VII.

THE REFORM MOVEMENT FROM THE DIET OF 1359 TO THE RETIREMENT OF THE GERMANS FROM THE PRAGUE UNIVERSITY.

(1359-1409.)

Many causes had paved the way for that revolution, both of thought and

## action, which marks the fourteenth century. The complete failure of the

crusades had shaken the faith of the people generally in the leadership of those princes and nobles who had organised these expeditions. The insurrection of “the Shepherds” in France had been one of the first results of this feeling; while the extraordinary performances of the Flagellants or Scourging Friars showed yet more clearly the extravagances which the popular discontent might produce.

Nor, in the general whirl of thought and feeling, was it easy to foresee on which side any new development of this feeling should be classed; whether it should be condemned as a source of heresy and a disturbance of order, or applauded as a revival of stronger faith and stricter discipline. The Dominicans and Franciscans, called into existence to combat heresy and to strengthen the Papal power, were looked upon by the secular clergy as intruders on their lawful privileges and disturbers of the peace; while the Franciscan renunciation of property gradually led them on to the advocacy of doctrines, which were at least as inconvenient to Popes and Cardinals as to the secular nobles.

It is characteristic of the way in which anxiety for their temporal possessions was colouring all the feelings of the defenders of the Church, that, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the name with which its champions were most eager to brand their opponents, as indicating the darkest shade of heresy, was the name of “Picard.” This word was a corruption of “Beghard,” the title of a Flemish sect, which had been distinguished for its devotion and zeal for prayer, but which had alarmed the rulers of the world by its advocacy of community of goods.

The confusion produced in men’s minds by the failure of the Church’s armies to recover Palestine, was still further increased by the retirement of the Popes to Avignon, and at a later time by that schism in the Papacy which followed the restoration of the Papal rule in Rome; and, along with the desire for the re-establishment of the unity of the Church, there grew the wish for a revival of peace and purity in the general life of Europe.

Of all the rulers of the fourteenth century Charles IV. seemed the most likely to guide these conflicting movements into channels, which should be at once favourable to the champions of the Papacy, and welcome to the promoters of peace and purity.

As King of Bohemia he had inherited, through his mother’s family, traditions of special devotion to the Church; and most of the circumstances of his career were of a kind to encourage the hopes of the Pope and the clergy. He had been elected to the Imperial throne, in opposition to the most bitterly anti-papal of Emperors, Louis of Bavaria; he had steadily opposed all the proposals which had been made to him, to induce him to assert his Imperial authority over the Italian cities; and he had prefaced the Majestas Carolina with an assertion of his adherence to the Catholic faith, and a denunciation of heresy. No doubt that clause in the Golden Bull which repudiated the necessity of a Papal sanction to the election of an Emperor, had drawn a protest from the Pope; but this error had surely been more than compensated for, by the zeal which Charles had shown for the restoration of the Pope to Rome, and for the maintenance of the Papal authority in Italy.

It must, then, have been with a shock of painful surprise that, in 1359, Pope Innocent VI. found himself suddenly opposed by this orthodox champion of the Church. The first cause of division had been a demand of Charles, that the Pope would repeal some decrees which hindered the Emperor from reforming the discipline of the clergy. Innocent had been so indignant at this demand, that he had tried to rouse the Electors against the Emperor; but he had wholly failed in that attempt, and had been forced to make some concessions to Charles.

The next point of difference was connected with a yet more burning question. Innocent had demanded new tithes from the princes of the Empire. Many of them had refused; and now, at an Assembly at Mainz, the Papal Legate again raised the question, possibly hoping to obtain Charles’s support. But the Emperor answered his demand by an expression of surprise, that the Pope was so much more zealous for collecting money than for reforming the morals of the clergy. Then, turning suddenly to the Dean of Mainz, who was wearing a splendid silken robe ornamented with gold, he made him exchange the magnificent dress for the simple cloth robe which Charles himself wore; and, as he put on the grand dress of the ecclesiastic, he appealed to the spectators to say if he did not now look more like a knight than a dean. This practical exhibition of clerical luxury the Emperor followed by a stern rebuke to the bishops for not enforcing a more strict decorum of life among the clergy; and he even threatened to tax their income for the support of the royal exchequer.

In Germany, unfortunately, there were many nobles who were ready to take advantage of the reforming movement to promote their own ends. That the clergy should live more simply seemed to these nobles a most desirable thing; and to help them to attain so satisfactory a condition, they proceeded to plunder their houses, and lay waste their lands. Such acts were utterly opposed to Charles’s intentions; and he checked these outrages so sternly that the Pope was once more forced to recognise him as his safest and strongest supporter. Perhaps this last circumstance made it easier for Charles to carry out his plans for reformation in Bohemia. In that kingdom, however, he worked by different methods, and with somewhat different objects from those at which he had aimed in his German schemes of reformation; for in Bohemia he trusted rather to the moral effect which could be produced by great preachers than to legislation or forcible repression.

The first of these preachers, whom the King summoned to Prague, was an Austrian named Conrad Waldhauser, who began to come prominently forward in 1360, the year after Charles’s attempt to reform the German clergy. Conrad’s preachings were largely directed against the luxury of women; but he also denounced the tyranny of the nobles and their usurious exactions from the peasantry. His fiercest attacks, however, were aimed against the Mendicant Orders, and specially against their simoniacal attempts to obtain ecclesiastical offices. It was these attacks that brought the greatest danger to the preacher; for the Franciscans were still strong in Papal support; and Conrad was summoned before the Legate to answer a charge of heresy. As both King and Archbishop stood by the accused, the attempts of his enemies were defeated; and he continued till his death in 1369 to exercise great influence in Bohemia.

But Conrad was a German, and preached, of course, in his native language; and Charles felt that, if the reformation were really to take hold of the people, they must be addressed in their own language. He therefore brought forward a preacher of a rather different type from Conrad. This was Milic of Kromĕr̆íz̆, a Moravian of rather plebeian origin. He had early attracted Charles’s attention, and had been already appointed to some office about the court in 1350. He had risen steadily in the king’s favour, and had been raised in 1363 to one of the chief posts in the Chancellery. An ascetic dislike to worldly honours now induced him to resign all these offices, in order to become a preacher. He at first retired to a living in a distant town; but, finding that the beautiful garden which was attached to the pastor’s house gave him too much pleasure, he returned to Prague, and began to preach at the Church of St. Nicholas in the Small District, and afterwards at St. Giles’s in the Old Town.

At first his Moravian accent excited some ridicule; but the eloquence and moral fervour of his preaching soon brought him large audiences; and he was at last called on to preach three times a day in different places. His horror at the evils of the time was so great that he soon began to prophesy the coming of Antichrist; and, at one time, when Charles was, as he considered, falling short of his duty, Milic even denounced the King as Antichrist. The Archbishop of Prague became alarmed at this attack, and put Milic in prison; but Charles himself never resented the opposition of those whom he respected; and Milic was set free again. Like so many of the reformers of the time, he had been greatly distressed at the retirement of the popes to Avignon; and, when Charles was trying to persuade Pope Urban V. to return to Rome, Milic went to Rome, and there also delivered his sermons on the coming of Antichrist. The Roman authorities were alarmed, and Milic was again thrown into prison; but, when the Pope actually returned to Rome, he was again set free and sent back to Prague.

He now abandoned his preaching on Antichrist, and restricted it to the advocacy of moral reforms. The death of Conrad Waldhauser made Milic the undisputed leader among the preachers of Prague; and, while the Teyn Church became the chief scene of his labours, he also prepared discourses for a preacher in another church. His most successful work was in reclaiming fallen women. Of these he had sometimes more than three hundred under his charge, whom he had rescued from an evil life; and he not only built a penitentiary for their residence, but he persuaded the ladies of Prague to give them places in their service. Charles nobly seconded his efforts by pulling down a notorious house of ill-fame, and building a church on the site of it.

But Milic’s fierce denunciations of the sins of the clergy continued to stir up enemies against him; and in 1374 Gregory XI., who had returned to Avignon, sent a warning to the King and Archbishop, as well as to the Bishops of Breslau, Cracow, and Olmütz against the danger of Milic’s teaching. He went to Avignon to defend himself; but, though he succeeded in satisfying the Pope and cardinals of his innocence, he never returned to Bohemia; for he was seized with an illness while at Avignon, and died there on St. Peter’s Day, 1374.

Milic had been assisted by his humble origin in gaining the sympathies of the poor; but even more alarming to the Germans who had gathered in Prague was Milic’s follower Thomas of S̆títný. He was descended from a noble family, and had been one of the earliest pupils of the University of Prague. He was thus able to give a more permanent literary reform to the teachings of the reformers. Nor did he confine himself, as Conrad and Milic had done, to efforts after moral improvement; for he grappled also with those more subtle questions of theology which were coming at that time into prominence. Master Eckhard, the founder of the Mystics, had been appointed at one time as Vicar-General of Bohemia. He had no doubt gained considerable influence in that country; and S̆títný’s utterances, especially about Faith and Love, were coloured by the teaching of the mystical school.

But the chief point of objection urged against S̆títný by his enemies was that he wrote in Bohemian. Since the time of Otto of Brandenburg, the German language had gained much ground in the town councils of Bohemia; and the foundation of the Prague University had brought a rush of German scholars to that city. The arrangements for the votings of the Nations had secured a predominance to the German element in the University; for not only did the Bavarian and Saxon nations represent almost exclusively the German influence; but even in the districts from which the Polish nation was drawn, there was a large German admixture. Of course those students who had come from a great distance had given a special proof of their genuine interest in learning; and they naturally looked upon themselves as the representatives of a higher culture than that of the ordinary townsfolk of Prague. Hence it came that the leading doctors of the University inclined to consider German rather than Bohemian as the suitable language for men of culture, especially when writing on abstruse subjects; and this feeling they were all the more anxious to assert, because, in the general stir of thought, a native Bohemian literature was beginning to attract attention.

Charles himself had studied the language carefully, had favoured the revival of the Slavonic ritual, and, as already mentioned, had chosen Milic of Kromĕr̆íz̆ in order to encourage the popular preaching of Bohemian. Under these circumstances, satirists, poets, and historians began to write in their native language; and the Masters of the University felt that they would have a hard struggle before they could denationalise Bohemia. They were therefore especially irritated when a cultivated nobleman like S̆títný insisted on discussing the most profound and subtle questions of theology in the Bohemian language; and this alarm was certainly not diminished when they found that he coupled these speculations with denunciations of the corruptions of the clergy, the tyrannies of nobles, and even the injustices of kings. Thus, then, a general movement for the reform of morals and the improvement of the clergy was more and more connecting itself with the struggles between German and Bohemian for the supremacy of their respective languages. It is conceivable that even so bitter a controversy as this might have been guided into more peaceable channels by a king who combined zeal for the Church, hearty appreciation of German learning, and a real enthusiasm for Bohemian traditions. But whether or not Charles would have been equal to such a task, there can be little doubt that his death in 1378, and the accession of his son Wenceslaus IV., did prepare the way for the more violent explosion which followed.

A great name is, in any case, a very dangerous inheritance; and when that inheritance implies an obligation on the heir to carry out a great work begun by his predecessor, the tradition generally involves failure and disgrace. In Wenceslaus, as in so many sons of great rulers, some of the qualities which had secured his father’s success were conspicuously wanting. Charles had known when to insist, and when to abstain from insisting, on the reforms which he had most at heart. He had known how far to go in the punishment of offences, and when to pardon graciously; above all, he had known how to respect, and even to utilise, the abilities of honest opponents. None of these lessons of statesmanship could Wenceslaus ever learn; he was absolutely without self-restraint or sense of proportion; and, consequently, though his aims were generally those of a wise and patriotic ruler, he frequently used the methods of a cruel tyrant.

Yet, with all these grave defects, Wenceslaus was far from being the unscrupulous and self-indulgent monster which his enemies delighted to paint him. In the early years of his reign his policy was wise and enlightened, though, even then, it was marked occasionally by that hastiness and uncertainty which belonged to his passionate temperament. But, in the difficult position in which he was placed, every step which he took was a dangerous one, and was certain to encounter fierce opposition.

The first work which his Imperial position imposed on him was the effort to restore order in the Church, by putting an end to the divisions between the rival Popes. In this point he wisely followed the policy of his father, and supported the claims of Pope Urban VI., who was actually living at Rome. The assembly of German princes accepted the decision of the Emperor; and at Prague he received the support both of the University and the Archbishop. But a difficulty at once arose. The Pope of Avignon was, as a matter of course, supported by the King of France; and the old traditions of the House of Luxemburg were in favour of friendly relations with the French kings. Greatly, therefore, to Urban’s indignation, Wenceslaus insisted on renewing his alliance with Charles in the next year to that in which he had recognised Urban as pope; he also refused to support that Pope in his quarrels with the House of Anjou for the possession of Sicily; and an even more vital cause of difference between Urban and Wenceslaus was the determination of the King to assert his authority over the clergy of Bohemia.

It was in these quarrels with his clergy that Wenceslaus first showed that tendency to violent methods, which undermined his own power and inflicted great injury on the cause of Church reformation. In 1385 he was involved in a quarrel with the Dean of Breslau. It appeared that a cask of beer sent to the dean by his brother had been intercepted by the Town Council, on the ground that no foreign beer should be admitted into the town. The dean, therefore, laid an interdict upon Breslau. Wenceslaus came to inquire into the matter, and demanded that the religious services should be celebrated, as long at least as he stayed in the town. The dean refused; and thereupon Wenceslaus banished the whole Chapter of Breslau from the town for two years, and handed over a large part of their property to the citizens.

But the most dangerous of his clerical enemies was the Archbishop of Prague, John of Jenstein. The Archbishop, himself of noble birth, had had a quarrel with the Marshal of the Court about certain rights of fishing on the Elbe; and, in asserting these rights, he had destroyed a weir which the marshal had made. Wenceslaus took the side of his official, and demanded that the Archbishop should make compensation. Jenstein refused; and Wenceslaus thereupon confiscated his property. But these acts, however arbitrary, might possibly have been forgotten, had they not been followed by a more celebrated quarrel.

In the year 1393 the Vice Chamberlain, who was the chief judge of the royal law-court, had put to death two priests. It is uncertain what their offences were; but the Archbishop claimed them as under his jurisdiction, and asserted that they should only have been tried in his court. About the same time, the Archbishop had wished to seize and punish certain Jews, who, after being baptised as Christians, had relapsed into Judaism. As the Jews were under the special protection of the King’s court, the Vice Chamberlain refused to surrender them to the Archbishop. For these two acts of opposition to his power, the Archbishop excommunicated the Vice Chamberlain, and denounced him as a heretic. The King received this news with great indignation; and his anger was still further quickened by a more personal insult. Not long before this time, he had recommended a special favourite to a bishopric in Pomerania; but, as the rulers of Pomerania had resisted the appointment, Wenceslaus had been unable to establish his claim. He was therefore resolved to endow a new bishopric in Bohemia, to which his nominee could be appointed; and the death of the abbot of a monastery in Prague suggested to the King the advisability of suppressing the monastery in order to obtain funds for the endowment of his new bishopric. The Archbishop opposed the creation of this bishopric as a diminution of his own diocese; and he may very likely have considered the suppression of the monastery as an act of injustice. In defiance, therefore, of the King’s order, the Archbishop directed the monks to proceed to the election of a new abbot, which they accordingly did. Wenceslaus hastened back to Prague in great indignation; and the Archbishop fled to the Castle of Raudnice. The King claimed this as a royal castle; and he therefore considered the Archbishop’s flight thither as conclusive proof of an organised conspiracy against the royal authority. Finding that Jenstein would not return to Prague, the king summoned before him the two chief officials of the archbishopric, Puchnic, and John Nepomuc. When they persistently refused to give any evidence against the Archbishop, Wenceslaus ordered them to be tortured. As they continued to defy him, he had them burnt on the hand; and, at last, fixing upon Nepomuc, either as the most defiant or the most important of his victims, he ordered him to be bound hand and foot, and thrown into the Moldau.

This crime was to produce even greater triumphs for the clerical party than those which had followed the murder of Becket; and Wenceslaus seems to have repented of it almost as soon as it was committed. He set Puchnic free, and gave him money compensation for his sufferings; and he recalled Jenstein to Prague. The Archbishop came; a sort of reconciliation was patched up, but its unreality was evident from the first. Jenstein secretly fled to Rome and demanded that the Pope should lay an interdict on Bohemia. At the same time all the clergy appealed to Sigismund, King of Hungary, the brother of Wenceslaus, to come to Bohemia to avenge their wrongs. Strange to say, this second appeal was the only one which produced a result. The new pope, Boniface IX., was eager to obtain the support of Wenceslaus, and therefore took his part against the Archbishop. Sigismund, on the contrary, was always ready to plot against his brother; and he easily found allies among the Bohemian nobility.

For, though the offences of Wenceslaus against the clergy had attracted the most attention, his injuries to the secular nobles had been not less keenly felt. In his desire to weaken the more powerful members of the aristocracy, he had formed a private Council among the small nobility and citizens; and, by their help, he had opposed and counteracted the greater nobles. He had further offended their sense of dignity and decorum by playing the part of Haroun Alraschid, and paying secret visits to the houses of his various subjects, to discover any offences which might have escaped the notice of the ordinary tribunals. This conduct had made him so unpopular with the nobles that, even before Sigismund’s intervention, they had formed a conspiracy against him. The ostensible leader of this conspiracy was the king’s cousin Jodok, the Margrave of Moravia; but perhaps its most powerful member was Henry of Rosenberg. This nobleman, like so many of his time, was a distinguished patron of literature and art; though his influence in such a movement was no doubt due to the more material considerations of his high rank, wide connections, and large territorial influence.

[Illustration: KRUMOV, ONE OF THE CHIEF SEATS OF THE ROSENBERGS.]

The Rosenbergs were the members of a very powerful group of families called the Vítkovici, who were the practical rulers of the south and south-east of Bohemia. There they exercised an authority which was little short of regal. They had bodies of soldiers at their command; they coined money and built fortresses at their pleasure. They professed to trace their origin to the Italian family of the Orsini; and they had played almost as important a part in the thirteenth century as the Vrs̆ovici had played in the earlier history of Bohemia. Of these Vítkovici the Rosenbergs were the most important branch; and their name shows that they had to a large extent Germanised themselves, even in the time of Ottakar. They had strengthened their position in Bohemia by founding towns and monasteries, planting woods, and building churches; and their fishponds became so important that the town of Prague was mainly supplied from them. So deeply-rooted was their power that the signs of its past greatness are visible even at the present day, in the towns of Krumov, Tr̆ebon̆, Prachatice, the monastery of Hohenfurt, and the castle and village of Rosenberg. It will easily be understood that the leader of so powerful a clan would deeply resent such attempts as those of Wenceslaus to infringe the privileges of the nobility, and to call men of lower rank to his Councils. Nor did the nobles rely solely on Bohemian support. Jodok of Moravia had taken counsel with the Duke of Austria and the Margrave of Meissen, who were always ready for any opportunity of weakening the Bohemian kingdom. Such a combination as this would have been dangerous even to Charles; and Wenceslaus was quite unable to stand against it.

The rebels were quickly ready for action; and in the year 1394, as Wenceslaus was on his way to Prague, he was seized by Jodok and his followers, and imprisoned in the Castle of Prague. The demands of the insurgent nobles were now formulated. They insisted that Wenceslaus should leave them in possession of all the fortresses that had been pledged to them, and that he should appoint Jodok as his Viceroy in Bohemia. Duke John of Görlitz, the youngest brother of Wenceslaus, hastened to the rescue of the king; and, though Jodok succeeded in carrying off his prisoner to Austria, John was welcomed by the citizens of Prague, who swore to recognise him as the administrator of the country till the King should once more be at liberty to act.

In the meantime the princes of the Empire had become indignant at the treatment of their Emperor; and they persuaded the Duke of Austria to set him free. Wenceslaus returned, embittered and suspicious, to his kingdom; and his brother John soon found that the position of liberator and peacemaker was a very difficult one. The rebel nobles had fled to Austria, whence they made raids upon their native country; John attempted to make peace between the king and the insurgents; but, when Wenceslaus found that John had mistaken the extent of the powers entrusted to him by the rebels, he accused his brother of deceiving him, and deprived him of his vice-royalty. Many of the citizens of Prague had become attached to John, and they remonstrated against his deposition. Thereupon Wenceslaus deposed all the members of the Town Council, appointed a new Council in their place, and then went through the town, accompanied by an executioner, who cut off the heads of the King’s leading opponents at the doors of their houses. In his discontent with John, Wenceslaus now appealed to his brother Sigismund. Sigismund came, and John soon after died, not without suspicion of poison. Sigismund at once persuaded Wenceslaus to recognise him as his heir if he should die without sons, to appoint a Council of the nobles, and to promise not to introduce any changes in the government without the consent of that Council.

The hollowness of the peace which followed was very quickly seen. When Jodok came to see the king at Carlstein in the same year, Wenceslaus was so carried away by the recollection of his cousin’s insults, that he had him arrested and imprisoned. Then, suddenly remembering the treaty of peace, he set him free again. But Jodok thought more of his imprisonment than of his liberation; and, though nominally reconciled, the King and the Margrave remained enemies throughout life.

The Bohemian quarrels had, in the meantime, given opportunity for the intrigues of Wenceslaus’s rivals in the Empire. That jealousy which the Electors always felt of the concentration of the Imperial power in any one family, had been for some time directed against the House of Luxemburg. Charles’s extension of Bohemian territory, by the addition of German lands, had caused much suspicion and dislike. But his combination of vigour and self-restraint, and his complete hold over his Bohemian subjects, had prevented the intriguers from making any head during his lifetime. Now, however, the quarrels of Wenceslaus with his subjects had given a double opportunity to his German opponents; for while, on the one hand, they could point to his long detention in Bohemia as a proof of his indifference to Imperial affairs, on the other hand, the disaffection of his Bohemian subjects supplied a hopeful weapon for undermining his power.

His two leading enemies were Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, who aimed at the Imperial dignity, and the Archbishop of Mainz, who had secured his see by a promise to support the intrigues of Rupert. These conspirators succeeded in winning to their side Pope Boniface IX. This Pope had indeed been at first friendly to Wenceslaus; but he had been offended by the readiness with which the King of Bohemia had listened to the French proposals for the election of a new Pope in place of the two rival claimants to the Holy See. Under various pretexts, the Duke of Saxony and the Archbishops of Trier and Köln were drawn into the conspiracy; and so, in February, 1400, the Electors met at Frankfort and resolved to choose a new Emperor.

The most plausible grounds for this deposition were mainly of a negative kind. Wenceslaus was charged with failing to procure a peaceful settlement of the affairs of the Church, and with paying no heed to those wars which were disturbing the Empire. Though Wenceslaus might have found ample excuse for these failures, he could not directly deny them; but the other charges were either false or grossly exaggerated. One of them, however, must be quoted, since it has so much bearing on the troubles which were approaching in the Bohemian kingdom. This was a charge that he “had drowned, burnt, and otherwise murdered and tortured reverend prelates and priests.” This accusation shows that the murder of Nepomuc was to be represented, at the pleasure of Wenceslaus’s enemies, either as part of a general massacre of priests, or as the cruel execution of one specially righteous man.

It was, therefore, as the champion of Holy Church against its oppressor, that Rupert was chosen Holy Roman Emperor. In this character he at once marched into Bohemia and won the support of Jodok and the discontented nobles. Again Wenceslaus was forced to make terms with his enemies; and again Sigismund was called in and appointed Viceroy. But Sigismund gained favour with no party. Jodok and his friends resented the power entrusted to him; the citizens of Bohemia complained of the heavy taxes which he laid upon them; and Wenceslaus resisted his proposal that he should counteract the schemes of Rupert by accompanying Sigismund to Rome, and by accepting the Imperial crown from the Pope. Finding his plans thwarted, Sigismund suddenly seized upon his brother, and carried him off as prisoner to Vienna. From this imprisonment Wenceslaus succeeded in escaping in 1403; and, on his return to Prague, he was welcomed as the liberator of Bohemia from Sigismund.

In the meantime the reform movement had been approaching a crisis. The teacher who, after the death of Milic, had gained most influence in the country, was a Bohemian nobleman named Matthias of Janov. He had not devoted himself so exclusively as Conrad and Milic had done to the denunciation of moral abuses, but had also attacked practices like the worship of images and saints; and he had been the first to bring before the public the question which was afterwards to be so interesting to Bohemians, the granting of the cup to the laity in the Holy Communion. But though this latter fact gives Matthias a kind of historic interest, he seems to have been in the main a source of weakness to the cause which he defended. Never wholly disinterested in his objects, he soon flinched from the attacks of the rulers of the Church; and in 1389 he formally recanted his reforming doctrines.

[Illustration: VILLAGE OF HUSINEC.]

Along with the movement for ecclesiastical reform, the Bohemian national revival had been steadily making way; and the opposition of the German party had served to deepen the zeal of the reformers for the encouragement of the Bohemian languages. A most important link was formed in 1396 between the linguistic and the moral revival. In that year a man named John of Milheim founded a chapel which was to be entirely devoted to Bohemian preaching, in order, as its founder expressed it, “that the Word of God should not be fettered, and that Bohemian preachers should not be obliged to go from house to house.” The new foundation was to be called the Bethlehem Chapel, and was to be consecrated to the Holy Innocents. Strange to say, the first three preachers seem to have been somewhat hesitating and uncertain in their tendencies; and it was not till 1402 that the appointment of Jan Hus secured to the Bethlehem Chapel a special position in the history of Bohemia.

[Illustration: HUSINEC, SHOWING COTTAGE WHERE HUS WAS BORN.]

On July 6, 1369, Jan Hus was born at Husinec, in the south of Bohemia. This village lies in a deep valley among pine-covered hills, and the tiny cottage in which Hus was born still remains. As his parents were poor, he was forced to support himself in his early days by singing in churches; and even after he had been sent to the University he was in such straits that he was at one time compelled to live on dry bread. Nevertheless he made steady way in the University; two years after taking his degree of Master of Arts, he was appointed examiner; in 1401 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and in 1403 he was chosen Rector of the University. He had thrown himself from the first into the national cause; and he denounced, from his pulpit in the Bethlehem Chapel, the expedition of the rebel nobles against Prague. He showed great zeal in giving new literary expression to the Bohemian language, and expunged from it the Germanisms which had crept into it. He also persistently opposed the encroachments of the Germans in the government of the University. At the same time he always declared that he would prefer a good German to a bad Bohemian, even if the latter were his brother.

It was in this same year, 1403, that the national reform movement began to connect itself generally with questions of ritual and doctrine. The exact point in history at which the doctrines of Wyclif gained influence in Bohemia, is very difficult to fix. The marriage of Anna, the sister of Wenceslaus, in 1381, to Richard II. of England, undoubtedly produced close contact between the two countries. It is clear, from his own statements, that Wyclif was much impressed by the forwardness of the Bohemians in religious knowledge, and specially by the fact that they had already translated the Bible into their native tongue. But, although this experience much affected the work of the English Reformer, it seems doubtful how soon he began to repay the debt, by imparting his ideas to Bohemia. Apparently, neither Matthias of Janov nor Thomas of S̆títný were deeply acquainted with Wyclif’s works; and neither his condemnation in 1382 nor his death in 1385 seem to have excited much interest in Bohemia. Yet, on the other hand, it is evident, from the scene which is about to be described, that both Hus and some of his followers must have given considerable attention to Wyclif’s writings.

It was, however, the enemies of the English Reformer who first publicly called the attention of the Bohemians to his works. A German Silesian, named Hubner, had selected from Wyclif’s writings forty-five propositions which he asked the University of Prague to condemn. The period of Hus’s Rectorship seems to have come to an end before this proposal was made; and on May 28, 1403, the new Rector of the University convoked an assembly of the Masters of Arts, and laid before them the propositions which Hubner had compiled. Hus at once came forward to answer Hubner, but he based his opposition entirely on the inaccuracy of the summaries laid before them. He referred to the burning alive of certain adulterators of saffron, which had recently taken place in Prague; and he declared that such a fate was better deserved by these adulterators of books. But some of his followers went much further. Stephen Pálec̆ threw a book of Wyclif’s on the table, declaring that he was willing to defend it against all attacks; and Stanislaus of Znaym (Znojem) offered to prove that none of the articles attributed to Wyclif were heretical. This statement so offended some of the older Masters that they at once left the room; but, in spite of their retirement, a majority of those who remained condemned the forty-five Articles of Wyclif, and decided that they should not be taught in Bohemia. The influence of Wenceslaus was, for the moment, thrown on the side of reform; and, after the death of the Archbishop of Prague, he appointed to the see an ex-soldier named Zbynĕk Zajíc, who had a great dislike to many of the impostures which had been encouraged by the clergy. The new Archbishop at once sent Hus to inquire into several fictitious miracles which had recently become notorious in the country; and, by his help, these abuses were checked for the time.

[Illustration: JAN HUS.]

But, while Hus was zealous against every form of moral corruption, he had by no means committed himself to those doctrines for which Wyclif had been branded as a heretic. At the same time he had read and studied many of the purely philosophical works of the English Reformer; and he expressed his belief that much good was to be learned from them. With the Englishman’s hatred of moral corruption Hus sympathised yet more warmly; while the national character of the two movements naturally roused a sympathy between their respective supporters. The revival of the English language, as a literary expression of thought, had received considerable impulse from Wyclif’s translation of the Bible; and the use of English, rather than Latin or Norman-French, in theological writings became one of the notes of the Lollard movement. In this tendency Hus could not fail to observe the likeness to his own efforts to maintain the Bohemian language against the inroads of the Germans.

All these considerations produced in Hus so strong a personal admiration for Wyclif that he expressed a wish that his soul might be with his. The combination of such a wish with the rejection of many of Wyclif’s doctrines as heretical, was utterly unintelligible to most of the contemporaries of Hus. This pious expression of moral sympathy was naturally connected by many with the attacks which Stanislaus of Znojem was at the same time making on the doctrine of Transubstantiation; and, consequently, the rashness of Hus’s followers, coupled with his own expressions of personal feeling, caused him to be branded as a heretic, with regard to doctrines about which he held the orthodox belief.

But the opposition to the reform movement could not long be confined to the masters of the University of Prague. In 1405 Pope Innocent VII. became alarmed at the progress of heresy, and issued a Bull against the doctrines of Wyclif. In deference to this denunciation, Wenceslaus ordered an inquiry into these doctrines; and Archbishop Zbynĕk became even more excited on the subject. On May 14, 1408, even the Bohemian nation in the University consented to hold a meeting for the examination of Wyclif’s books; but they could only be induced to come to the harmless conclusion that the Articles of Wyclif should not be taught in any heretical sense, and that his Dialogus and Trialogus should not be studied by members of the University before they had taken their degree. Such a decision could not satisfy the Archbishop; and, in June, 1408, he issued a new decree forbidding the clergy to preach against Transubstantiation. This decree was soon followed by a demand that all who possessed copies of Wyclif’s books should surrender them to the Archbishop; and the majority of the University obeyed this command, only five students refusing.

Hus had openly expressed his dislike of some of the prosecutions, by which the Archbishop attempted to enforce some of his prohibitions; and such a protest from so prominent a reformer could not be allowed to pass unnoticed at such a crisis. So, early in 1408, the clergy of Prague presented to the archbishop certain articles against Hus. Most of these are concerned with his denunciations of the pecuniary greed of the clergy; but they also include a reference to his wish that his soul might be with Wyclif. For the moment, indeed, these complaints produced little result; for just at this time Archbishop Zajíc himself announced that, after inquiry, he could find no heresy in Bohemia. Moreover, it was unavoidable that this smaller controversy should be lost sight of, for a time, in the apparently larger issue of the reunion of Christendom under one Pope.

The division of the Papacy between Rome and Avignon had begun to cause such a scandal in the Church that a new Council was held necessary for the restoration of order and unity. Wenceslaus saw in the meeting of this Council an opportunity for recovering the position of which he had been deprived. He had never admitted the legality of his deposition from the Imperial throne; and, since only a part of the Electors had sanctioned that step, he had plausible grounds for disputing its validity. When, then, the Council of Pisa proposed to deal with the Papal Schism, Wenceslaus consented to send ambassadors to that Council, on condition that they should be recognised as the representatives of the Holy Roman Emperor. To secure the consent of the Council to this proposal, Wenceslaus readily accepted the decision of that body, that, as a preparatory step to the Unity of the Church, the two rival Popes should be required to resign; and he forbade his subjects to recognise the authority of either Gregory XII. or his rival till the Council should have decided on their claims. This demand at once produced a new line of division between the contending parties in the Bohemian Church. Hus and his friends had welcomed the Council of Pisa, as a possible means of accomplishing the reforms which they desired; and they made no difficulty about approving the deposition of the two Popes. The Archbishop, however, and the great body of the Bohemian clergy, maintained that they were bound by their allegiance to Gregory XII.; and in this view the three foreign “Nations” in the University eagerly supported them.

This division of opinion at once brought to a head that desire for reasserting their national independence which the Bohemians had so long cherished. The dislike of being swamped in their own capital by foreigners had been steadily growing in the minds of the Bohemians. This feeling had been at first expressed in complaints about the rise of prices and the overcrowding of the city; but it had gained a much greater intensity when the native population realised that the supremacy of their language in their own country was at stake. The resistance of the Germans to the demands of Wenceslaus enabled the Reformers to join their movement for national independence with the assertion of the royal authority; and, as a means of accomplishing both these ends, they proposed that the Bohemian Nation should in future have three votes in the election of University officials, while each of the three foreign “Nations” should be still limited to one vote. Wenceslaus had already made some concessions to the national party in the University; and they naturally thought that he would at once approve of a concession which would tend to strengthen his hands in his struggle against Gregory XII.

To their great surprise, however, they at first met with a rebuff. Wenceslaus was desirous of recovering his position as Emperor; and for that he needed German support. He also wished to appear as the orthodox champion of the Church; and a recent event had brought home to him the danger into which the Bohemian Reformers were running, in this respect. Stephen Pálec̆ and Stanislaus of Znojem had been sent as commissioners to the Council of Pisa; on their way thither they had been arrested at Bologna and imprisoned as heretics. This so alarmed the king, that when the Bohemian Deputation waited on him at Kutna Hora, he not only rejected their proposals, but sharply rebuked Hus and his friends for bringing discredit on the nation by tainting them with heresy.

Consistency of purpose, however, was never one of the virtues of Wenceslaus. A Bohemian nobleman of the name of Lobkovic had considerable influence with the king; and he was a strong champion of Hus and his party. He pointed out to Wenceslaus that those who proposed this reform at the University were the supporters of the king’s policy in the Council of Pisa. Queen Sophia, with whom Hus had already become a favourite, no doubt used her influence in the same direction. The king was convinced that his interests were, for the time, on the side of the Reformers; and, in January, 1409, he issued the desired decree which granted three votes to the Bohemian Nation in University elections.

But the powerful German party did not yield without a struggle. They pleaded that their oaths as Masters of Arts bound them to maintain the settlement made by Charles IV.; and they pointed out that that Emperor had intended to make his University the centre of all the learning of the Empire. Finally they suggested that, if the Bohemian Nation objected to be swamped by them, it ought to separate from them and have a council, tribunal, and elections of its own.

Of these arguments, the first may be fairly dismissed as one of those pieces of ill-tempered rhetoric which are usually thrust forward on such occasions. If an oath to maintain the laws of an association implies an opposition to any possible change in those laws, there can be few corporations in the world which are not deeply tainted with perjury. But the second argument, which appealed to the wishes and intentions of Charles IV., had undoubtedly some plausibility, especially when one considers that the University was only sixty years old. An answer to this objection could, however, be easily found by the Bohemians. Though Charles IV. had no doubt desired to make the University the centre of the Empire, other words of his could be quoted to show that he had also intended that his Foundation should secure special advantages to the Bohemians.

The explanation was, that Charles’s idea, however grand, was self-contradictory; and, while inconsistent schemes may work very well, as long as all who are interested in them wish them to do so, they must fall to pieces at once if they are administered by two antagonistic parties with directly opposite ideals about the welfare of the institution. Charles had undoubtedly wished, as the Germans said, to make Prague an intellectual centre for Europe; he had also desired, as the Bohemians said, to call out the national life and encourage the national literature of Bohemia. It now appeared that these two objects were incompatible; and the question was, which must yield to the other. Charles IV. was a great statesman; but, as in the case of so many great men, the effect which he ultimately produced was precisely the contrary of that which he desired. He had wished to found a University, which should gratify the feelings both of Bohemians and Germans, and be a centre of unity and peace to the Empire. He had, instead, given an impulse to life, movement, and struggle, which was to overthrow many abuses which he condemned, but also to drag down in their fall much which he desired to maintain.

Finding that their arguments were of no avail, the Germans devoted themselves to more practical forms of obstruction. They insisted on disregarding the decree of the King and on voting in the old fashion at the next election of the Examiners. The Bohemians resisted this attempt; and the consequence was that no examination took place. A similar dispute arose about the election of the Deans of Faculties; and a similar result followed. It was obvious that the continuance of this struggle must end in the destruction of the work of the University. Moreover, whatever doubts Wenceslaus might have on other subjects, he was quite clear about the duty of enforcing his own decrees. So, on May 9, 1409, he summoned an extraordinary meeting of the University, at which he appointed a new Rector and a new Dean of Arts on his own authority. The Germans, finding further resistance hopeless, resolved to abandon the struggle; and, on May 16th, several thousand German students left Prague for ever.