Charles IV, Emperor

CARLO IV, IMPERATORE. – Born in Prague on 13 May 1316 and died there on 18 November 1378. Son of Giovanni, king of Bohemia, he succeeded his father in 1346. He was supported by the Guelph party against Ludovico il Bavaro and, upon the death of his rival in 1347, was elected king of Germany and crowned at Aachen on 25 July 1349. He entered Italy through Friuli, was crowned king of Italy at Milan on 6 January 1355, and then, by a cardinal delegated by Innocenzo VI, emperor at Rome on 5 April of the same year. Having returned to Germany, he definitively organized the imperial election through the famous constitution of the Golden Bull of 1356, by which he established that the emperor’s election should be reserved to a college of seven electors, namely the archbishops of Trier, Cologne, and Mainz, and the princes of Bavaria, the Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg. In 1365 he went to Avignon to Urban VI, by whom, on 4 June of the same year, he had himself crowned king of Burgundy at Arles. He returned to Italy once more in April 1368; at Udine he met Petrarca, and in October he met Pope Urban at Rome. He obtained from the electors that the empire should pass to his firstborn, Venceslao, who was also to succeed him as king of Bohemia, and succeeded in taking the margraviate of Brandenburg from the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, giving it to his second son Sigismondo, who later, through his marriage to Maria d’Angiò, also became king of Hungary. He was a great patron of the arts: he honored Petrarca, contributed to the spread of humanism in Bohemia and Germany, and founded the University of Prague. He also gave considerable impetus to industry, commerce, and agriculture.