Visegrád 1335 (Budapest, 2009)

The Congress of Visegrád by György Rácz

English The Congress of Visegrád

In order to understand the reasons that led to the royal meeting one needs to study the circumstances of the respective countries at the beginning of the 14th century. Although the spread of the black plague and other epidemics in this time period marked the closure of the Middle Ages in Western Europe, the culture of chivalry was at that time still in full force. The 14th century history of the three Central European kingdoms, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, features a time of progress and development reflected in similar ways in each country. At the beginning of the century all three neighbouring kingdoms had been experiencing frictions and social unrest. By the second half of the century the three leaders had managed to resolve their inner conflicts and build up strong countries. In Bohemia and Hungary the old dynasties had died out almost simultaneously at the beginning of the 1300s, while in Poland, Lokietek - who was one of the branches of the Piast dynasty - ascended to the throne. The demanding tasks that all three countries were about to face informed their relationship to one another. Wladislaw I Lokietek, Principal of Cracow (1306-1320), succeeded in unifying the fractured Polish territories and made himself king upon the approval of the Pope in 1320, thus re-making the Kingdom of Poland (ruled: 1320-1333). In Hungary, once the lineage of the Árpád dynasty ended in 1301, Charles of Anjou (1301-1342) came to the throne and, like Lokietek, commenced his reign with dedication and the gift of leadership. The Polish and the Hungarian rulers had been supporting each other in their battles against the oligarchs in their own territories, and this alliance would become a foundational pillar of Central European politics throughout the 14th century.

With the end of the Bohemian Premyslid dynasty in 1306, the adversary of the Anjous, John of Luxembourg (1310-1346), ascended to the throne of Bohemia, which brought stability in Bohemian-Hungarian relations as well. One indication of this is that Charles of Anjou, having suffered the untimely loss of his first two wives, married Beatrix of Luxembourg, sister of the Bohemian king, in 1317. The death of Beatrix in 1319, however, put an early end to this marriage. Because John did not have any more sisters, Charles resorted to asking his other neighbour,

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