After the battle of Nikopolis (September 28, 1396),
Sigismund turned to securing his Hungarian lands. This
left Wenceslas, after a ten-year absence from Germany,
faced with an angry crowd of princes at the imperial
diets of Nuremberg (1397) and Frankfurt (1398). The
four Rhenish electors issued a series of demands. The
Landfriede and Schism were perennial sticking points.
Wenceslas’s elevation of Giangalleazzo Visconti to the
duchy of Milan (April 11, 1395) also provoked the elec-
tors’ ire. In June 1400 the Rhenish electors demanded
that Wenceslas appear before them to answer to their
complaints. Their request coincided with a renewal
of hostilities among Wenceslas, Jost, and the nobles.
Wenceslas’s Bohemian problems did not, in the eyes
of the electors, excuse his refusal to appear. On August
20, 1400, the four Rhenish electors declared Wenceslas
deposed and elected the count palatine, Ruprecht III,
king of the Romans.
Wenceslas refused to recognize his deposition, but
he was too occupied with Bohemian affairs to do much
about it. The death of Ruprecht of the Palatine in 1401
presented Wenceslas with an opportunity to regain the
German throne. Unfortunately he could not count on
support from his family. Indeed, both Sigismund and
Jost were able to secure election to the imperial throne.
Jost’s death—perhaps from poison—in January 1411
cleared the way for an agreement between Sigismund
and Wenceslas. The latter agreed to relinquish his Ger-
man crown in return for half the imperial revenues and
recognition of his position in Bohemia.
The last years of Wenceslas’s reign in Bohemia saw
the beginnings of a religious and political crisis that
would later erupt in the Hussite revolution. Since the
time of Charles IV, a series of radical preachers, among
them Conrad Waldhause, Jan Milíc, and Matthew of
Janov, had been attacking the higher clergy. The mar-
riage between Anne of Bohemia and Richard II of
England led to the growth of a Wycliffi te faction among
Czech scholars at the University of Prague. Jerome
of Prague, along with his student Jan Hus, appeared
as leaders of the Wycliffi te Czechs. The ideological
struggles were connected with political struggles in the
university between the Czech minority and the three
German-dominated “nations.”
After the Roman pope Boniface IX (1389–1404)
supported the Rhenish electors in 1400, Wenceslas
turned to support the Czech reformers. He agreed to
recognize the Council of Pisa (1408) and at the council
of Kutná Hora ordered the German masters of the
university to do so as well. The Kutná Hora decrees
(January 18, 1409) broke the Germans’ control over
the university, giving the Czech nation three votes
to one for all three of the German nations. A number
of German masters left, later forming the core of the
University of Leipzig.
The principal architects of the Czech victory were
Jerome of Prague, Jan Hus, and Jakoubeck of Stríbro. In
the wake of the Kutná Hora decrees, Archbishop Zdynek
of Prague (1399–1411) excommunicated a number of
royal offi cials and placed Prague under the interdict.
Wenceslas ordered the city’s clergy to ignore the decree.
Zydnek agreed to submit to the king, but then fl ed the
kingdom, seeking the aid of Emperor Sigismund. The
archbishop died in Bratislava in September 1411, and
after his departure, the Hussite movement became more
radical. A group of reformers began calling for the
administration of the cup to the laity (utraquism). In
1412 Hus and Jakoubek publicly declared the Roman
pontiff to be antichrist, leading to their excommunica-
tion. Along with the new archbishop, Conrad of Vechta,
Wenceslas made a furtive attempt to restore Catholicism.
Hus turned to the nobility for support, and at a synod
in February 1413, Wenceslas again changed his mind,
ordering the archbishop’s commission to declare that
there was no heresy in Bohemia.
In 1414 Emperor Sigismund requested that Hus
appear before the Council of Constance to explain his
program. Under a guarantee of safe-conduct, Hus went
to Constance but soon found himself imprisoned. Over
250 Czech nobles protested this action, but to no avail.
On July 6, 1415, Hus was burnt as a heretic in Constance.
Reprisals against other Hussites had already begun.
The German burghers of Olomouc had burned two lay
preachers a week earlier; Jerome of Prague was burnt
in May of the following year. Hus’s death led fi fty-eight
Hussite nobles to form a Hussite league in September- A Catholic alliance followed a month later. In
1416 Wenceslas again tried to restore Catholicism
in Prague, but resistance from the university faculty
and nobility forced a compromise on the question of
utraquism.
The election of Pope Martin V in 1417 increased
pressure on Wenceslas to take a hard line against the
heretics. In the spring of 1419, Wenceslas arrested
priests in Prague who granted the cup to the laity, and
appointed Czech and German Catholics as Bürgermeis-
ter (mayors) in the Nové Mesto. On July 30, 1419, the
radical preacher Jan Zelivsky led a procession through
the city to the New Town Hall demanding the release of
imprisoned Utraquist priests. A scuffl e broke out, and
thirteen of the council members were thrown out the
window. The fi rst defenestration of Prague led to the
outbreak of a great revolt. Not long after, on August 6,
1419, Wenceslas died. While most works ascribe his
death to a stroke, research by a Czech neurologist sug-
gests that the actual cause of death was acute alcohol
poisoning.
Wenceslas was married twice, to Johanna of Bavaria
(d. 1386) and Sophia of Bavaria (d. 1425). He had no
children and all his lands fell to Emperor Sigismund.
WENCESLAS