Dvojí podoba jednoty – vývoj úřadu bratrského soudce v českých zemích a Rzeczpospolité Obojga Narodów
Two Forms of the Unity of the Brethren – the Development of the Role of its Judge in the Czech Lands and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Summary/Abstract: The article gives an outline of a development of the organisational structure of the Unity of the Brethren in the second half of the 16th and the first decades of the 17th century. It compares the character and nature of changes to which two autonomous branches of one church were subjected: one in the Czech lands and the other in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The key issue of the European reformation is the assistence of the lay Church members in Church administration. In the Unity of the Brethren this was done through the office of a judge. The relation between judge and priest is examined at several levels: Important moment is judge’s right to punish erring and disobedient members of the Church as well as to supervise the conscience and protect the purity of faith which implies his possible supervision on priest himself. Judge’s position of an assistant in the Church can be strengthened by priest’s dependance on the financial support that he provides and also by the way he has been elected, i.e. the strenth of judge’s “mandate”. The development of these relations is shown through the testimony of normative sources that define the office of judge. In the Czech lands it has developed in a relatively traditional way regardless of the evident changes that the Unity of the Brethren underwent. On the other hand, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the Unity has undergone many transformations which are motivated by the interest of patrons in the Church and their efforts to gain its protection and support.

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