royal castle of Pürglitz, where he remained a prisoner for sixteen years. Some years later, Ferdinand, during one of his visits to Bohemia, established the order of the Jesuits in the land (1556). It has been truly stated by writers of the most opposite views that this measure had a very decisive effect on the future of Bohemia, in consequence of the marvellous intellectual activity of the Jesuit order, and the unequalled knowledge of the country which its members soon acquired.[1]
King Ferdinand left Bohemia soon after the suppression of the disturbances of the year 1547, leaving his second son, Archduke Ferdinand, as his representative. The king did not then wish to confer that dignity on his eldest son Archduke Maximilian, though the latter was about this time—February 1549—recognized as heir to the throne by the Bohemian Estates. It seems unquestionable that Maximilian's sympathy with Protestantism (founded, as it was said, on the influence over him which the Lutheran preacher Pfauser had acquired) caused a temporary estrangement between father and son. Maximilian did not long continue to hold the views in question. It seems likely that (as Ranke has suggested) the death of the Infant Don Carlos and the possibility of Maximilian's succession to the Spanish throne contributed to the abandonment of his hostile attitude towards the Roman Church.
The triumph of the Roman Catholic cause in Germany, which seemed assured by the battle of Mühlberg, was of short duration. Duke Maurice of Saxony, who had, as a reward for his services to the Emperor, obtained the Saxon Electorate in the place of John Frederick, shortly afterwards headed a new confederacy of the Protestant princes of Germany against Charles V (1552). The Protestants were this time more successful, and Charles V was obliged to assume a more conciliatory attitude. The peace concluded at Augsburg (1555) between the Emperor and the Protestant princes recognized the status quo in Germany. The
- ↑ The views of the more advanced utraquists, or rather Lutherans, are stated very forcibly by Andreas ab Habernfeld in his little known but valuable work, Bellum Bohemicum. Lugduni Batavorum, 1645: "A primo Jesuitarum in Bohemiam introitu turbari regnum coeperat, Regum Sacramenta Sanctiones donationesque vilia haberi. Status reipublicae optime constitus vitiari, aboleri consuetudines, Religionem quae summum mortalitatis solatium est, intentari, inquisitionis Hispanicae seminaria inseri."
