challenged, and indeed refuted, by all the leading Czech historians from Palacky and Tomek to Count Lützow. There is no trace whatever of Russian or Eastern influence upon Hus. But the origin of the idea is distinctly interesting. Christianity first came to Bohemia and Moravia from the East, through the great Slavonic apostles, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who began their career as missionaries of Byzantium, and then drifted into the Roman sphere. Methodius was Archbishop of Nitra, the old Slovak town in North-west Hungary, in the ninth century. It is also significant that the celibacy of the clergy and the withdrawal of the chalice from the laity became established at a considerably later date in Bohemia than in the rest of Western Christendom.
2. The movement inspired and inaugurated by John Hus was quite as much national as it was religious in character. The Czechs were for reform, the Germans for reaction and the Papal supremacy. This is the secret of Hus’s great popularity at the present day, when his portrait may be seen on the walls of many a devout Catholic priest and Protestants form but an insignificant minority among his admirers. And indeed, his services to the national cause of Bohemia can hardly be exaggerated. What Luther did for the German language, Hus did a whole century earlier for the Czech language. Hus’s writings are epoch-making not only in the history of Czech literature, but in Slavonic history
