(1356), resulted in the publication of the celebrated Golden Bull, in which the Emperor Charles attempted to codify the regulations concerning the election of the kings of Germany. The Golden Bull belongs rather to German than to Bohemian history, but it may be noted that it contains a reaffirmation of all the privileges formerly granted to the lands of the Bohemian, and that it contained a special paragraph which decreed that the sons of the Electors and other German princes were to learn the Bohemian language, as it was a language respected in the Empire and useful to them.[1]
The Golden Bull was not favourably received by the Holy See, as its regulations concerning the election of the German kings tacitly ignored certain undefined claims to influence these elections which the Popes had several times raised. The friendship between Emperor and Pope decreased for a time, and the latter even favoured the plan of certain German princes to depose the Emperor Charles.
The Emperor, though he has always by German historians been accused of undue subserviency to the Holy See, showed great firmness on this occasion. At an Imperial Diet, which assembled at Maintz in 1357, the Emperor very strongly opposed the demand of the papal legate who was present, that a tithe should be collected from the German clergy for the benefit of the papal court. Charles called on the bishops to pay greater attention to the morals and conduct of their clergy, and even threatened to seize the ecclesiastical revenues should they not be more worthily employed. Though the momentary estrangement between Pope and Emperor may have been one of the motives of the energetic language which Charles used, there is no doubt that the Emperor, a man of earnest and unaffected piety, seriously desired to reform the habits and morals of the clergy.
At no time, indeed, was such a reformation more necessary. Warfare, tournaments, hunting, and gambling were widely spread among the clergy, and immorality was almost universal, the law of celibacy having fallen into complete neglect.[2] This degraded condition of the clergy produced
- ↑ Tomek.
- ↑ Baron Helfert, Hus und Hieronymus, p. 18, says that the immorality of the clergy was then so great that some parishes even considered it desirable that their priests should live in concubinage, "hoc modo proprias uxores tutiores ab insidiis existimantes." This cannot be considered as a party statement, as Baron Helfert's book is written from a strongly Catholic point of view.
