EN
Charles IV was born at a time when the worst ever famine of the last millenium peaked. His life and reign were dominated by an unprecedented burden imposed upon European society by a worsened climate, crop failures, frequent floods, desolation of the countryside and the Black Death. At the same time, the Czech Lands experienced a remarkable cultural blossoming, primarily under the baton of the sovereign and his court, alongside a phase of territorial acquisitions and a stabilisation of his political power. The author searches for an answer to this seemingly contradictory nature of those times and outlines what the contemporaries had to say about it. Indeed, Charles IV might seemingly have led his life isolated from the crisis-ridden day-to-day normality of his times. Yet, he was repeatedly a direct witness to extreme natural events, which shook the society of his time to the core and posed unusual and extraordinary challenges to it. This study merges the findings from the fields of political history, cultural history and the history of piety with the results of naturalscientific and climatic research. It, thus, aims to give us an insight into the somewhat contradictory personality of Charles IV.