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Czechoslovakia Hussite Movement
The Hussite movement was a national, as well as a religious,
manifestation. As a religious reform movement, it represented a
challenge to papal authority and an assertion of national
autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs. As a Czech national movement,
it acquired anti-imperial and anti-German implications and thus
can be considered a manifestation of a long-term Czech-German
conflict. The Hussite movement is also viewed by many Czechs as a
precursor to the Protestant reformation.
Hussitism began during the long reign of Wenceslas IV
(1378-1419), a period of papal schism and concomitant anarchy in
the Holy Roman Empire, and was precipitated by a controversy at
Charles University. In 1403 Jan Hus became rector of the
university. A reformist preacher, Hus espoused the antipapal and
antihierarchical teachings of John Wyclif of England, often
referred to as the "Morning Star of the Reformation."
Hussitism--as Hus's teaching became known--was distinguished by
its rejection of the wealth, corruption, and hierarchical
tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church. It advocated the
Wycliffite doctrine of clerical purity and poverty and insisted
on communion under both kinds, bread and wine, for the laity.
(The Roman Catholic Church reserved the cup--wine--for the
clergy.) The more moderate followers of Hus, the Utraquists, took
their name from the Latin sub utraque specie, meaning
"under each kind." A more radical sect soon formed--the Taborite
sect. The Taborites, who took their name from the city of Tabor,
their stronghold in southern Bohemia, rejected church doctrine
and upheld the Bible as the sole authority in all matters of
belief.
Soon after Hus assumed office, German professors of theology
demanded the condemnation of Wyclif's writings. Hus protested and
received the support of the Czech element at the university.
Having only one vote in policy decisions against three for the
Germans, the Czechs were outvoted, and the orthodox position was
maintained. In subsequent years the Czechs demanded a revision of
the university charter, granting more adequate representation to
the native, i.e., Czech, faculty.
The university controversy was intensified by the vacillating
position of the Bohemian king. His insistence at first on
favoring Germans in appointments to councillor and other
administrative positions had aroused the national sentiments of
the Czech nobility and rallied them to Hus's defense. The German
faculties had the support of Archbishop Zbynek of Prague and the
German clergy. Wenceslas, for political reasons, switched his
support from the Germans to Hus and allied with the reformers. On
January 18, 1409, Wenceslas issued the Kutna Hora Decree: the
Czechs would have three votes; the foreigners, a single vote.
Germans were expelled from administrative positions at the
university, and Czechs were appointed. In consequence, Germans
left Charles University en masse.
Hus's victory was short lived, however. He preached against
the sale of indulgences, which lost him the support of the king,
who received a percentage of the sales. In 1412 Hus and his
followers were suspended from the university and expelled from
Prague. For two years the reformers served as itinerant preachers
throughout Bohemia.
In 1414 Hus was summoned to the Council of Constance to defend
his views. The council condemned him as a heretic and burned him
at the stake in 1415.
Hus's death sparked decades of religious warfare. Sigismund,
the pro-papal king of Hungary and successor to the Bohemian
throne after the death of Wenceslas in 1419, failed repeatedly in
attempts to gain control of the kingdom despite aid by Hungarian
and German armies. Riots broke out in Prague. Led by a Czech
yeoman, Jan Zizka, the Taborites streamed into the capital.
Religious strife pervaded the entire kingdom and was particularly
intense in the German-dominated towns. Czech burghers turned
against the Roman Catholic Germans; many were massacred, and most
survivors fled to the Holy Roman Empire. In the countryside
Zizka's armies stormed monasteries, churches, and villages,
expelling the Catholic clergy and expropriating ecclesiastical
lands.
During the struggle against Sigismund, Taborite armies
penetrated into Slovakia as well. Czech refugees from the
religious wars in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia settled there, and
from 1438 to 1453 a Czech noble, Jiskra of Brandys, controlled
most of southern Slovakia from the centers of Zvolen and Kosice.
Thus Hussite doctrines and the Czech Bible were disseminated
among the Slovaks, providing the basis for a future link between
the Czechs and their Slovak neighbors.
When Sigismund died in 1437, the Bohemian estates elected
Albert of Austria as his successor. Albert died, however, and his
son, Ladislas the Posthumous--so called because he was born after
his father's death--was acknowledged as king. During Ladislas's
minority, Bohemia was ruled by a regency composed of moderate
reform nobles who were Utraquists. Internal dissension among the
Czechs provided the primary challenge to the regency. A part of
the Czech nobility remained Catholic and loyal to the pope. A
Utraquist delegation to the Council of Basel in 1433 had
negotiated a seeming reconciliation with the Catholic Church. The
Council's Compact of Basel accepted the basic tenets of Hussitism
expressed in the Four Articles of Prague: communion under both
kinds; free preaching of the Gospels; expropriation of church
land; and exposure and punishment of public sinners. The pope,
however, rejected the compact, thus preventing the reconciliation
of Czech Catholics with the Utraquists.
George of Podebrady, later to become the "national" king of
Bohemia, emerged as leader of the Utraquist regency. George
installed a Utraquist, John of Rokycan, as archbishop of Prague
and succeeded in uniting the more radical Taborites with the
Czech Reformed Church. The Catholic party was driven out of
Prague. Ladislas died of the plague in 1457, and in 1458 the
Bohemian estates elected George of Podebrady king of Bohemia. The
pope, however, refused to recognize the election. Czech Catholic
nobles, joined in the League of Zelena Hora, continued to
challenge the authority of George of Podebrady until his death in
1471.
Upon the death of the Hussite king, the Bohemian estates
elected a Polish prince, Vladislav II, as king. In 1490 Vladislav
also became king of Hungary, and the Polish Jagellonian line
ruled both Bohemia and Hungary. The Jagellonians governed Bohemia
as absentee monarchs; their influence in the kingdom was minimal,
and effective government fell to the regional nobility. Czech
Catholics accepted the Compact of Basel in 1485 and were
reconciled with the Utraquists.
In 1526 Vladislav's son, King Louis, was decisively defeated
by the Ottomans at Mohacs and subsequently died. As a result, the
Turks conquered part of the Kingdom of Hungary; the rest
(including Slovakia) came under Hapsburg rule. The Bohemian
estates elected Archduke Ferdinand, younger brother of Emperor
Charles V, to succeed Louis as king of Bohemia. Thus began almost
three centuries of Hapsburg rule for both Bohemia and Slovakia.
In several instances, the Bohemian Kingdom had the
possibility of becoming a Czech national monarchy. The failure to
establish a native dynasty, however, prevented such an outcome
and left the fate of the Bohemian Kingdom to dynastic politics
and foreign rulers. Although the Bohemian Kingdom evolved neither
into a national monarchy nor into a Czech nation-state, the
memory of it served as a source of inspiration and pride for
modern Czech nationalists.
Data as of August 1987
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