Petr ChelčickýПетр Хельчицкий

There is a book, written more than 450 years ago by an unlearned man, Petr of the village of Chelčice, that is almost entirely unknown.

In this book, entitled “The Net of Faith,” we find not only a simple, clear, strong, and truthful exposure of the terrible deception in which people have lived and still live, believing in what is most alien to true Christianity and imagining that they profess the Christian teaching; we find in this book also a clear indication of the one good way of life that was opened to people by Christ.

Every truth of life that is meant to serve as a guide to people’s conduct, even if it appears all at once, in all its fullness, in the consciousness of holy people, appears in most people slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, in fits and starts, at times seeming to hide itself completely and then appearing again with new efforts, like the throes of birth.

So it was, and so it still is now, with Christianity. Christian truth was at first received in its full meaning by a small number of simple people, of no importance and no wealth. But as it spread among a great number of people, and among the rich and the noble, it was perverted more and more, and from the time the church was instituted (from the time of Constantine, as Chelčický says) it became so perverted that its chief, true meaning for life was completely hidden from people and replaced by external forms alien to the essence of Christianity.

But a truth that has entered people’s consciousness cannot die away. Outside the church, in what churchmen called heresies, there always remained faithful understanders and doers of the true Christian teaching. And again and again there came new and ever new throes of its rebirth. And each time a greater and greater number of people became partakers of Christian truth in its real meaning.

Chelčický was such a faithful understander and reviver of Christian truth. Chelčický’s chief work, “The Net of Faith,” is an indication of what Christian society ought to be according to the teaching of its founder, and of what it has become under the perverted teaching.

Here is what is said in the preface to the book:

“This book, bearing the title ‘The Net of Faith,’ was composed by Petr of Chelčice, who lived in the time of Master Rokycana, was well acquainted with him, and often talked with him. He wrote many useful books on the law of God for the advancement of the church in its struggle against antichrist and his delusions, and if this book has so far seen little of the light of day, the cause of this has been the clergy, who have not ceased and do not cease to represent the books of Petr Chelčický to the people as erroneous and heretical, and all because he condemns their way of life. For all that, many people of every estate gladly read both this book of Petr Chelčický’s and his other writings, even though he was a layman and not learned in Latin, because, though he was not a master of the seven arts, he was truly a doer of the nine beatitudes and of all the commandments of God, and was thus a true Czech doctor. In this book Chelčický touches on all the estates, beginning with emperors, kings, princes, lords, knights, burghers, and craftsmen, and ending with the rural estate; but he gives particular attention to the clergy: to popes, cardinals, bishops, archbishops, abbots, and monks of every order, deans, parish rectors, and vicars. The first part of this book sets forth by what path and in what manner a terrible corruption made its way into the holy church, and proves that only by removing from the church all human inventions can one reach its true foundation — Jesus Christ; the second tells of the rise and multiplying in the church of various estates, which only hinder the true knowledge of Christ, for they are filled with the spirit of pride and resist with all their might the humble and meek Christ.”

And indeed, Chelčický, in this book as in his other writings, does not dispute the papal ordinances and dogmas of the church, as did his predecessor Hus and, living and working after him, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin; he only shows that the life of people who consider themselves Christians is not Christian; that a Christian cannot exercise power, cannot own lands or slaves, cannot live in luxury, cannot live a dissolute life, cannot carry out executions, cannot, above all, kill and make war.

Chelčický does not argue about salvation by works or by faith, about predestination, or about dogmas in general; he demands only that all the decrees of the church be accessible to the understanding of the people. He does not deny them, but speaks of the life of Christians, and shows that earthly rulers, the army, the courts, and the nobility are incompatible with Christian life (he even considers the estate of the towns incompatible with Christianity). Above all, he shows that executions and wars are unthinkable for a Christian. He shows that the union of Christianity with the state — the one that has now come about — has ruined, has destroyed Christianity, but that it ought to be the other way around: Christianity, uniting with the state, ought to destroy the state.

And he proves that this is possible, that the absence of state power not only does not destroy order in people’s lives, but destroys the disorder and the evil from which people suffer.

In this lies the very reason for the obscurity of Chelčický’s book and work. Chelčický’s book and work hold, within Christian humanity, the same position that Christianity holds within all humanity. It is too far ahead of its time. The season for its fruits has not yet come. The destruction of papal authority and of indulgences, and much else that Luther did, was within the strength of the people of his time; but what Chelčický said could not be accepted, not because it is unclear or wrong — all that he said is, on the contrary, too clear and right — but because what he said was too far ahead of its time.

What Chelčický demanded cannot be accepted even now; still less could it be accepted in his time. What Chelčický said could not be refuted; at least, people then were still honest enough to consider it impossible to deny that Christ taught what he taught, that is, that people should love not only those who love them but their enemies, should endure wrongs, repay evil with good, and consider all people brothers, and that such a teaching is incompatible with the existing order of life. And so the question inevitably arose: which to keep, Christianity or the established order?

If Christianity is kept, then clearly those who have power must give up power, the rich must give up riches, those in the middle must give up securing themselves by violence, and the poor and those under authority must give up obedience to what is contrary to the Christian law (and in the state all public activity is contrary to the Christian law), and so expose themselves to persecution. And all this is frightening.

But to keep the existing order, knowing that it is not Christian, means renouncing Christianity. And this too is frightening. What, then, remained to be done? One thing: to forget what Christ said, what Chelčický said, and what conscience said, and not to think or speak about it.

In this lies the reason for the obscurity of Chelčický and his book.

The book was passed over in silence and forgotten. If some ten scholars know of it, they look on it only as a historical, literary monument.

But the spiritual riches of humanity never perish; they only ripen, like hard fruit. And the longer they wait for their time, the more precious they are. So it is with Chelčický and his book.

His book was recently printed, for the first time, by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and of course no one has read it, or even heard of it, as with everything that is printed at such great expense and with such an air of importance in the Academy’s publications. The works of Nietzsche, Zola, and Verlaine are printed in dozens of editions and hundreds of thousands of copies. Everyone knows the slightest details of these people’s lives, but Chelčický’s books have still not been printed, even in Bohemia and Germany, to say nothing of England and France.

And about Chelčický himself almost nothing is known. It is supposed that he was born around 1390 and died around 1450. Some think he was a nobleman, others that he was a peasant, a shoemaker, or a tiller of the soil. I think he was a tiller of the soil.

That he was a tiller of the soil, a peasant, I conclude, first, from the strong, simple, clear language of the book; second, from the wisdom of the book, owing to which the author always knows what is important and what is less important, and always puts the important first; third, from the warmth of heart and the artlessness with which he speaks, sometimes in a peasant’s way, coarsely and strongly, with indignation, sometimes with bitter mockery, of what evidently makes his soul ache.

“The Net of Faith” is an old book by its date, but by its meaning and content it is the newest of books, so new that the people of our time are still far from being prepared by true enlightenment to be able to understand it. But its time will come, and is coming.

For Christianity is not a human invention, not one of the temporary forms that human societies settle into, but a truth — one that, if it did not appear on tablets of stone on Sinai, is written, more firmly still than on stone, on the hearts of all people. And once it has been spoken, none of it can be scratched out of people’s consciousness anymore. This truth has waited and will wait longer still, but from this it will only become the more evident and will only demand its fulfillment the more insistently.

One cannot strike out of Christianity the fact that Christians, as Chelčický says, must “not be participants in worldly wisdom,” must not be officials, judges, or soldiers, but must endure all injustices humbly, patiently, not repaying evil for evil, not murmuring, and not taking revenge. However hard people have tried, and still try, to talk these truths away, these truths remain truths, and through all the sophistries devised over the centuries to hide them they go on seizing people’s hearts directly, immediately.

What, then, is to be done? Until now the dilemma has been resolved by passing Christianity over in silence, or crudely lying about it, and keeping the state.

But people are bound to try the other, the opposite resolution as well: giving up the state and giving themselves to Christianity.

And this resolution will be all the more prudent because all states, with their violent order, have so far not only failed to give the good things they promised, but, on the contrary, more and more increase the calamities that people bear, and people more and more lose their faith in them.

It is just this new and good resolution that this wise, warm-hearted, and needed book of Chelčický’s furthers.

Some excerpts from it are included in the weekly readings of the “Circle of Reading.”