It was at this juncture that the final separation between the Taborites and the Calixtines took place. The former renounced all connexion with Rome, and for awhile laid aside their very priesthood. The latter continued, in name, the children of that church, whose favourite, because most oppressive, edicts they disobeyed. Not that popery was without its adherents in Bohemia all this while; on the contrary, these were very numerous, and they included a large proportion of the hierarchy, as well as many of the nobles. But the university, as it had early adopted Huss's opinions, so it continued steadily, yet mildly, to maintain them. Throughout the wars that marked the commencement of this strife of opinion, the Carolinum was ever present to assuage the rancour of parties. It withstood absolute popery on the one hand, and absolute fanaticism on the other. And when the war ceased, and George of Podiebrad mounted the throne, it gave all its influence to a government of which the policy throughout was just, and wise, and temperate.
Acted upon by the efforts of this seat of learning, the Taborites themselves became gradually tame. They accused John of Rokysan, it is true, of having betrayed them, because he would not place himself at the head of the schism; and they held aloof from familiar intercourse with their rivals; but they made no appeal to the sword. Accordingly John became their advocate with the new monarch, and ample toleration was extended to them. With this they were satisfied. They withdrew into the mountains, built villages and places of worship, and never addressing each other except as brother or sister, they came, by-and-by, to be known every where as the Bohemian or Moravian brethren. Simple in their habits, and primitive in their ideas, they soon ceased to be objects of terror to the government; and being left to themselves, became, by degrees, at once the most industrious and honest portion of the population. Moreover, the anomaly in the constitution of their church, which at the outset, had been little thought of, began by degrees to make itself felt. They had no appointed teachers or ministers among them; and there was confusion in their very worship. Their chiefs determined to remove the evil; and seventy of them, from Moravia as well as Bohemia, meeting together, cast lots on whom the priestly office should devolve. Three men, Matthew of Kunwald, Thomas of Przelan, and Eli of Krzenovitch, were chosen; who repairing to a settlement of the Waldenses,—of whom numbers were scattered over Austria and Moravia,—received from the hands of Stephen, one of their bishops, episcopal consecration. From them the brethren derived that apostolical priesthood, which has never since died out, and of which the most perfect model is now to be seen at Hernhut, in Silesia.
Thus fared it with the Reformed religion and its professors in Bohemia, till Ferdinand I. ascended the throne. There was tranquillity, at least, and toleration, under Ladislaus of Poland, and an anxiety expressed everywhere, that the language of controversy might cease; and that the cultivation of letters, which more than a century of civil strife had interrupted, might again occupy men's minds, and soften and humanize their spirits. But Ferdinand had no part in this virtuous longing. Whether it was the influence of his brother, the Emperor Charles V., or his own innate hatred of the institutions of Bohemia, that swayed him, is a question not easily answered, if, indeed, it were worth asking,—but it is not. The promises which he had given so liberally when elected, were all disregarded so soon as he felt himself secure; and Bohemia, which ought to have thrown her weight into the scale of the Protestant princes, was kept, at the period of the league of Smalcalde, in a state of fatal neutrality. She could not wield her power against men to whom she was bound by all the ties of sympathy and communion of principle; for by this time, the Lutheran doctrines were taught in her churches, and openly maintained in her university. Neither would the diet consent that an army should be marched into Saxony. It was a balance of antagonist principles which proved fatal in its results to her own liberties, both civil and religious. The battle of Mühlberg gave to Charles and Ferdinand a superiority which they failed not to improve. The Bloody Diet sat in Prague; and nobles, and knights, and even cities forfeited their privileges and their property; and the two former, at least, in many instances, their lives.
There remained now but one bulwark of the Reformed faith in Bohemia,—the Caroline University, and against it the efforts of the dominant faction were directed. It was a sore grievance to the court and the popish nobility, that a weapon so powerful as education should be exclusively in the hands of schismatics; so they resolved to counter-work it. With this view, the aid of the Jesuits was called in; and twelve fathers of the order of Loyola took possession, in 1555, of the Clementinum College. At first their unpopularity was such, that they never ventured to show themselves in the streets without being insulted. Yet they pursued their course with unwearied assiduity; and patience, and a mild demeanour, and an anxiety to conciliate even the taste for shows which prevailed then, as well as now, among the citizens, gradually produced their results. The Jesuits were first tolerated, and by-and-by respected in Prague. Moreover the college was raised to the rank of a university, in which theology and philosophy might be taught; and they received from day to day an accession to their numbers. Still the fame of the Carolinum, or Protestant seminary, surpassed that of the modern university, as far as the Jesuits individually surpassed the Protestant teachers in urbanity of manner; and hence, though personally tolerated, the latter continued as a party to be objects of extreme suspicion. And so things remained, till the issue of the Thirty Years' War threw all power into the hands of the Catholics, and religious freedom, and civil liberty, became words without meaning in Bohemia.
I have spoken of the house of Austria as indicating from the outset of its connexion with Bohemia, a spirit of decided hostility to the institutions of the country. From this general censure, two, and for a brief space at least, three princes of the line must, indeed, be excepted. Maximilian had no sooner mounted the throne, in 1564, than he proclaimed the most ample religious toleration. The Compacta Basilicana, which had heretofore protected the Utraquists alone, were set aside, and all sects were permitted to worship God, according to the dictates of their own consciences. The consequence was, that a large portion of the people became, with the university, avowedly Protestant, and adopted, some the Augsburg Confession as their standard of belief,—others, the opinions of Calvin. In like manner, Rodolph II., and after his deposition, Matthias, stood forth as the champions of absolute freedom of opinion. They looked to matters of more importance than the squabbles of sophists; they laboured to advance the prosperity of their people, and they succeeded. The interval between 1564 and 1610, may, indeed, be described as the golden age of Bohemian history. Then did the diet exercise a sound and constitutional control over the supplies and general policy of the government. Then was the condition of the peasant improved, his proverbial industry encouraged, and himself permitted to share largely in its fruits. There were, in fact, as many elements of civil and religious liberty in Bohemia then as in England;—how wide is the contrast which the one nation offers to the other now!
It would have been strange, indeed, had princes who were wise enough to know, that a monarch's greatness is best enhanced by the prosperity of the people over whom he reigns, failed to give ample encouragement, at the same time, to learning and to the arts. Under Rodolph the halls of the Hradschin were adorned, with the productions of the best masters, which he purchased in Italy, and brought with him into Bohemia. His court, likewise, became a centre of attraction, round which Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and other foreigners of high renown, were gathered; while the native nobility, catching the impulse which their sovereign afforded, devoted themselves, in numerous instances, to the cultivation of letters and of science. There are several histories yet extant, which came from the pens of Rodolph's courtiers; while the same class gave professors and teachers, not only to the university, but to many of the most distinguished seminaries in Italy and Germany. Moreover, schools were multiplied both in Prague and elsewhere with unwearying zeal; till, in addition to the sixteen which flourished in the capital, there were at Laun, Salz, Klattau, Leitmeritz, and Chrudim, seminaries, each of which was presided over by a master, of whose fitness to communicate sound and wholesome learning, the Carolinum itself had approved. And it is worthy of remark, that one great object of which these promoters of mental culture never lost sight, was the improvement and extension of their native tongue. There was no country in Europe which could boast of so many statesmen, historians, and professors, by whom the vernacular language was habitually employed, as Bohemia. The printing-office of the Moravian brethren, of which Charles of Zierotin was the founder, multiplied copies of the Bible in the Bohemian tongue. In the same dialect, Radowsky of Husterzan put forth his treatise on astronomy. John of Hdiejouna used it as well as Charles of Zierotin, and Hajek, Dembrawricky, Wartowsky, and Blahoslaw, all demonstrated its fitness for the purposes of the chronicler. In a word, Bohemia was great, and flourishing, and happy; and her prosperity rested on a basis which, if wisely dealt with, must have rendered it as enduring as it was conspicuous.
Every movement on the part of the people had for its object, the establishment of a perfect nationality in Bohemia;—the leaning of the court was, perhaps naturally, towards Austrianism. Maximilian, Rodolph II., and for a time Matthias, gave, indeed, no countenance to the latter; but Matthias's constancy seems, in the end, to have been overcome. The Jesuits never ceased to keep in view the ultimate ascendancy of their own order, and they quite understood that to accomplish this, it would be necessary to crush the spirit of independence in Bohemia altogether. Both parties took the alarm; each made its movement to counteract the other, and the results were such as I have described. The Emperor Matthias, supported by the Catholic nobility and the Jesuits of the Clementinum, insisted on nominating his own successor, in the person of Ferdinand II.; the States, to which adhered the Carolinum, and all that were Protestants in Bohemia, protested against so gross a violation of their rights. Then followed an insurrection, the expulsion of the Jesuits from the kingdom, and a demand that neither the university nor any other seminary of education, should again be subject to the control of that order. And finally began that terrible struggle which crushed the liberties, as well civil as religious, of the Bohemians. For Ferdinand, not content to scotch the snake, never rested till it had ceased to be. The Carolinum, with all its endowments, privileges, and libraries, was handed over to its rival. Protestantism was declared to be extinct; and the gibbet, and the stake, and confiscations, and banishments, rendered the decree, in due time, more than an idle boast. There is, probably, no instance on record of an extirpation of a religious creed more absolute than that which the Jesuits effected of Protestantism in Bohemia. It was entirely put out, and has never since so far revived, as to embrace one-hundredth part of the population within the compass of its rays.
From the close of the war the University of Prague assumed the title of the Carlo-Ferdinandian Institution. In one of its branches, indeed,—the Carolinum,—the professors' chairs stood vacant for twelve years, and the building itself was shut up. But at the termination of that period it was reopened, and it has continued ever since to be the seminary in which instruction in the faculties of law and of medicine is communicated. For theology, and moral and abstract philosophy, on the other hand, the student must needs repair to the Clementinum; over which, till the suppression of the order by Joseph II., the Jesuits presided. Nor has the downfall of that most ambitious and subtle body, worked any important change in the constitution of the university. The Carolinum is still the laymen's college; the Clementinum the place of education for the divine,—who seems to be returning, with rapid strides, at least in Prague, to what he used to be while yet Jesuitism was in full vigour.
Such is an outline of the great historical events of which a visit to these two edifices is sure to remind the traveller. Of the buildings themselves, as well as of the system of education that is pursued within their walls, I have very little to say. The Carolinum, entirely remodelled by the Jesuits, retains no resemblance, even in its external features, to what it was at the period when Huss presided over its affairs. It is a handsome pile, doubtless; but all traces of its Gothic architecture are swept away, and in its very dimensions it is changed. The Clementinum, on the contrary, has grown, both in importance and bulk; for it occupies the site of two churches, of a Dominican convent, and of several streets and squares, which were pulled down in order to make room for it. Of its noble halls the interior decoration is altogether Italian; and its library, its museum, its cabinets, and scientific collections, are, at least, worth seeing.
Education in Bohemia, as well as in the other provinces of the Austrian empire, goes on under the strict and unceasing surveillance of the police. The clergy, in spite of what travellers assert to the contrary, have no control over it at all; except so far as they may possess influence enough with the government to recommend such text-books as are adopted in the various seminaries. It was whispered, indeed, in Prague, that since the accession of the present emperor, the clergy have, in this respect, made large strides upwards; and it is very certain that Jesuitism is not what it was some years ago,—a profession which men esteemed it prudent to conceal. But however this may be, as the nomination to vacant chairs in the university is vested in the Board of Education at Vienna, so by the head of the police it is determined by what process eminent philosophers, and divines, and lawyers, shall be fabricated. In like manner the period of attendance on each class,—or, to speak more accurately, the space of time which is necessary to complete an academical course,—is not left either to the discretion of the professors, or to the talent and industry of their pupils. In the first place, the youth, to be admitted, must show that he has attended one of the public schools for three years, at the least. He must bring with him also a slender stock of German, arithmetic, mathematics, Greek, and Latin; which for six years more he labours only to increase. Then comes a fresh distribution of the students, who, throughout these protracted periods, have gone on together; but, who now pass off into the schools of law, and medicine, and divinity, according to the nature of the professions for which they are respectively intended. The candidates for the cope and the judge's chair complete the course in four years more. From the incipient Esculapius six years professional study is demanded. It is worthy of remark, that not a single lecture is delivered in the vernacular language of the country. German is, indeed, employed, where Latin may have grown into disrepute; but the Bohemian is a dialect of which the use seems restricted to the very lowest and most despised of the peasantry.