turbed the quiet of the country. The king's letter to the Pope was at first without result, and the Archbishop of Prague, indignant at the loss of part of his revenues, placed the town of Prague under an interdict, thus prohibiting all religious ceremonies.
At this time occurred one of the many temporary and insincere reconciliations between Venceslas and his brother Sigismund, and there appeared to be some hope of a peaceful ending of the ecclesiastical conflict in Bohemia. Pope John temporarily suspended the proceedings which the Roman courts had already begun against Hus; and Sigismund, during a visit to his brother at Prague, induced the archbishop to remove the interdict from the town, and even to use his influence in favour of the suppression of the proceedings against Hus in the Roman ecclesiastical courts. The hopes of those who wished to end the ecclesiastical strife in Bohemia were raised by the death of Archbishop Zbyněk, and by the choice of Magister Albik as his successor. Albik had long been physician to the king, whose thorough confidence he enjoyed. This was undoubtedly the principal cause of his election; though it is unfortunately probable that he—as was then so frequently the case—made use of bribery to obtain the pope's consent to his election. Magister Albik, then already an elderly man, was only known as one of the first medical men of his age; although in his youth he had been admitted to the lowest of minor orders, that of acolyte, he had been married, but was now a widower.
Albik is described by all contemporary writers as a man of conciliatory disposition, and the intimate relations he enjoyed with the king render it certain that his purpose was the appeasement of Bohemia. It was natural to hope that the election of Albik, an elderly, conciliatory, opulent man, would at least cause a respite in the theological strife that agitated Bohemia.
Events in distant Italy, however, brought on a crisis which was more serious than any of the former disturbances in Bohemia. Ladislas, King of Naples, still supported the cause of Pope Gregory, and war consequently broke out between the king and Pope John. The latter proclaimed a crusade against Ladislas, and promised indulgences to all those who by contributions of money would aid him in the equipment of his army. Preachers sent by the Pope arrived
