Václav Žůrek – författare

The first collection of essays in the English language dedicated to the cultural achievements and politics of one of the most important ruling houses of late medieval Europe. The house of Luxembourg between 1308 and 1437 is best known today for its principal royal and imperial representatives, Henry VII, John the Blind, Charles IV, and Charles's two sons, Wenceslas and Sigismund - a group of rulers who, for better or worse, shaped the political destiny of much of Europe during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. While some of the Luxembourg cultural legacy can still be experienced directly today in and around Prague and southern Germany, and through the literary and musical works of Machaut, Froissart, and Wolkenstein, it reached much further across Europe: from England to present-day Romania, and from the Baltic Sea to the Italian peninsula, alongside the dynasty's homelands in what is now Luxembourg, Belgium and France. However, this culture has not always attracted the scholarly attention it deserves. This volume explores the pan-European impact and influence of the Luxembourgs in a variety of fields: art and architectural history, material culture, Czech, French, German and Latin text production, gender and intellectual history, and music. Embracing the subject matter from multi-disciplinary and transnational perspectives, the essays here offer new insights into the late medieval cultures of the Luxembourg court. Particular subjects treated include the making of the "Wenceslas Bible"; Machaut at the court of John of Luxembourg; and Charles IV's patronage of multilingual literature.On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND.

A critical examination of the life and legacy of Charles IV.Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, has been called “one of the most learned and diplomatically skillful sovereigns” of the fourteenth century. Having moved the seat of the Holy Roman Empire to Prague and founding the first university in Central Europe, Charles IV is a towering figure in Czech history and a crucial character in the story of medieval Europe.Recent research, especially in art history, has tended to present Charles IV in a purely positive, unblemished light: viewing him and his imperial court as the engine behind a flourishing of culture in the region. This book views Charles IV through a more critical lens, examining the careful construction that went into the way he presented himself and the characteristic manifestations of Charles’ execution of royal power. The first part of the book offers a chronological description of Charles’ life within the broader context of the times and the House of Luxembourg. The second part provides a close look into Charles IV’s style of rule while focusing on phenomena that reveal his personal conception of power and how it was wielded.