It will be easily understood that the conduct of Henry III. and the Duke of Saxony had quickened once more in Bohemia that anti-German feeling, which the struggles with the Magyars and the Poles had for a time forced into the background. Brac̆islav had, no doubt, been statesman enough to restrain such a feeling within due bounds; but, when his son Spitihnĕv came to the throne, he gave far fiercer expression to his hatred of the old enemies of Bohemia. No sooner was he established in his power, than he issued a decree ordering all the Germans to leave the country; nor was even his mother allowed an exemption from this sentence. His brother Vratislav set himself against this policy, and tried to make the province of Moravia a centre of opposition to the king. But Spitihnĕv invaded Moravia, forced Vratislav to fly to Hungary, and treated his wife with such cruelty that she died from the effects. In order to make his power yet more secure, the Duke persuaded his other brothers, Otto and Conrad, to abandon their claims to the special districts of Moravia, which their father had granted to them, and to come to the ducal court at Prague. Spitihnĕv, however, like Svatopluk of Moravia and Boleslav the Cruel, was one of those violent men who are subject to reactions as inexplicable as their first outbursts. Under the influence of the Bishop of Prague, he consented to be reconciled to Vratislav, and to allow him to return to Moravia; and this concession was a prelude to a complete change of policy. So mild, indeed, did he become, that he gained the reputation of being a friend to the poor, a just judge, and an encourager of religion. It is difficult to say to which part of his reign we are to assign an act, which seems at first sight a strange contrast with his furious national prejudices. This was his suppression of the Slavonic ritual in the monastery of Sázava. But the apparent inconsistency is easily explained. The Emperors and Popes were no longer the props of each other’s power; for Henry III. had struck out that new policy, which aimed at the humiliation of the Papacy, and the exaltation of the Empire at its expense. Under these circumstances, a king of Bohemia who wished to hurl defiance at the Germans and their ruler, was necessarily forced to rely on the support of the Pope. Now the very bitterness of the struggle against the German Empire had crushed out those ideas of tolerance towards national feeling which had prevailed in the days of John VIII. The Slavonic ritual represented at once a concession to the Greek heresy, and a substitution of a national language for the Latin, which symbolised the power of the Papacy. Spitihnĕv, therefore, was obliged to suppress this incitement to heresy before he could obtain the help of the Papacy against the Emperor.