The Golden Bull of Sicily

JAN 01 1212 · 12:00

The Golden Bull of Sicily itself: parchment, Latin, gold seal; the charter that makes Bohemia a hereditary kingdom. Place: Basel, the imperial chancery Figures: Emperor Frederick II (newly elected, still in his Sicilian title) · Přemysl Otakar I, king of Bohemia · the imperial chancery, drafting in Latin Frederick II is seventeen, has just crossed the Alps from Palermo, and needs Bohemian votes and Bohemian troops to consolidate his election against Otto IV. Přemysl Otakar I has backed him from the moment Innocent III did. At Basel on 26 September 1212 the new emperor issues, under a golden seal, three charters at once: the Golden Bull of Sicily proper for Přemysl Otakar, a companion bull for his brother Vladislav Jindřich the margrave of Moravia, and a charter for the bishop of Prague. The bull is short. It guarantees in seven articles that the kingship of Bohemia, granted personally to Přemysl Otakar in 1198, will descend by hereditary right; that the king of Bohemia is a prince-elector of the empire and one of the seven who choose its emperors; that the king alone presents the bishop of Prague to the emperor for investiture; that the kingdom is exempt from imperial campaigns except those near its borders; and that within his lands the king of Bohemia rules without imperial interference.