Historian Petr Čornej will introduce the personality and reign of Sigismund of Luxembourg. The lecture Sigismund of Luxembourg – Contrasting Portraits of a European Statesman will offer a new perspective on a ruler whose reputation has been controversial for centuries.
The lecture is held in Czech language.
Petr Čornej (born 1951 in Prague) is a prominent historian who specializes in late medieval history, particularly Hussitism, as well as the history of historiography. He studied history and Czech at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where he worked for several years, but spent most of his professional life at the Faculty of Education of Charles University, the Hussite Theological Faculty of Charles University, and the Literary Academy (where he served as rector from 2006 to 2010). He also worked at several research institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences and was a long-standing member of scientific, editorial, and disciplinary councils.
He is constantly involved in popularizing history. He collaborates with radio and television stations (among other things, he was the creator and expert supervisor of the series Kronika česká, broadcast in 1997–1998 by Czech Television) and contributed as a consultant to the realistic portrayal of the Middle Ages in the computer game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. His lectures and podcasts are very popular on the internet (with a total of more than 2 million views).
The highlight of Petr Čornej’s work is the monumental Jan Žižka. The Life and Times of a Hussite Warrior, which he worked on for sixteen years and which was published on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the outbreak of the Hussite Revolution. The book became a bestseller and in 2020 won two Magnesia Litera awards (Litera for non-fiction and Book of the Year). Petr Čornej has been recognized for his research before (in 2013, he received the Egon Erwin Kisch Award, and a year later, as a member of the authorial collective, he received the Magnesia Litera Award for the publishing achievement Velké dějiny zemí Koruny české [The Great History of the Lands of the Czech Crown]). His teaching activities have also received many awards.
Back
