Utraquist

“ These noblemen have shared the fate of almost all men who, in a stormy and revolutionary period, attempt to maintain the principle of compromise. Menhard of Jindřichův Hradec acted as mediator, and we read of frequent banquets, to which he invited both the Utraquist nobles and the representatives of the Council. ”

“ The Utraquists were as [398] determined as ever to assert their independence; and they resented extremely the attempt to bring them under the rule of the Catholic bishop. Indeed, so strong was the opposition which was roused by this proposal, that many of the Utraquists began to repent of their persecution of the Brotherhood, and even to show signs of sympathy with them. ”

“ Martin V. had been extremely alarmed at the sympathies shown in Poland and Lithuania for the Utraquist cause; and by his orders the Polish clergy persuaded King Ladislaus to organise a new expedition against the Utraquists, while they induced Witold of Lithuania to recall Prince Korybut. But, though the summons for a third crusade was sent out to Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, and Norwegians, yet the Pope soon found that it was easier to cajole kings than to convert peoples. Not only did the Poles and Ruthenians refuse to serve in the crusade ”

“ They therefore demanded that the Utraquists should consent to a truce with Plzeň. The representatives of the Council, who were in secret communication with the city, had received intelligence that it was then on the point of capitulating. All Utraquist parties agreed in rejecting this proposal. The regent, Aleš of Riesenburg, demanded that the citizens of Plzeň should recognise his provisional government and pledge themselves to accept the agreement which the diet would conclude with the Council. ”

“ The siege of Plzeň had proved a complete failure. Treason and anarchy were rife in the Táborite camp. The moderate Utraquists, particularly the nobles, desired to come to an agreement with the Council of Basel, as representing the universal Church. It was, however, certain that the Council would never admit that a small minority of the Bohemian people should be coerced into abandoning the practice of the Roman Church and into accepting the Utraquist teaching, to which the Church could at best only give a reluctant consent. ”

“ He was the son of John of Jindřichův Hradec, who had been one of the first Bohemian nobles to adopt the Utraquist teaching, but who had died in 1417, before the beginning of the war. Menhard had in 1421 taken up arms against Žižka, by whom he was made prisoner and detained for some time at the castle of Přibenic. After his liberation he again opposed the national party, but was defeated at Kamenic in 1425. Henceforth he joined the Utraquists, as whose ally he took part in the campaigns of Střibro and Tachov. ”

“ Though the battle of Lipany had been fought but a short time previously bands of Táborites had again risen in arms, and in Silesia there had been conflicts between Utraquists and Roman Catholics. It was thought that only priests belonging to the Utraquist Church would have authority over the people. The diet therefore demanded that the new archbishop and his two suffragan bishops should be elected by the estates and should belong to the Bohemian nation. ”

“ Other less insane, but perhaps even more dangerous, fanatics also imperilled the Utraquist Church in the year 1421. Prominent among them was the priest John of Zělivo, who has already been mentioned. He was the leader of the advanced party among the citizens of Prague. In his sermons he constantly referred to the approaching Kingdom of Heaven, and opposed all temporal laws and regulations. Though he may himself have been a well-meaning man, his following consisted mainly of the most turbulent and violent citizens of the lowest class. These men caused constant riots in the city. ”

“ Maximilian invariably demanded grants of money to enable him to carry on war against the Turks, and the Estates, with equal regularity, claimed that further concessions should be made to the Utraquists, or rather Protestants as they should now be called. At the Diet of 1575 the Lutherans and Bohemian brethren jointly drew up a profession of faith which is known as the ‘Confessio Bohemica.’ The King did not indeed recognise it, but he granted the Protestants, now the great majority of the population, independence from the old Utraquist consistory. ”

“ The university of Paris, however, in view of the disturbed condition of the Christian world, wished to advance the date of the new assembly. It was hoped that a general council of the Church would more easily come to terms with the Utraquists than the Pope. The Bohemian envoys were received by King Sigismund on the day of their arrival, but the first meeting had an entirely ceremonial character. On the following day the King assembled the princes, Bohemian nobles, and theologians, and consulted them as to the best manner in which negotiations with the Utraquists could be opened. ”

“ Organization of the Utraquist National Church. Minority of Ladislaus Posthumus. Regency of George Podiebrad. Origin of the Unitas Fratrum. "The battle of Lipan was a turning point in the history of the Hussites. It put Bohemia and Moravia into the hands of the Utraquists, and enabled them to carry out their plans unhindered. The man who was foremost in shaping events and who became more and more prominent, until he exercised a commanding influence, was John of Rokycana. ... At the diet of 1435 he was unanimously elected archbishop. ... Meantime Sigismund endeavored to regain his kingdom. ”

“ The fools were accordingly commanded to fall-to and do their best in behalf of their respective forms of faith. After exasperating each other by sallies of irritating wit, they grappled and commenced wrestling. The spectators stood anxiously looking on while, by such singular argument, the question of the Sacrament in one or both kinds was being discussed. The Bohemian Utraquists were in high spirits, for their champion was a gigantic fellow, while his opponent, the little Hungarian, was not stouter built than ordinary strong men. ”

“ Very few of the leaders of [366] that movement had ever desired that complete separation from Rome which Luther soon perceived to be an absolute necessity. They had been driven, against their will, to combine the assertion of their national independence with resistance to the authority of the Pope; but, when the deaths of King George and Rokycana had removed at once the main ground of Papal hostility to Bohemia, and the most determined asserters of an independent national Church, the Utraquists began to show an even painful eagerness for a reconciliation with the Papacy. ”

“ The crusaders undoubtedly aimed at the complete extermination of the Czech population of Bohemia, whom they wrongly believed to be all Utraquists. They therefore murdered all, without distinction of age or sex. “They were determined to let no heretic live,” as a contemporary chronicler writes. The Hussites almost always spared children and women, and those who suffered most from their cruelty were priests and monks, whom they considered responsible for the murder of Hus, as they termed it. It is, of course, impossible to deny that Žižka was cruel; no Hussite general could be otherwise ”

“ Returning on one occasion to Europe by Belgrade, I brought some Turks by the steamer up to Vienna to show them a little of Europe. After a night on board, my levée proved an awkward business. In a Turkish household all the servants attend their master while he dresses. That is the time to prefer petitions and make complaints. Every one is there, and may say what he likes. On the morning in question, they were mute as statues ”

“ Although he was popularly known as an extravagant Turcophil, he had a thorough knowledge of the politics of Eastern Europe, which was recognised at home by Disraeli and abroad by statesmen like Thiers and Beust. To Urquhart belongs the distinction of promoting the naturalisation of the Turkish bath in the British Isles. He spoke enthusiastically of the merits of the institution in his ‘Pillars of Hercules’ (London, 1850, 2 vols. 8vo) , a narrative of travels in Spain and Morocco. ”

“ The Turk is a noble fellow; I should wish to be a Turk, were I not a Magyar.
Myself. The Turk always keeps his word, I am told.
Hungarian. Which the Christian very seldom does, and even the Hungarian does not always. In 1444 Ulaszlo made, at Szeged, peace with Amurath for ten years, which he swore with an oath to keep, but at the instigation of the Pope Julian he broke it, and induced his great captain, Hunyadi John, to share in the perjury. The consequence was the battle of Varna, of the 10th of November, in which Hunyadi was routed, and Ulaszlo slain. ”

“ Their civilization is on a level with that of the Osmanli.
The Turk area extends eastwards, the Ugrian is continued north and north-west. The Udmart, or Udy of the river Viatka, are the Votiaks of the Russians and the Ari of the Turks, imperfect Christians, agriculturalists rather than nomades, and with more red-haired individuals amongst them than any other population. Eminently unmixed, they live not only in separate houses but in separate villages. ”

“ The reader must fill up this faint sketch from his imagination, and when he has done so, he will understand why an Eastern cannot endure Europe, and why Christians amongst Mussulmans are called “dogs.” [57]
Why should the ladies of the East have enjoyments from which ours are debarred, and sensations too of which they know nothing? It may be said the Turkish ladies so make up for their “exclusion from society:”—they have no balls or operas, morning concerts or fancy fairs, and therefore they take up with these merely sensual indulgences. ”

“ A Southern Slav patriot has said that no greater misfortune has befallen the Southern Slavs, than to pass under the dominion of civilized Austria. Had they been obliged to share the fate of their brothers, the Serbs and Bulgarians, they would certainly have tasted all the misery of the Turkish yoke, but to-day they would be free, as an independent State with a right to their own national and intellectual development. The one thing Turkey has left untouched in the Serbs and Bulgars—the heart of the people—is the very thing that Austria has sought to destroy in her Southern Slav subjects. ”

“ In the fifteenth century, baths were still in common use in Spain; for a law of Castile forbids the Moors and the Jews to bathe with the Christians.
[76] A Greek sailor once sat down to eat with me with dirty hands; observing my look of astonishment, he said, flourishing them, “No one will accuse me of being Τουρκόλατρος (worshipper of the Turks) .” What kind of people must that be whose enemies make their patriotism consist in filth! ”

“ The people dwelling in Turkestan are mainly of the Turkish race; their language is Turkish, and the country was the seat of the race that spread its boundaries by a career of conquests, which did not stop until it entered Europe and pressed as far westward as the walls of Vienna. Briefly we may say the inhabitants of Turkestan are Ozbeks or Uzbeks (the [Pg 450] dominant race) , Turcomans, Kirghese, Karakalpaks, Tajiks, Persians, Kipchaks, and a few Arabs, Hindoos, and Jews. The Ozbeks are the most civilized people of the country, and are mainly settled in the cities and towns ”

“ Turkestan means 'The land of the Turks.' On the maps it is generally divided into Eastern and Western Turkestan, the former lying partly in the Chinese Empire, and the latter covering the vast plain of the Caspian and Aral seas. The population is variously estimated at from eight to twelve millions. Russia has absorbed nearly all of Western Turkestan, and the Russian officials think they have at least eight millions of people in their new possessions. ”

“ In those states, too, a man is spoken of by his race. He is an Usbeg, a Kipchak, a Kirghiz, or a Tajik, as the case may be, and by this means the rivalry of past ages is to some extent preserved down to the present time. It is the dissension spread, or rather the destruction of any [Pg 15] sympathy between the various races caused, by these outward tokens of diversity in origin, that has made Western Turkestan the familiar home of intestine disturbance, which has in its turn led up to the easy dismemberment of the various Khanates by Russian intrigue and by Russian force. ”

“ Neither have the German States formed themselves as yet into any formidable nation. The power, always rather vague and ill-defined, of the Emperor has much decreased, and Switzerland and other States have shaken themselves free of it.
The Turk is pressing Austria and Hungary very hard. He holds, for a time, large provinces which had been Austria's, and which will be hers again, and, besides, he has established himself in that territory which is now the Balkan States and Greece, and is in possession of all that he now has of Asia Minor, with Egypt and the northern African coast in addition. ”

“ The dying Tsar had made his nobles swear to maintain the rights of his son, Stephen Urosh V, then a boy of nineteen. But the lad’s uncle, Symeon Urosh, the viceroy of Akarnania and Ætolia, disputed the succession; some nobles supported him, while others, availing themselves of the family quarrel, set up as independent princes in their particular satrapies. Symeon made Trikkala the capital of a brief Greco-Serbian Empire; and his son ended as abbot of the famous monastery of Meteoron. ”

“ There was the agent of the young republic of the West at work trying to involve France and Morocco with a view to the settlement of the Oregon question against England, while the profound cabinet of the North is so heedless of Morocco as not to have even a consul there. Nay, Russia is positively so ignorant of the commonest facts connected with this country, that, when appealed to recently in an affair concerning it, she replied that she considered it as a portion of Turkey. ”