The Hussites and the Compacts of Basel

The Council of Constance, which condemned Jan Hus and gave him up to be burned in July 1415 (see the council and his trial), had ruled three weeks earlier against priests who gave lay people the cup as well as the bread at communion, a practice that the editor of its decrees says had lately been revived in Bohemia. Christ had given both, the council said, and the early church had received both; but the later custom that the laity receive the bread alone was to be held as a law, and those who stubbornly said otherwise were to be punished as heretics (Council of Constance, session 13 (15 June 1415), with the editor’s heading).

Master Lawrence of Březová, who sided with the chalice, tells what followed. On 30 July 1419 a procession carrying the sacrament was insulted at the town hall of the New Town of Prague, and the crowd threw the burgomaster and some of the councillors from the building and killed them. King Wenceslas died of a stroke on 16 August. The next day crowds broke organs and images in the churches, above all in those where the chalice was refused (Lawrence of Březová, Chronicle, year 1419 (Höfler, pp. 340–341)). Early in 1420 a band of those he calls Taborite brethren seized the stronghold of Hradiště, fortified it and named it Mount Tábor (Bohemia) (Lawrence of Březová, Chronicle, year 1420 (Höfler, p. 351)). They chose four captains, one of them the one-eyed Jan Žižka, formerly of the king’s household (Lawrence of Březová, Chronicle, year 1420 (Höfler, p. 356)).

On 1 March 1420 Martin V, at the request of Sigismund, king of the Romans, called on rulers everywhere to arm for the extermination of the Wycliffites, Hussites and other heretics, and granted those who took the cross full pardon of their sins (Martin V, Omnium plasmatoris Domini, Palacký, no. 12 (pp. 17–20)). The crusade was proclaimed at Breslau on 17 March (Lawrence of Březová, Chronicle, year 1420 (Höfler, pp. 352–353)). Sigismund’s army camped before Prague from 30 June. On 14 July it attacked a wooden bulwark that Žižka had built on the hill of Vítkov and was thrown back (Lawrence of Březová, Chronicle, year 1420 (Höfler, pp. 374–379)).

From the besieged city the burgomasters and community of Prague sent the army, in Latin, Czech and German, the Four Articles for which they stood: that the word of God be preached freely and in due order by the Lord’s priests throughout the kingdom; that the eucharist be given freely in both kinds, bread and wine, to all the faithful not in mortal sin; that the clergy be deprived of the worldly lordship over wealth and temporal goods that it holds against Christ’s command, and brought back to the rule of the Gospel and the life of the apostles; and that mortal sins, above all public ones, and other disorders against the law of God be duly and reasonably put down in every rank by those whose duty it is (Four Articles of Prague, articles 1–4 (Höfler, pp. 380–384)). Sigismund had himself crowned in Prague castle on 28 July, and two days later his army went home (Lawrence of Březová, Chronicle, year 1420 (Höfler, pp. 384–385)).

A Prague chronicle of these years records the wars that followed. Žižka died in October 1424 while besieging the castle of Přibyslav. In 1431 a great army led by the electors of the empire, with the legate of the council then sitting at Basel, fled from the Bohemians (Chronicle of the Old College of Prague, year 1424 (Höfler, pp. 87–88)) (Chronicle of the Old College of Prague, year 1431 (Höfler, p. 92)). Under 1433 it tells of a siege of Plzeň that lasted nearly a year, and of its end: on the Sunday after Corpus Christi the Bohemian lords and the Praguers destroyed the field armies of the Taborites and of the Orphans, as Žižka’s men were called after his death, in a battle near Lipany (Chronicle of the Old College of Prague, year 1424 (Höfler, pp. 87–88)) (Chronicle of the Old College of Prague, under the year 1433 (Höfler, pp. 93–94)).

At Jihlava in July 1436, before Sigismund, the Bohemian estates handed the council’s legates the agreed Compacts and four priests promised obedience on behalf of all. The legates proclaimed peace. No one was to defame Bohemians and Moravians for communicating in both kinds; they were to be held good Catholics, and the bishops were to give the cup to those accustomed to it (Compacts of Basel, reports of 5 July 1436 (Palacký, nos. 964–965, pp. 456–458)) (Chronicle of the Old College of Prague, year 1436 (Höfler, pp. 94–96)).