opinions, and they have not remained without echo in recent English works. In his important work, Hus und Wiclif, Professor Loserth has strongly insisted on the indebtedness of Hus to Wycliffe. He has undoubtedly proved this indebtedness, which has indeed at all times been known to those who have studied the writings both of Wycliffe and of Hus. Thus the treatise of Hus, De Ecclesia, is to a large extent founded on Wycliffe’s work of the same name, and Professor Loserth has, in his work mentioned above, printed in parallel columns considerable passages from the two works that are almost identical. With all deference to so eminent a scholar as is Professor Loserth, it must be admitted that he has everywhere attempted to minimise the importance and independence of Hus and the Hussite movement. Thus Loserth—as did Höfler before him—lays great stress on the fact that the Hussites were frequently called Wycliffites by their enemies. He does not, however, mention that as the strength of the Bohemian movement in favour of church-reform was largely based on its connection with the national movement, it was an obvious stratagem of the Romanist party to exaggerate the dependence of the reform movement on foreign influences. We frequently meet with this tendency. Thus one of the manuscripts of a work of Matthew of Janov, one of the forerunners of Hus, formerly bore the inscription: Tractatus Johannis Wikleff heretici. This inscription was afterwards erased and the name of the true author, Matthew of Janov, substituted.[1] Professor Loserth has also placed Wycliffe on a higher pedestal than most of the English reformers’ countrymen have done,[2] and he has certainly
- ↑ Dr. Kybal’s edition of Janov’s Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti, vol. i. p. 1.
- ↑ It is interesting to compare with Loserth’s appreciation the words of the late Canon Bigg, who writes: “Wycliffe was a college don, the most famous teacher of his time at Oxford, though not of the first rank. His philosophy is not original and he appeals invariably to the head; there is no sentiment or pathos or unction about him, not a grain of amusement is to be extracted from his books, and we may reckon this a serious defect—not a grain of poetry, and this is more serious still. He had none of the qualities of a great preacher, or a great leader of the people, and as far as we can see, he never attempted
