powerhouse. Taking advantage of the weak position of the German emperors,
Bohemia’s rulers now styled themselves “king.” Ottokar II (r.1253–1278) and his son
Vaclav II (r.1283–1305) welcomed settlers from Germany and Flanders and took
advantage of newly discovered silver mines to consolidate their rule. Charles IV
(r.1347–1378) even became Holy Roman Emperor. At the same time, however,
Czech nobles, who had initially worked as retainers for the dukes and depended on
ducal largesse, now became independent lords who could bequeath both castles and
estates to their children.
Despite their differences, the polities of East Central Europe c.1300 were all
(some more, some less so) starting to resemble Western European states. They had
begun to rely on written laws and administrative documents; their nobles were
becoming landlords and castellans; their economies were increasingly urban and
market-oriented; their constitutions were defined by charters reminiscent of Magna
Carta; and their kings generally ruled with the help of representative institutions of
one sort or another. All—except for Lithuania until Gediminas’s death—were
officially Christian, and even Lithuania under Gediminas supported Christian
institutions like monasteries, churches, and friaries. Universities, the symbolic centers
of Western European culture, were transplanted eastward in quick succession: one
was founded at Prague in 1348, another at Krakow in 1364, and a third at Vienna in
1365.
The Church Militant, Humiliated, and Revamped
On the surface, the clash between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII seemed yet one
more episode in the ongoing struggle between medieval popes and rulers for power
and authority. But by the end of the thirteenth century the tables had turned: the
kings had more power than the popes, and the confrontation between Boniface and
Philip was one sign of the dawning new principle of national sovereignty.
THE ROAD TO AVIGNON
The issue that first set Philip and Boniface at loggerheads involved the English king
Edward I as well: taxation of the clergy. Eager to finance new wars, chiefly against
one another but also elsewhere (Edward, for example, conquered Wales and tried,
unsuccessfully, to subdue Scotland), both monarchs needed money. When the kings
financed their wars by taxing the clergy along with everyone else (as if they were
going on crusade), Boniface reacted. In the bull Clericis laicos (1296), he declared
