Page:The Peace League of George Poděbrad, King of Bohemia.pdf/7

 he four Articles of Prague put up at the begin of the Hussite Wars as the joint party program of the Hussites contained in the first chapter the following words: »that the words of God shall be proclaimed and preached by the christian priests freely, openly and without any hindrance« and further we read in the third chapter of the same resolution: »that contrary to Christ’s commandments and in transgression of their priestly rights and also to the very great prejudice of the secular lords, many priests and monks rule over great worldly goods and possessions in attributing to themselves secular rigths: that an end should be put to this improper ruling and that those priests and monks should be compelled to live true to the words of the Gospel and to our edification and that they should be led into the paths of Christ and his apostles.«

These two articles contain two great principles which the hussite doctrine in the Czech state first formulated and later introduced and defended, with the free exercise of religion, at least as far as the christian church was concerned, and the deliverance of the secular element from the ecclesiastic supremacy.

Whilst, up to that epoch, not only in the Czech State, but also in all other states where the population professed the romancatholic creed, no exception or divergence of any kind from the teachings and principles of Rome was tolerated and considered a heresy which called for capital punishment,—the hussite doctrine on the contrary admitted of a free interpretation of Christianity, although there could be no question of freedom of conscience in a way. It should be mentioned, of course, that subsequently this general religious liberty was not maintained in the Czech State on the same broad lines as during the Hussite Wars, but was restricted to certain confessions tolerated besides the roman creed. Moreover, the hitherto existing supremacy of the clergy over the secular elements was broken from the beginning by the hussite doctrine. During the single or separate Hussite Wars this became not so evident, because then and especially in the «Sirotci» and