Bohemian brothers

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Hymn book of the Bohemian Brothers, 1561

Bohemian Brothers (also Moravian Brethren , Czech : Jednota bratrská ; Latin : Unitas fratrum , from this Germanized also Moravian Church ; as xenonym formerly Lamb brothers ) were a religious community in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially in Bohemia occurred and from Members of the Taborites and Waldensians . Characteristics of the Bohemian Brethren in doctrine and way of life were a religious conception oriented towards early Christianity , church discipline , the refusal to perform military service and the oath, and the refusal to hold public office.

history

After the eminent Bohemian reformer Jan Hus was burned at the Council of Constance in 1415, the Hussites named after him split into two parties, the pragmatic Utraquists and the radical Taborites . Initially, these Reformation groups were able to assert themselves with the foreign name Bohemian Brothers , which was customary at the time , or the own name Unitas Fratrum (Brothers Unity) . But tried the Czech-Luxembourg royal dynasty , ruled the Hussites of church and state offices, which resulted in violent riots and finally with the Crusade boy by Pope Martin V. from March 1420 then in the Hussite wars resulted. During these fierce battles against the Catholics in Bohemia and the neighboring countries , a violent struggle broke out between the two Hussite groups for years.

Petr Chelčický (approx. 1390–1460)

The preacher and theologian Petr Chelčický was a follower of Jan Hus. After his death, he fell out theologically with Hus' successor as preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, the Utraquist Jakobellus von Mies , who argued that the word of God could also be properly defended with the sword. The Taborites also accepted this thesis and thus justified their military traits. Petr Chelčický, however, rejected all violence. Since 1420 he has been living in retirement on his estate in South Bohemia, Chelčický developed a radical pacifist vision of Christianity in various treatises and treatises in the old Czech language, influenced by John Wyclif (1330-1384) , he strived for a return to early Christianity and postulated the equality of all Christians , called for voluntary poverty, rejected monasticism, spoke out against conscription and rejected the oath. He criticized the corporate social order of the time of manorial rule and inheritance . Although he was a layman , Chelčický won great acclaim as an important thinker in the field of theology because of his plea for voluntary poverty. King George of Podebrady gave his followers, the Petr Chelčický brothers , the Kunwald estate as their residence in 1457 . Despite some persecution, the number of followers continued to grow, so that in 1467, at a meeting in Lhotka near Reichenau , they decided to establish an order based on the apostolic model. Three priests were chosen by lot from among the congregation; one of these, Matthias von Kunwald , became a bishop . They were consecrated by the bishop Michael von Žamberk , who had previously been consecrated by a Waldensian bishop.

A group that wanted to introduce milder elements, the so-called brother unity (Unitas fratrum) , soon turned against the representatives of the strict principles . At the Synod of Reichenau in 1494, this group came to power under Luke of Prague , who was the second founder of the brotherhood. Until his death on December 11, 1528 he exerted great influence on the brotherhood. Instead of a bishop, the top management of the brotherhood consisted of a council of four senior citizens.

The stricter community appeared from 1494 under the name of the Small Party (as opposed to the Big Party ) or Amositen and held on to the strict ethical attitude of the first brothers. The Small Party rejected the oath of oaths and the exercise of state offices, while the Big Party of the Bohemian Brethren has now accepted the oath, state offices and, under certain conditions, the death penalty. Jan Kalenec appeared as the leader of the Small Party from 1523/1524 . Kalenec also rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and infant baptism and was in contact with the Moravian Anabaptist movement . The Little Party existed next to the Brothers' Union for about 50 years.

Neither the peaceful attempts at conversion by the Dominicans around 1500 nor the bloody persecution by King Wladislaw II (1503–1516) or his St. Jacob mandate led the brothers back to the Catholic Church . Even Martin Luther , who negotiated with them several times, could not get them to his side, because they insisted on the celibacy of the clergy, the seven sacraments and the Eucharistic teaching according to the Catholic faith and apostolic tradition.

After Luke's death, however, the brothers more and more lost their peculiar character and, in order to gain further recognition or at least to be tolerated, first turned to Lutheran and later to Reformed teaching.

In 1548 many brothers had to emigrate to Poland and the Duchy of Prussia as a result of renewed persecution through Catholic Bohemia . They had to evacuate their traditional settlements in the cities of Chlumec and Turnau and the majority settled in Posen and Thorn .

In 1557, at the Synod of the Church of the Bohemian Brothers in Sležany in Moravia, the Polish Province of the Unity was established, the third after the Moravian and the Bohemian. It also included the Brethren in the Duchy of Prussia. Georg Israel was elected the first bishop (senior) of this province and judge for all of Poland. He was responsible for the management of the Polish communities. Under his leadership, the university in Poland experienced a strong boom. 1570 Czech Brethren joined in Poland with the Lutherans and the Reformed the Sandomierz Agreement by which it in 1573 in the "dissidents peace" of the Warsaw Confederation were included.

In Bohemia, too, the toleration was achieved through the Confessio Bohemica in 1575, which compares the brothers with the Lutherans, the Reformed and the Calixtines . On the basis of this Confessio, Emperor Rudolf II issued the majesty letter in 1609 .

During the Thirty Years' War the brothers in Bohemia were almost completely destroyed and they could only meet in secret. Many fled, including their bishop Johann Amos Comenius, who had to leave his home in 1628.

As a congregation of brothers , they later experienced a second bloom in Herrnhut through the support of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf . Some of them settled in 1737 near Berlin in Bohemian Rixdorf . Occasionally, the Bohemian Brothers under Joseph II also reappeared in Bohemia and Moravia, but had to confess to one of the two exclusively tolerated Protestant denominations : the Augsburg (Lutheran) or the Helvetic (Reformed) . The Evangelical Church of the Bohemian Brothers, which emerged from the Union of Reformed and Lutheran Congregations in Bohemia and Moravia in 1918, sees itself as rooted in the tradition of the Bohemian Brethren.

The lost collection of sacred songs in the Czech language, which was probably published in Prague in 1501 and was long considered the first hymnbook of the Bohemian Brothers, belongs more to the Utraquist circle . Michael Weisse published the first German-language hymn book of the Bohemian Brothers in 1531. In 1544 Johann Horn published a modified and expanded new edition of the White Hymnbook, further editions followed.

In 1903, Czech Protestants who had emigrated to Texas formed the Evangelical Unity of the Bohemian-Moravian Brethren in North America as a renewal of the old Brethren Unity. The church, which has been celebrating its services in English since the middle of the 20th century and has been called Unity of the Brethren since 1959 , has around 30 parishes.

The files and a library of the Bohemian Brethren were included in the UNESCO list of World Document Heritage in 2015 .

Literature and source editions

  • MT Brown: John Blahoslav - Sixteenth-Century Moravian Reformer. Transforming the Czech Nation by the Word of God , foreword by Jan Hábl and Thomas K. Johnson (= Christian contributions to European identity , Vol. 2 ISSN  2195-299X ). Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft , Bonn 2013, ISBN 978-3-86269-063-3 (English).
  • Jaroslav Goll : Sources and Studies on the History of the Bohemian Brothers , 2 volumes. Prague 1878-1882.
  • Lorenz Hein: Italian Protestants and their influence on the Reformation in Poland during the two decades before the Sandomir Consensus 1570 , Brill, Leiden 1974, ISBN 978-9-00403-893-6 .
  • Wolfgang Herbst: Bohemian Brothers. In: Wolfgang Herbst (Ed.): Who is who in the hymnal. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, ISBN 978-3-525-50323-2 , pp. 45-47 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • David R. Holeton: Church or Sect? The Jednota Bratskà and the Growth of Dissent from Mainline Utraquism . In: Communio Viatorum. A Theological Journal 1996, pp. 5-35.
  • Ludwig Keller : The Bohemian Brothers and their predecessors . Leipzig 1894.
  • Amedeo Molnár (Hrsg.): Sources and representations on the history of the Bohemian Brothers Unity (= Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf: materials and documents . Series 1). Olms, Hildesheim 1970–1982, ISBN 3-487-06911-3 .
  • Joseph Theodor Müller: History of the Bohemian Brothers . 3 volumes. Herrnhut 1922–1931.
  • Joseph Theodor Müller: The basic features of the community constitution of the Bohemian brothers . In: Monthly Issues of the Comenius Society 5 (1896), pp. 140–163.
  • Rudolf Říčan: The Bohemian Brothers. Its origin and history (original title: Dějiny Jednoty Bratrské , translated by Bohumír Popelář). With a chapter on the theology of the brothers by Amedeo Molnár. Union, Berlin (East) 1961 DNB 454014155 .
    • Revised new edition: The Bohemian Brothers. Origin and history . Reinhardt, Basel 2007, ISBN 978-3-7245-1445-9 .
  • Michael Rohde: Luther and the Bohemian Brothers according to the sources (= Pontes Pragenses , Volume 45), Luboš Marek, Brno 2007, ISBN 80-86263-92-4 ( dissertation Charles University Prague , [2007], 240 pages).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Rothkegel: Anabaptist, spiritualist, anti-Trinitarian and Nicodemite: Jakob Kautz as a schoolmaster in Moravia . In: Mennonite history sheets . tape 57 . Mennonite History Association, 2000, p. 51-88 .
  2. ↑ Lorenz Hein: Italian Protestants and their influence on the Reformation in Poland during the two decades before the Sandomir Consensus 1570 , Brill, Leiden 1974, ISBN 978-9-00403-893-6 , pp. 17 ff.
  3. ^ Rudolf Wolkan: The German hymn of the Bohemian brothers in the XVI. Centuries. Haase, Prague 1891, p. 4 ( digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Ddasdeutschekirc00wolkgoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn15~doppelseiten%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D ).
  4. ↑ Jan Kouba: The oldest hymn book print from 1501 from Bohemia. In: Yearbook for Liturgy and Hymnology. 13, 1968, pp. 78-112 ( JSTOR 24193651 ).
  5. ↑ Hymn book of the Bohemian Brothers 1531. Edited by Konrad Ameln in a reprint true to the original. Kassel, Basel 1957 (facsimile of the first edition Ein New Gesengbuchlein. Jungbunzlau 1531, DKL 153102, VD 16 XL 8).
  6. ↑ A hymn book of the brothers in Behemen vnd Merherrn, Die one auss vnd neyd, Pickharden, Waldenses, & c. calls. Johann Günther, Nuremberg 1544, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb00083305-1 .
  7. ↑ Unity Of The Brethren Church website
  8. ^ Files and library of the Unity of the Brethren | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved August 28, 2017 .