Ze zákulisí jednání o odstranění církevního schismatu, vydání Dekretu kutnohorského a sňatku Elišky Zhořelecké s Antonínem Brabantským. S edicí účtů brabantského a francouzského poselstva do Čech v letech 1408–1409
Behind the scenes of the negotiations to resolve the ecclesiastical schism, the issuance of the Kutná Hora Decree, and the marriage of Eliška of Zhořelec to Antonín of Brabant. With an edition of the accounts of the Brabant and French embassies to Bo

Author(s): Jiří Jurok, Wilken Engelbrecht, Zdeňka Schejbalová
Subject(s): Christian Theology and Religion, History, History of Church(es), Diplomatic history, Middle Ages, Theology and Religion, History of Religion
Published by: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci
Keywords: history; medieval diplomacy; the Hussite reformist nobility; the Kutná Hora Decree
Summary/Abstract: How did the Brabant and Franco-Burgundian delegations to Bohemia achieve their objectives in 1408–1409? Which group of the nobility dominated the court of the Bohemian King Wenceslas IV at the beginning of the 15th century? Who provided financial support for these delegations? It is interesting to note that at the head of the Bohemian provincial officials, the courtiers of King Wenceslas IV and their wives – who were presented with diamonds, jewellery and gold-embellished objects – stood nobles of the Hussite reformist faction: Lacek of Kravaře, Petr Zmrzlík of Svojšín, as well as the éminence grise of Wenceslas’s court, the administrator of the Kutná Hora urbury, chief scribe and principal advocate of the Kutná Hora Decree, Mikuláš Augustin. Likewise, at the head of the rewarded courtiers of King Wenceslas IV, who accompanied his niece, Duchess Eliška of Zhořelec, to her wedding to Duke Antonín of Brabant in Brussels on 16 July 1409, stood the Hussite reformist nobles: Mikeš, known as Kozíhlava, Jan Smolík of Slavice, and presumably also Voksa of Valdštejn. And the financiers of the delegations, in addition to the Brabant and French courts, and French, Brabant and German merchants, financiers and money-changers, also included Czech merchants, such as Dětřich of Aachen, the captain of the Brotherhood of the Chapel of God (established to house the imperial crown jewels), which had been administered since 1403 by M. Jan Hus of the Bethlehem Chapel. The fact that King Wenceslas IV’s court was dominated by the Hussite reformist nobility at the beginning of the 15th century became one of the fundamental errors of Wenceslas’s anti-clerical policy. Without the traditional support of the Church, which Emperor Charles IV had built up, Wenceslas’s Kingdom of Bohemia moved quite rapidly towards the Hussite Revolution of 1419, which championed a programme of radical reform of the Catholic Church and society as a whole; this event is also characterised as the first European Reformation and, at the same time, an early revolution marking the transition to a state based on the estates.

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