Jan Hus and the Bohemian Reformation in Prague'', a 1916 portrait by
Alfons Mucha The
Hussite movement that was to become the Moravian Church was started by
Jan Hus () in early 15th-century
Bohemia, in what is today the
Czech Republic. 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. Hus was released 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 Roman Catholic rulers and the Hussites. Then there was a Hussite civil war, between the more compromising
Utraquists and the radical
Taborites. In 1434, an army of Utraquists and Roman Catholics defeated the Taborites at the
Battle of Lipany. The Utraquists signed the
Compacts of Basel on 5 July 1436. Within 50 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. 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. 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
Roman Catholic Church was unable to compete in the field of education. 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 Roman Catholic educational institutions. One of these
was the university in the Moravian capital of
Olomouc. In 1582, they forced the closure of local Protestant schools. In 1617,
Emperor Matthias had his fiercely Roman Catholic brother
Ferdinand of Styria elected as King of Bohemia. In the year that followed,
Protestant Bohemian noblemen, in fear of losing their religious freedom,
instigated a revolt with the unplanned
Defenestrations of Prague. The Protestants were defeated in 1620 in the
Battle of White Mountain near Prague, known as the first battle in the Thirty Years' War. As a consequence, the local Protestant noblemen were either executed or expelled from the country, while the Habsburgs placed Roman 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. 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 () 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 the Czech Republic and
Slovakia today, as with the
Unity of the Brethren in the United States; these are denominations in the same Hussite-Moravian theological tradition. and his group of some 200
Lenape and
Mohican Christians traveled west along
The Great Shamokin Path from their village of Friedenshütten (
Cabins of Peace) near modern
Wyalusing on the
North Branch Susquehanna River to their new village of Friedensstadt (
City of Peace)] on the
Beaver River in southwestern
Pennsylvania. Along with the
Royal Danish Mission College, the Moravian missionaries were the first large-scale
Protestant missionary movement. They sent out the first missionaries when there were only 300 inhabitants in Herrnhut. Within 30 years, the church sent hundreds of Christian missionaries to many parts of the world, including the
Caribbean,
North and
South America, the
Arctic,
Africa, and the
Far East. They were the first to send lay people as missionaries, the first Protestant denomination to minister to slaves, though some communities also owned slaves, and the first Protestant presence in many countries. Owing to Zinzendorf's personal contacts with their royalty, the first Moravian missions were directed to the
Dano-Norwegian Empire. While attending the coronation of
Christian VI of Denmark-Norway in 1730, Zinzendorf was profoundly struck by two
Inuit converts of
Hans Egede's
mission in Greenland and also by an African from the
West Indies. The first Moravian mission was established on the Caribbean island of
Saint Thomas in 1732 by a potter named
Johann Leonhard Dober and a carpenter named
David Nitschmann, who later became the first bishop of the Renewed Unity in 1735.
Matthaeus Stach and two others founded the first
Moravian mission in Greenland in 1733 at
Neu-Herrnhut on
Baal's River, which became the nucleus of the modern capital
Nuuk. Moravians also founded missions with the
Mohicans, an
Algonquian-speaking tribe in the
colony of New York in the
Thirteen Colonies. In one instance, they founded a mission in 1740 at the Mohican village of
Shekomeko in present-day
Dutchess County, New York. The converted Mohican people formed the first native Christian congregation in the present-day United States of America. Because of local hostility from New Yorkers to the Mohicans, the Moravian support of the Mohicans led to rumors of them being secret
Jesuits, trying to ally the Mohicans with
France in the ongoing
French and Indian Wars. Although supporters defended their work, at the end of 1744, the colonial government based in
Poughkeepsie, New York, expelled the Moravians from the
Province of New York. In 1741,
David Nitschmann and
Count Zinzendorf led a small community to found a mission in the colony of
Pennsylvania. The mission was established on
Christmas Eve, and was named Bethlehem, after the
Biblical town in Judea. There, they ministered to the Algonquian-speaking
Lenape.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is today the seventh-largest city in Pennsylvania, having developed as a major industrial city in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1772, the first European-Native American settlement of what later became
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, occurred when Reverend John Ettwein, a Moravian missionary, arrived there with a band of 241 Christianized
Lenape. In 1771, Moravians established a settlement at
Nain, Labrador, which became a permanent settlement and the Moravian headquarters in Labrador. The mission stations expanded to
Okak (1776),
Hopedale (1782),
Hebron at
Kauerdluksoak Bay (1830–1959), serving also
Napartok Bay and
Saeglek Bay,
Zoar (1864–1889),
Ramah (1871–1908),
Makkovik (1896), and
Killiniq on
Cape Chidley island (1905–1925). Two further stations were added after this period at
Happy Valley near
Goose Bay (1957) and
North West River (1960). The start of far-flung missionary work necessitated the establishment of independently administered provinces. So, from about 1732, == Present ==