Cyprian, an educated Hesychastic-oriented monk, was one of the most important representatives of the Orthodox church in medieval Eastern Europe. All of the measures which he carried out during his time as the Metropolitan of Kiev were aimed at maintaining the unity of the metropolis, covering the whole of Eastern Europe, regardless of political divisions. He used proposals for negotiating a church union to find a solution to the situation which had arisen after the foundation of the Polish-Lithuanian union, which presented the Orthodox church with a new situation. He continued the reforms to the monasteries in the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which helped create the conditions for the development of the Russian autocephalous church. After a critical period in the 1380s, he contributed towards the restoration of the authority of the Russian metropolis and the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy.
At the Council of Constance, the issue of the Christianisation of Lithuania and Samogitia came to the fore in the dispute between the Polish-Lithuanian Union and the Teutonic Knights. The whole matter was brought about by a Polish-Lithuanian delegation (1416), which in two indictments, Proposicio Polonorum and Proposicio Samagitarum, accused the Grand Master and the Order of hostility towards the recently baptised Lithuanians and against the Samogitians, who had expressed the same willingness to accept the Catholic faith. On the contrary, the Order's delegation, calling on its own historical experience, accused the dukes of Lithuania, including King Vladislav Jagello of Poland, of hypocrisy, dishonesty and treachery. Surprisingly, the Order's reply does not call into question the very fact of the mass baptism of Lithuanians, who willingly accepted Christianity, but doubted their simple-mindedness and inability to understand the content of the creed and the significance of the ceremony they had undergone. The Polish-Lithuanian party's argument was more successful because it was based on numerous biblical motifs, such as the light and peace that Jesus Christ brought to earth and which were desired by the pagans in Lithuania and Samogitia. On the contrary, the political and historical arguments of the Order's delegation lacked a similar positive emotional charge. The practical long-term consequence of the controversy was the official baptism of the Samogitians, the establishment of a diocese (1417) and the permanent annexation of the disputed territory to Lithuania.
Bohemian prince and first king Vratislav II († 1092) encouraged the building of an exemptchapter dome, dedicated to St. Peter and Paul opposite to Prague castle. It was situated near the second important dwelling of the dynasty, the Přemyslid castle of Vyšehrad on the left shore of Vltava river. In the first years of the chapter's existence, under the rule of Vratislav II and Soběslav I (1125–1140), there were four phases of associated privilege making. The study emphases on those charters that contain the chapter's justification and some references to alleged privileges of the founder Vratislav II and pope Alexander II. The same accounts for the charter's placement in the memoria of the chapter.
The essay deals with the Czechoslovak state's measures put in place against the properties of the Liechtenstein primogeniture shortly after the liberation of the country in 1945. It analyzes the reasons behind these steps, which are apparent in the negative relationship the Czech society had towards to the family connected with events in Bohemia following the Battle of White Mountain (1620) but also in the treatment of the German speaking population in Bohemia after the Second World War (the transfer/expulsion of Germans). This all happened without regard for the foreign citizenship and status of the Liechtensteins as a ruling family in the independent Liechtenstein Principality that had remained neutral during the war. The author also links the implementation of the national administration to the post-war shift of Czechoslovak politics to the left and points to the communist-run Ministry of Agriculture, which had made the decision on the above measures. In large part the essay also deals with the defense of the Liechtensteins using diplomacy, especially to the role that Swiss diplomacy played as well as to the fruitless attempts made by the family to positively influence Czech administration.
This article by political scientist and long-standing high-ranking diplomat Roland Marxer provides an insight into Liechtenstein-Czech relations seen through the eyes of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Principality of Liechtenstein. For Liechtenstein as a state, for the princely family, but also for individual Liechtenstein nationals who did not belong to the princely family, a difficult situation arose after the Second World War, largely as a result of the Beneš decrees. Liechtenstein repeatedly stated to Czechoslovakia that it considered the confiscation of Liechtenstein property as assets of persons of "German nationality", which took place in 1945, to be an unacceptable violation of international law. Especially since the beginning of the 1990s, numerous initiatives have been taken at both bilateral and multilateral level in order to achieve lasting recognition of the sovereignty of Liechtenstein by Czechoslovakia, or more exactly, by its two successor states. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the associated changes in Eastern Europe, the European political landscape changed fundamentally, raising promising hopes for future cooperation in Europe. It must have seemed strange that three European states which were members of different European and international organizations and, as a result, were committed to cooperation that pursued the same goals, still did not have a resolution – in addition to the still unresolved issues of compensation – to mutual recognition and the establishment of diplomatic and consular relations. An agreement on the establishment of diplomatic relations and future cooperation was signed on 8 September 2009. On 7 April 2010, a Memorandum on the Establishment of the Czech-Liechtenstein Commission of Historians was signed, followed by a visit by the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs to Vaduz.
This study is concerned with the analysis of police and censorship responses to the economic, social and political preconditions of 1848 revolution in Vienna. It points out, how the reform of rural and suburban police in terms of establishing new police commissariats had failed to a large degree, depriving police authorities of permanent control of these insecure areas. Typical police measures like strict censorship of books, journals or songs, surveillance of places of tension like reforming Italian states neighboring with Habsburg province Lombardo-Venetia and precise registration of revolutionary elements, combined with competence clashes of Vienna authorities as well as personal failures of police leaders Muth and Sedlnitzky, proved to be more than insufficient in order to prevent the inevitable change of the rigid absolutistic regime in the Habsburg monarchy.
This study focuses on the memorial function of charters in the Late Middle Ages based on narrationes in Sigismund of Luxemburg's charters for Czech recipients from 1433 to 1437. This dramatic period saw the culmination of the Hussite Wars (the siege of Plzeň, the Battle of Lipany), while at the same time there were negotiations between the Hussites and the Council of Basel which resulted in the issuing of the Basle Compacts and the acceptance of Emperor Sigismund as King of Bohemia in July 1436. The author gradually describes narrationes in Sigismund's charters for Bohemian Catholics from 1433 to 1435 and 1436 to 1437, and finally also for the Utraquists from 1436 to 1437. He demonstrates that while from 1433 to 1435 the charters were a means of fixing the Catholic towns' and noble families' memory of their continued and gallant struggle against "Hussite heresy" in writing, from 1436 to 1437 Sigismund's chancery retrospectively modified the memory of the previous wars in an effort to harmonise the image created in these charters with the religious reconciliation of July 1436.
A medieval war demanded an officially written declaration. Polish war declarations from the time of war with the Teutonic Order are an integral part of war and political culture of that time. In construction the declarations were written analogically to ones in neighbouring countries. They were written in Latin, sometimes in German. In 1454 a gauche Polish language made its presence. In the last war of the Order (1519–1521), the documents were uniformly in Polish and the royal chancellery attempted with some success to establish a uniform model for the drafting of war declarations.
In Czech historiography, Prince Charles I of Liechtenstein personifies the process of the post-White Mountain confiscations and the political and social changes in the post-White Mountain Czech lands. Between 1918 and 1945 he even became the subject of historiographical and journalistic discussion within Czech historiography, which was directly linked to the foundation and strengthening of the Czechoslovak Republic. These attitudes also led to discussions between historians standing on the side of the emergent Czechoslovak Republic and historians from the circle of the Prince of Liechtenstein. Contemporary research shows that the role of Charles I of Liechtenstein was by no means straightforward. This was due to the personal ambitions of the ruler of the emergent princely house, but also because of the complex historical context, when the representatives of the Central European aristocracy were searching for a place between the estates' community and the ruling dynasty. Charles I of Liechtenstein's case was also different due to geography and the individual countries where the Liechtensteins held positions, functions and offices. In the Margraviate of Moravia in particular, Charles I of Liechtenstein was the victim of confiscation declared during the Estates' Uprising. After the uprising had been defeated he could return to the country and reclaim his land. In Bohemia, Liechtenstein was rewarded for his loyalty to the Austrian house during the rebellion by soon becoming the emperor's commissar and then the emperor's governor. It was in that capacity that he arrested and tried the main rebels and presided over their execution at the Old Town Square. In the 1620s he organised the imperial confiscations in Bohemia. In Opava, which was gradually moving towards the Silesian principality, Liechtenstein attempted to enter as the supreme ruler and organise his own confiscations from this position. However, this manoeuvre came up against the interests of Emperor Ferdinand II and his central offices, which did not agree with such a division of the monarchy. But Charles I of Liechtenstein did make gains in Moravia, where he was awarded a large amount of property from his erstwhile opponent, the rebel provincial governor Ladislav Velen of Žerotín, the most important being the domain of Moravská Třebová. Charles I of Liechtenstein died in 1627 when, from the emperor’s perspective, peace and normality had finally returned to the Czech lands. His role in the confiscation process, albeit with certain dark shadows, nevertheless contributed towards the great advancement of the Princely House of the Liechtensteins, which would last for centuries.
The present paper uses two case studies to scrutinize the many different documents emanating from the administrative needs of late medieval mercenaries and their employers. The analyzed documents come from the Moravian towns of Jihlava and Znojmo, both of which Duke Albert of Austria held in pledge during the Hussite War. The corpus consists mostly of receipts issued by the mercenaries confirming received pay, and documents, which pertain to transactions concerning compensations for damages. The sources are first classified and analyzed from the point of view of medieval diplomatics. Secondly, the study tries to reconstruct the overall expenditure for the Austrian garrisons in Jihlava and Znojmo. Thirdly, the paper discusses fruitful areas for further research based on the presented sources.