Geneza czeskiej reformacji

Abstrakt

On the first days of June 1421 at an assembly convened to Časlav representatives of the Bohemian estates reached an agreement on the religious and political program which for many long years had laid the foundations for the — victorious for the time being — Bohemian Revolution. A program was formulated that amounted to four points: God’s word might be freely preached; Communion under both kinds could be given to the faithful; secular power should be not exercised by the clergy who could not posses any worldly goods; and public sins should be punished publicly. This was completed by fifth demand: the repeated rejection of Sigismund of Luxembourg’s claims to the Bohemian throne. From the mid-fifteenth century, however, it was more and more clear that Bohemian lands were ceasing to be the centre of religious reformation. When formulating his new articles of faith, Martin Luther regarded the followers of Hussitism as a sect and heretics similar to vegetating Waldenses or Cathari. He had nothing but words of contempt for Jan Hus and his followers. The article attempts to answer the question about the basis and development of the Bohemian Revolution and to what extent later reformation movements were related to the religious transformation in the Kingdom of Bohemia. The author concludes that the Hussite Reformation melted away in the Protestant world and in time lost its autonomy despite the fact that the apostles of its tradition neither lost their former identity nor stopped to appeal to Jan Hus and people of his generation as the authors of the Bohemian Reformation which preached a fully reformation program long before Martin Luther and John Calvin.