George of Poděbrady

George of Kunštát and Poděbrady was born on 23 April 1420 and rose as a Hussite leader, though he kept a moderate line and tolerated the Catholic faith in a kingdom split down the middle. In 1458 he became the sixteenth King of Bohemia, earning the nicknames "King of two peoples" and "Friend of peace" for his efforts to hold the religious factions together. He spent his reign trying to broker tolerance between Hussites and Catholics in the Crown of Bohemia, walking a line that made him few friends in Rome. His larger ambition was a plan for common European Christian institutions - a confederacy of kingdoms that nineteenth-century Czech revivalists later held up as proof of his diplomatic vision. He died on 22 March 1471, remembered in modern times less as a king than as an early architect of something like European unity.