Publication details
Jak se stal Václav II. roku 1285 králem
| Title in English | How Wenceslaus II became king in 1285 |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Pro pana profesora Libora Jana k životnímu jubileu |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | Wenceslaus II; Rudolph I of Habsburg; fief; crown; Czech lands; Holy Roman Empire; |
| Description | In 1285 Wenceslaus II stopped using the title of Inheritor and Lord of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia in his charters and began using the title of King of Bohemia and Margrave of Moravia. Previous research attributed this change in title to the meeting of Wenceslaus II and the king of Holy Roman empire, Rudolph I of Habsburg, in Cheb in January 1285. Here the young Přemyslid was supposed to have accepted the Czech lands as a fief from his father-in-law Rudolph, and with it the rank of king. Historians today look upon this explanation with scepticism, just as they refuse to trust a report from the Vienna chronicles (Continuatio Vindobonensis), stating that Rudolph the King of the Romans himself crowned Wenceslaus as the King of Bohemia in Cheb. This study points to the plausibility of these annals, the records for which were written at the same time as the events described. In the second stage the study examines the meaning of the secular coronations at the hands of the Roman-German kings or emperors. In the 12th and 13th centuries this ritual at the imperial court was not only significant for conferring the rank of king, as the coronation by the emperor or king was also connected with the recognition of sovereignty. However, the idea that the rulers of the Holy Roman empire would place the crowns on subordinate kings did not disappear with the arrival of the 13th century. In this context the report from the Vienna chronicles of how „dominus R. Romanorum rex in Egra […] in regem Boemie coronavit” Wenceslaus II, appears as entirely plausible and corresponds to the historical practices of the imperial court. The Cheb coronation of the young Přemyslid as the King of Bohemia could have been related to the fact that after this event Wenceslaus began to use the title “rex Bohemie”. |
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