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Updated: June 23, 2025
What finally impelled the Brethren to court countenance from Erasmus is not clear; possibly the cool reception the Utraquists had had from Luther the year before, with the rather contemptuous suggestion that their style and opinions were more like Erasmus' than his own. Camerarius' book was not published till 1605; but we can perhaps trace the source of his information.
The Brother and the Emperor drove on side by side. "I hear," said the Emperor, "that the Picards are giving up their religion and going over to the Utraquists." The Baron was astounded. He had never, he said, heard the slightest whisper that the Brethren intended to abandon their own Confessions. "I have heard it," said the Emperor, "as positive fact from Baron Hassenstein himself."
The Utraquists and Bohemian Brothers, making up nearly the whole population of the country, were just extorting religious liberty from their unlucky master in his very palace and at the point of the knife.
Through the fifteenth century they grew steadily in strength and unity, sheltered by the toleration which Rome unwillingly granted to the Utraquists as a result of the Compacts of Basle; and as compared with other dissentient bodies their name was singularly free from gross imputations. Throughout that age such imputations were freely made and believed against heretics. This was not unreasonable.
The Utraquists, for by this title the Bohemian Protestants continued to designate themselves, were put in possession of the University of Prague, and allowed a Consistory of their own, entirely independent of the archiepiscopal see of that city.
His conscience drew him to the Brethren, his honour held him to the Utraquists, and finally his own father confessor settled the question for him. "Dear friend," said the holy man, "entrust your soul to the Brethren. Never mind if some of them are hypocrites, who do not obey their own rules. It is your business to obey the rules yourself. What more do you want?
The Utraquists, for by this title the Bohemian Protestants continued to designate themselves, were put in possession of the University of Prague, and allowed a Consistory of their own, entirely independent of the archiepiscopal see of that city.
Now these differed in nothing from the other Utraquists. The sentence, therefore, of their condemnation, obviously included all the partisans of the Bohemian Confession. Accordingly, they all combined to oppose the imperial mandate in the Diet, but without being able to procure its revocation.
He was loved by the Utraquists because he had burned the Pope's Bull. He was loved by the young because he favoured learning. He was never quite easy in his mind about Martin Luther. He still believed in the Seven Sacraments. He still believed in the Brethren's system of stern moral discipline. He still believed, for practical reasons, in the celibacy of the clergy.
Even the churchyards were rifled of dead Lutherans and Utraquists, their carcasses thrown where they could no longer pollute the true believers mouldering by their side. It was not strange that the coronation as King of Bohemia of a man of such decided purposes a country numbering ten Protestants to one Catholic should cause a thrill and a flutter.
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