about the schism when we get into the next season, but suffice to say that this split did nothing to rebuild the already severely damaged moral authority of the papacy.

The Western schism is surely one of the seminal moments in the late middle ages with implications that reverberate into modernity. But as far as the role of the empire or more precisely the position of the emperor himself was concerned, another long term trend is taking shape. And that is the beginning of a rivalry between France and the empire/the ruling family of the empire.

Let us just quickly recap where the French monarchy is in the 1370s.

The Hundred-years war had begun in 1337. The first major battle at Crecy took place in 1346, a battle that Karl had actually taken part in and where his father had died in an act of chivalric madness. King Edward III of England had won this battle and used it to acquire the city of Calais. When the Black death hit in 1348, hostilities ceased for a few years. Action resumed in the 1350s but French luck did not improve. The next encounter at Poitiers in 1356 goes horribly wrong. The king John II called le Bon, the Good was captured. In the subsequent treaty of Bretigny the French ceded vast amounts of territory around the west and south west of France to the English on top of a 3 million ecu ransom for the release of the king. In return king Edward III of England renounced his claim to the French crown.

King John II was called “the Good” for reasons I will explain in a minute, but should in fact been called John the apocalyptically useless. He returned from captivity upon payment of the first third of the ransom and the provision of new hostages, including two of his sons. When one of his sons escaped, John II felt honor-bound to return back into captivity. John II died in England in 1364.

Many contemporaries interpreted his return to England as praiseworthy adherence to the chivalric code, which is why they called him the Good. But in practical terms this act was catastrophically ill judged. France was on its knees due to the enormous ransom payments, the loss of large sways of territory and the hordes of unpaid soldiers ransacking the countryside, not to mention the recurring waves of the Plague. What the country needed was an effective ruler trying to put things right. With John II absent, the burden of royalty fell on his eldest son, the future king Charles V. Charles V was nothing like his father, he was a diligent and competent man who attracted exceptional military commanders to his service like Bertrand du Guescelin.

But he was fighting with one hand tied behind his back. For one he had his father still in England which ruled out any action against the English. He also was seriously short of cash, forcing him to call the estates general that squeezed concessions out of him. But one of the most serious long term problems was his father’s generosity. John II had four sons and he left them each vast territories carved out of the royal purse. The youngest who had stayed with his father in captivity was most generously rewarded, Philip was made duke of Burgundy. Philip would later acquire the county of Flanders by marriage which made him the richest peer in France, rich enough to challenge royal authority, which is the story of Agincourt, Joan of Arc etc.

But we are still a bit before that. Charles V, despite all his handicaps, managed to secure his reign in France and in 1369 resumed hostilities with the English. And again, patiently, one by one, the French, led by Du Guescelin recovered every single bit of territory they had given up in the treaty of Bretigny. This process was completed in 1378 with the English reduced to Aquitaine and Calais.

What all this means for our emperor Karl is that he could step into a power vacuum left by the French preoccupation with the English. He could assert imperial authority on the western border by holding his splendid diet in Metz, he could even get the future Charles V to accept his lands in the Dauphine and Franche Comte as an imperial fief including the whole kneeling and swearing bit. In 1365 he took a few days off from his negotiations with pope Urban V and nipped down to Arles to get himself crowned king of the Arelat, the ancient kingdom of Burgundy. Again, nobody had done that since the days of Barbarossa. He then used the opportunity to reorganize this kingdom. In particular he moved Savoy out of the Arelat and under direct control of the empire.

The weakness of the French court may also have been one of the reasons why the Popes felt able to attempt a return to Rome.

But this weakness did not last forever. As I said, by 1378 Charles V had returned at least his territorial position back to the status quo ante. The country was still a lot poorer with the plague and decades of war and plundering mercenaries, but overall, the French were back in the saddle.

And being back in fighting force could only mean one thing, the French were looking for some new acquisitions. And there was an opportunity out there that was truly enormous. The house of Anjou, the cadet branch of the French royal house had amassed a whole host of crowns, Sicily, Hungary, Poland and Provence in particular. And they had the decency to die out, at least in part. King Louis the Great of Hungary was blessed with three daughters, but no son.

King Charles V of France moved quickly and managed to get his younger son Louis engaged to King Louis’ eldest daughter and heir presumptive, Catherine. The calculation behind this was obvious. Once cousin Louis of Hungary had snuffed it, the battle hardened French army would go to Hungary with pitstops in Provence and Sicily. And once there, Poland would be the next one on the list.

Our friend Karl IV, though now rapidly approaching his sixties, suffering abysmally from gout and the consequences of the mystery illness he had contracted in the 1350s, realized the deadly danger this plan posed for him and the empire. If the French were to rule the two kingdoms in his back, Hungary and Poland, the empire would be surrounded and would in the long run fall to the Valois as well. There was no room for a great House of Luxemburg and the seven electors in this scenario. Therefore this French plan needed to be scuppered and scuppered at all cost.

So in 1378 he took his son and heir Wenceslaus and set off to the city where he had spent his youth, Paris. No crowned emperor had been to Paris since Otto II’s ill-fated attempt at taking the city in 978. Such a visit caused no end of complexity for the court officials in charge of protocol.

According to roman law, which by now was accepted as the basis of temporal justice across France the emperor was the unconstrained ruler of the known world. Karl was emperor and France was part of the world, so Karl was at least in theory, the absolute monarch in France. But at the same time this could not be. All these last few centuries French lawyers had worked on the basis that the king of France was standing in for the emperor with all the rights that come with it. That worked fine as long as there is a zero percent chance of the actual emperor ever showing up.

Now Karl was far too politically savvy to insist on a legal fiction that would never be implementable. But what he did insist on was that the emperor did formally rank above the King of France. All the sequences of greeting and serving food and so forth were important to him, because most of his power rested on the imperial prestige.

Charles V and his courtiers did an exceptional job of treading the fine line between recognizing the imperial authority whilst not really admitting that the king of France was subordinate to the emperor. The event is recorded in a whole host of illuminated manuscripts and it is quite interesting to see how much care the painters took to depict the relative rank of the two monarchs.

There was one ceremony however that the French were unwilling to allow to let take place on French soil. And that was the reading of the Christmas story in church. Because Karl had the habit to read the crucial verses “And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from the emperor Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed” whilst wearing his full imperial regalia, crown, scepter and orb, basically appearing as the emperor Caesar Augustus in church.

To stop that from happening, the French held Karl back in Cambrai, on imperial territory until after Christmas 1377.

Once all these issues of protocol were sorted out, the two monarchs finally sat down to hash out their differences. No record of the discussions exists. All we know is what happened next.

The emperor appointed the dauphin of France, the future Charles VI as imperial vicar first in the Dauphine and then in the whole of the Arelat. With that the French monarch became the de facto ruler of Provence and the Rhone valley, territories that had once been part of the kingdom of Lothar and hence lands the French kings had always and forever believed were theirs. Though Charles VI was only made imperial vicar for life this appointment is usually seen as the moment when Provence leaves the purview of the Holy Roman Empire. It would still take until 1486 before Provence became formally a part of France.

Meanwhile the marriage between Louis of Valois and Catherine of Hungary did not take place. That was in part due to the fact that Catherine died aged 7 in 1378. But that was not the only reason. King Louis of Hungary still had another daughter, Hedwig, who he could have betrothed to young Louis. But that did not happen. Instead Hedwig remained unmarried at her father’s death, went to Poland, changed her name to Jadwiga and married the grand duke of Lithuania creating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Now I am not one to speculate about what happened here, but my best guess is that Karl and Charles had come to an agreement. The French King gave up his plans on Hungary and in exchange he got Provence. As the Germans say, better the sparrow in your hand than the dove on the roof.

If that was so, then we also see here a clear reorientation of imperial policy. Giving up positions in the west in the interest of expanding and deepening holdings in the east would be a key feature of Luxemburg and later Habsburg policy. It is also the beginning of the rivalry between the kings of France and the Holy Roman Emperors, a rivalry that would be an axis of European politics for 400 years, basically until Frederick the Great and the English mix things up.

As you hopefully see, this period of the 14^th century is one of enormous change that lay the foundations for the events that will dominate the subsequent centuries. One last item we still have to tick off the list and that is the whole subject of succession. That is what we will do next week. I hope you will join us again.

And before I go let me just remind you that you can support the podcast by going to historyofthegermans.com/support where you can make a one-time donation or find a link to patreon.com/historyofthegermans.

Episode 161 – A Luxemburg Empire

by History of the Germans Podcast on 29th August 202417th December 2025

Karl IV’s Hausmacht

“In the regions of Germany, he worked to establish peace and foster the affairs of the empire. Then, in the same year, during the month of November, he entered the city of Metz, a city both large and exceedingly famous, where, as it was said, no emperor had been walking under the crown for 300 years. He was received with great solemnity by the princes, nobles, and citizens. The citizens of the city went out to meet him three miles away, presenting him with the keys to the city and all its gates, willingly submitting themselves and their possessions to his empire with all benevolence. And there was great joy at the entrance of the lord emperor; all the clergy and the entire populace joyfully met him, warmly welcoming him, and led him to the episcopal residence prepared for his lodging, with relics, hymns, and songs.

Afterwards, the lord emperor stayed there and summoned an imperial court and council with the princes of the empire to be held in the same city during the upcoming feast of the Nativity of Christ. When the feast of the Nativity of the Lord approached, the ambassadors of the lord pope arrived at the imperial court, namely Cardinal Talleyrand and the Abbot of Cluny. Additionally, the two sons of the King of France, the firstborn and the second, the nephews of the lord emperor, also came. Furthermore, the archbishops of Trier, Cologne, and Mainz were present, along with the Duke of Luxembourg, representing the King of Bohemia, who is the arch-cupbearer. The Duke of Saxony, the arch-marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, the arch-chamberlain, also attended, as well as the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the arch-steward, and the Margrave of Meissen, the arch-huntsman, the holders of the great offices of the Holy Empire.

On the feast of the Nativity of the Lord, during Matins, the lord emperor, adorned with imperial insignia, read the Gospel before the aforementioned princes that began with: ‘A decree went out from Caesar Augustus,’ and the lord cardinal sang the first Mass before the emperor, from whose hands the lord emperor humbly and devoutly received the Holy Eucharist. Then the Archbishop of Cologne celebrated the High Mass of that day, and after it was solemnly performed, all the archbishops, bishops, and other prelates, as well as secular princes, led the lord emperor and the lady empress, dressed in imperial robes and insignia, solemnly to the banquet hall prepared in the town square and exquisitely decorated, where many tables and seats were set up for the invited guests.

When the lord emperor was seated at the head of the table, the holders of the great offices of the empire came forward, each performing their respective duties according to custom. First came the aforementioned archbishops the archchancellors of Germany, Italy and Burgundy each carrying their imperial seals. Then the Duke of Saxony, the arch-marshal, came on his charger before the table, carrying oats in a silver vessel for the imperial horses, and he seated each prince at the table in the place designated for them. After him came the Margrave of Brandenburg, the arch-chamberlain, on horseback, carrying a golden basin and beautiful towels, and he offered water to the emperor, who was seated on the throne. Next, the Count Palatine brought food in golden dishes and, after tasting it, placed it before the emperor. After him came Wenceslaus, Duke of Luxembourg and Brabant, the brother of the lord emperor, representing the lord King of Bohemia, who is the arch-cupbearer, carrying wine in golden cups, and after tasting it, he gave it to the emperor to drink. Finally, the Margrave of Meissen, the arch-huntsman, and the Count of Schwarzburg, the under-huntsman, came with hunting dogs and many horns, making a great noise, and they brought a stag and a wild boar to the prince’s table with all due cheerfulness.

A great feast was held on that day, the likes of which no one could recall. After the feast, the lord emperor bestowed various magnificent gifts upon the different princes, and they all departed with joy and happiness to their own lands. In the same year, the emperor laid the foundation or the primary stone for the new Prague Bridge near the monastery of St. Clement. In the year of our Lord 1358, the lord emperor went to Bohemia and constructed many buildings there.” end quote

All is well in the empire. The Golden Bull had been debated, agreed, sealed and then celebrated at the great diet in Metz you just heard about. The first time in decades that all the Prince Electors had come together and performed the ancient duties of their offices. Even the Dauphin of France had come to do homage to Karl IV for the lands he held inside the empire.

But did all the princes join in the joy? No, not really. There are always some who felt left out and they will try to upturn the new order. How they tried to do that and why these efforts laid the foundations for the future Habsburg empire is what we will discuss today…

All is well in the empire. The Golden Bull had been debated, agreed, sealed and then celebrated at the great diet in Metz in 1357.

The first time in decades that all the Prince Electors had come together and performed the ancient duties of their offices. Even the Dauphin of France had come to do homage to Karl IV for the lands he held inside the empire.

As always:

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Ep. 161: Karl IV (1346-1378) – A Luxemburg Empire

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 161 – A Luxemburg Empire, also episode 24 of Season 8: from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.

But, before we start just the usual reminder that the history of the Germans is advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too by going to my website historyofthegermans.com and look for support the show. There you can ether join Patreon or make a one-time donation. And thanks a lot to Brigham T., Vincent C., Christopher B., Charisse P for a second time, Owen O. and Julian T. who have already signed up.

Last week we discussed the Golden Bull of 1356, its content and significance. And despite the fact that there wasn’t much fundamentally new in the provisions, by writing down the detailed process for the election of a King of the Romans, it fixed in place who the seven electors were and – by omission rather than explicitly – that the pope had no say in the choice of ruler.

We discussed why the popes had to accept this resolution to the 300 year conflict between Rome and the empire, a conflict that had dominated our narrative for the last 160 episodes. So, if you have not listened to it, do it now.

But the pope wasn’t the only loser from the Golden Bull. There were also the Bavarian Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs.

The house of Wittelsbach had two electoral votes in 1357, one as Counts Palatinate on the Rhine and one as margraves of Brandenburg.

As I mentioned before, the fundamental difference between the Habsburgs and the Wittelsbachs was that the Habsburgs almost always stuck together in the interest of the dynasty, whilst the Wittelsbachs literally always fought amongst each other. In a way Karl owed his ascendance to the throne to one of these family squabbles which led to the defection of the Wittelsbach count palatinate to his side in 1348. The different branches would constantly fight each other, then divide territory between them in complex treaties and succession arrangements. This propensity to quarrel with their brothers and cousins is at least partial reason why the capital of Germany is now Berlin rather than Munich.

One of these complex treaties amongst members of the House of Wittelsbach was an arrangement between the Palatinate line and their cousins, the sons of Ludwig the Bavarian whereby the two sides of the family would take turns in exercising the electoral vote.

The Golden Bull prohibited this arrangement as it sets out that only the count Palatinate could cast a vote. That froze the dukes of Bavaria, specifically Ludwig the elder out of this vote.

But he still had another one, that of Brandenburg. Brandenburg as you may remember had initially been acquired by emperor Ludwig the Bavarian for his son Ludwig the Elder and had become the key battleground of Karl’s war over the imperial crown. Karl had supported a usurper called the false Waldemar who had thrown Ludwig the Elder out of the Margraviate. In 1350 Karl had settled with the Wittelsbachs, dropped the false Waldemar and enfeoffed Ludwig the elder as margrave again.

But for Ludwig the Elder Brandenburg was a bit second best. The county’s soil was famously sandy, gaining it the nickname the Reichsstreusandbuechse. So it wasn’t particularly fertile. Moreover, the Wittelsbachs never managed to get a proper grip of the margraviate. Local lords and the cities, in particular the largest, Berlin, kept feuding with each other and with Ludwig the Elder. The war of the false Waldemar had further devastated the land, so that net, net there was not much profit to be made of that territory. And, it was a long way from Munich.

As one would expect, Ludwig the Elder was very disappointed with the outcome of the Golden Bull. Hence he started a feud against Karl and tried to bring together a coalition of opponents to Karl’s reign which we will talk about in a minute in more detail. Amongst the members of this coalition should have been his 5 brothers, each holding a bit of the vast territory their father had gathered together in 30 years on the throne.

But Ludwig the Elder stumbled over the perennial Achilles heel of his house, the endless bickering. Karl managed to pull three of the five brothers over to his side with the promise of one of his daughters in marriage and ever-lasting support, that -as we know – never materialises.

In the end Ludwig the Elder caved in. He even passed the margraviate of Brandenburg to his two brothers, Ludwig the Roman and Otto the Lazy, two, as you may gather, not very dynamic stewards of the lands that would rise to dominance in centuries to come.

Mismanagement, lack of interest and rather complex arrangements over inheritance meant that in 1373 the Wittelsbachs were willing to sell the margraviate to Karl IV for the astronomic sum of 500,000 gold florin. Raising these funds brought him to the edge of what he could extract from Bohemia, the empire and all his other assorted positions.

Despite the truly enormous price, the deal was a bad one for the Bavarian Wittelsbachs. By selling Brandenburg they were kept out of the exclusive circle of the electors until 1623. Not being electors, the family did not move to primogenitor and so the duchy of Bavaria remained split into four different branches, Munich, Ingolstadt, Landshut and Straubing, each too small to play a significant role in German, let alone European politics. It took until 1505 before the four branches were reunited and Bavaria mattered again.

For Karl, the acquisition of Brandenburg, even in its sorry state was a major deal. It did fit into his broader strategy and vision.

As we are talking about people who were disappointed with the Golden Bull, one very vocal group were 19^th century historians. They blamed Karl for selling the empire down the river. By giving the Prince electors king-like status inside their lands, he had made the creation of a powerful state as they were emerging in France and England, impossible. And many claimed he did it deliberately, as he was king of Bohemia first and emperor second.

This assessment is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the situation of the empire in the 14^th century and the process how the French monarchy had become so dominant.

First up, there was no way Karl or anyone else was able to force the imperial princes, let alone the prince Electors into a system of centralised monarchy. The privileges and rights that granted them independence from imperial control were already hundreds of years old when Karl took over. The emperors who had made serious attempts, Henry IV, Lothar III and Barbarossa had found themselves in hot water very quickly. There was no imperial administration or infrastructure except for the chancery and a rudimentary court system. No capital, no army and hardly any resources to fund the state.

But the even more important point is that the Capetion kings did not come to dominate France by enforcing the ancient royal rights. No, they rose to hegemony by acquiring one county and duchy after the other as their own private possession. These private possessions were then comingled with the crown. In other words, the great princes of France weren’t defeated but disinherited.

If you look at Karl’s approach to the empire, he was doing exactly the same thing. He was patiently acquiring one county or duchy after another, growing his personal fiefdom in the hope that – at some point – his dynasty would own every single duchy, margraviate, county and city in the empire. Exactly the way the French kings had done since the 11^th century.

And in this way Karl acquired not just Brandenburg, but vast holdings in an area called the upper palatinate, which is roughly between the Czech border and Nurnberg. He built a system of connecting castles and estates, all the way from Nurnberg to Frankfurt as the nucleus for further expansion. He bought lower Lusatia and then upper Lusatia. His brother Wenzel had also built a major position in the West around Luxemburg and Brabant. As emperor he controlled the imperial cities mostly in Swabia. Through family ties he controlled parts of Bavaria. Through a complex marriage strategy Karl created options on other territories, should the incumbent die without male heirs, all driven by this concept of Hausmacht. And he bought Brandenburg. At its height, the Luxemburgs controlled a quarter of the empire directly.

And this quarter wasn’t just in the south. Karl becomes the first emperor to go to north for centuries, he is the first to visit Luebeck since Barbarossa. The great rift between the old duchy of Saxony and the rest of the empire is being bridged.

Therefore, even for a 19^th century historian, who judged every action on whether it was helpful or unhelpful for the creation of a centralised nation state, Karl’s approach should have been applauded. The attempts to subdue the princes never worked, so time to try a new strategy. Buy what you can, what you can’t marry and only what resists to the end, conquer.

Still we aren’t done with the critics of the Golden Bull. It’s fiercest opponent is Rudolf IV, duke of Austria, head of the House of Habsburg. For the Habsburg the Golden Bull was a slap in the face. Other than the Wittelsbachs, they had not been given any electoral seat, nada, silch. And they had been the house that had placed two kings on the throne and been one of the three great families that had dominated imperial politics in the first half of the 14^th century.

What really irritated them was that the Prince Electors had been given an elevated social status above the other imperial princes. The prince electors had special rights in their territories few other lords enjoyed. They were the inner circle that was meant to advise the emperor in annual conventions. Whenever there was an official imperial dinner, the Electors sat at a high table, whilst the other imperial princes were relegated to the lower tables in the second rank.

And Rudolf did not want to sit at the cat’s table. He was after all a descendant of Rudolf von Habsburg and duke of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, count of Tyrol and Landgrave in Alsace. These were the actual titles, but since taking over the duchy of Austria, the Habsburgs had engaged in some serious mythmaking. The first thing was to co-opt the Babenberg family that had held Austria from the 10^th century onwards and can trace back even further to the Carolingian times. The Babenberg’s were not just ancient but also most venerable. They had produced a string of dukes with epithets like “the Devout”, “the Illustrious”, “the Glorious” and “the Holy”. The latter, Leopold became a particular focus thanks to the miracles that were attributed to him. As the Habsburgs now claimed they had received Austria as an inheritance from the Babenberg’s, instead of by legalised theft, they also began using Babenberg names, in particular Leopold.

This notion of ancient, if not holy ancestry sat even more awkward with the relegation to second division in the Golden Bull.

Rudolf needed to reassert the standing of his family and therefore instructed his chancery to generate five documents to p[ove the eminence of the house of Austria. Three of those were copies of existing privileges, but two were something different. The first was a charter from emperor Henry IV from 1056 confirming the existence of 2 letters in the possession the Babenberger duke Ernst of Austria. The first letter was from none other than Julius Caesar addressed to the people of Noricum, the Roman province roughly equivalent to Austria. In this letter Caesar asked them to accept his uncle as their ruler, who had been given absolute rights over them as their feudal lord. The second letter is from emperor Nero, saying that Noricum/Austria is by far the most splendid of the Roman provinces and that henceforth it should be released from all taxes and duties to the empire. Caesar’s uncle was – as you can guess – the ancestor of the Babenbergs and hence the Habsburgs.

Then there is a second document, the privilegium maius, or greater privilege. That was based on something that actually did exist, the privilegium minus, or lesser privilege by which Barbarossa had elevated the Babenbergers to dukes of Austria (see episode 50). That privilege had already granted wide reaching rights to the dukes of Austria, but Rudolf needed more. He instructed his chancery to include provisions such as the right to wear a special crown that included the fillet or headband normally reserved for actual kings. And with this crown came a new title, “palatine archduke”. There we go, the Habsburgs invented the title of archduke. The title came with a lot of honours, including sitting to the right of the emperor at public events, leading processions and been given equal rank to the electors.

These documents, in particular the letters from Caesar and Nero were received with unreserved hilarity by contemporaries. Asked of his opinion, the poet and great Latinist Petrarch called the obvious anachronisms “not just risible but stomach churning”.

Still Rudolf insisted, all this was true and, since the Habsburgs did win in the end, the Greater privilege including the letters were considered genuine until the 19^th century.

But Rudolf did not just fight with the quill. He did put together a coalition with the Wittelsbachs and the kings of Hungary and Poland against Karl IV.

Why the Wittelsbachs joined is quite obvious. As for the kings of Poland and Hungary, they had grown concerned about the rise of Karl’s power. His interest in Brandenburg and further north made the Poles uncomfortable. Then there was Karl’s long time association with the Teutonic Knights who had been clashing with the Poles over Pomeralia and Lithuania. As for Hungary, its ruler was the king of Poland’s named successor and as such had a strong interest in the wellbeing of his future kingdom.

Even though Karl was by now in a vastly more powerful position than either the Habsburgs or the Wittelsbachs, a war against their combined forces and those of Poland of Hungary would be hard, if not impossible to win.

As always, Karl resolved the issue, not with weapons, but with diplomacy. He went to meet king Kasimir the great of Poland in person and reassured him of his good intentions towards his kingdom. And to underpin that, he dropped his support for the Teutonic Knights in the conflict over Pomeralia (see episode 134). And to seal it all off, in 1363 he married Kazimir’s granddaughter, Elizabeth of Pomerania.

With Poland out of the coalition, the king of Hungary had no reason to support a Habsburg-led insurrection. This king of Hungary was Louis I, called the Great. He was from the French house of Anjou that also ruled the kingdom of Naples. Louis was an eminently capable ruler who vastly extended Hungary and – like Karl – provided the country with a foundational document, this one remained in force even longer, until the end of the first world war. Not only that, he finally inherited Poland from Kasimir who had no male heir in 1370.

The two monarchs grew closer over time and in 1373 Louis promised his second daughter Mary in marriage to Karl’s second son, Sigismund. This would become very significant in the future, as Louis died without male heir. His three daughters, Catherine, Mary and Hedwig would inherit Hungary and Poland. When Louis died in 1382, Catherine was married to the dauphin of France, Mary was betrothed to Sigismund and Hedwig was not yet promised. Those of you who have listened to the series about the Teutonic Knights may remember Hedwig. The nobles of Poland called her to rule the kingdom, changed her name to Jadwiga and married her to Jogaila, the grand prince of Lithuania. These two than created the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth that stretched from the Baltic to almost the Black Sea.

His coalition broken, Rudolf’s plan to defeat Karl and potentially even become emperor himself had fallen apart. But again, Karl reacts as a diplomat, not as an autocrat. He could have probably sought a military resolution, but that was, as he kept saying, far too expensive and unpredictable.

Instead he sat down with the angry archduke and soothed his pains. He accepted some of the provisions of the greater Privilege despite knowing them to be fake. He confirmed the Habsburg acquisition of Tyrol and he agreed a family compact. This compact set forth that should either family die out in the male line, the other should inherit all their possessions.

Wow, what a long list of great options Karl had accumulated. By marrying Elizabeth of Pomerania, he had gained an option on the duchy of Pomerania and, through her grandfather Kasimir, an option on Poland. Then he had got his second son Sigismund an option on Hungary, and again possibly on Poland. And thanks to the family compound with the Habsburgs, an option on Austria.

And that last option looked pretty good for Karl. He had by now three sons, Wenceslaus, Sigismund and Henry plus a brother, Johann Heinrich of Moravia with his son Jobst. A lot of dudes, whilst Rudolf IV himself had no children and died already in 1364, leaving his lands to two brothers, Albrecht III and Leopold III, who, unusual for the Habsburgs, squabbled and divided their lands.

But then option probabilities change over time and in particular long dated ones can pay out in the most unexpected ways. But that is a story for an entire new season, far too much for a single episode.

Next week we will discuss what I initially thought I could fit in here, which is Karl’s policy in the west of the empire, in particular his relationship with France and the events in Brabant. We will also talk about Karl’s succession plans and how he gets those implemented. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go – I am afraid- you will hear the inevitable bit about the History of the Germans being advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too. All you have to do is to go historyofthegermans.com/support and sign up for the cost of a latte per month. And if you sign up after November, make sure not to subscribe through the Patreon app, only through the Patreon website.

Episode 160 – The Golden Bull of 1356

by History of the Germans Podcast on 22nd August 202417th December 2025

The Basic Law of the Holy Roman Empire

“Every realm that is divided internally will go to ruin, for its princes have become the comrades of thieves. The Lord has poured out the spirit of deceit among them, so that they grope about at midday as though in darkness, and He has withdrawn the light from their dwellings, so that they are blind and leaders of the blind. And those who wander in the dark run into things, and those who are blind of spirit bring about evil deeds, which occur in disunity. [..]

You, Jealousy, have soiled the Christian Empire, which was reinforced by God with the virtues of faith hope and love, just like the indivisible Trinity, and whose foundations stand firmly on the kingdom of Christ; you have soiled it with your ancient poison that you have spewed forth like an evil snake on the Empire and its members. And to shatter the pillars and to bring the whole structure to collapse, you have incited disunity among the seven electors, who should illuminate the Empire like the light of the seven lamps of the mind.

But in the name of the office which we hold as Emperor we are obliged to act against disunity and struggle among the electors [..] for two reasons: because of our Imperial office, and because of our rights as an elector.

In order to increase the unity among them, and to bring about unanimity during elections and to avoid disgraceful divisions and to close the door to the multiple dangers that arise from them, we have issued the laws written down here at our festive Imperial Diet in Nuremberg, in the presence of all the spiritual and worldly electors, and before a large crowd of other princes, counts, free lords, lords, nobles and urban delegates. From our Imperial throne, decorated with the imperial insignias and treasures, wearing the imperial crown, after ripe deliberation, we issued them on the basis of our unrestricted imperial powers, in the year of our Lord 1356, on the 10th of January, in the tenth year of our royal power and the first of our Imperial power.”

So begins one of the most important constitutional documents of the Holy Roman Empire, the Golden Bull of 1356. But what did it actually say, and even more important, what did it not say and how does it fit into the context of the history of the Holy Roman Empire. That is what we are going to discuss in this episode.

“Every realm that is divided internally will go to uin, for its princes have become the comrades of thieves. The Lord has poured out the spirit of deceit among them, so that they grope about at midday as though in darkness, and He has withdrawn the light from their dwellings, so that they are blind and leaders of the blind. And those who wander in the dark run into things, and those who are blind of spirit bring about evil deeds, which occur in disunity. [..]

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Ep. 160: Karl IV (1346-1378 – The Golden Bull of 1356

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 160 – The Golden Bull of 1356, also Episode 23 of Season 8: From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.

Before I start there is an important piece of information. Apple has decided that it will take 30% of any new pledge you make via the Patreon App from November onwards. Android users and existing pledges are unaffected, so you do not need to do anything.

But, if you wish to become a patron to the show after November and you happen to have an iPhone, please do not subscribe on the app, but on the internet. That means go to your computer and do it there. The evil lords of Cupertino have unfortunately set it up in such a way that even if you try to go to patreon.com/historyofthegermans on the iPhone web browser, you still end up in the App and they still charge you an additional 30%. I cannot tell you how furious that makes me.

So, please go to a computer and sign up there. Or, you can completely avoid this by either subscribing before November or by making a one-time donation on my website historyofthegermans.com. And thanks a lot to Scott A., Stephen M., Troels L. Joerg K. and Scott Smiley who have already beaten the deadline.

And with that, back to the show

Even if you grow up in Germany, there is not an awful lot of political history of the 14^th century you are likely to be taught. But two events you will hear about, one is the Interregnum and the other the Golden Bull. Why, because the Golden Bull remained on the statute books of the Holy Roman empire until 1806, and it governed its main political event, the election of a new emperor, throughout that time. It was never amended or changed. Creating a system to select a ruler that lasts unchanged for 450 years is no mean feat, and some have called it the constitution or the Basic Law of the Holy Roman empire.

That alone would be reason enough to dedicate a whole episode to it, but the significance of the document goes well beyond providing a procedure for the choice of a ruler.

When Karl IV returned from his imperial coronation in Rome in the summer of 1355 he was riding high. He had been crowned emperor with the blessing of the pope, he had made peace with the other powerful imperial families, the Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs and he had asserted his and the empire’s power on the western frontier against the acquisitive French.

Having reached a degree of recognition few of his predecessors could have dreamt of, he wanted to use his power to put his two realms, that of Bohemia and the Empire onto a more stable footing. We have already heard that his plan to pass a fundamental law, almost a constitution for Bohemia had floundered on the resistance of the Bohemian barons.

But that did not discourage him from trying the same in the empire. He called an imperial diet to Nuernberg for January 1356 to discuss his proposal for a decree that would be later called the Golden Bull. By the way, the Golden Bull is not the only golden bull. The term means that the document had been sealed with a golden seal, marking it out as particularly important. But there have bee dozens if not hundreds of golden bulls. Some or famous, like the golden bull of Rimini that granted the Teutonic Knights ownership of Prussia and if you ask a Czech about the Golden bull, they would think of the one that turned Bohemia into an inheritable kingdom in 1212.

But in a German context The Golden Bull is the one issued in 1356/57 by Karl IV. Before we talk about why it is so important, let’s first look at what it actually says.

The Golden Bull is an imperial decree comprising 23 chapters first issued at the imperial diet in Nuernberg on January 10, 1356 and then amended by a further 8 chapters at a subsequent diet in Metz almost exactly one year later.

The majority of the document deals with the process of the imperial election and the role of the prince electors.

When I went to school, we were told that the Golden Bull established the system of election by the seven electors, but anyone who has listened to this series knows, that this is not so. Election by seven electors, namely the three archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine and the Margrave of Brandenburg had been standard practice since at least the election of Rudolf von Habsburg, way back in 1273.

But what the Golden Bull does is making sure that from now on there should no longer be any more contested elections. And that is achieved by resolving certain open questions once and for all, and by closing down some loopholes.

The first thing was to make sure there is not going to be any confusion who these seven electors were. In the past this had been a problem since for instance the two branches of the ducal house of Saxony, the Sachsen-Wittenbergs and Sachsen-Lauenburgs each had claimed the right to elect. Equally the Wittelsbachs had set up a system of rotation between the Bavarian and the Palatinate line about who would be allowed to cast the vote. And, as we have seen in the election of Ludwig the Bavarian, ambitious candidates sometimes pulled prince-electors out of their hats, nobody had expected.

The Golden Bull made sure that there could only ever be seven men who could be the Prince lectors.

First it states that the vote for Saxony rested with the Sachsen -Wittenberg and that the Palatinate vote could only ever be exercised by whoever is the count Palatinate on the Rhine. The Sachsen Lauenburgs and the Bavarian Wittelsbachs were told that they were just imperial princes, like everyone else, something the latter in particular will resent for centuries to come.

Then a system of strict male primogenitur is introduced for the Prince-Electors. Only the eldest son of the elector should become elector and should also inherit all the lands associated with the electorate. Lands belonging to an electorate could not be divided up, sold, pawned or otherwise given away. Should an elector die without issue, his brother or his brother’s eldest son should take over. Is the elector younger than 18, his most senior male uncle was to cast the vote. And finally, if there is no male heir left, the electorate falls back to the emperor who can enfeoff it to any other suitable candidate.

The Golden Bull contains further provisions for the Prince electors that grant them pretty much all the imperial rights within their territories. They were now almost kings in their own lands. They could establish cities, build castles, set taxes, mint coins at will. Their judicial system was almost completely insulated from the imperial power, etc., etc.

Then there are very detailed procedural rules. The election has to take place in Frankfurt. The election is to be called by the archbishop of Mainz within a month of the death of the previous emperor. If he does not, the electors have to come to Frankfurt on their own accord. Electors who fail to show on the date, lose their vote. Each elector shall bring no more than 200 retainers, only 50 of whom are allowed to bear arms. The city council of Frankfurt is tasked with keeping the peace between the different groups.

Upon arrival the electors are to hear mass at the church of St. Bartholomeu, the church nowadays called the Kaiserdom. There they would also vote on the new ruler, each giving their vote in turn with the archbishop of Mainz voting last. Prince Electors could vote for themselves. If after three months they have failed to select a candidate, the electors are to be reduced to just bread and water. Whoever is elected by the majority has to be unanimously recognised as the emperor.

The coronation should take place in Aachen and the king should hold his first diet in Nuernberg

And then there are even more detailed rules and regulations, including detailed provisions about who sits where at dinner, who leads which procession and so forth.

All these rules were designed to make sure that the elections could take place peacefully and could only ever produce one legitimate King of the Romans. And in that respect, the Golden Bull was a huge success. Whenever there was an election, only one candidate was elected. That however did not mean we are completely out of the woods as regards competing kings. How that happened we will find out when we get there.

Apart from the provisions about the election and the prince electors, there are a few more, somewhat random chapters. On bans any form of associations, confederations or unions between cities or between individual lords, effectively outlawing city leagues, like for instance the Hanseatic League. But it also banned the associations that the Reichsritter, the knights had formed to protect their interests against the encroaching territorial princes. Karl also banned the practice of cities to admit local nobles as citizens, thereby removing them from the feudal context of their overlord. And finally there is an even more watered down version of the ban on feuding that Frederick II had included in the Mainzer Landfrieden more than 100 years earlier.

So, if we look at the heart of the Golden Bull, there is not an awful lot of new stuff. What it does, is sorting out the open questions and designing a procedure that reduces if not eliminates double elections and some provisions that limits the city’s and knight’s ability to fend off the encroaching territorial princes. All the rest, the idea of seven electors, the privileges to do as they like in their lands etc., had been standard practice for a long time, or go back to the Mainzer Landfrieden of Frederick II.

So, nice, but not earth shattering. So, why did contemporaries see it as something of huge importance? Why did they produce no less than 173 copies, some of which like the copy produced for king Wenceslaus IV, the son of Karl IV, includes delightful images of pretty washing girls, wild men and pretty birds .

As is sometimes the case, the real significance of the Golden Bull isn’t what was in it, but what wasn’t. And what wasn’t in the Golden Bull at all was any mention of the Pope. If anyone had listened to these last 159 episodes you have most likely retained at least one thing, that the pope was a seriously big deal for the empire. But now he does not even get ignored in this foundation document that set out the election process in enough detail that we know who walked in front of who when entering the city of Frankfurt on election day.

Was it an omission – no way. This was deliberate. A deliberate exclusion of the pope from the election of future emperors thereby removing the successor of St. Peter from the fabric of the empire that he had dominated since the days of Henry IV. And as much by luck as by design it worked.

How did the Golden Bull became the formal end point in a 300 year conflict between the popes and the emperors?

If we look back at what happened and what drove this sometimes brutal clash between Rome and the Kaiser, it boils down to three broad drivers, what we called the three roads to Canossa in episode 30. And these three were the rise in lay piety, the reform papacy and the internal conflicts in the empire that first erupted in the Saxon rebellions of the mid-11^th century.

Let’s start with Lay Piety. What happened in a nutshell was that as medieval society enjoyed centuries of economic expansion, even people outside the church hierarchy found the breathing space to care about their spiritual wellbeing. They demanded competent priests who could guide them in living a life that pleased God and would make sure they will be counted amongst the righteous at the last judgement. This pushed for a reform of the church that was initially led by the emperor and many of his magnates.

The popes only got involved in this movement when it was already well under way. Pope Leo IX, (1002-1054) was the first pope who took charge of the task to clean up what was sometimes called the Pornocracy. His successors turned out to be equally capable and over the next 200 years the church cut down on simony and corruption, consolidated the theological underpinnings of the faith, improved the quality of the clergy, supported strict religious orders and through all that wrestled control of the reform process from the emperors.

This rise of the papacy to ever greater moral authority led them to claim temporal power over kings and emperors. The two swords were no longer equal, Innocent III declared that, like the moon, the monarchs received their lustre only as a reflection of the papal sun. And on a more tangible level, the two powers clashed over the question of investiture, i.e., who selects the bishops and archbishops, over power in Northern Italy and then even more intensely over who controlled the kingdom of Sicily

The first bust-up was during the reign of Henry IV that included the famous scene of the emperor kneeling in the snow begging the pope for forgiveness. But pretty much every one of the emperors that followed, found himself in some sort of dispute with the pope, even those that had set out as papal champions. Henry IV, Henry V, Frederick Barbarossa, Otto IV, Frederick II, Ludwig the Bavarian were excommunicated, whilst Lothar III, Henry VI, and Henry VII came close.

What tilted the balance in favour of the papacy was that this conflict wasn’t the only one the emperors had to deal with. The other frontline was the resistance of the aristocrats against a centralising, tax raising monarchy. This conflict broke out in the open again under Henry IV but it continued all throughout the Middle Ages, often somewhat inaccurately labelled as a fight between the Welf and the Hohenstaufen.

The Golden Bull is issued just at the time when all of these trends either petered out or changed direction.

Lets start at the back, the civil wars between princes and emperors. These ended more or less with the reign of emperor Karl IV.

Issuing the Golden Bull reconfirmed and strengthened the rights of the electors to act like kings in their own territories. The emperor had formally accepted the freedoms of the princes that Otto von Nordheim had so vehemently demanded in 1077.

Then he had sold or pawned almost the entirety of the resources that supported an imperial administration, which made the throne an exceedingly unattractive proposition. Only the largest of territorial princes could afford to be emperor, and with some small deviations, that is how the empire will work from here on out. Only the Luxemburgs and later the Habsburgs had enough Hausmacht to meet the imperial expenses.

And last but not least, the 30 years under papal interdict had fostered a sense of unity amongst not just the imperial princes, but the population as a whole. At the Kurverein zu Rhense in 1338 the prince electors, three of them veritable archbishops, had unanimously declared quote “that it is according to the law and ancient custom of the empire, approved that once someone has been elected as King of the Romans by the prince-electors of the empire or by the majority of the same princes, even if in discord, he does not need the nomination, approval, confirmation, assent, or authority of the Apostolic See to assume the administration of the goods and rights of the empire or the royal title.” This notion was then signed by a vast number of lesser lords and cities. No longer could the pope hope to use disunity in the empire to push his interests.

Which gets us to the second key driver of the conflict between papacy and empire, the rise of the reform papacy. We have talked about that yesterday and so we do not need to go into that much detail. But the main point is that the moral authority of the church had begun to erode after its total victory over Frederick II and his descendants. And once they had moved to Avignon that trend became an avalanche. John XXII condemnation of the poverty of the Franciscans, the shocking display of wealth by the cardinals and the papal court, the political dependency on the French king, the greed, the sale of ecclesiastical positions, all that and more put people off.

And with that erosion of moral authority, the church was no longer the institution people looked to as their guide to heaven. We already heard about the Flagellants who emerged during the years of the plague. But the writings of early reformers, of William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua and so forth circulated amongst the educated classes, as did Petrarch scathing critique of the Avignon papacy and the visions of St. Bridget of Sweden. John Wycliff blamed the unworthy clergy for the plague in one of his earliest works. As literacy levels had improved significantly in particular amongst the merchant class in the cities, some of these ideas circulated more and more broadly.

By the time the Golden Bull was issued, the papacy had lost the ability to effectively fight the emperor. They had lost the spiritual leadership amongst the faithful, were politically boxed in and could no longer piggyback on the internal divisions of the empire.

And they also had a lot less reason to fight the emperors. Not since the catastrophic defeat of Karl’s grandfather Henry VII had an emperor attempted to exert effective power in Northern Italy. They were happy to declare a Visconti or Este an imperial vicar or elevate a Gonzaga to a margrave, all in exchange for cash, but apart from safe passage to Rome, they had demanded very little. And when Karl left the eternal city on the day of his coronation, he sent a clear signal to Innocent VI that he would not interfere with the papal states.

The conflict between the popes and the emperors was over. And because it was over, Karl could issue the definitive guide to an imperial election without mentioning the pope, and everybody, the pope included understood that a papal approbation would no longer be required. The elected king of the Romans was in charge of the empire from the moment he was elected and would remain so to his death.

The Golden Bull stated what should have been obvious to everybody at the time, but by stating it, made it real. That is why princes and cities all over the empire demanded copies of the document. And that is also why it was such a watershed moment.

Now that the destructive conflict with the papacy was formally over and the princes and emperor had found a permanent settlement, the empire could begin a new phase in its development. In this new phase the empire can finally establish its own institutions, the Reichstag as the political coordination mechanism between the imperial estates and the Allgemeine Landfrieden, Reichshofgericht and Kreise as a tools to provide policing and justice across the empire. The Golden Bull may not have broken new ground intellectually, but it was the kick-off document that launched the second phase of the Holy Roman empire that would last until 1806 surviving even Europe’s most devastating religious war.

Now that is my interpretation of what the Golden Bull was and what it meant. As you can imagine for such a totemic document there are many other views. So if you want to get really deep into it and can find a way to feed it into deepl or any other translation engine of your choice, there is a pretty comprehensive compendium published in 2006 called “Die Goldene Bulle Politik, Wahrnehmung Rezeption”. In it the crème de la crème of German medieval scholars investigate every nook and cranny of the document in over more than a 1000 pages.

I am afraid I could not follow up on all of these in the 25-30 minute format of this podcast. But we will touch upon some next week when we talk about the reception of the Golden Bull, in particular in Vienna where Karl’s son in law Richard IV of Austria, called the Founder is arch-irritated about some of his peers being formally elevated to a status above him. And in his anger he does what everybody else would do – he went down the archive and unearth some letters from Julius Caesar and Nero to his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. And then there is the relationship between the empire and France, the various other constitutions that are created during that period and lots more. I hope you will join us again.

Episode 159 – The rise to Imperial Power

by History of the Germans Podcast on 15th August 202417th December 2025

Karl IV’s journey to Rome

This season has now gone on for 22 episodes. We started with the interregnum of largely absent rulers and after a brief renaissance under Rudolf von Habsburg the empire became a sort of oligarchy where 3 families, the Luxemburgs, the Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs took turns on the throne. Succession usually involved some form of armed conflict between the contenders and a struggle with the pope over who had precedence. Whoever emerged victorious then used the ever-dwindling imperial powers to enrich his family at the expense of the others.

When in 1349 Karl/Karel/Charles IV emerged triumphant from the latest of these conflicts, chances were that the same game would start anew, civil war between the three families, excommunication and murder. But it did not. Why it did not is what we will talk about in this episode…

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Ep. 159: Karl IV (1346-1378) – The Rise to Imperial Power

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 159 – The rise to Imperial Power, Charles IV journey to Rome, also episode 22 of season 8 From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.

But before we can all breathe a great sigh of relief, the gods have made it so that I have to hold the beggars bowl up to you again, my graceful listeners. This show is, as you know, free of advertising, apart of this my grovelling. And if you want to keep yourself safe from me droning on about my varied mental health issues, holiday rental preferences or sleeping problems, there is only one thing to do. Go to historyofthegermans.com/support and give generously. And thanks so much to Michael W., Admiral Geekington, Timo B., Admiral von Schneider, Barry M. and Greg B. who have already signed up.

Next thing, I have to admit to an error, or more precisely to a serious lack of knowledge. I did say last week that the cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague was unique in as much that it sat on the top of a hill, half an hour’s walk from the centre of the city and within the precinct of the royal castle. All that is correct, apart from the bit about it being unique. As some of you pointed out, the cathedrals of Meissen and Krakow are similarly inside the compound of the territorial ruler, away from the city centre. I then looked at the locations of several other cathedrals founded east of the Elbe River and it becomes clear that the concept of the cathedral inside the royal or ducal compound is the norm rather than the exception. Esztergom, Naumburg, Brno to name just a few have a similar setup. However, west of the Elbe, in particular in the lands that had once been part of the Roman empire, cathedral churches tend to be in the centre of town. And that makes sort of sense.

The citizens of the Roman empire had largely converted to Christianity by the 4^th century and hence when the bishops built their cathedrals and palaces, they did it amongst the faithful, largely independent from the secular ruler. Meanwhile the pagan Slavs who lived east of the Elbe had been converted by fire and sword in the 10^th, 11^th and 12^thcentury, which meant the bishop’s churches had to be located within the castles of the rulers for protection against a hostile population. And that is where they remained, often to this day.

The fact that I could not remember a place where the cathedral was located in the royal castle reveals the experience of someone who had grown up in West Germany and has not travelled anywhere as extensively in central Europe as I should have. And I have been reading books by predominantly West German authors who also seem to suffer from the same bias. That is history for you, so often as much about the author than it is about the subject. Will try to do better next time.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we discussed Karl IV’s political and architectural projects in Bohemia. This was however only one of the crowns he had by now acquired. As we discussed 3 episodes ago, Karl had managed to overcome the opposition and had been unanimously elected by all seven electors and then crowned king of the Romans in Aachen in 1349.

In 1350 he had reconciled with his last remaining serious adversary, Ludwig the elder, the son of the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and margrave of Brandenburg. This reconciliation involved on the one hand that Ludwig would be returned to his margraviate and the current usurper, now dubbed “the false Waldemar” be dropped. And in return Ludwig handed over the imperial regalia, including the Holy Lance, the purse of St. Stephen, various coats and socks and the imperial crown.

Beyond this exchange, Karl also promised to use his influence at the papal court in Avignon to finally lift the excommunication pope John XXII had put on Ludwig’s father and then ultimately over the whole Wittelsbach family 30 years earlier.

And shortly after that all political activity at the royal court ceased. That was in part down to the plague which had by now reached Bohemia. But there was also a mysterious illness. For about a year the king of the Roamn was afflicted by some sort of paralysis none of his doctors could identify. It wasn’t the Plague, otherwise he would have either died or recovered much more quickly. Nor was it the gout he would suffer from for the rest of his life. This sudden loss of ability to act, move and even speak remains a mystery, not least because none of the sources from the court mention it at all. We only know of it through sources from the empire who noticed the absence of their ruler.

He finally rose from his sickbed in 1352, but he never fully recovered. His spine remained impaired, giving him a somewhat hunched appearance. His days as a shiny knight at tournaments were now comprehensively over. He had never enjoyed them much and only taken part when it was absolutely unavoidable. He was so not his father’s son.

The other way in which he differed from the knightly blind king was in his preference for diplomacy over war. War was expensive and unpredictable, whilst playing the different sides against each other cheap, intellectually thrilling and something he was just very, very good at.

Having made peace with the Wittelsbachs, one of the great imperial families of the 14^th century, he now needed to settle things with the other one, the house of Habsburg. The Habsburgs had done alright under the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. They had gained the duchy of Carinthia and the county of Tyrol. The latter turned out to be a genuine lottery win as silver mining in the region was gaining pace. Ove the next 300 years more and more mines opened in Tirol, the largest in Schwaz which would at some point employ 10,000 miners who dug up 85% of all silver found in Europe.

Whilst this is all good news for the dukes of Austria, not everything was going according to plan. For one, the usually so fertile family had experienced one of its occasional bouts of reproductive decline and was reduced to just Albrecht II, the lame and his son Rudolf IV, the Founder. But the biggest issue were some renegade peasants back home in their original homeland. The three cantons, Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden that had defeated duke Leopold at Morgarten in 1315 have continued to undermine Habsburg control of the Aargau and the roads leading to the Gotthard pass. In 1332 the city of Lucerne, until then part of the Habsburg zone of influence had joined the three Waldstaetten and they had formed the “eternal Swiss Confederation”. In 1351 Zurich, then and now the largest city in Switzerland joined the confederation. In 1353 Bern, Zug and Glarus came in as well.

This had now become more than an irritation for the Habsburgs and Karl was happy to exploit the situation. He offered the Habsburgs to rein in on these obstinate commoners, if Albrecht and Rudolf kept the peace and let him pass down to Italy should he want to go to Rome. To further firm up the alliance Rudolf became engaged and later married Catherine, the daughter of Karl and – in the absence of a son – his heiress.

Karl never made good on his promise to go after the Swiss. He joined the Habsburgs and their army attacking Zurich but after a few skirmishes forced the parties on to the negotiation table. The subsequent peace included recognition of the Swiss confederation, very much to the chagrin of the Habsburgs. But by then it was too late and there was little they could do about it.

It is with these promises of help that rarely materialised in actual military support and the generous handout of titles and imperial vicariates that Karl solidified his reign in the empire.

In 1354 he moved his focus to the western side of the empire. One reason was that his great uncle, the legendary archbishop of Trier, Balduin had finally passed away at the grand old age of 69. Having become archbishop aged 22 he had lifted two members of his family on to the imperial throne, his brother Henry VII and now Karl. In the meantime he had fostered the power of the electors at the Kurverein zu Rhens and at the same time strengthened the territorial power of his archbishopric. Karl may have never liked him, and vice versa, but they had supported each other in the interest of the dynasty.

So when Karl rushed to Trier as soon as news had reached him of his relative’s demise, it wasn’t to mourn his long lost mentor. No, what he was after was a legendary hoard of gold and silver everyone believed the wily bishop had gathered during his 47 years on the episcopal throne. When Karl arrived the treasure, if it had ever existed, was gone. Still he coerced the new archbishop to hand back the lands his great uncle had forced him to hand over as an electoral bribe in 1344. And in the absence of precious metal, he raided the spiritual wealth of this, the oldest cathedral in the German lands. The staff of St. Peter, a third of the veil of the virgin Mary, a piece of the finger of St. Matthew and the obligatory piece of the holy cross were packed up and sent to Prague.

Then he went to Luxemburg where his half-brother Wenceslaus had now turned 18. Wenceslaus was supposed to inherit Luxemburg but Karl had seized it upon their father’s death. Now it was time to honour the bling king John’s wishes and Wenceslaus received Luxemburg, which Karl elevated to a duchy and imperial principality at the same time. Young Wenceslaus then married Joanna, the eldest daughter and heiress of the duchies of Brabant and Limburg, which was followed by the happy event of duke John of Brabant dying in 1356. Wenceslaus and his wife gained control of this exceedingly wealthy part of the world after granting the citizens of Brabant a large number of rights in a document called the Joyeuse Entrée which we will look at next week. For the moment the important point is that the Luxemburgs got hold of Brabant, at least tripling their position in the west and all that against opposition from the count of Flanders and behind him, the king of France.

The empire was on the up. And to make it absolutely clear that there was a new broom in the house, willing to protect the western border of the empire against constant French incursions, Karl held an imperial diet in the city of Metz, right on the border to France. No emperor had been to Metz since the days of the Hohenstaufen. This event in March 1354 was meant to rebuild the sense of belonging to the empire that had been waning. Ever more often had the local powers taken their disputes to the courts and Parlamants of France, believing that there was no justice to be obtained from the weak imperial power. Karl imposed an imperial peace on Lothringia whereby they should resolve their conflicts peaceably in courts of their own peers, rather than by the French.

Such local peace agreements had been a tool of imperial policy for a long time, but the last decades had seen them running out and/or being ignored. Karl used them extensively in all the areas he travelled through. And he could back them up with the sheer strength of his personal wealth and prestige. In the east the house of Luxemburg controlled Bohemia, which had almost doubled in size since the days of Ottokar II and in the West they ruled the combined duchies of Luxemburg and Brabant. And Karl could rely on the support of the great imperial cities, in particular the richest and most powerful of them, Nürnberg.

Many citizens of the empire experienced imperial administration for the very first time. By 1355 Karl had become the most effective guardian of the empire in generations.

With the empire under his control, we move on to – yes I can hear you groan – the inevitable journey to Rome. Should that not be over by now? Didn’t the Electors declare that the elected king was automatically the ruler of the empire, even without coronation of approbation by the pope? Did Karl not remember the catastrophic outcome of his grandfather’s attempt to pacify Italy, let alone his own experience as a young man trying to chart a path through the endless squabbles between the various communes, republics and autocracies?

Sure, he did, but even though an imperial Romzug was no longer an absolute must, it still added to the cachet of an emperor, in particular an emperor like Karl who derived more of his power from symbols and the letter of the law than from the yielding of swords.

So a trip to Rome was on the agenda, but such a trip was not as urgent as it had been for his grandfather or for Ludwig the Bavarian. Karl had time to plan how he could thread his course through the convoluted Italian and papal politics.

Papal politics should have been easy. As we have discussed before, Karl owed the beginnings of his career to his mentor, the pope Clement VI. But by the 1350s that relationship had soured.

When Karl reconciled with the excommunicated Wittelsbachs, first by marrying the daughter of the Count Palatinate on the Rhine and then by making deals with the sons of Ludwig the Bavarian, the pope was incensed. The whole point of supporting Karl as the new king of the Romans had been to squash the Wittelsbach and their nest of heretics that was Munich. And once the excommunicated usurpers were gone, the popes would regain control of the imperial church.

Well, none of that happened. Karl had no intention to become a papal lapdog. Instead of taking orders from Avignon, he strengthened imperial oversight of the church to the point that he invested more bishops during his reign than any emperor had done since Barbarossa.

What also did not help was that Karl let slip that he found Clement VI’ propensity for bling and hard partying unsuitable for his office, comments that made their way back to Avignon.

With Clement VI refusing to send cardinals to crown him, Karl had two options. One was to boost his diplomatic efforts in Avignon in the hope of changing Clement’s mind. The other was to do as his predecessor had done and go to Rome to accept the crown from the Senate and People of Rome as the ancient Roman emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus have done.

This latter option materialised in 1350 in the form of a visit to Prague by Cola di Rienzi, the Tribune of the People of Rome. Cola di Rienzi is one of those characters that warrant a whole podcast by themselves and I may produce one for the Patreon feed. But since he is very much a figure of Italian history, rather than German history, here are just the bare bones of his story.

Cola di Rienzi, actual name Nicola Gabrini was the son of a wine merchant. Being clever and talented, he received a thorough education and rose to become a notary and diplomat for the city of Rome. In 1347 he led a public revolt that catapulted him to the leadership of the city, where he promised to resurrect the ancient Roman republic with him as the Tribune of the people.

How come a wine merchant’s son can rise to be the ruler of the eternal city? The answer lies in the truly dissolute state of Rome and the papal states in the middle of the 14^th century. It is now more than a generation since the popes had left Rome to settle in Avignon. Without the papal court the income streams that had sustained the city had dried up. Not just the lavish expenditure of the popes and cardinals but also the bribes paid for ecclesiastical judgements, the approval of episcopal appointments, the income from absolutions etc., etc., all that was now spent in Provence.

Rome, unlike the other great Italian cities did not have much commercial or industrial activity. Barely 20,000 souls lived in a city once built for millions. To generate some cash the popes had declared holy years in 1300 and in 1350 that brought in thousands of pilgrims. The tradition exists to this day by the way and the next holy year is 2025.

But these Jubilees took place only every 50 years. In the intervening years, the impoverished Romans had fallen into the hands of warring aristocratic factions, the Colonna and the Orsini. Most Romans huddled within the bend of the Tiber marked by the triangle of the Mausoleum of Augustus at the north, Castel Sant’Angelo to the west and the Tiber Island to the south, the area called the abitato. The Vatican Borgo, stretching from St. Peter’s to the river, retained its boundaries set by the walls of Leo IV. The remaining 215 hectares (almost 4.7 square miles) within the ancient Aurelian Wall lay nearly empty. This disabitato remained a dangerous waste of forest, vineyard, and garden, interrupted only by the irregular masses of Rome’s fortified monasteries and the fortress-towers of its barons, by hamlets scattered around the major churches and the militarized hulks of Rome’s vast ruins. Meanwhile in Florence, Siena, Milan and Venice churches and palaces rose up that could rival the splendour that had once been Rome’s

Cola di Rienzi tapped into the discontent of the Roman masses, promising them an end to the current mismanagement and a return to the glory of ancient Rome. By all accounts he was an engaging orator who could whip up the crowds. He was also a populist and fantasist who promised the world but was unable to maintain a functioning administration, let alone deliver on these pledges.

His first run as Tribune of the Roman People lasted a mere seven months, at the end of which he slunk out of town in the middle of the night. From 1347 onwards he hid for 2 years in a community of Franciscan who adhered to the rule of strict poverty promoted by Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham. In 1349 he embarked on a journey across plague ridden europe in search of allies who would help restore the glory of Rome.

That is why he showed up at the court of Karl IV in Prague in 1350. And the emperor was listening. After all Cola di Rienzi still had supporters in Rome and all across Italy including the celebrated poet Petrarch.

Though he may have been tempted by the proposal to get his coronation swiftly and with the support of the Roman populace, there were a number of issues with that though.

One was that his predecessor who had accepted the crown from the people and not from the pope had always faced issues of legitimacy. Karl himself had never recognised Ludwig’s imperial title.

Moreover, it would have also been a truly unforgivable affront to the pope that would turn the simmering disappointment into open conflict. A conflict that judging by the example of Ludwig, could go on for decades and hamper his efforts to stabilise the empire under his reign.

So Karl had Cola di Rienzi arrested and sent to Avignon. By all accounts that should have been a death sentence. But by the time he had arrived, pope Clement VI had died and his successor Innocent VI saw an opportunity in the plebeian rabble rouser. In 1354 he sent Cola di Rienzi together with a cardinal to Rome to oust the regime of the aristocrats and bring order to the place, make it ready for a return of the pope.

Cola’s second attempt to restore ancient Rome lasted not much longer than the first. Rienzi made some stirring speeches and put the Colonna and Orsini on trial. He managed to have a few of them beheaded before the two archenemies joined hands and also the cardinal realised that Rienzi may not be entirely on board with the idea of the return of the Holy Father. A crowd gathered outside the Palazzo Senatorio on the Capitoline hill demanding his head. He tried to make one last speech to defend himself and his track record but could not get through. The mob set the palace alight. Cola di Rienzi fled the building in disguise but was recognised and then horrifically maimed and killed.

As I said, a fascinating and dramatic story that Richard Wagner made into his first and worst opera and that allegedly inspired Adolf Hitler. As I said, well worth a whole podcast.

But why does this story matter beyond the fact that Karl had rejected the offer to be crowned by the people of Rome?

What it illustrates is how far the power of the Avignon church had declined. If a pope has to resort to a populist firebrand in his attempt to exert control over his capital, the situation must be quite dire.

And it was. These 40 years in Avignon had had a devastating effect on the standing of the church. We have not gone quite all the way back to the days of the Pornocracy in the 9^th and 10^th century, but a lot of the political capital the reform popes since Leo X have patiently built into the imperial papacy of an Innocent III has been washed away in an excess of corruption and ostentatious display of wealth. Then there was the political dependency on the French kings who could force the pope to sanction the raid of the Templars.

Few people in the cities and villages ever saw the extravagant luxury of the papal palace but they did see what happened to the Franciscans and Dominicans. These mendicant orders enjoyed a lot of respect for their good works and adherence to the vows of poverty. When John XXII forced them into accepting gifts and property, the brothers and even more, the papacy lost the moral high ground. And it was the moral high ground that papal power was based on.

More and more voices criticised the pope and demanded a change in his behaviour and a return to Rome. One of them was Petrarch and another was St. Bridget of Sweden. She was a high aristocrat who had come to Rome during the holy year of 1350. Shocked by the state of the city she threw herself into charitable works and as things got traction, founded her own order of nuns. What made her famous across europe were her religious visions. And in one of those visions God told her to tell Pope Clement quote “ it shall not be forgotten how greed and ambition flourished and increased in the church during your time, or that you could have reformed and set many things right but that you, lover of the flesh, were unwilling. Get up, therefore, before your fast approaching final hour arrives, and extinguish the negligence of your past by being zealous in your nearly final hour! End quote.

Once Clement’s final hour arrived in 1352 as predicted, the church tried to improve. They replaced the worldly pope Clement VI with Innocent VI, an altogether more sober head of the church. But the pope’s room for manoeuvre was very limited. Reforming the church back to a semblance of moral authority ran into the opposition of entrenched interests, his attempt to regain Rome through Cola di Rienzi had failed and left him marooned in Avignon under the watchful eye of the French.

And it was exactly this weakness of the pope that Karl had bet on. One of the few options Innocent VI had to counterweigh French influence was through the empire. Karl may not have lived up to papal expectations, but he was still less overbearing that the king of France. And he had enormous prestige and still some influence in Italy.

And that is why Karl was confident that once he were to set off for Rome the new pope would fall into line and send him a cardinal for the coronation.

Karl set off for Italy in September 1355 with just 300 men. The reason he did not bring an army as his grandfather had done was simple, he had no interest in conquering Italy. All he wanted was to travel down to Rome, get crowned and go home again. He had made that very explicit in a letter he had written to Petrarch. The great poet had begged him to bring peace to his war-ridden Italy. To that Karl responded quote “The times have changed my most venerated poet laureate. Freedom has been crushed, the bride of the empire, together with all the other Latins, have been wedded into servitude; justice has become the whore of avarice, peace has been driven out of the people’s minds and the virtues of men have vanished so that the world is descending into the abyss” end quote.

No, Karl had been to Italy before and got the T-shirt. No way was he going to take sides in this never ending game of Whack-a-mole. All he wanted was free passage. To achieve that he joined an alliance led by Venice against Milan. Once he had crossed the lands of his allies, he headed for Milan, signed a deal with the city’s rulers, the Visconti, who handed him 150,000 gold florin and the iron crown of Lombardy. Next stop is Florence where he promised help against Milan in exchange for 100,000 florin and recognition of imperial overlordship, the first time in centuries the city on the Arno river had bent the knee. Then he goes to Siena who make Karl their podesta in exchange for protection against Florence, and so forth and so forth, I guess you get my drift.

Somehow this has turned into a veritable walk in the park. Part of his success is clearly his diplomatic skill that allowed him to double cross all his interlocutors with impunity. But he is also genuinely popular. He is one of the very few emperors who speak Italian. Wherever he goes, he chats with the people, he gets down from his horse to shake hands. They even forgive him his now obsessive raids of churches and monasteries for relics. He remains calm in all circumstances, both when the citizens of Siena parade him through the city on their shoulders in triumph as well as when a rebellion in Pisa puts him and his now third wife in mortal danger.

On April 2nd does he arrive before Rome . And for the next three days he visits all the great basilicas and monasteries of the eternal city, disguised as a pilgrim. Most probably many a saint was missing a few bones once the mysterious pilgrim had left.

The coronation date was set for the 5^thof April.

Which now leaves the question, is there a cardinal available to perform the ceremony? Oh you bet. Though Karl had not even bothered to inform the pope of his departure for Rome, seven month earlier, as soon as he was under way Innocent VI caved in. The cardinal bishop of Ostia, the #2 in the papal hierarchy was dispatched to Rome to do the deed. The only condition was that Karl should not spend more than a day in the eternal city.

And so, for the first time in now 150 years did Rome see a peaceful imperial coronation. Both St. Peters and the Lateran welcomed the emperor and he and his wife were crowned following the ancient coronation ordo. No wading through blood, no arrows shot into the dining hall, just a really nice party.

And, as promised, Karl IV left Rome at sundown and returned to his lands north of the Alps as the universally recognised Holy Roman Emperor. And he was truly universally recognised, the pope accepted him, the Italian cities as far as they ever would, recognised him as their king and emperor, the Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs had made their peace with him, his family possessions, the much enlarged kingdom of Bohemia and the duchies of Luxemburg and Brabant made him the by far richest and most powerful imperial prince.

Not since the early years of Frederick Barbarossa had an emperor gained such a position of power. And it was this power he would now use to create what many called the constitution of the Holy Roman empire, the Golden Bull of 1356. And that is what we are going to look at next week. I hope you will join us again.

And if you feel swept away by all that goodwill and splendour in the History of the Germans remember that the show is advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too. All you have to do is to go historyofthegermans.com/support and sign up for the cost of a latte per month.

Treasures of Medieval Rome

by History of the Germans Podcast on 19th March 202210th May 2023

I recently went to Rome – mostly as a romantic getaway – but also to get a better idea what Rome would have looked like to the medieval emperors who came down to be crowned by reluctant popes. A lot of the main historic sites have been fundamentally remodelled (St. Peter, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore), but more survives than one thinks.

The first thing to remember is that by the time say Henry IV or Frederick Barbarossa come to Rome, many of these churches are already unfathomably old. The first great period of church building in Rome was during the fourth and fifth century. Emperor Constantine funded the construction of the two great basilicas of Old St. Peter and the Basilica of the Lateran. But as the share of Christians in the population grew from 15-18% under Constantine to being the vast majority by late fifth/early 6^th century, new churches needed to be built all across Rome.

These early churches were mostly new built over virgin land or land previously used for residential or industrial purposes, not over existing pagan temples. The building was usually in the form of an ancient Roman basilica. These basilicas were originally secular buildings used amongst other things to hold court cases with the judge/governor/emperor sitting in the apsis dispensing justice.

There is one still extant imperial basilica, in Trier that dates from the time of Constantine.

In early Christian churches, the judge’s seat was replaced with the altar but otherwise the architecture remained the same. And this apsis was than lavishly decorated with mosaics, depicting Christ in the place where the emperor would usually have sat. This mosaic here is the oldest and most beautiful in Rome dating back to around 390 AD.

Imagine you come from say a great Carolingian monastery like Corvey with beautiful early medieval interior decorations, and then you look at this. Nobody during this period was able to create such natural expressions or depiction of movement. It must have been a complete shock to see…

The Basilica of Santa Sabina

The best way to get an impression what these early churches looked like is to visit Santa Sabina on the Aventine hill. The church was built between 422 and 432 and is largely unchanged in its structure today.

If you stand inside you can experience what a space like old St. Peter would have felt like. Not at all dark and “medieval”, but bright, symetric with clean lines. Windows were in clear glass, letting the bright Roman sun into the building. All eyes look down towards the Apsis where all teh important things, like teh coronation is happening.

Though Santa Sabina does no longer have the brilliant Mosaics that once covered its apsis, it has another, truly astounding piece of decoration, its doors, which are original from the 5^th century.

Let me repoeat this. This is a set of cedar doors made in ~430 AD. The image cannot really convey what they look like. The wood is still shiny, the carving beautiful and detailed, as if no time had passed.

I know the doors in the Pantheon are older and larger, but still, these must be the second oldest doors still in operation anywhere in the world. And if you go to Santa Sabina, you share the space with some Dominican friars, the kids from the primary school opposite and a small number of full-on history geeks (Birkenstocks and all) – well worth it (also got a great view over the city from the park).

The Mystery of the Destruction of Old San Clemente

The next church to look at is San Clemente, which is interesting for two reasons. The first one is its marvellous mosaic that covers the whole of the apsis.

This work of most likely Byzantine artists is a little younger than the others we will be looking at here but it contains such marvellous little details that again display the incredible craftsmanship of these unknown artists.

The church of San Clemente is full of other fascinating things, such as the grave of Saint Cyril and a beautiful renaissance chapel to Santa Catarina.

But the most interesting stuff is underground. San Clemente was built over what was initially a private house, then became an industrial complex, some argue the mint where the empire would strike its coins. It at least in part became an apartment block with a sanctuary for the cult of Mithridates in its centre. By 392 all these buildings had been filled in and a church built on top.

This church was redecorated in the 9^th and then in 11^th century. And then something strange happens. The whole church is getting destroyed, filled in and a new church is built on top of it around 1099 to 1120.

All these underground structures have been excavated and can be visited., something well worth doing. If you go, buy the ticket online before you enter the church, it is 2€ cheaper and connection is better outside.

During the excavations they found part of the fresco decoration of the church that was destroyed, depicting the story of Saint Clement. And that is where the mystery starts.

San Clemente Lower Basilica – the Rescue of a Child

Initially people thought the church was destroyed during the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard in 1084, which I talk about in Episode 36: (https://historyofthegermans.com/captivate-podcast/cominghome/).

But they could not find any signs of burning so the suggestion was the lower church had been deliberately destroyed. But why? Some argue it was because the street level had risen and so the old church was constantly flooded.

But there could be another reason. The images in the old chapel depicted the Saint Clement, which in the 1080s was a dangerous name. As you know Henry IV had elevated Wibert of Ravenna to be antipope Clement III. Painting a church with the deeds of the antipope’s namesake was an affront. And moreover, who was the titular deacon of San Clemente in the 1080s? Hugh Candidus, or Hugh the White. You remember him? He is the cardinal who fell out with Gregory VII and alleged the pope was living in sin with Matilda of Tuscany and was up to all sorts of shenanigans (check out Episode 35).

Hence pope Gregory and his successor, Pope Paschalis II who was deacon of San Clemente after Hugh the White had motive and means to literally bury the antipope Wibert and his enabler Hugh the White. If that is true, it would be a rare case of church destruction on ideological grounds.

San Cosmas and Damian vs. Castor and Pollux

The foundation of this church was in 527, when Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths , and his daughter Amalasuntha arranged the donation of two buildings on the Forum to the Church under Pope Felix IV. These building were the Temple of Peace and the “temple of Romulus”

Three interesting observations can be made about this. Firstly, the king was consciously not acting in his own name, but as the agent of Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople. Modern historians may have pretended that the Roman Empire came to an end in the West in 476, but the inhabitants of Rome were not aware of this fifty years later. Secondly, the area of the Roman and Imperial fora was still functioning as part of the city and had not yet fallen into complete ruin. Thirdly, this was the first Christian church to be founded in the area. Again, despite modern popular historical imagination, much of the nobility of Rome was still hostile to Christianity in the 5th century and this may have prevented the provision of churches in the cultic centre of the city before this one.

The new church was not a titulus or a monastic church, but was a diaconia. This meant that it was a centre for the Church’s charitable activities such as helping poor people. When the pope united the two buildings to create a basilica devoted to the two holy Greek brothers and doctors, Cosmas and Damian, he may have been wishing to continue the free public medical services formerly based in the Temple of Peace. There may also have been a deliberate contrast with the ancient pagan cult of the divine twin brothers Castor and Pollux, who had been worshipped on the other side of the Forum in the Temple of Castor and Pollux.

The whole structure was changed many times and today the entrance is no longer on the Forum but from the Via dei Fori Imperiali which has its advantages, i.e., no entrance fee. Go there, even if all you need is shelter from the August heat. It has a lovely shaded little cloister.

But that is not the only reason you may want to get there. The apse of the new church was decorated with a mosaic, representing the parousia (coming at the end of time) of Christ. This work was immensely influential, and art historians have been able to trace its inspiration in mosaics in later Roman churches. It stands nowadays as one of the foremost examples of the old Classical style of depiction starting to mutate into the (then novel) Byzantine style.

The mosaics are masterpieces of 6th century ecclesiastical art. The apse mosaic is especially fine, but you need to remember that you should be standing seven metres lower than you actually are, in order to see it as the creators intended. There is a coin-operated light for it at the head of the center aisle in front of the alter.

In the middle is Christ at his parousia, or Second Coming as triumphal judge at the end of time. He is standing on the red clouds of dawn, and is dressed in golden robes with a single monogram I which stands for either Iesus or Imperator. In his left hand he holds the rolled-up scroll of the Torah, which only he is able to interpret. To the left is St Paul, and to the right is St Peter. They are introducing SS Cosmas and Damian to Christ, and it is not possible to tell which is which because the mosaicists followed the tradition that they were identical twins. They are carrying martyrs’ crowns. To the far left is Pope Felix IV, who as founder holds a model of the church; this figure was restored in the 17th century. The reason for this is that Pope Gregory XIII saw fit to alter the figure to show Pope Gregory the Great in the previous century, and a very bad job was done. The Baroque restorers put it right. To the far right is the martyr St Theodore. The figures stand in front of a river labelled Iordanes (Jordan) and are flanked by palm trees.

Note the phoenix on the left-hand palm, a symbol of the resurrection.

Below Christ is another representation of him, this time as the Lamb of God accompanied by twelve sheep representing the Apostles. The Lamb stands on a hill with Jerusalem on the left and Bethlehem on the right, and from the hill flow the twelve Rivers of Paradise labelled Gion, Pison, Tigris and Eufrata (Euphrates).

Santa Prassede and the running pope

After the destruction of Rome during the Gothic wears (535-554) the city’s population collapsed. The low-lying areas were gradually abandoned and became hotbeds of malaria and other diseases.

There was no longer the money to build splendid rectangular basilicas on brownfield sites. The church began to invade the now abandoned pagan temples, using fallen masonry to create new structures. These are often oddly shaped and Roman columns protrude from the walls.

When pope Paschal I (817-24) began the construction of Santa Prassede, he did intend to create a classic basilica, but it did not really work. the surveying during the construction was seriously badly done and the edifice is “wonky”. The nave walls and colonnades are not parallel, neither are they straight. The transept is not at right angles to the nave’s major axis, and neither are the façade and the atrium.

But it is still standing and it houses one of the greatest early medieval interiors in Rome. Two 9^th century mosaics stand out, those on the triumphal arch in the centre of the nave.

The overall theme is the Second Coming of Christ and the End of Time, based on the description given in the “Apocalypse of St John” (Book of Revelation).

On the triumphal arch, the one closest to the nave,The Heavenly Jerusalem is depicted as a walled and gated enclosure with its golden walls set with jewels. In it, Christ accompanied by two angels is venerated by two queues of apostles and saints; to the left, the first two are Our Lady and St John the Baptist, and to the right the first is St Praxedis. At the ends of the queues are Moses and Elijah. The city gates are guarded by another pair of angels, and a further two escort more saints through flowery meadows, with the right hand group led by SS Peter and Paul.

Below this composition, on either side of the arch, are two crowds of people holding crowns and palm branches. These are the multitude of the martyrs.

And then there is the Apse Mosaic – just look at it

And if you look for some historic context, here is a tale from 1118

The papacy had recovered from the depth of its depravity in the 10th century thanks to a string of powerful popes, namely Leo IX, Gregory VII and Urban II. By 1111 the tide was however turning. Pope Paschalis II made a most unexpected offer to emperor Henry V to return all the lands and privileges the church had received over the centuries in exchange for the emperor no longer interfering with church affairs. That backfired terribly as literally everybody hated the idea, except for the pope and the emperor. Paschalis lost all authority in Rome. The two great Roman families of the Frangipani and the Pierleoni began fighting over control of the seat of Saint Peter.

When Paschalis died in 1118 the Frangipani made their move. The cardinals had elected the former pope’s chancellor as pope Gelasius II. On the day of his election, the Frangipani captured him, put him into a windowless cell and tortured him mercilessly. Censius Frangipani allegedly hissed at him like a giant snake, grabbed the pope by the throat, struck him with his fists, kicked him, drew blood with his spurs and dragged him away by his hair. Had he not been rescued by a mob paid for by the Pierleoni, Pope Gelasius would hold the record for the shortest Pontificate. This way he lasted a year and a bit. In his last months he could not hold the Vatican and hence celebrated mass at the church of St. Prassede, an amazing and truly ancient but size wise very modest building. If you are in Rome, go there it is a wonderful refuge from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Anyway, whilst saying mass he was attacked by Censius Frangipani again and only escaped on a swift horse. His attendants found him hours later sitting in a field, muttering incoherently – still wearing his papal vestments. Gelasius had enough. He left Rome to travel to France and died in the safety of the abbey of Cluny.

His successor Calixtus II was able to regain some semblance of control, but the next election, Honorius II ended with even more bloodshed.

If you want to follow the whole story, including detail about the divisions in the church and the city of Rome around 1130, listen to Episode 45 of The History of the Germans or read the transcript, both available here: https://historyofthegermans.com/…/episode-45-triple…/

Santa Prudenziana

My greatest find on the whole trip was however Santa Prudenziana. Santa Prudenziana, if she existed, was the sister of Santa Prassede but her church is even more undeservedly overlooked.

And overlooking it is easy. The church sits in a non-descript street below Santa maria Maggiore and is itself a couple of metres below street level. The façade is less than impressive and I would have instinctively walked past had I not looked for it.

But this is a true treasure trove. This basilica is recognised as the oldest place of Christian worship in Rome, dating back potentially to the time of the Apostles but more convincingly to the time of pope Pius I (140-155). The popes would reside in this complex until Constantine offered them the palace of the Lateran in 313.

In around 390, the church received its mosaic, which is of prime importance, not just because of its beaty, but also because of its subject.

The magisterial figure of Christ, seated on a gilded throne embossed with jewels and cushioned with purple fabric, recalls ancient representations of Jupiter. The apostles are dressed in togas, like Roman senators. Such images reflect the fundamental change in the role of the church. No longer a persecuted minority that has to hide from authority, Jesus (or god) is now in charge, determines the order man has to live by. You can see visually how the church goes from providing spiritual guidance to being an unquestionable authority, a process we have heard so much about in the podcast.

Image of mosaic in Santa Prudenziana

Today this tiny church is serving the global community of Catholic Filipinos, the largest Christian community in Asia.

I could go on for hours from here. And maybe I will write another post looking at secular medieval buildings in Rome. But if you ever go, sure, do all the classic Roman and renaissance things, but if you have a bit of time on your hand, check out these treasures. They are so worth it. (and also listen to the History of the Germns Podcast – also worth it)

History of the Germans

A narrative history of the German people from the Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings.
“A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad”. Gregory of Tours (539-594)

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

The Interregnum and the early Habsburgs (#138 ff
– Rudolf von Habsburg (#139-141)
– Adolf von Nassau (#142)
– Albrecht von Habsburg (#143)
– Heinrich VII (#144-148)
– Ludwig the Bavarian (#149-153)
– Karl IV (#154-163)
The Reformation before the Reformation
– Wenceslaus the Lazy (#165)
– The Western Schism (#166/167)
– The Ottomans (#168)
– Sigismund (#169-#184
The Empire in the 15th Century
– Mainz & Hessen #186
– Printing #187-#188
– Universities #190
– Wittelsbachs #189, #196-#199
– Baden, Wuerrtemberg, Augsburg, Fugger (#191-195)
– Maps & Arms (#201-#202)
The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg
– Early habsburgs (#203-#207)
– Albrecht II (#208)
-Freidrich III (#209-

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans Podcast, the podcast that does exactly what it says on the tin. What you get here is a narrative history of the German people from the early Middle Ages to German Reunification in 1991 in 35-40 minute episodes coming out every Thursday.

We are 200 episodes in, but do not worry, you do not need to listen to all 200 for it to make sense. The show is now split into seasons which are almost stand alone. So you can listen to any one of theose and skip the rest. Let me tell you a little bit about these season….

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

If you wish to support the show go to: Support • History of the Germans Podcast

Facebook: @HOTGPod

Bluesky: @hotgpod.bsky.social

Instagram: history_of_the_germans

Twitter: @germanshistory

So far I have:

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History of the Germans – Trailer

12th January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

From Julius Caesar to the end of the Roman Empire – Prologue (Part 1)

13th January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

From Romulus Augustulus to Pippin the Short – Prologue (Part 2)

14th January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Charlemagne and all that – Prologue (Part 3)

15th January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Ep. 1: Henry the Fowler (919-936) – A New Beginning

16th January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Ep. 2: Otto the Great (936-973) – A Dog’s Breakfast

22nd January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Ep. 3: Otto the Great (936-973) – A Series of Fortunate Events

28th January 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Ep. 4: Otto the Great (936-973) – A Foe Wherever You Go

4th February 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Ep. 5: Otto the Great (936-973) – The Father, the Son and the Uncle

11th February 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

Ep. 6: Otto the Great (936-973)) – The Battle on the Lechfeld (955)

18th February 2021

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

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OTD in 546 Totila destroys the Aqueducts of Rome

by History of the Germans Podcast on 17th December 202117th December 2025

On this day, December 17th, 546 Totila, king of the Ostrogoths conquered the city of Rome. During the siege he destroyed the aqueducts that had made life in the eternal city viable. After 546 the population dropped rapidly, buildings finally fell into ruin and in the eyes of many ancient Rome finally fell.

Totila did not set out to destroy the ancient Roman way of life. The Ostrogoths found themselves in a struggle for survival against the (Eastern) Roman Emperor Justinian. The Ostrogoths had occupied Italy since 493 with approval from the emperor in Constantinople. They pursued a policy of live and let live with the local Roman population. The Ostrogoths counted no more than 100,000 individuals whilst Italy at that time still had a population of several million. To manage their new kingdom, they kept key institutions like the Roman Senate and maintained at least some of the infrastructure.

After their great leader Theoderic (475-526) had died his succession became contested and as a consequence Ostrogothic power was weakened. The emperor Justinian sought to use this weakness to regain the western parts of the Roman empire. The first Gothic war lasted from 535 to 540 and ended with a defeat of the Ostrogoths. Shortly afterwards the Justinian plague broke out in the Eastern Roman empire and would ultimately kill as many people as the more famous Black Death of 1348.

From 541 onwards a faction of the Ostrogoths resumed hostilities hoping that Justinian would be weakened by the outbreak of the plague. By 546 the new leader of the Ostrogoths, Totila, had recovered sufficient military might to attack the city of Rome itself. The siege was extremely brutal and Totila forced the surrender by destroying the aqueducts that lead water into the city of Rome. Totila could not hold on to his conquests for long. He was defeated in 552 by the great Byzantine general Narses. His successor Teja took an (almost) last stand on Mount Vesuvius a few months later where the last Ostrogothic army was destroyed.

The Byzantines were not much luckier. Northern Italy was soon overrun by the Lombards and Sicily by the Muslims, confining them to Ravenna and parts of Southern Italy.

After the destruction of the aqueducts the ancient Roman infrastructure of the city could no longer be maintained. The last of the great baths closed and without ready access to drinking water the population of the city shrinks from what might still have been 100,000 before the siege to maybe 20,000.

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Episode 40 – Henry V HAs a cunning Plan

by History of the Germans Podcast on 28th November 202119th February 2026

Pope Paschal II offers to hand back all imperial fiefs which causes havoc

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 40 – Henry V’s Cunning Plan

In this episode we will see whether young Henry V will do any better at ending the conflict between Pope and Emperor, featuring one of the most audacious political moves seen in this conflict.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

In this episode we will see whether young Henry V will do any better at ending the conflict between Pope and Emperor, featuring one of the most audacious political moves seen in this conflict.

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

If you wish to support the show go to: Support • History of the Germans Podcast

Facebook: @HOTGPod

Bluesky: @hotgpod.bsky.social

Instagram: history_of_the_germans

Twitter: @germanshistory

So far I have: