Page:Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule (1915).pdf/169

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THE SLAVIC REGENERATION
165

mians were fond of attending foreign universities, especially those of Paris and Oxford. In the latter place they became acquainted with Wiclif and, returning home, they translated his works and laid the foundation for that remarkable activity which is known as Husitism. Matěj of Janov, who had studied at Paris, had even before Hus put himself in opposition to Popery, but it was Hus’s particular desert to have roused the Čech national feeling. Hus was opposed not only to the corruptions that had crept into the Church, but also to the anti-nationalistic activities of the Germans, and so headed the movement which had for its purpose Čech regeneration. Čech became the language of intercourse, and a large number of translations of the Bible into Čech was made between 1400 and 1430, the most remarkable being that written by a Taborite miller’s wife.

Hus became the first rector of the Čech Prague University, after the German students had withdrawn to the newly formed University of Leipsic. Bohemia was rent by disorder, not only from without, but also within the Husitic movement itself. Husitist stood not only for religious freedom, but also for democracy, and for a time the Husites got along without a king. The most advanced of these democratic protagonists of that time was