at Prag in Bohemia.
The artists in that capital who executed the famous Golden Bull and
commenced the grand Wenzel Bible were a select band of Frenchmen and
Italians; the combined result of whose designs and labours was this very
mixture of Gothic ivy leaf and thorn with the softer Othonian and Roman
foliages and a new scheme of colour. Charles IV., son of that famous
John of Luxembourg, the blind king of Bohemia, who perished at Cr?cy,
was himself King of Bohemia as well as Emperor, and a man of brilliant
personal accomplishments and cultivated tastes in literature and art.
Becoming Emperor the very next year after his succession to the throne
of Bohemia, he fixed his residence at Prag, where he began the building
of the new city, and founded a university on the model of that of Paris,
where he had studied, and whence he had married his first wife, Blanche,
daughter of Charles, Count of Valois. His university soon attracted some
thousands of students, and with them no small crowd of literary men and
artists, both from France and Italy. The great fact, however, to
remember about Charles IV. is the Golden Bull, the masterly scheme by
which all matters concerning the election to the Empire were in future
to be settled. All the Constitutions were written in a book called, from
the _bulla_ or seal of gold which was appended to it, the Golden Bull,
of which the text was drawn up either at Metz or Nuremberg in 1356, and
many copies distributed throughout the Empire.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197