The Story of Prague
in the monasteries to which they belonged. The lectures were at first always delivered in Latin, and it is, therefore, equally incorrect to maintain that the Prague University was at its beginning a genuinely German one as to say that it had, from the origin, a really Bohemian—national—character.
In the last years of his life Charles caused several colleges to be built for the benefit of the students. The first of these colleges was founded when Charles ‘bought the house of the Jew Lazarus in the old town,’ which afforded a dwelling-place for twelve professors. Charles also gave a library to the newly-founded college. During the reign of his son this, the most important of these foundations, was transferred to the building known as the ‘Carolinum,’ which henceforth became the centre of the University.
Everything connected with the University was to Charles of the greatest interest, and the Sovereign was often present at the ‘disputations’ which, according to the mediæval custom, took place there.
Charles was also the founder of a confraternity or guild of artists, of which painters, sculptors, wood-carvers and goldsmiths were members, and which, as Palacky says, took the place of a modern academy of arts.
Charles—who, as his very curious Latin memoirs prove—was a very devout Christian, was a great church builder. He rebuilt and enlarged St. Vitus’s Cathedral, and among his many ecclesiastical constructions the Karlov and the Church and Monastery of Emaus may be mentioned.
The great prosperity that Bohemia and Prague in particular enjoyed during the reign of Charles produced a tendency to luxury, and had a somewhat harmful influence on the morality of the people and of the wealthy clergy in particular. Thence arose a strong and general demand for Church reform which after-
