Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/59

16 All this glory and prestige and material wealth gave rise to many kinds of abuses and to a general moral de cadence. The Church was thoroughly enme shed in this demoralization. The Bohemian Church of that day possessed for instance not only extensive rights, but also one half of the entire area of the country.

It is precisely at this moment of crisis that we hear the prophetic voices of protest, hurled from the pulpits and house-tops by Konrad Waldhauser (†1369), John Stēkna (†1369), Matthew of Janov (†1394), Mili̍c̄ of Kromēr̄i̍z̄ (†1374), and particularly John Hus (†1414). The results, finally crystallizing in the popular ups urge of the Hussite movement, are too known to be discussed here. Suffice it to say that after the martyrdom of John Hus his followers have honestly done away with the worst offences of the Church of Rome, but, in the process of doing so they supplanted the tyranny of Rome by two contending tyrannies of Prague and Ta̍bor.

There was a quaint habit among certain Roman Emperors as well as among many famous men of his time to spend the Zdenēk Nejedly̍, ; see reference to this situation in the, Book II, ch.viii.

Seat of the Utraquist Church.

Seat of the Taborite faction.