U'TRAQUISTS (Lat. utraquistce, from utrdque—i.e., specie, in both kinds), a name at first given to all those members of the western church, in the 14th c., principally fol lowers of John Huss, who contended for the administration of the eucharist to the laity under both kinds; but iu later times restricted to one particular section of the Hussites, although all the members of that sect alike claimed this as a fundamental principle of their church discipline. The name may be said to date from 1415, when the followers of John Huss, iu Prague, and elsewhere iu Bohemia, adopted " The communion of the cup" as their rallying cry, and emblazoned the cup upon their standards, as the distin guishing badge of the association. In 1417 the university of Prague, by a formal decision, directed that all the laity should communicate in both kinds; and the council of Constance, in consequence, prohibited students from any longer resorting to Prague for the purposes of study. The.Hussite party, on the contrary, made the demand one (the second) of the four points upon which they insisted as the condition of their sub mission to the church. Their demands were rejected by the council of Constance; but the council of Basel, in 1433, acceded to the demand for the cup, under the condition that, whenever communion was so administered, the ministering priest should accompany the ministration with a declaration that Christ was contained whole and entire under each species. A portion of the Hussite party was content with the explanation of this and
the other points offered by the council, but the more violent held out. See Huss. The former were called Utraquists, and continued to be so designated. During the refor mation troubles, this division was still maintained. The Utraquists were favorably regarded by the imperial party; and after the battle of Mtihlberg, in 1547, they alone were formally tolerated in Bohemia and Moravia. One of the most celebrated leaders was Jacobus v. Mies. The name Utraquist is still applied to certain districts or villages in Bohemia and Moravia; but it is used not in reference to this theological controversy, but merely to convey that, in these villages or districts, both languages, Bohemian and German, are spoken.