Born Wenceslas (1346 - 1378), Charles was the second king of Bohemia from the House of Luxembourg, and the first king of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor.
His reign was characterised by a transformation in the nature of the Empire and is remembered as the Golden Age of Bohemia. He promulgated the Golden Bull of 1356 whereby the succession to the imperial title was laid down, which held for the next four centuries.
Charles made Prague the imperial capital and was a great builder in the city, which bears his name in many spots. Prague Castle and much of the cathedral of Saint Vitus by Peter Parler were completed under his patronage. Finally, it is from the reign of Charles that dates the first flowering of manuscript painting in Prague. In the present Czech Republic, he is still regarded asPater Patriae (father of the country).
Detail of the gold woman’s crown, which probably belonged to Blanche of Valois, first wife of the emperor Charles IV. Part of the Środa treasure, 14th century
Poor Maria Josepha of Bavaria died on this day (28 May) in 1767. Her husband was apathetic to her existence and her mother-in-law was the Empress Maria Theresa, not known for her patience with conceiving heirs!
Notable Holy Roman Commanders in the War of the League of Cognac (1526-1530)
The Italians Wars as a whole mark some of the most chaotic times the region has experienced. The Italian states at the time were ravaged by consistent infighting, French and Holy Roman incursion, Papal attempts at dominance, and eventually Ottoman Turkish interference. This maelstrom of war lasted nearly 70 years and was characterised by intense bursts of conflict that devastated the region. Powerful commanders, however, were forged in the unforgiving crucible that was war-torn Italy and today I will be highlighting some from just this small segment in the entire overarching conflict.
The conflict began as a direct result of the French loss in the previous war (lasting from 1521-1525). The French had decisively lost at Pavia and Lombardy as a whole which prompted Pope Clement VIII to arrange a formal league led by the pride-damaged French but which also included the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, and the Republic of Genoa. The Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Navarre played a small, but present role as well. Opposing this League was the Holy Roman Empire and its holdings in Spain and Sicily.
Here are some of the Holy Roman/Imperial German leaders in the War of the League of Cognac.
Alfonso d'Avalos, Marchese del Vasto. Painted by Titian in very early 1533. Housed in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Alfonso d’Avalos fought on the Imperial German side under Emperor Charles V and was appointed governor of Milan after it was seized from the Sforza family on the League’s side. He was commanded by Imperial Lieutenant of Naples, Don Hugo de Moncad, and was instrumental in the utter defeat of League forces outside of Naples in 1528. Further, for his actions he was inducted into the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. Painted by Battista Dossi (the sibling of Dosso Dossi) between 1534-1536. Housed in the Gallerie Estensi. Alfonso I d’Este had a very poor relationship with the Papacy even before this war. In 1510, Pope Julius II had excommunicated d’Este to annex his territories into Papal control. d’Este had then gone on to fight against the Papacy in the previous wars and eventually sided with Emperor Charles V as the French wanted to validate Papal claims on Ferrara.
Charles III, Duke of Bourbon. Painted sometime in the 16th century by an unknown artist. Housed in the Parc & Château de Beauregard. Charles had fought for the French for most of his career as Constable, but had severe disagreements with his treatment by King Francis I. For this, Charles conspired against Francis and defected to the Imperial German forces in 1523. Charles received a very diverse army of Italians, Germans, and Spaniards but faced grave issues regarding payment of troops (many of whom were mercenaries) and issues around food supply. His failure to control his forces resulted in the marching to Rome where he was shot and killed outside the walls which then triggered the impromptu Sack of Rome in 1527.
Ferrante I Gonzaga. Painted sometime in the 16th century by an unknown artist. I could not locate where it is housed. Gonzaga succeeded Charles III de Bourbon and was promoted to commander-in-chief of the Imperial German forces in Italy. Further, he was captain-general of the Imperial light cavalry with which he ruthlessly harassed and ambushed League forces successfully for the entire campaign. His creative and bold use of light cavalry as a critical instrument of this new mobile warfare led to him becoming a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1531 and eventually governor of the Duchy of Milan. Gonzaga was part of the forces with the Prince of Orange that crushed League forces outside of Naples in 1528.
Today, I’ll be making a simple cherry pudding recorded in the 14th century AD - from the region of the Holy Roman Empire! Cherries were (and still are) a very popular fruit to eat, given the extensive range at which they can be grown. The original recipe is recorded in The Forme of Cury - a 14th century English manuscript - but the origin of this recipe likely comes from a central European source, given the variety of recipes recorded here.
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above. Consider supporting me on Patreon if you like my recipes!
Ingredients
500g fresh ripe red cherries 200ml red wine 100g white sugar 1 tbsp unsalted butter 100g soft white breadcrumbs salt Edible flowers (e.g. clover, lavender, etc)
Method 1 - Prepare the Cherries
To begin with, we need to wash, de-stem, and stone the cherries. Do this by cutting into them carefully with a knife, before using your thumb to dig out the stone. Do this to about half a kilogram of cherries.
When your cherries have been stoned for their sins, place them into a bowl, along with 100ml (or a cup) of red wine - I used a merlot here, but a sweet dessert wine would work nicely. On top of this, also add about 50 grams of white sugar. Mix and mash everything together until it forms a very thick, lumpy soup.
2 - Cook the Pudding
At this stage, place a tablespoon of butter into a large saucepan or pot. Place this over a high heat until it starts to melt. At this point, place your breadcrumbs and cherry-wine mix into the pot, along with another 50g of sugar. Mix everything together. If it’s looking a little dry, add in another cup of wine. Put this onto a medium-high heat and let it cook away for about 10-15 minutes. Keep the whole thing stirring as you cook it, so nothing sticks and burns onto the pot.
3 - Cool and Serve
The pudding should thicken up considerably, and act like a porridge when it’s done. Let everything cool a little, before spooning into a bowl of your choice. The original recipe claims that you should decorate it with edible flowers.
The finished pudding is super sweet and flavourful. The breadcrumbs soaked up the cherry juice and wine mixture and became fantastically smooth, with a sharp undertone (thanks to the wine). If you wanted to make an alcohol-free alternative, you could use some grape juice instead!
The pudding itself can also be used as a pie or tart filling, and firms up quite nicely if baked.
Sooooooooooooooooooo, current governments enacting laws based on religious ideology, amiright? Here in the modern Western world, we’ve grown accustomed to governments largely agreeing that we have freedom from and of religion, by and large. Obviously, at some points (*ahem*), this doesn’t work out and particular individuals push for religiously motivated legislation. This usually doesn’t go well for us women. Funny that.
Often, people who want to do my head in will refer to this kind of religious influenced legislation (or, you know, executive order (*cough*)) as being ‘medieval’, which as I have pointed out severaltimes, is not helpful. More to the point, in this case it’s not even accurate, because there sort of kinda was separation of Church and State in the medieval period, at least in the Holy Roman Empire, but it worked in the exact opposite way.
So the Holy Roman Empire was essentially established on Christmas Day 800 when Charlemagnewas crowned by Pope Leo III. Charlemagne was a total bad ass, as many important historians have noted, and had essentially united all of Western Europe under his rule, for the first time since the fall of Rome. Boy had his shit on lock, unlike Leo. Leo was, shall we say, not that popular. He showed up in Aachen because he got his ass beat down while on procession through Rome, and almost got his eyes and tongue cut out.
His beat ass showed up at Charlemagne’s court, looking for protection and Charlemagne was like, ‘Hey home boy while I’m here keeping you alive, why don’t you crown me Emperor?’ Leo was like, ‘Say no more, fam’. That’s where the trouble started.
When the papacy finally got some power, they decided to straight up change the narrative on this one. It wasn’t that the Emperor was decided already, and he got a Pope in to do the honours. No no – The Pope got to decide who the Emperor was going to be and it was the crowning that signified this. Charlemagne is probs still rolling in his grave about this.
The Popes tried to justify the idea that they were kingmakers in a number of ways. One of these was by referring to the Donation of Constantine. The Donation was a document that claimed to have been written in the fourth century by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine I, (You know, him what Constantinople was named after?), and to give control over the western half of the Roman Empire to the Pope. In reality that was what we might now refer to as an, um ‘alternative fact’ (*cough*), and it was really just something made up in the eighth century when the papacy was trying to justify its existence. Anyway Popes liked this big ol’ lie and were like, yeah see, we run this show? I’ll tell you who gets to be Emperor.
The reason that they were picking Emperors at all, if they were so powerful that they were supposed to control all of Western Christendom, is because it was considered that there needed to be a separation of powers. The Church, you see couldn’t be involving itself in worldly matters, because as members of the clergy, Popes weren’t supposed to shed blood. As a result, Popes were supposed to pick Emperors in order to do all the violent shit that statecraft involved/involves.
In the fourteenth century, Pope Boniface VIII wrote about this in his 1308 bull Unum Sanctum.* He expressed this idea by saying that Popes were possessed with two ‘swords’ granted to them by God as the representatives of Christ on earth: one of spiritual power, and one of temporal. Since Popes couldn’t be violent, they granted their own ‘sword’ of temporal power to Holy Roman Emperors during the imperial coronation ceremony. All of this meant, essentially that there was no imperial power that did not flow from the papacy, and that Emperors were meant to wield their temporal power for the benefit of the papacy. Moreover, because an Emperor received his power from the Pope, if he were to piss off the papacy, or engage in sinful behaviour, the Pope should be able to depose him and go find someone more representative of the papal brand. Homeboy made it clear that ‘it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subjected to the Roman pontiff”**, Emperors included.
The point of all of this? The way the separation of Church and State went down in the medieval period was essentially the Church trying to get the Holy Roman Empire to do what it wanted because it couldn’t be violent. It used religious means to attain secular ends. Today, the opposite thing is true. The state uses its legislative power to enact secular orders based on religious ideals.
So the next time you are angry because a bunch of sad old angry men decided that they can tell women what to do with their bodies, don’t call it medieval. Call it what it is – totally fucked.
*See A. Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, Vol. II, (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879-81), pp. 1245-6. On Unum Sanctum, see Friedberg, Corpus, p. 48; Zdeněk Kalista, Renata Ferklová, Karel IV.: jeho duchovní tvář (2nd. ed.) (Praha: Vyšehrad, 2007), p. 96.
**‘Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus, definimus, et pronuntiamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis.
Illustration from Codex Rossianus 711, a 1615 manuscript copy of the Thurnierbuch (The Thurnierbuch (“tournament book”), published in 1530, is an important work on the tradition of medieval tournaments in the Holy Roman Empire.)
Of 1400AD and 800AD as pretty close together; I mean they’re both like old Europeans times or whatever. But, 1400 to 800 is the same as now to 1400. Wow dude
Stained glass window with Philip I of Castile, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, Mary of Burgundy, Bianca Maria Sforza and Archduchess Margaret in St. George’s Cathedral, Wiener Neustadt, Lower Austria; 20th century reconstrusction of a 16th century original
Elements of an armor garniture made for Reichsfreiherr Wilhelm von Roggendorf, attributed to Kolman Helmschmid and Daniel Hopfer, Augsburg, Germany, 1523, housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
As it is currently displayed, the armor represents its parade configuration, designed to mimic the clothing of the famous landsknecht mercenaries. The surviving pieces of exchange would be swapped out so the armor could be used for war or tournament.
A black an gilt half-armor in the peascod style made for Karl von Habsburg, attributed to Jakob Topf and Elias Stark, Innsbruck, Austria, ca. 1580, housed at the Kunsthistorisches Musuem, Vienna.
A rare example of a complete field armor, this armor, which was made ca. 1500-1510 in the Kingdom of Germany, is an excellent example of armor made for a larger individual than is typically seen on surviving armors. The crack that appears on the upper right-hand side of the breastplate shows that the armor was severely damaged and then repaired at some point, possibly in its working life,
A lavishly gilded tournament Half-Armor which belonged to Archduke Ernst von Habsburg of Austria, attributed to Anton Peffenhauser, Augsburg, Germany, 1571, housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Elements of an armor garniture made for Reichsfreiherr Wilhelm von Roggendorf, attributed to Kolman Helmschmid and Daniel Hopfer, Augsburg, Germany, 1523, housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
As it is currently displayed, the armor represents its parade configuration, designed to mimic the clothing of the famous landsknecht mercenaries. The surviving pieces of exchange would be swapped out so the armor could be used for war or tournament.
