Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, episode 183, the aftermath of a revolution, which is also episode 20 of season nine. Now this week we'll bring the season about the Reformation before the Reformation to an end. It's time to take stock. What changes did 20 years of opposition to the established church and 15 years of war bring to Bohemia? How did Jan Hus, Jan Zielewski, Wenceslas Koronda and Peter Khelczytski influence Luther Zwingli, Calvin Muntzer and von Htten?
How did Ziska's reform impact the Swiss mercenaries and the German Landsknechte? But before we go there, a very brief the History of the Germans is, was and will be advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons who've signed up on historyofthegermans.com support. And this week we want to thank Sven Klauke, Fran Duki, Carl J. Shannon S. Dennis, Travis D. Werner Geh, and Nifgal Weitzer who've already signed up. And with that mercifully short intro, back to the show.
Last week we came to the end of the Hussite Revolution, which is usually set at 1434, the Battle of Lipani that broke the power of the radical sects, the Tabarites and the orebites, or 1437, the ascent of Sigismund to the throne of Bohemia as the universally accepted ruler of the kingdom. So this may be a sensible place to take a break and survey the outcome of those 20 years of upheaval. So let's start with the toll in terms of human life.
As always in the Middle Ages, numbers are very unreliable. Wikipedia has an unsupported but weirdly precise set of numbers, indicating a loss of 1.3 to 1.8 million over the entire period, all the way to 1526. The Central Academic estimate for the death toll of the Hussite wars is around 100 to 200,000. The majority of the losses weren't battle casualties, but civilian losses due to the devastation of fields and vineyards.
In pre modern times, food supply was always precarious, so that even temporary disruptions from foraging armies or deliberate destruction of fields could cause disastrous famines. That still feels like a modest number compared to the millions who perished in the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century. But Bohemia is a small country, so that modest number still adds up to roughly 10% of its population at the time.
To put that in context, the French military deaths in World War I were 1.3 to 1.5 million, plus maybe another half a million to 800,000 civilian losses from starvation and diseases, out of a population of 39.6 million, came to about 5%. If you are looking for a death toll of 10% or more in recent times, well, there's the Soviet Union, which lost 13.5% of its population during World War II, which included famine, genocide, deportation and disease.
As Lawrence of Brejoin, an eyewitness to these events, said. As I consider the ruin, as varied as it is enormous, of the once famous and fortunate kingdom of Bohemia, which has been everywhere devoured as by a serpent and devastated by internal conflict, my senses are dulled and my reason, distraught with grief, declines from the vigor of its faculties. The recovery from this devastation took not only years, but centuries.
One key reason for this prolonged impact was the massive damage the Bohemian economy sustained during the conflict. The main pillar of the Bohemian economy in the high Middle Ages had been mining, especially silver mining. I have been going on about the mines of Kutna Hora so often you must be tired of me talking about them. One of the outcomes of the conflict was that the trained mining engineers, most of whom had been German and Catholic, left kutna hora in 1422.
And the Czechs struggled to bring the production back to the levels they had been before the war. Plus, the easier seams were exhausted and the remaining shafts were prone to flooding, so that the silver production dropped sharply. The other great mine in Joachimsthal, the one which gave its name to the thaler and ultimately the dollar, opened only in 1512. So for much of the time, during and after the Husseid wars, there was only moderate mining activity.
And we should not forget that in the 14th century, Nuremberg devised the technology to separate silver from copper ore, something that yielded enormous profits for the city, but left the locals in Bohemia and Hungary with just the crumbs that fell off the table.
And then before the Hussite wars, Bohemia had not only experienced a massive building boom, in particular the construction of the new town of Prague, the kingdom had also become more deeply integrated into the expanding European trade networks. Emperor Charles IV had tried to establish a new trade route from Venice via Prague to Leipzig and then into the Hanse territory, as well as into Poland and Russia.
Though this grand plan was only partially successful, mainly German speaking long distance merchants settled in Prague, Pilsen, Kutna, Aure and many other cities. Now, as we've heard during the season about the Hanse late medieval trade wars, largely based on trust, a merchant who sent his wares or his money to another city usually placed it with a dependable business partner or a branch of his own firm. These were pretty much the only options.
The logistics of recovering funds or merchandise lost to fraud was simply insurmountable. The duped trader would have had to go to the place where the fraud was committed, bring a case before the local court, in some cases under a legal framework different to what he was used to at home, and then hope the con men wouldn't skip town.
Hence we have trade networks like the Hanse, which were based on a shared language, culture and social surveillance, or the great Italian and southern German firms with offices in all the major trading centers. By embracing the Hussite beliefs, even in its most moderate form, the Bohemians had made themselves suspects in the eyes of a still 100% Catholic Europe. Nobody wanted to trade with someone who had been labelled a heretic, whether justified or not.
Once most Catholics had left Prague following the defenestration in 1419, the city was literally cut out of international trade. Staunchly Catholic cities like Pilsen might have been able to maintain their relationships with the outside world, but the regular sieges and incursions by tabarites and orebites must have made things difficult. And for what that was worth, the Catholic Church and the empire had issued a trade embargo on all of Bohemia.
After that embargo was lifted in 1437, and the Catholics trickled back into Prague, reconstructing the old links remained a slow and painful process, often interrupted by the wild swings of Bohemian politics. In the 15th and 16th century, the second boost to economic activity that Charles IV had bequeathed the Crown of Bohemia was the pilgrimage trade.
He had placed literally hundreds of venerated relics into the churches of Prague and the great monasteries, the imperial regalia and the crown of St Wenceslas, themselves objects of veneration, were displayed once a year in a grand procession that brought visitors in from all across Europe. But at the end of the Hussite wars, many of these relics had been destroyed and the monasteries been burned down. The imperial regalia had transferred to Nuremberg, so that trade had also ceased.
Finally, the last great gift Charles IV had granted Prague had been the university. But the expulsion of the German nations in 1409, a withdrawal of the papal charter during the Council of Constance, and the burning of the books by the archbishop left the institution a mere shadow of its former self.
Its role as the preeminent academic institution in the empire had initially gone to Heidelberg and Leipzig, and then many of the foundations of the 15th and 16th century still outpaced the the oldest university in the empire, to provide at least a little bit of a silver lining. The translation of the Bible into the common tongue and the emphasis Hussite believes placed on preaching led to a rapid development of Czech as a literary language.
As you may have noticed, I do not really speak Czech, but I am sure some friendly Czech listeners may be able to point us to some of the interesting works from that period. But overall, Bohemia lost touch with much of the early modern developments in art and philosophy. The emerging humanist ideas and writings took a long time to get there, as did the art of the early Renaissance.
At a time when Matthias Corvinus was creating his famous library in Hungary and Italian artists were busy embellishing Krakow, Bohemia clung to a late Gothic style, which I find very appealing, but wasn't exactly cutting edge of the time. And as we are talking about philosophy and theology and in case you want to go deeper, I have an excellent philosophy podcast for you.
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Find new episodes wherever you find your podcasts or at partiallyexaminedlife.com now we've done Population, Economics and Culture, which means we can now move to our more familiar territory of political history. When a revolution comes to its end, it usually leaves behind winners and losers, and that is the case here too. The winners by a wide margin were the barons, Hussites and Catholics alike.
For one, they seized the vast majority of the former Church lands and incorporated them into their personal property. It is quite remarkable that in the Four Articles of Prague it says explicitly that the Church owning property is to the disadvantage of their spiritual office and also of the temporal lords. End quote. I will be looking out for a similarly blatant statement when we get to the actual Reformation.
Before the Hazard Revolt, the Church in bohemia controlled around 30 to maybe even 35% of the arable land. At the end of the process, this had dropped to about 12%, and most of these properties went to the barons and to a few members of the gentry who had become successful military leaders during the conflict. And it was not just the Hussite barons who salivated at the prospect of expelling monks from a rich abbey. The Catholics were at it as well.
Alongside the increase in wealth came an uplift in political influence. Bohemia was, as we know from way back in episode 146, an elective monarchy. That is how Sigismund's grandfather, the blind king John, gained the crown in the first place. Charles IV tried to shift this, but never managed to formally rescind the elective nature of the kingdom and had to confirm it in his Golden Bull.
But like in the empire under the Ottonians and Thessalians, if there was a male heir who was competent, the election was more of a formality. But now, after 20 years of war, which at least in part was a war over Wenceslas IV's succession, the elective element of the monarchy was put to the forefront. Sigismund had to confirm the right of the land diet to choose the monarch, and that diet was dominated by the great barons.
The elective element would become even more important as Sigismund's heir, Albrecht of Austria, died after just two years on the throne in 1439, leaving behind a son who was born posthumously. And when that son died in 1457, without ever really taking control of Bohemia, the barons saw themselves entirely free to grant the crown to whoever they liked, which turned out to be one of their own. George of Pogibrad. Beyond the right to elect their king, Sigismund had to make even further concessions.
He had to accept the transfer of royal cities and castles to the barons, leaving the kings of Bohemia very much without resources. He passed a ban on promoting foreigners to any of the high offices of state, and an obligation to consult the assembly of the kingdom on appointments, which turned into a de facto approval right. During the 1460s, the barons also gained control of the local courts, rendering royal justice effectively defunct. Which gets me to the cities.
As we have seen, Prague, Pilsen and Tabor featured as major players during the Hussite wars, fielding armies and signing treaties. Other places like Radic, Kralove, Kathna, Ora, etc. Also mattered. These cities had developed a significant degree of autonomy, held something akin to elections to the city council, and in the case of Thabo and its affiliates, had a very distinct history and culture. Hence, one would expect them to remain of importance post the revolution. But that wasn't the case.
The barons had teamed up with Sigismund to strip the cities of the right to appoint their military captains. Without control over their military force and subject to the courts owned by the barons, the cities were defenceless and lost more and more influence. That being said, the very biggest losers were the peasants. In a republic of barons, you don't want to be the one who toils the land.
Whilst in most of Europe the Black Death had led to an increase in wages for laborers and a reduction in feudal obligations, in Bohemia, serfdom returned with a vengeance. Peasants who had fled into the cities, even into places like Tabor, could be forced to return to their previous home in bondage. In the persistent economic depression and the continued upheaval, even free peasants were gradually pushed into submission.
Under a tiny land owning elite, Bohemia became a land ruled by a few dozen barons who controlled the state and the royal assembly. And when the Habsburg monarchs in 1618 tried to impose not just religious but also political control on the Bohemians, it came to the Second Prague Defenestration which triggered the Thirty Years War, A war even more devastating than the Hussite wars. Having done politics, it is time to move on to the other topic one should never ever raise at a dinner party.
Religion in the very broadest of brushes. The situation developed as the formerly moderate Hussites moderated further and further as time went on. At the beginning of the 16th century, there was really very little that distinguished the Hussite Eutrac Church from the traditional Catholic Christianity. Except for the offer of bread and wine during services and the veneration of Jan Hus as a saint. The formerly Catholic church had never disappeared from Bohemia.
As we know, several regions around Pilsen and in southern Bohemia had remained Catholic all throughout. But as part of the compacts of Basel, Catholic priests and monks were allowed to return. They reopened the monasteries in the churches, they collected endowments from the faithful and slowly and steadily rebuilt their presence. It is also important to remember that the Crown of Bohemia comprised not just Bohemia, but also Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia.
These territories had in the main, rejected Husseitism. That meant that as the Crown of Bohemia reconsolidated, the overall entity was almost split, 5050 between the now very moderate Hussites and and the old school Catholics. Then what happened with the Tabarites and the Orebites and some of the even more radical splinter groups? Well, as we heard last week, their military power was broken at the Battle of Lipani in 1434. However, they were able to continue their spiritual independence.
They had their own bishop and their own liturgy, but that lasted only until about 1452 when Thabo got caught between the political powers in the land, was besieged by King George of Portibrat, defeated and turned into a royal city under the Utraquist Church. Those who did still yearn for a different approach formed the Unity of the Brethren. The Brethren were a lot closer to the original ideas of Jan Hus than the Republic of Thabor. Their founding thinker was Peter Khelcitzki.
He's another one of these people I would love to produce a whole episode on if this show was called the History of Europe or the History of Theology and not the History of the Germans. And if I could pronounce his name properly but briefly. He took his cues from the Sermon of the Mount. That led him to reject the institutions of the Church and the state, but most importantly led him to reject any form of violence. He preached tolerance and turning the other cheek not to repay evil with evil.
He embraced many early Tabarite ideas on communal living and sharing of resources. The Brethren, being strict pacifists, were tolerated within Bohemia until the Counter Reformation. After the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, any non Catholic beliefs were persecuted so that the Brethren were forced underground. Some moved to Moravia, others further afield of those who lived in hiding in Moravia. In 1720, a small group left for Battlesdorf, a noble estate near Goerlitz in Saxony.
Its owner, Nicolas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, welcomed them and gave them land where they established a new village called Herrnhut. That community thrived and triggered a revival of the Unity of Brethren. They became better known as the Moravians and thanks to a proactive missionary activity, are today a Protestant community of over 700,000 with a strong presence in Tanzania, the Caribbean and the US. Their ideas had a major impact on Methodists, Baptists and the Evangelical movement more broadly.
Which leaves the most important question for how did the Hussite revolt impact religious thought in the German speaking parts of the Empire? The first thing to say, and I believe that is not at all controversial, is that there are a large number of parallels between the ideas of Jan Hus, Jan Zhalifski, Wenstlas Koronda, Peter Khelczytski, the Taborites, zizka, the orevites, etc. On the one hand, and Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Munster, von Htten and so forth on the other.
Both demanded freedom to preach based on the Bible in the vernacular language. They demanded a return to the Church of the Apostles, where priests did not yield temporal power or had enormous wealth. They offered the sacrament in the form of bread and wine, dismissed the saints, the adoration of the Virgin Mary, and had at least some of them an iconoclastic bent. And even some of the set piece events had an eerie similarity.
The offer of safe conduct to Constance and to Worms, an emperor present at the disputations. Then there was the expansion of Ottoman power that forced both Sigismund and Charles V away from the centre of religious dissent, giving the reformers enough breathing space to disseminate their ideas. But as we bankers say, correlation is not causation.
The fact that both movements came to similar conclusions could have been down to Luther, Calvin or Zwingli reading the books of Hussor, the millennial sermons of the Taborites. Or it may have been down to the fact that the Bible is pretty unambiguous in its description of the primitive church, and that the gap between that ideal and the lived reality of the church in the 15th as well as the 16th century was pretty obvious.
As you know, we have not yet done the Reformation, and my experience after four years of doing this podcast is that I usually regret any statements I make looking forward in our timeline. Therefore, with that caveat that I have only read a very limited set of sources, it is my understanding that Martin Luther had at best only a sketchy understanding of the Hussite revolt when he drafted his 95 theses in 1517.
It was only when his opponent Johann von Eck pointed out to him how close his ideas were to Jan Hus writings that he realized the similarities. He first read Hus main work de Ecclesia in 1519, and it took him until 1522 before he publicly stated that Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague had been innocent. It is therefore difficult to argue that the Hussite revolt directly influenced the Reformation, but it may well have had an indirect influence.
Luther himself may not have been aware, but it is unlikely that such audacious ideas and dramatic events as we have discussed these last few weeks left no imprint in the collective memory of the Empire. Or did it? There is something that strikes me as odd.
We've been talking about the relationship between the Empire and the papacy for literally years now, and in this context we have noticed a strong anti papal, if not anti clerical undercurrent in the general opinion of the German speaking peoples on the Empire. After all, a half dozen emperors had been excommunicated and had still been able to rely on the support of their people, even their bishops.
Ludwig the Bavarian is a great example of an emperor who remained outside the Church for most of his reign was never legally crowned and he was still able to gather the kurfa einsurins that rejected papal influence on the empire. At which point one wonders why the Hussite ideas did not resonate with the German speaking peoples. Instead they mustered crusades against them. And the Hussite ideas did seemingly not circulate broadly amongst theologians in German universities.
And that gets us to the bit which may now become a little bit controversial. The idea that springs to mind is that the Hussite revolt had some strong nationalist overtones. And that was not just in the 19th century historiography, but our friend Lawrence of Brezowa, who wrote his chronicle right in the midst of these events, never missed an opportunity to paint the Germans as evil.
And likewise the towns and cities near the Bohemian border may not have looked fondly on the Hussite armies they came across burning and plundering. But I am not convinced that Husseitism was a mainly national movement for the Czechs that the Germans rejected as foreign. Because the idea that all Czechs were Hussites is obviously not true. Cities like Pilsen and the Baron Ulrich von Rosenberg were Catholic and undeniably Czech.
The accusers of Jan Hus and Constance weren't German smart Czechs in the main, and their judges included more French and Italians than Germans. Meanwhile, Prokop the Shaven, the military leader of the Tabarites for 10 years, was from the German minority in Bohemia. And during the time of Jan Hus sermons were also preached in German at the Bethlehem Chapel.
The reason the Germans in Bohemia sided in the main with the Catholics against the Hussites had probably more economic than spiritual reasons. Their networks as long distance traders and mining specialists stretched beyond the borders of the kingdom. And if they wanted to maintain these links, they had at least formally to stay with the Catholic Church. That does not justify the massacres in Kutna Hora, but it does explain why this community in the main refused to join the Hussite movement.
So my thesis on why it didn't spread is a fairly simple one. The reason that Jan Hus and the other Hussite thinkers were unknown in German speaking lands lay in the fact that they discussed and published much of their ideas in Czech. Sure, many foundational texts were initially written and published in Latin, but the scholarship that developed around it was conducted in Czech. And if you realize one thing over the last few episodes, it is that Germans really cannot pronounce Czech words.
And that may be the main reason Jan Hu's revolutionary and I found profoundly convincing ideas did not make it to Germany. Luther had to find it out all by himself, like Peter valdes, de Cathars, St Francis, St Peter, Damian, Michael of Cesena, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, and the dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of others.
There was, however, one very different thing the Hussites developed that was unique and that the Germans embraced enthusiastically, and that were the military innovations of Jan Ika. The transfer was not direct, but went through the Swiss mercenaries, who were the first to take on IKA's military doctrine of discipline, meritocracy and the equal sharing of the loot.
They replaced the Wagenburgs with pike and shot squares, which are based on a similar idea of defending against cavalry attacks through interlocking units, low cost cut and thrust arms and the use of artillery. Their version of Ika's ideas was then absorbed by the Landsknechte in Maximilian's military reforms.
I am sure we will discuss this change in military tactics and the subsequent change in the social hierarchy in a lot more detail in the upcoming episodes, so I will not elaborate too much at this point. Which brings us to the end of this episode and the end of this season. I hope you enjoyed our somewhat elongated excursion into Bohemia. We will almost certainly return when we discuss the rise of the Habsburgs and it's unlikely to be the last time our story will take us to foreign shores.
It is one of the things about German history that a lot of the action consists of key protagonists heading out to neighbouring places. For a long time the Empire was simply too big for anyone to invade, but once they did, they did not stop for 200 years and boy will we be busy talking about that. But before we do any of this we will do our little tour of the Empire, taking it in in all its late medieval half timbered glory.
I'm still in the process of planning it so that I cannot guarantee we will start immediately. Next week I might slot in a short episode on Barbara of Chile or simply take a week off. Let's see. But I hope you will join us again. And in the meantime, if you want to induce me to work harder and faster, there is always the historyofthegermans.com support page where you can make a contribution SA.