Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/309

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The Reformation of the Latin Church 289 Czechs, unlike the Waldenses, beheved in armed resistance. The Bohemian Crusade dissolved and streamed away from the battle- field at the sound of the Hussites' wagons and the distant chanting of their troops; it did not even wait to fight (Battle of Domazlice 1431). In 1436 an agreement was patched up with the Hussites by a new Council of the church at Basle in which many of the special objections to Latin practice were conceded. In the fifteenth century a great pestilence had pro- duced much social disorganization throughout Europe. There had been extreme misery and discontent among the common people, and peasant risings against the land- lords and the wealthy in England and France. After the Hussite Wars these peasant insur- rections increased in gravity in Ger- many and took on a religious charac- ter. Printing came in as an influence upon this development. By the middle of the fifteenth century there were printers at work with movable type in Holland and the Rhineland. The art spread to Italy and England, where Caxton was printing in Westminster in 1477. The immediate consequence was a great AETkERNA IPSE JVAE sA^ENTlS JIMVLACHR/^ LVTHEPVi ij ExPRlMIT-jtr WLTVJ aRA LVCAE OCCIDVOS ■ PORTRAIT OF LUTHER {^Frojn an early German engraving in iJie British Museuin)