Moravian missionaries

, image = AgnusDeiWindow.jpg
, imagewidth = 250px
, caption = Church emblem featuring the Agnus Dei.Stained glass at the Rights Chapel of Trinity Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States
, main_classification = Proto-Protestant
, orientation = Hussite (Bohemian) with Pietist Lutheran influences
, founder = followers of Jan Hus and Petr Chelčický
, founded_date = 1457
, founded_place = Bohemia
, congregations = 1,000+
, number_of_followers = 1,112,120 (2016)
, website =

The Moravian Church ( cs, Moravská církev), or the Moravian Brethren, formally the (Latin: "Unity of the Brethren"), is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity, dating back to the Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century and the Unity of the Brethren ( cs, Jednota bratrská, links=no) founded in the Kingdom of Bohemia, sixty years before Luther's Reformation.

The church's heritage can be traced to 1457 in Bohemian Crown territory, including its crown lands of Moravia and Silesia, which saw the emergence of the Hussite movement against several practices and doctrines of the Catholic Church. However, its name is derived from exiles who fled from Bohemia to Saxony in 1722 to escape the Counter-Reformation, establishing the Christian community of Herrnhut; hence it is also known in German as the ("Unity of Brethren f Herrnhut).

The modern has about one million members worldwide, continuing their tradition of missionary work, such as in the Americas and Africa, that is reflected in their broad global distribution. Moravians continue many of the same practices established in the 18th century, including placing a high value on a personal conversion to Christ (called the New Birth), piety, good works, evangelism (especially the establishment of missions), Christian pacifism, ecumenism, and music.

The Moravian Church's emblem is the Lamb of God () with the flag of victory, surrounded by the Latin inscription "" ('Our Lamb has conquered; let us follow Him').

History

Jan Hus and the Bohemian Reformation

The Hussite movement that was to become the Moravian Church was started by Jan Hus ( en, John Huss) in early 15th-century Bohemia, in what is today the Czech Republic. Hus objected to some of the practices and doctrines of the Catholic Church; specifically, he wanted the liturgy to be celebrated in Czech, married priests, and eliminating indulgences and the idea of Purgatory. Since these actions predate the Protestant Reformation by a century, some historians claim the Moravian Church was the first Protestant church.

The movement gained support from the Crown of Bohemia. However, Hus was summoned to attend the Council of Constance, which decided that he was a heretic and released him to the secular authority, which sentenced him to be burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. From 1419 to 1437 were a series of Hussite Wars initially between various Catholic rulers and the Hussites, and then the political situation continued into a Hussite civil war between the more compromising Utraquists and the radical Taborites. In 1434, an army of Utraquists and Catholics defeated the Taborites at the Battle of Lipany. The Utraquists signed the Compacts of Basel on 5 July 1436.

Within fifty years of Hus's death, a contingent of his followers had become independently organised as the "Bohemian Brethren" () or Unity of the Brethren (), which was founded in Kunvald, Bohemia, in 1457. A brother known as Gregory the Patriarch was very influential in forming the group, as well as the teachings of Peter Chelcicky. This group held to a strict obedience to the Sermon on the Mount, which included non-swearing of oaths, non-resistance, and not accumulating wealth. Because of this, they considered themselves separate from the majority Hussites that did not hold those teachings. They received episcopal ordination through the Waldensians in 1467. These were some of the earliest Protestants, rebelling against Rome some fifty years before Martin Luther. By the middle of the 16th century as many as 90 percent of the subjects of the Bohemian Crown were Protestant. The majority of the nobility was Protestant, and the schools and printing-shops established by the Moravian Church were flourishing.

Protestantism had a strong influence in the education of the population. Even in the middle of the 16th century there was not a single town without a Protestant school in the Bohemian crown lands, and many had more than one, mostly with two to six teachers each. In Jihlava, a principal Protestant centre in Moravia, there were five major schools: two German, one Czech, one for girls and one teaching in Latin, which was at the level of a high/grammar school, lecturing on Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Rhetorics, Dialectics, fundamentals of Philosophy and fine arts, as well as religion according to the Lutheran Augustana.

Counter-Reformation

With the University of Prague also firmly in hands of Protestants, the local Catholic church was unable to compete in the field of education. Therefore, the Jesuits were invited, with the backing of the Catholic Habsburg rulers, to come to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and establish a number of Catholic educational institutions. One of these was the university in the Moravian capital of Olomouc. In 1582, they forced closure of local Protestant schools.

In 1617, Emperor Matthias had his fiercely Catholic brother Ferdinand of Styria elected King of Bohemia, but in 1618 Protestant Bohemian noblemen, who feared losing their religious freedom, started the Bohemian Revolt with the unplanned second Defenestrations of Prague and was defeated in 1620 in the Battle of White Mountain near Prague. As a consequence the local Protestant noblemen were either executed or expelled from the country while the Habsburgs placed Catholic (and mostly German speaking) nobility in their place. The war, plague, and subsequent disruption led to a decline in the population from over 3 million to some 800,000 people. By 1622, the entire education system was in the hands of Jesuits and all Protestant schools were closed down.

The Brethren were forced to go underground and eventually dispersed across Northern Europe as far as the Low Countries, where their bishop, John Amos Comenius, attempted to direct a resurgence. The largest remaining communities of the Brethren were located in Leszno (german: Lissa) in Poland, which had historically strong ties with the Czechs, and small, isolated groups in Moravia. The latter are referred to as "the Hidden Seed" which John Amos Comenius had prayed would preserve the evangelical faith in the land of the fathers.

In addition to the Renewed or Moravian Church, which preserves the 's three orders of episcopal ordination, The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church also continue the Hussite tradition in Czechia and Slovakia today, although they only account for 0.8% of the Czech population (which is 79.4% non-religious, and 10.4% Catholic).

, 18th-century renewal

In 1722, a small group of the Bohemian Brethren (the "Hidden Seed") who had been living in northern Moravia as an illegal underground remnant surviving in the Catholic setting of the Habsburg Empire for nearly 100 years, arrived at the Berthelsdorf

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases