The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss – 4

Today’s installment concludes The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss,
our selection by Richard Chenevix Trench.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of four thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss.

Time: 1415
Place: Konstanz

So far as we know, Huss had not himself laid any special stress on communion under both kinds; but in 1414 — he was then already at Constance — the subject had come to the forefront at Prague; and, being consulted, Huss had entirely approved of such communion as most conformable to the original institution and to the practice of the primitive Church. On the other hand, the council, learning the agitation of men’s spirits in this direction, had declared what is called the “Concomitance” — that is, that wherever one kind was present, there was also the other, which being so, nothing was, indeed, withholden from the communicant through the withholding of the cup. At the same time the council had solemnly condemned as a heretic everyone who refused to submit himself to the decision of the Church in this matter, June 15, 1415.

But there was no temper of submission in Bohemia — least of all when the University of Prague gave its voice in favor of this demand. Wenceslaus, the well-intentioned but poor-spirited King, was quite unable to keep peace between the rival factions and could only slip out of his difficulties by dying, August 16, 1419. Sigismund, his brother, was also his successor; but of one thing the Bohemians were at this time resolved; namely, that the royal betrayer of his word should not reign over them. And thus a condition of miserable anarchy followed, and, in the end, of open war; which, lasting for eleven years, could be matched by few wars in the cruelties and atrocities by which on both sides it was disgraced. In Ziska, their blind chief, the Hussites had a leader with a born genius for war. It was he who invented the movable wagon-fortress whereof we hear so much, against which the German chivalry would break as idle waves upon a rock. Three times crusading armies — for this name they bore, thinking with no serious opposition to enforce the decrees of the council — invaded Bohemia, to be thrice driven back with utter defeat, disgrace and loss; the Hussites, who for a long while were content with merely repelling the invaders, after a while and as the only way of conquering a peace, turning the tables and wasting with fire and sword all neighboring German lands.

A conflict so hideous could not long be waged without a rapid deterioration of all who were engaged in it. The spirit of Huss more and more departed from those who called themselves by his name. Intestine strifes devoured their strength. There were first the Moderates — Calixtines, Utraquists or “Those of Prague,” they were called — who, weary of the long struggle, were willing to return to the bosom of the Church if only the cup (calix) and thus communion under both kinds (sub utraque), were guaranteed to them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain fastness which they fortified and called Mount Tabor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party, separating themselves off as early as 1419, had left Huss and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the whole historical development of Christianity, they demanded that a clean sweep should be made of everything in the Church’s practice for which an express and literal warrant in Scripture could not be found. When at the Council of Basel an agreement was patched up with the Calixtines on the footing which I have just named, 1433, a few further promises being thrown in which might mean anything and, as the issue proved, did mean nothing, the Taborites would not listen to the compromise. Again they appealed to arms: but now their old comrades and allies had passed to the other side; and, defeated in battle, 1434, their stronghold taken and destroyed, 1453, their political power forever broken, they, too, as so many before and since, were doomed to learn that violence is weakness in disguise and that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Whether the Church of Rome made the concessions to the Calixtines which she did, with the intention of retracting them at the first opportunity, it is impossible to say. This, however, is certain, that half a dozen years had scarcely elapsed before these concessions were brought into question and dispute; while, in less than thirty, Pope Pius II formally withdrew altogether the papal recognition of them, 1462; though a struggle for their maintenance, not always unsuccessful, lasted on into the century ensuing.

It was in truth a melancholy close of a movement so hopefully begun. And yet not altogether the close; for, indeed, nothing, in which any elements of true heroism are mingled, so disappears as to leave no traces of itself behind. If it does no more, it serves to feed the high tradition of the world — that most precious of all bequests to the present age from the ages which are behind it. But there was more than this. If much was consumed, yet not all. Something — and that the best worth the saving — was saved from the fires, having first been purified in them. The stormy zealots, as many as had taken the sword, had for the most part perished by the sword.

But there were some who made for themselves a better future than the sword could have ever made. A feeble remnant, extricating themselves from the wreck and ruin of their party and having been taught of God in his severest school, pious Calixtines, too, that were little content with the Compacts of Basel, a few stray Waldensians mingling with them, all these, drawing together in an evil time, refashioned and reconstituted themselves in humblest guise, though not in guise so humble that they could escape the cruel attentions of Rome. Seeking to build on a true scriptural foundation, with a scheme of doctrine, it may be, dogmatically incomplete — even as that of Huss himself had been — with their episcopate lost and never since recovered, the Unitas Fratrum, the Moravian Brethren, trampled and trodden down but overcoming now, not by weapons of carnal warfare but by the blood of the Cross, lived on to hail the breaking of a fairer dawn and to be themselves greeted as witnesses for God, who in a dark and gloomy day and having but a little strength, had kept his word and not denied his name.

This ends our series of passages on The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss by Richard Chenevix Trench. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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