Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T11:57:02.737Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Hussites in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2020

Get access

Summary

The place of the Hussites in Czech history has always been a source of controversy. From the defeat at White Mountain in 1620 to the period following Napoleon's defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Hussites were regarded as heretics. Statues of emperors continue to dot the empire's cities featuring a snake or dragon being trampled under the imperial foot; in Czech lands, the identity of that serpent was Hussite. Today, travellers will encounter shrines and statues dedicated to St. John Nepomuk, a fourteenth-century priest famous for refusing to divulge the information the queen had confessed to him to an angry King Václav of Bohemia. He was thrown from the Charles bridge to his death, and after White Mountain, was promoted as the perfect replacement to overcome the hagiographic cult of Hus.

Among the first scholars to pay serious attention to Hus and Hussitism were German church historians who identified them as forerunners of Protestantism. Attempts to identify the Hussites with Czech nationalism were not desirable for the Habsburgs, though. The Catholic identity of the Empire suffered from Napoleon's invasion and the ignominious defeat at Austerlitz, not far from Brno. Enlightenment secularism remained a threat to the Empire's hold over populations either prone to Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or those sceptical of Roman Catholic dogma. But the drama the Hussites inspired among Romantic era authors and artists had the same effect among the Czech intelligentsia that tales of medieval Scotland had on writers like Sir Walter Scott. Perhaps the most famous of the non-Czech works of this period is George Sand's Jean Ziska: Épisode de la guerre des Hussites. She developed an interest in the subject during a trip through the Czech lands, and when she wrote, she explained that Žižka was a real person, despite the drama and energy that cast him as such a Romantic figure.

When Josef Jungmann published his massive Czech–German dictionary in 1834–1839, the Czech language was regarded as little better than a bucolic patois by the German-speaking upper and middle classes. One of the figures instrumental in publishing this dictionary was František Palacký, now regarded as the founder of modern Czech historiography.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hussites , pp. 83 - 94
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×