Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/33

 Bohemia with the Eastern Church was of more importance and longer duration than had formerly been supposed. Some of these writers have even maintained that the Hussite movement itself was an attempt of the Bohemian people to return to the church from which it had first received Christianity. This supposition is entirely unfounded. It can be stated positively that we find in Hus no trace of the influence of the Eastern Church, though we cannot affirm this with the same certainty with regard to Jerome of Prague. It is a proof of the close connection between political and ecclesiastical matters that exists up to the present day in Austria, Bohemia, and Eastern Europe, that the question of the connection of Bohemia with the Eastern Church acquired a certain political importance during the period (1866–1872) when Russian opinion, and to a far lesser extent Russian diplomacy, supported the Bohemians in their struggle against the centralist policy of Vienna.

At the time when Bohemia first became part of the domain of the Western Church, it appears to have preserved a far greater degree of independence than did countries lying farther west. Immediately after the acceptation of the Roman rites the country was under the rule of the German Bishop of Regensburg; but when in 973 the bishopric of Prague was founded, it was but loosely connected with Rome. Its administrators were, on the other hand, greatly dependent on the rulers of Bohemia who considered them as their chaplains. For several centuries after the foundation of the bishopric of