Jan Huss

Hus, Jan (c.1369–1415)

From his appointment as rector of the Bethlehem chapel in Prague in 1402 until his execution at the Council of Constance in 1415, Jan Hus advanced the goals of an ecclesiastical reform movement with Czech national overtones. Hus’ ministerial and academic posts provided a broad platform for his leadership. He preached tenaciously against clerical abuses. At the University of Prague he taught philosophical and ecclesiological doctrines which, his opponents charged, were taken from the radical Oxford reformer, John Wyclif. Whereas Wyclif’s philosophical realism (for example, the indestructibility of ‘being’) led him to adopt several positions condemned as heretical, Hus’ polemic, in which he castigated the fiscalization and bureaucratization of the papacy, sprang more from his ideals of evangelical minority and apostolic poverty.

Hus came from Husinec in southern Bohemia. He was trained at the University of Prague, earning his BA in 1393 and his MA in 1396. Divisions in the university faculty ran along national origins, German and Czech, and were reflected in schools of philosophy. Hus sided with his compatriots who adhered to the realism of Wyclif as opposed to the nominalism embraced by the German counterparts. Along with his teaching duties, Hus preached in the large Bethlehem chapel. He followed in the footsteps of John Milic of Kromeríz and Matthew of Janov, forerunners of the Czech reform effort, committed to the reformation of the church according to the ideal of the early apostolic community.

The conflict between the faculties escalated into denunciations of heresy. Accused of Wycliffite errors, Hus and his fellow Czech academics responded by overturning the university voting procedure which had favoured the German students. After King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia confirmed this reversal by mandate in 1409, the Germans left en masse for other German universities, where they continued to challenge the ‘Wycliffites’ by seeking their condemnation at the imperial court and the Roman Curia. Moreover, Hus encountered stiff resistance from the indigenous clerical hierarchy, stung by his strident accusations of careerism and moral laxity. Ultimately, he broke with the archbishop of Prague, Zbynek Zajíc, over the papal election at the Council of Pisa in 1409. The archbishop, although at first sympathetic to reform, maintained obedience to Pope Gregory XII of Rome, while Hus supported the newly elected Alexander Zbynek; in return the Pisan pope decreed that preaching cease in all Prague chapels. Hus ignored the pope’s prohibition; even more, he publicly defended condemned articles of Wyclif. Outraged at Hus’ defiance, Zbynek declared him excommunicate.

Hus alienated King Wenceslaus when Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, called for a crusade in 1411 against the supporters of Gregory XII. The campaign was to be financed by the sale of indulgences, the profits of which Wenceslaus shared. Hus decried the crusade as fratricide; the King withdrew his protection for Hus. Meanwhile, Hus’ antagonists at the Pisan curia secured papal excommunication against him, extended by an interdict on Prague.

In deference to his sovereign, Hus left the city in 1412 and found refuge among nobles in southern Bohemia. From there he defended his position in Latin and Czech treatises, the most important titled Tractatus de ecclesia (On the Church). Like Wyclif before him, Hus defines the universal Church as the ‘totality of the predestined’. The Church on earth consists of the elect and those foreknown by God to be damned. This militant Church includes the Roman church with the pope and the cardinals who form ‘the chief part of its dignity’, provided they adhere to Christ’s example. Hus rejects papal claims to headship; Christ alone remains head of the Church. Anyone not prepared to follow Christ in word and deed is a ‘disciple of the Antichrist’.

When summoned to appear before the general council at Constance (1414–18), Hus received from the emperor Sigismund a guarantee of safe conduct to and from Constance. Instead of being allowed to present his case, Hus was imprisoned. Confronted with a series of loose quotes, deemed Wycliffite, that were gleaned from his works, Hus responded that he would abandon any position if it could be proven heretical on the basis of the Scriptures. Herein lay the main cause for his condemnation: Hus repudiated all pronouncements, either papalist or conciliarist, formulated without scriptural foundation. Refusing to recant, Hus was burned as a heretic on 6 July 1415. His death rallied his Czech countrymen and ignited a broad-based reform movement. Its conservative wing wrested major concessions from the Council of Basel in 1431–49, which were acknowledged in the Compacts of Prague (1436).