Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/57

15 However, by a strange twist of fortune, Bohemia was spared for a while at least of all these Egyptian plagues. It was soon recognized that the rich seem to be unaffected by the diseases; for they did not live in overpopulated cities and unhygienic suburbs of the poverty-stricken plebeians. At any rate, under the rule of the Luxembourg Emperor Charles IV ( 1346–1378), Bohemia reached its peak of economic wealth and prosperity, and the King-Emperor inaugurated a new policy of tearing down old overcrowded city slums and building completely new districts, particularly in Prague, with wide streets, vineyards, and spacious palaces. Perhaps this sanitary urban re construction was one of the reasons why the plague stayed away so long from Bohemia (it appeared there only during the Thirty Years' War). Of course, the contemporaries did not explain it that way. They found their answer rather in supernatural phenomena. It became a common belief that Bohemia was under a special protection of God and St. Wenceslas, with the result that all the rich nobles of the entire continent, desirous of enjoying the cultural life in the Emperor's capital and to escape at the same time the sword of Damocles continuously hanging over their plague-infested towns, flocked in droves to Bohemia. Many famous people could be found there at one time or another; from Italy, for instance, Cola di Rienzi and Petrarch, arrived to 'pay their respects.'