Huss (1415) and Jerome of Prague (1416) igniting an in-
tense nationalism in all sections of Czech society. The Bo-
hemian Länder had long been part of the Holy Roman
Empire, and nationalist feeling was fueled by a deep re-
sentment of German influence; Huss himself had been
leader of the nationalist movement at Prague University.
In 1417 Prague University sanctioned Hussite prac-
tice, and many Czech nobles offered to protect those per-
secuted for their faith. In 1419, when Sigismund (emperor
1411–37) acceded to the Bohemian throne, leading
Czechs asked him to guarantee that Hussite demands
would be met. He refused, and in 1420 Martin V (pope
1417–31) declared a crusade against the Hussites. Several
imperial and papal invasions were firmly repelled during
the 1420s and the early 1430s, the Hussites being led by a
brilliant general, Jan Zizka (c. 1376–1424), who also ex-
pelled thousands of Germans. Under his successor,
Prokop Holý (Procopius the Great; died 1434), the defen-
sive strategy became expansionist, with Hussite forces en-
tering Silesia, Saxony, and Franconia.
However, the wide support enjoyed by Hussite views
was also a weakness, as it became increasingly difficult to
hold together factions with very different political and re-
ligious aspirations. The moderate Hussites, the Utraquists,
who were mainly nobles and burghers, sought a reconcil-
iation with Sigismund and the Church. By contrast, the
Taborites, who were largely (but not exclusively) drawn
from the peasantry, supported radical religious and social
reforms, including the abolition of feudalism. In 1423 and
1424 Zizka (a Taborite) had suppressed several moderate
factions.
Eventually, negotiations begun in 1433 at the Council
of BASLEled to the Compacts of Prague, in which (bowing
to pressure from Sigismund and against the wishes of the
pope) the Church conceded several Czech demands. Hav-
ing accepted Sigismund’s main demand—an oath of loy-
alty—the Utraquists now joined with imperial forces to
inflict a final defeat on the Taborites at the battle of Lipany
(1434). In 1436 Sigismund was recognized as king of Bo-
hemia and an independent Hussite Church came into ex-
istence.
A desire to return to the religious and social reforms
of the radical Hussites persisted, however. The CZECH
BRETHREN, notably, who became formally independent in
1467, spread rapidly and in time sought union with
Calvinists and Lutherans, leading to the Bohemian Con-
fession of 1575.
The Bohemian Church finally came to an end during
the Thirty Years’ War: in 1620 Catholic forces reasserted
their control over the region through their victory at the
battle of the WHITE MOUNTAIN, scattering radical Hussites
and Protestant groupings and bringing the moderates
back into the Catholic Church.
Further reading: Frantisek Michálek Bartos, The Hus-
site Revolution, 1424–37 (Boulder, Colo.: East European
Monographs and New York: Columbia University Press,
1986); Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolu-
tion (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1967);
Josef Macek, The Hussite Movement in Bohemia, transl.
Vilém Fried and Ian Milner (London: Lawrence &
Wishart, 1965).Hutten, Ulrich von (1488–1523) German humanist
After an early life of apparently aimless wandering from
his native Steckelberg around the universities of Germany
and Italy, Hutten found fame as a controversialist and
pamphleteer. His first work, an attack on Duke Ulrich of
Württemberg, was inspired by a family quarrel, but about
the same time (1515) Hutten also became a major con-
tributor to the famous humanist satire EPISTOLAE OB-
SCURORUM VIRORUM. In 1517 Hutten entered the service of
the archbishop of Mainz and the following year published
an edition of Lorenzo VALLA’s Donation of Constantine with
a sarcastic dedication to the pope. In 1520 his enthusias-
tic support of Martin LUTHER(expressed in several Latin
and German tracts) resulted in his dismissal from the
archbishop’s service, and Hutten resumed his wanderings.
He died soon afterwards, under the protection of Ulrich
ZWINGLIat Zürich.hydraulics Before the development of the steam engine,
and excluding animal power, much of the energy available
to Western man derived from hydraulic power. Vitruvian
mills, with vertical wheels and horizontal axles, were in-
troduced into Rome in the first century BCE. They were
mainly used to grind corn. From the 10th century CEnew
uses began to be found for them. With suitable gearing
and connections a water mill could be used to power a trip
hammer or a mechanical saw, to beat cloth, to pound ore,
to pump water, to ventilate galleries, and to operate nu-
merous other devices. Many of these machines can be seen
illustrated in the pages of Georgius AGRICOLA and
Agostino RAMELLI. Advances were also made in canal de-
sign. Pound locks replaced primitive flash locks in the
15th century and soon spread across Europe. At approxi-
mately the same time the miter-gate, reputedly designed
by LEONARDO DA VINCIand still in use today, began to re-
place the more cumbersome portcullis.
At a more theoretical level, Renaissance mathemati-
cians sought to advance beyond the foundations estab-
lished by Archimedes in antiquity. STEVIN in his
Hydrostatics (1586) formulated the socalled hydrostatical
paradox, the principle that the force exerted by a fluid on
the bottom of a vessel is proportional to the bottom’s area,
the height of the fluid, and its specific gravity, but is not
necessarily equal to the weight of the fluid. Further in-
sight came from Leonardo da Vinci, who presented the
continuity equation, relating the flow of a volume of water
to its cross-sectional area. He was less successful, however,
in determining the water’s velocity. This required a more22448 8 HHuutttteenn,, UUllrriicchh vvoonn