72 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
preaching. Within Bohemia he remained safe due to the strength of his
support, but in 1414 he accepted Emperor Sigismund’s request and offer
of safe-conduct to present his case at the general council of the church
in Constance. There, instead of receiving a full hearing, he was arrested,
put on trial for heresy, and burnt at the stake in June 1415.
Hus thus became the symbol of the revolt which followed, in which
neither he nor even his own specific ideas were truly central, and indeed
the term ‘Hussite’ is a later encapsulation which was used at the time
only by opponents. There were a number of other elements involved
apart from the religious aspects, including the academic and political
ambitions of many at the university, the broader political aspirations
of the nobility, and the efforts of the Prague council to augment the
leading role of the city, as well as an early form of Czech linguistic
nationalism with strong anti-German overtones. Even where religion
was concerned ‘Hussite’ was and is a catch-all term embracing a broad
spectrum of views, from conservatives who wanted little more than
modest reforms of the worst existing Catholic abuses, to extreme rad-
icals who set up their own communities intended to emulate the early
Christian church, including one completely new town, Tábor, run ini-
tially on communal principles. In doctrinal terms the limited amount
of common ground became defined around four main tenets. The best
known of these was the right of the laity, rather than only the priest,
to receive communion in both kinds,sub utraque specie,thatistotake
the wine as well as the bread, from which the name Utraquists for the
participants was derived. To this implicit denial of priestly otherness
was added freedom of preaching, limitation of the property-holding and
secular powers of the church, and the civil punishment of mortal sins,
including those of the clergy, without respect of person.
As is often the case, external pressures provided the strongest impetus
towards unity, as after the execution of Hus the Council of Constance
produced ideas of some form of crusade to eliminate heresy from
Bohemia. A large number of the Bohemian nobility had protested
against Hus’s trial, and they renewed this protest after his death, going
on to form a defensive league to protect themselves and Hussite preach-
ers against any internal repression or external intervention. The weak
and ageing King Wenzel first temporised, but later supported the efforts
of the church to reassert control in Bohemia, so that a confused three-
way struggle ensued involving the loyal Catholics and the conservative
and radical wings of the Hussites. One notable event, famously imitated
by the rebels in 1618, occurred during a big Hussite rally in Prague in
July 1419, when hostile city councillors were seized and thrown to their