The history of fifteenth-century Prague is a history of conflicts, and these conflicts fundamentally shaped the lives of most inhabitants of the Old Town and the New Town of Prague. The causes of communal disputes lay in legal, political, social, religious, and economic issues.
One of the principal sources of rivalry between the communities of the Old Town and the New Town stemmed from the efforts of the New Town burghers to place themselves on an equal footing with their Old Town counterparts in virtually all respects. Political and power-related considerations underpinned competition over the privileged position of the Old Town Hall within the political landscape of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Questions of social prestige were reflected in conflicts between the ruler and urban elites over municipal autonomy. Equally pronounced was the antagonistic relationship between burghers and the mere inhabitants of the city, whose economic and political rights were limited. A conflict of a similar nature emerged between craft production and trade, touching upon the antiquity of burghers’ rights, as they were unwilling to relinquish their privilege to brew beer and trade in it. The Hussite Revolution introduced a religious dimension into Prague’s social environment, replacing the pre-revolutionary national conflicts.
Prague society in the fifteenth century was by no means harmonious, and tensions among its inhabitants were as palpable as they are in twenty-first-century Prague. One of the aims of this book is therefore to demonstrate that the nature of communal conflicts has not differed significantly between the Middle Ages and the present, as such conflicts arise from the very essence of urban existence itself.
Author(s):
Martin Nodl
Publisher: Karolinum
Language: Czech
Place: Prague
Year: 2023
Pages: 308
ISBN: 9788024657103