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.
XVI.
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE REACTION TO THE DEATH OF RUDOLF II.
(1600-1612.)
However indifferent Rudolf might have seemed to his duties as King
of Bohemia, he was as anxious as most of his predecessors had been
to maintain his ground in Hungary both against Turks and rebels. And
during the closing years of the sixteenth century he had gained new
hopes of success in the struggle, from the submission which was at
last offered to him by the Prince of Transylvania. Unfortunately,
however, for Rudolf, the cruelty of his general, Basta, produced such
disorders in the newly conquered province, that the Transylvanians
rose against the Emperor, joined themselves to the discontented nobles
of Hungary, and once more called in the Turks, who gained several
victories over the Imperial forces. Rudolf, like his predecessors, had
been irritated at the opposition which had been offered by the various
Assemblies of the Bohemian kingdom to his continual demands for money
for the Turkish war; and this opposition had been greatly increased
by his attempt to extend the powers of that Hof-Kammer which had been
instituted by Ferdinand. That body, no longer contented with inquiring
into the debts and credits of the king, now wished to pry into the
incomes of his subjects, and even to make its own arrangements for the
collecting of taxes. These encroachments were naturally resented by the
Bohemians; and the continual friction thus produced roused Rudolf to
more energetic action.
Nor were the differences with his subjects and the danger from the Turk
the only causes of this apparent change of disposition in the sluggish
Emperor. The Austrian Archdukes had noticed the growing disorders in
Bohemia, as well as the neglect by Rudolf of the affairs of the Empire;
and, on further inquiries, they found evidence that much of this
neglect was due to the strange state of mind into which the Emperor
was falling. That shy and melancholy disposition which had led him,
in the early part of his reign, to withdraw so much from public life,
was now ripening into a condition of morbid suspicion which had in
it a strong taint of insanity. It is a curious sign of the extent to
which superstition affected even great minds in the sixteenth century,
that this tendency in Rudolf was largely encouraged by a prophecy
of the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. The recent murder of
Henry III. of France by the monk, Jacques Clément, had impressed the
imagination both of the Emperor and the astronomer; and the latter had
prophesied that the same fate which had overtaken the French king also
awaited Rudolf. This prophecy had increased the Emperor’s tendency
to morbid suspicion, and had led him still further to withdraw from
the public gaze. The Archdukes now inclined to believe that the only
hope for good government was in the removal of Rudolf from power, and
the substitution of his brother Matthias on the thrones of Bohemia
and Hungary and Austria. Rudolf resented this proposal with all the
fierceness of a half crazy man; and this interference of his brothers,
combined with the advance of the Turks into Hungary, determined him to
adopt a new policy.
Both in Hungary and Bohemia he saw, or believed, that the Protestants
were the main cause of the opposition to his power. He knew that in the
kingdom of Bohemia they had continually resisted his decrees; and he
believed them to be the prime movers of the Hungarian insurrections.
Therefore, in 1602, he suddenly revived the old decree of Ladislaus
which commanded the suppression of all sects in Bohemia. In pursuance
of this decree, the chief meeting-house of the Bohemian Brotherhood in
Mláda Boleslav was closed; and Cardinal Dietrichstein began a regular
persecution of the Protestants.
In 1604 the same policy was extended to Hungary; and when the
Hungarians endeavoured to protest, Rudolf issued a decree that all who
tried to bring forward religious grievances in the Hungarian Assembly
should be treated as disorderly persons. Thereupon the Hungarians
rose in insurrection, and chose as their leader Stephen Bocksay, a
Transylvanian nobleman. Rudolf’s inability to provide payment for his
troops soon produced a mutiny among them; Bocksay succeeded, not only
in conquering Transylvania, but in overrunning Hungary, and at last
entering Moravia. Bocksay had hoped to persuade the Moravian Estates to
join him in defending the cause of civil and religious liberty. This
the Moravians were unwilling to do, as they hoped to come to terms
with Rudolf. But the unpopularity of Cardinal Dietrichstein, and the
cruelties of Rudolf’s German troops, gradually weakened the sympathies
of the Moravians for their king; and in the general state of misery
and confusion which followed, two movements began to be developed for
the counteraction of Rudolf’s policy--movements widely different in
character and methods, but both intended to promote the cause of civil
and religious liberty--and each of them finding its ablest and most
earnest supporter in a member of the Bohemian Brotherhood.
Of these the first to ripen into action was the movement which had
its centre in Moravia, and its best and ablest champion in Charles
of Z̆erotin. The life of this nobleman was a striking illustration
of that effort after compromise, which has already been spoken of
as so characteristic of the Brotherhood--an effort which makes it
so interesting to the student of human nature, and which enabled it
to gain so great an influence in the history of its country; though
it produced a somewhat disappointing effect, if one looks to the
Brotherhood for the highest embodiment of Christian life.
[Illustration: MORAVIAN WOMAN.]
The Z̆erotin family had long been established in Moravia, and had had
many claims to distinction, especially on the battlefield. They had
eagerly adopted the cause of Hus, and boasted that, since that time,
they had never had a Roman Catholic in their family. They had accepted
the principles of the Brotherhood, so far as they were consistent
with noble rank and the military profession; and John of Z̆erotin,
the father of Charles, had played as prominent a part in Moravia,
in the character of protector of the poorer Brothers, as Conrad of
Krajek had played in Bohemia. He had fallen under the influence of
Blahoslav, and had imbibed something of his zeal for learning and his
keenly patriotic feelings. Charles had been sent, as a boy, to study
at Strasburg, Basel, and Geneva; and his interest in the foreign
Protestant communities had led him to desire that they should unite to
resist the encroachments of Rome and Spain. He submitted strictly to
the rules of the Brotherhood in the choice of a wife, not venturing
to ask in marriage the lady whom he had chosen, till he had consulted
the bishop and other leading members of the Brotherhood. In his zeal
for resistance to the power of Spain, he assisted Henry of Navarre in
his war against the Catholic League. But his disgust at the profligacy
of Henry’s court ripened into absolute disapproval of the cause,
when Henry was received back into the Catholic Church. Soon after
this event Z̆erotin took service under the Archduke Matthias in the
war against the Turks; and thus he gained the favour of Rudolf, and
obtained an appointment in the Land Court of Moravia. Here he soon
found that Cardinal Dietrichstein and Ladislaus of Berka were making
great efforts to strengthen the power of the Jesuits in Moravia, and
to weaken the influence of the Protestants. Just at the time when
Charles of Z̆erotin began to devote himself to the local government of
Moravia, Charles of Lichtenstein, a member of an old Protestant family
of Moravia, was converted to the Catholic faith; and soon after this
Dietrichstein was chosen Bishop of Olmütz.
It will be remembered that the last Bishop had made ineffectual
attempts to suppress the freedom of the press, and to crush out
Protestantism. But Dietrichstein was so far from being warned by this
failure that he speedily set himself to restore a clause in the oath
administered to the officials in the Land Court, which recognised as
necessary the worship of the Virgin and the Saints. Z̆erotin soon
became recognised as the opponent of the new Bishop; and once again
comes to the front the ever-reviving question of the Bohemian language.
Dietrichstein had been brought up in Spain, and spoke Spanish by
preference; and though he could on occasion speak German, he had very
little knowledge of Bohemian. Z̆erotin declared that if Dietrichstein
was to be allowed to take his seat in the Land Court of Moravia, he
must speak the language of that country; and the Cardinal in vain
attempted to overrule this decision, and to obtain a hearing in German.