I 152 Robert Novotný Prague and Kutná Hora The arrival of Sigismund of Luxembourg to Prague at the end of August 1436 fully demonstrated that written guarantees might not mean much. The presence of a large Catholic court, with a number of prelates who had begun to openly restore pre-revolutionary conditions, marked the first great disillusionment. The Catholic nobility began to flock to Prague again to participate in the post-war restoration of the country-wide authorities. With the help of Sigismund, moderate Hussites came to power in Prague, and were able to find common ground with the Catholics. They retained power even after Sigismund’s death (December 9, 1437) and the demise of his successor, Albert of Habsburg, shortly afterwards (October 27, 1439). Although Prague immediately passed a resolution forbidding the communion sub una after Albert’s death (aimed especially at canons and friars), this was a defensive act that did nothing to change the rapprochement between the two confessions in the capital, which continued throughout the 1440s.11 An unmistakable sign of the Catholic restoration was the renewal of monastic life. Though surviving testaments show that donations favouring these institutions increased, the same ones also record the memory of Utraquist schools or hospitals, showing the complexity of such sources. This represented a continuation of pre-Hussite donation activity, where donors were concerned with saving the souls of relatives entombed there, or confirming or expanding the donation activities of their ancestors. Bequests to monasteries peaked in 1448, when they appeared in more than a third of all wills.12 In addition to the monastic milieu, the Utraquist monopoly within the university was also broken. Already Sigismund’s privilege of July 1435 provided for the arrival of Catholics, requiring that “the masters who would return again, and other foreigners, should not oppress those who receive [communion] under both kinds; they should be considered good Christians and sons of the Holy Mother Church.”13 The negative reputation of the University of Prague at first discouraged foreign students, but it welcomed the first two in 1442, and after the dispute at the University of Vienna in 1443, the gates of the University of Prague were further opened to foreigners. Of the 26 masters graduated in the next four years, half came from abroad.14 The strengthening of the Catholic confession received a further boost with the visit of the papal legate Juan Carvajal in 1448. The victorious campaign of papalism against conciliarism, which was the sole guarantor of the Compactata in the Roman Church, caused great concern among the Utraquists. For this reason, the municipalities of Prague reaffirmed the Compactata and banned the Catholic rite in the capital shortly after the departure of Carvajal, who refused to negotiate the 11 Staří letopisové čeští od roku 1378 do 1527, eds. František Palacký and Jaroslav Charvát, Dílo Františka Palackého, 2 (Prague, 1941), no. 317, 109–10. An overview of the issue is provided by Jan Hrdina and Kateřina Jíšová, “Die Koexistenz zweier Konfessionen in Prag 1436 – ca. 1520,” in Krakau – Nürnberg – Prag: Stadt und Reformation, eds. Michael Diefenbacher, Olga Fejtová, and Zdzisław Noga (Prague, 2019), 65–88. 12 Bohdan Zilynskyj, “Postavení utrakvistické a katolické konfese na Novém Městě pražském v letech 1436–1459,” Documenta Pragensia 9 (1991): 389–405. Kateřina Jíšová, Testamenty novoměstských měšťanů v pozdním středověku, Doctoral Thesis, Charles University (Prague, 2008), 79–89. 13 Codex iuris municipalis, vol. 1, no. 134, 218. 14 See the chapter of Blanka Zilynská in this volume.
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