This summary is taken from a book titled The Dawn of a New Era 1250-1435 written by Edward P. Cheney, the first book in the 20-volume historical series The Rise of Modern Europe. The original copyright was in 1936; this particular copy is dated 1971, so the monetary figures in �modern value� are not accurate.
The Spread of Heresy
John Wyclif
[Keep in mind that the Catholic Church hijacked the faith given to the apostles, the faith they were instructed to teach. So while someone called a heretic might actually believe in unscriptural doctrine, someone else called a heretic will actually have more truth than the Catholic Church. There is much error, idolatry and pagan practices re-packaged as Christian worship in Catholicism. There is error in all of Christendom, including the Protestant faiths. It is impossible for the entire pristine, errorless Truth to have been kept intact on earth during nearly 2,000 years of human handling.]
Through much of the middle ages England was nearly unaffected by heresy. The troubles on the continent were hardly heard of by the English and they produced almost no heretics of their own. William of Ockham was declared a heretic in 1327, but the impact of his works was felt elsewhere in Europe. This changed in the late 14th century.
Other events occurred during this time: the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, the Peasants Rebellion, the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire and the beginnings of popular literature written in English. Along with this came a religious revival imbedded with heresy.
English Lollardy had it roots mainly in the teachings of John Wyclif. He was a product of the University of Oxford, with a degree in divinity and lecturing from 1360 to 1378, mostly at the University. Wyclif also preached at London churches and elsewhere, and became rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire in 1374.
Wyclif was a scholar, a bold and independent thinker, described glowingly: �peerless in logic, philosophy, divinity morality and speculation,� �the most eminent doctor of theology of those days,� �in philosophy second to none, in scholastic learning incomparable.� Like Ockham and Marsiglio he was early drawn into the discussion of the temporal claims of the papacy. Against papal provisions, Wyclif also wrote for Parliament an argument against the feudal payment claimed from England by the pope.
Wyclif�s disregard of the authoritative teaching of the church and reliance on the Boble as the adequate soured of faith and of moral teaching came early. Many of his sermons and tracts are little more than extracts from Scriptures with a running commentary. He at first urged that the Bible be interpreted in accordance either with the teachings of the Fathers or the guiding of learned men, but later his expressed his full confidence that the Holy Spirit would enlighten even ignorant men in discovering its meaning, if they were in earnest. Neither the tradition of the church nor the authority of pope of council, he held, was of any weight in matters of religion when compared with the words of the Bible. This was perhaps his most fundamental divergence from the conceptions of the official church.
Wyclif was also opposed to the many possessions of the church. Holding that view were also Walter von der Vogelweide, Dante, Ottokar of Harnack, John Hus, the Cathari and also learned scholars of France and Italy among others.
Wyclif also opposed the possession of the clergy, whether it is lands, property or legal income. He knew that the Savior and apostles were poor men and �it belongeth not the Christ�s vicar nor to priests of holy church to have rents on earth.� Also wrong were simony, covetousness, diversions, all things that corrupted a clergy collecting endowments, tithes, payments and fees instead of the free offerings of the people. Wyclif also chastised mendicants orders with homes, lucrative appointments and other possessions: �These irreligious that have possessions, they have commonly red and fat cheeks and great bellies.� Prelates were �horned fiends to be damned in hell,� who �made God�s law unsavoury . . . with stinking words and law.�
Wyclif�s targets fired back with their own condemnations. They referred to him as �Mahomet,� �the devil�s instrument,� �the heretics idol,� and transformed his name into �Wickedlife.� The pope also got a shot in by charging Wyclif with �vomiting forth from the recesses of his body false and heretical propositions.�
Wyclif also denied the church its temporal office, saying that churchmen had no right to interfere in matters of government. Temporal rulers had the right and duty to prevent the pope and his clergy from meddling in civil matters. Prelates who were also great officers for of government; ecclesiastical judges who fined and imprisoned laymen for religious offenses; the pope, who claimed to depose kings and to be himself a sovereign and who made wars for temporal ends, all were alike unchristian and should have their temporal powers and possessions wrested from them by kings and governors.
Wyclif challenged the theory of an organized church system. His ideas included: the denial of the existence of rank in the church; ceremony and symbolism � confession, penance and absolution, pilgrimages, holy water, veneration of relics, prayers to the saints and the Blessed Virgin and excommunication by the clergy � should be abolished; and that the church consisted of all Christians, not just the clergy.
In a series of pamphlets he took on the papacy. He denied the pope�s power to excommunicate, questioned the primacy of Peter and ridiculed the claims of infallibility by the wicked Urban VI. Indulgences and the dispensing of the accumulated merits of the saints were blasphemy. His teachings on transubstantiation were declared heretical.
The attempts to silence Wyclif were ineffective, he was required to answer for his views on only two occasions. In 1377 the pope sent a series of bulls to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the king and the University of Oxford. They were charged with allowing �tares to spring up amidst the pure wheat in the fields of your glorious university.� They were required on apostolic authority to put an immediate end to all discussions and doctrines of Wyclif, to arrest him and send him under guard to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London and to silence and remove all other supporters of doctrines condemned by the church.
No action was taken for several months. The archbishop summoned Wyclif the following year and the clergy recommended that he cease supporting in public or at the university the articles recently condemned by the pope. Wyclif accepted the admonition. He withdrew from public preaching and largely from the university, retired to his parish of Lutterworth and spent the remaining six years of his life in varied writing, especially his massive Latin works and died in 1384.
The Spread of Lollardy in England
Wyclif�s teachings took root at Oxford. In 1382 the chancellor, Robert Rigge, appointed Dr. Nicholas Hereford as preacher of the English sermon on Ascension Day. Philip Reppingdon was appointed as preacher of the Latin sermon on Corpus Christi Day. Both Hereford and Reppingdon had views similar to Wyclif. In the same year a student named William James, in the presence of all the masters in Arts, declared the Eucharist as the church celebrated it to be mere idolatry. John Aston was one of masters who preached what was considered heresy.
This body of opinion became to be known as Lollardy and it penetrated all society, possibly even supported by Queen Anne. The Duke of Lancaster was an early supporter of Wyclif, Henry Percy, who was the Earl of Northumberland and lord marshal of England and John Montague who was the Earl of Salisbury were also Lollard supporters. When Montague acquired the manor at Shevley he removed all the images of saints in the chapel (except for an image of St. Catherine in the kitchen as favor to his servants). At the point of death at the hands of a mob he refused confession and absolution.
The knights and gentry were keen on Lollardy. They read the Bible in English and were blamed by the clergy for protecting Lollard preachers. Some knights refused to remove their hats when the host was carried through the streets. At least three members of King Richard�s council (Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Richard Stury and Sir John Clanvowe) were Lollards. In 1400, Sir Thomas Cheney was removed from his position as Speaker of the House of Commons because he was a Lollard, though he occupied other less conspicuous positions.
In 1395 Clifford and Sir Thomas Latimer introduced into the House of Commons the �twelve conclusions� of their group, why the Lollards opposed the organization, the property holding and the doctrines of the church. The church�s endowments should be taken away, monastic vows and vows of chastity by the secular clergy are injurious, the miracle of transubstantiation is idolatry, the blessing of holy water and other objects is mere jugglery, prayers for the dead are ineffective, churchmen ought not to hold worldly office. They call upon parliament to introduce reforms in these matters, though no action was taken. The �twelve conclusions� were also tacked onto the doors of St. Paul�s and Westminster Abbey.
In 1404 and 1406 proposals were made to confiscate the lands and other temporal possessions of the church. In 1410 it was rumored that the knights of the shire in Parliament were planning to propose a general act of confiscation of the lands and goods of the clergy, a plan stopped by the king. The Commons then asked for some mitigation of the existing statutes against heretics and for confiscation of half the revenues of absentee churchmen and papal-appointed holders of benefices. Nothing came of this either and it was the final parliamentary threat against the church except for the most famous case of Sir John Oldcastle.
Wyclif also encouraged traveling preachers who became known as his �poor priests�, who traveled throughout the country. They were described by an orthodox opponent as: �on foot, clothed in long garments of russet, all of one cut, sowing their errors among the people and preaching them publicly in their sermons.� Many of their teachings were filled with Biblical texts and their explanation and application were intended for use among the common people. Wyclif also blamed the beneficed clergy for their neglect of preaching and wrote a special treatise on � The Pastoral Office.�
Large parts of the Bible were translated into English and spread abroad and other translations were already made or being made: French, Catalan, Castilian, German and Bohemian. The English Bible was common by 1400. Various portions of the Bible were translated in the 14th century. The Wyclif Bible was not of heresy, but readers, using their own reasoning and developing their own conclusions, were bound to develop views different that those of the church. The bishops and their shackled clergy disapproved. �This Master Wyclif translated from the Latin into the tongue of the Angles (not of the angels) the gospel which Christ intrusted to the clergy and learned men of the church in order that they might gently minister it to the laity and to the weak, according to the exigencies of the times and the need and mental hunger of each one. Thus to the laity and even to such women as can read this was made more open than formerly it had been, even to such of the clergy as were well educated and of great understanding. Thus the evangelical pearls have been scattered abroad and trampled by the swine.�
When heretics were prosecuted [and persecuted] it was part of the charge that they were found to have copies of the English Bible in their possession. A group of heretics were known as �Bible men.� Minds stimulated by the reading and the pondering of the scriptures led to such things as the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) and the refusal to eat pork. The greatest number of religious dissenters in England came from the lower clergy and the common people. A Lollard priest named Swynderby, who was forbidden to preach in the diocese of Leicester, chose as his next pulpit a pile of millstones. A Wiltshire knight, Sir Lawrence St. Martin, took the consecrated wafer home, broke it into three pieces and ate one with oysters, one with onions and one with wine to show that it was no different than ordinary bread. Another chopped up an image of St. Catherine for firewood to boil his cabbage. So knights, priests, chaplains and common folk are named in the contemporary records as instance, illustration or as culprit in a trial, to be persecuted and burned at the stake.
The Suppression of English Lollardy
The Lollard movement was such a threat that the �official� church and state put much time and effort to eradicate it. In thirty years it was reduced to unimportance and fifty years to send it into complete obscurity. The price of this success for the church was the increased dependence of the church on the civil government. They needed help from three successive English kings: Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V and from the majority of parliament. There was a series of royal ordinances and parliamentary statutes in1382, 1395, 1401, 1406 and 1414. The great Lollard statute of 1401 �for the burning of heretics,� introduced and pushed through Parliament by the clergy, required sheriffs and other local officers to receive heretics after their conviction in a church court �and them before the people in a high place cause to be burnt, that such punishment might strike fear into the minds of others.�
The theory that the church should control the faith and religious practices of the people, and that civil government should support them even to the use of the death penalty, was introduced into English law and remained for a century and a half. Henry IV�s approval of this statute, the connivance of Prince Henry with the burning of Sawtrey, and after he became king [Henry V], with the prosecution for heresy of his old friend and companion in arms Sir John Oldcastle, are only the most egregious indications of the aggressive orthodoxy of the crown.
The actual suppression of the Lollardy was the work of the organized church. The Peasant�s Rebellion of 1381 helped in the suppression of heresy because the fear of further violence led to a disapproval of any deviation of customs of either church or state. The death in the insurrection of Archbishop Sudbury brought into the chair Courtenay and after him Arundel, both upholders of authority. They, the provincial and diocesan councils and the bishops of London, Hereford and Salisbury all pressed hard upon those who tested their authority. Several statements of orthodox doctrine and rules for enforcement were drawn and enacted by church courts. With the assistance of the sheriffs and other officers Oxford was reduced to submission.
Most of the first generation of English Lollardy recanted. There was no Inquisition for England, nor any use of torture. The church had so much oppressive power over the religious and intellectual life of the people the offenders recanted and performed penance. Later on the English were more resolute and joined the ranks of martyrs. More than fifty were burned at the stake or were sent to the gallows, as was Sir John Oldcastle. The church did show some mercy. After a heretic was burned at the stake in Norwich, 120 Lollards in the diocese recanted on being offered mild penance. Men and women, stripped to their shirts, carrying fagots or candles as penance for holding heretical beliefs, were a common sight before St. Paul�s or in the market places of Leicester or Bristol.
Over time the purging of Oxford University was achieved, the books of Wyclif were burned in the market place of Oxford and the wandering preachers were silenced. The crushing of Lollardy as a political danger was completed with the execution of Oldcastle in 1417. By the mid 15th century Lollardy was insignificant. If Wyclif�s books and the English Bible were read, it was in secrecy. The people were submissive to whatever religion the church shackled them with, and the church, in return for the assistance of the government, became submissive to royal supremacy.
The Religious Awakening of Bohemia
[Bohemia became Czechoslovakia in 1918 and has been known as the Czech Republic since 1993]
English Lollardy did not end; it reappeared in Bohemia along with an awakening of nationalism. A Slavic nation, Bohemia had long been under the influence of the Germans who entered as ecclesiastics, colonists, merchants and officials and took control of state, church, learning and economic life. This changed in the mid 14th century.
Charles IV was king and emperor who ruled Bohemia from 1333 to1378. He was a third-generation Bohemian king who encouraged Bohemian nationality and made Prague a great European capital. To do this Charles encouraged his nobles to follow local customs and respect national tradition. Czech language was given extended recognition and usage. Laws and customs were issued in the native language and works of literature and science appeared in national dress. In 1344 the bishopric of Prague was separated from the province of Mainz and became an independent archdiocese. In 1348 a university was established on the model of Paris, Oxford and Bologna and became a center of the national movement.
There was also a movement for ecclesiastical and moral reform. The churches received numerous grants of land and bequests from the crown and nobles. Locally born clergy were placed at the head of the churches and new sets of rules of a reformatory nature were issued. The religious revival was spread by preachers � Conrad of Waldhausen, Milicz of Kremsier, Albert Ranconis, Thomas of Stitny, Mathias of Janov, John of Stekno, John Hus and others � in town churches and country parishes, in either Latin, German or in Czech. Some of their sermons were collected and published as models and material for young preachers, as were Wyclif�s tracts and homilies.
A merchant named Kreuz and a knight named John Muhlheim raised and endowed Bethlehem Chapel in 1391. It was a lace for public preaching independent of the established church. The endowment provided for a chaplain who should always be a secular clergyman and should preach to the people in the Czech language every Sunday and on holydays.
There was no heresy involved. The popular preachers were or at least intended to be entirely orthodox, and when objections were raised they yielded to authority. The heresy the church had it sights set on at the time was the teachings of the Waldenses, rooted out in France, but spread to Bohemia, Moravia and Poland.
The revivalists were strict moralists and would blame the lives of the clergy and the laity, even those in high places. They were devoted to the Bible and saw it as the only source of religious teaching. Mathias of Janov, in circa 1382, wrote Rules of the New and Old Testament, which declared that the Bible alone is the standard of faith. He wrote familiar reformed doctrines: salvation is by faith in the Savior alone, not baptism or confirmation, is what makes the Christian. Ceremonies, pilgrimages, veneration of relics and images are distractions that steal time from more important spiritual matters. Thomas of Stitny criticized churchmen, appealed for more spiritual religion based on the study of Scriptures, and had little respect for ceremonies and the intervention of the priest.
The Gospels and the Psalter were already written in Czech, and before the 14th century ended the entire Bible was written in the Czech language. There was an antiquated Czech version from quite early times, and some twenty-two additional manuscripts written before the invention of printing.
English Lollardy then influenced the Bohemians. There was a bond between Bohemia and England. In 1381 Anne of Bohemia, daughter of Charles IV and sister of Wenzel and Sigismund, successive kings of Bohemia, came to England as the wife of Richard II and lived there till 1394. Bohemians accompanied her, and embassies were established between the two countries. Henry of Lancaster visited Prague in 1392 and later Sigismund visited England.
The interchange of students among European universities brought occasional English students to Prague and Bohemian students to Oxford. Adalbert Ranconis, a Prague graduate and former Oxford student, established a foundation for young Bohemians to study in England and left provisions in a will for Czech students to be educated at Paris or Oxford. These students, and possibly earlier students as well, may have been responsible for transmitting Wyclif�s works. One student, Jerome, while at Oxford in 1399 copied at least two of his treatises and took the to Prague in 1401. The works were so well known and widely disseminated that many were intentionally destroyed and in one instance 200 manuscripts were collected and burned.
John Hus
One of the Bohemians greatly inspired by the works of Wyclif was John Hus or Husinec, a scholar, writer and preacher. From his humble beginnings Hus attended the University of Prague and graduated Master of Arts in 1396. He began lecturing in 1398 and became dean of the faculty of philosophy in 1401 and rector two years later. He was also a canon of the cathedral and became confessor to the queen. His greatest contribution was as a preacher.
Hus was ordained priest in 1400 then was appointed chaplain of Bethlehem Chapel two years later. He quoted Wyclif�s writings, praised and recommended them, argued from them and used them as the basis of his religious teachings. Of Wyclif, Hus said to a critic, �I am drawn to him by his writings, by which he seeks to bring back all men to the law of Christ, and especially so the clergy, to the end that they may dismiss the splendor and glory of the world and with the apostles live after the life of Christ.�
With Wyclif as Hus� source of free thought there was opposition. In 1403 two of his fellow canons of the cathedral submitted to the university a series of forty-five points of Wyclif�s teachings, already declared heretical, and demanded that all lecturers at the university be forbidden to teach or preach them. This was agreed upon by a slight majority of the masters, causing a deep rift in the university, among the cathedral and city clergy and among the populace. Hussite or Wycliftite soon spread through all classes and became in Prague and in much of Bohemia the prevailing belief in the community.
The Germans who controlled the university forbid the new doctrine, and local patriotism caused a split between the two. Germans a most other foreigners left Prague, and the reform party came uppermost. The university became the patriotic center of the nation, the great upholder of the new doctrines and thereby a patron of heresy.
At the cathedral Hus had the duty of preaching the semi-annual Latin sermon to the assembled clergy, but as he departed from accepted doctrine and became more outspoken in his criticism of the clergy, the archbishop and several of the canons turned against him. They appealed to the pope for further power to contend against heresy in 1409. A bull soon followed. In accordance with its provisions the archbishop issued an order that all persons having copies of Wyclif�s writings containing any of the forty-five condemned articles should surrender them, and that all preaching in any place except the cathedral and the parish churches should cease. This led to the burning of the 200 manuscripts, in the year 1410, that took place in the courtyard of the archbishop�s palace. While the cathedral bells were tolled and the clergy sang Te Deum, as if for a victory, the university, now purely Czech and largely Hussite, protested against the destruction.
Hus and other clergymen made appeals to the archbishop and newly-elected Pope John XXIII. Hus also continued to preach, in spite of the archbishop�s order, to thousands in Bethlehem Chapel. The pope ordered Hus to appear for a trial at Rome. Hus refused to go and the archbishop proclaimed his excommunication and that of all others who had disobeyed the orders of the church to bring in heretical books and cease unlicensed preaching.
Riots spread through the city and Hus defied the church authorities and appealed to the people. �I known not whether the pope, who has just died, the one who has issued orders to burn the books of Master John Wyclif where many good things are to be found, is in heaven or in hell, but I have appealed against him. Will you support me?� His church audience gave their assent. Hus urged them to stand firm and not to fear excommunication; �let us gird ourselves, and stand for the law of God after the example of the old covenant.�
From 1410 to 1412 Prague and much of Bohemia were torn by religious conflict. King Wenzel appealed to the pope and the archbishop to allow freedom of preaching and to release Hus from his excommunication and also ordered the rebellious clergy to obey their superiors in the church. An interdict was placed upon the city, the cathedral treasures were taken to the castle for safekeeping and an attack was made upon Bethlehem Chapel by a group of townsmen injured by the interdict.
The indulgences being sold to finance Pope John�s crusade against the King of Naples, protector of his rival, aroused anew the opposition that the sale of indulgences has never failed to produce, led Hus to bitter attacks on the head of the church, and led to riots in which his students, led by Jerome, chased the pope�s messengers out of the city, piled the pardons on a cart, carried them through the streets and then burned them in the market place. In 1412 three young men were tried and beheaded in the city ditch for sharing in these riots and shouting in a church that the indulgences were lies and the pope was a liar. But the crowd hailed them as martyrs.
The pope�s emissaries appealed to the populace of Prague to raze Bethlehem Chapel, which was considered to be a nest of heretics. Hus hinted that swords would be used in defense, and his congregations threatened bloodshed if they were interfered with. King Wenzel, caught in the middle of all this, asked Hus to stop preaching in the city. Hus left Prague in late December of 1412 to reside in the castle of a friendly nobleman away in the country. Here and elsewhere, Hus wrote, books pamphlets and letters of appeal to his people at Bethlehem Chapel and to the university, and occasionally preached in the villages. Hus� doctrines were not at rest either, they spread through the country and in 1414 he was summoned to appear at the council of Constance.
Hus Before the Council of Constance
The council�s settlement of the schism has already been described. Its second task was to be the defining and the extirpation of heresy, focusing on the teachings of Wyclif and Hus. Two successive commissions were appointed to consider some of the works of Wyclif, the previously mentioned forty-five articles and 200 additional. They were condemned as heretical by both commissions and then by the whole council. All of Wyclif�s writings were to be destroyed and his body was to be exhumed and removed from consecrated ground. There were enough surviving manuscripts for further study and reproduction. Wyclif�s remains were desecrated twelve years later.
Prior to his journey to Constance, Hus procured from the archbishop and the Inquisition testimony to his orthodoxy concerning transubstantiation and was assured safe-conduct from Emperor Sigismund. Hus arrived at Constance early November 1414, where he was treated respectfully, but when he continued religious discussion in his lodgings the pope and cardinals turned sour. Late November Hus was formally accused of heresy, arrested and placed in confinement where he was interrogated and treated with rigor. While he was being grilled witnesses were examined and a more definite statement of the charges against him were written. Emperor Sigismund and Hus� friends protested his imprisonment, but someone charged with heresy lost all civil rights until the charges were disproved. The emperor buckled and abandoned Hus. Sigismund did not follow up on his assurance of his safe-conduct and acquiesced in all later proceedings against Hus.
Before the proceedings continued, Hus was in prison for seven months. For most of the time he was chained to a post, poorly fed, and under the charge of hostile guards. On the demand of friends Hus finally appeared before the general council in early June 1415. With much confusion and interruptions the sitting was suspended, and there was open discussion for two days. Hus acknowledged his admiration for Wyclif, but disagreed with his opinion of transubstantiation. He wanted to discuss theological and legal question, but he first had to recant or be held guilty of heresy. He then drew the ire of the emperor and the clergy by casting doubt on the right of those in mortal sin to rule in church or state. Hus also introduced the unfamiliar conception of the church, held by Marsiglio and Wyclif, who saw the church not as the body of ordained clergy, but as all those, whether clergy or laity, who were predestined to salvation. Either political or ecclesiastical authority could not condone such opinions. Hus was accused of holding beliefs that were not his, and he tried to explain how the beliefs he did have were not heretical.
None of this mattered; the pope and the church demanded Hus� submission to their judgment. He asserted his right to accept or not accept their judgment and was condemned. For the next month they sought to make him recant. Hus was then brought before the entire council in the cathedral of Constance and formally declared guilty of heresy. Hus was deposed from the priesthood, divested of the robes and symbols of his standing as a clergyman, and a paper fool�s cap painted with devils was placed on his head. Hus was then handed over to the secular power for punishment, the church fooling only themselves that this would clear them of the guilt of murder (the death penalty was approved by both canon and secular law). Hus was taken to the meadow outside the city walls and burned at the stake. His executers gathered his ashes and cast into the Rhine ensuring that the relics of his martyrdom would not remain.
Jerome, the follower and friend of Hus and missionary to Poland and Bohemia, revoked his recantation the following year. He then said that Hus was not a heretic, but a witness for the truth who had died a martyr. The Catholics did what any good Catholic would do. They burned Jerome on the same spot that they burned Hus. Poggio Bracciolini, an Italian ecclestiastic attending the council, a devotee of the rising study of antiquity, wrote to a friend that Hus and Jerome endure death �with as much firmness as any ancient philosopher.�
Evil Catholic deeds notwithstanding, there was still a large and growing number of persons determined not to accept the authority of the Roman church. Church unity could no longer be retained and its unquestioned dominion was no more.
The Hussite Wars
The execution of Hus was a call to arms for Prague and all of Bohemia. There were three specific reasons for this: Foreign interference that caused a rise in nationality. Religious oppression. Hus was loved and admired, and was betrayed by his native sovereign and burned to death by foreign ecclesiastics.
In September 1415 at a series of meetings in Prague 452 nobles and knights affixed their seals to a protest against the condemnation and execution of Hus. More than half entered into a solemn covenant to uphold for the following six years their national religion and to resist any external attack upon it. It took five years to find a suitable description of what that religion was. The result was �The Four Articles of Prague,� providing for freedom of preaching, the giving of both bread and wine to the laity in communion, the exclusion of the clergy from civil office and the possession of property, and the punishment of both clergy and laity for moral offenses.
There were still problems, however. Supporters of the pope and the council opposed the Hussites, and the Hussites split into two divisions: Utraquists, the moderate party, and Taborites, the extremists. There were widespread riots; churches and convents were attacked and burned; priests, monks and laymen were killed in conflict; images and relics were destroyed.
King Wenzel wavered between Catholics and Hussites. When he died in 1419, his brother Sigismund, now king of Bohemia as well as emperor, came to Prague looking to restore his kingdom to orthodoxy and order. The city, remembering his betrayal of Hus, shut the gates on him. On November 1, 1420 a force consisting of mostly peasants defeated Sigismund and his German troops. Sigismund was declared deposed by some of his subjects and sixteen years passed before he could enter the capital. The Hussite wars troubled and devastated much of eastern and central Europe for almost twenty years, wars that were a combination of civil, foreign wars and religious matters. The extreme Taborites developed exceptional leaders. John Ziska and Procop the Great are considered to be among the world�s great generals. Their armies were powered by a fierce national and religious enthusiasm. At first the armies were solely Bohemian, but later on attracted a large mercenary and alien element, an ever-victorious veteran professional army against which few opponents could stand. The ancient practice of arranging their baggage wagons in a circle or square was combined with the use of cannons and guns, resulting in the slaughter of the attacking armies.
While opponents were sometimes fellow countrymen, the anti-Hussite armies were usually foreigners. Five successive �crusades� were declared by the pope, usually German feudal of mercenary troops led by German princes. In the 1420�s there were civil wars, but the invaders were also driven from Bohemia during this span also, and the land was under the control of native army and leaders. Then in 1428 the Hussites became the aggressors, invading Moravia, Silesia and Hungary to the east. They then went westward into Germany and raided the region into despair. In 1429 and 1430 they raided into the very heart of Germany and sent plundering bands far to the north into Saxony and to the west almost to within sight of the Rhine. Germany was powerless. The final attempt at a counter-attack was in 1431 when a crusading force under Cardinal Cesarini and Frederick of Hohenzollern entered Bohemia. Near the city of Taus they were met by Procop and his Hussite army and slaughtered.
These events led to a series of meetings of the German Reichstag from 1422 to 1434, that sought to introduce financial, military and constitutional reforms in Germany. Proposals were made to organize an imperial standing army supported by a permanent tax in order to contend with the Hussites. This was no solution, however. In 1429 a papal legate met the retreating German army and in his anger tore the imperial standard down and trampled it underfoot.
The End of the Councils
The next church council was at Basel. The Council of Basel met in 1431 and concluded that it was necessary to negotiate with the heretics of Bohemia. Pope Eugenius IV was concerned since Hussite doctrines spread through Europe along with the news of the wars. In many cities, especially in Germany, burgher governments were following the example of Prague and expelling domineering church officials.
Church leaders were ready to make concessions, Sigismund wanted to resume his reign over Bohemia and moderate Hussites and Procop longed for peace. In 1432 an invitation was sent to the Bohemians to send representatives to Basel in search of a compromise. The Four Articles of Prague were accepted as a basis of negotiations by both sides and the Bohemians were guaranteed personal safety and would be given freedom to argue their beliefs. Eight Bohemian clergymen and seven nobles represented the various Hussite factions in January of 1433.
While the council was in progress a league was formed for the purpose of finding peace on reasonable terms with the church and deposed King Sigismund. The league included nobles and the conservative clergy and citizens of Prague. Also rising was the population favoring democracy and social equity. Military leaders of both sides were old officers of Ziska and Procop. The moderates were more in number and at the siege of Pilsen in 1433 and a battle near Lipa in 1434 the remains of the old Taborite army was destroyed and Procop was killed. Negotiations between Bohemian leaders, Sigismund and the council resulted in the �Compacts of Prague,� signed in 1436.
Details of the compact for Sigismund: he, to the best of his ability, would protect Bohemians from external intrusion on the ecclesiastical semi-independence; archbishops and bishops of the Bohemian church should be elected by the Bohemian clergy; no foreigner should grant benefices in Bohemia or its dependent state, Moravia; nor should any natives of those countries be cited before a foreign tribunal. The king was given the oaths of fealty of Bohemian nobles and he entered Prague in state that year.
Details of the compact of religious nature: the laity should receive both bread and wine in the communion was conceded to all Bohemians and Moravians who should request it; preaching was to be free to all duly authorized, and the punishment of mortal sins was to be inflicted on all, clergy as well as laity. The right of holding property by the church was acknowledged and protected, but its administration was to be �according to the teaching of the Apostles and the Fathers,� whatever that may have meant [what the author is saying is that there was no such thing].
While the �compacts� were meager in comparison to the large liberties that the more radical reformers sought, they were of much significance to the church. The fact that the church agreed to compromise instead of treading down their opponents showed that the power, authority and the (demanded) unity of the church were waning. They were forced into recognizing the divergent practices, rights and independent thinking among Christians.
The council at Basel, with which the compacts of 1436 were signed, was the first assembly of importance that had met in obedience to the bull titled frequens, providing for regular meetings of a council of every five years, decreed by the Council of Constance in 1417. The council at Basel ran from 1431 to 1449, albeit with lulls of activity and interruptions. There were long contests between the council and the pope as to their respective powers and much appeal and interference by temporal rulers.
Dissention became so great between the council and Eugenius IV he announced its transfer to Ferrara, then Florence in 1437 and to Rome in 1443. The majority of the council declared that a general council of the church was superior in authority to the pope and remained at Basel. In 1438 they claimed to suspend the pope from the exercise of his papal functions. The next year they declared that his insistence of superiority to a general council was heresy, excommunicated him and announced his deposition. The council elected Felix V as the new pope, although some of the smaller countries and none of the more important countries recognized him. There were rival councils and popes, but Eugenuis� death in 1447 prevented another schism. The cardinals in the council at Rome elected Nicholas V as pope. In 1449 the Basel council (now in Lausanne) also chose Nicholas, after the abdication of Felix and the councils of Basel-Lausanne and Basel-Ferrara-Florence-Rome both dissolved.
Also at the four councils from 1435 to 1439 were also attempts to unite the Greek Orthodox with the Roman Catholic Church. The Turkish threat to Greek lands was the reason for the try at reconciliation. Though a great embassy journeyed to Ferrara, including the Greek Emperor and scores of churchmen, the plans for unity was ultimately rejected by the east. No more councils were called for over a century.
While they did meet during the 15th century there was an attempt at reformation. But the popes and the majority of the clergy were reluctant to make improvements and the measures approved concerning discipline and morals were never enforced. The church was not only morally weak, but had lost much of its power and control over the people.
[Whether or not the Bohemian/Czech people did the right thing by going to war over religion, all non-Catholics from Martin Luther to today�s Protestants are in debt to them. Freedom of all kinds in Europe and even in the USA has its roots in the Bohemians.]