Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 / With a short summary of later events

by C. Edmund Maurice

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.