This was by no means a phenomenon limited to France. In Germany, particularly glorious Gothic cathedrals appeared at Cologne and Strasbourg. In the fourteenth century King John of Bohemia and his son, the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI, undertook an energetic rebuilding of Prague: giving the city a world-class university and a cathedral to match, paid for from a levy on profits from Bohemia’s rich silver mines; the cathedral was home to a glorious shrine containing the relics of Saint Wenceslas,*
