shadows already the fateful battle of Lipan, and dimly even the more fateful battle of the Bila Hora,[1] where Bohemian freedom and independence perished. As all churches, even those where the utraquist rites were observed, were closed to the Taborites, they began to assemble in large numbers in the fields and on mountains. Lawrence of Brezova, the foremost among the historians of the Hussite war, writes:[2] “In the year 1419 the priests and preachers of Scripture who favoured the teaching of Hus and communion in the two kinds, who were then called Wycliffites or Hussites, and with them people of both sexes from all parts of Bohemia, both from towns and villages, began to assemble on a hill near Bechyn, to which they gave the name of Tabor. The priests carried the eucharist before them,[3] and particularly on feast days administered the sacrament to the faithful with great reverence; for the enemies of communion in the two kinds prevented the common people from receiving the communion in that fashion in any church of that neighbourhood. On the day of St. Mary Magdalene,[4] a large number of people of both sexes, and many little children, more than 40,000 people from all parts of the kingdom, assembled on this hill and with great fervour received the sacrament of the body of God and of the blood of God, according to the order of Jesus Christ, which was preserved by the primitive church. Then King Venceslas was greatly disturbed, fearing that they would put in his place Nicholas of Hus,[5] whom he had exiled from Prague because he had, accompanied by a large crowd of men, who, however, were unarmed, addressed him near the Church of St. Apollinaris, begging him to grant freely communion in both kinds to adults and children.”
The Nicholas of Hus here mentioned by Brezova had been
