Part 93

"Between Phokis and Lokris on one side, and Attica (from which it is divided by the mountains Kithærôn and Parnes) on the other, we find the important territory called Bœotia, with its ten or twelve autonomous cities, forming a sort of confederacy under the presidency of Thebes, the most powerful among them. Even of this territory, destined during the second period of this history to play a part so conspicuous and effective, we know nothing during the first two centuries after 776 B. C. We first acquire some insight into it on occasion of the disputes between Thebes and Platæa, about the year 520 B. C."

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 3._

In the Greek legendary period one part of this territory, subsequently Bœotian—the Copaic valley in the north—was occupied by the enterprising people called the Minyi, whose chief city was Orchomenus. Their neighbors were the Cadmeians of Thebes, who are "rich," as Grote expresses it, "in legendary antiquities." The reputed founder of Thebes was Cadmus, bringer of letters to Hellas, from Phœnicia or from Egypt, according to different representations. Dionysus (Bacchus) and Hêraklês were both supposed to recognize the Cadmeian city as their birth-place. The terrible legends of Œdipus and his unhappy family connect themselves with the same place, and the incident wars between Thebes and Argos—the assaults of the seven Argive chiefs and of their sons, the Epigoni—were, perhaps, real causes of a real destruction of the power of some race for whom the Cadmeians stand. They and their neighbors, the Minyi of Orchomenus, appear to have given way before another people, from Thessaly, who gave the name Bœotia to the country of both and who were the inhabitants of the Thebes of historic times.

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 1, chapter 14;_

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 1, chapter 4._

"That the Bœotia of history should never have attained to a significance corresponding to the natural advantages of the locality, and to the prosperity of the district in the pre-Homeric age, is due above all to one principal cause. The immigration of the Thessalian Bœotians, from which the country derived its name and the beginnings of its connected history, destroyed the earlier civilization of the land, without succeeding in establishing a new civilization capable of conducting the entire district to a prosperous and harmonious development. It cannot be said that the ancient germs of culture were suppressed, or that barbarous times supervened. The ancient seats of the gods and oracles continued to be honoured and the ancient festivals of the Muses on Mount Helicon, and of the Charites at Orchomenus, to be celebrated. {286} In Bœotia too the beneficent influence of Delphi was at work, and the poetic school of Hesiod, connected as it was with Delphi, long maintained itself here. And a yet stronger inclination was displayed by the Æolian immigrants towards music and lyric poetry. The cultivation of the music of the flute was encouraged by the excellent reeds of the Copaic morasses. This was the genuinely national species of music in Bœotia. … And yet the Bœotians lacked the capacity for attracting to themselves the earlier elements of population in such a way as to bring about a happy amalgamation. … The Bœotian lords were not much preferable to the Thessalian; nor was there any region far or near, inhabited by Greek tribes, which presented a harsher contrast in culture or manners, than the district where the road led from the Attic side of Mount Parnes across to the Bœotian."

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 6, chapter 1._

See, also, GREECE: THE MIGRATIONS.

BŒOTIAN LEAGUE.

"The old Bœotian League, as far as its outward forms went, seems to have been fairly entitled to the name of a Federal Government, but in its whole history we trace little more than the gradual advance of Thebes to a practical supremacy over the other cities. … The common government was carried on in the name of the whole Bœotian nation. Its most important magistrates bore the title of Bœotarchs: their exact number, whether eleven or thirteen, is a disputed point of Greek archæology, or rather of Bœotian geography. … Thebes chose two Bœotarchs and each of the other cities one."

_E. A. Freeman, History of Federal Government, chapter 4, section 2._

BOERS, Boer War.

See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1806-1881.

BOGDANIA.

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES, 14TH-15TH CENTURIES (ROUMANIA, ETC.)

BOGESUND, Battle of (1520).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1397-1527.

BOGOMILIANS, The.

A religious sect which arose among the Sclavonians of Thrace and Bulgaria, in the eleventh century, and suffered persecution from the orthodox of the Greek church. They sympathized with the Iconoclasts of former times, were hostile to the adoration of the Virgin and saints, and took more or less from the heretical doctrines of the Paulicians. Their name is derived by some from the two Sclavonian words, "Bog," signifying God, and "milui," "have mercy." Others say that "Bogumil," meaning "one beloved by God," was the correct designation. Basilios, the leader of the Bogomilians, was burned by the Emperor Alexius Comnenos, in the hippodrome, at Constantinople, A. D. 1118.

_G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, 716-1453, book 3, chapter 2, section 1._

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: 9TH-16TH CENTURIES (BOSNIA, ETC.)

BOGOTA, The founding of the city (1538).

See COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1536-1731.

BOHEMIA, Derivation of the name.

See BOIANS.

BOHEMIA: Its people and their early history.

"Whatever may be the inferences from the fact of Bohemia having been politically connected with the empire of the Germanic Marcomanni, whatever may be those from the element Boioas connecting its population with the Boii of Gaul and Bavaria (Baiovarii), the doctrine that the present Slavonic population of that kingdom—Tshekhs [or Czekhs] as they call themselves—is either recent in origin or secondary to any German or Keltic aborigines, is wholly unsupported by history. In other words, at the beginning of the historical period Bohemia was as Slavonic as it is now. From A. D. 526 to A. D. 550, Bohemia belonged to the great Thuringian Empire. The notion that it was then Germanic (except in its political relations) is gratuitous. Nevertheless, Schaffarik's account is, that the ancestors of the present Tshekhs came, probably, from White Croatia: which was either north of the Carpathians, or each side of them. According to other writers, however, the parts above the river Kulpa in Croatia sent them forth. In Bohemian the verb 'ceti' = 'to begin,' from which Dobrowsky derives the name Czekhs = the beginners, the foremost, i. e., the first Slavonians who passed westwards. The powerful Samo, the just Krok, and his daughter, the wise Libussa, the founder of Prague, begin the uncertain list of Bohemian kings, A. D. 624-700. About A. D. 722, a number of petty chiefs become united under P'remysl the husband of Libussa. Under his son Nezamysl occurs the first Constitutional Assembly at Wysegrad; and in A. D. 845, Christianity was introduced. But it took no sure footing till about A. D. 966. Till A. D. 1471 the names of the Bohemian kings and heroes are Tshekh—Wenceslaus, Ottokar, Ziska, Podiebrad. In A. D. 1564, the Austrian connexion and the process of Germanizing began. … The history and ethnology of Moravia is nearly that of Bohemia, except that the Marcomannic Germans, the Turks, Huns, Avars, and other less important populations may have effected a greater amount of intermixture. Both populations are Tshekh, speaking the Tshekh language—the language, probably, of the ancient Quadi."

_R. G. Latham, Ethnology of Europe, chapter 11._

BOHEMIA: 7th Century. The Yoke of the Avars broken. The Kingdom of Samo.

See AVARS: 7TH CENTURY.

BOHEMIA: 9th Century. Subject to the Moravian Kingdom of Svatopluk.

See MORAVIA: 9TH CENTURY.

BOHEMIA: 13th Century. The King made a Germanic Elector.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1276. War of King Ottocar with the Emperor Rodolph of Hapsburg. His defeat and death.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1310. Acquisition of the crown by John of Luxembourg.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1308-1313.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1347. Charles IV. elected to the imperial throne.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1355. The succession fixed in the Luxemburg dynasty. Incorporation of Moravia, Silesia, &c.

The diet of the nobles, in 1355, joined Charles IV. in "fixing the order of succession in the dynasty of Luxemburg, and in definitely establishing that principle of primogeniture which had already been the custom in the Premyslide dynasty. Moravia, Silesia, Upper Lusatia, Brandenburg, which had been acquired from the margrave Otto, and the county of Glatz (Kladsko), with the consent of the diets of these provinces, were declared integral and inalienable portions of the kingdom of Bohemia."

_L. Leger, History of Austro-Hungary, chapter 11._

{287}

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1364. Reversion of the crown guaranteed to the House of Austria.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1330-1364.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1378-1400.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1405-1415. John Hus, and the movement of Religious Reformation.

"Some sparks of the fire which Wielif had lighted [see ENGLAND: A. D. 1360-1414], blown over half Europe, as far as remote Bohemia, quickened into stronger activity a flame which for long years burned and scorched and consumed, defying all efforts to extinguish it. But for all this, it was not Wiclif who kindled the Bohemian fires. His writing did much to fan and feed them; while the assumed and in part erroneously assumed, identity of his teaching with that of Hus contributed not a little to shape the tragic issues of the Bohemian reformer's life. But the Bohemian movement was an independent and eminently a national one. If we look for the proper forerunners of Hus, his true spiritual ancestors, we shall find them in his own land, in a succession of earnest and faithful preachers. … John Hus (b. 1369, d. 1415), the central figure of the Bohemian Reformation, took in the year 1394 his degree as Bachelor of Theology in that University of Prague, upon the fortunes of which he was destined to exercise so lasting an influence; and four years later, in 1398, he began to deliver lectures there. … He soon signalized himself by his diligence in breaking the bread of life to hungering souls, and his boldness in rebuking vice in high places as in low. So long as he confined himself to reproving the sins of the laity, leaving those of the Clergy and monks unassailed, he found little opposition, nay, rather support and applause from these. But when [1405] he brought them also within the circle of his condemnation, and began to upbraid them for their covetousness, their ambition, their luxury, their sloth, and for other vices, they turned angrily upon him, and sought to undermine his authority, everywhere spreading reports of the unsoundness of his teaching. … While matters were in this strained condition, events took place at Prague which are too closely connected with the story that we are telling, exercised too great an influence in bringing about the issues that lie before us, to allow us to pass them by. … The University of Prague, though recently founded—it only dated back to the year 1348—was now, next after those of Paris and Oxford, the most illustrious in Europe. … This University, like that of Paris, on the pattern of which it had been modelled, was divided into four 'nations'—four groups, that is, or families of scholars—each of these having in academical affairs a single collective vote. These nations were the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Polish, and the Bohemian. This does not appear at first an unfair division—two German and two Slavonic; but in practical working the Polish was so largely recruited from Silesia, and other German or half-German lands, that its vote was in fact German also. The Teutonic votes were thus as three to one, and the Bohemians in their own land and their own University on every important matter hopelessly outvoted. When, by, aid of this preponderance, the University was made to condemn the teaching of Wiclif … matters came to a crisis. Urged by Hus, who as a stout patriot, and an earnest lover of the Bohemian language and literature, had more than a theological interest in the matter,—by Jerome [of Prague],—by a large number of the Bohemian nobility,—King Wenzel published an edict whereby the relations of natives and foreigners were completely reversed. There should be henceforth three votes for the Bohemian nation, and only one for the three others. Such a shifting of the weights certainly appears as a redressing of one inequality by creating another. At all events it was so earnestly resented by the Germans, by professors and students alike, that they quitted the University in a body, some say of five, and some of thirty thousand, and founded the rival University of Leipsic, leaving no more than two thousand students at Prague. Full of indignation against Hus, whom they regarded as the prime author of this affront and wrong, they spread throughout all Germany the most unfavourable reports of him and of his teaching. This exodus of the foreigners had left Hus, who was now Rector of the University, with a freer field than before. But Church matters at Prague did not mend; they became more confused and threatening every day; until presently the shameful outrage against all Christian morality which a century later did a still more effectual work, served to put Hus into open opposition to the corrupt hierarchy of his time. Pope John XXIII., having a quarrel with the King of Naples, proclaimed a crusade against him, with what had become a constant accompaniment of this,—Indulgences to match. But to denounce Indulgences, as Hus with fierce and righteous indignation did now, was to wound Rome in her most sensitive part. He was excommunicated at once, and every place which should harbour him stricken with an interdict. While matters were in this frame the Council of Constance [see PAPACY: A. D. 1414-1418] was opened, which should appease all the troubles of Christendom, and correct whatever was amiss. The Bohemian difficulty could not be omitted, and Hus was summoned to make answer at Constance for himself. He had not been there four weeks when he was required to appear before the Pope and Cardinals (Nov. 18, 1414). After a brief informal hearing he was committed to harsh durance from which he never issued as a free man again. Sigismund, the German King and Emperor Elect, who had furnished Hus with a safe-conduct which should protect him, 'going to the Council, tarrying at the Council, returning from the Council,' was absent from Constance at the time, and heard with real displeasure how lightly regarded this promise and pledge of his had been. Some big words too he spoke, threatening to come himself and release the prisoner by force; but, being waited on by a deputation from the Council, who represented to him that he, as a layman, in giving such a safe conduct had exceeded his powers, and intruded into a region which was not his, Sigismund was convinced, or affected to be convinced. … More than seven months elapsed before Hus could obtain a hearing before the Council. This was granted to him at last. Thrice heard (June 5, 7, 8, 1415),—if indeed such tumultuary sittings, where the man speaking for his life, and for much more than his life, was continually interrupted and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of 'Recant,' 'Recant,' may be reckoned as hearings at all,—he bore himself, by the confession of all, with courage, meekness and dignity." He refused to recant. Some of the articles brought against him, he said, "charged him with teaching things which he had never taught, and he could not, by this formal act of retraction, admit that he had taught them." He was condemned, sentenced to the stake, and burned, on the 6th of July, 1415. His friend, Jerome, of Prague, suffered the same fate in the following May.

_R. C. Trench, Lectures on Mediaeval Church History, lecture 22._

ALSO IN: _E. H. Gillett, Life and times of John Hus._

_A. H. Wratislaw, John Hus._

_A. Neander, General History of Christian Religion, volume 9, part 2._

{288}

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1410. Election of King Sigismund to the imperial throne.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493.

BOHEMIA: A. D. 1419-1434. The Hussite Wars. The Reformation checked.