Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/577

Rh nighted near Mount Tabor, and thought it safer to trust himself with the enemies of his faith than to pass the hours of darkness in the open villages. In return for the simple kindliness of his reception the polished scholar and courtier describes them with the liveliest ridicule, and with brutal sneers at their poverty. They were mostly peasants, and as they came forth to greet him in the cold and rain, many were almost naked, having nothing but a shirt or a sheepskin to protect them; one had no saddle, another no reins, another no spurs; this one had lost an eye, that one an arm. Ziska was their patron saint, whose portrait was painted on the city gates. Though they ridiculed the consecration of churches, they were very earnest in listening to the word of God, and if any one was too busy or too lazy to go to the wooden house where they assembled for preaching he was compelled by stripes. Though they paid no tithes, they filled their priests' houses with corn, beer, wood, vegetables, meat, and all the necessaries of life. Firm as they were in defence of their religious independence, they were not intolerant, and wide diversity of opinion was allowed among them.

When such men as these were driven forth and scattered among the people they were much more likely to make converts than to be converted, and though lost to sight they were assuredly not false to their convictions. The reactionary course of Rokyzana and Podiebrad during the succeeding years could hardly fail to provoke discontent among the more earnest even of the Calixtins and to furnish fresh disciples and teachers. Materials existed for a sect representing the doctrines which, a generation earlier, had set Bohemia aflame; and although when that sect timidly appeared it prudently and sedulously disavowed all affiliation with the hated and dreaded Taborites, there can be no doubt that it was, to a great extent, composed of the same elements. These new sectaries first present themselves in an organized form in 1457. Earnest, humble Christians, who sought to carry out the doctrines of Jesus, they differed from the Taborites in a yet closer approach to Waldensianism, due probably to the influence of Peter Chelcicky, who, without belonging to them, was yet to some extent their teacher. Like the Waldenses, they rejected