at a period subsequent to that of which I am now writing. The modern historian of Bohemia, Professor Tomek, who, though he was a fervent Roman Catholic, always wrote with absolute impartiality, very truly says:[1] “The Bohemian religious movement stirred up by Hus and his successors, who were able to carry away the majority of the nation, in its essence strove to reform the organisation of the Church, to encourage a more fervent interest in the doctrine of Christianity, and greater zeal for the fulfilment of the religious enactments. It therefore endeavoured to weed out the vices that had sprung up among a clergy that had become worldly. The minds of the people were also dominated by a particular devotion to Communion in the two kinds, overrating the importance of this practice, which had prevailed in the primitive Church.” It is, indeed, impossible to understand the importance which the Bohemians of all classes at that period attached to Utraquism if we do not realise that to the Bohemians, great readers of Scripture, only Communion as they believed it to have been instituted appeared as a true sacrament. Every other form was “incomplete.”[2]
It is certain that the originators of the Hussite movement were guided by very noble motives. The degeneracy of the Roman Catholic clergy at this period cannot be exaggerated. The study of Scripture, which, through the influence not only of Hus, but also of his predecessors, Milič and Stitný,[3] had become general, prevented the Bohemians from tolerating these abuses with the same indifference as other countries then did.
In spite of the bitter invectives of the enemies of Bohemia, and in spite also of the perhaps more harmful writings of indiscriminate praisers of Hussitism, the period of the Hussite war will always appear to a Bohemian as the most glorious epoch in the annals of his country.
- ↑ History of the Town of Prague, Vol. IV. p. 664.
- ↑ See my Master John Hus, pp. 232–233.
- ↑ See my History of Bohemian Literature.
