The adherents of the Roman Church in Bohemia were fully aware of the fact that the king was unable to afford them efficient aid; still his now openly avowed support encouraged them to assume an attitude by no means in conformity with the smallness of their number in the country. The Jesuit Landy, whom the Romanist Archbishop of Prague consulted, suggested the expulsion of all foreigners from the towns of Budějovice and Plzeň, which still contained many Catholics; by such means only, he said, could the contagion of "heresy" be prevented. The Catholic nobles, who, though not numerous, owned large portions of the land, now began to attempt the re-establishment of Catholicism on their estates. Jaroslav Borita, Lord of Martinic, was especially noted for his energetic attempts to force the peasants on his estates to return to the Church of Rome. He commanded them to be chased with his hounds, and thus forcibly driven into the churches where the Jesuits preached; and in order to re-establish communion in one kind, he insisted that the holy wafer should be forced down the throats of all his peasants whom he suspected of heresy.[1]
The attention of the militant religious parties was now for a time diverted to the family dissensions in the house of Habsburg. Ever since the failure of Rudolph's health his brother, the Archduke Matthew, had expressed himself in favour of depriving Rudolph of his Imperial and regal authority; though he had not at first contemplated his actual deposition. The events in Hungary now brought this plan again to the fore. The Imperial armies had at that period been successful against the Turks, and a considerable part of Hungary was for a time under Rudolph's rule. These successes and momentary enthusiasm for the Church of Rome induced Rudolph to attempt a "Catholic reformation" in Hungary. He published a decree founded on the ancient laws of Stephen—the first Christian king of Hungary—by which he menaced all who spoke in public about religious questions with the severest penalties. The numerous Protestants in Hungary, no doubt justly, con-
- ↑ "Baro de Martinic ferreo instrumento ore ad hiatum distento hostias injici subditis mandabat cogique ad idolorum ministerium" (Habernfeld). Recent historians, writing from a strongly Roman Catholic point of view, have, not very successfully, attempted to deny, or at least to extenuate, the violence of Martinic and other Catholic nobles at this time.
