During his life, and the first ten years of his son Rudolph’s reign, Bohemia was in peace:  the different denominations were indulged; literature flourished, and the Bohemian language was at the summit of its glory.  But we regret to add, that the Protestants, instead of improving this fortunate period by uniting to acquire a legal foundation for their church, instead of a mere indulgence depending on the will of the sovereign, lived in constant mutual warfare, and attempted only to supplant each other.  An ordinance in 1586 against the Picardites, a name under which the Bohemian Brethren were then comprehended; and still more the strict censorship introduced in 1605; first aroused them to unite their strength against oppression; and in 1609 they compelled the emperor to subscribe the celebrated Literae Imperatoriae, or edict, by which full liberty in matters of religion was secured to them.  During the rest of this period, the Protestants remained the ruling party.  The university of Prague, by the side of which from A.D. 1556 another of the Jesuits existed, was by that treaty given entirely into their hands.  This institution, although in consequence of the foundation of so many similar schools it never recovered completely from the shock it received in 1410, and though for more than a hundred years it had been decidedly on the decline, yet rose in reputation towards the middle of the sixteenth century; and among the professors who filled its chairs, there were always celebrated names.  Among the schools of a less elevated rank, those of the Bohemian Brethren at Bunzlau, Prerow, and other places, were distinguished.

Rudolph was a great patron of literature and science; and was quite favourably disposed towards the Bohemian language.  Nearly two hundred writers were numbered under his reign; and among these many ladies and gentlemen of his court, of which Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and other scientific foreigners were the chief ornaments.  Zeal for the cultivation of their mother tongue, seemed to be the point in which all religious denominations in Bohemia united.  But during this century, as in the preceding one, the language of the country existed only side by side with the Latin; which was still preferred by many, for the sake of a more general reputation.  It became the chief object of other eminent men, to make their countrymen acquainted with the classics in a Bohemian dress; and to improve the language by a strict imitation of Latin and Greek forms.  Among these a rich and noble citizen of Prague named George Hruby must be first named;[30] also Pisecky, ob. 1511, who translated Isoerates’ Epistle to Demonicus; Nicholas Konacz and Ulric of Welensky, the translators of Lucian; Krupsky, of Plutarch; Ginterod, of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.  Kocyn, celebrated for his eloquence and other gifts, translated the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius and Cassiodorus; Orliczny, the Jewish wars of Josephus, several of the Latin classics, etc.