Publication details
Giving the Heretics a Stand : The ‘Compacts’ and ‘Concordats’ of Jihlava (Basel) in the Long Struggle for a Peace Agreement between the Roman Church and Bohemian Hussites (1436)
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Chapter in a book |
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| Description | The “Compacts of Jihlava,” from 1436 (also known as ‘Compacts of Basel’) are today regarded as the end point of the Hussite Wars. Although they were not a peace treaty in the classical sense, they were a significant innovation: For the first time, the Catholic Church had yielded to a group it had accused of hereticism and granted their demand for the permissibility of chalice communion. Behind this six-year struggle for peace was a heterogeneous group of political actors, including Catholic and Hussite diplomats, representatives of the Bohemian and Moravian estates, and Emperor Sigismund, who had to find a common language over time. The agreements included the separate ‘Concordats’, an agreement limited to the interests of particular bohemian actors (especially Prague). This contained much more far-reaching concessions to the Hussites. Parts of it would survive in the Bohemian Land Law, which was much less known but more resilient than the fragile Compacts, which Pius II abolished as early as 1462. |