[50] St. Luke xxii. 38.
[51] This refers to the allegation that Albík of Uničov, the successor of Archbishop Zbyněk, had paid a large sum for his investiture with the Archbishopric of Prague.
[52] This refers to Stephen Paleč and other former adherents of Hus who had deserted the cause of Church reform.
[53] See Chapter VI.
[CHAPTER IV]
THE PERIOD OF THE HUSSITE WARS
The death, or, as his adherents considered it, the murder of Hus was followed by prolonged bloody wars, during which Bohemia, for a time, successfully repelled the forces of a large part of Europe. Such a period was naturally not fruitful of literary production. The writers deal almost exclusively with theology, and are, with a few very noteworthy exceptions, of secondary importance. This applies specially to the very numerous theological tracts or pamphlets, the names of which Jungmann has, in his great History of Bohemian Literature, rescued from oblivion.
The adherents of Hus divided into two parties very shortly after the death of their great leader. The more moderate party, which always endeavoured to obtain a reconciliation with Rome, and some of the members of which only differed from that Church in their views as to the ceremony of communion, became known as the Calixtines, or as the "Praguers," from the fact that the town, and specially the university of Prague, was their centre. The more advanced Hussites received the name of Taborites, as the town of that name soon became their stronghold. There were minor differences of opinion in both camps. Some of the Calixtines or Utraquists, as they were also called, were prepared to accept the entire teaching of Rome if only the right of receiving communion in the two kinds were granted to them. Other Utraquists, who maintained that they alone had preserved the teaching of Hus in its purity, differed from the Church of Rome on other points also, as had been the case with Hus himself.
Among the Taborites also a more moderate party, led by Zižka, and known after his death as the "Orphans," disagreed with yet more advanced Church reformers. Finally, it should be mentioned that the intense religious excitement, and the widely spread belief in the approaching millennium, led to the formation of yet more advanced religious sects, against some of which even the Taborites had no hesitation in employing the "secular arm."
All these parties found exponents of their views, but it will here be possible to mention only very few of the very many theological controversialists of this time. The principal champion of the moderate Utraquists was Magister John of Přibram, who is stated to have been a pupil of Matthew of Janov. His polemical works are all directed against the Taborites, and even against the more advanced members of his own party. His constant adversary was the English Hussite, Peter Payne, known to the Bohemians as "Magister Engliš." Přibram endeavoured, not very successfully, to prove that the teaching of Hus was quite independent of that of "the foreigner Wycliffe," and availed himself of the national prejudices of the Bohemians for the purpose of alienating them from the teaching of the English reformer and his pupil, Peter Payne. The most important work of Přibram bears the name Of the great Torment of the Holy Church, and was long attributed to Milič of Kremsier. One of his most noteworthy books also is his Lives of the Priests of Tabor, written, like the first-mentioned book, in Bohemian. Přibram here violently attacks Nicolas of Pelhřimov, the "false and monstrous bishop of the Taborites," as he calls him. Other minor Bohemian works of Přibram, as well as some written in Latin, have been preserved. He died in 1448.