Charles IV, Emperor

CHARLES IV, Emperor. - Born in Prague on May 13, 1316 and died there on Nov. 18, 1378. Son of John, king of Bohemia, he succeeded his father in 1346. He was supported by the Guelph party against Louis the Bavarian, and on the death of his rival in 1347 he was elected king of Germany and crowned at Aachen on July 25, 1349. He descended into Italy through Friuli, was crowned king of Italy at Milan on Jan. 6, 1355 and then, by a cardinal deputed by Innocent VI, emperor at Rome on Apr. 5 of the same year. Having returned to Germany, he saw to definitively organizing the imperial election with the famous constitution of the Golden Bull of 1356, by which he established that the election of the emperor was reserved to a college of seven electors, namely the archbishops of Trier, Cologne, Mainz and the princes of Bavaria, the Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg. In 1365 he went to Avignon to Urban VI, by whom, on June 4 of the same year, he had himself crowned king of Burgundy at Arles. He returned again to Italy in Apr. 1368; at Udine he met with Petrarch, and in Oct. with Pope Urban in Rome. He obtained from the electors that the empire should pass to his firstborn Wenceslaus, who was also to succeed him as king of Bohemia, and he succeeded in taking from the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria the march of Brandenburg, which he gave to his secondborn Sigismund, who later became, through his marriage to Mary of Anjou, also king of Hungary. He was a great patron: he honored Petrarch, contributed to the spread of humanism in Bohemia and Germany, founded the University of Prague. He also gave great impetus to industry, commerce and agriculture.

Emma Santovico