Moralitates of Charles IV
Moralitates Caroli IV
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
The Moralitates is the least studied of Charles IV's own Latin writings — a collection of moral and theological reflections on the virtues befitting a Christian ruler. Its first part is an almost verbatim Latin reworking of the Liber philosophorum moralium antiquorum attributed to John of Procida, weaving ancient wisdom into a Christian framework of kingship. Only two manuscript copies survive, including Prague National Library XIX B 5, confirming this remained a narrow court text rather than a widely diffused work. Charles composed it as a private formation document, most plausibly as instruction for his sons Wenceslas IV and Sigismund.
Why it still matters
The Moralitates can be read as an emperor's personal examination of conscience on the virtues — prudence, justice, humility — that a Christian in public leadership must cultivate; its brevity makes it a compact daily meditation for any Christian active in civic life.
Kept alongside
Vita Caroli (Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV)
Vita Caroli quarti
The Vita Caroli is one of the earliest royal autobiographies in medieval Europe, begun by Emperor Charles IV during a serious illness in 1350 that left him partially paralysed. Written in Latin and preserved in twelve manuscripts, it recounts his Parisian education under the future Pope Clement VI, near-miraculous military survivals, his practice of the canonical Hours, and his understanding of imperial power as a divine vocation. Charles explicitly modelled the text as a moral exemplum for his sons — a devotional-formation document framed by Augustinian self-examination, allusions to St Wenceslas, and echoes of the Mirrors for Princes tradition. It was translated into Czech and German in the late medieval period, indicating circulation beyond the Latin-literate court elite.
Book of Hours of the Bohemian Queen (Unknown Bohemian Royal Woman)
Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis (Bohemian court)
Pembroke College Oxford MS 20 is a Bohemian Book of Hours created at the beginning of the fifteenth century, containing extremely fine Bohemian illuminations characteristic of the Prague court style flourishing under Wenceslas IV. The manuscript is attested as having belonged to 'the Queen of Bohemia', but no secure identification of the specific Luxembourg-Bohemia queen patron — among candidates including Johanna of Bavaria and Sophia of Bavaria — has been established in published scholarship. It was loaned to Prague in 2015 for the Jan Hus commemoration exhibition as a prestige royal devotional manuscript. Its contents follow the standard Book of Hours structure: the Little Office of the Virgin, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Office of the Dead, and suffrages to local Bohemian saints.
Psalter of Wenceslas IV (Psalterium Wenceslai IV)
Psalterium Regis Wenceslai IV
Wenceslas IV owned a personal Latin Psalter decorated throughout with his distinctive heraldic and personal emblems: his coat of arms, his initial W interlaced with courtly love-knot motifs, his emblematic kingfisher bird, and repeated figures of a bath maiden carrying a bucket and sponge. The manuscript is held at Salzburg University Library and forms a companion object to the Wenceslas Bible project in testifying to the king's personal programme of devotional manuscript patronage in the 1390s. As a private Psalter for recitation, it served the most ancient continuous Christian prayer form — the chanting of all 150 psalms — within the framework of a luxury royal object. Its decorative vocabulary is drawn from the same Prague illuminators' workshop tradition visible in the Wenceslas Bible.