Some Hussites, however, continued as a separate body, calling
themselves Bohemian Brethren. First met with in 1457 they continue to
the present day as Moravians. They were subject to constant
persecution. In 1505 the Catholic official James Lilienstayn drew up
an interesting list of their errors. It seems that their cardinal
tenet was the supremacy of Scripture, without gloss, tradition, or
interpretation by the Fathers of the church. They rejected the primacy
of the pope, and all ceremonies for which authority could not be found
in the Bible, and they denied the efficacy of masses for the dead and
the validity of indulgences.
{41} With much reason Wyclif and Huss have been called "Reformers
before the Reformation." Luther himself, not knowing the Englishman,
recognized his deep indebtedness to the Bohemian. All of their
program, and more, he carried through. His doctrine of justification
by faith only, with its radical transformation of the sacramental
system, cannot be found in these his predecessors, and this was a
difference of vast importance.
SECTION 6. NATIONALIZING THE CHURCHES
Inevitably, the growth of national sentiment spoken of above reacted on
the religious institutions of Europe. Indeed, it was here that the
conflict of the international, ecclesiastical state, and of the secular
governments became keenest. Both kings and people wished to control
their own spiritual affairs as well as their temporalities.
[Sidenote: The ecclesia Anglicana]
England traveled farthest on the road towards a national church. For
three centuries she had been asserting the rights of her government to
direct spiritual as well as temporal matters. The Statute of Mortmain
[Sidenote: 1279] forbade the alienation of land from the jurisdiction
of the civil power by appropriating it to religious persons. The
withdrawing of land from the obligation to pay taxes and feudal dues
was thus checked. The encroachment of the civil power, both in England
and France, was bitterly felt by the popes. Boniface VIII endeavored
to stem the flood by the bull _Clericis laicos_ [Sidenote: 1296]
forbidding the taxation of clergy by any secular government, and the
bull _Unam Sanctam_ [Sidenote: 1302] asserting the universal monarchy
of the Roman pontiff in the strongest possible terms. But these
exorbitant claims were without effect. The Statute of Provisors
[Sidenote: 1351 and 1390] forbade the appointment to English benefices
by the pope, and the Statute of Praemunire [Sidenote: 1353 and 1393]
took away the right of {42} English subjects to appeal from the courts
of their own country to Rome. The success of Wyclif's movement was
largely due to his patriotism. Though the signs of strife with the
pope were fewer in the fifteenth century, there is no doubt that the
national feeling persisted.
[Sidenote: The Gallican Church]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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