Hussites, a general name for the followers of John Huss (q. v.). The Council of Constance, in its dealings with Huss, seems to have forgotten that the adherents to his cause were not the handful of men who had gath- ered around their friend and teacher in his la.st hours, but were scattered throughout Bohemia and Moravia. No sooner had the news of the execution of Huss reach- ed them than disturbances became the order of tlie day. Everywhere in the two kingdoms named the life of the priests was in danger. The. archbishop of Albicus (q. v.) himself was obliged to flee for his life. King Wences- laus, of Bohemia, was indignant at the action of the council, and the queen hesitated not to espouse openly the cause of the Hussites. September 3, 1415, the Diet of Bohemia addressed a manifesto to the council, full of reproaches and threats ; and September 5 it voted that every landowner should be free to have the doctrines of Huss preached on his estate. Fearful of the danger threatened, the priesthood, and, indeed, all strict adher- ents of the Romish Church, formed (October 1) a league (Herrenbund), vowing obedience to the council and fidel- ity to the Romish Church. Encouraged by these asso- ciations, deemed strong enough not only to oppose suc- cessfully any further attacks on Romanists, but even any further inroads of the heretics among the people, the council assumed a more authoritative position. Not satisfied with the mischief it had already done, it now threatened all adherents of Huss with ecclesiastical pun- ishments. Jerome of Prague (q. v.), the friend and dis- ciple of Huss, was the first to suffer. He was summon- ed before the council, summarily tried and condemned, and, like his master, burned at the stake (May 30, 1416). The 452 signers of a protest against the execution of Huss were the next summoned before the bar of the council to answer for their heretical conduct. Indeed, had not the emperor Sigismund interfered, the king and queen of the Bohemians would have been added to this number. But the execution of Jerome, following that of Huss, was too great an outrage in the ej'es of the Bo- hemians not to destroy the last vestige of respect for the body by whose order these atrocious deeds were commit- ted. The tlireats of the council became to them a mere brutum fulmen. They treated them with contempt.
Meanwhile, the adherents of Huss had divided into two parties, the' moderate and the extreme. The mod- erate party, led by the University of Prague, took the name of Calixtines (q. v.), who derived their name from the chalice (calix), holding that communion in both kinds was essential to the sacrament ; and the extreme party, called the Taborites, from the mountain Tabor (now Austin), which was originally their headquarters. Here, where Huss himself had formerly preached, they
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assembled in the open air, sometimes to the number of over 40,000, and partook of communion under both kmds on tables erected for the occasion. The Calixtines pre- served the belief in purgatory, praying for the dead, images of the saints, holy water, etc. ; but in INIarch, 1417, they declared openly for the right of all to receive communion in both kinds. In consequence of this dec- laration, all the privileges of the ujiiversity were sus- pended by the council, and the forcible abolition of the heresy demanded by pope Martin V. In the early part of 1419. king Wenceslaus, unwilling to lose the favor of either jiarty, and fearing the wrath of Rome, decreed the restoration of Roman Catholic priests to their for- mer ofSces. But no sooner had the Romanists learned of the enactments in their favor than they attacked the Hussites, and began all manner of persecutions against them.. February 22, 1418, Martin V issued a bull against the followers of "Wickliffe and Huss. All who shoidd be found " to think or teach otherwise than as the holy Roman Catholic Church thinks or teaches;" all who held the doctrines, or defended the characters of Huss or AVickliffe, were to be delivered over to the secular arm for punishment as heretics. The document is a model from which bigoted intolerance and persecution might copy and exhausts the odium of language in describing the character of the objects of its vengeance. They are " schismatic, seditious, impelled by Luciferian pride and •wolfish rage, duped by devilish tricks, tied together by the tail, however scattered over the world, and thus leagued in favor of Wicldiffe, Huss, and Jerome. These pestilent persons had obstinately sown their perverse dogmas, while at first the prelates and ecclesiastical au- thority had shown themselves to be only dumb dogs, imwiliing to bark, or to restrain, according to the canons, these deceitful and pestiferous heresiarchs." These in- tolerant measures added strength to the party whom it - was their object to extirpate. The Bohemians, threat- ened at home by a feeble and vacillating kinr, and abroad by the official emissaries' of the papal pontiff, felt them- selves obliged to gather in numbers for self-defence, and chose Nicholas of Hussinecz (q. v.) and John Zisca (q. V.) as their leaders. They also prepared an answer to the bull, and circulated it far and wide. It was entitled "A faithful and Christian Exhortation of the Bohemians to Kings and Princes, to stir them vp to the zeal of the Gospel,'' and was signed by four of their leading cap- tains. " It is honorable at once to their courage, their prudence, their Christian intelligence, and their regard for the supreme authority of the AVord of God." Their first aim was to secure, if possible, the capital of the king- dom. July 30, Zisca entered the old city, or that part of the city in which resided the reformers, and pre- pared for an assault on the new city, joined by the in- habitants of the old. His aim, however, for the present, was only to intimidate the papal party. After Zisca had gained the city, some of his men sought entrance in churches to observe their religious rites. They were denied admission to some of them, and the consequence was a forcible entrance, and the summary execution of the fanatic priests. With the council of the city also they experienced trouble. While a number of the Hussites were in a procession from one of the churches, their minister, bearing the chalice, was struck by a stone which had been thrown from one of the windows of the state-house. The Hussites became enraged. Under the command of Zisca himself, the state-house was stormed. Seven of the councillors, who had been unable to make their escape, were thrown from the upper windows and impaled on the pikes of the soldiers below. The king, when the news reached him, be- came so excited that he died of a fit of apoplexy. Gen- eral anarchy now ensued. The Hussites, undisi)uted masters of Prague, restored the forms of civil govern- ment by the appointment of four magistrates to hold of- fice until the next general election, and then withdrew, under Zisca, to Pilsen. The queen Sophia sought not only to secure the aid of the emperor Sigismund against