Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/806

 786 BOHEMIA BOHEMIAN BRETHREN duced from various quarters, but chiefly in its Slavic form by the converts of Methodius about 890, when the king of Moravia, S vatopluk, ruled Bohemia. When the Magyars destroyed his Moravian kingdom, the Bohemians volun- tarily sought annexation to the German em- pire, with which they remained connected, in spite of the endeavors for independence of Duke Boleslas I. (936-'67), the murderer of his brother and predecessor St. Wenceslas. Under his successor, Boleslas II., the bounda- ries of the country were extended to the Vis- tula, but subsequently it succumbed for a time to Poland. Wars with this country were often renewed, Silesia being the main object of con- tention, and ultimately kept by Bohemia. About 1035 Bretislas I. annexed Moravia. The native dukes in 1158 received the kingly dignity from Frederick I. Wars of succession convulsed the country until Ottocar I. (1197- 1230), a truly great monarch, made the royalty hereditary. By conquest he and his son Otto- car II. (1253-'78) extended their dominion over a part of Poland, Austria, and Prussia, where the latter, on a crusade against the heathen Borussians, founded the city of Konigsberg. After a short struggle against the emperor Kudolph I., in which Ottocar II. perished (see OTTOCAR), the Bohemian monarchs acquired Poland and Hungary by election ; but with the assassination of Wenceslas II. (1305) the native ruling house was extinguished, and was succeeded by the house of Luxemburg, until that line in 1526 was superseded by Austrian monarchs. Charles (1346-'78), who as Ger- man emperor was insignificant, was a great king for Bohemia, which he augmented by Lusatia and other acquisitions, which were soon lost. Under his reign the country flour- ished. Prague, then containing the only Ger- man university, numbered 30,000 students; cience and art were fostered, and manufac- ture#, particularly those of glass and linen, were founded. From the beginning of the 15th century, when Charles's profligate son Wenceslas occupied both the imperial and the royal throne, ideas b/..reformation began to spread by the teachings^>sf Huss and Jerome of Prague, whose death at &!pnstance in 1415 and 1416, and the interventions of the emperor Sigismund, the brother of Wenceslas, caused the outbreak of the Hussite waK (see HUS- SITES). Under the sway of the iSussites the throne of Bohemia was filled by election, for a time from the Luxemburg line, once (1458-'71) by a native nobleman, George PodAebrad (see PODIEBRAD), and subsequently fromj the Polish line of the Jagiellos. When the second Bohe- mian king of this line, Louis, whVo was also king of Hungary, perished at Moflacs (1526), his brother-in-law Ferdinand of (Austria, the brother of Charles V., was crowned king, and in 1547 made the crown hereditary in his house. (See AUSTRIA.) In 1618 the Bohe- mians, nnder Protestant lead, rose for fche res- toration of their liberties, and this revolt open- ed the thirty years' war. In 1619 they chose the elector palatine Frederick V. as their king, but succumbed in the battle at the White mountain, near Prague, in 1620. The most cruel persecution commenced ; the Protestants were executed, imprisoned, and banished, and their estates confiscated. The constitution was abolished, the Czech literature, school system, and nationality proscribed, and the native state with its civilization annihilated. No fewer than 36,000 families were forced to seek refuge in Saxony, Sweden, Poland, Holland, Branden- burg, and elsewhere. This, and the sufferings of the thirty years' war, devastated the land. German Catholics were introduced as colonists, and everything German was favored and pre- ferred to such an extent, that the Germans of Bohemia for more than a century furnished more than half of all the officers in the Aus- trian provinces. The country became intense- ly Catholic, but the spirit of Czech nationality reawoke after the French wars. The revolu- tion of 1848 inverted the position of the par- ties toward the Austrian government: the Germans of Bohemia, in common with a ma- jority of the Austrian Germans, opposed their government ; the Czechs in Bohemia, together with the other Slavic populations of the em- pire, looked for a great Slavic empire in Aus- tria, and, in spite of the bombardment of Prague, where a Slavic congress was assem- bled in June, 1848, supported the imperial au- thorities. Since that time the political strug- gles of the Czechs for renewed national auton- omy have played a very prominent part in the history of the Austrian empire, while Bohemia itself, which witnessed some of the principal contests in the Hussite, thirty years', and seven years' wars, once more became a great theatre of war in 1866 (battle of Sadowa, July 3). BOHEMIAN BRETHREN, a Christian society which originated in the Hussite movements of the 15th century, and rejected the mass, pur- gatory, transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, and the adoration of images, and con- tended for the communion in both kinds. The origin of this sect is traced to Peter of Chel- cic, who about 1420 protested against any in- terference of the secular power in matters of faith, and demanded a return of the church to the institutions of the apostolic age. About 1450 an ecclesiastical organization was in exist- ence, composed mainly of remnants of the Ta- borites (see HUSSITES), and called the " Chelcic Brethren," who lived retired from the world, regarded oaths and military service as mor- tal sins, and denounced the Roman Catholic church as the church of Antichrist. They were favored by the Calixtine archbishop Roki- tzana, and under the leadership of Gregory, a nephew of Rokitzana, a considerable number of adherents of these doctrines settled on an es- tate belonging to George Podiebrad, then re- gent of Bohemia, and known as the barony of Liticz. The Calixtine priest Bradacz became their spiritual head. In 1460 the first synod