George of Poděbrady governed as the only Hussite king ever to rule Bohemia, elected by the Bohemian estates in 1458 despite papal hostility to his Utraquist faith. Rome eventually excommunicated him in 1466, triggering a crusade called against his own kingdom by Pope Paul II — an extraordinary situation in which a reigning Christian monarch was simultaneously conducting diplomacy across Europe while being declared an enemy of the Church. These hellers circulated through that entire crisis, a period of sustained military and political pressure that never actually dislodged him.
George of Poděbrady governed as the only Hussite king ever to rule Bohemia, elected by the Bohemian estates in 1458 despite papal hostility to his Utraquist faith. Rome eventually excommunicated him in 1466, triggering a crusade called against his own kingdom by Pope Paul II — an extraordinary situation in which a reigning Christian monarch was simultaneously conducting diplomacy across Europe while being declared an enemy of the Church. These hellers circulated through that entire crisis, a period of sustained military and political pressure that never actually dislodged him.