Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/201

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THE HUSSITE WARS
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This was a point on which the Hussites of all parties laid great stress. It was also decided to prolong the truce with the nobles of Sigismund’s party, who again promised to permit Communion in both kinds on their estates. The terms of the agreement referred only to the Bohemians, and the Utraquists were thus able to continue their warfare against Sigismund and his son-in-law without fear of intervention on the part of their internal opponents. The lords of the Roman party even agreed to allow their men-at-arms to enlist in the Utraquist armies during the time of the armistice. In contradiction to what occurred on similar occasions, no attempt was now made to establish a provisional government or elect regents. The Praguers, the Utraquist nobility and some of the moderate Táborites considered Prince Korybutovič as regent, and may have hoped that he would eventually be recognised by the Roman party also. The assemblies of Zdíc and Kouřim are notable also for the then exceptional circumstance that no theological disputations took place. The lords “sub una," who were constant, though not very selfsacrificing, adherents of King Sigismund, perhaps adopted his theory according to which laymen had no right to judge questions of ecclesiastical dogma and ritual.

It would, however, have been impossible to restrain even for a time the intense theological combativeness of the Bohemians of that age, which was equalled only in the Constantinople of the Eastern Empire and, perhaps, in the England and Scotland of the Commonwealth. It had, therefore, been settled, probably at the Treaty of Libeň, that representatives of the Utraquist or Calixtine Church should meet some of the priests of Tábor at the same time as that on which the conferences at Zdíc took place. It was hoped that the disputations begun at Konopišt would here be continued and satisfactorily ended. The meeting between the clergy of the town and university of Prague and the Táborite divines took place at the Hradčany castle of Prague on October 16, 1424. It is sufficient to state