Jan Hus

The Life and Death of a Preacher

Pavel Soukup

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781612496061
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Biografías religiosas

Jan Hus was a late medieval Czechuniversity master and popular preacher who was condemned at the Council ofConstance and burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Thanks to hiscontemporary influence and his posthumous fame in the Hussite movement andbeyond, Hus has become one of the best known figures of the Czech past and oneof the most prominent reformers of medieval Europe as a whole.

This definitive biography nowavailable in English opposes the view of Hus that saw his importance primarilyas a martyr, subsequently invoked by a variety of religious, national, andpolitical groups eager to appropriate his legacy. Looking for Hus'ssignificance in his own time, this treatment tells a story of a late medievalintellectual who—through his dedicated pursuit of what he understood as hismission—generated conflict and eventually brought execution upon himself. Byinvestigating the life and death of Jan Hus, one learns not only about the man, but about the church, state, and society in late medieval Europe.

The story told in this book isoriginal in structure and purpose. Each chapter takes a major event in Hus'slife as a starting point for a broader discussion of crucial problems connectedto his career and the controversies he generated. How did these specific eventscontribute to Hus's own convictions? By suggesting parallels to and departures fromother late medieval figures and events in Europe, the book liberates Hus from anarrow and nationalist Czech historiography and places him squarely in abroader European context, showing a significance that transcended Czech borders.From a number of different vantage points, it raises a central questioncritical to understanding the later Middle Ages: why was a sincereecclesiastical reformer condemned by a church council committed to reformitself?

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Defendant at Constance

On Wednesday, 28 November 1414, after spending more than three weeks in the town of Constance where the Church Council had been convened, Master Jan Hus received an important visit. The bishops of Trent and of Augsburg arrived as ambassadors on behalf of the College of Cardinals, accompanied by the burgomaster of Constance and others. Sir John of Chlum, the master’s loyal guide and protector, accepted them with some suspicion. He reminded the visitors that Hus had arrived in Constance under the protection of King Sigismund, and warned them against any wrongdoing against the king’s will. As the prelates began to explain their intentions, Jan Hus arose from the table, revealing his identity to the bishops who had not yet recognized him, and proclaimed:

I did not come here to merely see the cardinals nor have I ever desired to speak with them in private; but I have come to address the whole Council where I will say whatever God grants me to say and answer whatever I shall be asked. Nonetheless, at the request of the Eminent Cardinals I am ready to come to them at once; and should I be questioned about any matter, I hope that I may choose death rather than deny the truth, which I have learned from the Scriptures or otherwise.¹

Hus professed similar views on numerous occasions while in Constance; in the end, his words proved true, as he indeed chose death.

The bishops then led Hus into the pope’s palace, where the cardinals addressed him as follows: “Master John, there is much strange talk about you. It is said that you hold many errors and that you have disseminated them in the Kingdom of Bohemia.” Hus answered the accusation in the same manner as he addressed the bishops earlier: “Most revered Father, be it known to You that I would rather die than hold a single error. For indeed, I have come freely to this sacred Council.”² After the meeting, Hus was placed under guard until late in the evening. Later, in the middle of the night, he was taken to the house of the cantor of Constance Cathedral, where he was held captive for a week. Later he was imprisoned at a Dominican monastery on the shores of Lake Constance. After Pope John XXIII’s secret flight from Constance on 25 March 1415, Hus was transferred to the custody of the archbishop of Constance who kept him captive at Gottlieben Castle on the River Rhine. At the beginning of June he was taken back to the city and imprisoned at the Franciscan convent for questioning until his conviction and execution.

On the day of Hus’s capture, Sir John complained to Pope John XXIII on Hus’s behalf. Later he made his protest to the cardinals as well, but without a positive outcome. Even a proclamation that publicly acknowledged all the facts surrounding Hus’s unjust capture, which he hung on the gates of the city cathedral and other churches in Constance, had no effect. The proclamation John of Chlum put forth read:

Master [Jan] Hus, bachelor formatus of sacred theology, under the safe-conduct and protection of the most illustrious prince and lord, Lord Sigismund […] came to Constance to render full account for his faith in a public hearing to anyone demanding it. The above mentioned Master [Jan], in this imperial city, under the safe-conduct of the said my lord, king of the Romans and of Hungary, was detained and is kept detained.³

In the proclamation Sir John addressed Hus formally, using the title bachelor of theology—his highest title—while keeping silent about the fact that Hus was still the rector of the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, and as such held extraordinary respect in the role of a preacher. Hus’s capture in Constance unambiguously signaled his downfall and sealed the path to a tragic end.⁴ Yet seven years prior to his execution, he enjoyed the support of the Royal Court and the friendship of the archbishop of Prague. He was then already preoccupied with deliberations on how to repair the reputation of the Church, which had been damaged by the Papal Schism and the undignified lifestyle of its clerics. Similar concerns troubled the majority of the fathers present at the Council of Constance, who even criticized the improprieties and offenses of the Church themselves, and called for rectification. The members of the Council of Constance tasked themselves with restoring the unity of the Latin Church and purging it of all abuses and indecencies. The well-attended international gathering represented probably the most serious attempt at Church reform in the fifteenth century.⁵ Why, then, did Hus’s ideas about the necessary reforms stand in such sharp contrast to the reformism of the majority of Catholic theologians, so much so that they felt compelled to burn him at the stake?

This is not an easy issue to resolve. While in Constance, Hus was accused of a whole series of crimes. The charges against him were already accumulating as early as 1408. But can the allegations themselves shed light upon Hus’s untimely demise? It is insufficient to simply seek answers within the text of the final judgment, the genesis of which will preoccupy the chapters that follow. From the historian’s point of view, however, investigation of the trial proceedings alone will not provide the necessary answers to resolve the question posed above. Other sources may shed additional light on the grounds for Hus’s conviction and reveal reasons for his condemnation, which the judges may have concealed, or of which they may not themselves have been aware. What is it that so provoked the Church authorities and secular representatives? Moreover, what was it about Jan Hus and his teaching that was so dangerous to warrant his annihilation? In order to adequately elucidate the demise of this renowned late medieval preacher and university scholar, one must investigate the society in which he lived, the society’s understanding of the world, and its internal tensions and biases.

This book examines Jan Hus and his career at the juncture of late medieval political conflicts, and deals only briefly with his “second life.” During the fifteenth century, Hus was an emblematic figure for the Utraquists. Later, he was the antagonist in a baroque legend who defiled Czech orthodoxy. In the nineteenth century Hus served as an integrative symbol of the Czech National Revival. A little later, at the hands of leftist historians, Hus became a fighter for social justice. Finally, for the Evangelical churches, not only in Bohemia but also abroad, he is a significant predecessor (or cocreator) of the Reformation. In a recent monograph, Hus’s posthumous glory takes up a good 40 percent of the text.⁶ It is therefore clear that the recollection of Hus’s “second life” is a separate topic in itself, one that this book will only lightly outline.

Although the last chapter addresses the relationship between Jan Hus and the German Reformation, my intention is not to portray the Czech reformer as a predecessor of Martin Luther. This book argues that the history of the Reformation begins with Hussitism in the fifteenth century. The comparison with the “classic” Reformation is intended to ameliorate our appreciation of Hus’s importance for the development of Czech society in the fifteenth century. The fact that over the course of the first half of the fifteenth century the Utraquist Church evolved into a particular variant of the new reformed church does not preclude that Hus himself wanted to embark on such a path. However, for Hus and his followers, a break with the Roman Catholic Church was an inevitable component of their concept of reform. And it is precisely these impulses that led to the formation of the Hussites as a group distancing themselves from the Catholic Church that are the focus of discussion in the following chapters.

Hus is thus taken up as a figure within his own time, emerging from both the specific circumstances in Luxembourg Bohemia and from the broader context of the developing Western Church during the time of the Great Schism. In the text that follows, rather than including a separate introduction on the history and culture of the Late Middle Ages, each chapter takes up the broader historical associations. Hus’s distinctiveness and the ways in which he was embedded in late medieval culture can only be determined on the basis of comparison with his European contemporaries and Czech forerunners. Therefore, in order to illustrate the historical figure of Hus, concurrent comparisons to other fifteenth-century ecclesiastical and university figures are included.

Retrospective in nature, the present biography interrogates the roots of the issues and controversies that pushed Hus to his limits. It recounts Hus’s successes and his demise, how he gained notoriety and created a circle of followers, why this attracted the attention of the Church authorities, and why the Church finally found it necessary to eliminate him. Although it is Hus’s death that serves as the basis of our inquiry, I do not agree with the opinion that Hus’s historical significance lies only in the fact that he was burned at the stake, and then was variously used and misused by history.⁷ Jan Hus was a publicly active and energetic scholar, and as such he must not only be of interest to scholars in death, but especially in life and through his deeds. From a historical point of view, as a significant actor and sometimes even the instigator of key events, Hus would be an attractive figure of study without the reformation, revolution, and national revival that were instigated in his name.

In this book, the figure of Jan Hus is primarily taken up as a well-documented medieval intellectual and a publicly engaged professor who gets into serious problems due to his popularity. It is Hus’s conflicts and controversies that have left the most noteworthy traces in historical sources. Owing to these disputes and to his posthumous fame, we have an infinitely deeper knowledge about Hus than about any of his contemporaries. What is more, no other Czech medieval author has left behind such an extensive and preserved body of work; Hus’s surviving correspondence is equally unique. Reports and documents that implicate him should also be added to the body of evidence. The many surviving documents provide insight into the world of the medieval scholar, something that would be impossible with any other contemporary figure.

This book includes a relatively wide scope devoted to the public activities of Hus, particularly the responses to his sermons and the emergence of a group of followers. As with any historical undertaking, the thematic focus of this piece is influenced by the experiences of the contemporary world. Hus’s image always corresponded and answered to the needs of the times inhabited by those who studied him. If today we are experiencing how political, civic, and social movements are organized through digital communications networks and social media, it is no wonder that the social impact of communicative behavior becomes a relevant topic of cultural-historical studies. For the purpose of the present book, however, this of course does not imply that we should create anachronistic parallels between the time of Hus and the present time. Rather, the focus on communication and group formation is an attempt to make Hus’s story relevant for the readers of today.

The subsequent two chapters give a concise overview of the historiography and of Jan Hus’s life. Each of the chapters that follow begins with a major event in the life of Hus. While these events form the chronological axis of the book, the problem-structured interpretation always takes into account additional testimonials from other phases of Hus’s life. A question is then posed at the end of each chapter that addresses the significance of a phenomenon or event in Hus’s life and whether it contributed to his conviction. In this way, Hus as defendant and, later, convict at Constance always stands at the center of this account.

Chapter 2

Jan Hus in the Hands of Historians

The Czech film The Elementary School (Obecná škola, 1991), directed by Jan Svěrák, features the character of a particularly favorite teacher. One of his most moving lectures is the one describing the life and death of Master Jan Hus. Two boys are incited by this story to confess the truth to the magician Mrázek about the tools they had previously stolen from him. “We suffer like Hus,” says one of the boys as the dog of the angry illusionist chases them out of his house. The boys became acquainted with Hus’s life and his suffering for the truth in 1946, a time that saw an upsurge of patriotism in the wake of the liberation from the Nazi occupation. The relevance of such a discourse about the martyr of Constance would have hardly been imaginable a century earlier, let alone even half a century later. Czech patriots of the late Austro-Hungarian monarchy and of the first Czechoslovak Republic vehemently seized the story of Hus, popularizing him to an unprecedented level not seen since the time of the Utraquist Church. Despite the fact that Hus’s popularity had its ups and downs, for centuries he has remained one of the most famous figures of early Czech history, not only in his country of origin, but also around the world. The so-called “second life of Hus,” his variously interpreted story, begins as soon as the preacher’s earthly pilgrimage came to an end by fire at the border of Constance. From a Catholic perspective, the day of death of a medieval martyr was also a birth. But Hus’s death marked the simultaneous birth of a martyr and a heretic, and both perceptions began to unfold without delay.¹

The preacher’s execution was documented by two chroniclers whose reports differ not only in the details they provided, but also in the overall assessment of the event. Ulrich Richental, from Constance, recorded Hus’s burning as an event connected to the Council, which of course attracted attention to the execution.² Peter of Mladoňovice wrote with the intention of eternally preserving Hus’s memory.³ The overall course and scope of the execution were described by the two eyewitnesses in roughly the same manner. The text of Hus’s prayer that the master uttered while walking to his execution is also the same. However, according to Richental, Hus was praying on his way to the execution, and again upon arrival. According to Mladoňovic, he sang the prayer, but only once the stake was lit. According to Richental, “Hus began to scream horribly, and quickly burned.” The laconically realistic description offered by Richental likely did not correspond with Mladoňovic’s notion of the martyr in the flames. Nor does Richental’s detail of the smell of burning flesh that spread around the site of the execution appear in Mladoňovic’s version, let alone the anecdotal explanation that it was likely the stench of a decomposing mule that had earlier been buried there by a cardinal. Equally distinctive is another detail, about which the two accounts differ. On two occasions, Ulrich explicitly states that Hus was fully dressed, and with the regret of a cloth merchant he describes the quality of Hus’s clothing. According to Mladoňovic, Hus’s clothing was immediately thrown into the fire by the bailiffs at the wearer’s death. Another similar yet brief account of Hus’s martyrdom is offered by John Bradáček, who wrote that the Count Palatine, Ludwig III, promised the executioners damages for the burned clothing. Clearly, the image of soldiers dividing amongst themselves the robe of a martyr must have invited association with the torture and resurrection of Jesus.⁴ In contrast to Richental, who saw Hus as an unrepentant heretic, both Mladoňovic and Bradáček, who stylized the last moments of Jan Hus according to the motifs of the Passion, a Christological association was precisely their intention.⁵

The two contrasting readings of Hus’s death established two different traditions that persisted throughout the early modern era. In both roles, the person of Jan Hus, either as a martyr or a heretic, becomes a type. Devotion to Saint John Hus emerged shortly after his death in the community of his Czech followers, and became one of the most important distinguishing features of the Utraquist Church. Hus was represented in altarpieces alongside national patron saints. During the fifteenth century he also found an importance place in the Utraquist liturgy. Texts borrowed from liturgies of other saints were used for his feast day, celebrated on 6 July. By the end of the fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth we also find texts composed specifically for Hus’s Day. Texts about ancient martyrs served as models for composing liturgical texts on Hus. Among them was the first Christian martyr, Saint Stephen, as well as Saint Vitus, the patron saint of the Prague Cathedral. In addition, due to his ascendance to the heavenly realm on a fiery chariot, the prophet Elijah was likened to Hus, as was John the Baptist, whose criticisms of the sins of the mighty formed another suitable parallel to Hus.⁶ However, the emphasis on Hus’s criticisms of the clergy could also be turned against the Calixtine ecclesiastics. In 1522 the following verse was added to an older song, Master Jan Hus, in the Hope in God:

Master Jan Hus was burned without mercy,

For he exposed the wrongs of the clergy

To the common people,

To all the faithful and devout.

Priests praise his life,

Yet they distance themselves from him,

For he was humble

even poor, and patient.⁷

Prior to the Battle of White Mountai...