editors decided wisely not to begin their publication with the one or two Latin works that have hitherto been almost exclusively known, and have indeed already included two or three works of Hus that had never previously been printed. The works already published are the Expositura Decalogi, De Corpore Christi, De Sanguine Christi, Super IV. Sententiarum, and the Sermones de Sanctis. The last-named work, just printed for the first time, contains, as Dr. Flajshans the editor writes, a collection of sermons of unequal value. Some are Hus’s own, while others are merely copies from the writings of St. Chrysostomus and St. Bernard.
It will be seen from what I have written that the works of Hus have been greatly neglected, if we consider the worldwide importance of the master. Even now it is impossible to state with certainty the number of genuine works of Hus that have been preserved. Josef Jungmann, writing about the year 1840, enumerates thirty-eight Bohemian works of the master. Jungmann, whose book treated of Bohemian literature, makes no reference to Latin works. Dr. Flajshans, whose work which I have frequently quoted supersedes Jungmann’s and all other earlier bibliographical attempts, enumerates seventy-four Latin, one German, and thirty-six Bohemian works of Hus.[1] The ancient traditions, which saw in Hus only the adversary of the Roman Church, which he became by the force of circumstances, by no means by his own wish, attributed all his numerous works to the last troubled years of his life. This, as previously noted, is quite untrue. Dr. Flajshans has for the first time seriously attempted to establish at least approximately the dates of the principal writings of Hus. Certainty, as the learned professor remarks, is very often not obtainable. The entire obscurity which surrounded all the master’s works renders research very difficult. Dr. Flajshans divides all Hus’s works, both Bohemian and
- ↑ I do not enter here into the difficult question of the manuscripts of Hus. Dr. Flajshans has written fully and clearly on this subject.
