compromise to the Catholics which cannot be called unfair; for of the four creeds that then divided Bohemia, the Old-Utraquists, the Lutherans, the Bohemian Brethren, and the Romanists, the last-named had the fewest adherents.[1]
These proposals were drawn up in seven articles. According to them, papal and utraquist priests were henceforth freely to celebrate divine service in the churches of either confession; the Romanists were to be allowed to embrace the utraquist faith without hindrance, and vice versâ; Catholic lords were not to appoint priests to a utraquist parish without the approval of the authorities of the utraquist Church; on the other hand, utraquist patrons of livings where the population was Catholic were not to make any similar appointments without the consent of the Roman Church. It was further proposed that there should be two bishops for Bohemia, one for the utraquist, the other for the Romanist part of the population. It was finally declared that utraquist lords should have equal rights to the offices of State with the Catholics. The Romanists refused these proposals, which would practically have established religious equality between the two creeds. The age was perhaps not ripe for such a settlement, and from a strictly Romanist point of view it was impossible to approve of the equality of position which the "heretics" would thus have obtained. Henceforth the utraquist Church became more and more Lutheran in its doctrine and ritual, and almost abandoned the Compacts, which no longer sufficiently represented its religious views.
Though he was unsuccessful in his efforts to prevent the spread of Protestantism in Bohemia, Ferdinand succeeded in consolidating his dynasty, and in strengthening the royal authority in Bohemia. He was able to obtain from the
- ↑ The number of the adherents of the Church of Rome during the sixteenth century is a very contested point. Dr. Gindely (Geschichte der Ertheitung des Böhmischen Majestätsbriefes), counting together Bohemia and Moravia, where the Roman Church never completely lost its power, estimates them as a third of the population. This figure is certainly too high. Gindely himself, speaking of the last years of the sixteenth century, says that Catholicism was constantly losing ground, and would then have been extinct had it not been for the Jesuits. The Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michiel (writing in 1576), speaks of "questi pochi catholici che ci sono" (in Bohemia); he adds, however, "che sono però li maggior signori ed officiali del regno" (from the State Archives at Venice).
