D. 1434, by which a conditional religious
liberty was granted to them, and they acknowledged the emperor
Sigismund as their sovereign; the weak king Wenceslaus having died in
1419. The Taborites were unable to resist any longer the united power
of both parties. They partly dispersed; the rest united in the year
1457, in separate communities, and called themselves United Brethren.
Under the severest trials of oppression and persecution, the number of
these congregations, the form of which was modelled after the
primitive apostolic churches, rose in less than fifty years to two
hundred. In the middle of the sixteenth century, numerous emigrations
to Prussia and Poland took place, where a free toleration was secured
to them. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, their
communities in Bohemia were finally dissolved. From the remnant of
these persecuted Christians, who were called by the Germans, Bohemian
or Moravian Brethren, has sprung the present community of United
Brethren, often called in English, Moravians, which was founded at
Hernhut in 1722, at first under the protection and ultimately under
the patronage and direction of count Zinzendorf.
The consequences of the barbarous measures of the Council of Constance
became immediately visible.
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