`Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists' Liberal Challenge to Rome, Luther"

Zdenek (Zed) David, 517 13th St. NE, was interviewed last month by Eric Bernard and Demetra (Deta) Voyadgis, 1223 E St. NE. The last issue of the Corner Forum featured the part of the interview focusing on Mr. David's background. This issue features the rest of the interview, focusing on his latest book, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists' Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther, which was published in August by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Mr. David is working on a sequel, in which he tracks the influence of the ideas of the Bohemian Reformation in the 19th century on the intellectual life in Bohemia and the Czech Republic. He hopes to have it published in two years.

Ms. Voyadgis asked all the questions but the first and the last.

Thank you very much for letting us into your home to interview you about this new book that you have written. I understand that the book was published late last year.

No, actually it was published in August. It appeared in August, but I have written it over the last 10 years. I was pleased that it has come to fruition. It is a rather large book, as you can see. There are some problems in publishing it, because publishers do not like to publish books over 300 pages, and this one is 576.

One of the matters which fascinated me about the religious history of [Central Europe] was the fate of Jan Hus, who was a kind of Czech national hero, a hundred years before the Protestant Reformation. He defied the sort of authoritarian character of the Roman Church, and he had been accused of certain heretical views.

He was burned at the stake as a heretic.

But his resistance to this authoritarian system made him a kind of figure of worldwide significance, one can say— somebody who stood for the rights of the individual against arbitrary authority.

Would you explain who the Utraquists were and why they are of interest?

They were the product of the Bohemian Reformation, which occurred as a result of the burning of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance in 1415. The issues which were involved were exactly this revolt of the authoritarian structure of the Roman Church at the time — that is, both its organizational structure and as far as the rigidity of, some could say, thought control, as was displayed so dramatically in the trial of Jan Hus.

The church separated from Rome and rejected this heavy handed authoritarian structure. In technical jargon, it adopted a liberal ecclesiology, as opposed to the authoritarian ecclesiology of Rome. And at the same time, however, it pretty much preserved the rituals and structure of the Roman Church.

The term Utraquists is from the Latin term sub utraque specie, which means "under both kinds." They insisted on distributing communion to laymen both in the form of bread and the form of wine, while the Roman Church at the time insisted that laymen should receive communion only in the form of bread.

[This was the most marked distinction, but the differences from Rome, of course, went much deeper. The Utraquists, in contrast to Rome, combined medieval Christian creed and ritual with freewheeling church administration and civic tolerance to other religious denominations.

A great paradox emerged after the Protestant Reformation, sparked off by Martin Luther, spread widely, particularly in the neighboring German-speaking countries. The Protestant Reformation was much more radical than its Bohemian counterpart. The Protestants abandoned the medieval liturgy, as well as sacramental priesthood, belief in all but two sacraments, veneration of saints and images and belief in the religious effectiveness of good works. The Utraquists retained these beliefs and practices.

This intermediate position created a major problem in the way the Utraquists were subsequently viewed. Modern theories tended to view historical progress as proceeding from medieval piety to Protestant Reform to secularism. The Utraquists neither "progressed" to Protestantism nor "retreated" to Rome. So modern historians joined Rome and the Reformation churches in considering the Utraquists an awkward historical anomaly. My purpose was to rescue the Utraquists from this historical trash heap!]

Did a portion of them eventually go back to Rome?

Well, what finally happened was that the Counter-Reformation prevailed in 1622, which was about two hundred years after the [Utraquist] Church was established and a hundred years after the Protestant Reformation. And the Utraquists' Church — its priests and its institutions — were just taken over by the Roman Church.

So the [Utraquist] Church was in existence for a couple hundred years?

Yes, right. It was not just something fly-by-night. It had a very invidious effect, because in some ways when the church was absorbed by the Roman Church, certain of the characteristics seemed to remain the same — the same ritual, the priests, the vestments and so on.

But the spirit of the church changed, and instead of being liberal — permissive — it suddenly became very rigorous and insisting on certain types of behavior: going to confession, for instance, and regulating people's lives. And also the hierarchy which came in — the priests came in from the outside — were very suspicious of the population, saying that they had been disobedient, schismatic, or heretical, so they had to be constantly watched.

So the relationship between the believers and the church had become antagonistic, or not really what one would assume to be a trusting relationship, but one filled with suspicions and anxieties and so on.

And what I consider to be particularly tragic is that this kind of absorption of this liberal church by the Roman Church in a sense wiped out the knowledge of what this liberal church was like. There is a kind of sense on both sides, the Roman side and the Protestant side, to simply not talk about this church, because it did not conform to either image.

So the result of this is that the Czechs lost the sense of what their real tradition was. I am using this very drastic image that what happened to the church was like the phenomenon of body snatchers in American horror movies, where there is this person that looks just like the old person but it's a different spirit.

Aside from this special meaning in Czech history, I also felt that this church gives a new perspective on religion, because often the traditional thing was that liberty, democracy, modern society resulted in a revolt against the traditional churches.

But here this church demonstrates that one can have fairly conservative set of beliefs — saints, sacraments, and so on — and yet have a liberal outlook on politics and social relations. In that sense I have compared the Utraquists to the Church of England, which in many ways also retained many of the medieval rituals — bishops and so on — and at the same time rejecting authoritarianism.

In the acknowledgment listed in your recent book, you thank your African American wife for giving you a different perspective on your research. In what ways do you feel that this helped you in your research?

Well, in looking at certain historical problems, there are certain conventional views, and I find it very refreshing that often I would have an idea that the relationship went one way, and she would say — well, it could have been the other way.

And in thinking about it, it sort of made more sense that the relationship went the other way. And she was familiar with the concepts of history. Not having been steeped in this mindset, and steeped in this history as a child, she was free of these set views, and sometimes it would convince me that looking at it in different ways made more sense.

If one were interested in purchasing the book, where is it for sale?

It could be ordered from Johns Hopkins University Press. It can be found on the Internet at http://www.press.jhu.edu.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. §