The Servants of Antichrist: the Denouncement of Franciscans on the Utraquist (Hussite) Pictures in Jena Codex (Bohemia, Around 1490-1510)

Abstract

The hectic period of Bohemian Reformation (1419-1434) was characterized by civil wars and by unequal struggles against international intervention by papal and imperial crusaders. One of the products of those stormy times is the entirely anomalous ecclesial situation, when in Bohemia there existed side by side two ecclesiastical organizations: the Roman Church and the Bohemian Utraquist Church. The Franciscan John of Capistrano, during his Bohemian sojourn (1451-1454), focused his ire on the Compactata, which had legitimized the Utraquist Church at the Council of Basel. Capistrano’s militant spirit continued to inspire their work, and, despite internal frictions within the Order, the Franciscans in the Bohemian Kingdom remained important supporters of the Roman Church, as well as zealous opponents of the Bohemian Reformation. The Franciscans received rough literary treatment, evocative of the dialectical pictorial treatment in the Jena Codex (ca. 1490-1510). The author of this composite manuscript of written Czech theological texts was Bohuslaus of Čechtice (†1533) from the Prague Utraquist University. The illuminator of this work was Janíček Zmilelý of Písek, who in his pictorial satire Antithesis Christi et Antichristi attacks Bohemian Franciscans. This illuminator created a very specific „Franciscan iconography“ with a perverted connotation: in the illustrations the Franciscans are symbolically presented as the destroyers of the Church and servants of the Antichrist. This essay represents only a brief view in the Jena Codex, a unique nonconforming art work from the end of the Middle Ages in Bohemia.