ABSTRACT
When the Council of Constance condemned and burned Jan Hus as a heretic, the story of his movement was far from finished. His supporters in Bohemia and Moravia created a Hussite League of nobles and drafted a letter protesting his execution while under an imperial guarantee of safe conduct. Four hundred and fifty-two nobles attached their seals to the letter, including one-third of the upper nobility. 1 A corresponding Catholic League also formed, and the two sides clashed, both on and off the battlefield. In 1419, the Prague preacher Jan Želivský incited his followers to break into a church from which he had been expelled. They celebrated Mass with communion in both kinds, and then left for the New Town Hall to free the Hussite prisoners being kept there. The mob attacked the building and threw 11 of their opponents out of the windows. 2
