Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/39

 selves, which was quickly put an end to by the choice of Hawel Czahera, the Lutheran leader, to the administratorship of the Utraquists, and the prohibition of all sects in the country except the Utraquist and Catholic confessions. Nevertheless, the Bohemian Brethren maintained their ground, in spite of difficulties, and even persecutions, in the districts of Jungbunzlau and Königgrätz, and in Moravia; and their literary activity was most remarkable. The first book printed in Bohemia was in Latin, and appeared at Pilsen in 1476; the Psalter was printed in Bohemian in 1487; and the whole Bible in 1488, and a second edition followed in 1489. Of all the printing establishments that of the brethren was the most active and important, and the result of their efforts was that the Bohemians were the best read nation in Europe at that day.

Ferdinand of Austria, brother of the Emperor Charles V, and husband of Anna the daughter of the late Bohemian king Wladislaw, was elected King of Bohemia on Oct. 24, 1526. The Utraquist Consistory at Prague was renewed, the Anabaptists expelled from the country, and the remarkable law introduced that no landowner might prevent a sert or retainer from devoting himself in a regular manner to scientific study. But Ferdinand conceived and carried out but too successfully a bloody conspiracy against the liberties of his kingdom, which nearly reduced it to the level of the German despotisms, whether large or small, which then infested and have not yet ceased to infest the continent of Europe. He also introduced the Jesuits into Bohemia, in 1556, in order to oppose the Utraquist professors of the University of Prague, and they soon became the richest and most powerful order in the country, and devoted their entire energy to bringing about a reactionary revolution in the political and literary circumstances of the Bohemian nation. The