hemians maintained the
first rank as teachers. The interest in spiritual things was no longer
confined, as in former times, to those who intended to devote
themselves to the clerical profession; it pervaded all classes, high
and low. Immediately after Wickliffe's death, an intercourse had been
opened between England and Bohemia by the marriage of a Bohemian
princess, Ann, sister of king Wenceslaus, to Richard II of England. A
young Bohemian nobleman, who had finished his studies in Prague,
repaired to Oxford, imbibed the sentiments and opinions of Wickliffe,
and on his return put a copy of all Wickliffe's writings into the
hands of John Huss, at that time one of the professors of theology at
Prague; whose mind was probably already prepared for them, and who
began to study them with great zeal and devotion. Indeed, the
pretensions of the chair of Rome, and the corruption of the clergy,
had been for some time since looked upon in Bohemia with private
disgust and open disapprobation; and when the professors Huss, Jerome,
and Jacobellus, began to declaim against monks, auricular confession,
and the infallibility of the pope, they found a responding echo in the
breasts of their hearers; and all that was novel in their doctrines,
was the boldness with which they were pronounced, and the logical
consistency with which they were justified.

Another difference of opinion, which tended greatly to augment the
excitement then reigning at the university, was the contest between
the two philosophical schools, viz. that of the Realists, who were
defended by Huss, and the Nominalists, to which nearly all the Germans
adhered. This contest became very soon a national affair; or, more
probably, had its principal origin in the unjust privileges of the
Germans and the jealousy of the Bohemians. The preference given to the
former at the foundation of the university, viz. the possession of
three out of the four suffrages in all matters determined by vote,
became anew the subject of debate, and was more especially assailed by
Huss, then rector of the university. After a whole year of resistance,
the king at length yielded. A decree of A.D. 1409 ordained that in
future the proportion should be reversed, so that the Germans should
possess only one suffrage, and the Bohemians three. For this victory
of their national pride, the university, the city, nay the whole
country, had to suffer severely. Immediately after this decision, the
famous litera