the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

Chapter I Historical Roots
clearest evidence that ethnicity played
no role is provided by the siege of Kutná
Hora by Albert of Habsburg in 1304,
when that wealthiest of Bohemian (and
also European) mining towns remained
loyal to the “Czech” Přemyslids
although governed by a German
patriciate. There was also opposition to
the arrival of foreign advisers at the
court of the new King John of
Luxembourg. That was blunted by the
The Bohemian king and Emperor Charles IV (left) made Prague the capital of the Holy
Roman Empire, not just formally but also through ambitious building projects. His chief
architect was Peter Parler, a German.
bohemocentric policy of Charles IV,
that offered the Czech nobility
unprecedented scope to intervene in
politics far beyond the country’s
borders.
The fifteenth century brought a
further change, however. In addition to
the social and political factors
influencing Czech-German relations,
there was now the religious, or more
precisely, denominational factor.
NATIONALITY OR FAITH?
The source of the new divergence that
was to spill over into hostility,
particularly in the later tradition, was
the dispute over the acceptance or
rejection in Bohemia of the new
20
doctrine of Wyclifism. The teachings of
the English theologian John Wyclif
won favour particularly among the
young scholars at Prague University.
They were members of the natio
Bohemorum, one of the four university
“nations”, alongside the “Saxons”,
“Bavarians” and “Poles”. This was a
traditional organisational division of the
university, based on a territorial
principle and had nothing to do with
the ethnic origin of its members. Hence
the natio Bohemorum included both
Czechs and “local Germans”, although
the Czechs greatly outnumbered the
Germans. The Wyclifites at the
university even received the support of
King Wenceslas IV who needed the
backing of the university at the Council
of Pisa in his efforts to win back the
Roman crown. That was also the
political calculation behind the Decree of
Kutná Hora issued by the king in
January 1409.
Nevertheless, it was the reform
doctrine of Wyclif and Huss that laid
the foundations of modern Czech
patriotic thought. Moreover, the Decree
of Kutná Hora used the term nacio