Many of the events of his life, therefore, do not belong to Bohemian history, and the greater part of his time, particularly during the last years of his reign, were spent away from Bohemia.
In matters of theological controversy, which then and for many years afterwards absorbed the whole intellectual activity of Bohemia, Ferdinand showed greater moderation than his Spanish education had led the Bohemians to expect. Thoroughly grasping the intricate state of ecclesiastical affairs in Bohemia, the king from the first realized that the abolition of all "heresies" and the complete re-establishment of the Roman creed and ritual were for the present not to be sought for. He therefore attempted to establish an alliance between the few Romanists in Bohemia and those utraquists who, though strictly maintaining the compacts of Basel, had little sympathy with the ideas of Church reform and of Protestantism which at that moment were spreading rapidly through the neighbouring German countries. The position of the moderate party in the utraquist community was, however, one of steady decadence. The king was therefore, in the concluding years of his reign, obliged to rely principally on the Catholics, and he used all his influence in the country in their favour. Whenever circumstances permitted, Ferdinand—whose time was principally taken up by the defence of Hungary against the Turks—attempted the difficult task of uniting the Romanists and utraquists, hoping thus to prevent the spread of Lutheranism. Ferdinand and his advisers maintained that as the Council of Basel had only recognized the utraquist community, that community and the Romanists alone were entitled to a legal status: the Protestants and Bohemian Brethren should therefore, they argued, be absolutely excluded from the country. In 1537 Ferdinand arranged a meeting between the representatives of the Roman and those of the utraquist parties. He declared that only those who either professed the Catholic faith or recognized the compacts had a right to be present. The utraquists forced several members of the community of the Brethren to retire, but they opposed the wishes of the king with regard to the Lutherans. Several of the utraquist nobles even spoke in a disparaging way of the compacts, saying that they had never read them, and that they would only be guided by the word of God. The utraquist party then proposed a
