while of the sciences, chemistry and astronomy interested him the most.[1]
The early part of the reign of Rudolph in Bohemia was uneventful, and, had he died in middle life, little mention of his name would be required. Constant theological strife, absorbing the whole intellectual activity of the country, was still the characteristic feature in Bohemia. The greatly increasing importance of Lutheranism, and the rapid decline of the old-utraquist, and, in a lesser degree, of the Roman, Church, have to be noted. The extinction of the latter Church was—according to the opinion of Dr. Gindely, the standard modern writer on this period of Bohemian history—only averted by the marvellous activity of the Jesuits. That order had at first not been numerous in Bohemia.[2] Its members, none the less, undertook the apparently impossible task of recovering for the Church of Rome the kingdom of Western Europe which had longest been estranged from it. Aided, it is true, by the force of arms, they were in the following century entirely successful. One of the methods employed by the Jesuits was that of acquiring influence over the wives of the great Bohemian nobles. Since the accession of the house of Habsburg to the Bohemian throne, many nobles had married ladies from Spain or the districts of Italy subject to the Spanish branch of the house of Habsburg. These ladies, strong Catholics by birth, used their influence in favour of their religion; it was said that they aided the Jesuits, when their means fell short, by gifts of money, clothing, and victuals.
With the exception of occasional disputes between the various religious bodies, Bohemia enjoyed internal and external peace during the first years of Rudolph's reign; and it was only after he had ruled for sixteen years that the ever-increasing encroachments of the Turks on Hungary obliged him to go to war with them. The seat of war was far from the Bohemian frontier, and it did not greatly disturb the tranquillity of the land. It was only through the annual contributions, which the Diets voted, that the weight of the war was felt.
This period of quiet in Bohemia would probably in no
H 2
