Section I.— INTRODUCTORY.
Endeavours have been made by ingenious theorists to connect the religious revival which took place in Bohemia in the latter half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, with the Greek origin of the Bohemian Church and the independent position which it continued to enjoy long after it had formally submitted to the Roman Pontiff. But, as a matter of historical fact, all traces of that independence had disappeared by the fourteenth century. By the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. the Sclavonic language and the Greek ritual had everywhere fallen into disuse in the services of the Church, and the host was no longer administered to the laity dipped in the consecrated wine. The Bohemian reformers were, in fact, quite unconscious of the Greek parentage of their Church. Equally unfounded is the theory which traces the Bohemian movement to Waldensian, or (as far as the early part of the movement is concerned) to Wycliffite influence. Like all truly great religious revivals, it was of indigenous growth. It began before the rise of Wycliffism in England; and, like the movement which is connected with the name of the Oxford doctor, it was only one part of a many-sided outburst of national vitality. The latter half of the fourteenth century was characterised both in England and in Bohemia, not only by a most remarkable religious revival, but by great social and political improvement, by great scholastic activity, and by a vigorous growth of vernacular literature.
The position Bohemian nation this period is thus described by Dean Milman. It was “a nation which spoke an unformed language, intelligible to themselves alone, and not more akin to German than to Latin; a nation, as it were, intruded into the Teutonic Empire, thought barbarian, and from late circumstances held in hostile jealousy by the Teutonic commonwealth.”[1] Before the reign of Charles IV., Bohemia was no doubt as much behind the rest of Germany in civilization, as Germany was behind Italy. It was to the Germans very much what Scotland was to our own ancestors. But in the course of the reign of the Bohemian Emperor, the Sclavonic kingdom became rather an envied, than a
- ↑ “Latin Christianity.” Bk. xiii. ch. 8.
