Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/25

 to be borne with, yet the right and original manner of receiving it was under both kinds. Hence the Utraquist doctrine of the reception of the communion sub utrâque specie took fast root in Bohemia.

In 1419, King Wenzel began at length to take measures against the Hussites, although his courtiers and enlightened favourites had always been among the most zealous and resolute adherents of the new doctrines. Several of these, in consequence, left his service; among whom the most remarkable were Nicolas of Pistna, Hus or Husinetz, and the famous one-eyed Author:Jan Žižka of Trotznow. Orthodox priests were placed in all the benefices; communion in both kinds was refused to the laity; and many undertook long pilgrimages in order to meet with clergymen who would not refuse them the cup. And the Hussite clergy, who were even driven from their old head-quarters at Austi, encamped in tents on a broad hill near the river Luznitz, which was surrounded on three sides by deep ravines full of water, and only connected with the mainland by an isthmus, thus forming a natural fortress. Here, in the summer of 1419, they held service in the open air, with the peasantry, who crowded to them, and named the place, in their almost exclusively Biblical language, Mount Tabor, a word which also signifies a camp in Slavonic. On July 22 no less than 42,000 persons assembled there for devotional purposes, and separated again with perfect quiet. But on Aug. 16, King Wenzel himself died, and his legitimate successor was his brother King Sigismund, under whose auspices the Council of Constance had been held, and Hus and Jerome condemned to the flames.

Sigismund was in Hungary at the time, and determined to postpone his Bohemian affairs to the prosecution of the war against the Turks, in which he was engaged. The Bohemian