Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/34

 Louis XI, though there is fortunately no other similarity between the Bohemian sovereign and the King of France. The complete list of the relics which Charles presented to the various churches of Bohemia fills six folio pages in the work of the learned Jesuit Balbinus.

On the other hand, it is but just to state that Charles was by no means lenient to the evil ways of the Bohemian clergy nor always so subservient to papal authority, as his nickname would appear to indicate. At the Imperial Diet held at Mainz in 1357, Charles strongly opposed the claims of the papal legate who demanded that a tithe for the papal court should be collected from the German clergy. On the same occasion Charles also requested the bishops to be more attentive to the morals and conduct of their clergy, and even threatened to seize the ecclesiastical revenues, should they not be more worthily employed. It is also a proof of the independent mind of Charles that he granted his protection to the mystical Bohemian Church reformer Milic, who not only severely blamed the terrible immorality of the Bohemian clergy, but even in dogmatic matters differed from the Church of Rome.

If we consider the great personality of its author, the Vita Caroli is a somewhat disappointing book. As Dr. Friedjung, who has written an able though somewhat one-sided life of Charles, states, it is mainly a description of the Lehrjahre (learning-years) of the prince; for Charles's autobiography ends with the year 1346. The book can be divided into two parts. The first, in which Charles writes of himself in the first person, contains reminiscences of his early youth up to the year 1340. The second, which is very short, and in which Charles writes of himself in the third person,