§ 73. The Bohemian Confessions after the Reformation. A.D. 1535 and 1575.
THE REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION IN BOHEMIA.
Comp. the work of Pescheck, quoted p. 565; and Reuss: La Destruction du Protestantisme en Bohème. Strasburg, 1867.
The Reformation rekindled the fire of the Husite movement, and made rapid progress within and without the Catholic Church. The Bohemian Brethren sent, from 1520, several delegations to Wittenberg to confer with Luther. They received new light in doctrine, but painfully missed discipline in the churches of Germany. Luther was at first displeased with their figurative theory of the Lord's Supper, their views of justification, and the celibacy of the clergy, and induced them to conform them to his teaching, but afterwards he treated them with a degree of indulgence and forbearance that contrasts favorably with his uncompromising antagonism to the Zwinglians. Nevertheless, the Bohemian Brethren, like the Waldenses, ultimately passed in a body to the Reformed communion, with which they had more sympathy in matters of doctrine and discipline. [1103] Besides them we find in Bohemia, after the Reformation, three Protestant parties, Utraquists, Lutherans, and Calvinists.
There was at one time, during the reign of Maximilian II., a fair prospect of the conversion of the whole Bohemian nation, as also of the German provinces of Austria, to Protestantism; but before the work was consolidated, the Jesuits, backed by the whole power of the Hapsburg dynasty, inaugurated a counter-reformation and a series of cruel persecutions which crushed the evangelical faith, and turned that kingdom into a second Spain. The bloody drama of the Thirty-Years' War began at Prague (1618). Emperor Ferdinand II. (1619-1637), a fanatical pupil of the Jesuits, fulfilled his terrible vow to exterminate heresy by all possible means, though he should have to reign over a desert. The execution of twenty-seven of the most distinguished Protestants, in June, 1621, was the signal for this war of extermination. The richest families were deprived of their property. Protestant worship was forbidden. Protestant churches, schools, and hospitals were razed to the ground, or turned into Jesuit churches and colleges. All Protestant preachers, professors, and school-teachers were ordered, in 1624, to leave the country within a week, under pain of death. Bohemian and German Bibles and all Bohemian works published after 1414, being suspected of heresy, were destroyed in immense quantities on marketplaces and beneath the gallows. One Jesuit, Anton Koniasch (1637) boasted that he had burned over 60,000 books. Thus the whole Czech literature and civilization was overwhelmed with ruin, and ignorance as dark as midnight spread over the land. [1104] Protestants were forbidden the rights of citizens; they could not carry on a trade, nor contract marriage, nor make a will. Even light and air were denied them. 'More than thirty thousand Bohemian families, and among them five hundred belonging to the aristocracy, went into banishment. Exiled Bohemians were to be found in every country of Europe, and were not wanting in any of the armies that fought against Austria. Those who could or would not emigrate held to their faith in secret. Against them dragonades were employed. Detachments of soldiers were sent into the various districts to torment the heretics till they were converted. The "Converters" (Seligmacher) went thus throughout all Bohemia, plundering and murdering. ... A desert was created; the land was crushed for a generation. Before the war Bohemia had 4,000,000 inhabitants, and in 1648 there were but 700,000 or 800,000. These figures appear preposterous, but they are certified by Bohemian historians.' [1105]
The exiled Bohemian Brethren became the nucleus of the Moravian Brotherhood (1722), and in this noble little Church, so distinguished for its missionary zeal, they continue to this day. Their last and worthy Bishop, Amos Comenius, died an exile in Holland, 1671, with the hope of the future revival of his persecuted Church, which was fulfilled through the labors of Count Zinzendorf. But even in Bohemia Protestantism could not be utterly annihilated. It began again to raise its feeble head when Emperor Joseph II. issued the Edict of Toleration (1781). The recent revival of Czech patriotism and literature came to its aid. The fifth centenary of the birth of Hus was celebrated at Prague, 1869, and his works and letters were published. In 1875 there were forty-six Reformed congregations in Bohemia and twenty-two in Moravia. The number of Lutheran congregations is smaller, and they belong almost entirely to the German part of the population.