Bohemia
This article is about the historical region in central Europe; for other uses, see Bohemia (disambiguation).Bohemia (; ) is a
historical region in central Europe, occupying the western and middle thirds of the
Czech Republic. With an area of 52,750 sq. km. and 6.25 million of the country's 10.3 million inhabitants, Bohemia is bounded by
Germany to the northwest, west and southwest,
Poland to the north-east, the Czech province of
Moravia to the east, and
Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the
Šumava, the
Ore Mountains or
Giant Mountains as part of the
Sudeten mountains.
Note: In the Czech language there is no distinction between adjectives referring to Bohemia and the Czech Republic, i.e.
český means both Bohemian and Czech.
|
Historical map with Bohemia proper outlined in pink, Moravia in yellow, and Silesia in orange |
|
The Banner of Arms of the King of Bohemia |
Roman authors provide the first clear reference to this area as
Boiohaemum,
Germanic for "the home of the
Boii", a
Celtic people. As part of the territory often crossed during the major
Germanic and
Slavic migrations, the area was settled from the 1st century BC by Germanic (probably
Suebic) peoples including the
Marcomanni. After their migration to the southwest, they were replaced around the
6th century by the Slavic precursors of today's
Czechs.
After freeing themselves from the rule of the
Avars in the
7th century, Bohemia's Slavic inhabitants came (in the
9th century) under the rule of the
Přemyslid dynasty, which continued until
1306. With Bohemia's conversion to
Christianity in the 9th century, close relations were forged with the East
Frankish kingdom, then part of the so-called
Carolingian empire, later the nucleus of the
Holy Roman Empire of which Bohemia was an autonomous part from the
10th century.
The first to use the title of "King of Bohemia" was
Boleslav I after
940, but his heirs again used the title of
Duke. The title of
king was granted to the
Premyslid dukes
Vratislav II (
1085) and
Vladislav II (
1158), and became hereditary (
1198) under
Ottokar I, whose grandson
Ottokar II (king
1253"
1278) founded a short-lived empire also covering modern
Austria. The mid-
13th century saw the beginning of substantial German immigration as the court sought to make good the losses resulting from the brief
Mongol invasion of
1241. In
1346,
Charles IV became King of Bohemia. In
1348 he founded central Europe's first university in
Prague. His reign brought Bohemia to its peak both politically and in total area, resulting in his being the first King of Bohemia to be elected as
Holy Roman Emperor. Under his rule, the Kingdom of the Bohemian Crown included such diverse lands as
Moravia,
Silesia,
Upper Lusatia and
Lower Lusatia,
Brandenburg, an area around
Nuremberg called New Bohemia,
Luxembourg, and several small towns scattered around Germany.
During the ecunemical
Council of Constance in summer of
1415, the rector of the
University of Prague and prominent reformer and religious thinker
Jan Hus was sentenced to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. The verdict was passed despite the fact that Hus was granted formal protection by the Emperor
Sigismund of Luxemburg prior to the journey. Hus was invited to attend the council to defend himself and the Czech positions in the religious court, but with Emperor's approval, he was executed at the stake on
July 6.
It was this event, and also the
crusade against
heresy declared by the
Pope, that made the open anti-Catholic sentiment present in the Bohemian lands to burst into the movement of the Hussite. The period is nowadays known as the
Hussite Wars.
The uprising, largely a popular movement, was led by a former mercenary,
Jan Zizka of Trocnov, who was fifty years old at the time. Zizka took the chalice as his symbol and led a peasant Hussite army against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire. As the leader of the Hussite armies, Zizka did not lose a battle thanks to innovative tactics and weapons he had developed, such as
howitzers. The pistol (from a Czech píšťala, the flute) and fortified wagons in the
Wagenburg were revolutionary in his time and established his place amongst the greatest generals of all time.
After Zizka's death,
Prokop the Great took over the command for the army, and he would make the Hussites taste victories for another ten years to the sheer terror of Europe, until the fellow Bohemians, the Utraquists, reunited with the Catholic Church and destroyed the Hussite army in the
Lipany, and thereby Czechs successfully defeated their own kind. King Sigismund said after the battle that "Only the Bohemians could defeat the Bohemians."
Despite of the victory, the Bohemian Utraquists were still in the position to negotiate
freedom of religion in
1436. This happened in the so-called Basel Compacts, declaring the Peace and Freedom between Catholics and Utraquists. But that would only last for a short period of time, because as in
1462,
Pope Pius II declared the Basel Compacts to be invalid.
In 1458,
George of Podebrady (Jiří z Poděbrad) was elected to ascend to the Bohemian throne. He is remembered for his attempt to set up the pan-European "Christian League", which form all the states of Europe into a sort of community, based on religion. In the process of negotiating, he appointed
Leo of Rozmital (Lev z Rozmitalu) to tour the European courts and to conduct the talks, however the negotiations were not completed because George's position was substantially damaged over time by his deteoriating relationship with the Pope.
In
1609, the Bohemian King
Rudolph II, who himself was Roman Catholic was moved by the Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of
1575. Therefore Bohemia enjoyed a real religious freedom between 1436 and 1620, and in fact, it became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period of time.
In 1618, opposition to
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor as King of Bohemia resulted into outbreak of the
Thirty Years' War, and another, alternative Protestant king,
Frederick V, Elector Palatine was called for the Bohemain throne. However, after the defeat in the
Battle of White Mountain in
1620, the plans were ruined and the
Protestant nobility was either expelled at large from the country to the exile, or straight-away executed.
Until the so-called "renewed constitution" (obnovené zřízení zemské, Die Verneuerte Landesordnung des Erbkönigreichs Böhaims) of 1627, the German language was established as a second official language in the Czech lands. The Czech language remained the first language in the Kingdom, but not for long.
Both the German language and the Latin were widely spoken among the ruling classes and the German language was becoming increasingly more and more dominant. Also the formal independence of Bohemia was further jeopardized when in
1749 the Bohemian Diet approved the so-called Pragmatic Sanction. This document included the indivisibility of the Habsburg empire and the centralization of the rule, and practically, it made the Royal Bohemian Chancellery to merge with the Austrian Chancellery. (The pragmatic sanction document is also important because it confirmed the female succession in the ruling house.)
At the end of the 18th century, the Czech national revivalist movement, in cooperation with a part of the Bohemian aristocracy, started a campaign for restoration of the Kingdom's historic rights, whereby the Czech language was designed to become restored in the process. Coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1792 and minor language concessions were the first modest results of the movement. The movement became stronger and more influential, and Czech politicians participated fully and actively in the 1848 revolution. However, the revolution was not successful. The old Bohemian Diet, one of the last remnants of the independence, was dissolved. But thanks to the effort, the Czech language was rescued.
In 1861, the new, an elected Bohemian Diet was established. The renewal of the old Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia and Duchy of Silesia) became the official political program of both Czech liberal politicians and the majority of Bohemian aristocracy ("state rights program"), while parties representing the German minority and small part of the aristocracy proclaimed their loyalty to the centralistic Constitution (so-called "Verfassungstreue"). In 1867, a parallel movement in Hungary achieved an establishment of a dual Habsburg monarchy ("Austria-Hungary"), while an attempt to establish a tripartite monarchy (Austria-Hungary-Bohemia) in 1871 failed. However, the "state rights program" remained the official platform of all Czech political parties (except for social democrats) until 1918.
|
Bohemia within Czechoslovakia in 1928 |
After
World War I, Bohemia became the cornerstone of the newly-formed country of
Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia became a rich and liberal democratic republic, and
Tomáš Masaryk was elected as its first president.
Following the
Munich Agreement in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans, were annexed to Germany"it was the first and only time in the whole history of Bohemia that it was divided. Between
1939"
1945, the remaining part of Bohemia together with
Moravia formed the German
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (
Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren) under the Occupation.
Agnes of Bohemia (Sv. Anezka Ceska, 1211"1282) was the first saint from a Central European country to be canonized by
Pope John Paul II before the 1989 "
Velvet Revolution".
After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in
1993, Bohemia became part of the new
Czech Republic.
The Czech constitution from 1992 refers to the "citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia" and proclaims continuity with the statehood of the Bohemian Crown. Bohemia is not currently an administrative unit of the Czech Republic. Instead, it is divided into
Prague, the
Central Bohemian Region, the
Pilsen Region, the
Carlsbad Region, the
Usti nad Labem Region, the
Liberec Region, the
Hradec Kralove Region, and parts of the
Pardubice,
Vysocina,
South Bohemian and
South Moravia (only Jobova Lhota) regions.
*
Bohemia (for other definitions)
*
Bohemian*
History of Bohemia*
History of the Czech lands*
List of rulers of Bohemia
