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 captivity, had attempted to detach the country from its allegiance to that Pope. Sigismund had (1403) instructed the Bohemian clergy not to obey any orders received from Boniface, who had previously called on the German princes to dethrone the house of Luxemburg, and to recognize the Elector Palatine as king. It may be added that Boniface, not having the whole revenue of the Church at his disposal, had aroused great indignation by exacting enormous sums for his confirmation of bishops and archbishops, and had even established a rule that the benefices in his gift, when vacant, or even when a vacancy was expected, should be publicly sold to the highest bidder.

It will thus be seen that the Hussite movement was at first favoured by the queen and court, and was then by no means the democratic movement which it afterwards became.

There was only one element in Bohemia that was from the very first hostile to the new movement, and that was the German party, both in the towns and at the university. The doctrines of Wycliffe had been freely expounded at the university in 1402, during which year Hus was Rector, and several of his friends, also belonging to the Bohemian "nation," held high appointments there. The German members of the university, both from national and from religious motives, opposed these doctrines, and when Walter Harasser of the Bavarian "nation" was Rector in the following year he convoked a general meeting of the university, which declared that forty-five articles taken from the writings of Wycliffe contained heresies, and forbade all members of the university to circulate them. Hus and the Bohemian "nation" protested against the decision, as they maintained—not without some truth—that the articles that had been read out were falsified, and did not convey Wycliffe's meaning. This debate was the first public manifestation of the reform movement. The Bohemians were greatly incensed at having been outvoted by the Germans, and neither this decision, nor the subsequent prohibition addressed by the archbishop to the clergy of preaching the doctrine contained in the forty-five articles, interrupted the reform movement to any great extent. In 1408 the