the world, in order to find out where the simplicity of faith was still
maintained. Nothing, however, seems to have resulted from these visits;
and the party of Lukas continued to gain ground. Mathias was unable to
hold his own against the pressure of the new Reformers; so at last he
resigned his judgeship in despair, and consented to the abolition of
the Small Council. Thereupon Amos of S̆tekna and his followers revolted
from the Brotherhood, and founded a new sect which was called, after
its founder, the Amosites. At the same time the old society became
generally known as the Bunzlau Brothers, after the town of Jungbunzlau
(Mláda Boleslav) which was now their chief centre.
Two results followed from this separation; first, an intensity of
bitterness between the old Society and the seceders, greater than that
between the Utraquists and the Brothers; and, secondly, the adoption
of new modifications and compromises by those who adhered to the old
Society. All compromises have a certain want of logic about them; and
compromises between the Church and the World on such questions as war
and peace, simplicity and luxury, equality and distinctions of rank,
must necessarily produce results which, while painful and pathetic to
those who realise the state of mind of their framers, will strike an
unsympathising world as grotesque and even ludicrous.
Under the new arrangements, the members of the Brotherhood were allowed
to wear dress in proportion to their rank, if they did not become
luxurious; but silk and embroidery were still strictly forbidden. The
compromise about war was still stranger. If a Brother considered that
the war which his king had made was a just one, he should not refuse to
take part in it if the lot fell upon him; but he was to try, whenever
possible, to find a substitute, or to get some office about the Court
which would excuse him from military duty, or to find some service in
connection with the army which did not involve fighting; but if he
could not find any such means of escape, then let him fight in God’s
name; but let him not fight for idle fame, and let him draw the sword
with reluctance.
Some of the other modifications of principle seem more in accordance
with ordinary conceptions of life. Trade might now be practised, but
usury was to be avoided. Beer might be sold, if pure; but it was only
to be sold in a public manner to travellers. Oaths, again, might be
taken by witnesses if they were convinced of the justice of the cause
in which they appeared.
But though such relaxations permitted the extension of membership
to those who had hitherto been excluded from the Brotherhood, the
bonds of the Society were drawn closer than ever round those members
who had entered it. Strict arrangements were made for the visitation
of the Brothers by their clergy, and for inquiry into the morals of
each family; more rigid limitations than before were placed on the
acquirement of property by the clergy themselves, while the appeals to
worldly law-courts were more carefully guarded against by the provision
of Courts of Appeal within the Brotherhood. Lastly, the exclusive
position of the Brotherhood was strengthened by a most startling
provision; if a husband or wife joined the Brotherhood without the
sympathy of their partner, and were afterwards interfered with by him
or her in matters of faith, the brother or sister so hampered might
claim a divorce, and make a new marriage. Thus, then, the Brotherhood
seemed to be strengthened and consolidated, both by the facilities of
admission to those who had been repelled by its sterner rules, and by
the stricter organisation which separated the enlarged Society more
distinctly from the outer world.
But an additional source of strength was soon to be provided by the
renewal of persecution. This persecution was due to three causes.
Soon after the changes above mentioned, Lukas and some of the other
Brothers had made an expedition to Italy to investigate the condition
of the Waldensian Communities. It was the time of the struggle between
Alexander VI. and Savonarola, and some of the Bohemian missionaries
were actually present in Florence at the burning of the great
Dominican. They returned to Bohemia, offended at the laxity of many of
the Bohemian Communities, and more embittered than before against a
Catholic Church which was ruled by Alexander Borgia. Alexander, on his
side, had been roused by his struggle against Florence to a fervid zeal
for the suppression of heresy, and his attention had evidently been
called to these strange visitors to Italy. So in 1500 he despatched
inquisitors to Moravia with orders to burn all heretical books, and
especially those of Peter of Chelc̆ic. So effectively was this part
of the work performed, that of the book which Peter had specially
written against the Pope, only one copy is to be found at this day. The
inquisitor, indeed, found it easier to burn books than to convert the
Brothers, but his efforts in that direction were soon supported by men
of a very different type.
The first of these was Bohuslav Hassenstein of Lobkovic, a learned and
cultivated scholar, who had gained some reputation as a poet. He had
quarrelled with Pope Alexander, in consequence of the Pope’s refusal to
confirm him in the bishopric of Olmütz; and he was at first disposed
to look rather to King Ladislaus than to any ecclesiastical authority
for the restoration of unity and order in the Church. He seems indeed
to have had some genuine zeal for moral reform; for he denounced
the luxury and pride of the nobility; the gluttony, drunkenness,
and debauchery of all classes; and the general decline of art and
literature. For all these evils he suggested the one remedy--that
Ladislaus should restore religious unity to the Church. But, like
every earnest man who came in contact with this unfortunate king,
Hassenstein began by admiring his gentleness, and ended by despising
his weakness and incapacity. Since the death of Matthias, Ladislaus
had been elected King of Hungary; and, if he had been unable to govern
Bohemia effectively from Prague, he was still less able to govern it
from Presburg. Hassenstein, in despair, turned to his clerical brethren
for help; and they resolved to promote religious unity by a friendly
compromise with the Utraquists, which was to be a preparation for a
joint persecution of the Brotherhood.
But a third enemy of the Brothers proved more efficacious than Borgia
or Hassenstein in stirring up the embers of persecution. Amos of
S̆tekna had heard with renewed indignation of the later modification
of their creed introduced by the Brothers after his secession; and
he had particularly resented the compromises with regard to war, and
the completer recognition of the civil power. He, therefore, wrote to
Ladislaus that the Brothers were now taking up the position of the
old Taborites. The suggestion was the one best fitted to alarm such a
man. “What!” exclaimed the king, “are they going to imitate Z̆iz̆ka?”
(Z̆iz̆kovati), and he at once rushed into action with all the irritable
energy of a weak nature.
Orders were now sent out to all those towns and country districts which
were directly dependent upon the King, directing them to suppress the
meetings of the Brothers, to arrest all their teachers, and to send
them to Prague, where they would either be forced to recant, or else be
burnt alive; and these measures were to be followed by the expulsion of
the rest of the Brotherhood from Bohemia. Many wholesale arrests were
made; and one nobleman burnt some of the Brothers whom he found on his
estate.
But these summary proceedings of the King roused against him the
constitutional feelings both of the nobility and of the representatives
of the towns. They disputed his right to act in so arbitrary a manner,
even in the districts dependent upon him; and they feared that he would
soon exert the same power in the independent towns and on the estates
of the nobles.
Apart from these general objections, there were three noblemen, at
least, who were disposed to extend their protection to the Brothers;
and it was on their estates that the largest number of the Brothers
were to be found. Different motives actuated the nobles who took
this course. Kostka, who has been already referred to, sympathised
personally with the teaching of the Brotherhood; Schellenberg wished to
spare them, because his wife was a member of their society; Pernstein
was entirely indifferent to all theological disputes, and therefore saw
no reason for the persecution. But all the three were united in the
determination to assert their feudal rights for the protection of their
dependants; and they insisted that, if any Brothers were summoned to
Prague from their estates, they should be secured complete protection
and a fair hearing.
When, however, the Brothers arrived in Prague, they found that the
Committee of the Masters of Arts intended to administer a rebuke,
without hearing the defence of the accused parties. Against this
injustice the Brothers protested; and at last the nobles and citizens
succeeded in persuading the Masters to withdraw, before the accused
persons were introduced. When, then, the Brothers appeared to answer
the charges against them, they found themselves in the presence
only of the nobles and citizens, who informed them that their mere
appearance in Prague was all that was required of them, and that they
might now go home again. This result was considered to be, in the
main, a victory for the Brothers. But some of them were more indignant
at the time which had been wasted than pleased at their escape from
condemnation; and Lukas and his friends followed up this visit by an
energetic war of pamphlets.
A new weapon, it must be remembered, was now at the service of all
promoters of new teaching. The invention of printing had quickly spread
to Bohemia; and, in 1468, the fourth printing-press ever established
in Europe had begun to work at Pilsen. The Brothers quickly saw the
advantage of the new discovery; and, in 1500, they established a
printing-press at Mláda Boleslav. More than one lady of rank joined
the Brotherhood; and at least one Catholic noble found the new creed
rapidly spreading among his dependants.
Ladislaus now recognised the mistake which he had made in ignoring the
constitutional methods of procedure. He therefore resolved to appeal to
the regular Assemblies for support in his war against heresy; and he
believed that he would find his best chance in Moravia. The Moravian
Assembly, unlike the Bohemian, admitted the clergy to a special
representation as a fourth estate; the Bishop of Olmütz had been active
in the propaganda against the Brotherhood; and the great power which
the Germans and Catholics had obtained in Moravia during the wars,
seemed to point to an easy victory in the Moravian Assembly.
But again the King had miscalculated. The victories of the Germans and
Catholics had excited against them a bitterness, both national and
religious, far more intense than was to be found in other parts of the
kingdom. The cruelties of Sigismund, the Germanising zeal of Albert of
Austria, and the many injustices of Sternberg and the Catholic League,
had consolidated against them a mass of Moravian feeling, which, if
unable to secure victories on the battlefield, was eminently calculated
to give strength to an opposition in the Assembly. To the Bohemians of
the western province the Catholics and Germans were enemies, whom they
had met on equal terms and often thoroughly routed; to the Moravians
they were victorious tyrants, whose rule was to be thrown off at the
first opportunity.
When, then, the Catholics demanded that the Assembly should unite
in suppressing the “Picard” heresy, they were startled to find that
the Utraquists made common cause with the Brothers in opposing this
motion, and that they actually chose as their spokesman a member of the
Brotherhood named John of Z̆erotin. This nobleman demanded that the
complaints already made by the Utraquists should be attended to before
the question of supposed heresy was dealt with. The Bishop of Olmütz
taunted Z̆erotin with professing a sympathy with the Utraquists which
he did not feel; but the Opposition remained firm; and the Assembly
broke up without coming to any decision.
In Bohemia the Catholic party had an easier task. The opposition to
Ladislaus’s former proceedings had been mainly based on constitutional
grounds; and it now appeared that there was little religious sympathy
with the Brotherhood amongst the leaders of public opinion. The power
which the Utraquists had gained during the reign of King George had
drawn them into sympathy with the leading nobles; and Rokycana had
inspired them with a special dislike of the Brotherhood. The Bohemian
Assembly, therefore, consented to a decree, which ordered the burning
of the books of the Brotherhood, the suppression of their meetings, and
the punishment of their teachers. Elated by this victory, the Bishop of
Olmütz hurried back to Moravia, intending to summon the Assembly for a
second meeting, and to secure the reversal of its former decision; but
he was taken ill on his way, and died before the Assembly could meet;
nor, from that time till the fall of Bohemian independence in 1620, did
any Moravian Assembly consent to the suppression of the Brotherhood.
Nevertheless, the Catholic party found full compensation for their
failure in Moravia in a specially fierce enforcement of the law just
passed in Bohemia. Indeed, the former patrons of the Brotherhood
became so much alarmed, that even Kostka forbade the Brothers to hold
any further meetings on his estates. In spite of this opposition,
the Brothers still maintained their ground, and even extended their
preaching further; and but few of them could be persuaded, even by the
most cruel tortures, to submit to the authorities of the Church. In
1511 the Brothers hoped, for a short time, to secure the protection of
the greatest scholar of the time, Erasmus of Rotterdam. They had heard
of some private letters of his, in which he had defended them against
the attacks of their enemies; and they now prepared a Defence in Latin,
which they sent to him. He thanked them for their communication, and
expressed approval of at least part of their defence; but he declined
to publish his opinion, on the ground that it would not help them,
and might injure his work. So the persecution went on. Even Peter of
Rosenberg found himself unable to protect a Brother, in whom he was
interested, from being imprisoned and nearly starved to death. He
succeeded, indeed, in getting him released before death had actually
occurred, and he then urged him to submit to the Church; but the
Brother, though almost too exhausted to speak, steadily refused to
submit; and he was set free without further persecution. Lukas, who
was now the most prominent member of the Brotherhood, succeeded for a
long time in escaping the vigilance of his persecutors; but, in 1515,
he was treacherously seized under false pretences, brought to Prague,
and subjected to the torture. When nothing could be obtained from him
by this means, he was set free, on the understanding that he was to
appear before the Utraquist Consistory in April, 1516; but in the month
before this appearance was to take place King Ladislaus died, and the
persecution again slackened for a time.
In the meantime, the long absence of the King in Hungary, and the
growing sense of his weakness of character, had been producing other
divisions in Bohemia which gradually turned men’s minds away from
the religious controversies. The wars of the fifteenth century, like
all wars, had tended to draw the people away from their ordinary
occupations, and to make them dependent on their military leaders.
As long as the Taborite organisation lasted, its democratic spirit
provided at least some check on the oppressions of the military nobles;
and the alliance between the peasants and the Order of Knights, to
which Z̆iz̆ka had belonged, counteracted any advantages which the
nobles might have gained by their military prowess. But the fall of
Tabor had destroyed any hopes, which the peasantry and townsmen might
have had, of strengthening their position through war.
Under these circumstances the peasantry gradually fell back into the
condition from which they had been escaping in the fourteenth century.
The right of leaving their masters at their pleasure, of settling in
towns, and of becoming priests without the sanction of their landlords,
were gradually taken from them; and at last they were deprived even of
that right of appeal to the King’s Court by which Charles had protected
them against the absolute power of their lords.
But, though the peasantry were thus crushed back into a state of
serfdom, the organisation of the towns was too strong to yield at
once to the attacks of the nobles. Unfortunately, however, the lords
gained about this time a new and important ally in their struggle for
supremacy. The knights, or independent country gentlemen, who had been
such zealous rivals of the higher Order in the fifteenth century, had
lately consented to a reconciliation with their opponents; and these
two classes were thus able to combine their forces against the towns.
The new king was little able to give the weaker party any assistance
in the struggle. Ladislaus had succeeded in securing to his son Louis
the succession to the crown, and he had even had him crowned during
his lifetime. But Louis was a boy of ten; he was in the main under
Hungarian influences; and he was of course utterly unfitted to control
the fierce factions which were struggling in Bohemia.
The three chief points at issue between the Towns and the other Orders
were, firstly, the right of the Town Tribunals to summon before
them the nobles and knights in cases specially affecting the towns;
secondly, the monopoly claimed by the towns in the brewing trade;
thirdly, the right of the towns to send representatives to the Bohemian
Assembly. In 1517, indeed, a nominal settlement was effected on all
these points by the treaty of St. Wenceslaus. By that treaty the towns
surrendered their monopoly of brewing, but were secured the peaceable
possession of their other privileges. Such treaties had little effect
in a time of discord, and it was not long before a new violation of
town rights led to the outbreak of a civil war, in which the citizens
gained some victories. Both parties, however, soon began to desire
peace, and the king was called in to arbitrate between them.
When Louis arrived in Prague to inquire into the circumstances of
the contest, he found that the disturbances of the country had been
largely increased by the rise of certain self-seeking politicians,
who had made their profit out of the difficulties of the kingdom. Of
these the most powerful and unscrupulous was Lev of Roz̆mital, the
brother-in-law of King George. He had induced Ladislaus to mortgage to
him some of the royal property. By this and other means he had gained
a great control over the finances of the kingdom, and he refused to
give any account of his use of that power. He was supported in most of
his intrigues by a citizen who had recently been ennobled, and who had
taken the name of Pas̆ek of Wrat. These two men had gradually gained
complete power over the government of Prague; and, on one occasion, a
man who had opposed Lev in the Town Council had been dragged out and
beaten to death.
Fortunately, however, there were powerful influences in the country
which worked in favour of the young king. One of the Rosenbergs of
Krumov was a rival and enemy of Lev; and an equally formidable opponent
of these schemes was found in Karl, Duke of Münsterberg, and nephew of
King George. Louis’s uncle, King Sigismund of Poland readily supported
his nephew by advice and encouragement. The respectable citizens of
Prague were willing to rally round him; and, with such friends as
these, the boy could venture to act vigorously. He deposed Lev from his
office, raised a citizen named Hlavsa to the place which Pas̆ek had
formerly held on the Council, and made Karl of Münsterberg the chief
governor of the kingdom.
This change of government was intended by Louis and his nearest
advisers simply as a means of restoring order and honesty in public
affairs; but, besides that result, his action produced another effect,
of which neither the King nor his uncle Sigismund would have approved.
In choosing his new Councillors from the most respectable politicians
whom he could find, Louis had unintentionally singled out men who were
in sympathy with the movement for religious reform.
That movement had recently entered on an entirely new phase. In the
middle of the exciting political struggles in their own country, many
of the Utraquists and Bohemian Brothers had heard with the greatest
interest that a German monk had come forward to denounce that very
practice of the Sale of Indulgences which had first brought Hus into
direct collision with the Papacy; and a rapid approximation followed
between a section of the Bohemian Reformers and the new German teacher.
Luther’s attitude towards the followers of Hus is made clear enough
by his own statements. He had been induced to read the story of Hus’s
career before he had entered on his actual contest with Rome. He had
even then been impressed by the greatness of the Bohemian Reformer, but
he had thrust the book aside as likely to lead him into evil. Something
of this old feeling still hung about him in the early part of his
struggle. And, when Eck brought against him the charge of favouring the
Bohemian heresy, he had been inclined to repel it with indignation.
Yet it was that very charge which had induced him to return to the
study of Hus; and he soon began to express so earnest an admiration
for the Bohemian leader that his enemies spread the rumour that he was
himself a Bohemian, who had been educated in Prague on the writings of
Wyclif. Nay, they even went so far as to Bohemianise his name--a change
in which they doubtless took a malicious pleasure, for the Bohemian
word “Lŭtr̆e” means a scoundrel. Several letters of encouragement
from scholars and clergymen at Prague were addressed to Luther in the
earliest years of his struggle; and he declared that he would himself
have come to Bohemia had he not feared that such a visit would have
seemed like a flight from his enemies.
But he very soon began to recognise the distinction between his own
position and that of Hus. This difference he has referred to in several
of his writings; and perhaps the passage in his “Table Talk” is the one
which will be best remembered, from the vigorous metaphor by which he
illustrates his opinion: “Hus,” he said, “cut down and rooted out some
thorns, thickets, and chips from the vineyard of Christ, and chastised
the abuses and evil life of the Pope. But I, Dr. Martin Luther, have
come into an open, flat, and well-ploughed field, and have attacked and
overthrown the doctrine of the Pope.”
If this distinction between the attacks of Hus on the immorality of the
Papacy, and his own attack on its doctrines, seemed to Luther to put
the earlier Reformer in a less important position than that which he
himself occupied, he must have felt this difference still more strongly
with regard to the later Utraquistic movement. Very few of the leaders
of that movement had ever desired that complete separation from Rome
which Luther soon perceived to be an absolute necessity. They had been
driven, against their will, to combine the assertion of their national
independence with resistance to the authority of the Pope; but, when
the deaths of King George and Rokycana had removed at once the main
ground of Papal hostility to Bohemia, and the most determined asserters
of an independent national Church, the Utraquists began to show an even
painful eagerness for a reconciliation with the Papacy. They felt the
need of a priesthood which possessed the dignity and legal stability
secured by the consecration of Romanist bishops; and they not only sent
their clergy to Italy to obtain this privilege, but they even welcomed
in priests of other countries, who had been appointed to their offices
in the orthodox manner.