APPENDIX A
A DOUBTFUL LETTER OF HUS
We have deemed it best, following the example of Palackẏ, to print the following letter in an Appendix rather than to incorporate it in the main text. The letter itself is not found in any manuscript, nor is it printed in the Epistolæ Piissimæ. We are entirely dependent for it upon the Nuremberg edition of 1558 (Monumenta, i. 59). It is true that there is also a Czech copy of it, first printed in 1564, but the Czech copy, according to Palackẏ (Doc. 149 n.), is a mere translation from the Latin, and is in no sense an original of Hus. But the most suspicious circumstance is the internal evidence. The letter contains an exhortation to communion in both kinds. Now historians are agreed that this was a matter upon which Hus had formed no very definite ideas before his imprisonment at Constance (see supra, pp. 170, 177, 248). That clause therefore certainly must be an interpolation. But the rest of the letter is a mere patchwork, which could easily have been compiled from the other letters of Hus.[1] Moreover, it is evident from the absence of all allusions that this letter was not written during Hus’s stay in Constance, or from his prison. This therefore rules out a later date. The letter seems to us either a pious fraud in the interest of the Calixtine party, or else to be too seriously interpolated for us now to discover the original kernel. Of the two, we incline to the former opinion. But the reader shall judge the matter for himself.
- ↑ The reader may compare the letter with pp. 149, 275, and other places.
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