reported to have said. Both Venceslas and his courtiers were greatly irritated by the conduct of the Bohemian clergy, whose complaints and depositions had largely contributed to the condemnation of Hus. The movement caused by the execution of Hus, though it had a somewhat revolutionary character, was, therefore, not at first anti-dynastic, as it was favoured by the Queen and the ladies of her court, and at least not discountenanced by the King.
On the other hand, the secession of the Bohemian people from the Church of Rome became complete. This was mainly due to the general consent to the custom of receiving Communion in the two kinds, Utraquism, as it was generally called. Towards the end of his life Hus had maintained the necessity of Communion in the two kinds. He had at Constance written a tract in defence of this practice as well as a letter[1] in which he warmly upheld it. After the death of Hus, Utraquism became one of the fundamental doctrines of his adherents. I have in other works[2] attempted to state the reasons why the Bohemians attached such great importance to this tenet. This can to a great extent be explained by the strongly anti-clerical feeling that was at that time almost general among the Czechs. They resented the claim of superiority over all laymen which Bohemian priests—often very unworthy priests—raised, and they resented their attempt to administer Communion in what the Bohemians considered an “incomplete” form. Though recent research has proved that all traces of Communion in the two kinds, as it had been established when Cyrillus and Methodius introduced Christianity into Moravia and Bohemia, had long disappeared in Bohemia, a sentimental recollection of the Eastern Church, to which the “apostles of the Slavs” belonged, may still have influenced the people.
It is at any rate certain that the practice of receiving the
- ↑ Letter to the priest Havlik, printed in Palacký’s Documenta Mag. Johannis Hus, p. 128.
- ↑ Particularly in my Master John Hus, pp. 56–62, 266–267.
