and the sanction of the Compacts had continued meanwhile. Pope Nicholas now openly opposed them, and the conviction that an agreement with Rome was impossible gradually gained ground in Bohemia. This conviction led many Bohemians to contemplate a union with the Eastern Church. The details of this movement are unfortunately very obscure. It seems almost certain that Archbishop John, though he did not oppose it, was not its originator. There is great probability in favour of Palacký's suggestion that the monks of the Slav monastery founded by Charles IV, who, having immediately accepted communion in both kinds, remained unmolested during the Hussite wars, advised negotiations with Constantinople. The negotiator, Constantinus Angelicus, probably a Greek, is entirely unknown to us. The only reference to him is contained in the letter which the Church of Constantinople addressed (1452) "to the priests and princes of Bohemia," and Constantinus seems to have had no credentials from Prague. In this letter the Church of Constantinople expressed its pleasure at hearing that the Bohemians were treading the path of truth, and that they were opposed to the dangerous innovations of Rome. Hope was expressed that through the mediation of the Holy Gospel, the truest of all authorities, the Bohemians would unite with "the Church of Christ" (the Eastern Church). The letter further states that though they (the Church of Constantinople) had formerly believed that the Bohemians were opposed, not to the innovations of Rome, but to the old traditions of the Universal Church, they had now (through Constantinus Angelicus) found that the Bohemians had returned to the original Christian faith, and were anxiously seeking their true mother-Church. The utraquist Consistory of Prague answered (Sept. 29, 1452) by a letter which they addressed to the Emperor Constantine Palaeologus, the Patriarch, and to the whole Greek Church.[1] In this letter the Consistory expressed gratitude to God for having enlightened the minds of the Bohemians, and shown them the way to return to the primitive Church. In Bohemia—it continued—simony, pride, and avarice are, unknown among the clergy, and all the arts of Antichrist are detested by the people. "Even when Antichrist, enraged against us, attacked us, burnt our
- ↑ Both these letters are printed in full in Palacký's Geschichte von Böhmen.
