II. The Hussites

1. Effect in Bohemia of the Death of Huss

The arrest of Huss had excited considerable resentment in Bohemia and Moravia. In both countries the estates appealed repeatedly and urgently to Sigismund to deliver Huss. On the arrival of the news of his death disturbances broke out which were directed at first against the clergy, especially against the monks. Even the archbishop saved himself with difficulty from the rage of the populace. In the country places conditions were not much better. Everywhere the treatment of Huss was felt as a disgrace inflicted upon the whole country, and his death was looked upon as a criminal act. King Wenceslaus, prompted by his grudge against Sigismund, at first gave free vent to his indignation at the course of events in Constance; and his wife openly favored the friends of Huss. Pronounced Hussites stood at the head of the government. A league was formed by certain lords who pledged themselves to protect the free preaching of the Gospel upon all their possessions and estates, and to obey the power of the bishops only in case their orders accorded with the injunctions of the Bible. In disputed points the decision of the university should be resorted to. The entire Hussite nobility joined the league, and if the king had entered it, its resolutions would have received the sanction of the law; but he refused, and approached the Roman Catholic league of lords, which was now formed, the members pledging themselves to cling to the king, the Roman Church, and the Council. Signs of the outbreak of a civil war began to show themselves. Pope Martin V., who, while still Cardinal Otto of Colonna, had attacked Huss with relentless severity, energetically resumed the battle against Hussism after the enactments of the Council of Constance. He intended to eradicate completely the doctrine of Huss. For this purpose the cooperation of King Wenceslaus had to be obtained. In 1418 Sigismund succeeded in winning his brother over to the standpoint of the council by pointing out the inevitableness of a religious war if the heretics in Bohemia found further protection. Hussite statesmen and army leaders had to leave the country, and Roman priests were reinstituted. These measures caused a general commotion which hastened the death of Wenceslaus by a paralytic stroke in 1419. His heir was Sigismund.

2. Two Parties in Bohemia

Hussism had organized itself during the years 1415-1419. From the beginning two parties were found: the closer adherents of Huss clung to his standpoint, leaving the whole hierarchical and liturgical order of the Church untouched; the radical party identified itself more boldly with the doctrines of Wyclif, shared his passionate hatred of the monastic clergy, and, like him, attempted to lead the Church back to its condition during the time of the apostles, which necessitated the removal of the existing hierarchy and the secularization of ecclesiastical possessions. The radicals among the Hussites sought to translate their theories into reality; they preached the sufficientia legis Christi--only the divine law (i.e., the Bible) is the rule and canon for man, and that not only in ecclesiastical matters, but also in political and civil matters. They rejected therefore, as early as 1416, everything that has no basis in the Bible, as the adoration of saints and pictures, fasts, superfluous holidays, the oath, intercession for the dead, auricular confession, indulgences, the sacraments of confirmation and extreme unction, admitted laymen and women to the preacher's office, chose their own priests. But before everything they clung to Wyclif's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, denying transubstantiation, and this is the principal point by which they are distinguished from the moderate party.