Emperor Charles IV (1346–1378) as the Architect
of Local Religion in Prague
DAVID C. MENGEL
T
HE IDEA OF REFORM STILL SUPPLIES THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE for most accounts of late
medieval religion in Bohemia. Like a brightly colored thread, reform marks a trail
leading forward from Jan Hus (d. 1415) to the leaders of the sixteenth-century
Reformation, as well as backward to a series of precursors in the fourteenth century. This
essay takes a different path through the religious culture of fourteenth-century Bohemia and
of Prague, in particular. Rather than following the traditional historiography in identifying a
handful of fourteenth-century Prague preachers as revolutionary forerunners of Jan Hus, this
essay situates these and other figures within a more complicated and multivalent local
religious culture, a culture that was carefully molded by Central Europe’s most powerful
authority. No one shaped Prague’s local religion more dramatically than the Holy Roman
Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1346–1378), as three examples offered here will illustrate. Like an
architect, Charles IV designed much of Prague’s vibrant local religion. Nevertheless, neither
he nor anyone else completely controlled it.
Imperious reform, however, cannot be cast aside so easily. In part this arises from the deep
shadow the Hussites cast. Czech historians tellingly continue to label the fourteenth century
“pre-Hussite.” Moreover, the deepest roots of Protestant historiography identify the Hussites
as a movement of religious reform. Matthias Flacius Illyricus and the martyrologist John
Foxe have long offered Protestant church historians a clear orientation: Jan Hus fits neatly
into a tale of beleaguered medieval reformers. Persecuted by an ecclesiastical hierarchy gone
badly astray, these early reformers nevertheless blazed a path for Martin Luther and the
sixteenth-century Reformers. This long-lived narrative has of course encountered rivals.
Early modern Catholic historians preferred to number Hus and his followers among the
heretics who sprouted like weeds in the turbulent age before Luther.1
In the nineteenth
century, this heresy-centered Catholic interpretation was eclipsed in scholarly literature and
in Czech popular consciousness alike by František Palacký’s profoundly nationalist version of
1
Zdeněk David, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Baltimore, 2003),
5–6.
Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 15–29 © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2010
doi:10.1017/S0067237809990063
15
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the Protestant narrative.2
Both historiographical strains nevertheless survive, at least in mutated
forms: Hussites still appear in modern surveys as both late medieval heretics and Reformation
forerunners.3
Twentieth-century historians offered a new alternative to reform. Drawing a fuller
and more complicated picture of the Hussites, they insisted that the Hussite movement was not
exclusively or even predominately religious in nature. Accordingly, they substituted the
language of revolution for that of reform or heresy.4
Nevertheless, reform continues to inform even the most recent studies of medieval Bohemian
religion, just as it does a strain of scholarship on medieval religion more broadly.5
Indeed, the
idea of reform seems to be enjoying a resurgence. Those still interested in the religious aspects of
the Hussite revolution now routinely describe their subject as the “Bohemian Reformation.”6
Some Czech historians have preferred the “First Reformation,” emphasizing its temporal
precedence to the better-known German one.7
The leading Czech historian of the Hussites
now writes of a “pre-mature Reformation,” borrowing a term Anne Hudson applied to the
Lollards in medieval England.8
These new applications of Reformation language claim for
the Hussites (or Utraquists) independent value apart from the Lutheran Reformers—they are
no longer mere forerunners—although they do so only by appropriating the terminology of
the sixteenth century. This is Reform with a capital “R.”
Similarly, the study of “pre-Hussite” Bohemian religion has borrowed most of its terms
and questions from a later era. Just as reform ties Hus to Luther, reform links a handful
of fourteenth-century Prague preachers to Hus. Palacký had implied a fundamental
continuity between these Vorläufer and the Hussites themselves. His influential formulation
eclipsed claims by Bohuslav Balbín (d. 1688) and other Czech Catholic historians that the
heretical Hus had represented a sharp break from Prague’s fourteenth-century orthodox
2
Palacký’s Dějiny národu českého v Čechách a na Moravě [History of the Czech nation in Bohemia and Moravia]
appeared from 1836 in German as Geschichte von Böhmen, the Czech volumes from 1848. By Palacký’s 1878 death,
second and, in some cases, third editions of each Czech volume had been issued. See František Kutnar and Jaroslav
Marek, Přehledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví [Synoptic history of Czech and Slovak historiography]
(Prague, 1997), 213–30.
3
For example, Malcom Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the
Reformation, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1992); Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval
Thought (New York, 1966).
4
Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley, 1967); František Šmahel, Husitská Revoluce, 4
vols. (Prague, 1993), now translated by Thomas Krzenck as Die Hussitische Revolution, ed. Alexander Patschovsky, 3
vols. (Hannover, 2002).
5
See, for example, Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550 (New Haven, 1980); Phillip H. Stump, “The
Influence of Gerhart Ladner’s The Idea of Reform,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Louis Pascoe, SJ, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Leiden,
2000), 3–17.
6
See, for example, the biennial Prague conference established in 1996, The Bohemian Reformation and Religious
Practice, with published proceedings appearing from 1998, edited by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton, and
now also available at http://brrp.org.
7
Amedeo Molnár used this term to describe Hussites together with Waldensians, in distinction from the “second
Reformation” of the sixteenth century. See Robert Kalivoda, “K otázkám myšlenkového modelu tzv. první a druhé
reformace” [On the question of the conceptual model of the so-called first and second Reformation], in Bratrský
sborník: Soubor prací přednesených a symposiu konaném 26. a 27. září 1967 k pětistému výročí ustavení Jednoty
Bratrské [Symposium of the Brethren: Series of works presented at the symposium held on the 26 and 27
September 1967 for the five hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Unity of the Brethren], ed. Rudolf
Říčan, Amedeo Molnár and Michal Flegl (Prague, 1967), 120–26, reprinted in Kalivoda, Husitská epocha a J. A.
Komenský (Prague, 1992), 153–59.
8
František Šmahel, ed., Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter (Munich, 1998); Anne Hudson, The
Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988).
DAVID C. MENGEL16
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spiritual leaders.9
Since the time of Palacký, these figures, all active in Bohemia’s capital city,
have been understood almost universally as the “forerunners” of the Hussites. To the extent
that the names of Conrad Waldhauser and Milíč of Kroměříž are remembered at all beyond
the historiography of Bohemia, they appear as precursors of Hus and indeed of the later
Reformers.
This model has its merits. It brings into focus the Hussites’ own appeals to the previous
century’s local religious figures for inspiration and justification. Emphasizing continuity, it
also reveals how obscure Prague preachers can illuminate the well-known story of the
Reformation. In short, this backward look helps to explain the origin of the Hussites by
magnifying the signs of incipient reform present before Hus.10
Yet the same Hussite lens,
blind to elements that fall outside its teleological vision, also inevitably distorts. To see the
broader field of religious culture in fourteenth-century Prague, it will be necessary to widen
the aperture—to forget for a moment that Jan Hus lived and preached in the same city half a
century later.
Rather than borrow loaded terms like “Reformation” from later eras, this essay instead
focuses on the religious culture of Prague as an example of later medieval local religion.11
Of
the many recent approaches to medieval religion, “local religion” has the advantage of
avoiding the dubious bifurcation of medieval culture into distinct popular and elite branches
while remaining sensitive to the unique conditions of a particular place.12
And what a place
Prague was becoming in the later fourteenth century! Charles IV’s 1346 election as King of
the Romans (and his later coronation as emperor) raised Prague to new heights of privilege
and power. Already the bishopric of Prague had been elevated to an archbishopric, a proud
promotion that inspired the construction of a grand, new Gothic cathedral. Once crowned
king of Bohemia, Charles IV dramatically increased Prague’s urban area in 1348 by
establishing New Town, a centerpiece of an ambitious vision for his capital city (vnser
hoepstat).13
His public participation underscored his commitment to the project: just as he
had celebrated the start of the new cathedral’s construction four years before, the emperor
now personally laid the first stone of the new fortifications.14
Together with another
fortification effort a decade later, this new wall quadrupled the size of Prague and created the
largest fortified urban area (seven hundred hectares) north of the Alps. The great medieval
9
František Palacký [J. P. Jordan, pseud.], Die Vorläufer des Husitenthums in Böhmen (Leipzig, 1846); Bohuslav
Balbín, Epitome historica rerum Bohemicarum (Prague, 1677), 406–409.
10
Now see Olivier Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot: Genèses du movement réformateur pragois années 1360–
1419 (Paris, 2005), e.g., 11.
11
Howard Kaminsky, “The Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘the Reformation,’” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation
im Spätmittelalter, ed. František Šmahel (Munich, 1998), 1–22.
12
See, for example, William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981). One of the
most eloquent critiques of a two-tiered model of medieval religion remains Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise
and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981). See also John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an
Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 519–52; and now, Van Engen, “The Future of
Medieval Church History,” Church History 71 (2002): 492–522. Also see the editors’ introduction to part 4,
“Religion and Society,” of Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H.
Rosenwein (Oxford, 1998), 299–309; and Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Religion, Folklore, and Society in the Medieval
West,” in the same volume (376–87).
13
Privilegia civitatum Pragensium, ed. Jaromír Čelakovský, Codex juris municipalis regni Bohemiae 1 [Prague,
1886], 73 no. 48; 81 no. 49.
14
Francis of Prague, Chronicon Francisci Pragensi, ed. Jana Zachová, Fontes rerum bohemicarum (Prameny dějin
českých), Series Nova 1 (Prague, 1997), 202; Vilém Lorenc, Nové město pražské [Prague’s New Town] (Prague, 1973),
75–81.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 17
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cities of London, Paris, and even Florence occupied smaller spaces.15
Within these walls, a
network of carefully planned new streets and two major marketplaces began to fill with
churches, religious communities, and a burgeoning population. Tax incentives and detailed
building regulations stimulated the rapid construction of stone houses, even if the special
invitation Charles IV extended to Jewish settlers proved less successful.16
Yet Charles’s plans for Prague encompassed more than wall-building and city planning.
Tirelessly he sought to transform Bohemia’s undisputed urban hub into an important
political, cultural, economic, and religious center for the entire Holy Roman Empire.
The frequent residence in Prague of his imperial court, and the permanent presence of
certain elements of that court, did not escape the notice of a contemporary German
chronicler.17
and from Nuremberg, Charles IV withdrew to Prague, which now is the seat of the archbishop
(metropolis) of the kingdom of Bohemia; there one now finds the seat of the empire, which was
formerly at Rome, later at Constantinople, but now exists at Prague.18
With these words, Henry of Diessenhofen (ca. 1300–1376) described the new identity of Prague:
a second (or third) Rome. The emperor endeavored to mirror this lofty status in the physical
reality of the city. In conjunction with the foundation of New Town, Charles IV also
established the first university (studium generale) in Central Europe, which in subsequent
decades drew masters and students from the entire region.19
(Before 1348, the nearest
university towns had been Italian, French, and English.) Likewise, though with somewhat
less success, the emperor strove to reroute important long-distance trade through Prague. He
encouraged merchants to pass through the Bohemian capital, for example, on their journeys
15
Ferdinand Seibt, Karl IV.: Ein Kaiser in Europa, 1346 bis 1378 (1978; reprint Munich, 1994), 177; Jiří Čarek,
“Praha v období vlády Karla IV” [Prague in the time of the rule of Charles IV], in Dějiny Prahy [History of
Prague], ed. Josef Janáček (Prague, 1964), 112, 123.
16
Privilegia civitatum Pragensium, ed. Čelakovský, 79–85 nos. 49–50; Lorenc, Nové město Pražské, 97–104. For the
long-established Jewish community in Old Town, see Alexandr Putík, “On the Topography and Demography of the
Prague Jewish Town Prior to the Pogrom of 1389,” Judaica Bohemiae 30–31 (1996): 7–46.
17
Peter Moraw calculates from Charles IV’s known itinerary that the emperor and his court spent approximately
one-third of his reign (nine to ten years) in Prague or at one of the nearby castles like Karlstein (“Zur
Mittelpunktsfunktion Prags in Zeitalter Karls IV,” in Europa Slavica—Europa Orientalis: Festschrift für Herbert
Ludat zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Klaus-Detlev Grothusen and Klaus Zernack [Berlin, 1980], 455). See also Hans
Patze, “Die Hofgesellschaft Kaiser Karls IV. und König Wenzels in Prag,” in Kaiser Karl IV. 1316–1378:
Forschungen über Kaiser und Reich, ed. Hans Patze (Neustadt an der Aisch, 1978), 733–74; Josef Macek, “Die
Hofkultur Karls IV,” in Kaiser Karl IV: Staatsmann und Mäzen, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (Munich, 1978), 237–41, and
František Kavka, “Die Hofgelehrten,” in the same volume, 249–53.
18
[Chronicon], in Henricus de Diessenhofen und andere Geschichtsquellen Deutschlands im späteren Mittelalter,
edited by Alfons Huber from the Nachlass of Johann Friedrich Boehmer, Fontes rerum Germanicarum,
Geschichtsquellen Deutschlands 4 (Stuttgart, 1868), 116. Peter Moraw argues persuasively that Henry of
Diessenhofen is here attempting to justify the place of Prague on the emperor’s itinerary after stops in Aachen,
Mainz, and Nuremberg, cities whose impeccable imperial credentials did not need to be repeated (“Zur
Mittelpunktsfunktion Prags,” 457–58). Prague’s inclusion among these cities was indeed remarkable, but one
should not conclude that contemporaries generally considered Prague to be the empire’s preeminent city.
19
For an introduction to the substantial literature, see Michal Svatoš, ed., Dějiny univerzity Karlovy I: 1347/48–1622
[History of Charles University] (Prague, 1995); recently scholars have debated how soon after its 1348 foundation
charter the university in fact began to function: e.g., Peter Moraw, “Die Prager Universitäten des Mittelalters im
europäischen Zusammenhang,” Schriften der Sudetendeutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste 20
(1999): 97–129; František Šmahel, “Die Anfänge der Prager Universität: Kritische Reflexionen zum Jubiläum eines
‘nationalen Monuments,’” Historica NS 3–4 (1996–1997): 7–50.
DAVID C. MENGEL18
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between Bruges and Venice.20
Certainly his court, the new religious institutions, the university,
and the countless construction projects drew scholars and stonemasons, artists and artisans,
from throughout the region and beyond. From German university masters to Avignon
craftsmen, they combined with immigrants from rural Bohemia to swell the population, even
if parts of the expansive intramural area remained sparsely populated.
European, especially Czech, scholars have long noticed the remarkable effects of Charles IV’s
ambitious reign on the city of Prague. Indeed, this golden age forms the centerpiece of an
alternative historiographical narrative. In this story, the later fourteenth-century witnesses
the culmination of medieval Bohemia’s power and culture. Signs of decline late in Charles’s
reign give way to serious crisis at the close of the fourteenth century, even before the Hussite
revolution breaks out. The two narratives—golden age Prague and pre-Hussite Prague—at
times coexist uneasily in the historiography. Especially problematic are attempts to
characterize Charles IV’s relation to the religious world of the Hussite forerunners. Was the
pious ruler a powerful advocate of reform? Or did he instead represent the religious
establishment against which the Hussites revolted? In other words, was imperial authority
allied with or opposed to religious reform? The single monograph dedicated to Charles IV’s
religious character does not address this issue directly. Instead, the author prefers to forge
connections between the learned ruler’s Latin works and the writings of Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, and even Dante and Petrarch.21
Other accounts have emphasized the political
significance of the emperor’s numerous religious foundations and public acts. In these
studies, the emperor’s extravagant patronage of the cult of saints at Prague’s cathedral
provides an outstanding example of what Ferdinand Seibt and now Paul Crossley have called
Charles IV’s “politics of presentation.” Crossley, in particular, has persuasively argued that
Charles self-consciously manipulated Prague’s religious architecture for dynastic and other
political ends.22
This argument for the emperor’s calculated political application of religion
does not necessarily exclude recognition of Charles IV’s personal piety: Franz Machilek’s
interprets the emperor’s strong interest in relics as evidence of both Privatfrömmigkeit and
Staatsfrömmigkeit.23
The magnificent monuments of Charles IV’s reign continue to attract the interest of art
historians in particular, as illustrated by the 2005–2006 exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York and at Prague Castle.24
The emperor left clear fingerprints on
20
František Graus, “Die Handelsbeziehungen Böhmens zu Deutschland und Österreich im 14. und zu Beginn des
15. Jahrhunderts,” Historica 2 (1960): 77–110, esp. 104–6; Jaroslav Mezník, “Der ökonomische Charakter Prags im 14.
Jahrhundert,” Historica 17 (1969): 43–91.
21
Zdeněk Kalista, Karel IV.: jeho duchovní tvár [Charles IV: His spiritual character] (Prague, 1971). Cf. J. B. Čapek,
“Karel IV. a nástup české reformace” [Charles IV and the start of the Bohemian Reformation], Křest’anská revue 45
(1978): 200–209.
22
Crossley argues, for instance, that some of the oddest elements of Prague’s cathedral must be attributed to Charles,
rather than to the architect, Peter Parler. Crossley’s important work builds upon (and provides convenient access to)
the substantial German and especially Czech literature on the architecture of Charles IV: Paul Crossley, “The Politics
of Presentation: The Architecture of Charles IV of Bohemia,” in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees
Jones, Richard Marks, and A. J. Minnis (York, 2000), 99–172, esp. 101–6, 113. See also Crossley, “Bohemia Sacra:
Liturgy and History in Prague Cathedral,” in Pierre, lumière, couleur: études d’histoire de l’art du Moyen Âge en
l’honneur d’Anne Prache, ed. Fabienne Joubert and Dany Sandron (Paris, 1999), 341–65. See also Iva Rosario, Art
and Propaganda: Charles IV of Bohemia, 1346–1378 (Woodbridge, UK, 2000); Ferdinand Seibt, “Probleme eines
Profils,” in Kaiser Karl IV.: Staatsman und Mäzen, ed. Seibt, 27–28; Seibt, Karl IV, 384–97.
23
“Privatfrömmigkeit und Staatsfrömmigkeit,” in Seibt, Karl IV, 87–101.
24
Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt, eds., Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347–1437 (New York and New Haven,
2005); also see Rosario, Art and Propaganda.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 19
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Prague Cathedral, on the sacred treasures that filled it and other Prague churches, and on the
various depictions of saints that became permanent inhabitants of his capital city. Much harder
to discern is Charles IV’s role in shaping the religious experience of the mortal inhabitants who
walked Prague’s streets during his reign. Charles IV enjoyed far less extensive control over
Prague’s multifaceted local religion than he did over, for instance, the Last Judgment mosaic
that glitters over Prague Cathedral’s south porch. Yet his powerful and regular intervention
nevertheless qualifies him as the preeminent architect of Prague’s local religion. His
ambitious projects and targeted support fostered new religious energies that animated the
city. Three examples in particular stand out. Each was associated with a single individual;
each was anchored at a single urban location. Yet all three operated within the space of one
city and were fueled by the patronage of one authority: Emperor Charles IV. Two will be
familiar to those who know the story of Jan Hus’s forerunners. The third, though
contemporary, has until recently been almost entirely neglected.
Many scholars have noted Charles IV’s obsession—that is not too strong a word—with relics
and the cult of saints. The emperor tirelessly gathered relics from across Europe, amassing a
hoard of holy bones that, proud Czech clerics later claimed, exceeded all relic-collections
outside Rome.25
Charles IV’s outspoken personal devotion to the cult of saints and his
ambitious plans for Prague together drove this activity. He attributed it to the “zeal of
devotion and love with which we are consumed for the holy church of Prague, our venerable
mother” and for the “glorious patron saints” of the Kingdom of Bohemia.26
Prague’s new
cathedral soon housed a collection of saints worthy of its status. Gathered there, the emperor
explained, the relics would benefit the entire domain.
As we have received these venerable relics by the inspiration of divine will, we have resolutely
commanded them to be bestowed generously upon our holy mother church of Prague, the head
and mistress of other churches, for the comfort of the entire realm and the crown lands of
Bohemia and for the salvation of our subjects.27
The emperor also orchestrated publicity campaigns for his new acquisitions. To celebrate the
presence of newly obtained relics, he called for city-wide processions, secured countless
indulgences, and even gained papal approval for two new feast days: the feast of the
Conveyance of the Relics and the feast of the Holy Lance and Nail (also known as the
Presentation of the Relics).28
Prominent among the new relics were bones of Saint Sigismund, the sixth-century martyrking
of Burgundy. Although nearly unknown in Bohemia, Sigismund appealed to the emperor
as a royal saint whose crown (like the crowns of Charlemagne and Wenceslas) Charles IV now
25
Bohuslav Balbin, Vita venerabilis Arnesti primi Archiepiscopi Pragensis (Prague, 1664), quoted in Antonín
Podlaha, Catalogi ss. reliquiarum quae in sacra metropolitana ecclesia Pragensi asservantur, Editiones archivii et
bibliothecae s. f. metropolitani capituli pragensis 24 (Prague, 1931), 131. See chapter 5 of my doctoral dissertation,
“Bones, Stones, and Brothels: Religion and Topography in Prague under Emperor Charles IV (1346–1378)” (PhD
diss., University of Notre Dame, 2003).
26
Antonín Podlaha and Eduard Šittler, eds., Chrámový poklad u sv. Víta v Praze: jeho dějiny a popis [The Cathedral
Treasury of St. Vitus in Prague: History and Description] (Prague, 1903).
27
Tomáš Jan Pešina z Čechorodu, Phosphorus septicornis, stella alias matutina (Prague, 1673), 436–37.
28
Pražské synody a koncily předhusitské doby [Prague synods and councils of pre-Hussite times], ed. Jaroslav Polc
and Zdeňka Hledíková (Prague, 2002), 176; Beneš Krabice of Weitmil, Cronica ecclesie Pragensis, ed. Josef Emler,
Fontes rerum bohemicarum 4 (Prague 1884), 519, 522; Monumenta Vaticana res gestas Bohemicas illustrantia, ed.
Ladislas Klicman et al., 7 vols. (Prague, 1903–1998), 2.84, no. 197; 1.672–673 nos. 1263, 1264; Francis of Prague,
Chronicon Francisci Pragensis, 211.
DAVID C. MENGEL20
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claimed.29
Art historians especially have discussed Charles IV’s interest in the political
significance of the imported cult of this martyr-king.30
Yet Sigismund’s bones served as far
more than implements of imperial propaganda. His relics arrived in Prague in 1365, at a
time when popular preachers were drawing large crowds in the Bohemian capital. On the
vigil of Saint Wenceslas, when Prague was full of visitors for the feast and the accompanying
market day, a procession ushered Sigismund’s relics into the cathedral then under
construction. Together with the castle that literally surrounded it, this cathedral served as the
symbolic center of local religion and royal authority. The morning after the relic’s translation
to the newly consecrated chapel of Saint Sigismund, the new cult captured the city’s
attention. On the feast of Saint Wenceslas and every few days thereafter for at least the next
several months, the new saint did what saints do best: he performed miracles. Of the
hundreds of relics Charles IV brought to Prague’s cathedral, only this one seems to have
healed sickness, solved problems, freed prisoners, and even raised the dead.
Scholars have ignored or forgotten the rich record of these miracles, which numbered more
than thirty over the next four months.31
Pilgrims flocked to visit the tomb of Bohemia’s newest
patron saint. They came from all parts of the city, from across Bohemia, and occasionally from
beyond. There can be no question that the emperor orchestrated the warm Bohemian welcome
for the Burgundian martyr. The prominent new chapel and the strategically timed translation
attest to this. Moreover, each parish priest in the region was ordered to announce the relic’s
arrival. Once the miracles began, Prague’s archbishop added Sigismund’s feast to the list of
obligatory holy days. Within a few years, the foreign martyr had even joined the elite
company of patron saints of Bohemia.32
None of these official acts could have been achieved
without at least the emperor’s agreement.33
With some help from his archbishop, Charles IV
brought Sigismund to Prague and established the conditions necessary for a vibrant cult. The
suggestion of a special bond between Sigismund and Wenceslas, the most revered of the
native Bohemian saints, further eased the newcomer’s acceptance.34
The emperor reinforced
and supported the veneration of the new wonder-worker, not least with a series of public
images associating himself with the Burgundian king and other patron saints of Bohemia.
Both the archbishop and the king claimed to have received healing from Sigismund.35
In
1368, the emperor even christened his third son Sigismund.
29
See Mengel, “A Holy and Faithful Fellowship: Royal Saints in Fourteenth-Century Prague,” in Evropa a Čechy na
konci středověku. Sborník příspěvků věnovaných Františku Šmahelovi [Europe and Bohemia at the end of the middle
ages: Collection of papers presented to František Šmahel] (Prague, 2004), 145–58; Mengel, “Remembering Bohemia’s
Forgotten Patron Saint,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, vol. 6, ed. Zdeněk V. David and David
R. Holeton (Prague, 2007), 17–32.
30
Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge,
2002), 327–31; Crossley, “The Politics of Presentation,” esp. 159–60; Barbara Drake Boehm, “Charles IV: The
Realm of Faith,” in Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, esp. 30–31.
31
The only surviving manuscript of this collection, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Nouvelles acquisitions Latins,
Cod. 1510, was printed by the Bollandists: “Miracula sancti Sigismondi martyris, per ipsum in sanctam Pragensem
ecclesiam manifeste demonstrata,” in Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum antiquorum saeculo XVI qui
asservantur in Bibliotheca Nationali Parisiensi, vol. 3 (Brussels, 1893), 462–69.
32
Mengel, “A Holy and Faithful Fellowship,” 149–52.
33
According to the archbishop in a 1365 synodal statute, for example, Charles IV was responsible for the order that
Sigismund’s body be laid in the cathedral (Polc and Hledíková, Pražské synody a koncily, 192).
34
This is my central argument in “A Holy and Faithful Fellowship.”
35
“Miracula sancti Sigismondi,” 469; Beneš Krabice of Weitmil, Cronica ecclesie Pragensis, Fontes rerum
bohemicarum 4.543–544; cf. Johann Friedrich Böhmer, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Kaiser Karl IV. 1346–
1378, ed. Alfons Huber, Regesta imperii 8 (1877, reprint Hildesheim, 1968), 412 no. 4972a.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 21
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Charles IV designed and constructed the Bohemian cult of Sigismund so well that it spread
across and beyond his kingdom. The surviving record of miracles testifies to the success in
his endeavors. Simultaneously, however, it delineates the limits of the emperor-architect’s
power. No cult can be successful without adherents. No miracles can be announced without
the testimony of the beneficiaries. In this case, the identities of the miracle recipients
emerge distinctly. The names so painstakingly entered in the cathedral sacristy’s little book
were no pious fictions; some can still be conclusively identified from other contemporary
documents.36
Sigismund’s Bohemian adherents were male and female, secular and clerical, from all
strata of society: at one end was a lord, at the other a blind beggar woman. They brought
with them to the cathedral all manner of troubles and joys. Some came seeking miracles,
others came to thank the saint in person for miracles already granted. The blind, the
crippled, and the injured received healing. Evil spirits were expelled, as were bugs infesting
one petitioner’s house. Those suffering from assorted bodily pains announced their restored
health. Prisoners miraculously escaped and dead infants came back to life. The devout
welcomed Sigismund as a wonder-working generalist rather than a specialist. They sought
and received relief from suffering of all kinds.37
The single extant manuscript of the miracle collection is incomplete, so it does not reveal how
long the miracles continued. It does, however, communicate the heart-pounding excitement of
the first miraculous months. Word spread quickly, outstripping even official proclamation. One
out-of-town pilgrim had prayed to the little-known saint “even though he did not know his
name, for he had recently heard that his body had been brought and that he was performing
many miracles.”38
The new cult of Sigismund, carefully designed and publicly authorized by
the emperor himself, energized the local religion of Prague. The crowds of pilgrims and the
record of the miracles they proclaimed reveal that Prague’s inhabitants responded
enthusiastically to the imperial religious propaganda.
Sigismund and the breathless reports of his miracles invigorated Prague’s local religion, but
the powerful new saint still did not dominate the urban religious culture of the day. Even as the
shrine of Sigismund drew local and regional pilgrims, two charismatic priests were attracting
local crowds and controversies: Milíč of Kroměříž and Conrad Waldhauser. Both have
figured prominently in histories of Bohemian religious reform, and for good reason. Yet their
significant contributions to Prague’s local religion cannot be reduced to pre-Hussite reform.
Each brought to Prague his own religious vision and energy, but the emperor’s support
proved just as crucial for them as for the cult of Sigismund. In these two cases, however,
Charles IV cannot have been completely pleased with the results.
Two years before the arrival of Sigismund’s relics, Milíč of Kroměříž, a Prague cathedral
canon and former member of the imperial chancery, suddenly resigned his lucrative
benefices. Yet rather than joining a religious order—the standard corollary to such medieval
conversions—Milíč became a poor preacher, eventually going from church to church in
Prague to deliver sermons in Latin, German, and Czech. For at least a century, Milíč has
36
Beneš Krabice of Weitmil describes the “libellus” in which the Sigismund miracles were recorded (Cronica ecclesie
Pragensis, Fontes rerum bohemicarum 4.533–34), evidently the origin for the surviving Paris manuscript. For the
identification of some of the miracle recipients, see Mengel, “Remembering Bohemia’s Forgotten Patron Saint.”
37
Robert Folz, who did not take this miracle collection into account, notices the same tendency among the
posthumous miracles of other royal saints (Les saints rois du moyen âge en occident (VIe–XIIIe siècles), Subsidia
Hagiographica [Brussels, 1981], 129).
38
“Miracula sancti Sigismondi,” 465.
DAVID C. MENGEL22
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been known as the Father of the Bohemian Reformation.39
Every school child in the Czech
Republic learns his name and his story. That story, however, has been sharply refracted
through the prism of the Hussites. The religious community Milíč eventually established is
normally considered the direct predecessor to Bethlehem Chapel, where Jan Hus preached.
Modern nationalist agendas also seem to have affected our understanding of him.40
Part of
the problem, in this case, comes from the sources. Two ostensibly medieval biographies
survive, but the integrity of the longer and apparently more authoritative one is now in
question. The text, known only from a seventeenth-century printed copy, was in fact
compiled from various unrelated sources. For example, some oft-repeated passages
describing Milíč’s life were originally written about Bernard of Clairvaux.41
The implications
of this new uncertainty surrounding the central source of Milíč’s life have not yet been
worked out in the scholarship. At the very least, though, this recent work confirms the
apologetic and even hagiographic character of a vita that has too often been treated as a
straightforward and reliable biography.
In keeping with Milíč’s reputation as a Reformation forerunner, modern accounts uniformly
characterize him primarily as a reform preacher. Scholars have emphasized his dedication to
preaching, his advocacy of frequent communion, and his struggles with ecclesiastical
authorities, precisely the traits that connect him with his fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
successors. Yet other elements of his career—and arguably even the aforementioned elements
—tie him even more closely to movements in late medieval religion. One scholar, for
instance, recently studied Milíč’s extremely popular Latin model sermons. He concluded that
little or nothing distinguishes their content from the sermons of other charismatic preachers
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.42
In the first years after his conversion, for
example, Milíč preached and wrote ominously about the arrival of Antichrist. His announced
intention to preach on the same theme in Rome even earned him an enforced stay among
that city’s Dominican inquisitors. Yet Milíč was hardly alone during these centuries in his
focus on Antichrist. One thinks of Birgitta of Sweden and John of Rupescissa, to name just
two.43
Similarly, one could argue that Milíč’s support for frequent communion perfectly
illustrates the broad and well-documented late medieval preoccupation with the Eucharist.44
39
“Father of the Bohemian Reformation” is the subtitle of František Loskot’s 1911 biography, Milíč z Kroměříže: otec
české reformace (Prague, 1911), which was the second volume in the series, “Great Men of the Bohemian
Reformation.”
40
Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond: Milíč of Kroměříž and the Topography of Prostitution in
Fourteenth-Century Prague,” Speculum 79 (2004): 409–12.
41
Mengel, “A Monk, a Preacher, and a Jesuit: Making the Life of Milíč,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious
Practice, vol. 5, ed. Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague, 2004), 33–47. I have also identified a previously
unknown, seventeenth-century manuscript of the same text and am currently producing a new edition of the text.
42
Peter Morée, Preaching in Fourteenth-Century Bohemia: The Life and Ideas of Milicius de Chremsir (†1374) and
His Significance in the Historiography of Bohemia (Heršpice, Czech Republic, 1999), esp. 255–60.
43
One could also include Pierre d’Ailly in this list. On the broader context, see Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two
Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco, 1994), esp. 173–99. On Milíč and Matthias of
Janov, McGinn concludes that “[b]oth men were obsessed with Antichrist and the evidence of his presence in the
world, although neither departed from the usual applied Antichrist views prevalent in the fourteenth century” (183).
44
Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991). Arguably, the same
general preoccupation with the Eucharist also later provides the context for the later Utraquist demand for
communion in both kinds for the laity. See Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot, 457–508; David Holeton,
“The Bohemian Eucharistic Movement in its European Context,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious
Practice, vol. 4, ed. Zdeněk David and David Holeton (Prague, 2002), 23–38, also available at http://brrp.org/
proceedings/brrp1/holeton.pdf.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 23
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Milíč’s more unique contribution, by far his most important for Prague’s fourteenth-century
local religion, was the experimental religious community he established near the end of his brief
career. Here the emperor’s support proved essential. After a number of Prague’s prostitutes
responded to Milíč’s preaching, the former cathedral canon began to provide for both their
physical and spiritual well-being. At that point Charles IV intervened, transferring to Milíč
the ownership of Prague’s most famous brothel, nicknamed Venice. Rechristened Jerusalem,
this community of former prostitutes also came to include Milíč’s male, clerical followers.
With a chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene and two other prostitute saints, Jerusalem
invoked an entire Christian tradition of holy harlots.45
It also offered a respectable, even
conventional response to a common urban phenomenon. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
Europe witnessed the foundation of many religious houses for former prostitutes, often with
the support of municipal, royal, or even papal authority.46
A contemporary foundation in
Avignon, for instance, enjoyed the support of Pope Gregory XI.47
Hence, Charles IV’s
provision of property for Milíč’s community should come as no surprise. As I have suggested
elsewhere, the emperor’s motives may not have been exclusively charitable. Before the
foundation of New Town, the brothel called Venice had occupied a marginal location, just
inside the Prague walls. After 1348, and especially as a result of the official unification of the
cities of Old Town and New Town in 1367, this notorious district now found itself literally
in the middle of the emperor’s capital city. So even if the idea to eradicate Prague’s most
famous brothel in 1372 came from Milíč, it must have immediately appealed to the emperor
whose authority made the transformation possible. By substituting Jerusalem for Venice,
Charles IV secured an honorable reputation for a street that his urban development had
brought to the center of Prague.48
Whatever his motives, the emperor’s support for Milíč soon stimulated unintended
controversy. However conventional its attempt to convert prostitutes to religious women,
Milíč’s Jerusalem also challenged traditional models, not only because it included followers
of both sexes. Milíč rejected the adoption of any approved religious rule, yet he demanded
strict enclosure and apparently even a common habit for the women of the community.
Even more controversially, he acquired numerous properties in the former brothel district
and (unsuccessfully) sought legal recognition of his community both as a religious house and
as a parish church. This turned both local mendicant friars and secular parish priests against
him—an unusual instance of the two groups working together in Prague toward a common
purpose. Their joint accusations brought Milíč to the papal curia, where he died while
pleading his case.49
Seventeen years later, Bethlehem chapel was established nearby. Its innovative architectural
space became a center for Czech-language preaching and eventually for Utraquism. Bethlehem’s
founders invoked Jerusalem as a model for their endeavor. But they also undoubtedly ignored
45
Ruth Mazo Karras, “Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1
(1990), 3–32.
46
Leah Lydia Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (Chicago,
1985), 72–76; Iwan Bloch, Die Prostitution, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1912), 820–21; James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and
Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), 211–12, 395–96; František Graus, “Randgruppen der
städtischen Gesellschaft im Spätmittelalter,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 8 (1981): 405–6.
47
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ: The Avignonese Repenties in the Late Middle Ages,”
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 1 (2002): 110–44.
48
Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond,” 439–40.
49
Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond,” 434–38; Jiří Kejř, “Žalobní članky proti Milíčovi z Kroměříž”
[Articles of accusation against Milíč of Kroměříž] Husitský Tabor 10 (1988–1991): 181–89.
DAVID C. MENGEL24
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more aspects of Milíč’s community than they emulated. If one sets aside the later Utraquist
appropriation of its legacy, the extremely short-lived community of Jerusalem can be
categorized far more convincingly as one more example of what Kaspar Elm has called the
vita semireligiosa: an experimental, late medieval middle way between monastic and secular
spirituality, in this case with reformed prostitutes providing the bulk of its membership.50
The vision for this community belonged to Milíč, but Jerusalem came into being only after
Charles IV ordered the destruction of Prague’s most famous brothel and the transfer of its
property to Milíč. That does not mean that the emperor embraced Jerusalem wholeheartedly.
Nor does it unequivocally establish Charles IV as a patron of religious reform.51
Certainly
his support for this community proved fleeting once local accusations against Jerusalem led
to charges of heresy before a papal court. Rather than defending the vulnerable institution
after Milíč’s death, the emperor instead quickly transferred its property to the Cistercians.
Only two years after Jerusalem’s foundation, a new college for Cistercian students of
theology took its place. Perhaps Charles IV hoped that this dramatically different religious
community would erase the unintended and embarrassing results of his support for the
controversial Milíč.52
The Cistercian college secured for this former center of prostitution the
solidly respectable reputation that a traditional, uncontroversial religious community could
provide. The emperor who painstakingly strove to make Prague a worthy capital city surely
took some solace in that, at least.
Charles IV may have been the most influential architect of Prague’s local religion, but even
his power to control it remained limited. Not surprisingly, the results of his numerous projects
and interventions varied. If his efforts to establish a Prague-centered cult of Saint Sigismund
could hardly have hoped for better success and his deft transfer of Jerusalem’s property to
the Cistercians smoothed over an unfortunate local controversy, the emperor’s patronage of
another zealous preacher inadvertently rekindled a long-smoldering local tension that
brought disorder and even violence to the emperor’s city. The preacher was Conrad
Waldhauser, a famously charismatic Augustinian canon whom Emperor Charles IV lured to
Prague from Vienna, probably in 1363.53
Before Milíč of Kroměříž embarked on his own
preaching career in Prague, Waldhauser was drawing both crowds and controversies to the
parish church of Saint Gall (Svatý Havel). The great flocks of faithful, Waldhauser claimed,
forced him to preach outdoors on the square that today still houses a large market.
Preaching in German, he chided Prague’s wealthy women for dressing too luxuriously. He
also targeted usury and especially simony—as had reforming preachers, prelates, and canon
lawyers across Europe since the eleventh century.54
Almost immediately, a coalition of
Prague’s mendicant friars began complaining to the archbishop that this newcomer, an
Augustinian canon living apart from his community, was unjustly attacking them and their
reputation among Prague’s laity. The resulting controversial documents provide much of
50
Kaspar Elm, “Vita regularis sine regula: Bedeutung, Rechtsstellung und Selbstverständnis des mittelalterlichen und
frühneuzeitlichen Semireligiosentums,” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, ed. František Šmahel
(Munich, 1998), 239–73.
51
See Čapek, “Karel IV. a nástup české reformace,” 200–209; cf. Zdeňka Hledíková, “Karel IV. a církev” [Charles IV
and the church], in Karolus Quartus, ed. Václav Vaněček (Prague, 1984), 149–50.
52
Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem,” 439–40.
53
The most extensive treatment of Waldhauser remains František Loskot, Konrad Waldhauser: Řeholní kanovník sv.
Augustina, Předchůdce Mistra Jana Husa [Conrad Waldhauser: Augustinian Canon, Forerunner of Master Jan Hus],
(Prague, 1909); see also Franz Machilek, “Konrad Von Waldhausen (Waldhauser)” in Die deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, vol. 5 (Berlin, 1985), 259–68; Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot, 248–67.
54
Beneš Krabice of Weitmil, Cronica ecclesie Pragensis, Fontes rerum bohemicarum 4, 540.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 25
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what we know about Waldhauser’s impact on Prague. According to Waldhauser and his later
admirers, the corrupt mendicants opposed him for one reason: they were guilty of the sins
he sought to root out. No one, claimed Waldhauser, had preached the truth in Prague before
his own arrival.55
Waldhauser’s self-justifying version of events nicely anticipates tales of brave, sixteenthcentury
reformers standing up to the privileged power of corrupt priests and monks. Largely
on the basis of his own account, Waldhauser has since the time of Palacký counted as the
first of Jan Hus’s local forerunners.56
Yet when viewed in the context of the contemporary
local religious culture, rather than of fifteenth- or sixteenth-century reform, the preacher’s
zeal begins to look not precocious but conventional, not to mention partisan. Waldhauser,
for instance, brought with him to Prague a hearty animosity toward the friars who, in Prague
and elsewhere, competed with parish clergy to provide pastoral care—and to receive the
monetary gifts that traditionally acknowledged such care. This rivalry between friars and
secular priests was a fixture of late medieval urban life across Europe, all the more in cities
such as Prague where mendicant and secular masters had become rivals for university chairs
and students as well. Throughout Europe, secular priests hurled accusations against
mendicant friars, often in the language of the friars’ most famous thirteenth-century critic,
William of Saint-Amour.57
Prague was no exception. Thirty years before the arrival of Waldhauser and his fiercely
antimendicant sermons, the same rivalry had erupted into street battles between the respective
lay supporters of the friars and the parish priests. At that time, the hostile stalemate following
this notorious “battle of the clergy” had been resolved only when Charles himself, then the
young Margrave of Moravia, dragged the two parties to the negotiating table.58
Far from
championing the antimendicant Prague bishop and the secular priests against the friars, the
emperor-to-be powerfully intervened in the interest of compromise and peace.59
Three decades later, Emperor Charles IV brought Conrad Waldhauser to Prague, just as the
duke of Austria had previously called him to Vienna.60
Reports of Waldhauser’s preaching had
apparently impressed Charles.61
The renowned preacher would make a splendid addition to the
city’s religious culture. The thought of luring the Vienna fixture away from the Habsburg duke
may also have brought the Luxemburg emperor some satisfaction. Supported by an out-of-town
parish benefice controlled by Charles IV, Waldhauser quickly drew the expected crowds in
Prague.62
If one believes the friars’ complaints and Waldhauser’s boasts, the Austrian
55
Conrad Waldhauser, “Apologia Konradi in Waldhausen,” in Geschichtschreiber der husitischen Bewegung in
Böhmen, ed. Konstantin Höfler, vol. 2, Scriptores rerum Austriacarum 1.6.2, (1865; reprint Graz, 1965), 18, 26.
56
Palacký, Die Vorläufer des Husitenthums in Böhmen; František Loskot, Konrad Waldhauser.
57
For William of Saint-Amour and the antimendicant tradition, Penn Szittya’s study remains one of the best places
to start: The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton, 1986).
58
Peter of Zittau, Chronicon Aulae Regiae, ed. Josef Emler, Fontes rerum bohemicarum 4 (Prague, 1885), 321;
Jaroslav Kadlec, Das Augustinerkloster Sankt Thomas in Prag vom Gründungsjahr 1285 bis zu den Hussitenkriegen,
mit Edition seines Urkundenbuches, Cassiciacum 36 (Würzburg, 1985), 38–39; 223–25 no. 71; 168–69 no. 35.
59
Jaroslav Kadlec, Das Augustinerkloster Sankt Thomas in Prag, 36–39; see also Hledíková, Biskup Jan IV. z Dražic,
128–32; Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot, 235–47.
60
Ferdinand Menčík, “Konrad Waldhauser, mnich řadu svatého Augustina” [Conrad Waldhauser, a monk of the
Order of St. Augustine], Pojednání královské české společnosti nauk 6, řady díl 1. Třida pro filosofii, dějepis a
filologii 1 (1881): 15 no. 2, 18 no. 4.
61
Höfler, “Apologia,” 37.
62
Libri confirmationum ad beneficia ecclesiastica Pragensem per archidiocesi, vol. 1.2, ed. Joseph Emler (Prague,
1874), 16. Waldhauser held a benefice at the parish of All Saints in Litoměřice, where both the Dominicans and
the Franciscans had communities.
DAVID C. MENGEL26
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preacher won the hearts of most of his Prague listeners in the 1360s. In doing so, however, he
created a sensation that the emperor had almost certainly not intended. As the fiery newcomer
gained supporters, mendicant preachers lost their audiences. When called to answer charges
brought by a mendicant coalition to the archbishop’s court, Waldhauser led an unruly mob
to the hearing, an unmistakable display of his local power. As his agitated supporters crossed
the city, they yelled insults and even spat at the frightened Dominicans whose house
happened to lie along their path.63
Eventually the resulting legal dispute even drew in the
master general of the Dominican order himself.64
In his own vigorous defense, the Austrian
preacher did not hesitate to remind his opponents of his powerful patrons. When accused of
serving a Prague parish church unconnected with his Austrian house of Augustinian canons,
Waldhauser boldly reminded the Archbishop of Prague that letters from the Rosenberg
(Rožmberk) lords of southern Bohemia and the emperor himself had already “fully
informed” the prelate of the canon’s status in Prague.65
Waldhauser, the handpicked favorite
of the emperor, spent the rest of his career in a series of struggles with local friars. He died
in 1369 shortly after returning from Rome, where he had been litigating against Prague
mendicants before the papal curia.
Waldhauser’s own account of his Prague activities paints him as an unjustly accused
reformer struggling against corrupt enemies. Modern historians have followed Palacký in
interpreting Waldauser’s preaching in the context of the Bohemian Reformation, carefully
noting that Hus and other reforming preachers in later centuries repeated some of
Waldhauser’s favorite themes.66
They have generally not noticed, however, that Waldhauser
himself tended to express these and similar themes in terms borrowed from William of
Saint-Amour’s widely copied thirteenth-century attacks on the friars. For example, when
Waldhauser warned his listeners against those who “penetrate houses” to deceive women, he
was invoking a Biblical label that William of Saint-Amour had made synonymous with the
friars.67
Waldhauser’s controversial preaching had deep roots, in other words, in a
widespread antimendicant tradition reaching back more than a century. For Waldhauser and
other leading late medieval opponents of the friars like Richard FitzRalph, Nicholas of Jauer,
and Conrad Megenberg, opposition to the mendicants and moral reform were two aspects of
a single endeavor. Waldhauser believed that the moral condition of Prague’s laity indicated a
failure of pastoral care and that blame for that failure rested squarely on the shoulders of the
friars. Even their preaching against sin, he charged, was compromised by their dependence
on begging. Accordingly he accompanied every major message of his preaching with an
antimendicant rant. For Waldhauser and his fellow antimendicant preachers, friars
themselves were the central problem of late medieval religion.68
Scholars who have situated
63
Höfler, “Apologia,” 19–20; 29–30.
64
Ibid., 23–25.
65
Ibid., 36; 21; 32–33.
66
For example, Jana Nechutová, “Konrád Waldhauser a myšlenkové proudy doby Karla IV” [Conrad Waldhauser and
the currents of thought in the time of Charles IV], Sborník prací filosofické fakulty Brněnské Univerzity B 26/27 (1979–
1980): 51–57; Nechutová, “Raně reformní prvky v ‘Apologii’ Konráda Walhausera” [Early reforming elements in the
‘Apologia’ of Conrad Waldhauser], Sborník prací filosofické fakulty Brněnské Univerzity E 25 (1980): 241–48. Cf.
Nechutová, “Die charismatische Spiritualität in Böhmen in der vorreformatorischen Zeit,” Österreichische Osthefte 39
(1997): 411–19. For a more detailed account of the historiography, see Mengel, “Bones, Stones, and Brothels,” chapter 3.
67
Höfler, “Apologia,” 23; the Biblical warning against those who “penetrate houses” appears in 2 Timothy 3.6;
Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition, 58.
68
For the struggles of Waldhauser and the other traditional pre-Hussite forerunners with Prague friars, now see
Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot, 231–324.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 27
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Waldhauser’s antimendicant struggle within a teleological narrative of pre-Reformation reform
have at least implicitly agreed that late medieval opposition to the Franciscans, Dominicans, and
other friars can be interpreted in itself as evidence of precocious reform.
Some of Waldhauser’s fourteenth-century contemporaries offer another perspective. For
them, Waldhauser’s opposition to the mendicants threatened the success of his moral
reform. The two were hardly synonymous. Despite praising Waldhauser as a preacher whose
equal he had never encountered in “Germany, Bohemia, Bavaria, or France,” one writer
offered this criticism: “But he had one fault: namely, that he never wanted to stop his legal
wrangling with the mendicants.” The author considered this a serious failing, the sort that
could undermine the effect of a preacher’s labors in his parish.69
Waldhauser’s preaching
could certainly be construed as self-righteous, perhaps even self-interested, troublemaking.
Witness the synodal statute issued by the archbishop of Prague in October 1365, at the
height of the controversy stimulated by Waldhauser’s preaching:
As slander (detractio) is the step-mother of truth, the enemy of justice, the stuff of contention and
scandal, and the mother of all iniquity . . . we urge, order, and beseech all you secular and religious
clergy to abstain from slanderous words, which can give rise to scandal and spread error among
the people. For we notice that there are some who in their sermons, when they ought to bring
salubrious warnings that inspire people to devotion, instead pour forth words to disparage their
enemy. This causes disgrace and damage to those being attacked and to other listeners.70
Not all secular clergy, it is clear, approved of the strife that Waldhauser had stirred up between
secular priests and the friars, the clear target of the archbishop’s harsh warnings.
There is no evidence that Conrad Waldhauser’s notorious divisiveness caused Charles IV to
turn against him.71
Yet it would be preposterous to argue that the emperor brought Waldhauser
to Prague in order to attack the local friars.72
The seasoned ruler had a history of peacemaking
instead of partisanship in this debate. Moreover, the emperor continued to support and to
depend on the friars in Prague. Of the six new religious houses that Charles IV established
in Prague’s New Town, two belonged to mendicant orders (the Carmelites and Servites). Far
from favoring a particular type of religious ideal in opposition to others, the emperor’s
foundations testify to his universal vision for Prague. He imported Benedictines from the
Balkans who observed a Slavic rite, as well as Benedictines from Milan who used the
Ambrosian liturgy.73
Within Prague’s local universe of religious communities, the friars
enjoyed particular favor. Without the three preexisting mendicant studia, the university
established on paper by Charles IV in 1348 could hardly have come into existence: the
theology faculty’s first five professors were all mendicants from these studia.74
The emperor’s
69
“Sed unum eciam sibi defuit, scilicet quod cum religiosis ordinum mendicancium nunquam cessare voluit litigare.
Et tu tibi ergo de talibus cave, eciam cum hiis predictis vivas pacificus et cum hiis eciam, qui pacem oderunt. Hoc
tamen dico, si fieri potest, quia cum predictis litigando modicum fructum facies et in sermonibus tuis multos
supervacuos labores tibi facies in plebe” (Jan Sedlák, M. Jan Hus [1915, reprint Olomouc, 1996], 2*).
70
Polc and Hledíková, Pražské synody a koncily předhusitské doby, 190.
71
Charles IV seems to have had some role, for example, in securing for Waldhauser one of Prague’s most important
and wealthiest parishes, Saint Mary before Týn, probably around the time he resigned from his Litoměřice parish on
30 January 1365 (Menčík, “Konrad Waldhauser, mnich řadu svatého Augustina,” 30 n. 14; Libri confirmationum, vol.
1.2, ed. Emler, 59).
72
Josef Hemmerle, “Karl IV. und die Orden,” in Seibt, Karl IV, 301–5.
73
Mengel, “Bones, Stones, and Brothels,” chapter 1.
74
Peter Moraw, “Die Universität Prag im Mittelalter: Grundzüge ihrer Geschichte im europäischen
Zusammenhang,” in Die Universität zu Prag, ed. Richard W. Eichler, Schriften der Sudentendeutschen Akademie
DAVID C. MENGEL28
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strong support for the Augustinian hermits—some of the most vocal mendicant opponents of
Waldhauser—has even earned him accolades as a champion of reform and humanism! Finally,
the emperor chose as his personal confessor a Dominican friar.75
All of this evidence suggests
that the renewed animosity and even street violence instigated by Conrad Waldhauser’s
antimendicant preaching would have met with the emperor’s disappointment and disapproval.
The same people who heard the sermons of Conrad Waldhauser, the same people who
witnessed Milíč’s transformation of Prague’s most famous brothel into an experimental
religious community for priests and former prostitutes—these same people made their way
across Prague’s stone bridge and up the cobbled streets to the new Gothic cathedral on the
castle hill overlooking the city. They brought their alms and their problems to Saint
Sigismund, the new special friend of Saint Wenceslas himself. Many claimed to have
experienced miracles. All three elements contributed to Prague’s energetic and at times
volatile local religion. None would have been possible without direct intervention by
Emperor Charles IV. His ambitious vision for his capital included a transformation of the
city’s religious culture, yet only certain aspects of this transformation can be squeezed into
the distorting mold of pre-Reformation reform. Charles IV’s broad plans and direct actions
resulted in a vibrant, perhaps even unique, combination of religious energies that severally
typified late medieval urban religion. More than anyone else, Charles IV fashioned the
particular synthesis of religious culture that emerged. Yet the results must have periodically
surprised, and perhaps occasionally dismayed, the powerful architect of Prague’s local religion.
DAVID C. MENGEL is Associate Professor of History at Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH 45207. I would
like especially to thank Howard Louthan and Gary Cohen for organizing the conference “Religion and
Authority in Central Europe,” hosted by the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of
Minnesota in April 2006, for which I prepared this essay. The final version owes much to the
insightful comments and suggestions of the conference participants and also to the comments of
Daniel Hobbins.
der Wissenschaften und Künste 7 (Munich, 1986), 35; Moraw, “Die Prager Universitäten des Mittelalters,” 110–11;
Šmahel “Die Anfänge der Prager Universität, 25–31.
75
Vladimír J. Koudelka, “Zur Geschichte der böhmischen Dominikanerprovinz im Mittelalter: I: Provinzialprioren,
Inquisitoren, Apost. Pönitentiare,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 25 (1955): 96–98.
EMPEROR CHARLES IV (1346–1378) AS THE ARCHITECT OF LOCAL RELIGION IN PRAGUE 29
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