STORY OF BOHEMIA

FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD OF BOHEMIAN HISTORY TO THE HUNGARIAN INVASION

BARBARIAN  wanderings found a plain lying near the mountain Rip, and between the rivers Ogra (Eger), and Wlitawa (Moldau). This plain they called Bohemia after the eldest of the party named Boemus

Here they founded a peaceable and communistic settlement where they desired to make war on none but the beasts. But, some ambitious men having introduced the evil of private property, it became necessary to choose a judge to decide the disputes which now unavoidably arose. So they chose as their judge their best man named Crocco, who founded a camp. He had three daughters, of whom the eldest was skilled in medicine, the second was a kind of religious teacher, who instructed the people in the worship of Oreads and Dryads; while the third, Libus̆a, was distinguished for her political wisdom and foresight, and was supposed to be an inspired prophetes

Libus̆a was  chosen to the judicial office on her father’s death. But Crocco’s formation of a camp seems to have stirred the military spirit in the Bohemians; and the story which follows  the transition from the earlier and more peaceable stage to the later developments of national organisation. Two powerful chiefs are disputing for the land, which has come to them from their father. 

Libus̆a,  the chief judge OF THE BOHEMIANS.  She declareds  according to the old custom of their people, the land ought either to be equally divided between the brothers, or else they ought to share it in common. The leaders of the tribes, after collecting in some way the votes of the assembly, decide that the land is to be held in common, basing their judgment also on the old traditions of the nation. Thereupon the elder of the disputants rises in anger, and declares that he ought to have retained the land in right of primogeniture, and further that the Bohemians ought not to submit any longer to women, who were fitter for receiving the advances of wooers than of dictating laws to soldiers.

Libus̆a, anxious to warn her people of the full effect of the course they are taking, sets forth to them the dangers of a military monarchy.

Libus̆a, unable to resist the popular demand that she should take a husband and give the Bohemians a king, tells the people to go to a certain village where they will find a man ploughing with oxen. Him they are to greet as their king, and his posterity will rule in this land for ever. The messengers plead that they do not know the way to the village. Libus̆a said that if they will follow her horse it will guide them. They obey; and they at last arrive at the village of Stadic, where they find Pr̆emysl ploughing. They call on him to change his dress and mount the

[7] horse, as Queen Libus̆a and all the people demand him as their ruler  Pr̆emysl therefore sets free his oxen, telling them to go

the golden age of Queen Libus̆a is long past, when we catch sight of the Bohemians in even the earliest period of authentic history. First we have a dim vision of a great Slavonic Empire stretching northwards to the Spree, and eastwards to the Carpathians; of struggles with Avars and Huns, and, above all, with the Franks. Then suddenly, as the dim mist clears a little, we find that the Franks have[8] become Christian, and the great struggle between German and Slav, hinted at already in the poem of “Libus̆a’s Judgment,” has begun in earnest. The centre of resistance to the German, however, is not in Bohemia, but in the neighbouring Slavonic dukedom of Moravia; and it gathers round a prince named Rostislav, who is encouraging both Moravians and Bohemians to stand firm against those peculiar ideas of Christianity, which Charles the Great and his descendants tried to thrust upon reluctant nations by fire and sword. Some Bohemians had indeed been compelled by Louis, the grandson of Charles the Great, to accept baptism; and Christian Bohemia owned the authority of the German Archbishop of Regensburg

 the Duke of Bohemia, encouraged by Rostislav, still held out against the Carlovingian form of Christianity; the Moravians defeated Louis in 849, and Rostislav strengthened his own position as the champion of Slavonic independence by an alliance with the Bulgarians.  

Boris, the powerful king of Bulgaria, had received at his Court a Christian monk named Methodius, the son of a patrician of Thessalonica. Apparently Methodius had originally been brought to the Bulgarian Court on account of his artistic talent; but

[9] he was also a very zealous Christian; and when Boris ordered him to paint such a picture, in the hall of his palace, as would strike terror into all who saw it, Methodius improved the occasion by painting a picture of the Last Judgment. The inquiries and explanations that followed prepared the way for the acceptance of the new faith by the king of Bulgaria and his subjects.

But the Greek missionaries found that the want of a written language prevented them from giving their Slavonic converts full instruction in the details of the Christian creed. Methodius, therefore, called in the help of his brother Cyril, who had been occupied in the conversion of the Chazars, a people whose country lay a little to the north of the Bulgarian kingdom.

Cyril was a learned monk, who had been trained at the Court of Constantinople, and was well skilled in various languages. Taking the Greek alphabet as his basis, but altering its form, he invented a written language for the Slavonic race, into which he translated a liturgy, several books of the Bible, and some of the early Fathers

The news of the conversion of the Bulgarians quickly came to the ears of Rostislav, for the great Bulgarian kingdom touched the eastern side of Moravia; and the recent alliance had brought the two peoples into closer intercourse. Unwelcome as Christianity had seemed to the Moravians, when presented to them as a demand of Frankish invaders, and taught in an unknown tongue, its lessons came with a very different force when urged by pious and peaceable monks, recommended by friendly kinsmen, and expounded in a language intelligible to the converts. Rostislav no doubt quickly perceived that the new teaching might form a valuable link in the alliance of the Slavs against their enemies. He appealed to the Emperor of the East to send Cyril and Methodius to Moravia; and, when they arrived at the town of Devina, Rostislav and his followers went out to welcome them; and after Cyril had retired from the mission, Methodius was recognised by the Pope as Archbishop of Moravia and Pannonia.

But troubles very soon began for the new-comers. The German party in Moravia were resentful at the introduction into the churches of what they considered a barbarous  Nor was it only by foreigners that the influence of Cyril and Methodius was endangered; an opposition was roused even among the Moravians themselves. Svatopluk, the nephew and rival of Rostislav, seems to have accepted some kind of nominal Christianity, but unaccompanied by any change of life, or even by any great reverence for the externals of worship; and he opposed the new apostles of the Slavs with the greatest fierceness. The opposition of this ambitious prince no doubt arose at first from his desire to pose as the champion of the German party, who were undermining his uncle’s authority. According to one story he had already attempted to poison Rostislav, and having failed in that purpose he conspired with the Emperor Louis against him, made him prisoner, and sent him off to the Imperial Court to be tried. Louis threw Rostislav into prison, and put out his eyes. But Svatopluk, though he succeeded in seizing the Dukedom, did not long retain the confidence of the Emperor or the German party. He, in his turn, was deposed and thrown into prison.

Then the Moravians rose against the Franks, under a man named Slavomir, who, according to one story, was a pupil of Methodius. The Emperor thereupon set Svatopluk free, and sent him at the head of an army to suppress the new rising. Svatopluk betrayed his soldiers to his countrymen, destroyed the German army, and once more became Duke of Moravia

But, however slow the progress of Slavonic Christianity may have been in Bohemia, Methodius does not seem to have excited there that savage hostility which he continued to provoke in Moravia. Svatopluk and his courtiers were, no doubt, indignant at the higher morality preached by Methodius; and one of the claimants of the German Empire, with whom Svatopluk was alternately in alliance and enmity, resented extremely the authority claimed by Methodius over Pannonia as well as Moravia. But, in order to[13] strengthen their position, the opponents of Methodius took advantage of his having come from Constantinople, to attack him as a rebel against the Pope, and a supporter of the Greek heresy of the Single Procession.

The relations between Methodius and Svatopluk, always hostile, would now have probably culminated in the death or exile of the archbishop, but that a quarrel broke out between Svatopluk and Arnulf; and the desire of Svatopluk to overthrow Arnulf’s influence in Pannonia naturally hindered his action against Methodius. For the few remaining years of the archbishop’s life, he was able to carry on his work, both moral and religious, with much less opposition; but when, after his death, his friends attempted to get his pupil Gorazd appointed as successor in the archbishopric, Wiching succeeded in stirring up Svatopluk against him, in renewing the alliance with Arnulf, and finally in securing the expulsion from Moravia of the leading followers of Methodius

Moravia had become the centre of a great Slavonic alliance extending eastwards to Bulgaria and northwards to Magdeburg. The exact relations between the dukedom of Moravia and the other States referred to may be difficult to define; but the whole story of his relations with Bohemia shows that Svatopluk exercised an authority there which was, at least, equal to that maintained by the German Emperor over many of the states subject to him; and we may fairly assume that he held a somewhat similar position towards the other Slavonic States which surrounded him.

Such a position, in the then condition of Europe, could not but excite rivalry and jealousy among the neighbouring princes; and Arnulf, the Duke of Pannonia, who had aspired to the throne of the Frankish Empire, was particularly jealous of a man whose power, as he considered, had been largely due to the patronage which Arnulf had granted to him. The exact merits of the numerous quarrels between these princes it is impossible to estimate accurately; but it is clear that, as Svatopluk gained power, he became more and more resolved to throw off the authority which Arnulf found difficult to assert. At last Arnulf, having lost hope of maintaining his authority by his own force, and perhaps suspecting that Pannonia would itself fall a prey to his rival, resolved to call in a new ally to his assistance.

The emperors of Constantinople had followed the[20] tradition of the Western Empire, by playing off their barbarian invaders against one another. And, as the Romans had used their alliance with the Goths to drive back the hordes of Attila, so the Emperor of Constantinople had called on the descendants of Attila’s followers to protect the decaying empire from the inroads of the Bulgarians.

Although the overthrow of this powerful State broke down, for a time, a barrier between the savage invaders and the settled governments of Europe, it seems, strangely enough, to have produced less immediate evil to Bohemia than to the German principalities. It is, however, easy to understand that the protection and championship of a neighbouring State by such a ruler as Svatopluk may have had its disadvantages, both in checking the independence of the country protected, and in involving it in wars in which it had little interest. Indeed, it appears as if Bor̆ivoj and his immediate successors were too much concerned with the internal struggles of their country, to take much immediate interest in the apparently larger issues which were being settled in the neighbouring States. The Bohemian struggles were mainly concerned with the rivalry between heathens and Christians. The zeal of Bor̆ivoj for the new faith soon irritated a large number of his subjects against him; and, being unwilling to maintain his authority by force of arms, he abdicated in favour of his son Spitihnĕv. In the latter we seem to catch a glimpse of a premature champion of toleration, who, while desiring to encourage the progress of Christianity, resented the excessive influence of the Christian priests, and declared that he was equally the king of his heathen and Christian subjects alike

 In the case of Bohemia  the intense desire to maintain her own independent life brought her into collision with neighbouring States which were determined to crush or to absorb her; while, on the other hand, her position as the champion of a race

And in that struggle between Teuton and Slav the one thing which, from the earliest to the latest times, has been the most prized treasure, and the subject of the fiercest championship of the Bohemian, is his language. Every effort for constitutional government and national liberty has always directly connected itself with this aspiration for the preservation, development, and general recognition of this great right. Sigismund, in the time of his most cruel attempts to crush out the freedom of his subjects, was denounced as “the enemy of our language,” rather than of our nation. Hus is honoured, even by Roman Catholic Bohemians, as the assertor and developer of their language. It was the great crime of Joseph II. that he desired to destroy it. If we could have talked with a Bohemian Christian of the ninth or tenth century, we should have found his deepest feelings stirred by a reference to the language which was then assuming its first shape; and the same subject has the deepest interest for the Bohemian patriot of the nineteenth century, now that his language has become one of the most varied and expressive of modern Europe.

HAPSBURG MONARCHY