Note 573 — XV. CENTRAL EUROPE.

Et quia hospes est, plus ecclesiæ prodest: non eum parentela exhauriet, non liberorum cura aggravabit, non cognatorum turba despoliet—Cosmæ Pragens. Chron. Lib. III. ann. 1098.—It should, however, be borne in mind that Bohemia had been Christianized in 871, by Cyrillus and Methodius, missionaries from Constantinople, and the national Slavonic worship, founded on the Greek faith, after many struggles, was not abolished until 1094 (see Krasinski’s Reformation in Poland, London, 1838, I. 13). The attachment of the race to their ancestral rites explains the proneness of the Bohemians and Poles to fall away into heresy.