Youť viery

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Sieť viery , title page of the 1521 edition, Prague.
Representation of the cracked network.

Sieť viery (also Sieť viery pravé , German: The Net of Faith , today's Czech: Síť víry ) is a late work by Petr Chelčický , the most important thinker and writer of the Hussites . Scripture is a sharp criticism of the abuses of Christianity at that time and a call for renewal. She had a major influence on the beliefs and decisions of the first generation of the Bohemian brothers .

content

From Sieť viery , Prague 1521.
Beginning of the first chapter

The starting point is the report on the miraculous fishing trip from the Gospel of Luke :

And when he ( Jesus ) had stopped speaking, he said to Simon , Go out where it is deep and cast your nets to catch. And Simon answered and said, Master, we worked all night and caught nothing; but at your word I will cast the nets. And when they did that, they caught a great deal of fish and their nets began to snap. ( Luke 5,4-6  LUT )

For Chelčický, this account is a parable of the Church's mission in this world. The net is the belief in God, in it live many fish - the believers who are drawn out of the sea of sin by the net and achieve eternal salvation .

Chelčický writes: Therefore, just as the real net is woven and knotted together knot by knot, until the whole great web is created, just as one truth of the Holy Scriptures is added to the other, until finally all together the multitude of believers and each one in particular with all embracing his spiritual and physical concerns so that he, completely surrounded by the net, could be pulled out of the ocean of this world. Such a net is able to draw out of the sea of ​​deeper and grave sins, if only one allows oneself to be drawn out of it. Chelčický explains that the net does not break because of the large number of believers, because it can hold a large number of believers and elect . On the contrary, through the multitude of believers the network becomes firmer and harder, namely each one of them increases this belief on his own initiative and hardens it, because he lives from it and is a cause that helps others to believe and gives them their own Example gives. (Chap. 2)

The early church was still founded on the teaching of Christ and the apostles, the network was intact and could save many people. But with the so-called Constantinian donation in the 14th century, the net suffered an incurable tear through the penetration of two large whales , the Pope and the Emperor . After Chelčický, the amalgamation of the church with secular, pagan power began here. The further disastrous development of the church is a consequence of this betrayal of the gospel, it reaches its low point in the Middle Ages , when these two powers - the Pope as the spiritual power and the emperor as the worldly power - ruled all of Western Christianity. In the wake of these whales, enemy groups have penetrated the net and continue to tear at it: the groups of monks , the nobility , the scholars, the townspeople, the priests . Each of these races longs for more and more power, for their sake there is inequality, enmity and war in the world.

Chelčický strongly condemns the division of medieval feudal society into three classes : lords, priests and the common people. He criticizes that, contrary to God's law, this church is divided into three parts: lords, kings, princes - the first group that defends, strikes and protects; the second group is the spiritual priesthood that prays; the third group is made up of the indulgent workers, and they have to meet the physical needs of the other two. … It is palatable to two parties, since both are lazy, voracious and wasteful; they are on the third party, submitting it; and with its pains this one bears the opulence of those double eaters ... (chap. 14). With biting satire, Chelčický castigates the vanities, greed and obsession with power of both the secular and the clerical classes in his book. He mercilessly holds up the mirror to medieval society - it appears Christian, but in reality it is the embodiment of the Antichrist .

The model to which the Church must return is the original Church, living in simplicity, poverty and without worldly power . Chelčický shared this conviction with his Hussite contemporaries. The Hussites demanded (in the third Prague article ): that the worldly dominion over wealth and earthly goods, which the clergy holds against the commandment of Christ ..., be removed from him and that the clergy themselves be led back to the evangelical rule and the apostolic life of Christ and his apostles .

The original church was committed to Christ's commandment to love . This teaches ... that they [the people of God] continually seek God with a full heart and hold fast to justice and love towards all people - friends and enemies - that it will not harm or harm anyone, and that they will not be vindictive injustice inflicted on them by others retaliating neither good nor bad evil for evil. (Chap. 11) This commandment of Christ betrayed the church by alliance with the worldly, pagan power.

meaning

From Sieť viery , Prague 1521.
Presentation of a scholarly disputation.

The book is the culmination of Petr Chelčický's literary work. His views already expressed in previous writings - the radical rejection of violence in O boji duchovním (On the Spiritual Struggle ) and the rejection of the division of medieval feudal society into the three estates in O trojím lidu (On Three Kinds of People) - become haunting here and in concise images.

Chelčický opposed any kind of violence, even in one's own defense. In doing so, he consciously opposed the Hussites and especially the theologians of the radical Taborites, who were otherwise very close to him . The Hussites were ready to use the sword to defend their faith. They fought against the crusader armies that Emperor Sigmund and Pope sent against the Bohemian " heretics ". Even the moderate Prague masters under the leadership of Jakobellus von Mies approved the fight with armed force, despite initial theological reservations.

Since, according to Chelčický, every worldly power is based on violence, indeed violence is part of its essence, true Christians are not allowed to participate in it. Chelčický writes: ... how should the office of worldly power belong to those who are bound by God's command not to avenge themselves in the event of injustice, but to turn the other cheek, beaten and slapped, and to retaliate against evil with no evil To leave vengeance to God, to love the enemy ...? (Chapter 26) The worldly authorities are only necessary to keep order in the world that has fallen away from God. In the bourgeois world, however, Christians should fulfill their obligations, such as B. Paying taxes, fulfilling them as long as it does not contradict God's commandments.

The uncompromising rejection of violence, also in one's own defense, and the turning away from the godless world, shaped the first generation of the Bohemian brothers. Petr Chelčický is considered the spiritual father of this movement, which emerged from the Hussite church in the middle of the 15th century . The brothers founded their first church in seclusion in the small village of Kunvald , here they wanted to lead a life alone according to the standards of the Bible. At the end of the 15th century, the Brothers' Union revised its concept of aversion to the world. In the cities, too, new congregations of brothers emerged and members of the urban bourgeoisie and the nobility became members. But the brotherhood's critical distance from any state power, its criticism of the division of feudal society and, above all, its consistent rejection of violence remained. Here the brotherhood differed from Luther , who did not question the feudal medieval order and even sided with the lords during the peasant wars .

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy paid tribute to The Web of Faith in his book The Kingdom of Heaven within you :

This book is one of the few people who have escaped the stake to expose official Christianity. All of the books of this type, called heretical, have been burned with their authors, so there are very few of the ancient works that expose the aberration of official Christianity, and that is why this book is particularly interesting. … It is one of the most remarkable creations, both in terms of the depth of its content, as well as the wonderful power and beauty of its popular language and its age.

expenditure

The Network of Faith was created between 1440 and 1443, soon after the Battle of Lipany . At first it was only distributed by hand, the first print dates from 1521, from the Pavel Severin printing house in Prague. Some original prints from 1521 are kept in the National Library of the Czech Republic . During the Counter-Reformation , the book was on the index of the Catholic Inquisition and was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the 19th century by the Czech National Revival movement. A new edition of the old Czech original by Professor Emil Smetánka appeared in Prague in 1912 and revised again in 1929. F. Šimek (Prague, 1950) and E. Petrů (abbreviated, Prague, 1990) published a translation into today's Czech. Jaroslav Boubín published a new text-critical edition of the old Czech original from 1521 in 2012.

The book has also been translated into foreign languages: into Russian (JS Annenkov, 1893 and 1907), into German ( Carl Vogl , 1923 and 1970) and into English (E. Molnár, 1947).

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the Middle Ages it was believed that Emperor Constantine had the Pope after his conversion to Christianity New Year's Eve the Papal States given and him and all his successors as ruler of all Christendom of the former Roman Empire recognized. The supposed deed of gift is a forgery.

literature

  • Peter Cheltschizki: The web of faith. Translated from Old Czech into German by Carl Vogl . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, New York 1970 (316 pages). With an introduction by Amedeo Molnár. With a preface by T. G. Masaryk .
  • Petr Chelčický: Youť viery . Ed .: Jaroslav Boubín. Historický Ústav AV ČR , Prague 2012, ISBN 978-80-7286-196-5 (Czech, 408 pages). [1]
  • Petr Chelčický: Síť víry . Ed .: František Šimek. Orbis Verlag, Prague 1950 (Czech, 323 pages, online [PDF; accessed on December 13, 2018]). Afterword by F. Šimek p. 313

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d German based on: Peter Cheltschizki: Das Netz des Glaubens. Translated from Old Czech into German by Carl Vogl . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, New York 1970 (316 pages).
  2. ↑ The Four Prague Articles in German translation in: Wegbereiter der Reformation . In: Gustav Adolf Benrath (Ed.): Classics of Protestantism, Volume 1 . Schünemann, Bremen 1967, p. 368-371 (544 pp.). online , accessed December 13, 2018
  3. ↑ Quoted from: Peter Cheltschizki: The network of faith. Translated from Old Czech into German by Carl Vogl . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, New York 1970, p. IX (316 pp.).
  4. ↑ Petr Chelčický: Sieť viery . Ed .: Pavel Severin. Praha 1521 (Czech, online [accessed December 13, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Petr Chelčický: Síť víry . Ed .: Emil Smetánka. Melantrich Verlag, Praha 1929 (Czech, online [accessed December 13, 2018]). digitized by CMS
  6. ↑ Petr Chelčický: Síť víry . Ed .: František Šimek. Orbis Verlag, Prague 1950 (Czech, 323 pages, online [PDF; accessed on December 13, 2018]). Afterword by F. Šimek p. 313
  7. ↑ Petr Chelčický: Sieť viery . Ed .: Jaroslav Boubín. Historický Ústav AV ČR, Prague 2012, ISBN 978-80-7286-196-5 (Czech, 408 pages).
  8. ↑ JS Annenkov: Sočiněnija Petra Chelčickago. I. Sěť věry. - II. Replica protiv Biskupca. Okončil po poručeniju Otdělenija russkago jazyka i slovesnosti IV Jagič . Sanktpetěrburg 1893.
  9. ↑ Peter Cheltschizki: The network of faith. Translated from Old Czech into German by Carl Vogl . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, New York 1970 (316 pages).
  10. ^ Enrico CS Molnár: A Study of Peter Chelčický's Life and a Translation from Czech of Part One of his Net of Faith. A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Church History, Pacific School of Religion . Berkeley, California 1947 ( online [accessed December 13, 2018]).

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