History of Christianity in the Czech Republic

The origins of Christianity in our country are linked with the appearance of two missionaries from Southeast Europe, Cyril and Methodius (who were posted to the Greater Moravian Empire in AD 863). Christianity gradually found a home in the Czech lands, firstly because of the conversion of princely circles, and secondly by means of the strenuous work of missionaries, catechists and priests. Czech Christianity bloomed most under the government of Charles IV.

However, even by the end of the latter’s reign the Czech church had begun to take on the ideas of the Reform movement, which at that time had an influence on European Christianity. The rector of Charles University stood at the head of the reform preachers. After he was found guilty of heresy and burned in Kostnice (in 1415), his followers refused to accept the church verdict and withdrew their vow of obedience. After a series of unsuccessful religious crusades against the “Czech heretics” and the subsequent reconciliation, Czech society remained divided into the heretical (Hussite) majority and the Catholic minority. Later on, the Czech heretics, inspired by Martin Luther and John Calvin of the 16th century, joined the worldwide Reformation.

In the first half of the 17th century, there was a ferocious internecine war (lasting thirty years) between the Protestant and Catholic parts of Europe. The result was the majority non-Catholic nation fell under the government of the strongly Catholic Habsburgs within the framework of the peacetime redistribution of Europe. After the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), there began a period of strict re-Catholicisation, when the majority of Czechs either had to emigrate (this affected mainly the aristocrats) or change their religious affiliation. Understandably, this led to a considerable decline in religion. Later, during the period of the growing national consciousness of the Czechs, there was a conflict between religious and national identity. The emancipation of the country (at that time already re-Catholicised) from the Austrian, German-speaking authorities meant a weakening of the links to the Catholic faith associated with the governing Hapsburg family. The decisive symbols of the Czech national revival were for this reason naturally taken from the period prior to the Habsburg re-Catholicisation. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I (1918), there was strong anti-clerical feeling in Czech society. Indeed, the return to the Hussite inheritance typical of the First Republic related more to national emancipation than the Christian faith. The trauma of World War II and forty years of Communist “scientific atheism” also had a deleterious effect on the Czech church, and contributed to the Czech Republic being these days one of the most atheistic countries in Europe, and perhaps in the whole world.

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