In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

A second uprising broke out in Prague in 1422 following the sudden execution of John of Želiv and several of his followers. Many of the more moderate reformers were put to the sword, and power passed into the hands of the religious extremists. At the same time, other religious radicals established a second power base at Tábor in southern Bohemia. Their military leader was John Žižka, who had sided with Želiv in the first Prague uprising. Žižka organized an efficient army of resistance to the Catholic crusaders sent to crush the Bohemian “heretics.” Consisting mainly of peasants armed with flails and pitchforks, Žižka’s troops inflicted one humiliating defeat after another on the numerically superior foe. The ardent spirit of the Táborite armies can still be felt in the famous Hussite song “Ye Who Are the Warriors of God,”1 which, as František Šmahel puts it, defined “the ABC of the Hussite military code of conduct.”2 Apart from its obvious religious concern to invoke God’s help and intervention in human affairs —a theme it shares with the oldest Czech hymn Hospodine, pomiluj ny!—the words of this song are interesting for specifying their heterogeneous audience of knights, archers, pikesmen, and flailsmen united by one religious creed and a resolve to repel the Catholic foe. An accurate barometer of the increasingly polarized situation in Bohemia after the Prague uprising of 1422 is the pro-Catholic dispute Václav , Havel, and Tábor, an anonymous satirical poem of 1,185 lines written in 1424.3 In his introduction, the author of the dispute summarizes the current religious and political situation. In addition to those who remained true to Rome, the supremacy of the pope, and the heritage of Saint Wenceslas (Václav), there are two heretical groups. One is composed of those who merely follow the teachings of Hus, while the other consists of the Táborites, who are murderers, arsonists, and plunderers. Apart from all these there remain those who sway between changing sympathies according to their greed for material gain. The three disputants — Wenceslas, representing the Roman Catholics; Havel, the waverers; and Tábor, the militant Hussites—meet on a Friday in a burned-out church. Tábor has brought some pork; the greedy Havel hesitates to eat pork on a Friday but is willing to accept it. Wenceslas scolds him, however; since 149 CHAPTER 10 ✣ Epilogue Continuity and Change in Fifteenth-Century Czech Literature they are in a church, they should pray there and not have a picnic. In the tripartite dispute that ensues, Wenceslas defends the unity of the church and reproaches the Táborites for the confiscation of ecclesiastical property; the murders of priests, monks, and nuns; and the destruction of churches and the burning of books. Tábor asserts that they are acting in accordance with the will of God; if God were against their killing, burning, and plundering they would be prevented from doing so. Havel remains noncommittal. Tábor becomes enraged and threatens the others with his club, but the dispute ends peacefully. This work accurately reflects a society ruined by war (symbolized by the burned-out church in which the dispute takes place) and divided by religious opinion (represented by the three speakers). Hussite Bohemia became a fortress against the outside world, a bastion of heretical rebellion in Catholic Europe. The deep cultural links it had forged with Italy, France, and England in the previous century were severed; its churches were gutted, religious statues smashed, and precious manuscripts destroyed by religious zealots. But in the next few years this extremism began to lose momentum. Only the preacher and writer Peter of Chelčice, author of The Net of Faith (Siet’ viery, 1440–43) and founder of the Bohemian Brethren, remained an eloquently defiant voice among the radical Táborites of southern Bohemia. At the battle of Lipany (1434), the Táborites were decisively defeated by an army consisting of the moderate wing of the Hussites (the Utraquists) in league with the Catholics. The victors signed the Compactata of Basel in 1436, a compromise that permitted the Bohemian reformers to receive Holy Communion in both kinds, a unique accommodation within the Church universal. The literary and social situation in the Bohemian Lands between 1310 and 1420 was as momentous for the Czechs as the equivalent period in England was for the English.4 The late Přemyslid rulers had looked...

Share