Hussites

The Hussites (Czech: Husité or Kališníci, "Chalice People"; Latin: Hussitae) are a Czech proto-ProtestantChristian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus (b. 1368–1415, fl. 1401–1415), a part of the Bohemian Reformation.

After the trial and execution of Hus at the Council of Constance, a series of crusades, civil wars, victories and compromises between various factions with different theological agendas broke out. At the end of the Hussite Wars (1420–1434), the now Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from protracted conflict against Jan Žižka and the Taborites, who embraced the more radical theological teachings of John Wycliffe and the Lollards, and became the dominant Hussite group in Bohemia.

Catholics and Utraquists were given legal equality in Bohemia after the religious peace of Kutná Hora in 1485. Bohemia and Moravia, the predecessor to the current-day Czech Republic, remained majority Hussite for two centuries. Roman Catholicism was only reimposed by the Holy Roman EmperorFerdinand II following the 1620 Battle of White Mountain and during the Thirty Years' War.

The Hussite tradition continues in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and, since the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, by the re-founded Czechoslovak Hussite Church.