Financiers to the Blind King: Funding the Court of John the Blind (1310–1346)

In current Czech — as well as in German — historiography, the history of business in the Middle Ages, and especially a study of the rulers’ finances, lies outside out mainstream research interests. This is not just because historians follow trends believed to be more attractive to readers, but also because we do not have sufficient sources from which to study financial history. Accounts of the Bohemian king and his court do not survive before the second half of the 14th century (Mersiowsky, 2008, p. 266) and the later situation for Czech lands is, unfortunately, not satisfactory either. Therefore it is not surprising that studies on the finances of earlier periods are based on documents, forms, letters and narrative sources rather than accounting records. Despite this handicap, since the 1970s Czech historians have accepted ideas from German scholarship, notably the concept of ‘Hochfinanz’ (Veronesi, 2008, p. 185), which focuses its attention not only on urban financiers as carriers of the ruler’s credit, but also on the reforms of the Imperial coinage, the impulse for which came from financiers of Lombardy. As a result of the absence of accounting sources, such studies aim more to describe financial mechanisms, and focus on prosopography and relationships within the rulers’ courts. These works generally neglect the finances of King John the Blind, to which Jarmila Hásková dedicated her brief study (Hásková, 1981).