Hussites

The death of Jerome added to that of Huss increased their indignation.

Great disturbances took place, which King Wenceslas, who partly sympathized with the Hussites, was unable to appease.

He conceded to them the use of a number of churches in which they might administer the sacrament to the people in both kinds.

But while the Catholic party did all in their power to resist this innovation, the Hussites only increased their demands.

Wenceslas in vain endeavored to temporize.

The government of Prague was in the hands of the Catholics, but on July 30, 1419, a collision took place between the two parties in the streets, on which the Hussites under Zizka attacked the town hall, and having forced an entrance, threw the magistrates out of the windows, the mob below receiving them on the points of lances.

King Wenceslas was much agitated on receiving the news of this outrage and died a few days after.

His brother, the Emperor Sigismund, succeeded him as king of Bohemia.

I am, he used to say, king of the sheep as well as of the goats.

The Hussite ideas that had taken firm hold of many Polish minds, the abuses of which the Catholic clergy were guilty, in Poland no less than elsewhere, the universal intellectual movement which since the latter half of the 15th century had from Italy spread all over Europe, the desire of a numerous and greedy nobility to possess themselves of the estates of the church, and the dream of a national Polish church had all contributed to forward the Reformation movement.

Sigismund I gave his consent to the establishment of a Protestant university in Königsberg in 1544, and it soon flooded Poland with Bibles and polemical writings in the national tongue.

Luther's works were openly sold in the University of Krakow and everywhere greedily read.

The Lollards were put down.

The Hussites were put down.

Even after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in, it was successful.

In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian Empire, Protestantism was rooted out, and most likely would have been so in England had Queen Mary lived or Queen Elizabeth died.

But af- another honorable mention outside of France is Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland.

And according to this tradition, the Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa was raided by Hussite forces on Easter Sunday in 1430.

And the Hussites were basically part of the, um, [lips smack] you know, Protestant, Protestant revolution.

And so we have lots of stories of angry Protestants burning things, um, in, in, uh, Christian history.

It's, it's interesting history.

The attackers looted the sanctuary, smashed the icons, and one of the pillagers, um, slashed the Virgin Mary's face with a sword.

[coughs] And there's a couple, um, legends about Our Lady of Czestochowa, and one is she was broken into three, apparently by Islamic people, and then the Hussites, you know.

So they kind of meld together.

Now you have scripture is the authority, Christ is the head of the church, and it begins this, there's this swell of a movement that's happening.

And then the Hussites form, the people who are following Jan Hus' teachings, and the community begins to embody it.

So now you have not just academic teaching, but you have people who are saying, "We're listening to the scriptures, and we're following Jesus." And that takes shape among these people in a way that eventually captures the imagination of a number of people.

And in the meantime, something else happens.

What's amazing is the story continues.

There's this parallel track.

Those Hussites, they, um, there's a subgroup of them called the Unity Brethren.

And, um, they're looking-- They're, it's refugees from all over, and they call themselves the Unity Brethren because they believe that the, the gospel doesn't just call us to be reconciled to God, but to one another.