"If you are to choose a new king, I advise you not to go through the forests in search of the crooked woods." The image of John the Blind in medieval sources in Bohemia
Abstrakt
Epic poets and chroniclers writing in Middle French made the Count of Luxembourg and Bohemian king John, known as the Blind, the embodiment of the ideal knightly king. On the other hand, the portrait drawn by sources written in Bohemia in the 14th century, in Latin or Czech, is much darker.
The king is reproached for his German sympathies to the detriment of the local nobility and the Czech language, two elements that are at the center of the ideal of the good king as it was constructed in Bohemia at the time. Above all, he was accused of misusing the kingdom's money to finance futile military expeditions, tournaments and foreign travel.
John would only come to Bohemia to collect funds before leaving for his beloved Luxembourg. The wilful ignorance of the authors of the Bohemian written sources in the 14th century, who refuse to understand that King John also had duties in Luxembourg and the Empire, is the reason for the persistent label of "foreign king" that sticks to John the Blind in later sources, in the collective memory, and until recently in Czech historiography.
