overwhelmingly Protestant,[1] but Ferdinand determined that in his empire there should be “unity of faith and tongue.” A unity of faith he and his successors have achieved, but it has been denied to the Hapsburgs—much as they have tried to achieve it—the unity of language.
n 1620 Jesuit fathers were invited to come to Bohemia and to take charge of the once renowned University of Prague and of the provincial schools. “The Jesuits buried the spirit of the Bohemian nation for centuries.” This is the severe judgment of no less a person than V. V. Tomek, the noted historian. Accompanied by Liechtenstein’s dragoons these ecclesiastics went from town to town, searched libraries, carried off books written in Bohemian and burned them whether they were “tainted” or not. Sometimes the books were privately thrown in the flames in the houses where they had been seized; at other times they were brought to the market-place or to the public gallows and there publicly burned. The Jesuits were indefatigable in their search for heretical literature, ransacking houses from cellar to garret, opening every closet and chest, prying into the very dog kennels and pig-sties. People hid their most precious
- ↑ Now of every 1,000 inhabitants in Bohemia 956.61 profess the Catholic faith. Due to various reasons—spiritual, political, and historical—more than one-half of the American Bohemians have seceded from the Catholic Church. Some have joined various Protestant sects, but the majority of the secessionists are Free-thinkers.
