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 who had obtained the throne by the murder of his brother induced them somewhat to praise Boleslav II at the expense of his father, and to attribute to him conquests that had already been made by Boleslav I. It is certain that early in the reign of Boleslav II we find the Bohemian frontiers more widely extended than at any other time, even during the reigns of Ottokar II and Charles IV.

Besides Bohemia itself, Moravia, a large part of Hungary stretching from the Carpathians to the Danube, the greater part of Silesia including Breslau, wide districts of Poland reaching nearly up to the town of Lemberg, and touching the frontiers of the Russian rulers of Kiew, were subject to Boleslav II.

The great power acquired by Boleslav allowed him to assume a more independent attitude towards the German kings; and ecclesiastical affairs then being so intimately connected with the political situation, he now endeavoured to render the Bohemian Church less dependent on Germany.

On the occasion of an interview with the Emperor Otho (973), Boleslav obtained his consent to the separation of Bohemia, and the wide lands then incorporated with it, from the diocese of Regensburg. Prague was to become the seat of a bishopric; and the Pope gave his consent, though under the express conditions that the new bishopric was not to be considered a continuation of the old Moravian archbishopric, and that the liturgy should be the Latin, not the Slavonic one, which still had many adherents in the country. The Bohemian bishopric was also placed under the supremacy of the German archbishops of Maintz. On the proposal of Boleslav, Thietmar, a German who had long lived in Bohemia and was thoroughly versed in the language of the country, was, by the clergy, the nobles, and the people, elected first bishop of Prague (973). Thietmar only lived nine years after his election, and Adalbert or Voytech, a Bohemian noble, son of the voyvode of Libitz, was then chosen as bishop. It was through the efforts of Adalbert that Christianity was finally established in Bohemia; for the German priests of the diocese of Regensburg, to which the country had formerly belonged, had made little impression on the people, whose language they mostly did not understand.

Adalbert, however, found the ruling of his extensive diocese very difficult, and his efforts to extirpate polygamy