Collections of relics and their role in the representation of Charles IV’s idea of statehood (Sbírky relikvií nástrojem reprezentace ideje státnosti Karla IV.)

Abstract

Charles IV accumulated collections of relics which symbolized his imperial ambi-tions: as the Holy Roman Emperor, he obtained the imperial crown jewels that he kept – along with a newly created collection of the reliquary treasure of the Bohemian Kingdom – in the Karlštejn castle. This collection, together with the relic collection of the St. Vitus Cathedral, represented his political idea of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. The relic collections were regularly shown to the large public at the Cattle Market (today’s Charles Square) and in the cathedral. The way these collections came about and the public’s interaction with them consti-tute a medieval form of the museum phenomenon and thus go beyond the contemporary pre-dominant ways of collecting objects of great value and significance as practiced by church treasuries and noble palace treasure chests.

Keywords

• relics
• relic collections
• Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV
• visual representation
• museality
• Middle Ages