Hussites

Part of a series on
Protestantism
Latin version of the Christian cross which is used by virtually all Protestant denominations
Concepts
History
Branches
Movements
icon Christianity portal
Battle between Hussites (left) and Catholic crusaders in the 15th century
The Lands of the Bohemian Crown during the Hussite Wars. The movement began in Prague and quickly spread south and then through the rest of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Eventually, it expanded into the remaining domains of the Bohemian Crown as well.

The Hussites (Czech: Husité or Kališníci, "Chalice People"; Latin: Hussitae) were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus (fl. 1401–1415), a part of the Bohemian Reformation.

After the execution of Hus at the Council of Constance,[1] a series of crusades, civil wars, victories and compromises between various factions with different theological agendas broke out. At the end of the Hussite Wars (1420–1434), the now Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from conflict with the Taborites and became the dominant Hussite group in Bohemia.

Catholics and Utraquists were given legal equality in Bohemia after the religious peace of Kutná Hora in 1485. Bohemia and Moravia, or what is now the territory of the Czech Republic, remained majority Hussite for two centuries until Roman Catholicism was reimposed by the Holy Roman Emperor following the 1620 Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War.

The Hussite tradition continues in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and the refounded Czechoslovak Hussite churches.[2]

  1. ^ Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3), article "Constance, Council of"
  2. ^ Nĕmec, Ludvík "The Czechoslovak heresy and schism: the emergence of a national Czechoslovak church," American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1975, ISBN 0-87169-651-7