Page:Bohemia An Historical Sketch.djvu/302

 Germany, Protestantism was divided between the Calvinist and the Lutheran creed, and the strongest animosity then existed between the adherents of the two beliefs.

The Calvinistic doctrine, then prevalent in the Palatinate, and which Frederick and his councillors would undoubtedly, had fate favoured them, have established in Bohemia, was distasteful to many of the Bohemian Protestants; they had, indeed, long diverged from the old utraquist Church, founded on the Compacts, but they had retained much of the ritual and discipline of the Church of Rome. The religious party most in harmony with the doctrine of the divines of the Palatinate was the "Unity" of the Bohemian Brethren; of these, however, many entertained scruples as to the right of resistance to temporal authority under any circumstances whatever. It has already been noted that Žerotin, the leader of the "Unity" in Moravia, who also exercised great influence over the Brethren in Bohemia, totally refused to join the movement against the house of Habsburg. It remains to allude to the hopeless situation of Bohemia in its relations to foreign countries. A country such as Bohemia, neither very large nor very rich, was at best unable to resist the entire power of that absolutist alliance between Spain, Austria and Rome which Fra Paoli Sarpi termed the diacatholicon.

There is no doubt that immediately after the battle of the White Mountain the councillors of Ferdinand decided to change entirely the ancient free constitution of Bohemia, though, as will be noted in the next chapter, circumstances did not permit of these changes being carried out immediately in their entirety.

Before the great changes in the political and religious condition of Bohemia were carried out, Ferdinand's government considered it advisable that the public punishment of