Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/398

 serve the Calixtine rites, particularly with regard to communion, which would have at its head a pious, virtuous clergy not burdened with worldly riches, and which would employ the national language in its religious services. If Pribram attacked rather the Taborites than the partisans of Rome, it was because he knew that in Bohemia, where the memory of Hus was still venerated, the Roman church had for the time lost all hold on the people, while he feared that the communism and anarchy preached by some of the extreme Taborites would alienate all pious and orderly men from the cause of church-reform. Though Pribram has undoubtedly been very unjustly attacked, it is impossible to overlook his many faults. In his frequent controversies with archbishop Rokycan, a much sterner opponent of the Church of Rome, Pribram appears rather as an ambitious politician than as a preacher of God’s word. Hus was not destined to find a successor. Nor Pribram nor any other Hussite divine possessed the truly apostolic character, the indomitable fortitude, the intense compassion, the spirit of absolute self-sacrifice which have rendered Hus immortal.

To avoid repetitions I have here endeavoured to give a brief outline of the teaching and organisation of the two great Hussite parties. It is hardly necessary to say that not only the Calixtine or utraquist church, which with various vicissitudes existed up to the year 1620, when all religious freedom in Bohemia perished, but also the Taborite community, whose downfall occurred in 1452, underwent several changes. To give a detailed account of these changes would be entirely beyond the purpose of this work, which endeavours only to note briefly the development of Hus’s teaching. In 1420, after the great victories of the Zizkov and Vysehrad, it was hoped that a union between the contending Hussites might be obtained. A meeting for this purpose took place in Prague immediately after the battle of the Vysehrad “in the house of Peter Zmrzlik, a citizen of Prague, who lived in the old town