Page:The Peace League of George Poděbrad, King of Bohemia.pdf/8

 «Tábor» parties, it would seem for a time as if finally the utraquistic priests would become dominant. But, in its final effects and results the hussite doctrine did everywhere away with the supremacy of the clergy: the priests have no greater privileges than the secular elements, their hitherto possessed privileges are taken from them, they are deprived of their extraordinarily large immovable and real estates and thus, the whole class nearly entirely loses its political importance.

In this way, the hussite doctrine laid the foundation stone for the transformation of the Czech State into a modern secular state. The Church was compelled to put up with this change for the time being, in concluding compacts and agreements. But the Church did not consider this state of things as a lasting and definite one and tried in every possible way to get rid of these changes in the Czech State which were so unfavorable to her. For this purpose the clergy tried to obtain the abolishment of these compacts during the reign of George of Poděbrad—1462—when an attempt to abolish the independence of the French Church seemed to be succesfulsuccessful [sic]. But as this plan did not succeed in France owing to a strong opposition on the part of Parliament and the Clergy, it likewise could not be carried out in Bohemia. On the contrary, the political endeavours of the Church, and especially the abolition of the compacts, only brought about the strengthening of the hitherto existing evolutionary tendency to make the state independent from all ecclesiastical influences. The Czech State carried through its will against the will of the Popes, so that finally the Czech Parliament took a decision (1485), according to which the above mentioned compacts,—although the Pope expressly abolished them and declared them to be heresy—, became the fundamental law of the country, upon which the Czech kings had to take the oath, even if they were not utraquists themselves, but partook of the Lord’s supper in only one form in case they wanted to exercise their governmental powers. The most significant importance of these compacts becoming a Czech law lies in the fact that rejected and condemned a thing which the Church expressly became operative as a secular law. In such a mesuremeasure [sic] then the hussite doctrine emancipated the Czech State from the ecclesiastical influence.

And there is no doubt George of Poděbrad, the sole Hussite and at the same time our sole Czech king, made use of the foundations worked out by the Hussite wars and consciously adjusted his whole internal and foreign policy to these aims.