both kinds to laymen—a promise always enacted by the Roman Church.
The University of Prague, accepting the important position the nobles had conferred on it, declared (1417) that communion in both kinds was necessary to the salvation of the soul, and it shortly afterwards proclaimed Hus a holy martyr for the faith of Christ, and decreed that July 6, the day of his martyrdom, should be consecrated to his memory.[1] The party of reform, which now had its centre in the university, favoured by the king and queen, and supported by the larger part of the nobility together with the great majority of the people, was in a very favourable position, particularly as for the present no immediate danger of foreign intervention was to be apprehended.
Unfortunately for Bohemia, differences of opinion soon began to spring up among those who supported the cause of Church reform. A considerable party gradually formed itself in Bohemia, which, in direct antagonism to the University of Prague (now the recognized theological centre of the country), professed doctrines that went far beyond anything the earlier reformers had asserted. This advanced party rejected the mass and all the sacraments, except baptism and communion, the doctrine of the existence of purgatory, and many of the rules and regulations of the Church. Its adherents maintained that the Holy Bible was the sole authority in all matters of religious belief. This party—destined afterwards to become celebrated under the name of the Taborites—had its centre in the little town of Austi or Usti on the river Lužnic, near the spot where the town of Tabor was soon to arise. The University of Prague from the first opposed the tenets of these more advanced reformers, and several times (1417 and 1418) issued decrees informing the faithful that the Christian doctrine was contained, not only in the Bible, but also in the traditions of the Church, which were only to be rejected when manifestly in contradiction to Scripture. These differences gradually became more accentuated, and the dissentient parties received
- ↑ In the earliest printed Bohemian almanacks, some of which are preserved in the National Museum at Prague, the 6th of July is called the Day of Commemoration of Master John Hus. It was long kept as a holiday, and in 1592 the Roman Catholic Abbot of Emaus (at Prague) was attacked by the people and threatened with death because he had let some of his labourers work in his vineyards on the 6th of July.
