The struggle of the Bohemians against Rome continued uninterruptedly, and the position of Podébrad became a very difficult one when the young king Ladislas, who was crowned in 1453, expressed his sympathies for the Roman Church, though he had recognized the compacts and the ancient privileges of Bohemia.
Though he rejected the demand of the pope, who wished him to consent to the abolition of the compacts, he endeavoured to curry favour with the Roman see by punishing severely all the more advanced opponents of papacy in Bohemia.
Compacts with a powerful foreign state, under whose aegis Israel was glad to shelter, involved covenants sealed by sacrificial rites in which the deity or deities of the foreign state were involved as well as Yahweh, the god of the weaker.
The moderate party thus obtained the upper hand; and it formulated its demands in a document which was finally accepted by the Church of Rome in a slightly modified form, and which is known as "the compacts."
On the 5th of July 1436 the compacts were formally accepted and signed at Iglau, in Moravia, by King Sigismund, by the Hussite delegates, and by the representatives of the Roman Church.