e bully Thor, whose
brutality coloured German mentality down to most recent days, and seems
to do so still. Neither seem those Slavs to have been subject to
visitations in their homes by such doubtful characters as Hermes, nor
was their sense of propriety outraged by the "carryings on" of Zeus. No
doubt they had some benign deity, and also a malignant, jealous one, no
western creed is complete without the latter at least, if only for the
benefit of the priests, but they have left no trace on a people that has
suffered so much from the wickedness and stupidity of their human
oppressors. The western Slavs in general and the sons of Czech in
particular, had their flights of fairies, sprites, pixies and other
lovable immortals. They are here still; even I, a stranger, claim to
have heard them in "den heiteren Regionen, wo die reinen Formen wohnen,"
on the sun-kissed snow of the mountains, in the whispering voices of the
forest and the song of the burn in the glen. A sight of these benign
beings has been denied me--for this I make the heavy cuisine of Bohemia
responsible; but their spirit lives on and informs the sons of Czech in
the realm of the spirit, in art and poetry, above all in music.

Bo[vr]ivoj plunged into Christianity with enthusiasm; he is known to
have built a church at Levy Hradec, and is said to have laid the
foundations of another on the Castle Hill. It appears, however, that
the pace he set was rather too hot for his people; they raised a deal of
trouble, and Bo[vr]ivoj had to call in the German King Arnulf to help in
restoring order. This step did not bring unmixed blessings; it gave the
Germans an excuse for interfering in Bohemian affairs. Now Arnulf was a
Carolingian, of bastard blood indeed, but nevertheless under the "Holy
Roman Empire" obsession, and therefore convinced of the German right to
round up all Christian countries into that Empire. In this action of
Bo[vr]ivoj we see the first instalment of the endless trouble caused by
the obsession which originated with Charlemagne as mentioned in the
first chapter. Moreover, this German intervention gave to the
inhabitants of Bohemia their first experience of religious dissension.
Their first contact with Christianity brought them the choice of rival
liturgies, the Latin as favoured by the Germans with their "Holy Roman"
idea, and the Slavonic which St. Methodius had introduced. So
Christianity in Bohemia began with an exhibition of divergent religious