1609 THE BOHEMIAN ARISTOCRACY. 265 their serfs and dependents should not be admitted to the exer. cise of a religion which was not to the taste of their lords. Its insuffi This settlement, which was confirmed by Matthias when, by the expulsion of his brother Rudolph, he ascended the throne of Bohemia, was without any of the elements ciency. of permanency. In many respects, the principle adopted was similar to that which, for more than half a century, had prevailed in Germany. But there was one important difference. The German princes had virtually become territorial sovereigns, and had taken upon themselves the duties with the responsibilities of sovereignty. The Bohemian nobles were still landowners and nothing more. Their estates were too small, and Constantinople was too near, to render feasible' a change in their position which would place them on an equal footing with an elector of Saxony or a landgrave of Hesse. A king of Bohemia must still be retained, and the actual king was one who was far more opposed to the nobility than James II. was to the English people in 1688, or Charles X. was to the French people in 1830. Such a state of things could not last. Either the nobility would set aside the king, or the king would beat down the Approaching nobility. At first sight, the former contingency revolution. might have appeared to be unavoidable. Threefourths of the population, and all the military forces of the kingdom, were at the disposal of the Protestants. They could count on the warm sympathy, if not upon the active aid, of the great landowners in all the other states of which the dominions of their sovereign were composed. All this would avail them little unless they could ripen in a moment into wise and forecasting statesmen, and could bow their heads to the stern yoke of discipline and self-denial by which nations are foundedunless, in a word, men with all, and more than all, the failings of the English cavaliers could learn at once to display the virtues of the burghers of Leyden and the Ironsides of Cromwell. They had already chosen the field of battle upon which the conflict was to be waged. In popular language, the Church lands, which were still held by the Catholic bishops and abbots, were considered as the property of the Crown. This interpretation had been accepted by ali parties at the time of the drawing up of the law which guaranteed the details of the new arrangements introduced by the royal charter. The clergy continued to hold a different opinion, and maintained that they had as much right to regulate the religious worship of their own territories as any of the temporal magnates. Question of freedom of worship in lands. This view of their position, in which the strictly legal use of terms was adopted in preference to the popular, received the hearty support of Matthias,' to whom the question was indeed of vital importance, from a political as well as from a religious point of view. The ecclesiastical domains were almost the last supports on which his throne the Church rested; and to be deprived of them was tantamount to surrendering his crown at once to the nobility. In 1617, a golden opportunity was offered to the Bohemians of fighting their battle on favourable ground. The Emperor Matthias and his brothers were alike childless, and Candidature the Princes of the House had fixed upon his cousin, of Styria. Ferdinand of Styria, as the fittest person to be entrusted with the united inheritance of the family. Ferdinand was accordingly presented to the Estates for acceptance as their future king. 1617. of Ferdinand The terms in which the proposition was couched were On this subject Professor Gindely (Kudolf II., i. 354) has retracted his former opinion, and now cites the evidence of Slawata to the effect that the agreement consequent upon the royal charter was understood at the time to leave the ecclesiastical domains in the same position as those held by the King, and consequently open to Protestant worship. From this he deduces the conclusion that the Protestants were at least technically in the right. But though the Catholics who assented to this agreement are put out of court, it does not follow that Matthias, who was not king at the time, had not a sustainable case in arguing that he was not bound to travel beyond the four corners of the law. If a strictly legal interpretation did not make the Bishops' lards equivalent to Crown lands, he might well hold that he had nothing to do with the views of the individuals who composed the Diet. The whole case turns upon the interpretation of an agree ment which had the force of law. That the royal charter itself favoured the case of the Protestants is a pure delusion. 1617 FERDINAND OF STYRIA. 267 sufficient to show that the throne was now claimed by hereditary right, and an attempt to postpone the Diet, with the object of proceeding to an election of some other candidate, failed signally before the overwhelming evidence adduced in favour of the doctrine that, excepting in the event of a failure of heirs, the crown of Bohemia was hereditary and not elective.1 It is true that in the midst of the confusions incident to the last revolution, Matthias himself had been elected, and Rudolph, glad enough to say or do anything which might in any way affect the position of the brother whom he detested, had acknowledged the crown to have passed to him in right of this election. But so plain was it that constitutional usage was on the other side, that the great majority of the Protestant members of the Diet agreed to accept Ferdinand as their king. Yet powerful as the force of argument had been, it seems strange that no attempt was made to settle the question of the ecclesiastical lands. The dispute had been on foot for years, and it was evident that unless the opportunity were seized for coming to an understanding on the question, it would survive as a standing cause of discord between the nation and its king. The Bohemians could have been under no misapprehension of the character and intentions of Ferdinand. The friend and Character of pupil of the Jesuits, he had already gained an evil Ferdinand. reputation for intolerance, which was even worse than he deserved, In fact, it was hard to form a clear conception of the views and opinions of such a man, in the very midst of the contest in which he was involved. Even now his distinct place in the scale which leads from the unquestioning intolerance of men like our Henry V., to the large tolerance of men like William III., has still to be recognised. Step by step, as each generation took its place upon the stage, the political aspect of ecclesiastical disputes presented itself more vividly to the minds of An exhaustive examination of this point, with a full account of the debates in this Diet, will be found in Professor Gindely's paper in the Proceedings of the Historial and Philosophical Class of the Vienna Academy for 1859 the representative men of the age, whilst the theological aspect was gradually dropping out of sight. The place of Ferdinand is to be found midway between Philip II. and Richelieu. To the Spaniard of the sixteenth century, Protestantism was still an odious heresy, which, if it were allowed to spread, might perhaps be injurious to the supremacy of the Spanish Monarchy, but which was chiefly to be abominated as tainting the religious faith of Christians. By the Frenchman of the seventeenth century it was regarded entirely from a political point of view. Ferdinand would have sympathised with neither. To him Protestantism was hateful, but rather as a source of moral and political disorder than as a spiritual poison.1 tion. It could not well have been otherwise. When he passed as a boy from his own distracted land into Bavaria, where he His educa- was to receive his education from the Jesuits of Ingolstadt, the language of the Catholic reaction must have seemed to him almost like a Divine revelation. At Munich he saw an orderly and well-regulated government walking hand in hand with an honoured clergy. At home he knew that every landowner was doing what was right in the sight of his own eyes. To him the religious condition of the Austrian territories must have appeared even more anarchical than it really was. Doubtless a Protestant ruler of ability might have succeeded in reducing the chaos to order, and in beating down the arrogance of the nobles without crushing the faith of the people. But such a course was impossible for Ferdinand. He knew of but one fountain of justice and order-the Church of Rome. To a lifelong struggle against that which was in his eyes the root of all evil, Ferdinand devoted himself by a pilgrimage to Loretto. Yet it would be wrong to speak of him as an ordi 1 "So lange," he wrote to his sister in 1597, "die Prädicanten walten, ist nichts als Aufruhr und Unrath zu erwarten, wie man es da, wo sie geduldet werden, täglich erfahren kann." Quoted from the MS. at Vienna by Hurter. Geschichte Ferdinands II., iii. 410. In his will drawn up in 1621, he charges the guardians of his son to banish from the land all heretical doctrines. "Woraus Ungehorsam und Schwierigkeit der Unterthanen entspringt." 1517 nary persecutor. His pilgrimage to Loretto. FERDINAND OF STYRIA. 269 He never put himself forward as a general extirpator of heresy. He never displayed any per sonal animosity against heretics. His own nature was kindly and forgiving, and he was, by disposition, inclined to peace. The motto which he chose for himself, "For those who strive lawfully,"1 displays his own measure of the work which he had undertaken. The champion of the law, he would observe the law himself. Whatever he had sworn to his own hurt he would execute; but whatever rights the law gave him he would unflinchingly maintain. No unintelligible theories about the rights of conscience should weigh with him for an instant. If Protestants could prove that the letter of the law was on their side, he would be the first to support them in their demands. If they had nothing but its spirit to appeal to, he would be the first to close his ear to them. His orderly and resolute mind was thoroughly narrow. One side of the great question of the day was the only one which he was able to see. Rights which were clear enough to others were no rights at all to him. In maintaining his position he was as fearless as he was incapable of doubt. When called upon to face a raging multitude, he would be as calm as if he were standing in the midst of a circle of devoted friends. For the statesman's task of balancing opposing duties he was altogether unfitted. When complicated questions forced themselves upon him, the undaunted champion of the Church sunk at once into a perplexed and vacillating politician. His treat Protestants in his hereditary states. If there was any one principle more generally accepted in Germany than another, it was that which accorded to the Princes the right of regulating the religious affairs ment of the of their own dominions. Ferdinand, therefore, who had inherited from his father the Duchies of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, had no sooner grasped the reins of government firmly in his hands than he proceeded to proscribe Protestantism in his dominions by offering to his subjects the choice between conversion and exile. The ease with which the change was effected would seem to indicate that Legitimè certantibus. |