Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/576

 560 THE HUSSITES. ren, in dealing with heretics, should restrain their zeal from the customary curses and insults, and should try the effect of gentle- ness and argument. That these missionaries were mostly Fran- ciscans perhaps explains why the toleration accorded to Catholics could not be enforced against the popular prejudices of which the Order was the object. Even George Podiebrad, in 1460, had per- mitted the Franciscans to return to Prague, but their zeal was not to be restrained, and they were expelled in 1468. Under Ladislas they came again, in 1482, but in the disturbances of the following year they were glad to escape, their house was levelled to the ground, and was not rebuilt until 1629. From time to time other communities were founded at Hradecz, Glatz, and IS'eisse, but they were short-lived, and were speedily destroyed by the fanaticism of the people. As the invention of printing facilitated controversy, polemical zeal multiplied treatises to prove the iniquity of the Utra- quist heresy, but the Utraquists were not to be converted. They maintained the Compactata as the charter of their rehgious inde- pendence. When, in 1526, King Louis fell in the disastrous day of Mohacz, and the House of Austria, in the person of Ferdinand I., obtained the Bohemian throne, good Catholic though Ferdinand was, he was obliged to pledge himself to preserve the Compac- tata.* It is not to be imagined that the teachings of Wickliff and Huss were wholly forgotten in Utraquist degeneracy. Their real inheritors were the Taborites, and although these, in their disorder- ly enthusiasm, vainly contended against the spirit of the age and disappeared from sight under the strong hand of Podiebrad, the seed which they had nurtured was not wholly lost. The profound re- ligious convictions which animated these poor and simple folk are visible through the satire with which ^neas Sylvius requited their hospitality in 1451, on the eve of their suppression. Travelling with some nobles, on a mission from Frederic III., he was be- No. 28, 37-9 ; ann. 1489, No. 21 ; ann. 1491, No. 8, 78. — Chron. Glassberger ann. 1463, 1466, 1479, 1483. — Dubrav. Hist. Bohem. Lib. xxxi. — De Schweinitz, Hist, of Unitas Fratrum, p. 168. — Camerarii Hist. Frat. Orthod. pp. 72-3. — Georgisch Regest. Chron. Diplom. IH. 158.
 * Wadding, ann. 1460, No. 55 ; ann. 1462, No. 87 ; ann. 1471, No. 5 ; ann. 1475,