“To our great shame and sorrow, we must acknowledge how our brethren have been cleverly seduced by Satan, and how they have departed from Holy Scriptures in strange and unheard-of ideas and acts. When Satan first came to them it was not with an open face, as the devil, but in the shining garb of voluntary poverty, [..], and in the zealous work of preaching to and serving the people and in giving them the Body and Holy Blood of God. And [..] a great many people flocked to them.
Then the devil came to them clothed in other garb, in the prophets and the Old Testament, and from these they sought to confect the imminent Day of Judgement, saying that they were angels who had to eliminate the scandals of Christ’s kingdom, and that they were to judge the world. And so they committed many killings and impoverished many people; but they did not judge the world according to their words, for the predicted time has elapsed with which they terrified the people, telling them strange things.” End quote.
Strange things indeed were happening in Bohemia. Peter Chelcicky whose words you just heard reported how the radical Hussites had called the End of Days for February 14th, 1420. But when that day came, and instead of all the enemies of the faith lying dead with their noses pointing skywards, royalist forces surrounded the radical Hussites in the city of Pilzen. Now the end really seemed nigh, but cometh the time, cometh the man, even if the man is a one-eyed, gruff ex-Highwayman.
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.
As always:
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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.
So far I have:
Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy
Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen
The Hussite Wars from 1419 to 1435 tore apart the medieval world. This revolution created a new way to think about the world and about faith that had not been seen before, nor had anyone seen Jan Zizka's deadly military inventions.
This podcast is part of the broader History of the Germans podcast that aims to track the history of the German people from the Early Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. If you enjoy this show, check out any of the other seasons or follow the main show.
So far I have the following seasons:
The Ottonians (919 AD-1024 AD)
Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy (1024 AD-1125 AD)
Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen (1125-1190)
Frederick II Stupor Mundi (1190-1268)
Saxony and Eastward Expansion
The Hanseatic League
The Teutonic Knights
The Holy Roman Empire (1250 AD -1356 AD)
The Reformation before the Reformation (1356AD -1439 AD)
The Empire in the 15th Century
The Fall and Rise of the Habsburgs (1439AD -1519 AD)