Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/29

 his brother Venceslas on December 4, 1417, he wrote: “We cannot consider thee as our beloved brother if thou doest not, as did our ancestors, exterminate all heretics,” and further on, “Let every Bohemian, German and Latin, know that we can hardly await the day when I shall drown all Wycliffites and Hussites.”

In the last months of his life the weak King Venceslas entirely abandoned the cause of Church reform and endeavoured to stem the Hussite movement. This, as was inevitable, precipitated the course of events. Venceslas issued a decree, declaring that all parish priests whom the Utraquists had expelled from their parishes because they refused to administer Communion in the two kinds should be allowed to return. On the other hand, the Utraquist services were in future to be permitted in three of the Prague churches, and all Utraquist priests not belonging to these churches were to leave Prague. They suffered many indignities at the hand of the Germans of Prague, who had almost all remained faithful to the Church of Rome. Many of these priests fled to the country districts, where they continued to preach and to administer the Sacrament according to the rites of what soon began to be called the Bohemian Church. The priests who had been expelled from Prague mostly sought refuge in the southern districts of Bohemia, where, being deprived of churches, they generally preached, celebrated mass and administered the Sacrament in the open air. The movement spread rapidly, and large crowds flocked to the meeting-places, not only from all parts of Bohemia, but also from the neighbouring districts of Moravia. One of the favourite meeting-places was a hill near the small town of Ústi on the Luznice, to which they gave the biblical name of Tábor—a name which they afterwards transferred to the neighbouring hill of Hradiste, where they founded the still existing town of Tábor. Lawrence of Březova thus describes one of the early meetings of the