Anna of Schweidnitz ****************************************************************************************** * ****************************************************************************************** By Anna Košátková and Drahomír Suchánek Few medieval sovereigns could afford a long mourning over a deceased partner. Also Charles negotiating another marriage almost immediately after the death of his second wife, Anna o his case, the reason was obvious – despite two previous marriages, he was still short of a could always mean a danger of heavy fights for the vacant throne. Finally he chose a charm the Duke of Schweidnitz, Anna, a young girl already sought for by the Prague court earlier planned her as a suitable partner for his infant son Wenceslas. The prince’s sudden death these wedding projects, but the untimely death of Anna of Bavaria made Charles revert to t and marry young Anna of Schweidnitz himself. The first wedding negotiations took place in March in Vienna, where Charles met for consul neighbors, primarily the Austrian duke Albrecht II and Hungarian king Louis I of Anjou, al the Polish king Kazimierz. The marriage with Anna must therefore be understood in the cont Central European politics. Charles wanted to strengthen good relations with his neighbors, same time he supported the position of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Anna’s status may have been of the Roman and Bohemian king, but still she was a good match. After her mother, she was Hungarian king, who gradually became Charles’s key partner – the Polish-Hungarian agreemen to make Louis of Hungary the Polish king later, and his authority increased. The Polish af interesting for Charles as the Schweidnitz-Jauer Dukedom was the last Silesian enclave out of Bohemian kings. Therefore, the wedding with Anna was primarily a political and strategi The wedding probably took place in Buda, Hungary, on May 27, 1353, not even four months af of Anna of Bavaria. The guarantor of the wedding was, apart from Louis of Hungary, the bri then sovereign of the Schweidnitz-Jauer Dukedom, Bolek II. He provided the dowry for Anna stored in pledges of the towns Boleslawiec and Lwówek. Charles, as the husband, promised a wife in the amount of 15,000 talents, secured by yields from royal towns – Hradec Králové, and Polička. As Anna was the only child of then deceased Duke Henry II and her uncle Bolek childless, Anna became his heiress. Therefore, the wedding meant the future accession of S region to the Czech Crown, though further negotiation guaranteed Bolek lifetime sovereignt also the continuing reign of his wife, Agnes of Habsburg. The area was therefore annexed b 1392. There are better sources for the times of Anna of Schweidnitz than for her predecessors. T know that, for example, her personal court was probably bigger and more luxurious than the Bohemian queens. The likely reason was their position of the Roman queen and pretender of crown. This position had to correspond with her representation. In addition to usual court and marshal, she also had her own notaries, chaplains and physicians. Apart from a bigger sources, numerous iconographic items related to Anna of Schweidnitz have preserved. All av show her as a woman of extraordinary charming face. It can be seen on the busts of Charles Schweidnitz at the balcony of the Virgin Mary’s Church in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, depiction showing Emperor Augustus  “a woman clothed in sunshine” in the Emauzy Monastery in Prague, in the Chapel of the Holy Cross at Karlštejn, or the bust in the St. Stephen’s Dome in Vie best known depiction can be seen in the triforium in the St. Vitus’s Cathedral at the Prag The most important experiences of Anna’s life certainly included the Roman ride and imperi Soon after the wedding, on July 28, 1353, she was crowned the Queen of Bohemia by the arch Pardubice in Prague, and in February she became the Roman-German Queen in Aachen. The peak be the imperial coronation. The journey to Rome was long and dangerous. The monarch had to armed squad, which made the journey very expensive and unaffordable for many Roman kings. proof of Charles’s greatness, as he made not only one but two Roman rides – in 1355 and th During the first one, the Pope wasn’t continuously present in Rome as his headquarters was at the time. He therefore sent his deputy, Cardinal Pierre Bertrand de Colombier. On April cardinal crowned Charles with the imperial diadem in St. Peter’s Basilica. Anna of Schweid together with Charles, and therefore she, not long after her wedding, achieved the most pr medieval woman could ever reach. In 1358, after five years of marriage, Charles and Anna of Schweidnitz had their first dau Elisabeth for Charles’s mother. She was later married off to Albrecht III of Austria. In F the long-expected son Wenceslas was born in Nuremberg. The birth of much wanted male offsp extremely happy. When the baby was born, the emperor donated the same weight of gold – 16 Virgin Mary’s Church in Aachen. Thus he wanted to emphasize the link between the Luxembour Charles the Great, whose main place of residence was in Aachen, and was also buried there. Nuremberg were absolved from taxes for some time. Charles also released some prisoners and jewels brought from Prague and exhibited in Nuremberg. However, Wenceslas, the future four of this name, spent most of his childhood at the Prague court where his father wanted to e the help of teachers and tutors, in monarch duties. The joy about the birth of a son, and expectations related to another pregnancy of the Emp however marred by family tragedy that occurred a year later. The sources only include a sh Anna of Schweidnitz died on July 11, 1362, upon the birth of her third child. Charles beca for the third time. We don’t know the place of Anna’s death, probably either Prague or Kar know anything about the funeral ceremony either, or whether Charles IV was present. Anna o buried in St. Vitus’s Cathedral. Bibliography: BOBKOVÁ, Lenka. Územní politika prvních Lucemburků na českém trůně. Ústí nad Labem: Univer Purkyně, 1993. ČECHURA, Jaroslav – HLAVAČKA, Milan – MAUR, Eduard. Ženy a milenky českých králů. Praha: A ČORNEJ, Petr. Osudy českých králů a královen: od Přemyslovce Vratislava II. k Habsburkovi Reader’s Digest, 2013. KAVKA, František. Čtyři ženy Karla IV. Praha: Paseka, 2002.