Gold Coin Charles IV. Czechoslovakia 600th anniversary of his death 1978

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Gold commemorative coin from the period of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic issued in 1978. These gold ducats of Charles IV are rarely obtained and are a great rarity in the world of numismatics.

Charles IV.

The ducat represents statehood represented by the royal seal of Charles IV. The Latin text "KAROLUS. DEI. GRA. ROMANOR. REX. SEMPER. AUGUSTUS. ET. REX. BOEMIE", means in translation "CHARLES OF GOD'S GRACE KING OF ROME AND KING OF CZECH".

Charles IV (May 14, 1316 Prague - November 29, 1378 Prague) was the eleventh King of Bohemia (as Charles I - 1346-1378), King of Lombardy (1355), King of Rome (1346-1355) and Emperor (1355-1378), King of Arelat (1365) and Count of Luxembourg (1346-1353) of the Luxembourg dynasty. Charles IV, christened Wenceslas, was born the son of Eliška Premyslovna and John of Luxembourg.

Charles was educated at the French court, where he also married the first of his four wives, Blanca of Valois. As King of Bohemia he was at the birth of the New Town of Prague and had Charles Bridge built. In 1348 he issued the foundation charter of Charles University. At his instigation, the St. Wenceslas Crown was made. He left behind several writings, among the most famous is his autobiography Vita Caroli.

At the end of October 1333, Charles returned to Bohemia and administered the Kingdom of Bohemia in place of his absent father - this was done at the instigation of the nobility. From 1334 he was the Margrave of Moravia. From the early 1340s, Charles was the favourite of the papal curia for the rank of Roman monarch against Emperor Louis the Bavarian - that is why Pope Clement VI elevated the Prague bishopric to an archbishopric on 30 April 1344 (Arnošt of Pardubice became the first archbishop). On 11 July 1346, Charles was elected by the votes of five electors to the Roman See at Rhens on the Rhine and crowned in Bonn on 26 November 1346.

After the sudden death of Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria on 11 October 1347, Charles lost his rival. Bavor's son Louis of Brandenburg did continue the fight, securing the election of King Edward III of England as Roman viceroy, but his struggle was in vain. Edward III soon resigned the imperial throne. From 1349, Charles was recognized as the sole Roman monarch.

Charles became King of Bohemia after the death of his father at the Battle of Krescak on 26 August 1346 and was crowned together with Blanka by Archbishop Arnost of Pardubice on 2 September 1347. On this occasion, Charles had a new royal crown of St. Wenceslas made, and later participated in the formulation of the coronation order. As the Czech monarch, Charles followed the Přemyslid tradition in almost everything and, after decades of strife, calmed the rivalry between the king and the nobility. He saw the Czech lands as the most stable part of the empire.

On 26 March 1348, a joint session of the imperial and Bohemian assemblies was opened - the First General Assembly. Under the leadership of Charles IV on 7 April 1348, it took many crucial decisions. The privileges of the Bohemian Kingdom were confirmed as a "particularly noble article of the Roman Empire", in the original ipsum regnum Boemie Romani regni membrum fore nobilius. For the first time, the term "land of the Bohemian Crown" was used, thus removing the old concept of it as the personal property of the monarch and the excessive personalisation in his person. Henceforth the country had primarily a king, not only the king a country.

The lands of the Crown included the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Moravian Margraviate, the Bishopric of Olomouc, the Duchy of Opava, the Silesian principalities (at that time not including Javor and Svídnice, which Charles managed to acquire later) and Upper Lusatia; from 1368 Lower Lusatia and 1373 Brandenburg (which, however, as a land with an electoral vote, could not be directly incorporated, but only joined to the Crown by a personal union).

Charles was afflicted with gout in his old age, which made it difficult for him to move and may also have been the cause of his fall, probably from a horse or down the stairs. A fractured neck of femur left him bedridden. As a result, the emperor died of pneumonia on 29 November 1378.

Czechoslovak ducats Charles IV 600th anniversary of his death issued in 1978 - 1982