ABSTRACT
While almost the entire Austrian inheritance of which Archduke Ferdinand had now become master was riddled with religious dissension, nowhere were his Protestant subjects more vigorous or vocal in the defence of their religious rights and privileges than in the troublesome kingdom of Bohemia 1 , where no less than five non-Catholic denominations – Hussites, Utraquists and Bohemian Brethren, in addition to Calvinists and the much more numerous Lutherans – coexisted in more or less friendly fashion. Since well before 1600, the largely Slavic Bohemians had proved to be extremely defensive about traditional rights of various kinds, including that of choosing their own religion; and the facts that the Bohemian crown was elective and that the citizenry was not shy of rebellion as a means of chastising overmighty rulers had helped them to maintain an unusually large measure of political autonomy from their kings. The most recent evidence of their power was the so-called Letter of Majesty which they had forced out of Rudolf II in 1609 – a royal promise which guaranteed them free choice of religion and permitted them to establish a permanent committee to monitor observance of the promise. No Habsburg had ever liked these and other similar guarantees, which were regarded as pure extortion and Rudolf’s successor Matthias had already begun an active effort to strengthen Catholicism wherever it seemed possible to do so – chiefly on crown and ecclesiastical lands not covered by the Letter of Majesty. After his accession to the Bohemian crown in 1617, Ferdinand not only stepped up this activity, but also directed his Council of Regents in Prague (whose membership Matthias had already altered to favour Catholics) to disregard the protests of the monitoring committee.
