The Hussites

 As I have noted before, the majority culture of Europe's Middle Ages was Christianity, but there was often strong disagreement over what Christianity entailed and which version was the correct version.  We are used to varieties of Christianity in the US, Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Episcopalians, Baptists, Unitarians, Lutherans, and I'm just scratching the surface.  The difference is that for the most part people have a laissez-faire attitude these days toward other versions of religion, whereas for the most part medieval people found such variety deeply concerning.

(Though I should note that my mother, as a little girl in a nice Methodist household, was told rather triumphantly by her Catholic playmate that her parents weren't really married, that she was a bastard and not really baptized, and that she was going to Hell.)

The Hussites were a group of followers of John Hus in the late Middle Ages, labeled as heretics although, like all heretics, they asserted they were the true Christians and the others the actual heretics.  You can really only tell who was "really" the heretic by who ultimately won.  This isn't as cynical as you'd think.  Medieval Christians figured God would ultimately make sure the real Christians triumphed in the end.  It all made sense.

John Hus (1369-1415) was a theologian in Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic.  He became a professor at the University of Prague, then recently established.  He was perfectly orthodox, that is considered to have correct religious beliefs, though like many theologians arguing over doctrine he periodically got into trouble with his archbishop.  But he started questioning the church's practice of having lay people receive Mass with the wafer only, rather than both wine and wafer.  This had been established in the early Middle Ages out of fear that lay people might either spill or chug-a-lug the wine, neither appropriate for the Blood of Christ.  (Indeed, this continued in Catholicism until the Vatican iI council in the 1960s.)

Hus argued that the Bible showed Jesus urging his disciples at the Last Supper to partake of both bread and wine.  Those who agreed with him were called Utraquists, from the Latin for "both" (utraque).  Though Hus had been a respected theologian, this contrary teaching was considered deeply troubling.  Europe's bishops were at the time trying to resolve the Great Schism, where there were three different men all claiming to be pope (one each in Rome and Avignon, plus a third left over from a failed earlier council), and they called a council at Constance in 1415 to resolve this, and figured they'd start the council with something easier, like deciding what to do with the Utraquists.

Hus was invited to the council to present his arguments.  The emperor Sigismund said he'd guarantee his safety.  If you check Hus's death date, you can tell where this is going.  He was ruled a heretic, the emperor said he couldn't honor the safe-conduct he'd given a heretic, and Hus went to the stake rather than renounce his beliefs.  Even today, you do not tell Sigismund jokes in Bohemia.

(As I've noted before, I'd have made a lousy heretic, as at the first sign of burning at the stake I'd have renounced my "false" beliefs so fast it would make your head spin.  But that's just me.)

Hus's followers, now called Hussites, immediately rebelled against the emperor.  They carried out guerrilla warfare, dragging cannons through the woods to blast imperial soldiers.  At a certain point the organized church, which had in the meantime managed to resolve the schism and settled on having the pope just be one more Renaissance tyrant, basically decided to let the Hussites be heretics if they wanted to endanger their souls so badly, "see if we care."  Utraquists were still around as the Protestant Reformation got underway a century later, further complicating things.  But that story takes us out of the Middle Ages.

 © C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on medieval Christianity and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms. Also available in paperback.