Hussites
HUSSITES
A party of reformers, the followers of John Huss.
John Huss, from whom the Hussites take their name, was born in a little village in Gohemia, called Huss, and lived at Prague in the highest reputation, both on account of the sanctity of his manners and the purity of his doctrine. He was distinguished by his uncommon erudition and eloquence; and performed at the same time the functions of professor of divinity in the university, and of ordinary pastor in the church of that city. He adopted the sentiments of Wickliffe and the Waldenses; and, in the year 1407, began openly to oppose and preach against divers errors in doctrine, as well as corruptions in point of discipline, then reigning in the church. Huss likewise endeavoured to the utmost of his power to withdraw the university of Prague from the jurisdiction of Gregory XII. whom the king of Bohemia had hitherto acknowledged as the true and lawful head of the church. This occasioned a violent quarrel between the incensed archbishop of Prague and the zealous reformer, which the latter inflamed and augmented from day to day, by his pathetic exclamations against the court of Rome, and the corruption that prevailed among the sacerdotal order. There were other circumstances that contributed to inflame the resentment of the clergy against him. He adopted the philosophical opinions of the Realists, and vehemently opposed and even persecuted the Nominalists, whose number and influence were considerable in the university of Prague.
He also multiplied the number of his enemies in the year 1408, by procuring, through his own credit, a sentence in favour of the Bohemians, who disputed with the Germans concerning the number of suffrages which their respective nations were entitled to in all matters that were carried by election in this university. In consequence of a decree obtained in favour of the former, which restored them to their constitutional right of three suffrages usurped by the latter, the Germans withdrew from Prague, and in the year 1409 founded a new academy at Leipsic. This event no sooner happened, than Huss began to inveigh, with greater freedom than he had done before, against the vices and corruptions of the clergy; and to recommend in a public manner the writings and opinions of Wickliffe, as far as they related to the papal hierarchy, the despotism of the court of Rome, and the corruption of the clergy. Hence an accusation was brought against him in the year 1410, before the tribunal of John XXIII. by whom he was solemnly expelled from the communion of the church. Notwithstanding this sentence of excommunication, he proceeded to expose the Romish church with a fortitude and zeal that were almost universally applauded.
This eminent man, whose piety was equally sincere and fervent, though his zeal was perhaps too violent, and his prudence not always circumspect, was summoned to appear before the council of Constance. Secured, as he thought, from the rage of his enemies, by the safe conduct granted him by the emperor Sigismund for his journey to Constance, his residence in that place, and his return to his own country, John Huss obeyed the order of the council, and appeared before it to demonstrate his innocence, and to prove that the charge of his having deserted the church of Rome was entirely groundless. However, his enemies so far prevailed, that, by the most scandalous breach of public faith, he was cast into prison declared a heretic, because he refused to plead guilty against the dictates of his conscience, in obedience to the council, and burnt alive in 1415; a punishment which he endured with unparalleled magnanimity and resolution. When he came to the place of execution, he fell on his knees, sang portions of psalms, looked steadfastly towards heaven, and repeated these words: “Into thy hands, O Lord, do I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O most good and faithful God. Lord Jesus Christ, assist and help me, that with a firm and present mind, by thy most powerful grace I may undergo this most cruel and ignominious death, to which I am condemned for preaching the truth of thy most holy Gospel.”
When the chain was put upon him at the stake, he said with a smiling countenance, “My Lord Jesus Christ was bound with a harder chain than this for my sake, and why should I be ashamed of this old rusty one?” When the faggots were piled up to his very neck, the duke of Bavaria was officious enough to desire him to abjure. “No, ” says Huss, “I never preached any doctrine of an evil tendency; and what I taught with my lips, I seal with my blood.” He said to the executioner, “Are you going to burn a goose? In one century you will have a swan you can neither roast nor boil.” If he were prophetic, he must have meant Luther, who had a swan for his arms. The fire was then applied to the faggots; when the martyr sang a hymn with so loud and cheerful a voice, that he was heard through all the cracklings of the combustibles and the noise of the multitude. At last his voice was cut short, after he had uttered. “Jesus Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me.” and he was consumed in a most miserable manner. The duke of Bavaria ordered the executioner to throw all the martyr’s clothes into the flames: after which his ashes were carefully collected, and cast into the Rhine.
But the cause in which this eminent man was engaged did not die with him. His disciples adhered to their master’s doctrines after his death, which broke out into an open war. John Ziska, a Bohemian knight, in 1420, put himself at the head of the Hussites, who were now become a very considerable party, and threw off the despotic yoke of Sigismund, who had treated their brethren in the most barbarous manner. Ziska was succeeded by Procophus in the year 1424. Acts of barbarity were committed on both sides; for notwithstanding the irreconcileable opposition between the religious sentiments of the contending parties, they both agreed in this one horrible principle, that it was innocent and lawful to persecute and extirpate with fire and sword the enemies of the true religion; and such they reciprocally appeared to each other. These commotions in a great measure subsided by the interference of the council of Basil, in the year 1433. The Hussites, who were divided into two parties, viz. the Calixtines and the Taborites, spread over all Bohemia, and Hungary, and even Silesia and Polland; and there are, it is said, some remains of them still subsisting in those parts. Broughton’s Dict. Middleton’s Evan. Biog. vol. 1: Mosheim’s Ecc. Hist.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
Hussites
A religious sect which arose in Southern Bohemia in the early 15th century; the followers of Hus; also known as Wycliffites, as they professed the teaching of Wyclif and as Utraquists, as their distinctive dogma was Utraquism, i.e., the necessity of receiving Communion under both species. The followers of Hus, venerating him as a holy martyr of the old religion rather than as a founder of a new one, objected to the appellation “Hussites,” which implied separation from the Universal Church, for they believed their creed to be truly Catholic; but during the Hussite Wars the name became commonly applied both to the original followers of Hus and to the subsequent smaller sects into which they divided. The dogma of Utraquism, introduced by Jacobellis von Mies, was never preached by Hus, who first thought it “wise not to introduce such an innovation without the approbation of the Church.” Later, however, he maintained that the chalice should be given to the laity if Christ and the Apostle Paul were to be obeyed. The Council of Constance, realizing the danger of the heresy, ordered its extirpation by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Bohemia, but the Bohemian and Moravian nobles considered the “unjust” martyrdom of Hus, and the assertion that a heresy existed in Bohemia, insults to their country, and therefore banded together in an offensive and defensive league. Dissensions soon arose among the Hussites; the Taborites, so called because they met at “Mount Tabor,” completely set aside the authority of the Church and admitted no other rule than the Bible; the Calixtines only demanded Communion under both species for the laity, and free preaching of the Gospel; they were called Calixtines because of the chalice which they displayed on their flag, weapons, clothes, etc. Under the leadership of Ziska of Troznow, however, the two factions successfully resisted both the imperial armies and the papal crusaders sent to subdue them. Civil war and the destructive forces of the Hussites ravaged Bohemia for over fifteen years, but finally peace was obtained by the Compactata of Basle, 1433, which permitted Communion under both forms to those who had reached the age of discretion and were in the state of grace, under these conditions: that the Hussites confess that the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ was contained whole and entire both under the form of bread and under that of wine, and that they retract the statement that communion under both forms is necessary for salvation. Though the Compactata pleased the moderate Utraquists, the Calixtines, it found little favor with the Taborites (also, since the death of Ziska in 1424, called “Orphans”), but the Taborites were nearly exterminated at the Battle of Lippau, 1424, and the Compactata was finally accepted at the Diet of Iglau, 1436. Various troubles with Rokyzana, a leader of the Calixtines, eventually led to the nullification of the Compactata by Pius II, and his refusal to recognize the Utraquist rite, and other religious and civil wars followed, until in 1485 both parties were granted equal rights and liberty by King Wladislaw. By degrees the Utraquists conformed to the Roman rites so as to be hardly distinguishable from them, except through the chalice for the laity.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Hussites
The followers of Jan Hus did not of themselves assume the name of Hussites. Like Hus, they believed their creed to be truly Catholic; in papal and conciliar documents they appear as Wycliffites, although Hus and even Jerome of Prague are also named as their leaders. They wisely objected to the appellation of Hussites, which implied separation from the Universal Church; willing to venerate Hus as a holy martyr of the old religion, they refused to see in him the founder of a new one. Only about 1420, with the beginning of the Hussite Wars does the new name occur, first in the neighbouring lands; then it gradually imposes itself as connoting both the original followers of Hus and the subsequent smaller sects into which they divided. The distinctive tenet of the Hussites is the necessity, alike for priest and layman of Communion under both kinds, sub utraque specie whence the term Utraquists. Hus himself never preached Utraquism. During his presence at the Council of Constance, his successor in influence at the university of Prague Jacobellus von Mies, taking His stand on the Bible as the supreme rule of faith and practice in the Church, persuaded the people that partaking of the chalice was of absolute necessity for salvation, this being expressly taught by Christ: “Amen amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” (John 6:54)
Three parishes at once adopted the innovation. Former unauthorized sermons by Jacobellus, and trespasses on episcopal rights by the parish clergy) had prepared the ground in these particular places. The introduction of the lay chalice was regarded by many well-intentioned men as the outward sign of a nascent schism. These withdrew from the movement, but the people at large eagerly joined it as if the chalice were a panacea for all the evils of the time. Their eagerness is partly accounted for by a kind of crusade in favour of frequent and even daily Communion, and by a huge mass of eucharistic literature in Bohemia during the fourteenth century. As far back as 1380 a priest in Prague (Altstadt) is said to have preached to his parishioners the necessity of Communion under both kinds. Jacobellus was excommunicated. and Andreas von Brod confuted his teaching in a treatise but he continued preaching and answered Andreas’s tract by one of his own. Hus, then in Constance, was consulted. In a letter to the Knight von Chlum, he said: “it would be wise not to introduce such an innovation without the approbation of the Church.” Soon, however, seeing how the council upheld the existing practice, he inveighed against it and maintained that Christ and the Apostle Paul should be obeyed by giving the chalice to the laity; he also entreated the Bohemian nobles to protect the lay chalice against the council. These last words of Hus, written in sight of his funeral pyre, aroused Bohemia. In Prague the priests faithful to the Church were driven out of their parishes and replaced by Utraquists; in the country the nobles likewise filled all the parishes in their gift with men of the new discipline.
The change caused many excesses. Bishop Johann of Leitomischl had all his possessions devastated by the neighbouring nobles because of his strenuous opposition to Hus at Constance. King Wenceslaus (Wenzel) did not interfere. He had a grudge against the Emperor Sigismund for the role he played at the council, and he regarded the execution of Hus as an infringement of his royal rights. Meanwhile the fathers assembled in council at Constance sent earnest letters to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Bohemia, insisting on complete extirpation of the dangerous heresy (July, 1415); and gave ample powers to the Bishop of Leitomischl as legate for the same purpose. The Bohemian and Moravian nobles took up the gauntlets. Four hundred and fifty-two of them appended their seals to a joint answer to the council, setting forth their conviction that the sentence on Hus was unjust and insulting to their country, that there were no heretics in Bohemia, that any assertion to the contrary was itself a heresy of the worst kind. This document bears date 2 September 1415. Three days later they formed an offensive and defensive league by which they bound themselves for six years to grant on their estates to all priests applying for it freedom to preach the word of God, and protection against episcopal prosecutions for heresy, and against excommunication except from the local bishops. The clergy, however, should obey a lawfully elected pope in all things not contrary to God and God’s law. The authority of the council was thereby set at naught the Wycliffite principle that the laity should restrict and restrain the power of the clergy was fully applied.
The Catholics did not remain idle; episcopal ordinances of 5 September enjoined the publication in all churches of the prohibition of the lay chalice, a decree of 18 September inhibited vagrant, i.e. Utraquist, preachers; a league of Catholic lords was formed on 1 October; it consisted mostly of the southern and northern gentry accessible to German influence. King Wenceslaus was on their side in word, if not in deed. Before this favourable turn of events became known to it, the council in its ordinary proceedings against Wycliffism, took a step of the gravest consequences — the laying of the interdict on Prague for sheltering Johann of Jesenic, already excommunicated in 1412. Armed crowds of citizens invaded every church and monastery where Divine service had been suspended in obedience to the interdict, drove out all priests and monks unwilling to submit to the popular will, robbed them of their possessions and put Utraquist clergy in their places. The whole country followed the example of the capital, the king and the magistrates looked on without concern. The council’s legate, Bishop Johann of Leitomischl, was powerless to stem the evil tide. Probably on his denunciation, the four hundred and fifty-two signatories of the Utraquist covenant — together with Archbishop Conrad of Prague and Wenceslaus, Bishop of Olmutz — were summoned to appear before the council as suspected of heresy. Archbishop Conrad had been remiss in carrying out the conciliary measures; in the beginning of 1416 he had, in concert with the king, suspended the interdict on the far-off chance of thus conciliating the dissidents. The council was even then (1416) determined to use the secular arm against the King of Bohemia and his unruly land, but Sigismund, with whom lay the execution, refused his aid, hoping, as he said, to come to an understanding with King Wenceslaus.
The University of Prague was heavily Utraquist; the council, therefore, towards the end of 1416, suspended all its privileges and forbade, under excommunication, all further academical proceedings. The lecturers, however, continued to lecture as before; but since the chancellor, Archbishop Conrad, refused his co-operation, no new degrees could be conferred. Notwithstanding the turbulent spirit of many masters the influence of the university as a whole was moderating. For example, on 25 January, 1417, when some fanatical country parsons had destroyed the images and profaned the relics of their churches, the university, in virtue of the teaching authority it claimed, sent to all the faithful an exhortation to abstain from innovations and to hold fast to old customs. The noblemen of the Hussite league ordered the clergy dependent on them to conform to their teaching. This act in the right direction was followed on 10 March, 1416, by another which gave Utraquism the sanction of the only teaching authority then recognized in the country. The rector, Johann von Reinstein (surnamed Cardinalis), declared, with the consent of all the Magistri, that Communion under both kinds is an ordination of Christ Himself and a practice of the ancient Church, against which no human ordinances of later date could prevail. The declaration had been given in answer to questions by members of the Hussite league, and it was acted upon, wherever they ruled, with such thoroughness that the Utraquist clergy was insufficient to fill the places of the ejected Catholic priests. The head of the league, Vincenz von Wartenberg, found a way out of the difficulty. He waylaid the Auxiliary Bishop of Prague, confined him in a stronghold, and forced him to ordain as many Utraquist candidates for the priesthood as were needed.
The archbishop henceforth withheld ordination and benefices from all who did not abjure Wycliffism and Utraquism. The Council of Constance meanwhile gave continued attention to Bohemian affairs. Martin V who, in 1411, as Cardinal Colonna, had terminated the trial of Jan Hus with the sentence of excommunication, now, as pope, confirmed all the council’s enactments regarding him and his followers; he wrote to all whom it might concern to return to the Church or to lend their aid in suppressing the new heresies. Before the close of the council he addressed to King Wenceslaus a rule containing twenty-four articles, designed to bring back the religious status of the country to what it was before the Hussite upheaval. The task was heavy, and perhaps uncongenial to King Wenceslaus. Could he force all Wycliffites and Hussites to abjure or to die, reinstate all ejected priests in their benefices, maintain Catholic ascendency? He made no attempt. In June, 1418 he forbade the exercise of foreign jurisdiction over his subjects, a measure which put a stop to the work of the cardinal legate, Giovanni Domenici. The same year saw the arrival of foreign sectarians, Beghards — called Pickarts — attracted by Bohemia’s fame for religious liberty, and of the Oxford Wycliffite Peter Payne, admitted to the faculty of arts at the university. The university, apprehensive of doctrinal excesses, assembled (September, 1418) the whole party, the Communitas fratrum, in order to come to an agreement on doubtful points. The assembly granted Communion to newborn infants but forbade all deviation from tradition except where it was evidently opposed to Scripture, as in the case of Utraquism.
In 1419 Utraquism received an accession of strength from the repressive measures against it. King Wenceslaus at last giving way to the pope, and the emperor threatening a “crusade” against Bohemia banished Johann of Jesenic from Prague and commanded that all ejected Catholic beneficiaries should be reinstated in their offices and revenues. The people, accustomed by this time to Utraquist ministrations, resented the change they fought for their churches and schools, blood was shed, but the king’s ordinance was executed wherever his authority was strong enough to enforce it. The success was however, far from complete. The Utraquist clergy, followed by their numerous adherents, now assembled on the hills, to which they gave Scriptural names, such as Tabor, Horeb, and Mount Olivet. In July, 1419 “Mount Tabor” was the scene of an epoch-making assembly. Nicolaus of Husinec, banished by Wenceslaus as a dangerous agitator, had brought together 42,000 Utraquists; they listened to Utraquist preachers, received the chalice, and spent the day in organizing resistance to any interference with their religion; they sent a message to the king that they, one and all, were ready to die for the chalice. In Prague itself matters had gone even further. Ziska of Troznow, like Nicolaus of Husinec, a former favourite of the king, had taken the lead of the malcontents and familiarized them with the thought of armed resistance.
Ziska belonged to the inferior nobility of southern Bohemia, he had distinguished himself both as an undaunted fighter and as an excellent leader of men. Johann, formerly a Premonstratensian monk of Selau now a zealot for Utraquism, on 30 July, 1419, carried the Blessed Sacrament in procession through the streets of Prague (Neustadt); the processionists, excited by a fiery sermon of their leader, first penetrated into St. Stephen’s church which had been closed to them; then they assembled in front of the town hall, where Johann, still holding up the Blessed Sacrament, demanded from the magistrates the release of several Utraquists imprisoned for previous disturbances. The magistrates refused and prepared for resistance. Ziska ordered the storming of the town hall; all persons found therein were thrown out of the windows on to the spears and swords of the processionists, and hacked to pieces, whilst Johann called on God in His Sacrament to inflame their murderous fury. The mob there and then elected four captains, called all men to arms and fortified the Neustadt. King Wenceslaus swore death to all the rebels, but a stroke of apoplexy, caused by excitement, carried him off, 16 August, 1419. The next months were marked by deeds of violence against the faithful clergy, by wanton destruction of church furniture, and by the burning of monastic houses. Many citizens, especially Germans and the higher clergy, had to flee.
Wenceslaus’s successor on the Bohemian throne was his brother Sigismund, German Emperor and King of Hungary. He had been the very soul of the Council of Constance; but the Bohemians, holding him responsible for the death of their beloved Hus, disliked and distrusted him. Nor was Sigismund eager to assume the ruling of this troubled kingdom. He tarried in Hungary, leaving Bohemia to be governed by the queen-widow and Vincenz von Wartenberg, the chief of the Utraquist league. The popular masses led by the lesser nobility and fanatical priests, now began to multiply their meetings on “holy” mountains — Tabors — and to move towards Prague in armed bands. The queen regent, with the assent of the higher nobility, forbade them to meet or even to come near to Prague. In various encounters Ziska and Nicolaus of Husinec successfully resisted the royal troops (4-9 November, 1419), an armistice was, however concluded and Ziska withdrew to Pilsen. Sigismund now gave up his plans of a campaign against the Turks and resolved to restore his new kingdom to Roman unity. On his side were the Catholic nobles, the higher clergy, the Germans settled in the land, and all who had suffered persecution and losses at the hands of the sectarians; against him stood Ziska and Nicolaus of Husinec at the head of the peasantry. Sigismund took up the government in December, then went to Silesia to collect more troops. The Catholics regained courage. They were hard on the Utraquists wherever they were the stronger: in Kuttenberg, for instance, hundreds of captured Utraquists were thrown by the miners into the shafts of disused silver mines. The leaders of the people meanwhile, built the impregnable stronghold of Tabor whither the country people betook themselves with all their movable possessions, in order to await in the “community of the brethren” the things that were to come.
Here Utraquism entered upon a new development. The priests of Austi, starting from the principle that the Bible contained the whole teaching of Christ, abolished every traditional rite and liturgy. There were to be no more churches, altars, vestments, sacred vessels, chants, or ceremonies. The Lord’s Prayer was the only liturgical prayer; the communion table was a common table with common bread and common appointments, the celebrant wore his everyday clothes and was untonsured. Children were baptized with the first water at hand and without any further ceremony they received Communion in both kinds immediately after Baptism. Extreme unction and auricular confession were abolished; mortal sins were to be confessed in public. Purgatory and the worship of saints were suppressed, likewise all feasts and fasts. Such a creed accounts for the fury of destruction which possessed the Hussites. Ziska spent his time in drilling his peasants and artisans into an army capable to withstand the dreaded knights in armour of the king’s army. Clever tactics, apt choice of the battlefield, and confidence in their chief and in their cause, made up for their defective armament. Straightened scythes, flails forks and iron-shod cudgels were their weapons. Their religious fanaticism was heightened by a young Moravian priest, Martin Houska, surnamed Loquis, who taught them to read in the Bible that the last days had come, that salvation was only to be found in the mountains — their Tabors — that after the great battle the millennium would reign on earth.
Sigismund’s army had been strengthened by contingents from Hungary and other adjoining lands; everyone was ready for the fray. On 1 March, 1420, Pope Martin V issued a Bull inviting all Christians to unite in a crusade for the extermination of Wycliffites, Hussites, and other heretics. This Bull was read to the imperial diet assembled at Breslau on 17 March. Its effect was terror on the Catholic side, holy enthusiasm and closest union for deadly warfare on the side of the Taborites. Many Catholics fled; the Utraquist nobles renounced their allegiance and declared war on Sigismund “who had brought the slander of heresy on the land”; a secret embassy offered the Bohemian crown to King Wladislaw II of Poland. The energetic Ziska at once began operations in southern Bohemia. Royal towns, fortresses, and monasteries fell into his hands. These latter were plundered and destroyed. Koniggratz submitted, as did also some nobles disgusted with the excesses of the Taborites. While the king was waiting for the “crusaders” from Germany, he had seventeen Utraquists drowned in the Elbe at Leitmeritz and two burnt at Echlau. The rebels retaliated by setting fire to several monasteries near Prague and by burning the monks. The “crusading” army arrived in July; with the king’s troops they were 100,000 strong. Before engaging in battle, the papal legate, Ferdinand of Lucca, examined the “Four Prague Articles”, i.e. four points on the granting of which the rebels would submit.
These articles emanated from the university. In substance they are: “The Word of God is to be freely examined by Christian priests throughout the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margravate of Moravia. The venerable Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is to be given in two kinds to adults as well as to children, as Jesus Christ has instituted. The priests and monks, of whom many meddle with the affairs of the State, are to be deprived of the worldly goods which they possess in great quantities and which make them neglect their sacred office; and their goods shall be restored to us, in order that, in accordance with the doctrine of the Gospel, and the practice of the Apostles, the clergy shall be subject to us, and, living in poverty, serve as a pattern of humility to others. All the public sins which are called mortal, and all other trespasses contrary to the law of God, are to be punished according to the laws of the country, by those in charge of them, in order to wipe from the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margravate of Moravia the bad reputation of tolerating disorders.” The legate concluded his examination by a demand of almost unconditional submission. The “Calixtines”, now so called from the chalice which decorated their flags, weapons, and clothes, took up the unequal fight, on 14 July, 1420, they inflicted a signal defeat on the crusaders. Sigismund had recourse to new negotiation on the four articles. But seeing his best supporters wavering, he had himself crowned in the cathedral of Prague (28 July), and two days later he dissolved the crusading army. In order to pay his mercenaries he turned the treasures of several churches into money, and pledged their lands to the nobles, who never parted with them again.
The Utraquist magistrates imposed their whole will on the town and the university; riots and deeds of violence occurred everywhere the wealthy monasteries were the first and greatest sufferers. Many of the best citizens proclaimed their horror at the destruction of the fairest buildings and their disgust with the Taborite forms of worship. In Prague, however, they were kept down by Johann of Selau, who had assumed a kind of dictatorship, in the country the Taborite leaders themselves thought it better to give another direction to the destructive mania of their followers. Ziska in the southern borderlands and the Prague army added victory to victory; the strong town of Wysehrad surrendered, 1 November, 1420, after a crushing defeat of Sigismund’s troops. The rebels, now sure of their power, offered the Bohemian throne to King Wladislaw II of Poland. In March, 1421 King Wenceslaus returned to Hungary, leaving his country almost defenseless. By June of the same year the Hussites had established their dominion over the whole kingdom, with the exception of a few northern and western border districts. The inhabitants were asked to accept the Four Prague articles or to emigrate within a stated time, captains and sheriffs were appointed to rule the towns with royal powers. Thus Utraquism and home rule supplanted Catholicism and German rule. The nobility accepted the new order; Archbishop Conrad of Prague adapted the four articles (21 April, 1421), ordained Utraquist clergy, and invited the older clergy likewise to conform. The metropolitan chapter, however, who had fled to Zittau and Olmütz, remained faithful, and appointed the “iron” Johann of Leitomischl, later of Olmütz, administrator of the archdiocese. The Hussites never had a sterner enemy.
Among the Taborites, a new sect arose about this time. The priest Martin Loquis taught these rabid levellers of monasteries and murderers of priests that Christ was not really present in the Eucharist; consequently, that worshipping the sacrament was idolatry. Sacrilegious profanations became the order of the day. Proceedings were taken by the Utraquist authorities, advised by the university, against the innovators. Loquis and another were taken prisoners, dragged through the country, cruelly tortured and finally burnt in a barrel. His four hundred followers were expelled from Tabor. For some time they roamed through the country “as avenging angels”, robbing, burning, and killing. Ziska, in disgust, had twenty-four (some say fifty) of the worst put to death by fire. The remainder, reinforced by some fanatical Chiliasts, formed a sect of Adamites subject to no law and possessing their women in common. Ziska surrounded them on their island in the River Nezárka and exterminated them to the last man (October, 1421). The summer of 1421 was employed by the Hussites in consolidating their new power. Successful expeditions penetrated to the northwestern border, burned more monasteries, killed more monks, priests, and inoffensive citizens; but here also they suffered their first serious defeat at the hands of Catholic knights and the troops of Meissen (5 August, 1421). As early as April a second army of crusaders, twice as strong as the first, had been forming at Nuremberg, while Sigismund was expected to bring up his Hungarian army. The crusaders laid siege to Saaz.
On 2 October, the news spread that Ziska was coming to the rescue of the besieged. This perhaps false information sufficed to disperse the crusaders and their five leaders in all directions in disorderly flight. Not a blow was struck. Sigismund entered Moravia, which he reduced to submission, and met Ziska in battle at Kuttenberg. The stronger battalions were on the emperor’s side, but Ziska fought his way through them and shortly afterwards, at Deutsch-Brod, almost annihilated them (8 January, 1422). This victory kept the Hussites’ foreign foes in wholesome fear for many years; new crusades were indeed preached year after year, but not carried out. The field was left free for internal dissensions to undo what had so far been done. Prague began by shaking off the tyrannical dictatorship of Johann of Selau. With twelve of his partisans he was beheaded, 9 March, 1422. The mob avenged his death by ravaging the university, colleges, and libraries. Next, civil war broke out between, on the one hand the Taborites under Ziska a few southern towns and Saaz with Laun in the northwest, and on the other, Prague with the whole nobility and the other towns. Its cause was the proposal to unite all parties under the administration of Sigismund Korybut, a nephew of the Grand Duke Witold of Lithuania, who had accepted the Bohemian crown refused by the King of Poland, and appointed Korybut as governor. The first victory again was Ziska’s (end of April, 1423). Some futile negotiations followed. From January to September 1424 the Taborites waged a most successful war, which led their victorious army up to the gates of the capital. Korybut and Prague now sent to Ziska the eloquent priest Rokyzana, who succeeded in bringing about a complete understanding between the parties. They then joined in an expedition against Moravia. Close to the Moravian frontier, at Pribislau, Ziska fell ill and died (14 October, 1424).
His death was followed by new groupings of the parties. The closer partisans of Ziska, who represented the moderates, now took the name of “Orphans.” Their priests still said Mass in liturgical vestments and followed the old rite. The more extreme Taborites chose new chiefs, of whom the most prominent was Andrew Procopius, a married priest surnamed “the Great” or “the Shaven”, to distinguish him from Little Procopius (Prokupek) who in time became the spiritual leader of the Orphans. Orphans and Taborites fought together against any common foe; when there was no common foe they fought or quarrelled with one another. Their united forces, under Procopius the Shaven, won the battle of Aussig on the Elbe (16 June, 1426), in which 15,000 Germans and many Saxon and Thuringian nobles lost their lives, but they were beaten in their turn by Albert of Austria, at Zwettel, 12 March, 1427. While these horrible wars were laying waste the country, the Magistri of Prague, pro tem. the supreme judges in matters of Faith, divided into two parties. Rokyzana, Jacobellus, and Peter Payne favoured a nearer approach to the Taborite innovations; others had gained the conviction that peace and union were only to be found in returning to the Roman allegiance. The chalice for the laity was the only point they wished to retain. Korybut, the governor, favoured the latter view. He engaged in secret negotiations with Pope Martin V, but the secret having leaked out Rokyzana, at the head of the populace of Prague seized him and confined him to a fortress (17 April 1427). The Hussites under Procopius the Shaven now raided Lusatia and Silesia. In July, 1427, a third army of crusaders, some 150,000 strong, entered Bohemia from the west. Procopius met and defeated them at Mies (4 August). Another army coming from Silesia had a similar fate.
Being complete masters of the situation at home, the Hussites set out for further raids abroad. Their own country was lying waste after so many years of war; the people had become a huge horde of brigands bent on bloodshed and plunder. In the years 1428-1431 the combined Orphans, Taborites, and the townsmen of Prague invaded Hungary, laid waste Silesia as far as Breslau, plundered Lusatia, Meissen, Saxony, and advanced to Nuremberg, leaving in their track the remains of flourishing towns and villages, and devastated lands. Negotiations for an armistice came to naught. When the raiders returned in 1430 they had with them 3,000 wagons of booty, each drawn by from six to fourteen horses; a hundred towns and more than a thousand villages had been destroyed. In 1431 a fourth crusade, sent by the unbending Martin V, entered Bohemia. The crusaders numbered 90,000 foot and 40,000 horse; they were accompanied by the papal legate and commanded by the Electoral Prince Frederick of Brandenburg. They met a strong army of Hussites at Taus. The wild war-songs of the enemy filled the soldiers of the Cross with uncontrollable fear; once more they fled in disorder, losing many men and 300 wagons of stores (14 August, 1431). After so many reverses the Catholics realized that peace was only to be attained by concessions to the Hussites. Advances were made by Emperor Sigismund and by the Council of Basle, which was then sitting. A meeting of the contending parties’ delegates took place at Eger, where preliminaries for further discussion at Basle were agreed upon. Meanwhile the excommunicated Archbishop Conrad of Prague and the “iron” Bishop Johann of Olmutz died, and the Utraquist Rokyzana had an eye on the See of Prague: it was therefore his interest to make further peace negotiations with Rome. The Taborites, on the contrary, continued the war, heedless of the Eger arrangements. They raided Silesia and Brandenburg, advancing as far as Berlin, and fought Albert of Austria in Moravia and in his own Austrian dominions.
At length, 4 January, 1433, a deputation of fifteen members, provided with safe-conducts and accompanied by a numerous train, arrived at Basle. Discussion on the Four Articles of Prague lasted till April without any result. The deputies left Basle on 14 April, but with them went a deputation from the council to continue negotiations with the diet assembled at Prague. Here some progress was made, notwithstanding the opposition of Procopius and the extreme Taborites who were loath to lay down their arms and return to peaceful pursuits. The conferences dragged on till 26 November, 1433. The council, chiefly bent on safeguarding the dogma, consented to the following disciplinary articles, known as the Compactata of Basle: In Bohemia and Moravia, communion under both kinds is to be given to all adults who desire it, All mortal sins, especially public ones, shall be publicly punished by the lawful authorities; The Word of God may be freely preached by approved preachers but without infringing papal authority; Secular power shall not be exercised by the clergy bound by vows to the contrary; other clergy, and the Church itself may acquire and hold temporal goods, but merely as administrators and such. In substance, the Compactata reproduced the Four Articles of Prague. They were accepted by the delegates, but further discussion on minor points led to a new rupture, and in the beginning of 1434 the delegates left Basle. A new party now arose: the friends of the Compactata. It soon gathered strength enough to order the Taborites who were besieging Pilsen and infesting the country to dissolve their armed bands. Instead of dispersing, they brought all their forces together at Lipau near Prague and offered battle. Here they suffered a crushing defeat from which they never recovered. Their two best leaders, Procopius the Shaven and Prokupek, were killed (30 May, 1434).
The tedious negotiations, in which religious, political, and personal interests had to be satisfied, went on with various vicissitudes until 5 July, 1436, when the Bohemian representatives at the Diet of Iglau, solemnly accepted the Compactata and promised obedience to the council. The representatives of the council, on their side, removed the ban from the Bohemians and acknowledged them as true sons of the Church. The diet accepted Sigismund as King of Bohemia: on 23 August he entered Prague, and took possession of his kingdom. Henceforth the Utraquists or Calixtines and the Subunists (sub una specie) had separate churches and lived together in comparative peace. Priests were ordained for the Utraquist rite. New difficulties were created by Rokyzana’s failing to obtain the bishopric for which he had so long agitated and which he had been promised by Sigismund. His partisans went back to former aberrations, e.g. they re-established the feast of the “Holy Martyr Hus” on 6 July.
In 1448 Cardinal Carvajal came to Prague to settle the ever open question of Rokyzana’s claims. Having demanded restitution of confiscated church property as the first step, he was threatened with murder and fled. In December of the same year Rokyzana returned to Prague as president of the Utraquist consistory. The governor, George Podiebrad, supported him in his disobedience to Rome and nullified all Roman attempts at a final settlement; he opposed St. John Capistran, who was then converting thousands of Utraquists in Moravia. As things were going from bad to worse, Pope Pius II, who had had long experience of the sectarians at Basle and as legate to Prague, refused to acknowledge the Utraquist rite, and declared the Compactata null and void, 31 March, 1462. Podiebrad retaliated by persecuting the Catholics in 1466 he was excommunicated by Paul II; there followed other religious and civil wars. In 1485 King Wladislaw granted equal liberty and rights to both parties. Judging by its results this was a step in the right direction. By degrees the Utraquists conformed to the Roman rites so as to be hardly distinguishable from them, except through the chalice for the laity. In the sixteenth century they resisted Lutheran inroads even better than the Subunists. Their further history is told in the article BOHEMIAN BRETHREN.
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J. WILHELM Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Hussites
a general name for the followers of JOHN HUSS SEE JOHN HUSS (q.v.). The Council of Constance, in its dealings with Huss, seems to have forgotten that the adherents to his cause were not the handful of men who had gathered around their friend and teacher in his last hours, but were scattered throughout Bohemia and Moravia. No sooner had the news of the execution of Huss reached them than disturbances became the order of the day. Everywhere in the two kingdoms named the life of the priests was in danger. The archbishop of Albicus (q.v.) himself was obliged to flee for his life. King Wenceslas, of Bohemia, was indignant at the action of the council, and the queen hesitated not to espouse openly the cause of the Hussites. September 3, 1415, the Diet of Bohemia addressed a manifesto to the council, full of reproaches and threats; and September 5 it voted that every landowner should be free to have the doctrines of Huss preached on his estate. Fearful of the danger threatened, the priesthood, and, indeed, all strict adherents of the Romish Church, formed (October 1) a league (Herrenbund), vowing obedience to the council and fidelity to the Romish Church. Encouraged by these associations, deemed strong enough not only to oppose successfully any further attacks on Romanists, but even any further inroads of the heretics among the people, the council assumed a more authoritative position. Not satisfied with the mischief it had already done, it now threatened all adherents of Huss with ecclesiastical punishments. Jerome of Prague (q.v.), the friend and disciple of Huss, was the first to suffer. He was summoned before the council, summarily tried and condemned and, like his master, burned at the stake (May 30, 1416). The 452 signers of a protest against the execution of Huss were the next summoned before the bar of the council to answer for their heretical conduct. Indeed, had not the emperor Sigismund interfered, the king and queen of the Bohemians would have been added to this number. But the execution of Jerome, following that of Huss, was too great an outrage in the eyes of the Bohemians not to destroy the last vestige of respect for the body by whose order these atrocious deeds were committed.
The threats of the council became to them a mere brutum fulmen. They treated them with contempt. Meanwhile, the adherents of Huss had divided into two parties, the moderate and the extreme. The moderate party, led by the University of Prague, took the name of Calixtines (q.v.), who derived their name from the chalice (calix), holding that communion in both kinds was essential to the sacrament; the extreme party were called the Taborites, from the mountain Tabor (now Austin), which was originally their headquarters. Here, where Huss himself had formerly preached, they assembled in the open air, sometimes to the number of over 40,000, and partook of communion under both kinds on tables erected for the occasion. The Calixtines preserved the belief in purgatory, praying for the dead, images of the saints, holy water, etc.; but in March 1417; they declared openly for the right of all to receive communion in both kinds. In consequence of this declaration, all the privileges of the university were suspended by the council, and the forcible abolition of the heresy demanded by pope Martin V. In the early part of 1419 king Wenceslas, unwilling to lose the favor of either party, and fearing the wrath of Rome, decreed the restoration of Roman Catholic priests to their former offices. But no sooner had the Romanists learned of the enactments in their favor than they attacked the Hussites, and began all manner of persecutions against them.
February 22, 1418, Martin V issued a bull against the followers of Wickliffe and Huss. All who should be found to think or teach otherwise than as the holy Roman Catholic Church thinks or teaches; all who held the doctrines, or defended the characters of Huss or Wickliffe, were to be delivered over to the secular arm for punishment as heretics. The document is a model from which bigoted intolerance and persecution might copy and exhausts the odium of language in describing the character of the objects of its vengeance. They are schismatic, seditious, impelled by Luciferian pride and wolfish rage, duped by devilish tricks, tied together by the tail, however scattered over the world, and thus leagued in favor of Wickliffe, Huss, and Jerome. These pestilent persons had obstinately sown their perverse dogmas, while at first the prelates and ecclesiastical authority had shown themselves to be only dumb dogs, unwilling to bark, or to restrain, according to the canons, these deceitful and pestiferous heresiarchs. These intolerant measures added strength to the party whom it was their object to extirpate. The Bohemians, threatened at home by a feeble and vacillating king, and abroad by the official emissaries of the papal pontiff, felt themselves obliged to gather in numbers for self-defense, and chose Nicholas of Hussinecz (q.v.) and John Zisca (q.v.) as their leaders. They also prepared an answer to the bull, and circulated it far and wide. It was entitled A faithful and Christian Exhortation of the Bohemians to Kings and Princes, to stir them up to the zeal of the Gospel, amid was signed by four of their leading captains. It is honorable at once to their courage, their prudence, their Christian intelligence, and their regard for the supreme authority of the Word of God.
Their first aim was to secure, if possible, the capital of the kingdom. July 30, Zisca entered the old city, or that part of the city in which resided the reformers, and prepared for an assault on the new city, joined by the inhabitants of the old. His aim, however, for the present, was only to intimidate the papal party. After Zisca had gained the city, some of his men sought entrance in churches to observe their religious rites. They were denied admission to some of them, and the consequence was a forcible entrance, and the summary execution of the fanatic priests. With the council of the city also they experienced trouble. While a number of the Hussites were in a procession from one of the churches, their minister, bearing the chalice, was struck by a stone which had been thrown from one of the windows of the state-house. The Hussites became enraged. Under the command of Zisca himself, the state house was stormed. Seven of the councilors, who had been unable to make their escape, were thrown from the upper windows and impaled on the pikes of the soldiers below. The king, when the news reached him, became so excited that he died of a fit of apoplexy. General anarchy now ensued. The Hussites, undisputed masters of Prague, restored the forms of civil government by the appointment of four magistrates to hold office until the next general election, and then withdrew, under Zisca, to Pilsen. The queen Sophia sought not only to secure the aid of the emperor Sigismund against these armed heretics, but even endeavored to influence the citizens-of Prague to admit Sigismund as the successor of Wenceslas. The people appealed to Zisca for aid against the probable invasion of the city by Sigismund. November 4, 1419, Zisca re-entered the city. The emperor, involved in a war with the Turks, neglected at first to attend to Bohemia. Finally, in 1420, he besieged Prague, but was driven from his positions.
Widely differing in their political and religious sentiments, the Hussites became daily more divided. Some favored the Calixtines, others the Taborites, and between these two parties strong jealousies were constantly springing up. In the old town of Prague the Calixtines prevailed, in the new the Taborites held sway, and, finding it thus difficult to satisfy and please all parties, and even fearing a union of the Calixtines with the Royalists, Zisca finally withdrew to the country. During the siege the Praguers had presented to the emperor, as conditions of submission and adherence to him as subjects, four articles (Articles of Prague). These were stipulations for,
1, the free and untrammeled preaching of the Word of God, throughout the kingdom of Bavaria, by evangelical preachers;
2, the free use of communion in both kinds by all true Christians who had not committed mortal sin;
3, the keeping of all priests and monks out of any temporal power, and obliging them to live according to the example of Christ and the apostles;
4, the punishment of all mortal sins, and of all disorders contrary to the law of God committed by the priests. The Taborites, however, presented no less than twelve articles, namely, the suppression of all unnecessary churches, altars, images, etc.; the application of capital punishment for other sins, such as drinking in taverns, luxury in clothes or in the style of living, etc. But the continued persecutions of the Hussites, and the unqualified approval of them by Sigismund, ever united the two parties for common defense. March 1, 1420, Martin V invited a regular crusade against them, incited thereto in a great measure, no doubt, by Sigismund, who felt himself too weak to gain the kingdom with his army. The Hussites were now to be dealt with as rebels against the Roman Church, and as heretics; and the emperor exerted himself for the publication of this bull throughout his dominions. Even more than the previous documents of like character, it shows the blind zeal and persecuting bigotry of Rome.
A Christian, not a heathen people, were now, however, to be the objects of its vengeance a people whose great heresy was that they made the Word of God their supreme authority, and contended for the institutions of the Gospel in their primitive simplicity and integrity. To animate his followers with greater fervor in the execution of the bull, the pope, by the mercy of Almighty God, and the authority of the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as by the power of binding and loosing bestowed by God upon himself, granted to those who should enter upon the crusade, or to such even as should die upon the road plenary pardon of their sins, … and eternal salvation; and to such as could not go in person, but contributed to it in any wise, full remission of their sins. Thus all Christendom, with its generals and armies, was summoned to crush out the heresies of men whom the council chose to burn rather than refute. But the result disappointed all human expectations. The forces of the empire dashed and shattered themselves against the-invincible resolution and desperate courage of a band of men sustained by religious enthusiasm, and conducted by able generals.
Measures for defense were at once taken by the Hussites. The citizens of Prague, who had frequently been divided, now united against the common foe. Calixtine and Taborite were ready to join hands in a league of mutual defense. Never was there a more signal defeat than the imperial forces now sustained, although their army was 140,000 to 150,000 strong. Prague was the first city freed from the beleaguering enemy; but the great battle which decided the fate of the Imperialists was fought at Galgenberg or Witkow, known thereafter as the Ziscaberg (Hill of Zisca). Yet the opposition of the Taborites to all hierarchical pomp, and the threatened ruin of some of the most splendid structures of Prague, inclined the Calixtines, as soon as the danger had passed, to accept the terms of peace which Sigismund seemed very anxious to grant, provided, however, they could induce the emperor at the same time to remove the stigma of heresy which rested on the four Articles of Prague. This they failed to accomplish, and peace was further delayed. A second and third attempt of Sigismund at pacification met with no better success. An effort was now made to compromise the differences between the Calixtines and Taborites.
But the greatest obstacle to this was found to be their political rather than religious views. The question who should wear the crown of Bohemia was a matter of no little importance, and each party seemed anxious to secure it for one of their number. A convention of the states was held at Czaslau, July 1421, to determine the matter. A regency was appointed of twenty members, taken from the different orders of the nation. Zisca appeared in it in the first rank of the nobles. It was resolved, with remarkable unanimity, that the four Articles of Prague should be universally received. Sigismund was declared incapable of reigning over Bohemia, and the crown was offered to the king of Poland. He refused, however, to accept it. Withold, grand duke of Lithuania, was next chosen; he also declined, but recommended Sigismund Corybut, his brother, to the Bohemian barons, and accompanied him to Prague, where they both, by partaking of the communion of the cup, sealed their adherence to the faith of the Calixtines, who held now the supremacy at Prague, and who had revived their old hostility against the Taborites.
The nation divided into two fierce parties, embittered by prejudice and mutual aggressions, so that the opposition to Corybut became irreconcilable, even although Zisca himself espoused his cause, as the Taborites were unwilling to follow their leader blindly. A diet held at Prague in November, 1421, to determine the question, brought it no nearer to its solution, while it effected the estrangement of Zisca from the Calixtines, who now regarded him and his followers as their enemies. An army was gathered against them; but, as often before, the Taborites were victorious, and the Calixtines severely beaten. Another attempt proved even less favorable to them, and, thus driven to desperation, Zisca now attempted to crush the Calixtines, who were virtually leagued with the Imperialists. After various victories over his enemies, Zisca appeared before Prague September 11, 1423, and invested the city, suffering no one to issue forth from its gates. When everything was ready to storm the city, a deputation of the Calixtines appeared before him and offered terms of submission, which he readily accepted. Zisca entered Prague with great honors, and was entrusted with the exercise of paramount authority. The emperor’s hopes of being king of Bohemia had of late been based upon the divisions of the nation, and, baffled by this new agreement between the Hussites, he now sought to win them over by liberal concessions. He offered to Zisca the government of the kingdom, and asked for himself only the wearing of the crown.
But, at this culminating point of Zisca’s fortunes, death over took him (October 11, 1424). He lived to foil the purposes of Sigismund, and died at the moment when his death was, in some respects, another defeat to his hopes. Zisca’s death left the Taborites without any real leader. Their success they chiefly owed to him, and some of them, to indicate their deep sense of the loss they had suffered, took the name of Orphanites (q.v.). Others were absorbed by the Horebites (q.v.), while still others retained their old name, and chose St. Procopius the Great (q.v.) as their leader. The Orphanites, however, had relapsed to a belief in transubstantiation: they observed the fasts; honored the saints, and their priests performed worship in robes, all which the strict Taborites continued to reject. Among the Orphanite leaders, Procopius the Lesser was the most eminent. Vainly did the pope, assisted by the emperor, preach another crusade against the Hussites, who sallied out from Bohemia in troops to make invasions into neighboring countries, and, considering always Bohemia as their home, and other places as the land of the Philistines, treated the latter accordingly. Bands of robbers of all nations soon joined them. Frederick the Valiant made war against them, and entered Bohemia in 1425, and again in 1426, with 20,000 men, but was repulsed, on the second occasion suffering a terrible defeat at the battle of Ausch, June 15. A panic now seized all Germany, which was increased by the storming of Miess and Tachow by the Hussites in 1427. Another crusade, instigated against them by the emperor Sigismund in the same year, met with no better success than before.
At the opening of 1428, a Convention was called at Beraun to bring about, if possible, a general pacification of the nation. But so varying were the views of the different sects, especially the doctrines of free will, justification, and predestination, that the Convention was broken up without accomplishing anything. In 1429, the Orphanites, assisted by a portion of the Taborites, made a great invasion into Saxony and Silesia. They took Dresden, marched along the Elbe to Magdeburg, then turned into the province of Brandenburg, and finally returned to Bohemia by way of Silesia, distributing themselves into different bands in various places, and adopting names according to their fancy. Some were known as Collectors, some as Small Caps (Petit Chapeaus, says L’Enfant), some as Little Cousins, others as Wolf-bands. In the spring of 1430 they were ready to undertake another invasion. With 20,000 cavalry, 30,000 infantry, and 3000 chariots, and with Procopius and other able generals at their head, they repeated the invasion of the countries that had been visited the previous year.
Dividing into several bands, they desolated or reduced to ashes more than a hundred towns and villages, beat a Saxon army at Grimma, then wept to Franconia, and returned home through Lower Bavaria. Meanwhile the pope had been busy with his bigots crying a new crusade against the Hussites. November 1, 1429, a diet had been summoned to meet at Vienna, but the delay of Sigismund in reaching the place had caused its transfer to Presburg. Here the deliberations were protracted for eight months, and at length nearly all the prelates and princes of the empire were brought together, either in person or by ambassadors. It was finally resolved to make still another invasion of Bohemia. The papal legate came provided for the emergency. He had brought with him a bull of Martin V, ordaining a crusade, which was now opportunely to be published. Indulgences were profusely promised to those who should engage in the enterprise, or contribute to its promotion. Those who should fast and pray for its success should have a remission of penance for sixty days. From other vows interfering with enlistments in the holy war, a dispensation should be freely bestowed. Great efforts were made to insure the successful issue of this, the sixth invasion of Bohemia by the Imperialists (or the third papal crusade urged by Martin V). June 24,1431, was the time appointed for it. But, before it was undertaken, the emperor, to test the spirit of the Bohemians, made again propositions for the crown. The Orphanites were the only Hussites that opposed him. The Calixtines and Taborites returned a deputation of four to confer with Sigismund. But, even before this deputation had returned to Prague, the Hussites became distrustful, and the most cautious and moderate among them felt satisfied that the emperor only intended to mislead them into a state of security, and then surprise and conquer them. The old leagues and confederations were revived. Old feuds were forgotten.
The barons of Bohemia and Moravia, the Calixtines of Prague, and the indomitable Taborites and Orphanites, again united to repel the invader. In a few weeks 50,000 infantry, 7000 cavalry, and 3600 chariots were gathered. The crusading force also had been collecting, and now numbered 80,000 (some say 130,000) men, under the command of the elector of Brandenburg. This army, immense as it was, and powerful and invincible as it seemed, was, like its predecessors, completely routed at Tausch, August 14, 1431, and the hopes of the Imperialists of subjecting the Bohemians by force of arms effectually crushed. Sigismund now most earnestly endeavored to make peace, and entrusted the negotiations to the Council of Basle (which met December, 1431). The Bohemians were invited, promised a safe-conduct, and freedom to remain at Basle, to act, decide, treat, and enter into arrangements with the council; also perfect liberty to celebrate in their houses their peculiar forms of worship; that in public and in private they should be allowed from Scripture and the holy doctors to advance proof of their four Articles, against which no preaching of the Catholics should be allowed while they remained within the city. But even with these proffered favorable conditions the Bohemians at first kept aloof, mistrusting the sincerity of the offers made them; yet in 1432 they consented to send envoys to the council. It was in the beginning of the next year (January 4,1433) that the Bohemian deputation, numbering 300, was chosen from the most noble in the land, and with Procopius the Great, the colleague of Zisca, the hero of many battles, the leader of many invasions, at its head. On the 16th of January the Bohemian deputation appeared before the council, and presented the four Articles of Prague as the basis of negotiations.
After discussing them for fifty days, the parties had been brought no nearer together, and the Bohemians, growing impatient, prepared for their return to Prague. Towards the close of the same year, however, the council sent envoys to Prague, and finally the Treaty of Prague was concluded, November 30, 1433, known in history as the Compactata, stipulating first for the restoration of peace and the abolition of ecclesiastical censorship, then for the admission of the four Articles of Prague, modified as follows: 1, the Eucharist to be administered equally under one or both kinds; 2, that preaching should be free, but only permitted to regularly ordained ministers; 3, that priests should have no possessions, but should be permitted to administer upon them.; 4, that sin should be punished, but only by the regularly constituted authorities. The Taborites disapproved the proceedings; a diet, held at Prague in 1434, in which the Calixtines acknowledged the authority of the pope, brought the difficulty to a crisis, and the Calixtines, joined by the Roman Catholics, defeated the Taborites near Bhmischbrod, May 30,1434. The two Procopiuses were killed. The Taborites were now driven to their strongholds, which they were obliged to surrender one by one. In another diet, held at Prague in 1435, all Bohemians acknowledged Sigismund for their king, he granting them, on his part, very advantageous conditions for their country and sect. The Romish Church, in accepting the four Articles, having conceded to them the use of the cup in the Eucharist, and many other privileges, they were finally absolved from ecclesiastical interdict, and the emperor came to Prague August 23,1436. The Taborites submitted gradually, and the thus united Hussites took the name of Utraquists (q.v.).
Sigismund, however, did not keep the promises he had made on ascending the throne of Bohemia, but rather used every means to restore the Roman Catholic faith in that country. The chief of the Hussites, John Rokyzan, whom the emperor himself had at first confirmed in the office of archbishop, came to be in danger of his life. This created new disturbances, which continued until the death of Sigismund in 1437. The Roman Catholic party now elected Albrecht of Austria king, but the Hussites chose Casimir of Poland. The former finally prevailed; but at his death, in October, 1439, during the minority of his son Ladislaus, two governors were appointed (in 1441), the one a Roman Catholic, the other a Hussite, to govern the kingdom. In 1444, George de Podiebrad was the Hussite governor chosen, and in 1450 he assumed the sole control. This change created no disorder, as the Roman Catholics, who were busily engaged undermining the Hussite doctrine and gaining over its adherents, were anxious to avoid an open conflict with them. At the death of Ladislaus in 1457, George himself was elected king. In order to conciliate the pope, he caused himself to be crowned by Roman Catholic bishops, and swore obedience to the Church and to the pope. During his reign the Calixtines enjoyed full religious liberty; and when Pope Pius II declared the treaty abolished in 1462, George sent the papal legates to prison without further forms. For this he was put under the ban, and finally deposed by the pope in 1463.
Meanwhile the warlike Taborites had disappeared from the scene. They no longer formed a national party. But the feeble remnants of that multitude which had once followed the standards of Zisca and Procopius still clung to their cherished faith, and, with the Word of God as their only supreme authority, the United Brethren (q.v.) appear as their lineal representatives. How, from such an origin, should have sprung a people whose peaceful virtues and missionary zeal have been acknowledged by the world, is a problem only to be solved by admitting that, in the faith of the old Taborites, however they may have been guilty of fanatical excesses, there was to be found that fundamental principle of reverence for the authority of Scripture alone which they bequeathed as a cherished legacy to those who could apply and act upon it in more favorable circumstances and in more peaceful times. The successor of George, Ladislaus of Poland, who came to the government in 1471, held fast to the conditions of the treaty though himself a Roman Catholic.
In 1485 he concluded the peace of Kuttenberg, according to which the Utraquists and Subunists (Roman Catholics who communed but in one kind) were promised equal toleration; and in 1497 he gave the Utraquists the right to appoint an administrator of the archbishopric of Prague as their ecclesiastical chief. When the Reformation began in Germany, it was gladly hailed by both the Calixtines and the Bohemian Brethren, and in 1524 they decided to continue, under the guidance of Luther, the reform begun by Huss. A large part of them now divided themselves into Lutherans and Calvinists, and in 1575 both these united with the Bohemian Brethren in a joint confession, and became a strictly Protestant denomination. They were permitted to enjoy religious liberty until 1612, when they were subjected to many restrictions by the emperor Matthias, and to still more by the emperor Rudolph in 1617. This was the first cause of the Thirty-years’ War, and it was only under Joseph II that the Calixtines recovered their religious liberty. See Cochlaus, Hist. Hussitarum (Mayence, 1549, fol.); Theobald, Hussitenkrieg (Wittenberg, 1609; Nuremb. 1623; Bresl. 1750, 3 vols.); Geschichte d. Hussiten (Lpz. 1784); Schubert, Geschichte d. Hussitenkriegs (Neustadt, 1825); Pierer, Universal Lexikon, 8:636; Koppen, Der alt. Huss. Brderkirche (Lpz. 1845); The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia (London, 1849, 2 vols. 8vo); Palacky, Geschichte v. Behmen (1845, 3 vols.), vol. iii; Beziehungen u. Verhaltniss do Waldenser z. d. ehemaligen Sekten in Bohmen (Prag. 1869); Vorlaufer d. Hussitenthums in Bohmen (new edit. 1869); Jean Gochlee and Theobaldus, Hist. de la Guerre des Hussites; Neander, Church Hist. 5, 172; Gindely, Gesch. d. Bohnmisohen Brider (Prague, 1857, 2 vols. 8vo); and especially Gillett, Life and Times of John Huss (Boston, 1863, 2 vols. 8vo), from which extracts have frequently been made in this article. Roman Catholic-Aschbach, Kirchen-Lexikon, 3:348 sq.; Gesch. Kaiser Sigmunds (Hamb. 1838-45, 4 vols. 8vo). See Huss. (J. H.W.)