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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE

in the chancery of Charles IV. ; somewhat earlier he had already become archdeacon and canon of the cathedral of St. Vitus at Prague. The ever-increasing reaction against the corruption of the times, which had already found expression in Waldhauser's sermons, caused Milic in 1363 to renounce all these dignities. In spite of the remonstrances of his Archbishop, Ernest of Pardubic, he decided to devote himself entirely to the preaching of the word of God. He first preached for a short time in the small town of Bischof-Teinitz, and then in several churches at Prague. The sermons of Milic vigorously inveigh against the immorality and corruption of the times, and do not As Milic spare the secular clergy and the monks. preached in Bohemian, his teaching was accessible to the great mass of the people, whom Conrad's German sermons had not reached. The constant contemplation of the evils of his time, of poverty and vice as he saw them in the streets of Prague on the rare occasions when he left his studies for a few moments, produced a remarkable, though not at that period exceptional, effect on the imaginative mind of Milic. It seemed to him that all the preliminary symptoms described in the Revelation of St. John had He therefore came to the conclusion already occurred. that Antichrist was about to appear — he is said to have fixed on the years 1365 to 1367 as the date of his arrival — and sometimes even that he had already come. In a sermon preached before Charles IV., Milic openly denounced that sovereign as the "greatest Antichrist." Though he was imprisoned in consequence of this sermon, Milic remained but a short time in prison. The magnanimous prince condoned the offence against his