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UTRAQUIST PRIEST
An extract from Armies of the Middle Ages, Volume 2by Ian Heath
128. UTRAQUIST PRIEST
The term 'Utraquist' derived from one of the Hussites' principal religious demands, which was that laymen as well as priests should receive communion under both kinds (sub utraque specie), ie, should partake of the wine as well as the bread in Holy Communion hence their adoption of the chalice as the symbol of their movement. Many of the Hussite movement's early war-leaders were priests who, being men of the cloth rather than men of the sword, apparently based their military advice and teaching on the works of classical Roman authors. One modern authority has even attributed Jan Zizka's battlefield tactics to his familiarity with Vegetius' 'Epitome rei militaris'. Zizka's successor Prokop the Bald was himself a former priest.
This particular figure, from the same source as 125 (where he is shown before Zizka at the head of a column of Hussite infantry), wears vestments comprised of a white mantle over a brown cassock, plus black shoes; the chalice is added from another, later 15th century source. He carries a gold monstrance with a glass or crystal relic case at its centre.
