This thesis focuses on the Charles Bridge in Prague, which forms an important part of the changing topography of Prague as the seat of the Holy Roman Emperor. For this reason, the thesis considers first the role that the evolution of Prague's topography had on its early medieval bridges and the role of its first stone bridge in the life and the fabric of the city. The next part of this thesis examines the bridge and its tower in its chronological context – confirming Charles IV as the patron of the bridge, setting the date for the completion of its bridge tower, and supporting the role of Peter Parler in its execution. In this section, I also discuss the architecture of the bridge tower and especially its relationship with the contemporary works on Prague cathedral’s choir. Particular focus will be given to the bridge’s triradial net vault, the first of its kind in Bohemia. Iconographically, this thesis interprets the sculptural programme of the bridge tower in the context of royal and legal rituals of the city. I argue that the sculptural programme emphasizes the envisioned continuity of the Luxembourg dynasty in Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire. This sculpted tableau of royal power acted as a powerful backdrop to royal processions — most notably the pre-coronation procession — as a part of a series of genealogical stations laid out across the city. In the day to day life of Prague, the Charles Bridge is presented as a strategically important place for the execution of law and justice. Lastly, this thesis presents the changing focus of the Bohemian court after the death of Charles IV and how the emblems of Wenceslas IV, which were added to the bridge tower, demonstrate the development of a new chivalric language in the last decades of the fourteenth century.

This thesis examines the way in which members of the Bohemian estates showed their epistemology and claimed authority for the legal provisions they used in legal texts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Moreover, this thesis has a supplementary comparative element aimed at placing Bohemian laws and institutions in a broader European context. The thesis looks in particular at three legal texts from the Jagiellonian period (1471-1526) in Bohemian history. The three texts under consideration here are the 1500 Land Ordinance (Vladislavské zrízení zemské), the St. Wenceslas Day Agreement of 1517 (Svatováclavská smlouva), and the 1524 Ordinance Concerning Handguns (Zrízení o rucnicích). The 1500 Land Ordinance is particularly noteworthy, for it was Bohemia’s first authoritative law code. The St. Wenceslas Day Agreement of 1517 aimed at ending a long running conflict between the kingdom’s nobles and burghers. The 1524 Ordinance Concerning Handguns was an effort to control, rather than ban, the use of handguns in the kingdom. This thesis explores the techniques the drafters of each document employed to show that, when they looked back to customary provisions, they were using accepted and valid law. We also examine how consistently the drafters used authenticating apparatus to draw attention to the fact they were using laws that were already part of Bohemia’s legal architecture.

This thesis examines daily life in the city of Prague during the First World War and in its immediate aftermath. Its aim is twofold: to explore the impact of the war on urban space and to analyse the relationship of Prague’s inhabitants to the Austro-Hungarian and then Czechoslovak state. To this end, both the mobilization for the war effort and the crisis of legitimacy experienced by the state are investigated. The two elements are connected: it is precisely because of the great sacrifices made by Praguers during the conflict that the Empire lost the trust of its citizens. Food shortages also constitute a major feature of the war experience and the inappropriate management of supply by the state played a large role in its final collapse. The study goes beyond Czechoslovak independence on 28 October 1918 to fully grasp the continuities between the two polities and the consequences of the war on this transitional period. Beyond the official national revolution, the revolutionary spirit in Prague around the time of regime change reveals the interplay between national and social motives, making it part of a broader European revolutionary movement at the time.