Heresy

Later Years

The Hussites continued to practice their form of Christianity all through these years, but it was very much restricted to Bohemia. When the Reformation arrived in the 1520s, Hussite practices were subsumed under larger issues of reform. But religious practice in Bohemia was intimately bound up with Czech nationalism, so the Bohemians continued to resist Imperial/Catholic pressure. Jesuits were brought in to convert the heretics, with little success.

Emperor Rudolf II (1576-1611) actually kept his imperial court at Prague and made the city a center of Renaissance culture. Part of the price he paid was to grant protection to the Czech Protestants. After his removal in 1611, the Czech Estates offered the crown to the Elector Frederick V, and so Bohemia became ground-zero in the beginnings of the Thirty Years War.

And there I shall stop. The Hussites were no longer a separate church, but were part of the Czech reform movement. The principles of the Four Articles were very much a part of the general Protestant programme, so in a real sense it can be said that the Hussites at long last won their victory, preserving both their religious principles and their national identity.