been made by the Church of Rome.[1] There is little doubt that in this case German influence prevailed, and that the matter was treated from a political rather than from an ecclesiastical standpoint. While the conciliatory efforts of the Calixtines thus met with no success, they exposed them to the vehement enmity of the extreme church-reformers in Bohemia, and of the Taborites in particular.
Little was up to recently known of the Taborite community, and their own written documents having been destroyed, all contemporary knowledge of them has been derived from the works of their enemies. According to their main principle, the Taborites[2] admitted as truth nothing not contained in Scripture, and they rejected as false all the writings of the fathers of the church which deserved to be burnt as work of antichrist. After the year 1422 the Taborites rejected the teaching of the Roman church with regard to the sacrament, which had been the teaching of Hus also. They believed that after communion, bread remains bread and wine, but that Christ who is in heaven is through His divine grace present in the sacrament, and that those who piously receive communion partake of His divine grace. Of the sacraments the Taborites recognised only baptism, and they rejected all veneration of the virgin Mary and the saints. They also repudiated aural confession. When the faithful wished to confess, the Taborite priests said to them: Why do you run to us? We cannot forgive you your sins; go and make confession to God Himself. In distinction from Hus and the Calixtines, the Taborites rejected the doctrine of purgatory and therefore also the prayers for the dead. They were totally opposed to the traditional hierarchy of the Roman church, declaring that popes and cardinals were evil
- ↑ For instance, in the case of the Greek uniates.
- ↑ I must here acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Siegmund Winter, whose admirable Zivot cirkevni v. Cechach (Church life in Bohemia), founded almost entirely on unprinted documents, contains the first reliable modern account of the community of Tabor.
