only good action of Ferdinand’s, as regards Bohemia, was his application to Pope Pius IV, to sanction the use of the cup in the communion by the laity, and to reconsider the question of the celibacy of the clergy, the latter of which requests was put off with an evasive answer, while the former was granted in 1564, in hopes of the eventual return of the Utraquists into the bosom of the Holy Roman Church.
Ferdinand died in the same year, and was succeeded by his son Maximilian, who, in return for the liberal aid voted by the Bohemian Parliament for the Turkish war, suspended the “Compactata,” and proclaimed an universal toleration for each and every religious Confession in 1567.
Maximilian died on Oct. 12, 1575, and was succeeded by his son the Emperor Rudolf II. Peace had hitherto been maintained between the different religious parties by the Catholic Archbishop of Prague, Antonius of Müglitz, after whose death, in 1580, a different spirit became dominant. His successor almost immediately induced Rudolf illegally to proclaim the banishment of the Bohemian Brethren from the country, and they were, in fact, compelled to keep themselves completely in the background. In 1584, Rudolf, with the consent of the Parliament, introduced the new Gregorian Calendar into Bohemia, and at the same time, of his own authority, commanded the names of the national martyrs, Hus and Jerome, to be erased from the calendar. In 1602 the “Compactata” were again revived by Rudolf in the narrowest sense, and none but Catholics and Utraquists were allowed to hold any public worship. In 1603 the school of the Bohemian Brethren at Bunzlau was destroyed, so that the Jesuits had, henceforth, no antagonist of moment but the Utraquist University of Prague. Nevertheless, on July 5, 1609, the Parliament extorted a solemn charter re-establishing complete religious freedom. Rudolf’s brother,
