Bohemia with the Eastern Church was of more importance and longer duration than had formerly been supposed.[1] 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.[2] For several centuries after the foundation of the bishopric of
- ↑ Paul Stransky writes: “Nobilitas praecipue et plerique omnes qui cum Germanis vicinis frequentiores esse, commerciaque habere consuerant a ritibus Graecis recesserunt. Tenuiores duntaxat et plebs rebus domi praesentibus contenta Graeci ritus sacra tenaciter servabat.” (Respublica Bojema, p. 271.)
- ↑ As late as 1182, when the Bishop of Prague attempted to appeal to the German Emperor against a decree of Duke Frederick of Bohemia, the latter “fertur respondisse per procuratorem suum: Cum sit omnibus notum Pragensem episcopum meum fore capellanum, sicut omnes praedecessores sui patrum et avorum meorum fuerunt capellani, discernite quaeso si liceat ei agere contra dominum suum, vel si tenear ex aequo respondere capellano meo.” (Chronicle of Jarloch Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, ii. p. 480.)
