and called on him to appoint one of the Habsburg princes his
successor both to the imperial crown and to the thrones of Bohemia and
Hungary. It is probable that the fear that the pope might make good the
threats contained in this letter induced Rudolph, who had hitherto been
indifferent to matters of religion, to become more subservient to the
Roman church. The papal nuncio at Prague, in particular, appears for a
time to have obtained great influence over the king. Under this
influence, Rudolph in 1602 issued a decree which renewed obsolete
enactments against the Bohemian Brethren that had been published by King
Vladislav in 1508. The royal decree was purposely worded in an obscure
manner. It referred to the Compacts that had been abolished, and was
liable to an interpretation excluding from tolerance all but the
Romanists and the retrograde Utraquists. It appeared therefore as a
menace to the Lutherans--and all the more advanced Utraquists had now
embraced that creed--as well as to the Bohemian Brethren. The estates of
Bohemia met at Prague in January 1603. The discussions were very stormy.
Budovec of Budova, a nobleman belonging to the community of the Bohemian
Brethren, became the leader of all those who were opposed to the Church
of Rome. He vigorously attacked the royal decree, which he declared to
be contrary to the promises made by King Maximilian. He, however,
advised the estates to vote the supplies that King Rudolph had demanded.
Immediately after this vote had been passed, the diet was closed by
order of the king. Though the royal power was at that period very weak
in Bohemia, the open partisanship of the king encouraged the Romanist
nobles, who were not numerous, but among whom were some owners of large
estates, to attempt to re-establish the Roman creed on their
territories. Some of these nobles committed great cruelties while
attempting to obtain these forcible conversions.

Strife again broke out between Rudolph and his treacherous younger
brother Matthias, who used the religious and political controversies of
the time for the purpose of supplanting his brother. The formal cause of
the rupture between the two princes was Rudolph's refusal to sanction a
treaty of peace with Turkey, which Matthias had concluded as his
brother's representative in Hungary. The Hungarians accepted Matthias as
their ruler, and when his forces entered Moravia the estates of that
country had, by Charles, lord of Zerotin, also ren