Bohemia

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This article is about the historical region in central Europe; for other uses, see Bohemia (disambiguation).

Bohemia (Template:Lang-cs, Template:Lang-de (Template:Audio)) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western and middle thirds of the Czech Republic. With an area of 52,750 sq. km. and 6.25 million of the country's 10.3 million inhabitants, Bohemia is bounded by Germany to the northwest, west and southwest, Poland to the north-east, the Czech province of Moravia to the east, and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Šumava, the Ore Mountains or Giant Mountains as part of the Sudeten mountains.

Note: In the Czech language there is no distinction between adjectives referring to Bohemia and the Czech Republic, i.e. český means both Bohemian and Czech.

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History of Bohemia

Roman authors provide the first clear reference to this area as Boiohaemum, Germanic for "the home of the Boii", a Celtic people. As part of the territory often crossed during the major Germanic and Slavic migrations, the area was settled from the 1st century BC by Germanic (probably Suebic) peoples including the Marcomanni. After their migration to the southwest, they were replaced around the 6th century by the Slavic precursors of today's Czechs. Image:Böhmen Mähren Österreich Schlesien.jpg After freeing themselves from the rule of the Avars in the 7th century, Bohemia's Slavic inhabitants came (in the 9th century) under the rule of the Přemyslid dynasty, which continued until 1306. With Bohemia's conversion to Christianity in the 9th century, close relations were forged with the East Frankish kingdom, then part of the so-called Carolingian empire, later the nucleus of the Holy Roman Empire of which Bohemia was an autonomous part from the 10th century.

The first to use the title of "King of Bohemia" was Boleslav I after 940, but his heirs again used the title of Duke. The title of king was granted to the Premyslid dukes Vratislav II (1085) and Vladislav II (1158), and became hereditary (1198) under Ottokar I, whose grandson Ottokar II (king 1253-1278) founded a short-lived empire also covering modern Austria. The mid-13th century saw the beginning of substantial German immigration as the court sought to make good the losses resulting from the brief Mongol invasion of 1241. In 1346, Charles IV became King of Bohemia. In 1348 he founded central Europe's first university in Prague. His reign brought Bohemia to its peak both politically and in total area, resulting in his being the first King of Bohemia to be elected as Holy Roman Emperor. Under his rule, the Kingdom of the Bohemian Crown included such diverse lands as Moravia, Silesia, Upper Lusatia and Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, an area around Nuremberg called New Bohemia, Luxembourg, and several small towns scattered around Germany.

During the ecunemical Council of Constance in summer of 1415, the rector of the University of Prague and prominent reformer and religious thinker Jan Hus was sentenced to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. The verdict was passed despite the fact that Hus was granted formal protection by the Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg prior to the journey. Hus was invited to attend the council to defend himself and the Czech positions in the religious court, but with Emperor's approval, he was executed at the stake on the July, 6th.

It was this event, and also the crusade against heresy declared by the Pope, that made the open anti-Catholic sentiment present in the Bohemian lands to burst into the movement of the Hussite. The period is nowadays known as the Hussite Wars.

The uprising, largely a popular movement, was led by a former mercenary, Jan Zizka of Trocnov, who was fifty years old at the time. Zizka took the chalice as his symbol and led a peasant Hussite army against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire. As the leader of the Hussite armies, Zizka did not lose a battle thanks to innovative tactics and weapons he had developed, such as howitzers. The pistol (from a Czech píšťala, the flute) and fortified wagons in the Wagenburg were revolutionary in his time and established his place amongst the greatest generals of all time.

After Zizka's death, Prokop the Great took over the command for the army, and he would make the Hussites taste victories for another ten years to the sheer terror of Europe, until the fellow Bohemians, the Utraquists, reunited with the Catholic Church and destroyed the Hussite army in the Lipany, and thereby Czechs successfully defeated their own kind. King Sigismund said after the battle that "Only the Bohemians could defeat the Bohemians."

Despite of the victory, the Bohemian Utraquists were still in the position to negotiate freedom of religion in 1436. This happened in the so-called Basel Compacts, declaring the Peace and Freedom between Catholics and Utraquists. But that would only last for a short period of time, because as in 1462, Pope Pius II declared the Basel Compacts to be invalid.

In 1458, George of Podebrady was elected to ascend to the Bohemian throne. He is remembered for his attempt to set up the pan-European "Christian League", which form all the states of Europe into a sort of community, based on religion. In the process of negotiating, he appointed Leo of Rozmital (Lev z Rozmitalu) to tour the European courts and to conduct the talks, however the negotiations were not completed because George's position was substantially damaged over time by his deteoriating relationship with the Pope.

In 1609, the Bohemian King Rudolph II, who himself was Roman Catholic was moved by the Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of 1575. Therefore Bohemia enjoyed a real religious freedom between 1436 and 1620, and in fact, it became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period of time.

In 1618, opposition to Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor as King of Bohemia resulted into outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, and another, alternative Protestant king, Frederick V, Elector Palatine was called for the Bohemain throne. However, after the defeat in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the plans were ruined and the Protestant nobility was either expelled at large from the country to the exile, or straight-away executed.

Until the so-called "renewed constituion" (obnovené zřízení zemské, Die Verneuerte Landesordnung des Erbkönigreichs Böhaims) of 1627, the German language was established as a second official language in the Czech lands. The Czech language remained the first language in the Kingdom, but not for long.

Both the German language and the Latin were widely spoken among the ruling classes and the German language was becoming increasingly more and more dominant. Also the formal independence of Bohemia was further jeopardized when in 1749 the Bohemian Diet approved the so-called Pragmatic Sanction. This document included the indivisibility of the Habsburg empire and the centralization of the rule, and practically, it made the Royal Bohemian Chancellery to merge with the Austrian Chancellery. (The pragmatic sanction document is also important for that he has approved the female succession in the ruling house.)

At the end of the 18th century, the Czech national revivalist movement, in cooperation with a part of the Bohemian aristocracy, started a campaign for restoration of the Kingdom's historic rights, whereby the Czech language was designed to become restored in the process. Coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1792 and minor language concessions were the first modest results of the movement. The movement became stronger and more influential, and Czech politicians participated fully and actively in the 1848 revolution. However, the revolution was not successful. The old Bohemian Diet, one of the last remnants of the independence, was dissolved. But thanks to the effort, the Czech language was rescued.

In 1861, the new, an elected Bohemian Diet was established. The renewal of the old Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia and Duchy of Silesia) became the official political program of both Czech liberal politicians and the majority of Bohemian aristocracy ("state rights program"), while parties representing the German minority and small part of the aristocracy proclaimed their loyalty to the centralistic Constitution (so-called "Verfassungstreue"). In 1867, a parallel movement in Hungary achieved an establishment of a dual Habsburg monarchy ("Austria-Hungary"), while an attempt to establish a tripartite monarchy (Austria-Hungary-Bohemia) in 1871 failed. However, the "state rights program" remained the official platform of all Czech political parties (except for social democrats) until 1918.

Image:Czechoslovakia1927.png Image:Kingdom of Bohemia.gif Image:Flag of Bohemia.svg After World War I, Bohemia became the cornerstone of the newly-formed country of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia became a rich and liberal democratic republic, and Tomáš Masaryk was elected as its first president.

Following the Munich Agreement in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans, were annexed to Germany - it was the first and only time in the whole history of Bohemia that it was divided. Between 1939-1945, the remaining part of Bohemia together with Moravia formed the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren) under the Occupation.

Agnes of Bohemia (Sv. Anezka Ceska, 1211-1282) was the first saint from a Central European country to be canonized by Pope John Paul II before the 1989 "Velvet Revolution".

After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Bohemia became part of the new Czech Republic.

The Czech constitution from 1992 refers to the "citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia" and proclaims continuity with the statehood of the Bohemian Crown. Bohemia is not currently an administrative unit of the Czech Republic. Instead, it is divided into Prague, the Central Bohemian Region, the Pilsen Region, the Carlsbad Region, the Usti nad Labem Region, the Liberec Region, the Hradec Kralove Region, and parts of the Pardubice, Vysocina and South Bohemian regions.

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