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

by C. Edmund Maurice

A new weapon, it must be remembered, was now at the service of all promoters of new teaching. The invention of printing had quickly spread to Bohemia; and, in 1468, the fourth printing-press ever established in Europe had begun to work at Pilsen. The Brothers quickly saw the advantage of the new discovery; and, in 1500, they established a printing-press at Mláda Boleslav. More than one lady of rank joined the Brotherhood; and at least one Catholic noble found the new creed rapidly spreading among his dependants.

Ladislaus now recognised the mistake which he had made in ignoring the constitutional methods of procedure. He therefore resolved to appeal to the regular Assemblies for support in his war against heresy; and he believed that he would find his best chance in Moravia. The Moravian Assembly, unlike the Bohemian, admitted the clergy to a special representation as a fourth estate; the Bishop of Olmütz had been active in the propaganda against the Brotherhood; and the great power which the Germans and Catholics had obtained in Moravia during the wars, seemed to point to an easy victory in the Moravian Assembly.

But again the King had miscalculated. The victories of the Germans and Catholics had excited against them a bitterness, both national and religious, far more intense than was to be found in other parts of the kingdom. The cruelties of Sigismund, the Germanising zeal of Albert of Austria, and the many injustices of Sternberg and the Catholic League, had consolidated against them a mass of Moravian feeling, which, if unable to secure victories on the battlefield, was eminently calculated to give strength to an opposition in the Assembly. To the Bohemians of the western province the Catholics and Germans were enemies, whom they had met on equal terms and often thoroughly routed; to the Moravians they were victorious tyrants, whose rule was to be thrown off at the first opportunity.

When, then, the Catholics demanded that the Assembly should unite in suppressing the “Picard” heresy, they were startled to find that the Utraquists made common cause with the Brothers in opposing this motion, and that they actually chose as their spokesman a member of the Brotherhood named John of Z̆erotin. This nobleman demanded that the complaints already made by the Utraquists should be attended to before the question of supposed heresy was dealt with. The Bishop of Olmütz taunted Z̆erotin with professing a sympathy with the Utraquists which he did not feel; but the Opposition remained firm; and the Assembly broke up without coming to any decision.

In Bohemia the Catholic party had an easier task. The opposition to Ladislaus’s former proceedings had been mainly based on constitutional grounds; and it now appeared that there was little religious sympathy with the Brotherhood amongst the leaders of public opinion. The power which the Utraquists had gained during the reign of King George had drawn them into sympathy with the leading nobles; and Rokycana had inspired them with a special dislike of the Brotherhood. The Bohemian Assembly, therefore, consented to a decree, which ordered the burning of the books of the Brotherhood, the suppression of their meetings, and the punishment of their teachers. Elated by this victory, the Bishop of Olmütz hurried back to Moravia, intending to summon the Assembly for a second meeting, and to secure the reversal of its former decision; but he was taken ill on his way, and died before the Assembly could meet; nor, from that time till the fall of Bohemian independence in 1620, did any Moravian Assembly consent to the suppression of the Brotherhood.

Nevertheless, the Catholic party found full compensation for their failure in Moravia in a specially fierce enforcement of the law just passed in Bohemia. Indeed, the former patrons of the Brotherhood became so much alarmed, that even Kostka forbade the Brothers to hold any further meetings on his estates. In spite of this opposition, the Brothers still maintained their ground, and even extended their preaching further; and but few of them could be persuaded, even by the most cruel tortures, to submit to the authorities of the Church. In 1511 the Brothers hoped, for a short time, to secure the protection of the greatest scholar of the time, Erasmus of Rotterdam. They had heard of some private letters of his, in which he had defended them against the attacks of their enemies; and they now prepared a Defence in Latin, which they sent to him. He thanked them for their communication, and expressed approval of at least part of their defence; but he declined to publish his opinion, on the ground that it would not help them, and might injure his work. So the persecution went on. Even Peter of Rosenberg found himself unable to protect a Brother, in whom he was interested, from being imprisoned and nearly starved to death. He succeeded, indeed, in getting him released before death had actually occurred, and he then urged him to submit to the Church; but the Brother, though almost too exhausted to speak, steadily refused to submit; and he was set free without further persecution. Lukas, who was now the most prominent member of the Brotherhood, succeeded for a long time in escaping the vigilance of his persecutors; but, in 1515, he was treacherously seized under false pretences, brought to Prague, and subjected to the torture. When nothing could be obtained from him by this means, he was set free, on the understanding that he was to appear before the Utraquist Consistory in April, 1516; but in the month before this appearance was to take place King Ladislaus died, and the persecution again slackened for a time.

In the meantime, the long absence of the King in Hungary, and the growing sense of his weakness of character, had been producing other divisions in Bohemia which gradually turned men’s minds away from the religious controversies. The wars of the fifteenth century, like all wars, had tended to draw the people away from their ordinary occupations, and to make them dependent on their military leaders. As long as the Taborite organisation lasted, its democratic spirit provided at least some check on the oppressions of the military nobles; and the alliance between the peasants and the Order of Knights, to which Z̆iz̆ka had belonged, counteracted any advantages which the nobles might have gained by their military prowess. But the fall of Tabor had destroyed any hopes, which the peasantry and townsmen might have had, of strengthening their position through war.

Under these circumstances the peasantry gradually fell back into the condition from which they had been escaping in the fourteenth century. The right of leaving their masters at their pleasure, of settling in towns, and of becoming priests without the sanction of their landlords, were gradually taken from them; and at last they were deprived even of that right of appeal to the King’s Court by which Charles had protected them against the absolute power of their lords.

But, though the peasantry were thus crushed back into a state of serfdom, the organisation of the towns was too strong to yield at once to the attacks of the nobles. Unfortunately, however, the lords gained about this time a new and important ally in their struggle for supremacy. The knights, or independent country gentlemen, who had been such zealous rivals of the higher Order in the fifteenth century, had lately consented to a reconciliation with their opponents; and these two classes were thus able to combine their forces against the towns.

The new king was little able to give the weaker party any assistance in the struggle. Ladislaus had succeeded in securing to his son Louis the succession to the crown, and he had even had him crowned during his lifetime. But Louis was a boy of ten; he was in the main under Hungarian influences; and he was of course utterly unfitted to control the fierce factions which were struggling in Bohemia.