XV.

FROM THE DEATH OF FERDINAND I. TO THE BEGINNING OF THE REACTION UNDER RUDOLF II.

(1564-1600.)

In describing a struggle between two rival powers in a State, it is extremely difficult to give a correct impression of the exact balance of success on either side at a particular crisis in the controversy; and this difficulty is enormously increased when the struggle is concerned partly with the question of spiritual (and therefore mainly individual) liberty; and partly with the growth of those more material forms of centralisation which check constitutional freedom and local self-government. When we hear of Ferdinand yielding on his deathbed to the prisoner whom he had been trying for so many years to crush into obedience, we feel that the victory lies, in the main, with those spiritual forces which were working against ecclesiastical uniformity. Nor does the resistance of the Moravian Estates seem less important as a victory of constitutional freedom, than the firmness of Augusta as a security for spiritual independence.

But the real importance of such episodes as these lies in the contrast which they offer to the main tendencies of Bohemian history during the sixteenth century; and the proof which they consequently give of the survival of forces which seem elsewhere to be crushed out. For centralisation was, after all, steadily growing in the dominions of Ferdinand; and national life, however it might struggle for existence, was being sapped by arbitrary power.

Nor must we forget that there was one moral consideration which worked on the side of Ferdinand. The terrible danger to which Europe was exposed by the Turkish invader was not really removed until the latter part of the seventeenth century; and even Vienna itself was to be once more endangered, before the barbarian could be induced to settle down peaceably beside his neighbours, and confine himself to the oppression of his Christian subjects. When, therefore, Ferdinand found that the local assemblies of the different provinces grudged him their help in this important struggle, and that even at Prague he had difficulty in obtaining both money and soldiers, it was not unnatural that he should feel a growing indifference to liberties which seemed to him so dangerous to the peace and order of Europe.

So when in 1555 he had summoned representatives from all his dominions to meet at Vienna, to devise a common scheme of action against the Turk, he must have bitterly resented the absence of the Bohemians, who refused to attend an Assembly where they might be swamped by Germans and Hungarians. An even more fatal point of opposition between the National desire for peace and independence, and the Imperial scheme for the defence of Europe, was found in the question of military organisation. The old privilege of the Bohemians, to refuse their services for foreign wars, was continually insisted on by them in opposition to Ferdinand; and he was almost unavoidably compelled to raise armies which should be independent of national sentiment, and to garrison the frontier towns of Moravia with soldiers drawn from all parts of his dominions.

Nor, while he was so successful in his schemes of State centralisation, was Ferdinand wholly worsted in his struggle for ecclesiastical unity. One victory at least he gained; and by a curious irony of fortune, he won it by granting a concession which had once been most ardently desired by the Bohemian leaders, but which had now, by change of circumstances, become worse than useless. Just at the close of the Council of Trent, he succeeded in obtaining from the Pope a formal concession to the Bohemians of their right to grant the Cup to the laity. Thus the old watchword of the Hussite wars, separated from all that had given it life and force, now became a step towards the absorption of the Utraquists by the Catholics. When once this concession was granted, Ferdinand insisted that the Utraquists could no longer refuse to accept the authority of the Roman Catholic Archbishop. From this time forward, Utraquism ceases to be a force in Bohemian history. Their separate Consistory was indeed revived by Maximilian; and from time to time the members of it continued to assert themselves in the religious controversies of the day; but every such effort tended more and more plainly to show that the champions of the old faith were but the impotent and unworthy representatives of traditions of former greatness. With the death of Ferdinand, all these questions enter on a new phase. The strength and weakness of the late king’s ideals were to be put to new tests during the reign of his son.

Maximilian is one of those men who seem to the careful student of history all the more pathetic, because their failures are not of that striking and dramatic kind which at once excite the sympathy of the observer; but are rather gathered from a careful comparison of the objects aimed at with those actually accomplished. Hampered by the continual distrust and the domineering influence of his father, half inclined to the extremer doctrines of Protestantism, and yet never able to shake off the recollection that he was the heir of a Catholic tradition; angry with the Jesuits for their intriguing interference with his affairs, and no less angry with the Protestants for those divisions which prevented a completely artistic settlement of the ecclesiastical question; anxious to recognise the local and other liberties of his Bohemian subjects, but conscious of the difficulties which those liberties placed in the way of the struggle against the Turk, Maximilian was continually drifting backwards and forwards in a way which tended to weaken the system of government which his father had tried to establish, without substituting anything freer or more national in its place.

Nor must we forget that Maximilian had to deal with the same insoluble problem for which Charles IV. had only provided a temporary solution. Ferdinand had reigned for nearly thirty years as King of Bohemia, before he had been forced to assume the burden of the German Empire. Maximilian had to take up both these responsibilities at the same time; and, apart from the enormous intellectual and moral difference between Maximilian of Austria and Charles of Luxemburg, the problem with which the later Emperor had to deal was infinitely more complicated than any which presented itself to the statesmen of the fourteenth century. The difference between Protestant and Catholic was in itself enough to introduce years of division and war into the Empire; but that element of confusion was now trebly increased by the new sects into which Lutheranism had been divided, and by the still keener political divisions between the Lutherans and Calvinists. In Bohemia, again, the same difficulties presented themselves in an even more complicated form; for, while many of the Bohemian Reformers had identified their cause with that of the Lutherans, the old feeling of national distinction was driving many into opposition to the aggressive character of the German movement, and compelling them to seek for a new religious centre which should be neither Papal nor German. As the Utraquists could no longer supply such a centre, the championship of Bohemian feeling rapidly passed to the leaders of the Bohemian Brotherhood. The great defender of the national and distinctive position of the Brotherhood, against the encroachments of the Lutherans, was that Blahoslav who had already become prominent as a negotiator with foreign Protestants, and who was ultimately to become the historian of the Brotherhood. He had already vindicated the specially Bohemian character of the Brotherhood against a critic who had tried to identify them with the Franco-Italian sect of the Waldenses; and so keen had Blahoslav and his friends been in the assertion of their national position, that they had been willing sometimes to speak of themselves as “the remains of the Taborites,” choosing rather to identify their cause with a Bohemian sect so different from them both in spirit and doctrine, than with a French or Italian community, however like them in every respect but race.

When, then, the Lutherans demanded that the Bohemian Brothers should accept the Augsburg Confession, and practically consent to absorption in the Lutheran body, Blahoslav and his friends resolved to offer a steady resistance to this proposal. Unfortunately, Blahoslav was forced to encounter, in this controversy, the most distinguished member of his own community. John Augusta, after his release from prison, had been welcomed back to his friends by the main body of the Brotherhood; but he soon found that the power which he desired to exercise over them was still resisted and resented. He proposed that, instead of the free exercise of preaching in the Brotherhood, certain definite parts of the gospel should be chosen for exposition each Sunday in the year; and he himself drew up a plan on which these discourses should be founded. Some of the Brothers objected that the doctrines suggested in his book were not altogether those held by the Brothers; while, no doubt, a still larger number resented the restrictions which such an arrangement would impose on the preachers. Irritated at the general opposition offered to his proposals, Augusta came to the conclusion that the Brotherhood was in a radically unsatisfactory condition; and he threw himself into the movement for union with the Lutherans, as a means of reform. So bitter was the opposition which he roused by this conduct, that he became entirely separated from the rest of the Brotherhood; and, when he died in 1572, his death passed almost unnoticed by those for whom he had done and suffered so much.

In the meantime Maximilian was endeavouring to take up a neutral position in this controversy. Personally in sympathy with the Brothers, but afraid of offending Catholics and Lutherans, he continually assured all parties that he was unable to assent to any legal sanction for religious liberty, since he had bound himself to oppose novelties; but that, if they would only settle their differences between themselves, nobody would interfere with the performance of their religion. Even this statement was more definite and consistent than his actual practice; for, when the Catholic or Utraquist priests applied to him for powers to suppress novelties or heresies, he assented to their proposals, though, when either Brothers or Lutherans complained to him, he assured them of his personal sympathy for them, and his desire to leave them untouched.

His great hope for the solution of these difficulties seems to have lain in some scheme of union among Protestants. If only the Lutheran sects, Bohemian Brothers, and Calvinists would give up their quarrels with one another, religious toleration would become such an easy affair. He therefore sympathised particularly with the new proposal, which was gradually shaping itself in the discussions between the Lutherans and the Brothers. This was a plan for a new Bohemian creed, to be drawn up at a combined meeting of the various sects. The Brothers looked upon this movement with great suspicion. They saw in it an attempt of the Lutherans to secure the acceptance of the Augsburg Confession by indirect means; and they noted their persistent attempts to exclude the Brothers from those Assemblies where ecclesiastical questions were discussed. Nevertheless, when Maximilian, on his return to Bohemia in 1575, consented to preside at the Assembly in which this new creed was to be proposed, the Brothers were willing to take part in the discussion. Doctor Crato, Maximilian’s physician, secretly urged the Brothers to stand firm, assuring them that the Emperor was really in sympathy with them. Encouraged by this hint, they not only resisted a motion for the acceptance of the Augsburg Confession, but they even objected to the appointment of a committee for the preparation of formulæ which were to unite all parties.

The committee was, nevertheless, appointed, and its actions soon justified the fears of the Brothers. In the introduction to the proposed creed, the committee pronounced an anathema against a number of heretics, and, amongst others, against all Calvinists. Now many of the Brothers had embraced Calvinistic doctrines; and their friendship with the champions of those doctrines had been strengthened by motives, both of personal resentment and of moral sympathy. The treatment of the exiled Brothers by the Lutherans of Prussia had repelled the Brotherhood generally from the creed of their unfriendly hosts; while the strict moral discipline maintained in the Calvinistic University of Heidelberg was more attractive to the followers of Peter of Chelc̆ic than the growing laxity of Wittenberg. They therefore offered a successful opposition to that sweeping condemnation of Calvinism to which the Lutherans desired to commit them. But this was, after all, but a minor point in the objections of the Brothers to the proposed creed. Apart from every detail, the proposal to surrender their own Confession in favour of any new form of words whatsoever, was wholly inconsistent with the position which they desired to maintain. They therefore offered such steady resistance to the proposed Confession, that they at last induced the Lutherans to consent to a petition to the King and the Assembly asking them to recognise each sect as a separate organisation. This result, however, was not reached till the controversy had become so fierce that the rival theologians came to blows in the streets.

Maximilian was heartily disgusted with the whole proceeding. He saw his hope of union among the Bohemian Protestants annihilated. He felt that he had injured his position with the Catholics by the concessions which he had already made; and he was further irritated that the Assembly should waste its time in these theological discussions, when he was wanting it to consider the acceptance of his son Rudolf as the future king of Bohemia, and to vote money for the Turkish war. He laid the chief blame of these failures upon the Brothers, who had resisted the new Confession, and on the towns, which had always made difficulties about the Turkish vote; and he sent down orders to the governors to suppress the meetings of the Brotherhood, and to forbid the towns to introduce any novelties. He even went so far as to order prosecutions of various Brothers for having attended meetings forbidden by the law; but, before these prosecutions could be carried out, this new policy was suddenly cut short by the death of Maximilian in 1576.

Few kings had more thoroughly disappointed the expectations formed of them than Maximilian II. had done; but, in a different way, his son Rudolf was to disappoint the hopes of the Catholics as completely as his father had done those of the Protestants. Brought up in Spain, and believed to be a strict Catholic in convictions, shy and repellent in manner, he seemed exactly the man to revive the reactionary policy of his grandfather. But in Rudolf, as in the majority of men, temperament and taste had a greater influence over his actions than either religious or political convictions. The same feelings which made him so repellent in general intercourse, led him also to shrink from the burdens of public life; and his fondness for art and science led him in the earlier part of his reign to leave politics to men of more active character. The interest, therefore, of this part of Rudolf’s reign, so far as his own influence is concerned, centres rather in the revival of literature and art, than in political or religious controversy. This revival was of a varied character, for it included not only poetry and history, but every kind of art and science. Carving, statuary, and mosaic work were brought to great perfection: while the presence of Tycho Brahe at Court shows the interest which Rudolf always maintained in astronomical science. The preference of the new Emperor for Prague as a place of residence naturally attracted all this brilliant company to the Bohemian Court; and it seemed as if, in this respect, the age of Charles IV. were to return.

At the same time, it should be noted that this revival, though generally connected with the name of Rudolf, had been already growing since the accession of Ferdinand. The greater security for life and property, which was gradually introduced by the House of Austria, had given more opportunity for quiet study than had been possible in the turbulent Bohemia of the fifteenth century; while the greater intercourse with foreign countries, which the renewed connection with the Empire had produced, naturally attracted a large number of foreign celebrities to the Court of Prague.

The reign of Ferdinand had been marked by the works of two most picturesque though untrustworthy historians--Wenceslaus Hajek of Libocany, and Dubravsky, better known as Dubravius, the Bishop of Olmütz; while Matthæus Collinus of Choterina called out an interest in the study of the great Greek and Latin authors, who had till then been rather neglected. The interest felt by Maximilian and Rudolf in the revival of poetry was much keener than that of Ferdinand; though they both, doubtless, stunted more than one poetical intellect by the absurd practice of turning poets into nobles, and crowning them as Court Laureates. A more curious result of this revival, considering the origin and sympathies of the ruling House, was the steady development of the Bohemian language during this period. Dictionaries and other scientific works were produced; and Daniel Adam, who was Professor of History at Prague in the time of Maximilian, was said to have done much to bring the language to great perfection. Nor did Maximilian and Rudolf fail to encourage scientific discovery. Thaddæus Hajek, who had studied, not only at Prague, but also at Vienna and Bologna, actually discovered a new star in 1572; and he showed himself so far in advance of his age, that he used his learning to expose and ridicule the astrological speculations which were then so popular.

It might be expected, perhaps, that all this stirring of thought and life would be favourable to the revival of civic and religious liberty; and some of the men who were eminent in the literature and art of the time did take an active part in the struggles at the beginning of the seventeenth century. But a power had arisen in Bohemia, which continued steadily to gain ground during the reign of Rudolf, that could turn even literature and art into the cause of opposition to reform. This was the Order of the Jesuits, which, since the time of Ferdinand, had been steadily gaining ground in Bohemia. They eagerly seized upon the literary and artistic revival, and made use of it for their own purposes. George Bartold Pontanus, one of the poets who were crowned by Rudolf, fell into the hands of the Jesuits, and became one of their most eloquent preachers. William of Rosenberg, who was a great patron of the Order, founded an institution for poor scholars, which must have greatly forwarded the Catholic reaction. Even students of languages, and men engaged in foreign discoveries, were made use of by the Order. Moreover their great power then, as ever, was through the education of children. Many of these came from the poorest ranks, and were educated gratuitously by the Jesuits; and, through them, an influence was prepared which it was very difficult to resist. But the Jesuits were intended by Ignatius Loyola to be, before everything, a fighting body; and, as they looked round on the forces opposed to them in Bohemia, they speedily marked the Bohemian Brotherhood as the foemen most worthy of their steel.

The Utraquists, as already mentioned, had been reduced almost to impotence in the time of Ferdinand. The Lutherans, divided among themselves, weak in organisation, and without any hold on the feeling of Bohemia, were almost equally an object of contempt to the Jesuits; but in the Brotherhood they saw a power of organisation, a capacity for intense self-devotion, and great educational faculties, which made them dangerous rivals even to the followers of Loyola. Just at this time the Brothers had taken a step which, while infinitely to their own credit, had yet raised up against them enemies whom the Jesuits could easily call in as their allies. The Brotherhood, as already hinted, had found, even more than most religious communities, a perpetual difficulty in solving that painful problem of the proper relation of the Church to the World; for, while they would never consent to drift tamely into the conventional morality of a comfortable and generally accepted Church, they were yet continually forced to make concessions to the prejudices of the world around them, which endangered the spiritual life of their community. Their concessions in the matter of war had, as we have seen, driven from their ranks some of the stricter members of the Society at a very early stage of their history; and a difficulty which was an even greater vexation to the minds of the Brothers, was the relation between the Community and the nobles.

The original conception of the Brotherhood, as a Society of equals working in the main with their hands for their livelihood, had never been wholly lost sight of; and the clergy were still expected to support themselves largely by their own handiwork. But the necessity for protection against the continual outbursts of persecution from other sects had compelled the Brothers to accept the patronage of certain lords who were inclined to their doctrines. The most zealous of these noblemen desired a closer union with the Brotherhood than the position of outside patron could give them; and yet they were by no means willing to make that surrender of their rank and position which the rules of the Brotherhood required. The Brothers had not seen their way to exclude these aristocratic members from an entrance into the Community; and the difficulties of the position naturally increased, when the son or grandson of some zealous nobleman accepted the hereditary connection with the Brotherhood without any of the moral enthusiasm which had led his ancestor to join it. The opposition which the plebeian preachers of the Brotherhood encountered in their attempts to exercise a spiritual control over these aristocratic followers was of course specially great in a century when even champions of religious liberty claimed the right to dictate their creed to their tenants and dependants. Serfdom, it cannot too often be remembered, had gained a new footing in Bohemia at the close of the fifteenth century; and Krajek, in his championship of so eminent a Brother as Augusta, had insisted much on his right, as a feudal landlord, to protect his dependant against the King. In such a condition of society, it ought not to surprise us that the leaders of the Brotherhood may have sometimes seemed to wink at offences in the nobles which they condemned severely in their more plebeian members.

But there was a recuperative force in this Community which showed itself continually at critical moments, and, in 1578, the Bohemian nobility were startled by the news that the Brothers had expelled from their Society, for acts of immorality, two members of that very family of Krajek who had been the steadiest patrons of the Brotherhood. A fierce outburst of indignation and scorn followed; and the Bohemian nobles asked how “Chlapi” (serfs), like the leaders of the Brotherhood, could venture to deal thus with the members of a noble family? Nor was it only the protest of the nobles which showed how far the ideal of the Brothers transcended that of the rest of the Community. A Lutheran congregation at once invited one of the expelled Brothers to join their body, and urged upon him that such a step would be a fit revenge on the ungrateful Brotherhood.

The Jesuits saw their opportunity in the sudden unpopularity of the Brotherhood; and they pressed upon several of the nobles to expel these revolutionary heretics from their estates. The Chancellor, Vratislav of Pernstein, was one of those to whom the Jesuits made special advances; and they were able to influence him not only through his prejudices as a nobleman, but through his affection as a husband. Pernstein, like so many of the Bohemian nobles since their country had passed under the rule of the Hapsburgs, had married a Spanish lady; and these wives were, as a rule, zealous champions and obedient pupils of the Jesuits. Frau von Pernstein had a special influence, not only over her husband, but over many of the younger Bohemian women; and, with her help, the Jesuits succeeded in making many converts, even in that town of Litomys̆l where Augusta had once had so much influence. Both there and on other parts of the estate Pernstein now proceeded to close the meeting-houses of the Brothers, and he opened a Jesuit college on the site of their former labours. Adam of Neuhaus and William of Rosenberg carried out the same policy on their estates, and many other nobles followed their example. The Bishop of Olmütz, Stanislaus Pavlavsky, now hoped to rouse Rudolf to give active assistance to this movement. At the bishop’s request, the Emperor issued an order that no book should be sold in Moravia without Pavlavsky’s special permission; and, in order to secure the practical working of this prohibition, he decreed that not more than two printing-presses should be allowed at Olmütz.

At the same time a blow was aimed at the Brotherhood in a still more important part of their work. Ezrom Rüdiger, a leading Brother, had opened a school at Ivanc̆ic̆e, which had gained so high a reputation that men of other denominations sent their children to be taught by Rüdiger, and the managers of a rival Lutheran school in the city of Velké Mezir̆íc̆í attempted to decoy Rüdiger away by the offering of a higher salary. Of course these bribes had failed of their effect, and a decree had been obtained by the Jesuits for the closing of both these schools. This order, however, had been disregarded; and Rüdiger had gained further reputation by defending the Brotherhood against the attacks of the leader of another sect. This controversy, however, gave a handle to the Bishop of Olmütz, and he denounced both Rüdiger and his opponent to Rudolf as disturbers of the peace. A warrant was sent down for the arrest of Rüdiger, and about the same time Herr von Pernstein imprisoned two of the Brothers on his own Moravian estates.

But now, as in the time of Ferdinand, attempts at persecution, which had succeeded in Bohemia, broke down before the opposition of the Moravian Estates. At the meeting of the Moravian Assembly, the Bishop of Olmütz was so roughly treated by his colleagues, that he left Brünn before the meeting was over. The two clergy on the Pernstein lands were released. Rüdiger, who had taken refuge with Frederick of Z̆erotin, was allowed to submit his case to the Moravian Estates; and the Assembly not only disregarded the Edict about the books and the printing, but passed a vote of censure on those who had made attacks on the Brotherhood. This and other failures soon persuaded the leaders of the Catholic reaction that they had little hope of support from the Emperor; and the Jesuits were forced to carry on their struggles through the help of individual noblemen.

But, in 1592, even this form of propagandism encountered an unexpected obstacle. In that year William of Rosenberg died, and his nephew, Peter Vok von Rosenberg, succeeded to the estates. He had gained some distinction as a soldier under Ferdinand and Maximilian; but soon after Maximilian’s death he had married Caterina of Ludanic, a member of the family of that Wenceslaus of Ludanic who had defended the rights of the Brotherhood and the liberties of Moravia against Ferdinand. Under her influence Peter Vok rapidly drifted to Calvinism; and in 1582 he had formally joined the Brotherhood. On coming into his estates he soon gave signs of his change of creed; and, as a first step, he so harassed the Jesuits of the college which his uncle had founded at Krumov, that they left that town and fled to Neuhaus. About the same time, George of Lobkovic, another champion of the Jesuits, was deprived of his office by Rudolf for fraudulent use of his power; and, his estates being forfeited to the Crown, Rudolf handed them over to a man whom he supposed to be a zealous Catholic, but who soon proved to be a friend and favourer of the Lutherans. Thus, then, a general struggle was going on throughout Bohemia, which, from the apparent indifference of the Emperor, was tending more and more to loosen the bonds of the central government, and was in many cases leading to open acts of violence and disorder. But, just as the sixteenth century was closing on this condition of things, a series of events occurred which roused the Emperor from his lethargy, and produced a complete change in the course of Bohemian history.