them a chapter[1] which is neither edifying nor trustworthy. The gifted author of Lucretia and Euryalus seems to have carefully preserved all tales concerning this matter that were current at the time.
Though the Taborites were innocent of the worst accusations brought against them by their opponents, it cannot be denied that the more fanatical members of that party greatly injured the cause of church-reform. Proclaiming as they did the approach of the millennium, and denouncing as the imagining of Antichrist all secular and ecclesiastical authority, they undoubtedly encouraged communism and anarchy in Bohemia. This alone accounts for the bitterness with which the Calixtines, and magister John of Pribram in particular, write of the Taborites. This bitterness is particularly evident in Pribram’s famed work entitled The Life of the Taborite priests.[2] He has in consequence been attacked by modern Bohemian writers, who have even asserted that he became unfaithful to the Calixtine cause. This is certainly untrue. Like Hus himself, Pribram did not wish the nation to separate entirely from the universal church, but he hoped to establish in Bohemia an autonomous national church which would pre-
- ↑ See my Bohemia, a Historical Sketch, p. 172, n.
- ↑ As a proof of the intense bitterness of this feeling I will quote the opening words of the Life. Pribram wrote: “We priests and preachers and other faithful Bohemians, both laymen and ecclesiastics, earnest and constant lovers of the Bohemian nation, cannot suffer any longer the many errors and diabolical imaginings of these Taborite priests, which they proclaim in a manner that is ever worse and worse, spreading thus hatred and fear throughout the wide Bohemian land. As we have against them neither judge nor champion, either secular or spiritual, we bring our complaints before the Almighty Lord God, and pray to Him fervently for help and justice. We appeal to the whole kingdom of heaven for help and for the punishment of these terrible sins. We beg the whole Holy Church and all faithful Bohemians to consider this matter; we beg you, we call on you, we exhort you. Listen earnestly to these most weighty warnings of the whole Bohemian land; listen, we beg you, that our warning and your heedlessness and disobedience bear not witness to your damnation and that irreparable harm befall not this land because of your delay. Verily with great sorrow and with unspeakable anguish of the heart we intend to notify and to announce to you the many terrible errors and misdeeds of these Taborite priests.” (Pribram Zivot Knezi Taborskych—Life of the Taborite priests—in Vybor z Literatury Ceske—Selections from Bohemian Literature, ii. pp. 409–430).
