The Charters of Foundation of Prague and Naples: The Models and their Reuse

In 1348, when Charles IV, king of Bohemia and of the Romans, founded the University of Prague, he (or, better, his dictator, Nicholas Sortes) used some others sources as stylistic and argumentative models. This way, the charter of foundation appears to be a cento of other letters written for the University of Naples (founded in 1224) by Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen and his son Conrad. It is an evident example of the stylistic and functional reuse of one of the most important letter-collections of the 13th century: the rhetoric models attributed to Petrus de Vinea (maybe exported to Bohemia by Henricus de Isernia), which gained a huge diffusion and became a forceful symbol of power all around Europe.