Do not repay evil for evil
Petr Chelčický was one of the most important religious thinkers of the 15th century. He lived in the village of Chelčice near Vodňany and stood outside the main Hussite currents. He was personally acquainted with the leading figures of the Hussite movement, especially Jan Hus, and his religious principles also envisaged the basic equality of all Christians. According to Chelčický, people must endure evil in the conditions of secular coexistence for the sake of the afterlife. This distinguished him from the Hussites, who defended their own and God's truth with weapons.
The painting represents an event from the autumn of 1420, when the victorious Hussite armies were returning from Prague to southern Bohemia. At that time the powerful feudal lord Oldřich of Rožmberk, an implacable enemy of the Hussites since his defeat at Tábor, raided the town of Vodňany with his mercenaries. He murdered or expelled the supporters of the reform movement, destroyed the town walls and established an anti-Hussite Konšelj administration. News of this act quickly reached the Hussite army, which invaded Vodnany from its camp near Písek to punish the injustice committed.
Smoke rises in the background from the looted and burning city. The inhabitants are fleeing to a pond near the village of Chelčice, laying their dead and wounded on its banks. Hopelessness, fear and anguish can be read on many faces - on the left a little girl cries, who has saved only the dishes in her basket and a bird in a cage from the whole household, next to her a young woman laments the death of her dear ones. But the sight of the devastated home stirs other feelings in the hearts of the inhabitants. The desire for revenge overwhelms everything else. At this moment, Peter Chelčický comes among them with his great faith in the power of love, tolerance and forgiveness. He restrains the man's threatening fist and tells him, "No, you must not repay evil with evil, for then it is multiplied and there is no end to it. Let evil perish of itself."
In his treatises, Peter Chelčický condemns everything that contradicts Christian love, faith and hope, he condemns violence in any form. He lived to see the concrete fulfilment of his ideals when, in 1457, Brother John Gregory founded the Unity of the Brethren in Kunvald according to his teachings.
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