George's European Peace Proposal

JAN 01 1462 · 12:00

Mucha's Slav Epic: George of Poděbrady refuses obedience to the legate and stakes Bohemia on a treaty league of Christian princes. Place: Royal chancery, Prague Castle · embassies to Paris, Buda, Kraków, Venice Figures: George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia · Antonio Marini of Grenoble, his French diplomat · Lev of Rožmitál, his brother-in-law and ambassador · Louis XI of France · Casimir IV of Poland Under threat of crusade, surrounded by a Europe that questions his right to rule, George of Poděbrady commissions a diplomatic project of remarkable ambition. Antonio Marini, a Grenoble-born adventurer in Czech service, drafts the Tractatus pacis toti Christianitati fiendae (Treaty for establishing peace throughout Christendom) between 1462 and 1464. It proposes a permanent league of Christian European princes, governed by an assembly of envoys meeting in rotating capitals, with a common court to arbitrate disputes, a common treasury for shared defense (against the Ottomans), and a binding promise to refer all conflicts between members to the assembly before any resort to arms. Crucially, the papacy is excluded from the structure. The pope is recognized only in spiritual matters; the political authority of Christendom is vested in a federation of secular princes. For a Hussite king under threat of papal crusade, this is not subtle.