The Petition of the Bohemian Estates to Sigismund of Luxemburg in the Year 1419: Analysis of the Sources

Abstract

The paper examines the Old Czech and the Middle High German versions of the petition that was sent to Sigismund of Luxemburg by the Bohemian estates after the death of his brother King Wenceslas in 1419. The author has drawn the conclusion that both versions did have a common Old Czech archetype that was modified in both cases. The German translation is to be considered as the final version received by Sigismund: it had been composed not by the court chancery, but by the petitioners themselves. As lay people they have partly ignored, partly misunderstood what the Bohemian clergymen and scholars have expressed in the archetype: 1) the papal charters that set the divine service to a stop they considered being such document that set somebody to an office; 2) two requests are excluded from the final version, the first request demanding the unobstructed promotion of a master degree to the students of Prague university and second one asking for the convocation of a new council of the Catholic Church that would legitimate the utraquism; 3) the noetic notion of freedom from the Old Czech version («the freedom to God’s Law and God’s Word») has been profanized in the final German version: it has been considered a privilege to be granted by the monarch («the freedom of God’s Law and Word… to all Christian people»), while the utraquism is said to be not only the Law of God, but also as a terrestrial law allegedly imposed by King Wenceslas and to be renewed by his brother.