enth century, became together with this kingdom an ingredient
part of the Austrian states.

The Moravians were among the earliest Slavic tribes converted to
Christianity. As early as the seventeenth century a considerable
portion of them were baptized by German priests. It was however not
before the first half of the ninth century, that the first Christian
missionaries entered Bohemia. In the year 845, fourteen Bohemian
princes were baptized at Ratisbon. In the year 894 the duke Borzivog,
the head of the nation, received baptism; but his successors went back
to idolatry, and with them the greatest part of the people.
Christianity was not firmly established in these regions until the
second half of the tenth century. At this time the Slavic liturgy
introduced by Methodius into Moravia was already, in some measure, by
the indefatigable exertions of the Romish German priesthood,
superseded by the Latin worship. Thus it never was fully established
in Bohemia with the exception of a few churches, attached to convents
founded expressly in memory of the Slavic saints, Jerome, Cyril, and
Methodius. Their inmates however were expelled in favour of
German-Bohemian monks, or they died; and with them disappeared every
vestige of the innovations of Cyril and Methodius. Hence the Old
Slavic language, and the noble translation of the Bible extant in
it, have exercised only an inconsiderable influence on the Bohemian
idiom.[7]

Bohemia, under the sovereignty of her dukes, and from A.D. 1198, under
that of kings, was independent of the German empire, or at least did
not belong to its circles; it recognized however a kind of sovereignty
in that powerful neighbour, and the kings of Bohemia deemed it an
honour to belong to the seven Electors, who chose the worldly head of
Christianity. In the year 1306, the last male descendant of Perzmislas
was murdered. His house had reigned in Bohemia in uninterrupted
succession; although the kingdom was properly not hereditary, but
elective, like Germany, Hungary, and Poland. After a short interval,
the crown of Bohemia fell by succession to the house of Luxemburg, and
thus became several times united with the Roman imperial crown. Under
the emperor Charles IV, Bohemia rose to the summit of its lustre. It
was he who founded, A.D. 1348, the university of Prague, the first
Slavic institution of that description.[8] Under his successor,
Wenceslaus, the war of the Hussites began. In the year 1457. the
B