Bi-confessionalism in post-Hussite Bohemian Towns and its Legal Regulation 151 I tered the royal towns and renewed their councils. Given the Hussite majority among the royal towns, the Catholic loyalty of the sub-chamberlain could cause problems. For the Utraquist cities, the enforcement of confessional demands in internal affairs was crucial. Already the second point in the whole set of demands—after a general acceptance of the Hussite programme by Sigismund—asserted that no one should be accepted as a new townsman who would not receive the sacrament under both kinds. In the next point, the same condition was imposed on any repatriates, whether they left the towns voluntarily or were expelled. Two points dealt with the sensitive question of friars and their institutes: the demands forbade the king from introducing new friars into the towns unless the municipality or the council gave its express consent. This also applied to ruined monasteries, which were to be rebuilt only if the municipality requested it. Last on the list, but by no means least in importance, was an article demanding an inventory of Hussite parishes, whose Utraquist character was to be preserved in the future. The fear of a Catholic restoration (soon justified) was clear. The towns received confirmation of their claims in July 1435 in Brno, where representatives of the Bohemian Estates met with Sigismund. The monarch went far to meet the demands of the Utraquists, and Prague was granted a special privilege regulating religious conditions in the capital. The document reflected the aforementioned requirements, and specified the position of Catholics within the community. For inter-confessional coexistence, it used the terminus technicus “hanebná směsice” (shameful mixture), expressing the undesirability of the confessional heterogeneity, which caused hotspots of conflict. Nevertheless, it was clear that if Prague was to become the capital of a country where two confessions co-existed legally, it had to make some compromises. The Catholic clergy were given a district of Prague Castle as a parish settlement of St. Vitus Cathedral, but they had to tolerate the Utraquists. In their activities, however, they were not to interfere in any way with the traditional spheres of the parish clergy, a reservation which also applied to the friars if they resettled in abandoned monasteries in Prague or its surroundings. The inhabitants of Vyšehrad and Hradčany, on the other hand, were to unite with the townspeople of the Prague Tri-City in Utraquism.8 The representatives of Prague, as the head of other cities, requested another privilege before the final acceptance of Sigismund as King of Bohemia. The monarch promised them in a letter given on July 22, 1436, that they did not have to accept defected inhabitants and return their property.9 This was a thorny issue for the towns, except perhaps in Kutná Hora, which associated the return of the exiles with the return of know-how for the mining business. It also concerned, of course, Catholic towns such as Plzeň or České Budějovice, which resisted possible restitution claims from the escaped Hussites. Sigismund’s privilege, however, left the door open for the free prerogative of existing governments to deal with any exceptional cases. Especially in Prague, this became an important tool of economic and political power for councillors, allowing them to confirm confiscations in their own interest, and to restore the properties of various acquaintances and relatives.10 8 Codex iuris municipalis Regni Bohemiae, vol. 1, Privilegia civitatum Pragensium, ed. Jaromír Čelakovský (Prague, 1886), no. 134, 216–19. 9 Archiv český, vol. 3, no. 22, 449–50; Codex iuris municipalis, vol. 1, no. 136, 220–21. 10 Martin Musílek, “Formy komunikace doby husitské. Listy pražských obcí proti odběhlým měšťanům aneb vysoká hra o velké majetky,” in Komunikace ve středověkých městech, ed. Martin Čapský (Opava, 2014), 151–62.
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