page_title: Bohemian Reformation
section_title: Hussites
hierarchical_section_title: Bohemian Reformation / History / Hussites
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Jan Žizka vede polní vojsko, vyobrazení z Jenského kodexu z konce 15. století.
context_page_description: The Bohemian Reformation, preceding the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom and Crown of Bohemia striving for a reform of the Roman Catholic Church. Lasting for more than 200 years, it had a significant impact on the historical development of Central Europe and is considered one of the most important religious, social, intellectual and political movements of the early modern period. The Bohemian Reformation produced the first national church separate from Roman authority in the history of Western Christianity, the first apocalyptic religious movement of the early modern period, and the first pacifist Protestant church.
  The Bohemian Reformation was not an internally unified movement and did not remain immutable. Although it split into many groups, some characteristics were shared by all of them – communion under both kinds, distaste for the wealth and power of the church, emphasis on the Bible preached in a vernacular language and on an immediate relationship between man and God.
context_section_description: After Jan Hus was burnt at the stake, the Bohemian Reformation started to oppose the Council of Constance and later the Pope, and became a distinctive religious movement with its own symbols (chalice), rituals (frequent communion under both kinds even for children), and martyrs (Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague). In the 1420s it became separate from the Catholic church in just about every way, with the exception of the denial of apostolic succession and the conscious creation of an independent church.
  Because of the political situation the Hussites were not only a religious group but became also a political and military faction. The ideological and political program shared by the Hussites at the beginning of the Hussite Wars was contained in the Four Articles of Prague, which can be summarized as:
  Freedom to preach the Word of God.
  Freedom of the communion of the chalice (under both kinds also to laity).
  Exclusion of the clergy from large temporal possessions or civil authority.
  Strict repression and punishment of mortal public sins, whether in clergy or in laity.
  In the summer of 1419, tens of thousands of people gathered for a massive outdoor religious service on a hill christened Mount Tabor, where the town Tábor was founded. The so-called Taborites practiced a form of communal economy that has been of great interest to Marxist historians.
  After the battle of Lipany in 1434, in which the moderate Hussites united with Roman Catholics defeated the radical Hussites,a compromise with the Roman Church and the Emperor and crowned Bohemian King Sigismund could have been realized. The compromise led to reconciliation of the Bohemian reformed mainstream with the Roman Church. The text of Compactata based on the Four Articles of Prague was accepted by the Czech (Bohemian and Moravian) political representation as well as by the Council of Basel, but the Pope refused to recognize it.
caption: Jan Žižka leading troops of radical Hussites
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