Under this beneficent rule Prague promised to become the chief city of Germany, and the balance of power and of civilisation was transferred from the west to the east. Charles, undoubtedly, looked forward to securing for the House of Luxemburg a position almost exactly similar to that afterwards attained by the House of Hapsburg; and he trusted that his descendants would enjoy, as the Hapsburgs did in later times, an unbroken and quasi-hereditary succession to the imperial throne. And his more sanguine schemes did not stop at this point. He founded in Prague a cloister of Slavonic monks, collected from Bosnia, Servia, and Croatia, whose task was to draw closer the bonds between Bohemia and the eastern Slavs, and ultimately to pave the way for a union between the Latin and Greek Churches. If this dream had been fulfilled, the Luxemburg House might have founded a power greater than that of any Emperor, and Bohemia, which has always been a triangular wedge thrust from the east into the west, might have become a rivet between the two great divisions of the Continent. In 1354 Charles IV. set out for Italy to receive the Lombard crown at Milan, and the imperial crown in Rome. [Sidenote: Charles IV. in Italy.] From the Ghibelline point of view his journey was ignominious, but as throwing light upon Charles’s policy it was of great significance. He refused to be drawn into the vortex of Italian politics, or to break his treaty with the Pope. To the representations of the Ghibelline leaders, as to the eloquent appeals of Petrarch, Charles turned a deaf ear. He entered Rome to be crowned, paraded the streets in his imperial robes, and then retired outside the walls to San Lorenzo. With as little delay as possible, he hastened on his return journey. It was a deliberate renunciation of the claim of the mediæval Emperors to rule in Italy. Charles saw clearly that Germany had been ruined by the attempts of its rulers to make their monarchy in Italy a practical force, and in the interests of Germany he refused to imitate the folly of his predecessors. His main object was the reconstruction of an orderly and efficient authority in Germany, and that object could only be achieved by resolutely cutting himself free from the entanglement of Italian ambitions.