Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/18

 repulsing the entreaties of his barons that he would leave the hopeless field with the memorable words:—“TotToť [sic] bohdá nebude, by kralkrál [sic] Czesky z boje utiekal;” “Please God it will never come to pass that a king of Bohemia flees out of battle.” He was succeeded by his son Charles, who founded the University of Prague in 1348, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, in 1355, by the title of Charles IV. Both the Emperor and the Pope, Gregory XI, died in the same year, 1378.

Wenzel IV, succeeded both as King of Bohemia and King of the Romans, but was deposed from the latter dignity in 1400. It was during his reign that the great schism in the Roman Church occurred, and that the intellectual movement began in Bohemia, which resulted in the great Hussite wars. Conrad Waldhauser, Milicz of Kremsier, and Mathias of Janow, caused a great deal of religious enthusiasm by preaching and writing. And the University of Prague had become so famous that there is reason to believe it contained, in 1408, no less than 200 doctors and masters, 500 bachelors, and above 30,000 students, all divided into four nations,—the Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish. Doctors and masters might lecture as they pleased, but bachelors were obliged to make use of the works of some known master of the universities of Prague, Paris, or Oxford. Thus some of Wycliffe’s works became known at Prague even in his lifetime, and after the marriage of the Bohemian Princess Anne with Richard II. of England, in 1381, the intercourse between the two countries became very close and active, and several influential Bohemian doctors more or less adopted and defended the views of the great Englishman.

But the leading spirits of those to whom the principles of Wycliffe became more than mere matters of speculative dis-