58

A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN

LITERATURE

had assured to his country had produced a great change in the hitherto simple fashion of living of the Bohemians, A more and of the citizens of Prague in particular. sumptuous mode of life now prevailed, and the contemporary writers are eloquent in their references to the luxurious fashion of dress, the extreme devotion to the pleasures of the table, and the general immorality of the citizens of Prague. The clergy, with a few honourable exceptions, gave by no means a good example to the laymen. Simony, and immorality — according to the Catholic creed a far greater offence on the part of a priest than of a layman — were almost general, both among the monks and the members of the secular clergy.

This deplorable condition of his beloved Bohemia did not escape the notice of Charles IV., whom his country" men in his lifetime already described as " Otec Vlasti Hoping to improve the moral con( = Pater Patriae). dition of the country by calling in foreign priests, Charles in 1358 invited the Austrian monk Conrad Wal dhau ser to BoTiemia.

Colifad,

native of Upper Austria, had great attention by the eloquent sermons a

lately attracted A German by nationality, he had preached at Vienna. Conrad was ignorant of the Bohemian language, but though he was thus unable to make himself understood by the mass of the people, the impression produced by his sermons was none the less very great. The educated citizens of Prague were then, as now, almost as familiar with the German as with their own language. Graphic accounts of his eloquent denunciations of the corruption and luxuriousness of his age have been preserved ; they sometimes read like a modern account of a revival The Teyn Church, where Conrad preached, meeting.