§ 119.6. In all his departures from Romish doctrine Huss was dependent upon Wiclif, not only for the matter, but even for the modes of expression. He did not however separate himself quite so far from the Church doctrines as his English master. He firmly maintained the doctrine of transubstantiation; he was also inclined to withhold the cup from the laity; and, though he sought salvation only from the Saviour crucified for us, he did not refuse to give any place to works in the justification of the sinner, and even invocation of the saints he did not wholly condemn. While he energetically protested against the corruption of the clergy, he never denied that the sacrament might be efficaciously administered by an unworthy priest. In everything else however he was in thorough agreement with the English reformer. The most complete exposition of his doctrine is found in the Tractatus de ecclesia of A.D. 1413. Augustine’s doctrine of predestination is its foundation. He distinguishes from the church as a visible human institution the idea of the church as the true body of Christ, embracing all elected in Christ to blessedness from eternity. Its one and only head is Christ: not Peter, not the pope; for this church is no monster with two heads. Originally and according to Christ’s appointment the bishop of Rome was no more than the other bishops. The donation of Constantine first gave him power and dignity over the rest. As the church in the beginning could exist without a pope, so the church unto the end can exist without one. The Christian can obey the pope only where his commands and doctrines agree with those of Christ. In matters of faith Holy Scripture is the only authority. Fathers, councils, and popes may err, and have erred; only the word of God is infallible.—That this liberal reforming Council of Constance, with a Gerson at its head, should have sentenced such a man to death is not to be wondered at when we rightly consider how matters stood. His hateful realism seemed to the nominalistic fathers of the council the source of all conceivable heresies. It had even been maintained that realism consistently carried out would give a fourth person to the Godhead. His devotion to the national interests of Bohemia in the University of Prague had excited German national feeling against him. And, further, the council, which was concerned only with outward reforms, had little sympathy with the evangelical tone of his spirit and doctrine. Besides this, Huss had placed himself between the swords of two contending parties. The hierarchical party wished, in order to strike terror into their opponents, to show by an example that the church had still the power to burn heretics; and the liberal party refused to this object of papal hate all protection, lest they should endanger the cause of reformation by incurring a suspicion of sympathy with heresy.—The prophecy said to have been uttered by Huss in his last moments, “To-day you burn a goose (this being the meaning of Huss in Slavonian), but from its ashes will arise a swan (Luther’s coat of arms), which you will not be able to burn,” was unknown to his contemporaries. Probably it originated in the Reformation age from the appeals of both martyrs to the judgment of God and history.Huss had often declared that instead of the weak goose there would come powerful eagles and falcons.[350]

§ 119.7. Calixtines and Taborites.—During the imprisonment of their leader the Hussite party was headed by Jacob of Misa, pastor of St. Michael’s church in Prague. With consent of Huss he introduced the use of the cup by the laity and rejected the jejunium eucharisticum as opposed to Matthew xxvi. 26. This led to an interchange of controversial tracts between Prague and Constance on the withholding of the cup. The council decreed that whoever disobeys the Church on this point is to be punished as a heretic. This decree, followed by the execution of Huss, roused Bohemia to the uttermost. King Wenceslaw died in A.D. 1419 in the midst of national excitement, and the estates refused to crown his brother Sigismund, “the word-breaker.” Now arose a civil war, A.D. 1420-1436, characterized by cruelties on both sides rarely equalled. At the head of the Hussites, who had built on the brow of a steep hill the strong fortress Tabor, was the one-eyed, afterwards blind, John Ziska of Trocznov. The crusading armies sent against the Hussites were one after another destroyed; but the gentle spirit of Huss had no place among most of his followers. The two parties became more and more embittered toward one another. The aristocratic Calixtines (calix, cup) or Utraquists (sub utraque), at whose head was Bishop Rokycana of Prague, declared that they would be satisfied if the Catholic church would concede to them four articles:

  1. Communion under both kinds;
  2. Preaching of the pure gospel in the vulgar tongue;
  3. Strict discipline among the clergy; and
  4. Renunciation by the clergy of church property.

On the other hand, the Taborites would have no reconciliation with the Romish church, regarding as fundamentally corrupt in doctrine and worship whatever is not found in Scripture, and passing over into violent fanaticism, iconoclasm, etc. After Ziska’s death of the plague in A.D. 1424, the majority of the Taborites elected Procopius the Great as his successor. A small party that regarded no man worthy of succeeding the great Ziska, refused him allegiance, and styled themselves Orphans. They were the most fanatical of all.—Meanwhile the Council of Basel had met (§ [110, 8]) and after long fruitless negotiations it was resolved in A.D. 1433 that 300 Hussite deputies should appear at Basel. After a fifty days’ disputation the four Calixtine articles with certain modifications were accepted by the council. On the basis of this Basel Compact the Calixtines returned to the Romish church. The Taborites regarded this as shameful treason to the cause of truth, and continued the conflict. But in A.D. 1434 they were utterly annihilated at Böhmischbrod, not far from Prague. In the Treaty of Iglau in A.D. 1436 Sigismund swore to observe the compact, and was recognised as king. But the concessions sworn to by church and state were more and more restricted and ultimately ignored. Sigismund died in A.D. 1437. In place of his son-in-law, Albert II., the Utraquists set up a rival king in the person of the thirteen year old Polish prince Casimir; but Albert died in A.D. 1439. His son, Ladislaus, born after his father’s death, had, in George Podiebrad, a Calixtine tutor. After he had grown up in A.D. 1453, he walked in his grandfather’s footsteps, and died in A.D. 1457. The Calixtines now elected Podiebrad king, as a firm supporter of the compact. Pius II. recognised him in the hope that he would aid him in his projected war against the Turks. When this hope was disappointed he cancelled the compact, in A.D. 1462. Paul II. put the king under him, and had a crusade preached against him. Podiebrad however still held his ground. He died in A.D. 1471. His successor, Wladislaw II., a Polish prince, though a zealous Catholic, was obliged to confirm anew to the Calixtines at the Diet of Cuttenberg, in A.D. 1485, all their rights and liberties. Yet they could not maintain themselves as an independent community. Those of them who did not join the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren gradually during the 16th century became thoroughly amalgamated with the Catholic church.

§ 119.8. The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren.—George Podiebrad took Tabor in A.D. 1453, and scattered the last remnants of the Taborites. Joining with the evangelical Friends of God, they received from the king a castle, where, under the leadership of the local pastor, Michael of Bradacz, they formed a Unitas fratrum, and called themselves Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. But in A.D. 1461 Podiebrad withdrew his favour, and confiscated their goods. They fled into the woods, and met for worship in caves. In A.D. 1467 the most distinguished of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren met in a Bohemian village, Shota, with the German Waldensians, and chose three brethren by lot as priests, who were ordained by Michael and a Waldensian priest. But when the validity of their ordination was disputed, Michael went to the Waldensian bishop Stephen, got from him episcopal consecration, and then again ordained the three chosen at Shota, one, Matthias of Conewald, as bishop, the other two as priests. This led Rokycana to persecute them all the more bitterly. They increased their numbers however, by receiving the remnants of the Waldensians and many Utraquists, until by the beginning of the 16th century they had four hundred congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. Under Wladislaw II. persecution was stopped from A.D. 1475, but was renewed with great violence in A.D. 1503. They sent in A.D. 1511 a confession of faith to Erasmus (§ [120, 6]), with the request that he would give his opinion about it; which he however, fearing to be compromised thereby, declined to do. After the death of Bishop Matthias, in A.D. 1500, a dislike of monarchy led to the appointment of four Seniors instead of one bishop, two for Bohemia and two for Moravia. The most important and influential of these was Luke of Prague, who died in A.D. 1518, rightly regarded as the second founder of the union. He impressed a character upon the brotherhood essentially distinct in respect of constitution and doctrine from the Lutheran Reformation.—Continuation § [139, 19].

§ 119.9. The Waldensians.

  1. The range of the missionary enterprise of the Lombard-German Waldensians was widely extended during the 14th century. At the close of that period it stretched “from western Switzerland across the southern borders of the empire, from the upper and middle Rhine along the Main and through Franconia into Thuringia, from Bohemia up to Brandenburg and Pomerania, and with its last advances reached to Prussia, Poland, Silesia, Hungary, Transylvania, and Galicia.”The anonymous writer of Passau, about A.D. 1260 or 1316, reports from his own knowledge of numerous “Leonists,” who in forty-two communities, with a bishop at Einzinspach, in the diocese of Passau, were in his time the subject of inquisitorial interference, and in theory and practice bore all the characteristic marks of the Lombard Leonists. The same applies to the Austrian Waldensians, of whose persecution in A.D. 1391 we have an account by Peter of Pilichdorf. We may also with equal confidence pronounce the Winkelers, so called from holding their services in secret corners, who about this time appeared in Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and the Rhine Provinces, to be Waldensians of the same Lombard type. Their confessors, Winkelers in the narrower sense, were itinerant, celibate, and without fixed abode, carrying on missionary work, and administering the sacrament of penance to their adherents. Although, in order to avoid the attentions of the Inquisition, they took part in the Catholic services, and in case of need confessed to Catholic priests, they were nevertheless traced about A.D. 1400 to Strassburg. Thirty-two of them were thrown into prison, and induced under torture to confess. The Dominicans insisted that they should be immediately burned, but the council was satisfied with banishing them from the city. At a later period the Hussites obtained an influence over them. One of their most notable apostles at this time was Fr. Reiser of Swabia. In his travels he went to Bohemia, attached himself to the Hussites there, received from them priestly ordination, and in A.D. 1433 accompanied their representatives to the Basel Council. Then Procopius procured him a call to a pastorate in the little Bohemian town of Landscron, which, however, he soon abandoned. Encouraged by the reformatory tendency of the council, he now remained for a long time in Basel, then conducted missionary work in Germany, at first on his own account, afterwards at the head of a Taborite mission of twelve agents, in which position he styled himself Fridericus Dei gratia Episcopus fidelium in Romana ecclesia Constantini donationem spernentium. At last, in A.D. 1457, he went to Strassburg, with the intention of there ending his days in peace. But soon after his arrival he was apprehended, and in A.D. 1458, along with his faithful follower, Anna Weiler, put to death at the stake.—On the Waldensians in German Switzerland, and the Inquisition’s oft repeated interference with them, Ochsenbein gives a full report, drawn from original documents, specially full in regard to the great Inquisition trial at Freiburg, in A.D. 1430, consisting of ninety-nine wearisome and detailed examinations. Subsequently terrible persecutions, aiming at their extermination, became still more frequent in Switzerland. Also the Swiss Waldensians already bore unmistakable marks of having been influenced by the Hussites.Finally, Wattenbach has made interesting communications regarding the Waldensians in Pomerania and Brandenburg, based upon a manuscript once in the possession of Flacius, but afterwards supposed to have been lost, discovered again in the Wolfenbüttel library in A.D. 1884, though in a very defective form, which contains the original reports of 443 prosecutions for heresy in Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Thuringia. By far the greatest number of these trials were conducted between A.D. 1373 and 1394, by the Cœlestine provincial Peter, appointed inquisitor by the pope. From A.D. 1383 Stettin was the centre of his inquisitorial activity, and on the conclusion of his work he could boast that during the last two years he had converted to the Catholic faith more than 1,000 Waldensians. The victims of the Inquisition belonged almost exclusively to the peasant and artisan classes. Their objectionable doctrines and opinions are essentially almost the same as those of their ancestors of the 13th century. Although equally with their predecessors they abhorred the practice of the Catholic church, and declared all swearing and slaughter to be mortal sin, they yet in great part, and as it seems even without the application of torture, were persuaded to abjure their heresy, and incurred nothing more than a light penance. They did this, perhaps, only in the hope that their indulgent confessors would absolve them from their sin. The last protocols bring us down to A.D. 1458. Since a great number of these heretics were found again in Brandenburg, the elector caused one of their most distinguished leaders, the tailor Matthew Hagen, and three of his disciples to be taken prisoners to Berlin, and commissioned the Bishop of Brandenburg to investigate the case; but owing to his sickness this duty devolved upon John Cannemann, professor and doctor of theology. The elector was himself present at the trial. The investigation showed that the Waldensians of Brandenburg had evidently been influenced in their opinions by the Bohemian Taborites, and that they were constantly in close communion with them, and Hagen confessed that he had been there ordained by Fr. Ryss or Reiser to the clerical office. When Hagen persistently refused to retract, he was delivered over to the civil authorities for punishment, and was by them executed, probably at the stake. His three companions abjured their heresy, and on submitting to church discipline and wearing clothes marked with the sign of the cross, were pardoned. Cannemann then proceeded to Angermünde, where in the city and surrounding country crowds of such heretics resided; and there he succeeded without great difficulty in bringing them to abjure their errors and accept the Catholic confession.—The Waldensians in Bohemia and Moravia quite voluntarily amalgamated with the “United Brethren” there. The remnants of the German and Swiss Waldensians may have attached themselves to the Reformation of the 16th century, but probably for the most part to the Protestant sects of that age, some joining Schwenkfeld, and still more going with the Anabaptists, to whom they were essentially much more closely related than to Luther or Zwingli.—As to the ultimate fate of the Lombard Waldensians themselves, we know nothing. Probably many of them sought escape from the persecutions which raged against them among the French Waldensians in the valleys of Piedmont.

§ 119.9A.

  1. The remnants of the French Waldensians and their lay adherents down to the beginning of the 14th century had for the most part settled in the remote and little cultivated valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps. This settlement, which bore the character of an assembly as well as that of an isolation, now rendered indispensable the organization of an independent congregational order, such as had never been attempted before. In the arrangements of this community, not only was the question of clerical rank simplified by the combination of the order of bishop or majoralis with that of the presbyter, to which combined office was given the honourable designation of “barbe,” uncle, and instead of the hitherto annual tenure of this office was introduced a life tenure, but also to the laity was assigned a share in the church government at their synod meetings. A bull of John XXII., of A.D. 1332, informs us that then in the Piedmontese valleys ita creverunt et multiplicati sunt hæretici, præcipue de secta Waldensium, quod frequenter congregationes per modum capitali facere inibi præsumpserunt, in quibus aliquando 500 Valdenses fuerunt insimul congregati; yet certainly not merely clergy, as among the earlier congregations on the yearly tenure. The great, yea, extraordinarily great, number of the Waldensians in the Piedmontese valleys is proved by this, that from thence, since A.D. 1340, flourishing colonies of Waldensians were transplanted into Calabria and Apulia with the connivance of the larger proprietors in those parts. Those who had settled on the western side, in the province of Dauphiné, succumbed completely in A.D. 1545 to the oft repeated persecutions. The colonies of southern Italy, however, seem long to have led a quiet and little disturbed life under the protection of the territorial princes, until their adoption of Protestant views called down upon them the attention of the Inquisition, and led to their utter extermination in A.D. 1561. On the other hand, the Waldensians of Piedmont, in spite of continuous oppression and frequently renewed persecution, maintained their existence down to the present day. When in the beginning of the 15th century their residence came under the sway of the Duke of Savoy, the persecutions began, and lasted down to A.D. 1477, when a crusade for their extermination was summoned by Innocent VIII., which ended in the utter rout of the crusading army by Savoy and France. They had now a long period of repose, till their adoption of Protestant views in the 16th century anew awakened against them the horrors of persecution. In this time of rest brotherly intercourse was cultivated between the Waldensian groups and the Bohemian Brethren, who had hitherto maintained relations only with the German Waldensians.This movement originated with the Bohemians. Even at an earlier date, these, inspired by the wish to seek abroad what they could not obtain at home, namely, communion with a church free from Romish corruptions, had made a voyage of discovery in the east, which yielded no result. Now, in A.D. 1497, they determined to make another similar search, under the leadership of Luke of Prague, in the primitive haunts of the Waldensians in France and Italy. The deputies went forth, beginning with the south of France, and the remnants of the French communities in their settlements among the Piedmontese Alps. More detailed reports of their intercourse with these no longer exist, but it cannot be doubted that there was a mutual interchange of religious writings. It is a question therefore that has been much discussed as to which party was the chief gainer by this interchange. But it can now be no longer questioned that the Waldensians, as those who were far less advanced in the direction of the evangelical reformation, learnt much from the Bohemians, and by transferring it into their own literature, secured it as their permanent property.

§ 119.10. The Dutch Reformers sprang mostly from the Brothers of the Common Life (§ [112, 9]).