Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/404

 Iglau the compacts were signed and accepted by both the Bohemians and the representatives of the council, and the Bohemians at last recognised Sigismund as their king. The estates had some time previously elected John of Rokycan as utraquist Archbishop of Prague. One of their conditions for accepting Sigismund as king was his promise to use his influence on the pope to obtain the recognition of Rokycan as archbishop. Treacherous as ever, Sigismund did not fulfil his promise, and indeed secretly opposed the recognition of the archbishop by the pope. John of Rokycan, however, continued to exercise his functions up to his death in 1471, and the fact that the papal opposition to him also continued was alone sufficient to render a true ecclesiastical pacification of Bohemia impossible.

Sigismund’s reign in Bohemia was very short. Already sixty-eight eyars of age, he arrived at Prague for the first time as king in August 1436, and he died in December 1437. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Albert Duke of Austria, of whom the chroniclers only tell us laconically that “he was a good man though a German.” Albert only reigned about two years, and a very turbulent period followed his death. Albert’s widow had indeed in February 1440 given birth to a son Ladislas, surnamed “Posthumus,” but the government of the country was in dispute between two rival parties among the nobility. George of Podebrad acted as leader of the utraquist—or, as Palacky at this period calls it—the national party, while Ulrich of Rosenberg was the leader of the Romanist, or Austrian party. In 1448, Podebrad obtained the guardianship of Ladislas Posthumus.

Since the defeat of Tabor the utraquist church in Bohemia had adopted a very retrograde policy. It endeavoured in every way, except by means of absolute submission, to ingratiate itself with the Roman see. These attempts were invariably resultless. The Roman pontiff never recognised Rokycan as archbishop, and Pope Nicholas V. formally repudiated