§ 47. THE HUSSITES. 393
Hussite procession, the crowd rushed into the council-house and threw out of the window seven of the councillors who had dared to insult the procession.
, Affairs entered anew stage with Wenzel's death, 1419. With considerable unaniraity^he. Bohemian nobles acceded to_his successor Sigismund's demand that the cup be withheld from Jhe laity, but the nation at large did not acquiesce, and civil war followed. Convents and churches were sacked. Sigismund could not make himself master of his kingdom, and an event occurred during his visit in Breslau which deepened the feeling against him. A merchant, John Krasa, asserting on the street the innocence of Huss, was dragged at a horse's tail to the stake and burnt. Hussite preachers inveighed against Sigisraund, calling him the dragon of the Apocalypse.
Martin V. now summoned Europe, to a crusade against Bohemia, offering the usual indulgence^ as Innocent III. had done two centuries before, when he summoned a crusade against the Cathari in Southern France. In obedience to the papal mandate, 1^50,000 men gathered from all parts of Europe. All the horrors of war were perpetrated, and whole provinces desolated. Five.times.the holy crusaders entered the land of Huss, and fi.ve times they were beaten bacjk. In 1424 the Hussites lost their bravest military leader, John Zizka, but in 1427, under his suc^cessor, Procopius Rasa, called the Great, the most influential priest of Prag, they took the offensive and invaded Germany.
While they were winning victories over the foreign intruders, the Hussites were divided among themselves in regard to the extent to which the religious reformation should be carried. The radical party, called the Taborites, from the steep hill Tabor, 60 miles south of Prag, on which they built a city, rejected transubstantiation, the worship of saints, prayers for the dead, indulgences and priestly confession and renounced oaths, dances and other amusements. They admitted laymen, including women, to the office of preaching, and used the national tongue in all parts of the public service. Zizka, their first leader, held the sword in the spirit of one of the Judges. After his death, the stricter wing of the Taborites received the name of the Orphans.
394 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Thejnoderate party was called now-Pragei's, from the chief seat of their influence, now Calixtines, — from the word calix or cup, — or UtracLUJsts from the expression sub utraque specie^ "under both forms," from their insisting upon the administi:^tion of the cup to the laity. The University of Prag togk sides with the Calixtines and, in 1420, the four so-called Prasf articles were adopted. This compact demanded the free preaching of the Gospel, the distribution of the cup to the laity, the execution of punishment for mortal sins by the civil court, and tlie return of the clergy to the practice of Apostolic poverty. The Calixtines confined the use of Czech at the church service to the Scripture readings. ^
After tlie disastrous rout of the Catholic army, led by Cardinal Cesarini at Tauss, Aug. 14, 14^,thehistory of the Boheniig,n movement passed into a third stage, marked by the negotiations begun by the Council of Basel and the almostcoraplete annihilation of the Taborite party. It was anew spectacle for an oecumenical council to treat with heretics as with a party having rights. Unqualified submission was the demand which the Church had heretofore made. On Oct. 15, 1431, the council invited the Bohemians to a conference and promised delegates safe-conduct. This promise assured them that neither guile nor deceit would be resorted to on any ground whatsoever, whether it be of authority or the privileges of canon law or of the decisions of the Councils of Constance and Siena or any other council.^ Three hundred delegates appointed by the Bohemian diet appeared in Basel. On the way, at Eger, and in the presence of the landgrave of Brandenburg and John, duke of Bavaria, they laid down their own terms, which were sent ahead and accepted by the council.^ These terms, embodied in thirteen articles, dealt with the method of carrying on the negotiations, the cessation of the interdict during the sojourn of the delegates in the Swiss city and the privilege of practising their own religious rites. The leaders of the Bohemian delegation were
^ As early as 1423, dissenters with the name of Hussites appeared in Northern Germany and Holland. Fredericq, Corpus Inq., III. G5, 142, etc.
^ Sine fraude et quolibet dolo, occxdte vel manifeste, etc. Mausi, XXIX. 27. 8 See Hefele, VII. 47G sq.