Charles IV 1316-78
Holy Roman Emperor

He became Margrave of Moravia (1334) and gradually assumed the government of the Czech lands during the frequent absences of his father, King John, the Blind. After the latter's death (1346) he became King of Bohemia, he was elected King of Germany (1347) and crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome (1355), but unlike his predecessors tried to avoid being drawn into Italian conflicts. Instead, through shrewd diplomacy, he built up a dynastic empire based round his hereditary domains of Bohemia and Moravia, with his capital at Prague, where he founded the first university within the Empire (1348). His Golden Bull of 1356 became the new constitutional framework for the empire; it laid down procedure for the election of the monarch, excluded papal pretensions, and defined the rights of the seven electors, whose domains were declared indivisible. He was the first emperor since Frederick I, Barbarossa, to be succeeded by his son as Wenceslas IV (1361-1419).