Moravian Church - History

History

The movement that was to become the Moravian Church was started by Jan Hus (English: John Huss) in the late 14th century. Hus objected to some of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and wanted to return the church in Bohemia and Moravia to what were the practices in these territories when it had been Eastern Orthodox: liturgy in the language of the people (i.e. Czech), having lay people receive communion in both kinds (bread and wine - that is, in Latin, communio sub utraque specie), married priests, and eliminating indulgences and the idea of Purgatory. Evidence of their roots in Eastern Orthodoxy can be seen today in their form of the Nicene Creed, which like Orthodox Churches, does not include the filioque clause. In rejecting indulgences, Jan Hus can be said to have adopted a doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone; in doing so, the Moravians arguably became the first Protestant church.

The movement gained royal support and a certain independence for a while, but was eventually forced to be subject to Rome. Hus was tried by the Council of Constance, declared a heretic, and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415.

Within fifty years of Hus's death, a contingent of his followers had become independently organised as the "Bohemian Brethren" (Čeští bratři) or Unity of the Brethren (Jednota bratrská), which was founded in Kunvald, Bohemia, in 1457. They received episcopal ordination through the Waldensians in 1467. These were some of the earliest Protestants, rebelling against Rome some fifty years before Martin Luther. By the middle of the 16th century as many as 90 per cent of the inhabitants of the Czech Crown lands were Protestant. The majority of nobility was Protestant, the schools and printing-shops established by the Moravian Church were flourishing.

The Protestant Hussites were working for the provision of universal education, which was a particular challenge for the Catholics. 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.

Emperor Matthias 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 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 placed Catholic (and mostly German speaking) nobility into their place. The war, plague, and subsequent disruption led to a decline in the population from over 3 million to some 800,000 people. By 1622 the entire education system of the Czech lands was in the hands of Jesuits and all Protestant schools were closed. The Habsburgs not only suppressed Protestantism but also the Czech language: 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 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 Leszno (German: Lissa) in Poland, which had historically strong ties with the Czechs, and small, isolated groups in Moravia. These latter are referred to as "the Hidden Seed" which John Amos Comenius had prayed would preserve the evangelical faith in the land of the fathers.

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