Bohemia

BOHEMIA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - Region of central Europe, corresponding to the upper basin of the Elbe (Labe, in Czech), that is to say a quadrilateral closed on every side by highlands (the Erzgebirge, or Krušné Hory to the NW.; the Giant Mountains or Krkonoše and the Sudetes to the NE.; the Moravian-Bohemian hills to the S.; and the Bohemian Forest or Šumava to the W.), which thus isolate it from the bordering zones of Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Moravia and Austria. Despite its modest extent (52,062 sq. km., about three times that of Latium) B. is a country of very varied appearance, resources and aptitudes. Of the peripheral mountain sectors, only the western one has well preserved its original forest cover, on the exploitation of which the local economy is essentially centered; whereas both the Krušné Hory and the Sudetes have long been converted into industrial districts, thanks to the abundance of mineral resources (lignite, copper, tin, bismuth, manganese, uranium, etc.) in the first case, and of hydroelectric power in the second; while on the Moravian border the low, monotonous hill country corresponds to a typically rural sector.

The climate, purely continental, with cold winters (-3°) and hot summers (20°) in the plains, has abundant rains, but well distributed for agriculture. The marginal regions, more humid and colder, remain in the domain of the forest (from 40 to 60% of the territory). The population, which did not reach one million inhabitants at the middle of the 17th century, numbered 6,300,000 at the beginning of our century, and 6,800,000 in 1910, to fall to 6,700,000 in 1921 (a consequence of the First World War and of the strong emigration movement). The census of 1930 recorded 7,109,376 inhabitants (137 per sq. km.; approximately the figure for Liguria), of whom 1/3 were Germans. After the defeat of Germany and the reconstruction of the Czechoslovak state, these last were in their immense majority transferred to the American and Soviet occupation zones in Germany, and the population of B. was reduced in 1947 to 5,626,566 inhabitants (108 per sq. km.).

In the marginal areas thus depopulated, Bohemian groups coming from the interior of Czechoslovakia and from abroad will be settled. What repercussions these events will have on the economic structure of B., it is not yet possible to foresee. Before the last world conflict more than 2/5 of its population was devoted to industry and less than 1/3 to agriculture and forestry; both activities possible and developed thanks to an active internal trade (Moravia, Slovakia, Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the latter having passed to the U.S.S.R.) and international trade.

Of the inhabited centers, Prague, the traditional capital of the country, today approaches one million inhabitants (921,000 in 1947); another, Plzeň, exceeds 100,000 (118,000 at the same date) and about ten others exceed 20,000 (Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, Hradec Králové, Kladno, České Budějovice, Karlovy Vary, etc.).

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

This country, which remained to the east of the regions occupied by the Romans, inhabited by the Quadi and the Marcomanni, is mentioned by Tacitus, Strabo and Velleius Paterculus. The primitive populations were overwhelmed in the 6th century by Slavic tribes that came from beyond the Carpathians and established there their first state organizations. Thrown into crisis by Avar and Frankish invasions, they found in the Slavic prince Samo a valiant leader who succeeded in the 7th century in establishing a kingdom; this, however, fell apart at his death. With the prevailing of the Franks in Germany and in Italy, the Bohemians or Czechs, as they were also called, came under their influence not only political but also religious; but the decline of the Empire after Charlemagne favored the rise, during the 9th century, of the kingdom of Great Moravia, in which B. too was included, under the prince Mojmír. His successor Rastislav thus found himself between the nascent kingdom of Germany and the empire of Constantinople in a zone subject to a twofold influence; without breaking relations with Rome he welcomed in Moravia the two apostles Cyril and Methodius who came from the East, and favored Methodius, whom Pope Adrian II named archbishop of Pannonia.

Svatopluk (871-94), successor of Rastislav, continued the policy of his predecessor. The great Hungarian invasion of the early 10th century, penetrating into the Danube valley, separated the Byzantine East from the West, cutting off that kingdom, which remained isolated and forced B. into more direct contact with Germany and with the West.

Pier Fausto Palumbo

During the 10th century the duchy of B. became consolidated under the dynasty of the Přemyslids, whose capital was Prague, a city then in its first rise. The prince Wenceslas (v.: 920-29) regulated relations with Henry I, king of Germany, by a treaty, thus decisively orienting the destinies of B. toward the West; at the same time he favored the development of Latin Christianity in the country. He fell victim to the reaction led by his brother Boleslaus and was venerated as the patron saint of the nation; and the impulse he gave was never again halted.

Under Boleslaus II the bishopric of Prague was erected (973), its territory being detached from the bishopric of Regensburg and subjected to the metropolis of Mainz: the first bishop was a Saxon, soon followed by the Czech St. Adalbert, who founded at Břevnov near Prague the first monastery, with Benedictine monks brought from Rome. B. united its own destinies with the political-religious destinies of neighboring Germany, attempting to expand its own borders. The Přemyslid Ottokar I (d. 1230) obtained from Philip of Swabia, king of Germany, the hereditary royal crown (1190) as a fief of the empire; a merely formal dependence that nevertheless carried the right to participate with the other princes in the election of the emperor. Ottokar II (d. 1278) aspired to succeed the extinct Babenbergs in the duchies of Austria and Carinthia, in Styria and in Carinthia, but he had against him the king of Hungary and King Rudolf of Habsburg, by whom he was defeated. His son Wenceslas IV in 1300 also held the kingdom of B. (cf. Dante, Purg., VII, 97 ff.), but with him in 1305 the dynasty came to an end, and was succeeded by that of Luxembourg, under which, together with the expansion of German colonization, and without impairing national independence, a new current of civilization developed in B., in correspondence with that which embraced all of Western Europe. It was particularly under Charles I (later emperor Charles IV) that this current reached its greatest splendor in the arts, letters and sciences; the University of Prague was founded; monumental buildings were constructed; the diocese of Prague was elevated to an archbishopric.

However, a reformist current and an anti-German tendency also began to become more pronounced, and they erupted violently under Wenceslas IV, king and emperor, through the work of John Hus and his disciples, and then took on a markedly national and political character through the work of John Žižka. The wars became harsher under the reign of Sigismund, brother of Wenceslas, king of Hungary and at the same time emperor, and kept in agitation not only B., which was left ruined by them, but also the neighboring countries.

In 1526 B. passed under the dominion of Ferdinand of Habsburg, later emperor, and followed the fortunes of this dynasty, undergoing a constant process of Germanization that in the 18th century threatened to absorb completely what still remained of Czech nationality. It was only with 1848 that a stronger patriotic spirit began to make itself felt, together with the need for independence and the rise of national literature and language, while, appealing to the tradition of Hus and to Žižka, in opposition to the Habsburgs, anti-Roman religious prejudices also took root. The struggles in the Vienna Parliament on this matter were bitter, and they ceased only when, at the end of the World War, in 1918, B. began to form part of the independent Czechoslovak republic.

For further ecclesiastical information, literature, art and the school system, v. CECOSLOVACCHIA.