protested against this practice. He pointed out to them the dangers
to morality and order which they were incurring by letting in priests
of whom they knew nothing, except that they had been consecrated;
men who, in many cases, had left their country from discreditable
reasons. Finally, he appealed to them not to sacrifice that Bohemian
independence for which they had struggled so long, nor to compromise
with the representatives of those who had shed the blood of Hus and
Jerom.
Unfortunately, Luther himself fell into the very same error against
which he had so energetically warned the Bohemians. During these
negotiations he put his chief trust in a man who was totally unworthy
of his confidence. This was Gallus Cahera, the son of a butcher of
Prague, who had studied in the University and gained a Master’s degree.
He had then taken Holy Orders, and been appointed parish priest of
Litmerice. From thence he had gone to Wittenberg; and so completely
did he gain the confidence of the Reformers that, in 1523, Luther
sent him back to Prague with letters to the Utraquistic congregation,
urging them to choose him as their leader in the work of reform. He
arrived there just when Louis was accomplishing his changes in the
administration of Bohemia. In the following year the Utraquists elected
Cahera as the Administrator of their Consistory; and he proceeded to
draw up a series of Articles for their acceptance, which approached
nearer than any of their previous formularies to the Lutheran creed. A
proposal, indeed, to condemn the celibacy of the clergy was rejected
by the Assembly; but the Articles which were adopted were sufficiently
extreme to alarm the old-fashioned Utraquists; and Pas̆ek and his
friends began at once to make use of this feeling.
It must be remembered that Utraquism had always been most powerful when
it had been connected with efforts for Bohemian independence; and,
unfortunately, the national feeling of Bohemia was generally closely
connected with a hatred of all German influence. Pas̆ek had been able
to appeal to this prejudice, in resisting the appointment of Karl of
Münsterberg, who was not a Bohemian by birth; and, though the hatred of
the tyranny of Lev and Pas̆ek had been strong enough for the moment
to destroy the effect of this appeal, yet the dread of a German heresy
was easily awakened in the citizens of Prague. Louis had already called
on the Moravian Assembly to condemn the new doctrines; and that body,
which had defended the national movement of the Bohemian Brotherhood,
readily denounced the teaching of the monk of Wittenberg.
Pas̆ek soon succeeded in gaining help from an unexpected quarter.
Cahera was a weak and unprincipled man, and his opponents were easily
able to work upon his vanity. They proposed to him the splendid task of
reconciling the Utraquists to the Pope; and Cahera was so dazzled by
the prospect of the fame and dignity which such an undertaking promised
him, that he quickly drifted away from his former friends and helped
forward Pas̆ek’s intrigues. In vain did Luther remonstrate with Cahera
on this desertion of his principles. The reaction steadily went on.
Pas̆ek was re-elected to the Council; Louis, forgetful of his former
distrust, encouraged the town in its new course; Karl of Münsterberg
came over to the Catholic side; and the Assembly of Bohemia once more
appealed to the Pope to ratify the Compacts of Basel.
But Pas̆ek was not yet satisfied. He and Lev of Roz̆mital were
determined to recover the power which they had lost; and they found
that the discovery and denunciation of heretics were the easiest
means of obtaining this end. They therefore seized the opportunity of
Cahera’s change of policy to pass laws to strengthen the position of
the Administrator of the Consistory. At the same time some Lutheran
sympathisers were expelled from Prague, and a regular organisation
was formed in the Small Division to crush opposition. The Reformers
soon began to complain of the armed men who were allowed to parade
the streets. But these complaints were quoted by Pas̆ek’s friends
as evidence of an heretical plot. Suspicion was stirred up against
those reforming clergy who still remained in Prague, and at last a
tradesman named Zika appeared before the Council to denounce all those
leading councillors who were opposed to Pas̆ek. Hlavsa and his friends
were seized and thrown into prison, and Pas̆ek endeavoured to obtain
evidence against his leading opponents by putting their followers to
the torture. Lev of Roz̆mital was restored to all his former power, and
a system of terror was gradually established, under which the Brothers
and all Lutheran sympathisers were subjected to various kinds of
persecution. Karl of Münsterberg tried at first to check the progress
of this tyranny; but the intriguers had succeeded for a time in
winning to their side the king and the Hungarian bishops, and by their
influence the opposition of the governor was silenced.
A general atmosphere of suspicion now began to dominate the city and
its neighbourhood. Private avarice and vindictiveness found their
opportunity under the plea of orthodoxy. Men stopping to speak to each
other in the streets were accused of heretical conspiracies, and the
enforcement of a more rigorous form of confession put a powerful weapon
into the hands of the persecutors. Many workmen were deprived of their
means of livelihood by the espionage to which they were subjected, and
citizens coming to Prague to claim their debts were thrown into prison
on a charge of heresy.
Such a tyranny necessarily overshot its mark. Many of the nobles were
indignant at the power which Roz̆mital had gained, and he soon received
a startling proof of their hostility. Remembering the bait by which
they had drawn Cahera to their side, Pas̆ek and Roz̆mital despatched
an embassy to the king, who was then at Presburg, to persuade him to
second them in an appeal to the Pope to ratify the Compacts of Basel.
The Rosenbergs seized this opportunity for a blow at the new rulers of
Prague. They despatched a counter embassy to the king, in which they
denied Roz̆mital’s right to speak in the name of the nobles of Bohemia.
A still more impressive protest followed. Hlavsa and one of his friends
had escaped from prison, and they now appeared in Presburg to convince
the king of the injustice of their imprisonment. They showed, too, that
Roz̆mital and his friends had exceeded the powers granted to them, and
had inflicted sentences which were greater than any that the king had
permitted. Louis was impressed by these statements, and he at once
wrote to Roz̆mital, ordering him to reverse his illegal sentences, to
give Hlavsa and his friends a fair trial, and to restore order and
justice in Prague.
Karl of Münsterberg and Lev of Roz̆mital combined to defy the king’s
commands; and after vainly appealing to the Town Council of Prague to
resist this act of rebellion, the king summoned a Bohemian Assembly
to meet at the town of Kolin on the Elbe, and excluded from its
deliberations Karl, Lev, and all their supporters. He then secured the
trial and acquittal of Hlavsa and his friends, and punished Prague for
its contumacy by depriving it of its civic rights. So far, however,
were the Praguer from yielding that they now expelled from the city
the wives of the men whom they had been ordered to recall; and they
even imprisoned a citizen whom Louis had sent to Prague to recover the
property of which the Town Council had deprived him.
But, absolute as was Roz̆mital’s rule within the walls of Prague, a
curious story of the time reminds us of the formidable influences
which were counteracting his power in other parts of Bohemia. Peter of
Rosenberg had bequeathed to Roz̆mital the castle and town of Krumov;
but Peter’s nephew, Henry of Rosenberg, maintained that such an
alienation of the property was contrary to the settlements under which
it was held. Lev thereupon summoned Henry to appear before the law
court in Prague, to answer for his resistance to his uncle’s will. When
the messengers appeared at Krumov with the letters of summons, Henry of
Rosenberg at once threw them into prison. He then summoned them before
him, made them eat the letters which they had brought, gave them wine
to enable them to swallow this strange food, and then hunted them with
dogs from the gates of his castle.
Although this story shows that Roz̆mital’s power was confined within
certain local limits, yet, within those limits, he could not only
resist the remonstrances and commands of Louis, but could even hamper
in an important way his general schemes of policy. This power for evil
was shortly to receive a terrible manifestation. While the Bohemians
and Hungarians had been wrangling, the Turks had been steadily
advancing in Europe. Soliman the Great had considerably increased the
military prestige of his race; and Louis was startled, in the middle
of his domestic troubles, by the news that Belgrade had been captured
by the Turks. Then the young king appealed to the Bohemians to stand
by him and his Hungarian subjects in their resistance to this terrible
invader. The Rosenbergs and other nobles responded to this appeal; but
Roz̆mital and the Council of Prague, while ashamed to give a direct
refusal, yet succeeded in inventing all manner of delays, so as to
prevent their troops from coming in time to the king’s help. Some
of the Bohemian nobles wished to wait till their whole forces were
gathered, but the Hungarians soon grew impatient of delay, and on the
29th of August, 1526, they insisted on joining battle with the Turks
at Mohács. Louis, anticipating a certain defeat, fled from the field
before the battle began; but, in his flight, his horse fell into a
swamp, and his unfortunate life of failure was cut short at the age of
twenty.
The result of the battle was as Louis had foreseen. The Hungarians
were signally defeated, and the Turks speedily followed up their
victory by the capture of the fortress of Buda. A long series of
intrigues followed in Bohemia. The Austrian party were supported by the
Rosenbergs, and the Saxon party were led by Lev of Roz̆mital; but the
opposition of Lev was finally bought off, and the Archduke Ferdinand,
brother of the Emperor Charles, and brother-in-law of the unfortunate
Louis, was elected king of Bohemia.
XIV.
REIGN OF FERDINAND I.
(1526-1564.)
Although Ferdinand was known, and to some extent feared, as a stern
and rigid Spaniard, yet a belief in his desire for justice, and a
wish to secure any strong protector against the champions of disorder
in Bohemia, quite overbalanced any fears that might be caused by his
Catholic tendencies. Indeed, although many stipulations were made
before he was accepted as king, the fears of his subjects were far
less excited about those religious liberties for which they had so
long struggled than about questions of national independence. The
dangers which seemed most to threaten Bohemian liberty were the
possibility of Ferdinand’s election to the throne of Spain, and the
extreme probability of his election to the throne of Hungary; while the
subjects which ranked next in importance to these were the maintenance
of the right of the Assembly to elect their future King, and the
preservation of the supremacy of Bohemia over the dependent crown lands.
Never, perhaps, did the controversies at the beginning of a reign
more completely fail to foreshadow the events which should make it
memorable. Ferdinand himself was as blind to the issues before him as
were the people whom he came to rule. He thought that in the local
independence of Moravia and Silesia, which had been so much increased
by their frequent separation from Bohemia in the late wars, he would
find an admirable opportunity for strengthening his position at the
expense of the Bohemians. At first his theory appeared plausible
enough; for the Moravians and Silesians, indignant at not being
consulted in the first election of Ferdinand, were easily flattered
by his apparent tenderness for their provincial feelings; and they
consented to a concession to his wishes, which the Bohemians had
refused to make; for while the Bohemians would only recognise Ferdinand
as their freely elected King, the Moravians and Silesians consented to
admit his hereditary claim to the throne, and consequently fixed the
crown more permanently on the House of Hapsburg. But even the Bohemians
finally agreed that, if Ferdinand should find himself incapacitated by
old age or ill-health, he might commit the task of government to his
son Maximilian. Ferdinand doubtless hoped that both these concessions
would tend to consolidate the power of the House of Hapsburg, and to
strengthen his personal influence, as well as his legal claims; but
before the end of his reign he had cause to regret most bitterly the
increase of the Moravian independence, and to grudge the power which
he had conferred on a son, who seemed determined to reverse the most
important points of his father’s policy.
For the moment, however, his own thoughts and those of the country
which he governed were concentrated on the struggle in Hungary. John
Zapolya, the Voyvode of Transylvania, had begun, even before the death
of Louis, to show signs of an ambition which would carry him far beyond
the limits of his small principality; and he was strongly suspected
of having intrigued with the Turks at the battle of Mohács. After the
death of Louis, the intrigues and claims of Zapolya rapidly increased,
and he was at last crowned king of Hungary. Ferdinand, however, as
brother-in-law of Louis, was resolved to dispute Zapolya’s claim; nor
was this desire due to a mere greed of territory. The growing power
of Soliman the Great was becoming a serious danger to the peace and
liberty of Europe; and Ferdinand felt that the possession of the crown
of Hungary would enable him to protect his hereditary dominions, and,
indeed, the whole Empire, against the aggressions of the Turk. It must
be owned that, considering Zapolya’s evident inclination to intrigue
with Soliman, Ferdinand’s conception of duty was not by any means
unreasonable.
On the other hand, the feeling in Bohemia was considerably divided.
In spite of the dislike of the Turk, which was then common to all
Christian nations, the Bohemians looked with alarm on any increase in
those burdens of taxation which already weighed so heavily upon them;
and, as already hinted, they dreaded the rule of a King, who might find
it more convenient to reign at Presburg than at Prague. So strong was
this feeling, that the Bavarians, who had hoped to win the crown of
Bohemia for their Duke, now believed that they could form a Bohemian
party, which should commit itself openly to the side of Zapolya. On
the other hand, the men of Prague, who groaned under the tyranny of
Pas̆ek and Cahera, had reason for hoping that Ferdinand would come to
deliver them from their sufferings. He had already set free a friar
who had been imprisoned by Pas̆ek for denouncing his government; and
he had given the citizens good reason to believe that nothing but the
Hungarian war was preventing him from doing justice and restoring order
in Prague. Those citizens, therefore, eagerly desired his success; and
as long as the struggle was mainly between Ferdinand and Zapolya, the
victory seemed likely to fall to the Austrians.
Ferdinand returned in triumph to Prague; and, as the first step towards
the restoration of order, he deposed the Councillors, who had been
governing the city, and restored the separate jurisdictions of the Old
and New Towns. In previous times, indeed, the union of the different
quarters of the city had been looked upon as a means of securing the
liberties of Prague; but Pas̆ek and Cahera had turned this union into
so effective a means of tyranny over the freer spirits of the New
Town, that the citizens of the latter district hailed the separation
with enthusiasm; and they declared that their beloved King Charles
had returned to earth in the form of their new ruler. This exultation
was soon cut short by a new, and far more dangerous, outbreak of the
Hungarian war. Soliman, no longer relying mainly on the intrigues
of Zapolya, poured his forces anew into Hungary, reconquered all
the territory which had been lost, marched into Austria, and rapidly
approached Vienna. Even now, though they sent troops to the defence
of Vienna, the help of the Bohemians was grudgingly given, and
was hindered by their old suspicion of the power of the Germans.
Nevertheless, they joined in the war. The Viennese were roused to an
heroic resistance; and, after a fierce struggle, the Turks were driven
back from the walls of Vienna. The ships which Soliman had brought into
the Danube were destroyed; and he was compelled, for a time, to make
peace.
Ferdinand now hastened back to Prague, and found that Pas̆ek and
Cahera had recovered their power in the city. Although Hlavsa and his
friends had been allowed by Ferdinand to return from exile, Pas̆ek’s
party had succeeded in hampering their freedom and annoying them in
various ways. Knowing the King’s strong Catholic feelings, Pas̆ek had
hoped to conciliate his favour by giving a religious colouring to his
persecution; and several of the Bohemian Brothers had been singled
out for torture and burning. But Ferdinand seems to have thoroughly
understood the self-seeking character of the intriguers who were
governing Prague; and, resolving to show that he was not to be trifled
with, he banished Pas̆ek and Cahera from Prague, and pronounced the
formal acquittal of Hlavsa and his friends. Even those against whom
there was reasonable suspicion of heresy were allowed to escape by the
use of elastic formulæ; and it seemed for the moment as if a happier
and better government were really to be introduced into Bohemia.
But his Catholic training, strengthened by the circumstances of his
brother’s struggle against the German Protestants, had produced
in Ferdinand two strong aspirations, which had been enormously
strengthened by the difficulties of the Turkish wars. These were the
desire for the consolidation of the power of the Hapsburgs, by the
union of the different hereditary dominions of their House; and the
desire for union of the Church by the crushing down of the various
sects. These two objects were to be carried out side by side, and each
was to be brought into prominence as opportunity occurred. It was to
the latter object that he first desired to address himself; and certain
circumstances had at this time specially directed his attention to the
Bohemian Brotherhood.
The peasant rising in Germany had produced great dread of the teaching
of the Anabaptists; and, after the peasants had been crushed, many of
this sect had fled to Bohemia to escape persecution. The Brotherhood
had noticed that the new-comers agreed with them on the question of
the necessity of a second baptism; and Lukas and other leaders of the
Brotherhood had desired, on this ground, to negotiate further with the
Anabaptists. A closer inspection proved that no two bodies had less of
spiritual sympathy than the fiery revolutionists who followed Thomas
Münzer and the peaceable and orderly inheritors of the traditions of
Peter of Chelc̆ic. But this negotiation had called unfriendly attention
to the proceedings of the Brothers; and the alarm which it excited was
further increased by the action of one of those noblemen who had begun
to patronise the Brotherhood. This was Conrad of Krajek, the member of
a family who had defended the Brotherhood against Ladislaus. Conrad had
granted to the Brotherhood a church on his estate, which had long been
left without a pastor, and the new clergyman had removed from it the
ornaments which the Brothers considered idolatrous. Ferdinand demanded
the restoration of the ornaments, and Conrad refused to obey. The
Turkish wars hindered Ferdinand from pressing his demand at this time;
but Conrad felt his danger, and resolved to take further steps for the
protection of the Brotherhood. He saw that the German Protestants had
greatly strengthened their position by their recent publication of
the Confession of Augsburg; and it occurred to him that, if a similar
publicity were given to the doctrines of the Brotherhood, they also
might be placed in a better position in the eyes of the world.
[Illustration: JOHN AUGUSTA.]
The drawing up of this Confession brought into prominence a man whose
career was to have an important influence, both on the history of the
Brotherhood and on the policy of Ferdinand. This was John Augusta,
the son of a hatter in Prague. He had been born in 1500; and, though
without any regular learned education, he had acquired a useful
knowledge of Latin. He speedily made his mark in the Society; and in
1532 he was admitted into the smaller governing council. It was just
at this time that Conrad of Krajek had been convinced of the need of
a formal Confession of Faith for the Brotherhood; and Augusta was
appointed to undertake this work. This document was not only intended
for circulation among the immediate friends and acquaintances of the
Brotherhood; but it was also hoped that it would attract the sympathies
of the German princes, and particularly of the Margrave of Brandenburg.
There was also another ally whom Augusta was particularly anxious to
win to the side of the Brothers. Luther, as it will be remembered, had,
in the early period of his public career, made somewhat eager advances
towards the Utraquists; but, when the treachery of Gallus Cahera had
disgusted and repelled him, he had turned for sympathy to the Bohemian
Brotherhood. Lukas and other leaders had been well disposed to meet his
advances; but, on closer contact, they found three barriers apparently
insurpassable. The Brothers, like many other people, had been startled
and shocked by Luther’s doctrine of Justification by Faith _alone_.
They believed their fears of this doctrine to be justified by
personal observation; for it seemed to be leading, in many cases, to
carelessness and even immorality of life, however much it might seem to
Luther to be the assertion of a more spiritual creed against the belief
in mere dead works. Secondly, the Brotherhood came far nearer to the
Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament than Luther could at all approve;
and, thirdly, the same ascetic tone which induced them to shrink from
the Lutheran laxity of life, made the Brothers unwilling to accept a
married priesthood. The contention had become so sharp between Lukas
and Luther, that Luther, who showed himself the more moderate of the
two disputants, had felt it better to break off the correspondence.
Nevertheless, there were many, both in the ranks of the Brotherhood and
of the German Protestants, who desired a renewal of this intercourse;
and, as Lukas was now dead, there seemed less difficulty in beginning
a new correspondence. Augusta, therefore, went to Wittenberg, and
presented the Confession to Luther. Luther seems throughout to have
shown a generosity and breadth of sympathy towards the Brothers
which were not always characteristic of him. He readily praised a
great part of the Confession; he rejoiced in their agreement about
the main doctrines of Christianity and the rejection of many Papal
superstitions; and he declared that their mistakes about the Sacraments
and the question of Faith and Works were to be attributed partly to
differences of language, and partly to a want of clear perception
on their part of the points at issue. With regard to the married
clergy, it soon became clear that the difference between Luther and
the Brothers was not one of doctrine; but that it was due partly to
circumstances arising out of the persecution which the Brotherhood had
suffered, partly to a certain ascetic tendency which inclined them to
look upon celibacy as the higher state. Luther therefore consented
readily and warmly to recommend the study of the Confession to his
friends; and a few years later he even agreed that it should be printed
and published for them at Wittenberg.