Wenceslaus (Wenceslas IV of Bohemia)
Wenceslaus IV was King of Bohemia for fifty-two years and King of the Romans for twenty-two, and was deposed from the second for doing nothing with it. Born in 1361, the son of the Emperor Charles IV, he was crowned King of Bohemia at two and elected King of the Romans at fifteen, which his father secured by extensive bribery of the electors — the last time an emperor's son was elected in his father's lifetime. He inherited in 1378, the year the Great Schism began, with rival popes in Rome and Avignon and Europe dividing between them. He never went to Rome for the imperial coronation, never resolved the schism, and spent his reign in Bohemia, mostly hunting, drinking heavily, and quarrelling with his own nobility, who imprisoned him twice. He also quarrelled with the Church. His conflict with the Archbishop of Prague ended with the vicar-general John of Nepomuk tortured and thrown from the Charles Bridge in 1393 — the origin of a cult and of a saint. The German electors deposed him in 1400 as useless and negligent, citing the schism and the disorder of the empire, and elected Rupert of the Palatinate. Wenceslaus never accepted it and kept the title. His most consequential act was the Kutná Hora decree of 1409, which reversed the voting balance at Prague university in favour of the Czech nation, drove the German masters out to found Leipzig, and delivered the university to Jan Hus. Hus was burned in 1415. The Hussite revolution began in 1419, and Wenceslaus died of a stroke weeks later.
- Lived: 1361 CE – 1419 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: head_of_state
