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 ROM the time of his election to the Margravate of Moravia (October, 1526), Ferdinand of Austria had been determined to make his authority as absolute in that province as in his own duchy of Austria. The Moravian nobles had long been accustomed to a semi-independence that they now resigned with great reluctance, but they could oppose no effective resistance to the force that Ferdinand could put into the field, and slowly, with an ill grace, they submitted. As there could be no open resistance, so there could be no flat disobedience—passive, sullen, disaffected if not disloyal, they obeyed when they must, and disobeyed when they dared.

Ferdinand was a loyal son of the Church, and was determined to suppress heresy everywhere in his