€ALIXTINS. 521 lines. It accepted all Catholic dogmas, even the power of the keys in sacramental penance, and only was a protest and revolt against the abuses which had grown out of the worldly aspira- tions of the clergy. It was a Puritan reform, and it founded a Puritan society. When, after the reconciliation effected at Basle, on the basis of the four articles, Sigismund, in 1436, held his court in Prague, the Bohemians speedily complained that the city was becoming a Sodom with dicing, tavern-haunting, and pubhc women. It must have sounded strange to them to be cooUy told by a Chris- tian prelate, the Bishop of Coutances, who was the legate of the council empowered to enforce the settlement, that it would be well if pubhc sins could be eradicated, but that strumpets must be tolerated to prevent greater evils. "^ The Calixtins thus sought to keep themselves strictly within the pale of orthodoxy, and deemed themselves greatly injured and msulted by the appellation of heretic. After the reconciliation of 1436 one of their most constant causes of complaint was that they were still stigmatized as heretics, and that the Council of Basle would not issue letters proclaiming to Christendom that they were regarded as faithful sons of the Church. In 1464, after successive popes had repeatedly refused to ratify the pacification of Basle and had excommunicated as hardened heretics George Podiebrad and aU who acknowledged him as king, when George sent an em- bassy to Louis XL of France, Kostka of Postubitz, the envoy, and his attendants were more than once surprised and annoyed to' find that the people of the towns through which they passed were dis- posed to regard them as heretics. The position of the Bohemian Cahxtins was an anomalous one which has no parallel in the his^ tory of mediaeval Christendom.f
- Jo. de Turonis Regestrum (Mon. Cone. Gen. S^ec XV T T n fi^^
858). * ^- ^' -^- P- o^rf, Yet these Puritans were represented to Europe in the papal bulls for the crusades as not only subverting all political and social order, but as condemn ing marriage and abandoning themselves to all manner of license and bestiality -Martini PP. V. Bull. Permisit Deus, 25 Oct. 1427 (Fascic. Rer. Expetendarum et Fugiend, II. 613). t Jo. de Turonis Regestrum (Mon. Cone. Gen. Ssec. XV T I pp 843 858 865) - Wratislaw, Diary of an Embassy from George of Boliemia. London' lo (1. '
