Charles IV Dies

JAN 01 1378 · 12:00

Petr Parléř's portrait bust of Charles IV in the triforium of St Vitus, cut within a few years of the emperor's death. Place: Prague Castle, the Old Royal Palace Figures: Charles IV, in his sixty-third year · Wenceslas IV, his elder son and successor, age seventeen · Sigismund of Luxembourg, his younger son, age ten · Arnošt of Pardubice (long dead) and Petr Parléř, the survivors Charles is sixty-two. He has reigned thirty-two years as King of the Romans, thirty-one as King of Bohemia, twenty-three as emperor. The choir of St Vitus has been consecrated in 1370 with him present. The new Hungarian succession is arranged through the marriage of his daughter Mary to Sigismund. The Bohemian succession has been arranged a decade in advance: Wenceslas IV was crowned King of Bohemia in his father's lifetime, in 1363 at the age of two, and elected King of the Romans in 1376 at fifteen, to make the transition impossible to contest. In late autumn 1378 Charles falls from his horse during a hunt and breaks his femur. The wound becomes infected. He is brought back to Prague Castle and lies in the Old Royal Palace through November. Wenceslas is at his bedside. Sigismund is brought from his apanage in Brandenburg. The court chaplain reads the office of the dying.