Page:Gregor The story of Bohemia.pdf/204

 toward the emperor was so great that secret messengers were sent to the King of Poland offering him the crown of Bohemia.

The burning of John Krasa at Breslau, the declaration of the crusade, and the barbarous acts of the miners, led the other parties to acts of retaliation. This was especially the case with the extreme Taborites, who regarded the monks as the chief cause of the miseries with which the country was afflicted. They looked upon monasteries as the dens of wickedness, the strongholds of Satan; and whenever they could, they tore them down, murdering the cowled inmates. Historians speak with great regret of the many works of art that were thus ruthlessly destroyed by these wild fanatics. At this time, according to the historian Æneas Silvius, Bohemia excelled all other countries of Northern Europe in the magnificence of its temples. Whoever has studied the history of the country up to this date, can not doubt the truthfulness of this remark; for whenever a king or great lord committed some infamous crime, he quieted his guilty conscience by donating a part of his ill-gotten wealth to build and endow a church or a monastery. Charles IV, although one of the best kings the country ever had, in his religious fanaticism robbed the country by spending vast sums of money for these purposes. He filled the land with greedy monks and priests, who ate out the substance of the peasant, the widow, and the fatherless, and poisoned the moral atmosphere with their licentious living. The evil now threatening the country could be traced directly to those priests and monks; and had the people regarded them with indifference, they would have showed criminal stupidity.