III. The Beginning of the Hussite Movement

In its beginnings the Hussite movement borrowed the most weighty of its arguments and claims from Wycliffeism, for as soon as the doctrines of the English reformer reached Bohemia they were eagerly seized upon and propagated. But while Huss adhered closely to Wycliffe’s teachings, it is a gross exaggeration to assert that those teachings produced the Hussite movement. They supplied the Hussites with arguments of the greatest utility, and influenced the formulation of the demands put forward by them; but the cause, strength, and aim of the movement had their roots deep in circumstances which were wholly indigenous to Bohemia. In the reign of Charles 1. they had already found expression in Milic of Kremsier and Mathias of Janow, long before Wycliffeistic writings had penetrated to Bohemia, which did not take place till about 1380, in the last years of the curate of Lutterworth.

Wenzel, son of Charles I, and the fourth Bohemian king of that name (1378-1419), endeavoured as far as possible to suppress existing antagonisms. As he was repugnant to accepting the German crown on account of his powerlessness, it was not necessary for him to be a “parson-king” like his father. Although he endeavoured to subjugate the Church to his own control, and was thus put in touch with the efforts of the Czech patriots and Church reformers, he was forced to recognise the fact that Bohemia’s flourishing economic condition, and with it the greater part of his power, depended on Germans. While favouring the strivings of the Czechs, he did not wish the Germans to be injured thereby. To this highly contradictory situation we must ascribe the vacillating policy of Wenzel, who one day encouraged the Czechs and the friends of reform (e.g., in the question of the University), and the next day endeavoured to repress them – sometimes in vain. Although the Germanic spirit and influence declined in power and importance under his rule, his wavering, contradictory, and frequently capricious policy succeeded almost to the end of his life in preventing any violent encounter between the antagonistic parties.

The explosion came only when Bohemian affairs were interfered with by foreign powers, who, instead of a policy of vacillation and compromise, preferred that of a strong hand, and, by their attempt to stamp out the brand with a firm foot, caused the whole structure to burst into flame.

Johannes Huss (from 1398 professor in Prague University, and from 1402 pastor of Bethlehem Chapel), the most prominent literary representative of the anti-Papal and anti-German movement, enjoyed the favour of Wenzel, who appointed him father-confessor to Queen Sophia. The University, which was at that time in the hands of the Germans, turned at first against Huss and Wycliffe, whose doctrines Huss propagated, and pronounced forty-five of Wycliffe’s Theses to be heretical. The quarrel of the University became more and more a national one, in which the Czechs and the friends of reform were in the minority. Wenzel finally interposed and gave three of the four votes of the University to the Bohemian “nation,” and the remaining one to the other nations combined, whereupon the majority of German professors and students left the country. The University now declared for Huss, and appointed him Rector.

Huss had then to deal with the Archbishop of Prague, and, lastly, with the Pope himself. Fiercer and fiercer grew the struggle, and wider and wider the gulf between Huss and the Church. The conflict became especially sharp when, in 1411, Pope John XXIII, being in want of money, again made preparations for the sale of Indulgences, which took place in Prague in 1412.

Huss raised the most violent opposition to this sale, as well as to the money-seeking Pope, whom he denounced as anti-Christ. It soon culminated in a severe encounter between the Catholic Germans and the Hussite Czechs, the latter of whom burnt the Papal Bull, and even threatened the priesthood.

It seemed, indeed, at that time, as if these bitter antagonisms were about to measure their strength in open conflict; but Wenzel was once again able to preserve peace by a cold-blooded neutrality. In December, 1412, he expelled Huss from Prague, and soon afterwards prepared the same fate for four papistically-minded theologians; he simultaneously destroyed the preponderance of the Germans in Prague by decreeing that in future half of the town-councillors should be Czechs.

In 1414, the great Church Council assembled in Constance. Its mission was to reunite and reorganise the Papal Church – a task which involved not only the setting aside of the three existing Popes and the installation of a new one, but also the suppression of Bohemian heresy. Wenzel had been deprived of the imperial crown by the German Electors in 1400, and his brother Sigismund (who, since 1410, had been Emperor of Germany and was heir presumptive to the throne of Bohemia) had special interest in the suppression of Hussism, as this sect threatened the defection of Bohemia not only from the Church but also from his Empire.

Huss was cited before the Council. Full of confidence, he set out on the journey to Constance, relying, not on the letter of safe-conduct given him by Sigismund, but on his good cause. Like so many idealists before and after him, he saw only differences of opinion and misapprehension where there were actually irreconcilable antagonisms. If he could only clear up these misapprehensions and refute these opinions, the irresistible strength of his ideas would, he thought, be manifest. But he failed to convince the pious fathers, either that Apostolic poverty was enjoined upon the followers of Christ, or of the truth of his dictum that a spiritual or secular ruler, be he Pope or King, ceases to be lawful the moment he incurs the guilt of a deadly sin.

This democratic principle seriously offended Sigismund as well as the Council.

That Bohemia arose in its might in favour of Huss only bore witness to his dangerous power, and was one more reason why the Council should render him harmless. After it had vainly sought by threats and long imprisonment to induce him to recant, it condemned the reformer and his doctrines on July 6, 1415, and handed him over to the secular judges. Sigismund was sufficiently devoid of character to break his word; and, in spite of the letter of safe-conduct, Huss was sentenced to the stake.

This reduced the Bohemians to the alternative of rebellion, or subjection to the Church and the Germans. They chose rebellion.

A few of the more resolute among the followers of Huss had already openly renounced the Church. They upheld the claim previously raised by Mathias of Janow, that the Holy Sacrament should be administered to the people in both kinds. The use of the chalice had hitherto been confined to the priests. It was quite in accordance with their doctrine which had, as one of its aims, the abolition of the privileges of the priesthood, that it should also declaim against the external sign of their privileged condition. The chalice, i.e., the lay chalice, became from that time the symbol of the Hussites. According to the usual popular representation of history, the only question at issue during the gigantic struggles of the Hussite war, was essentially whether or not the Holy Communion ought to be administered in both kinds; and in this connection “enlightened minds” never tire of pointing out, with much self-satisfaction, how narrow-minded the people of that time were, and how luminous, on the contrary, are the free-thinkers of the present day.

This picture of the Hussite movement is about as true and well founded as would be a representation in coming centuries of the revolutionary conflicts of our times, in which it should be made to appear that the people of the nineteenth century were so ignorant as to attribute a superstitious importance to particular colours, so that the bloodiest battles raged over the questions whether the French colours should be white, red white and blue, or red; those of Hungary black and yellow, or red white and green; and that for a long time a wearer of a black red and gold ribbon was punished by severe imprisonment in Germany.

What the various flags are to the nations of to-day, the chalice was to the Hussites. It was their standard, round which they rallied, and which they defended to the last; but it was not an object of strife.

It was precisely the same with the different forms of the Holy Communion which made their appearance in the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

The casting off of the fetters of the Catholic Church – an act of which the symbol was the acceptance of the lay chalice – became universal after the execution of Johannes Huss. The ice was broken, and the practical consequences of renouncing the Church soon ensued – those consequences which were fundamentally the object of the whole conflict. Masses of the lower population in Prague now began to rise from time to time, not merely in demonstrations, but sometimes to expel the secular clergy and monks, and plunder the churches and monasteries; the greatest gainers by these uprisings being the nobility. Not in vain had they become the most zealous advocates of Hussite doctrines. To revenge the death of Huss, and, of course, out of pure enthusiasm for the faith (?), they now sent challenges to bishops and monasteries, and began, wherever possible, to seize the possessions of the Church.

Wenzel was powerless in the face of the storm. In vain did Sigismund and the Pope endeavour to goad him into energetic measures against the rebels. The Bohemian king deemed it most prudent to act as if he saw nothing. Matters finally went so far that Sigismund threatened his brother with war if he did not interpose in the Hussite revolt. The threat was effective: Wenzel turned against the Hussites, and tried to bring back the exiled clergy. Thereupon a tumult arose in Prague, during which the masses of the lower population, led by Johann Ziska, seized the town on July 30, 1419.

The king had fled before the threatening catastrophe to his stronghold in Wenzelstein, and when the dire news was brought to him fell into the most ungovernable rage. This was the probable cause of the attack of apoplexy which followed and from which he died a few days afterwards.

Bohemia was left without a king, a prey to the Hussite heresy.