The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss

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Introduction
Among the heralds of the Reformation, John Wycliffe, the English Protestant who antedated Protestantism by a century and a half, holds the first position in order of time. For many years after the death of Wycliffe the movement which he began continued to be, as it was at first, confined to England; but at length it was to acquire a wider significance and to enter upon its European extension.

Not long after his own day the spirit of Wycliffe — even before knowledge of his work had crossed the Channel — had come to a new birth on the Continent. And when some sparks of Wycliffe’s own fire were blown over the half of Europe — even as far as Bohemia — the kindred fires which had long burned in spite of all suppression were quickened into a living and a spreading flame.

While then there was a direct and vital influence from the work of the English reformer which gave to his teachings partial identity with those of his Bohemian successors, the movement led by these was still quite independent and national.

The central figure of the Bohemian Reformation was John Huss or Hus, the son of a peasant. He was born in 1369 at Husinetz — of which his own name is a contraction — in Southern Bohemia. The principal events of his life, from the time that he took his degree at the University of Prague until his death at the stake, July 6, 1415, will be found in Trench’s sympathetic but discriminating narrative.

This selection is by Richard Chenevix Trench.

Time: 1415
Place: Konstanz, Germany

If we look for the proper forerunners of Huss, his true spiritual ancestors, we shall find them in his own land, in a succession of earnest and faithful preachers — among these Militz (d. 1374) and Janow (d. 1394) stand out the most prominently — who had sown seed which could hardly have failed to bear fruit sooner or later, though no line of Wycliffe’s writings had ever found its way to Bohemia. This land, not German, however it may have been early drawn into the circle of German interests, with a population Slavonic in the main, had first received the faith through the preaching of Greek monks. The Bohemian Church probably owed to this fact that, though incorporated from the first with the churches of the West, uses and customs prevailed in it — as the preaching in the mother tongue, the marriage of the clergy, communion in both kinds — which it only slowly and unwillingly relinquished. It was not till the fourteenth century that its lines were drawn throughout in exact conformity with those of Rome. All this deserves to be kept in mind; for it helps to account for the kindly reception which the seed sown by the later Bohemian reformers found, falling as this did in a soil to which it was not altogether strange.

John Huss took in the year 1394 his degree as bachelor of theology in that University of Prague upon the fortunes of which he was destined to exercise so lasting an influence; and four years later, in 1398, he began to deliver lectures there. Huss had early taken his degree in a school higher than any school of man’s. He himself has told us how he was once careless and disobedient, how the word of the Cross had taken hold of him with strength and penetrated him through and through as with a mighty purifying fire. What he had learned in the school of Christ he could not keep to himself. Holding, in addition to his academical position, a lectureship founded by two pious laymen for the preaching of the Word in the Bohemian tongue (1401), he soon signalized himself by his diligence in breaking the bread of life to hungering souls and his boldness in rebuking vice in high places as in low. So long as he confined himself to reproving the sins of the laity, he found little opposition, nay, rather support and applause. But when he brought the clergy and monks also within the circle of his condemnation and began to upbraid them for their covetousness, their ambition, their luxury, their sloth and for other vices, they turned resentfully upon him and sought to undermine his authority, everywhere spreading reports of the unsoundness of his teaching.

Let us see on what side he mainly exposed himself to charges such as these. Many things had recently wrought together to bring into nearness countries geographically so remote from one another as Bohemia and England. Anne, wife of our second Richard, was a sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. The two flourishing universities of Oxford and Prague were bound together by their common zeal for Realism. This may seem to us but a slight and fantastic bond; it was in those days a very strong one indeed. Young English scholars studied at Prague, young Bohemian at Oxford. Now, Oxford, long after Wycliffe’s death, was full of interest for his doctrine; and among the many strangers sojourning there, it could hardly fail that some should imbibe opinions and bring back with them books of one whom they had there learned to know and to honor. Thus Jerome, called of Prague, on his return from the English university, gave a new impulse to the study of Wycliffe’s writings, bearer as he was of several among these which had not hitherto travelled so far.

This man, whose fortunes were so tragically bound up with those of Huss, who should share with him in the same fiery doom, was his junior by several years; his superior in eloquence, in talents, in gifts — for certainly Huss was not a theologian of the first order; speculative theologian he was not at all — but notably his inferior in moderation and practical good-sense. Huss never shared in his friend’s indiscriminate admiration of Wycliffe. When, in 1403, some forty-five theses, which either were or professed to be drawn from the writings of the English reformer, were brought before the university, that they might be condemned as heretical, Huss expressed himself with extreme caution and reserve. Many of these, he affirmed, were true when a man took them aright; but he could not say this of all. Not first at the Council of Constance but long before, he had refused to undertake the responsibility of Wycliffe’s teaching on the holy eucharist. But he did not conceal what he had learned from Wycliffe’s writings. By these there had been opened to him a deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church and its need of reformation in the head and in the members, than ever he had before obtained. His preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now were his, more than ever exasperated his foes.

Continued.

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