“The text is in two parts, presenting some of the same ideas that Chelcicky presented in 0 Trojim Lidu (The Three Estates, 1425). The historical context of Sit Viry is the Hussite Wars in Bohemia. In the 1440s Bohemia was without a king, after the death of the Emperor Albrecht and the battle of Lipany (1434), where the Taborites (radical wing of the Hussites) were defeated.”
“In 1458 the Bohemian nobleman George of Podebrady was elected king and he reconciled the Utraquists (moderate Hussites) with the Catholics. The Moravian Brethren originated among the followers of the Hussites in 1457; they had links with the Waldensians. Chelcicky is linked to them and shows the influence of the Oxford philosopher John Wyclif. He is primarily known as a “rural thinker” (selsky myslitel).”
“The title Sit Viry is drawn from Luke 5:4-6, where Peter and other apostles, having fished all night in vain, cast the net in the name of Jesus and drew in a catch so great that it broke the net.”
“In Chelcicky’s allegorized interpretation, the net is Faith, and the sea the pagan—later the secular—world. The apostles are fisherman of men and all Christian churches should adhere to their example. Those who tear the net of faith apart are false Christians, members of the clerical hierarchy who worship the outer forms of Christianity but lack true faith and good deeds.”
“The allegory leads to the exposition of Chelcicky’s view of the proper relations between Christians and the State. He holds that salvation comes when the individual Christian is drawn by his faith out of the sea of worldliness. That, he argues, was the essence of Christian life during the first three centuries of the apostolic church, until the Church was corrupted by Constantine’s Donation of world authority to Pope Sylvester, that introduced the evils of the worldly sea into its life.”
“Arguing for a return to the apostolic Church, Chelcicky inveighs against the corruption of the hierarchical principle of power and the attending wealth. The Christian community he projects has no power hierarchy to rule over it. Governed in the name of Jesus—the King of Love—the true Christian Church may coexist with secular power, and if necessary suffer the coercive power of the state. Christians must never seek to rule, but they may endure the necessity of service.”
“Here I note a difference between Chelcicky and Tolstoy (who admired him), who advocated a radical rejection of any participation by a true Christian in any social institution that wields power (army, courts, etc.)”
“Chelcicky does not advocate anarchism, allowing for the secular power to rule in secular matters. Unlike the utopian Taborites, he envisages that true Christians will always be a minority in a larger society that would remain spiritually pagan even in Christian times”.
“In Part II of Sit Viry, Chelcicky turns from theological to social and economic matters. He vehemently rejects city life. Cities, with their walled-in wealth and the violent strife it brings, are derived from the fratricidal Cain. His hostility to trade and the accompanying economic values of liquidity with the speculative aspects of usury, reflects in part an ethnic proto-nationalist Czech prejudice against the Germanization of Bohemia that came in with the rise of cities, their imperial charters and privileges accorded to industry (silver mining in Southern Bohemia) and trade.”
“Chelcicky favors rural life, even as he sees it being infected by the spread of luxury from cities. One of his fundamental values is individual self-sufficiency in a small rural community where no one lives from the work of others but each person has access to the Scriptures; hence the importance of literacy and education.”
“He condemns the clergy and even the village pastors, who traffic in the words of God for profit. He also inveighs against the parasitical learning of universities and professional teachers (monks); even the Franciscans who are dedicated to poverty are essentially Simonists, selling their services and rituals to the wealthy”.
“He rejects official priesthood in favor of the community of saints, which can only thrive in the peaceful seclusion of small, rural communities.”
“This ideal of rural life (derived from the legacy of Abel) is based on fraternity in faith – each individual member of the rural Christian community has hislher responsibility for his acts. The value of freedom of conscience and the insistence on economic self-sufficiency are fundamental to Hussite democracy. Social problems and disputes are to be resolved in communal meetings guided by the non-institutionalized influence of wise men who do not rely on coercive authority.”
“Chelcicky’s somewhat defensive view of rural life reflects the violent and chaotic temper of the time and place he lived in. The sense of an impending apocalypse shades his peaceful idyll.”
The following observations are from Peter Brock, The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren (London: Mouton & Co., 1957).
“In the second part [of Sit Viry] Chelcicky surveys the various classes which represent the ruling elements of contemporary society: the nobility, he townsmen, the monks and friars and priests and learned theologians. All are found wanting when measured in the scales of true Christianity…Taking the story of the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke V, 1-11) as his text, Chelcicky goes on to interpret it in his own way, to give it the ‘spiritual’ meaning so beloved of medieval thought. Within this loose framework he proceeds to erect one of the most powerful indictments of the state as an institution, as well as of the abuses of contemporary society, that has ever been penned.” @39)
“All government would seem to be for Chelcicky, as for the modern anarchists, solely an instrument of oppression, of legalized robbery. The conception of a welfare state would have been foreign to him. Domination and cruelty lay at the roots of the state organism, were inseparable parts of its make-up. ‘Authority cannot exist without cruelty [he says]. If it ceases to be cruel, it will at once perish of itself, since none will fear it…Therefore, authority is far removed from love.’
“Warfare between Christians, too, is an inseparable concomitant of the participation of Christians in the state.… Power could be wielded, in Chelcicky’s opinion, ‘by the worst of men who are without any faith or virtue, since it is by means of terrible punishments that the state compels evildoers to some measure of justice in outward matters.’” (@46-47)
“Every kind of trade and profit-making occupation connected with the town should be avoided in order not to harm one’s soul…His ideal seems to have been a loose association of independent and self-sufficient village republics founded on a barter economy.” (@67)