BOHEMIAN BRETHREN. A Christian sect which arose in Bohemia about the middle of the 15th century from the remains of the Hussites. Dissatisfied with the advances to ward the Catholic Church by which the Calix tines had made themselves the ruling party in Bohemia, they refused to receive the compacts, as they were called, that is, the articles of agree ment between that party and the council at Basel (1433), and began about 1457, under the direction of a clergyman, Michael Bradatz, to form themselves into separate parishes, to hold meetings of their own and to distinguish them selves from the rest of the Hussites by the name of Brothers, or Brothers' Union. Amidst the hardships and oppressions which they suffered from the Calixtines and the Catholics with out making any resistance, their numbers in creased so much, through their constancy in their belief and the purity of their morals, that in 1500 their parishes amounted to 200, most of which had chapels belonging to them. They re jected the idea of transubstantiation, admitted only a mystical spiritual presence of Christ in the eucharist, and took the Scriptures as their sole doctrinal guide, and for this latter, but more especially for the constitution and discipline of their churches, received the appro bation of the reformers of the 16th century. They aimed at restoring the primitive purity of Christianity by the exclusion of the vicious from their communion, and their distribution of the members of their society into three classes — the beginners, the proficients and the perfect. Their strict system of superintend ence, extending even to the minute details of domestic life, did much toward promoting this object. To carry on their system they had a multitude of officers of different degrees ; or daining bishops, seniors and conseniors, presby ters or preachers, deacons, wdiles and acolytes, among whom the management of the ecclesiasti cal, moral and civil affairs of the community was distributed. Their first bishop received his ordination from a Waldensian bishop, though their churches held no communion with the Waldenses in Bohemia. They were destined,
however, to experience a like fate with that op pressed sect. V%'hen, in conformity with their principle of not performing military service, they refused to take up arms in the Smalkaldic War, Ferdinand took their chinches from them, and in 1548, 1,000 of their Society retired into Poland and Prussia, where they first settled in Marienwerder. The agreement which they con cluded at Sendomir (14 April 1570) with the Polish Lutherans and Calvinistic churches, and still more the Dissenters' Peace Act of the Pol ish Convention (1572), obtained toleration for them in Poland, where they united more closely with the Calvinists under the persecutions of the Swedish Sigismund, and have continued in this connection to the present day.
Bohemia recovered a certain degree of liberty under Maximilian II, and had their chief resi dence at Fulneck in Moravia, whence they have been known as the Moravian Brethren. The is sue of the Thirty Years' War, which terminated so unfortunately for the Protestants, occasioned the entire destruction of their churches, and their last bishop, Comenius, who had rendered important services in the education of youth, was compelled to flee. From this time they made frequent migrations, the most important of which took place in 1722, and occasioned the establishment in Saxony of the new churches of the Brethren by Count Zinzendorf (q.v.). Al though the old Bohemian Brethren must be re garded as now extinct, this Society will ever deserve remembrance, as a quiet guardian of Christian truth and piety, in times just emerg ing from the barbarity of the Middle Ages; as a promoter of pure morals, such as the re formers of the 16th century were unable to es tablish in their churches; and as the parent of the esteemed and widely extended association of the United Brethren, whose constitution has been modeled after theirs. See UNITED