were formulated; should these demands be granted the Bohemians were ready to conclude a permanent treaty of peace. The draft differed slightly from the one drawn up by the Hussite divines in Prague, and the compacts—as this agreement soon began to be called—were slightly modified before their acceptation at Jihlava in 1436; yet it is well to give here the wording of these famed stipulations, which ended the Hussite wars. They ran thus:
I. The Holy Sacrament is to be given freely in both kinds to all Christians in Bohemia and Moravia, and to those elsewhere who adhere to the faith of those countries.
II. All mortal sins shall be punished and extirpated by those whose office it is to do so.
III. The Word of the Lord is to be freely and truthfully preached by the priests of the Lord and by worthy deacons.
IV. The priests in the time of the law of grace shall claim ownership of no worldly possessions.
The compacts were declared invalid in 1462 by Pope Pius II (Æneas Sylvius), and in 1567 the Bohemian diet, then consisting mainly of Protestants, thinking that they formed an obstacle to their larger demands, decreed that the compacts should no longer form part of the fundamental laws of the kingdom of Bohemia.[1] Most historians have, therefore, considered the compacts as an attempt at compromise which was bound to fail. The writer of the present day who judges the events of the fifteenth century with greater impartiality than was perhaps possible at an earlier period will probably hold a different opinion. It is certain that the compacts were entirely adapted to the wishes of the nobles sub utraque, of the citizens of the Old Town of Prague and generally of the conservative townsmen of Bohemia, who at that time almost all belonged to the Utraquist Church. It is certain that later and more advanced Church reformers, such as the German Protestants, have greatly underrated the value of the compacts.
- ↑ See my Bohemia, a Historical Sketch, pp. 213–214.
