History of The Moravian Church - Early History: The Czech Background

Early History: The Czech Background

The movement that would develop into the Moravian Church was started by a Catholic priest named Jan Hus (in English John Hus) in the late fourteenth century. The church was established as a reaction against alleged errors within the Roman Catholic Church. Hus wanted to return the practices of the church in Bohemia and Moravia to the allegedly "purer" practices of early Christianity: liturgy in the language of the people, having lay people receive communion in both kinds (bread and wine), and eliminating indulgences and the idea of purgatory. The movement gained royal support and a certain independence for a while, even spreading across the border into Poland, but was eventually forced to be subject to the governance of Rome.

A contingent of Hus's followers struck a deal with Rome that allowed them to realise most of their doctrinal goals, while recognising the authority of the Roman Catholic Church; these were called the Utraquists. The remaining Hussites continued to operate outside Roman Catholicism and, within fifty years of Hus's death, had become independently organized as the 'Bohemian Brethren' or Unity of the Brethren. This group maintained Hussite theology (which would later lean towards Lutheran teachings), while maintaining the historic episcopate, even during their persecution. The Bohemian Brethren's Church was founded in Kunvald, Bohemia, in 1457.

The Moravians were some of the earliest Protestants, rebelling against the authority of Rome some fifty years before Martin Luther. One unusual and (for its time) shocking belief was the group's eventual focus on universal education. By the middle of 16th century as many as 90% of the inhabitants of the Czech lands were Protestant. The majority of nobility was Protestant, the schools and printing-shops established by the Moravian Church were flourishing. Very often the Brethren were protected by local nobles who joined their ranks to assert their independence from Habsburg Vienna. By the middle of the 16th century there was not a single town without a Protestant school in the Czech lands, and many had more than one, mostly with two to six teachers each. In Jihlava, a principal Protestant center in Moravia, there were six schools: two Czech, two German, one for girls and one teaching in Latin, which was at the level of a high / grammar school, lecturing on Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Rhetorics, Dialectics, fundamentals of Philosophy and fine arts, as well as religion according to the Lutheran Augustana. With the University of Prague also firmly in hands of Protestants, the local Catholic church was unable to compete in the field of education. Therefore the Jesuits were invited, with the backing of the Catholic Habsburg rulers, to come to the Czech lands and establish a number of Catholic educational institutions, foremost the Academy in Prague and the Academy in Olomouc, Moravian capital.

Nevertheless, the nobility was able to force the emperor Rudolf II to issue Letter of Majesty in 1609, safeguarding the religious freedom in the Czech Crown lands.

Rudolf II was succeeded in 1612 by his brother, the Emperor Matthias who sought to install the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand of Styria on the Bohemian throne (which was conjoined with that of the March of Moravia), but in 1618 the Protestant Bohemian and Moravian noblemen, who feared losing religious freedom (two of the Protestant churches being already forcibly closed), started the Bohemian Revolt. The Revolt was defeated in 1620 in the Battle of White Mountain. As consequence the local Protestant noblemen were either executed or expelled from the country while the Habsburgs put Catholic (and mostly German speaking) nobility into their place. The brutal violent Counter Reformation (together with war and plague) led to decline of population from over 3 million to some 800,000 people. The wrath of Catholics and Habsburgs wasn't aimed only against the Protestants but against anything Czech: books written in Czech were burned and any publication in Czech was considered to be heresy by the Jesuits. The Czech language was gradually reduced to a means of communication between peasants, who were often illiterate. The era is generally described as the Dark Age of the Czech Nation.

Protestants were offered an ultimatum. They were forced to choose to either leave the many and varied southeastern principalities of what was the Holy Roman Empire (mainly Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and parts of Germany and its many states), or to practice their beliefs secretly. The Brethren were forced to operate underground and eventually dispersed across Northern Europe as far as the Low Countries, where Bishop John Amos Comenius attempted to direct a resurgence. The largest remaining communities of the Brethren were located in Lissa in Poland, which had historically strong ties with the Czechs, and in small, isolated groups in Moravia.

Today, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church claims also to be a modern successor of the Hussite tradition.