I04

A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN — in fact

LITERATURE

according to the requirements of the people." The queen proceeds to request the Pope to withdraw his prohibition, and ends by stating : " We will not endure that the preaching of the Word of the Lord in our castles and cities should This interesting letter was suffer such hindrance." ^ undoubtedly written specially in the interest of the Bethlehem chapel, at which the queen was one of the These letters remained most assiduous worshippers. without result, and negotiations which took place on the initiative of King Wenceslas were also fruitless, though the Archbishop in the last months of his life seems to A court have been himself in favour of a compromise. of arbitration, composed principally of Bohemian nobles, met by wish of the king, but the desired reconciliation between Hus and the Archbishop was soon found to be impossible. Archbishop Zbynek died in September 141 1, and was in the following month succeeded by Albert of Unicov, a Moravian who had formerly been court physician to King Wenceslas. Unicov is described to us as a man of conciliatory character, and this appears all the more probable from the fact that he was in great favour with King Wenceslas. The king had always wished that the Bohemians should settle their differences among themselves, and as far as possible without foreign intervention. This had indeed been the basis on which the recent negotiations had been conducted. But neither the Archbishop nor any one else could at this moment have arrested the march of events that were rapidly approaching a crisis. A comparatively unstreets, houses

everywhere

' Palackt, Documenta,