justice. A further step in the same direction was the decision of Venceslas that all decrees of the court and the Government, for which hitherto either the German or the Latin tongue had been employed, should henceforth be published in Bohemian. We also find at this period an increasing movement among the Bohemian clergy in favour of preaching in the native language, even in the towns; and it is probable that the example of Milič of Kroměřiže, whose sermons had so deeply stirred the people, contributed largely to induce the clergy to use the native language for their sermons.
The national party, as soon as it had gathered strength, began to view with displeasure the condition of the Prague University, the great intellectual centre of the country. The management of the university, and therefore the right to confer the numerous dignities, professorships, and prebends which were in its gift, was entirely in German hands. It has already been mentioned that the university was divided into four "nations"; and as the Polish "nation," particularly after the foundation of the University of Cracow, was largely composed of Germans from Silesia and Pomerania, the Slav Bohemians found themselves in a permanent minority in their own country; this was considered particularly unfair, as the university had been founded and endowed at the expense of Bohemia. A movement against the predominance of the Germans began as early as 1385, when the Bohemians specially attacked the appointment of foreigners to the offices of the university. The Archbishop of Prague, to whom both parties appealed, decided in favour of the Bohemians, declaring that preference should be given to them, and that Germans should in future hold the offices of the university only in the absence of a fit Bohemian candidate. The Germans appealed to the Pope, and a compromise was at last obtained, according to which five of the great university dignities were always to be held by Bohemians, whilst the sixth one should alternate in the sequence that after two consecutive German occupants one Bohemian should always follow. This compromise only postponed temporarily the national struggle at the university, and it was inevitable that when a leader appeared in whom both the religious and the national tendencies of the country were personified, an outbreak must occur.
Such a leader was found in John Hus. Before giving
